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I've never reviewed a cookbook before, but then I've never been this enthusiastic about a cookbook before: The Instant Pot Bible by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough . Why I love this book Before I bury the lede with a lot of explanation, I'll tell you why I find The Instant Pot Bible so appealing. -- The design. When you're using a book for information, design and layout are very important. Someone (or someones) really nailed it with this one. I find it incredibly clear and easy to use. -- The formatting. Ingredient list on the left, step-by-step instructions, IP times and settings highlighted in a chart. And so on. Not only a great format, but more consistent than many other cookbooks I've used. -- One specific bit of formatting that I find super useful is a gray box called "Beyond". Here, the authors put all the substitutions, extras, and equivalences. I appreciate not having to sort through those to read a basic recipe. -- Road maps! The Instant P...

I'd love reader feedback on these three questions. I know most people will reply on Facebook, which makes it really difficult to save reader reaction. But there's no stopping that train, so... copy/paste/save. Instapot Yes, I know it's an Instant Pot. I like to call it an Instapot. I think the Instant Pot folks missed an opportunity. I'm late to the Instapot bandwagon, but I'm glad I waited before jumping on. I bought a huge 8-quart Ultra, which is big enough for the batch cooking I prefer, has all the features, and has more safety features than the early models. I love  making steel cut oatmeal in this thing, and also rice. It is so easy, and it comes out perfect  every time. Steel cut oats don't actually take less time in the Instapot than on the stove top. Factoring the time to pressurize and the natural release, it's about the same time on the clock. But using the stove top, you have to stand there and stir. And if you don't pay attention, and someti...

I was sure that one of the downsides of moving to a small town in a relatively remote area would be a serious lack of food choices. I've been very happy to be wrong! There aren't a lot of restaurants here, but what's here is very good -- well-prepared, fresh, tasty food, and excellent, friendly service. As with most things, I'm finding that having a few choices are enough. I cook a lot more now, as there's no prepared food, and I'm also less busy and have more energy. Allan's been helping me with food prep, cutting up vegetables to store in the fridge. This was my idea, but he's more than willing to do it, and I find it hugely helpful. He's also been making dinner once a week, which gives me another break. But when we're not eating at home, here's where we might be. Port Hardy Fire Chefs , also known as Captain Hardy's. Captain Hardy's was a fixture in town. It closed a few years ago, and new owners updated the menu and changed the na...

Some years ago, after reading about overfishing and the horrendous state of our oceans, I vowed to stop eating tuna . Certain species of tuna are on the brink of extinction, thanks to soaring demand and modern fishing methods. Plus, the "eating fish is good for you" equation has changed because of the presence of mercury in many fish, especially tuna. I decided to put tuna in the same category as veal and lobster -- animal products I no longer eat. Alas, while I have no problem foregoing lobster or veal, tuna was a promise I couldn't keep. I don't know how long I lasted, but five years later I was writing about  homemade vs. Whole Foods tuna salad . (If you're reading the old posts, there's an update here .) Fish and shellfish are mainstays of my diet. We eat a lot of salmon (Pacific only) and shrimp, occasionally halibut, Pacific cod, squid, and other shellfish -- and I eat a lot of tuna. I joke that I'm going to turn into a thermometer . But I don't ...

Pyrex! I bought these! I love them! For the longest time, I've had a very large collection of plastic food storage containers. Allan and I have always brought most of our meals to work -- for healthy eating, for convenience (I'd rather not spend any part of my meal break foraging), and to economize. I also tend to cook in batches, plus of course there are always leftovers. Eons ago, when I bought all the plastic, I didn't know it was unhealthy -- that the polymers break down and enter your food. I knew plastics were bad for the environment, but I thought if I kept the same ones for a long time, it was not as disposable. Plus I commuted by subway to my day-job, with a lot of walking on both ends. Even if I had known that glass food storage existed (which I didn't), it would have been too heavy to carry. More recently I learned that all this lovely plastic has been leaching into our food for all these years. Yuck. Plus the containers have gotten old and ugly. I was torn b...

During the Ontario provincial election, after a hack from the Toronto Sun drew attention to an unpopular view that I had expressed some years earlier, I was the object of right-wing attacks by email and on social media. Many of these wingnuts referenced my weight in various disgusting ways. This shocked me because, although I am overweight, I'm not unusually heavy, not large enough to be remarkable. No matter. Total strangers mocked me for being overweight, using a whole slew of pejoratives and curse-words. I had never experienced that before. I confess that even though I couldn't possibly care less what trolls think of me, each time this happened, I felt a brief pang of humiliation and embarrassment. I've always been impervious to right-wing bullying; if anything, I wear it with pride. But these taunts hurt, if only for a split-second. I wish this weren't true. I'm embarrassed to admit it. I thought of this experience as I read Roxane Gay's powerful book, Hung...

