Food

Apricot Juice Syrup

Any fruit can be used to make this juice concentrate. Keep in the fridge and pull out to make an instant glass of cold apricot nectar  to drink on hot summer days.

Apricot Juice Syrup

It’s apricot season right now, trees are laden with orange spheres of tart flesh.  It’s rather decorative, orange set against green. When tree fruits are in season, however, they come in a deluge but are soon over, gone for another year.

When we had the first basket of apricots, my husband buried his face in them and inhaled. “Ah,” he sighed, “the smell of summer.” When he was a child, his family would pick boxes of apricots and take them to sell in a spa town.  Click to continue reading

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Creamy Eggplant Chicken Zucchini Noodles (Dairy Free)

Eggplant, or aubergine, forms the creamy base for this dairy free pasta sauce but you’d never guess it! Paired with chicken and topped with zucchini noodles, or zoodles, this makes a filling and delicious meal.

Creamy Chicken Zucchini Noodle Sauce (Dairy Free)

Living with four children in an apartment, as is our current situation, is far from my ideal. I eagerly look forward to having a yard someday. There are, however, positives to most circumstances.

The other day I was in the kitchen and the shouts of children outside brought a smile to my face. It reminded me of the good ol’ days before technology, you know, the ones when kids walked barefoot to school uphill both ways after milking cows in the morning.  Click to continue reading

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3 Ingredient AmazeBalls

3 Ingredient AmazeBalls

Sometimes accidents are happy.

I went into a bio shop (health food store) the other day looking for carob, which I happen to actually like. The package I bought was opaque and when I opened it at home I realized that the powder was much lighter than normal. It was only then that I noticed that on the package was written “raw carob”.

Most carob powder, made from the pod of the carob tree, is dark brown. Roasting the pod creates a strong, very distinct flavour. I like it, some hate it. Raw carob, on the other hand, is a light brown and has a much more subtle flavour.

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Cherry Mint Spritzer

 

Cherry Mint Spritzer

When I came to Europe, one difference that took me by surprise was the water. Europeans buy water more than I remember in North America, and there are so many options to choose from. Most people buy sparkling water, which I still haven’t really gotten used to. There are three types of water: no fizz, lightly fizzy, and regularly fizzy. Click to continue reading

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Watermelon and Lemon Balm Sorbet

Watermelon Lemon Balm Sorbet

 

My sister Kazuko visited me in Slovakia a few years ago. It was hot and we bought a large watermelon for the kids to slurp on the balcony, juice dripping down their chins. She started to cut into it.

“It has seeds!” she exclaimed. “I haven’t seen seeds in a watermelon for ages!”

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Flavoured Water: Elderflower Lemon and Linden Blossom Cucumber

Flavoured Water: Elderflower and Linden Blossom

The problem with foraging wild flowers is that they are rather finicky.

If it rains, it washes away the pollen and reduces the taste of the flowers. This year it started to rain heavily just when the lilacs came into bloom. Last year I made an amazing lilac ice cream; this year it had no taste.

Some flowers all bloom in one shot, so that they are available only for a short time. Behind my inlaws’ village is an avenue lined with black locust trees; when in bloom the fragrance in the air is intoxicating. The trees look like they are covered in snow and white blossoms drift to the ground like large perfumed snowflakes. But if you’re a little late, too bad. I missed the peak of the black locusts and, while I managed to gather a handful of late blossoms, the recipe didn’t turn out the first time. Click to continue reading

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Sweet Beef Heart Curry

Sweet Beef Heart Curry

If you’ve continued to read on after the title, congratulations – it means that you haven’t keeled over from the thought of eating a heart, as in, the organ. If you’ve only risen from keeling over, you might want to skip this post, although nutritionally speaking you’ll be sorry if you do.

If you’re actually interested in eating a beef heart, I heartily toast you as being an adventurous eater, at least if you are from North America. To most of the rest of the world, I think, eating organs is no big deal. Click to continue reading

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Lemon Poppy Seed Ice Cream

Lemon Poppy Seed Ice Cream

While serving this ice cream to my daughter, I taught her the “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream” ditty. Not having heard it before, she thought it was pretty funny and ran around to everyone else saying “Say I scream!”

I realized after I titled it, however, that it’s probably more like a gelato than ice cream.

But does it really matter? It’s cold, it’s delicious, it’s refreshing. And a secret ingredient.  Click to continue reading

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Fermented Spiced Apple Chutney

Fermented Spiced Apple Chutney

I remember the very first time I ate an apple straight from the tree. It was as if I had been in Plato’s cave my whole life and what I thought were apples were only shadows.

Crisp. Juicy. Sweet. Refreshing.

I was in college by the time I experienced an amazing apple, as where I grew up was too cold to have fruit trees. Fruit trees, apparently, don’t like -40 temperatures. Actually, I can’t think of any living thing that does. Click to continue reading

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