Check out these beauties! I am currently working on developing a mushroom story for Canadian Living Magazine and couldn’t resist taking a picture before I transformed these woodsy wonders into delectable dishes. If you love mushrooms this is the time of year to find exciting varieties that are not usually available like the orange-y chanetrelles [...]

I had my niece and nephew staying with me on the weekend. I made these Mini Banana Bundt Cakes, covered them with orange-coloured peanut butter icing and let them go to town making Jack-o-Lantern faces on them. The stems are store-bought chocolate covered wafer cookies.

More fun in the test kitchen. Since we have been preserving all season it came time to test out the fruits of our labour. Andrew, the food editor for Homemakers Magazine, brought in link wieners from a Mennonite farm to test out our house made pickles and relishes. For best results, the Test Kitchen staff [...]

There are a few food meccas in the world where trends tend to emerge from, currently we are seeing Spanish chefs and Italian slow-food movement making a real impact on our culinary cultural map. While trends come and go – New York is still the place where cutting edge innovation takes place. This is where [...]

I recently returned from vacationing on the Adriatic coast of Italy. My first day back in Canada and I was struck with the realization that I would not be able to wake up with the exquisite lattes and espressos that greeted me every morning for the past three weeks. Back at work that morning, speaking [...]

Looking for an excursion on a Sunday afternoon? Act like a chef and check out your local farm communities. A revived interest in quality food and back-to-the-earth techniques has brought about a resurgence in niche farming and artisan producers of farm products. We had a great experience visiting Katie and Phillip Wilman on their family [...]

Getting family to enjoy cooking together is something all of the food editors here at Canadian Living are passionate about. So when one of our readers sent us photos from her family’s Thanksgiving weekend, I thought I would leave today’s blog to Erika Tipping to inspire you all… October 2007 Family Thanksgiving at the cottage [...]

If you want to do this at home, I have two pieces of advice: 1. Don’t taste too many at once, although everyone in the test kitchen was looking forward to having a chocolate pig-out, we all now feel slightly ill.

I just conducted a chocolate tasting in the test kitchen for an upcoming piece that I am working on. I am jittering and shaking from the after-effects, can’t think why I thought that a coffee would help to counteract the chocolate overload! The high point? A silky chocolate from Italy

The test kitchen has been busy all month putting up preserves, pickles, jellies and jams. The fresh smell of peaches, strawberries and vinegar has wafted through the office for weeks now. The other day, I ran into Adele, one of our Test Kitchen staff,