We used to eat President's Choice Blue Menu granola. The vanilla-almond flavour was crunchy, delicious, and reasonably healthy. My favourite way to eat it was with plain Greek yogurt and fruit, but it was very good with milk or rice milk as well. Then... it changed. It was no longer crunchy. It was no longer tasty. With a little liquid added, it tasted like soggy cardboard, or what I imagine soggy cardboard would taste like if it were a breakfast cereal. Thanks a lot, Loblaws. Allan, who does our food shopping, went on the hunt for a cereal that would satisfy all the requirements: whole grain, crunchy, tasty, not overly sweet, and reasonably healthy. Plus I prefer clusters to flakes. It would also be good if the cereal didn't cost $10.00 a box. This is how I discovered Jordan's Morning Crisp granola, and it has made me very happy. Morning Crisp is crunchy. Morning Crisp is delicious. Morning Crisp comes in a variety of yummy flavours: Wild About Berries, Simply Strawberry, ...

In our home, shopping at Whole Foods was once reserved for special dinners or used a stop-gap during an extremely busy week. Then slowly, over time, it became habit -- and a big one. For a long time now, we've had two regular shopping days each week, one at Loblaws and one at Whole Foods. Sometimes we end up at Whole Foods multiple times in one week. This has been expensive, of course, but I felt it was worth spending more for better quality, and even more so for convenience. Because of Whole Foods' prepared food, we've been able to spend less time on food preparation, but still eat healthfully. Where prepared food in most supermarkets consists of rotisserie chicken and mayonnaisey pasta salads, Whole Foods carries an array of fresh, healthy, delicious -- expensive -- choices. Over time we relied on this more... and more. I did determine that some prepared food was actually no more expensive than if I had made it myself: see my post about Roman tuna salad . Now I suspect th...

Do you watch Aziz Ansari's show " Master of None "? I like it. It's not zany or wacky; it doesn't try so hard to be funny, which I find annoying in so many TV comedies. Parts of the show are funny, but parts are earnest, and interesting. It's not sappy, but it's not afraid to be a bit serious. In the episode we just watched, we see Dev, the main character played by Ansari, as a child, encountering bacon for the first time. He's at the home of a friend, and when his mom calls, he innocently tells her that he's eating bacon. Mom reminds the young Dev that Muslims don't eat pork -- and informs him that bacon is pork. Young Dev looks at the bacon, confused and a bit perturbed, deciding what to do. Then he opens wide and takes another bite. Back in the present, the episode involves Dev and his friend Navid eating pork and drinking alcohol -- but leading their parents to believe they are devout. * * * * If you grew up in Canada or the US, and you...

I read this on Facebook and absolutely love it. The author, Arun Gupta, understands and acknowledges cultural appropriation as a fact and a legitimate concern (as do I). But he also believes the "reactionary left" spreading lists of ethnic restaurants run by white people ...essentializes the notion of culture as rooted in the very soil of a place and not something that can travel or transcend boundaries. This hints at fascistic notions of blood and soil as what constitutes the nation. It is reactionary because the creators of this are implying there are timeless practices, rooted in a people, land and culture, that constitute only appropriate form of food. They want to fix all cultures as fossils in a museum, not allowing for adaptation, changing tastes, social roles, or fashion. It reminds me of how the National Front fetishizes a notion of the pure French nation. He's unpacked the food-as-cultural-appropriation concept perfectly. Please go read the whole post. I would ...

I'm increasingly dismayed by accusations of cultural appropriation that are used as weapons, rather than as a tool for raising awareness and educating. Accusations of appropriation have become a form of bullying, a weapon wielded to police and enforce a superficial obeisance to a behavioural code -- while doing nothing to address the underlying issues. Cultural appropriation is real. It's a valid issue. I'm not saying that cultural appropriation is not real. It is. I'm not saying claims of appropriation don't have merit. They do. When I was a child in the 1960s, parents might dress their children as "Indians" for Halloween, without a second thought. Kids played "Cowboys and Indians," dressing up in hats or feathers, with toy guns or tomahawks. Can you imagine if someone had played "Nazis and Jews"? It's completely inappropriate to turn a history of genocide and oppression into costumes and games. That in the 21st century, people are...

I've noticed that ideas that I used to blog about, I am now posting on Facebook instead -- a combination of laziness and time pressure. I'm going to try to get the ideas here, first. Conventional wisdom has it that preparing food at home is less expensive than buying prepared food. I'm not talking about frozen or processed food, but freshly prepared food from a store like Whole Foods, or increasingly, regular supermarkets trying to compete with specialty stores. Allan and I buy quite a bit of prepared food. With limited time and energy, it's often the tool we reach for to keep healthy eating on track. It's less expensive than eating in a restaurant, and it's more convenient if you're tired and want to stay at home. I always think we spend far too much on prepared food, especially something I could make myself -- and once did, in the dark ages before Whole Foods came to Mississauga. Of course, you're not comparing the price of prepared food to not eating....

