NEAROF

I couldn’t tell you how it happened, nor why it remains this way, but green onion cakes are synonymous with Edmonton’s festival season. For the uninitiated, green onion cakes are round, pancake-like discs of flour, water, chopped green onions, salt, and sesame oil, fried flat on an oil-drenched grill. That may not sound appetizing when [...]

It’s hard to win with fruit beers. Some are sweet and sticky, verging on a cooler or cider. The best ones in this category are bursing with ripe fruit with a trace of malt and hops; the worst are the ones that hit you over the head with nasty, tinny, cloying artificial flavour better suited [...]

When working on a story, there’s a whole lot of stuff that never makes it into the paper. There’s only so much room, and sometimes things just don’t fit. While writing about the curious love/hate relationship firefighters have with barbecues, I got a sense of how important the gas grill is to fire station food [...]

If there’s one small quibble I have with blackberries, it’s the seeds. There are lots and lots and lots of seeds. They’re tough, crunchy little beasts, liable to get lodged between teeth until being painstakingly plucked away with a toothpick. Blackberry jam, while delicious, sometimes suffers from the too-many-seeds problem. That’s why blackberry jelly is [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the west coast lately. I adore British Columbia, from the breathtaking natural beauty of isolated Bella Coola, to the inner-harbour strolls of Victoria. Blackberries are one of the things that define my mental image of B.C. I’ve picked buckets and buckets of them over the years, staining my hands [...]

A little bit like Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, and a little bit like mini donuts doused in cinnamon-sugar, you’ve never tasted chips like these before. After my positive experience with Covered Bridge Smokin’ Sweet BBQ chips, I wanted to try another variety from the New Brunswick brand. While they make a lot of standard flavours, [...]

Nestle Milo will forever be etched in my mind as a hot, comforting beverage that helped lift my spirits at a roadside rest stop in rural Ghana. After a very long, very bumpy start-stop bus trip on the road from Tamale to Kumasi, I was relieved to make a several-hour-long middle-of-the-night stop at a busy [...]

Next Monday, May 23rd, marks the unofficial start of summer in Canada. It’s the May long weekend, celebrating both Victoria Day and the start of BBQ season. And what key condiment is crucial to a summer BBQ of burgers and hot dogs? Why ketchup, of course. I’ve been known to dabble in organic products, so [...]