I am a wee bit obsessed with tomatoes. I grow my own, inside my apartment. I buy them in exorbitant amounts at the farmers market. I see heirloom varieties and I hyperventilate a bit as I frantically try to buy them all.

Continue Reading »

I took Oliver to the groomer this weekend for a 7 am appointment on a Saturday morning.

He has never been groomed, EVER. In his four years of life. So why I felt immediate attention to his hairdo was so urgent that 7 am seemed reasonable…

The grooming lady was very pleasant. She calls herself “Auntie Sue”. She tried unsuccessfully to win his affection by feeding him those weird cracker sticks dipped in a substance that mimicks cheese.

You know, the rectangle plastic snack thingy with two compartments, one for sticks, one for cheese goop? You peel back the plastic and dip the sticks in the goop? Ick.

She said that it would take an hour if things go well. Two if he struggles. We were going on three when I started to sweat just a little.

My friend suggested maybe they were just making him “extra handsome”.

I had my money on him coming out looking exactly as scruffy as he went in, but with crazy, bulging eyes and blood on his nails from his ravaging of Auntie Sue.

I really wouldn’t blame him if he’d roughed her up a bit just for the edible cheese-like product…
Continue Reading »

Healthy Families BC is a fantastic British Columbia initiative to promote, well, healthy families!

It is an incredible one-stop online resource to find everything you need to know to live well, including healthy eating, finding community resources, physical activity, and more. Their website is one that I keep bookmarked, and have blogged about elsewhere previously. They have a great healthy recipes section, and an interesting and informative blog.

Healthy Families BC wants to engage and activate families to take action when it comes to their health, and they are honing in on how busy people can make physical activity part of their daily routine. And guess what?! In the spirit of promoting exercise, they are offering up a $250 Lululemon gift card to one lucky Foodess reader! Continue Reading »

My last two posts have been written from my home town in New Brunswick, Canada.

Lots of friends and family + lots of day trips + lots of doing absolutely nothing. Vacation, perfected.

The highlights:

- I got to play with the adorable new babies of my best friends forever

- I got to sit in a kayak with my sister and paddle around a humorously tiny lake

- I spent long, luxurious hours painting in my mom’s art studio Continue Reading »

Hey, guess what? I’m representing Canada in an international Mushroom Masters competition! Exciting, eh?

I like mushrooms because:

-they add umami to a dish, which is the savoury fifth taste, usually characteristic of meat (the other tastes are sweet, salty, bitter and sour).

-they are the only item in the produce aisle with vitamin D.

-they can be an effective substitute for meats thanks to their hearty texture.

-they are a source of selenium and ergothionene, antioxidants that play a role in immunity.

-they are incredibly versatile. I love them with Asian flavours in soups or stir-fries, smothered in rich tomato sauce on pizza or pasta, loaded with garlic and white wine and stuffed into ravioli or piled onto a steak, as a filling for quiches or tarts… the options are endless. -

When challenged with the task of creating a breakfast recipe, I dove straight to softly poached eggs and rich hollandaise sauce. I think the roasted meaty portobello mushroom is a perfect stand-in for the english muffin in eggs benny.

I was right – it was incredible. Continue Reading »