NEAROF

You thought they were dead? Pfft. You can’t kill the Twinkie! Millions – well, maybe thousands – of Canadians were relieved when they learned the impending demise of American food giant Hostess wouldn’t affect their Twinkie fix. Turns out the brand is owned by Saputo in Canada, so we can keep cramming snack cakes into [...]

I don’t like taking pills. Never have, and I doubt I ever will. As a kid, chewable Flintstones vitamins were the solution to the vitamin problem; they tasted funny, but I didn’t mind. At least I didn’t have to down them with a glass of water. I’m not sure how old I was when I [...]

Unless you have a reasonably tuned palate, a very large number of Starbucks coffees taste pretty much the same. It’s not the fault of the beans, no sir. It’s all about the Starbucks roasting process, which, in the traditional Starbucks method, required every bean to be roasted to a dark, oily char – hence the [...]

Near as our calendar app can tell us, it’s Christmas Eve. That means it’s time to hunker down in front of the fireplace, snuggle up with your special someone, and enjoy a warm mug of spiced apple cider. This recipe, from the lovely Aline, is easy to make, and the aroma fills a house with [...]

Is it just me, or did San Pellegrino’s near ubiquity come out of nowhere? It wasn’t long ago that you’d typically only find San Pellegrino fruit beverages at coffee shops and Italian restaurants, stocked either to please clients who remember it from the old country, or as a way of appearing worldly via the fizzy-drinks [...]

It’s that time of year again, isn’t it? It’s hard to believe this is the third annual NEAROF! gift guide. Every year, it’s getting harder to write this thing, probably because I’ve included all sorts of great stuff in prior years. Be sure to check out the 2010 guide, as well as the 2011 guide. [...]

Goodie! It’s that time of year again when a few hundred square feet of every grocery store becomes a temporary enclave of Christmas snacks, full of icy squares, Turtles and Toblerone bars the size of fence posts. I can’t say I’ve ever tried to find peanut brittle outside of the holiday season, so I’m not [...]

Until moving to Calgary, the closest I came to balcony gardening was the flower bed in front of our old apartment in Edmonton’s Belgravia neighbourhood, which the owners actively encouraged us to plant with veggies and herbs. Try as we might, the soil was kind of grotty, and the local rabbits trashed much of the [...]