Category: Food

  • Where the wild things are

    I’ve been working the Toronto Star for almost two years now, and I’ve finally written my first piece for them… a little essay about the joy of foraging for berries in the city. A pint of serviceberries is however you value an hour’s work. Grasp the branch with one hand, an open plastic bag looped…

  • Flabbergasted

    The other day at the St. Lawrence farmer’s market, a strawberry farmer was handing out free samples of the fruit to bystanders, straight from the basket. A woman walked by, turned up her nose, and said, “Ugh! Ew, that’s dirty. You can’t eat that.” I’ve never seen a more thoroughly bewildered person in my life,…

  • 52 Titles: M.F.K. Fisher’s “The Art of Eating”

    This book is actually five of her early titles, bound into one, so I will count it as five — a welcome loophole, as I was falling behind schedule and this put me back on track. M.F.K. (Mary Frances Kennedy) Fisher was a locavore and proponent of nose-to-tail eating before either of those concepts became…

  • Berry foraging, and Peach-Mulberry Boy Bait

    I love fruit. I also love fruit-picking, and I especially love it when both of these things are free. It’s my second year as a volunteer for Not Far From the Tree, a wonderful group that seeks to share the bounty of the many backyard fruit trees within downtown Toronto. My experience with them has…

  • Someone pass me a salad: the post-#cupcakecampTO post

    (image from spotlighttoronto.com) I’m not much of a baker — I’m constantly fucking up even basic cookie recipes. Luckily for me, I have mastered the recipe for the only cookie that matters, a.k.a Pierre Hermes’ fleur de sel and chocolate sables from foodbeam. Unfortunately, I can’t say I’ve picked up his macaronage expertise, but I…