Kitchen Operas

Who needs take out when you can make Chinese food this good at home?

I was in San Francisco last week, and my absolute favourite place to visit while I’m there is Samovar Tea Lounge in the Yerba Buena Gardens.  I stopped in for tea and lunch, and was treated to a quite place away from the hustle and bustle of both the city and of the conference I […]

My Mum is famous in our family for her amazing soups.  She makes two that are my world-favourite soups: a roasted veggie soup with about a million cloves of garlic, and a mixed mushroom soup! I could eat her mushroom soup twice a day for the rest of my life, and when I finally pestered […]

It’s Fall, and it’s getting chilly here, so it’s all squash all the time.  And this time, it’s a lasagna! I changed up the squash, and this time sliced a butternut squash lengthwise and popped it in the oven.  (If you’d like proper directions, check out: my post on how to roast squash). Along with […]

Today is the birthday of my very dearest friend: Pemma.  We have had so many adventures together from escapades in the kitchen to musical fun and traveling! Pem likes bugs.  And makes friends with them at restaurants: And she is a secret spy… when it comes to the intrigue of avocados: She has such a […]

I’m loving my buckwheat lately, and thought I’d try my hand at a gluten-free vegan mushroom gravy to go with it, after I was inspired by a suggestion of kasha & mushroom gravy in the amazing vegan cookbook, Veganomicon. I thought I’d experiment with buckwheat flour instead of wheat flour in the gravy, as the […]

I hate to call this a recipe, but it is darned delicious, (and the mushrooms are a perfect base for a real recipe I’ll share with you later this week, mmm). I was craving mushrooms on toast for about the last six months, thanks to Nigel Slater.  So they were breakfast! Mushrooms on Toast Serves […]

Ok, less fun around here today — I’m at home on the futon with a chest cold.  Ugh. I must have known I was coming down with something last night when I went for one of my go-to super-quick meals: Miso with Dumplings. Traveling Asia in my mind, and still needing sick food today, lots […]

It’s time for another Daring Cooks challenge — and this one was the ultimate comfort food: risotto! The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the […]