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss is an excellent addition to a bookshelf that includes works by Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, Marian Nestle and others who write about the health of our food and the un-health of the industrial food system. Moss lifts the curtain on the giant corporations that engineer and market convenience foods and processed foods. What he reveals is largely invisible to us on a daily basis, yet affects our society significantly - and catastrophically. Moss is a seasoned investigative reporter - he was the first to expose trans fats , and more recently " pink slime " - and this book is a tour de force of research. Moss takes you to the laboratory and the board room, where chemical engineers and marketing executives contrive to get North Americans eating more and more of everything unhealthy. (The book is written in a US context, but it is equally relevant to Canada.) Salt Sugar Fat is full of wonderful mini-histories of corpo...

Revolutionary thought of the day: Hunger isn't about the amount of food around. It's about being able to afford and control that food. After all, the U.S. has more food than it knows what to do with, and still 50 million people are food insecure. Raj Patel , author of Stuffed and Starved and The Value of Nothing , quoted by Naomi Klein in This Changes Everything

I grew this! It's eight inches long, and three more are on the way. What's ordinary to you veteran gardeners is still miraculous to me. Gardening on a small scale is easy, fun, and very rewarding. Next stop, eggplant recipes.

I found a bunch of recipes similar to this, and adapted them to my tastes. This one is easy (especially if you use a food processor to shred the zucchini and cheese), healthy, and tasty. I feel like the ability to tweak and change recipes marks a turning point in my cooking evolution, in both confidence and knowledge. I like it! Also, I don't have measurements for this one. It's down to what proportions you like and what ingredients you have on hand. Zucchini-Corn-Tomato Bake 1 medium-to-large zucchini, grated or shredded 2 large ripe tomatoes, coarsely cubed Kernels of corn, either fresh (one cob) or frozen (one box or half of one bag) Fresh basil, shredded Seasoned bread crumbs Parmesan cheese, shredded (omit this for a dairy-free dish) S&P to taste In a baking dish, combine zucchini, tomatoes, corn kernels, basil, salt, and pepper. Stir until all are thoroughly mixed. Mix Parmesan cheese and bread crumbs, then sprinkle the mixture on top. Bake in 400F/200C oven for 45 mi...

This is probably the easiest way to use zucchini from your garden, and if you're growing herbs, it's an excuse to use those, too. It's also one of those dishes that takes just about anything you like in pasta. I'm keeping it very simple, so as not to drown out the zucchini. I use brown rice pasta. I originally tried it when we thought one of us was celiac, then it became habit. It's delicious and very healthy, but it does need the extra step of rinsing the cooked pasta. If you don't do that, the pasta will all stick together in a one big gluey mess... something I discovered painfully on my own.  Also, if you use brown rice pasta, it's easier to use a "cut" pasta, like penne, rotini, or ditalini. Long pasta like spaghetti or linguini is more difficult to rinse properly.  Pasta with Zucchini and Fresh Herbs 1/2 package of penne pasta  1 large zucchini a variety of fresh herbs, washed and shredded (I used basil, thyme, and cilantro) 2 cloves of garlic...

Apparently if you grow zucchini, you have too much of it. Being new gardeners, we didn't know how prolific our one zucchini plant would be, or the insane quantities - and size! - of the vegetables it would produce. And those leaves! They're gigantic and there's so many of them! It's been a source of wonder and amusement. We've cut back the leaves several times, as they're crowding out the herbs and the eggplant. And of course cutting back just makes the plant produce even more. I remember that much from my indoor planting days. There's no shortage of recipes online offering ideas and advice on how to use your surplus zucchini, including several suggestions of leaving some on a neighbour's porch. So although there's no need, I'm going to add mine to the pile. My recipes are all adapted from what I've found online, usually a combination of ideas I find in two or three places, tweaked to our own tastes and cooking style. Zucchini Fritters 1 huge...

I've mentioned Beretta Farms in many different posts over the years, but I've never specifically blogged about them. With grilling season underway, it's time to give Beretta a shout-out. When I learned about the horrors of factory farming, first from reading Michael Pollan , and later through other sources, I knew I needed to change my eating habits. I needed to translate my knowledge into action, but I was at a loss for what to do. In the 1990s, I had eaten a vegetarian (almost vegan) diet for more than two years, but it didn't work for me, and I gave it up. I certainly don't eat meat with every meal, but I learned that I do need animal protein for optimal function. But once the curtain had been lifted on the horrors of factory farming, I could no longer stand the thought of contributing to the industrial food chain, especially as it relates to animal abuse. The first step was releasing myself from all-or-nothing thinking about food. We're not going to buy onl...