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.

“Cool! Yes!!!”

The shout rang through the house this morning—last night the Tooth Fairy came to our house and deposited a toonie for my 6 year old’s tooth under his Star Wars pillow.

Questions that raced to my mind:

How does the Tooth Fairy know that Luka lost his tooth yesterday when it wasn’t under his pillow?

How many kids’ teeth fall out at lunch and get swallowed or brushed away by the janitor and dumped in the school garbage?

How has the Tooth Fairy escaped renaming to the Tooth Person? Tooth Rebate Representative? Dental Recycling Associate?

Where is Victoria now? Victoria was the little friend who told my daughter that girls got a Tooth Fairy Barbie when they lost their first tooth. Oh yay!

If I got a quarter from the Tooth Fairy when I was 6, and a regular-priced loaf of bread was 27 cents, is a toonie in step with wheat inflation rates when a loaf of Harvest whatever is $2.69??

Oh lordie, it is!

That Tooth Fairy is one smart girl!

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 involved a lot of games and activities. One of our activities was to make the caramel apples featured in your magazine. (more…)

My cancer-kid, Graydon (see yesterday’s blog for a BIG photo of him) was the Honoured Hero of Toronto’s Light the Night Walk for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It meant he got to go on-stage with the MC (the voice of the Toronto Raptor games, which Graydon can’t get enough of), (more…)

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. (more…)

This is the photo of Graydon that appeared in this year’s Light the Night brochure. It was taken on the haematology/oncology floor at Sick Kids Hospital.

On Friday, the 14-year-old son and I went to a fancy lunch. In my former working life, I probably went to one if not two fancy lunches per week, as well as countless cocktails, launches, dinners, events and premieres. But we had a very personal stake in this lunch. (more…)

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 (more…)

For Friday (YAY!!!!), a roundup of responses with your best non-medicinal cough remedies. There are some for infants, kids, and, of course, grownups, since we have to keep the parents healthy! Having successfully raised three kids through cough and cold seasons (more…)

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, (more…)

With three people in the house with coughs (I joined the 6- and 14-year-old sons with a sore throat and cough—not strep, thank you!—yesterday) it’s difficult NOT to think about the impact on parents’ lives when they have sick kids. (more…)