Category: Reflections

2013 Holiday Reading List

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2013 Reading ListThe holiday season has moved in like a ninja this year: swift and unseen, appearing only at the last minute for a killing blow. Thwack! It’s time to start buying gifts for family and friends. If you’ve got a special cook in your life that you think is ‘kinda keen, then this year you should think about stuffing a little literary love in their stocking (not a metaphor).

I’ve been reading a lot this past year and I’ve been blessed with a lot of family and friends that have gifted me many books on food and kitchen life. I’ve compiled a short list of my favourites, why they pop and my recommendations for who might love finding them under the tree this Christmas. Read More

The Dao Of Prep

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Prep 1“Do not just leave washing the rice or preparing the vegetables to others but use your own hands, your own eyes, your own sincerity. Do not fragment your attention, but see what each moment calls for; if you take care of just one thing then you will be careless of the other. Do not miss the opportunity of offering even a single drop into the ocean of merit or a grain atop the mountain of the roots of beneficial activity.”

–          Dogen Zenji, from “The Instruction for the Cook” (1237) Read More

Five Movies About Life In Kitchens

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Eat Drink Man Woman
From Eat Drink Man Woman (1994). Pic from http://www.btchflcks.com

Working in a professional kitchen fills one’s life with crazy little “did that just happen?” moments that we all think, patched together with some semblance of narrative could make a great movie. I can’t count the times that I’ve looked over at one of my co-workers and giggled, “Oh yeah, that’s going in the [enter restaurant name here] movie!” Read More

Radishes Gone Wild!

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RadishPod1Seeds are incredible things. They can lay dormant for eons in the most inhospitable soil, waiting for environmental equilibrium and then for no rhyme or reason (perceptible to us big, lumbering bipedal mammals) it will hit that perfect balance of this or that and go Boom! And a living thing will spurt up out of the scrub and welcome the new day. It’s crazy stuff.

The same thing happens once the seed grows into a big, strong, adult, taxpaying plant. The sun and soil send those mysterious vibrations through the ether and the plant goes nuts. Shazam! It sloughs off it’s fruit and abandons any plans to expand it’s meticulously constructed root system and instead builds up and up, higher and higher until it towers above the garden. There, swaying crazily in the breeze it covers itself in flowers and (with a bit of luck) will score some pollination and grow tiny triffid-like capsules meant for the future.

It’s the plant equivalent of leaving a steady job and family and just trucking out to burning man. It’s plants gone wild! And, I’m sorry to report… It’s what most of my garden looks like right now. Read More

Ten BC Beers You Have to Try This Summer!

Shawn 5 Comments

BC BeersSummer. Beer.

No two words have ever been so flawlessly in simpatico. One is the perfect complement to the other, it’s twin and companion. Without one, the other is incomplete. There is nothing like sun, surf and a beer that has been freshly plucked from a slightly sand-crusted cooler’s cold, slushy recesses. Big sunglasses and good tunes naturally accompany such moments and bikini parties are sure to spontaneously occur. It’s science. Read More