As promised, I have done some research about chestnut products and where to buy them. Fresh chestnuts, chestnut puree, peeled vacuum packed and jarred chestnuts are mainly seasonal items so you will be hard pressed to find them year round outside of specialty food stores. You should be able to find them in most urban centres from November to January or February. In Chinese markets you will probably find dried chestnuts most of the time. (more…)

Today the Canadian Living test kitchen went for a holiday lunch at The Centre Street Deli and had a toast to our holiday break with some good Jewish smoked meat! The deli is a North Toronto institution and serves authentic deli goods from Matzo ball soup with homemade chicken stock, to hand sliced corned beef. Just the selection of mustards alone is the worth the trek to Thornhill! (more…)

It’s time for my second entry into Works for Me Wednesday, a blog carnival hosted by Rocksinmydryer.typepad.com. After you’ve read my post on the making of Sugar Houses (and commented, please comment), click on the link and you’ll go to the host of Works For Me Wednesdays and a list of 150 or more links to bloggers who are also posting things that work for them—recipes, parenting ideas, easy crafts, crafty tips, you get the idea.
And comment there too!

One thing this blog is leading me to realize is how many of our Christmas traditions are food or food-related. Friday’s was the constructing of sugar cube houses. Some years the kids have made two each, which made for very limited space on the kitchen table for the rest of the holidays. Other years we’ve had the kids’ friends in to make houses to take home. This year, my 16-year-old daughter had her two best friends over for The Three People Christmas Party. She stayed up until 3 in the morning the day of to clear the kitchen table, make the place presentable and even hang snowflake lights and white crepe streamers. It looked so Christmasy!

Click on for tons of photos! (more…)

I was at a tree trimming party on Saturday afternoon and my friend Debbie brought a butter pastry that was divine. We all voted it best treat on the Christmas cookie platter. She said she got the recipe from someone at her work that always brings it to group meetings.

I don’t have the recipe but I have been hunting around and I think it is a Danish recipe for shortbread called Sankager, or maybe it is Norwegian, both seem to make something similar. It is baked in a 9” pan and had almonds sprinkled over the top. It tasted very buttery with a hint of almond. (more…)

Not a lot of things say wintertime like cutting snowflakes out of super-white paper. On the weekend, before the big kids got up, Luka and I sat on the living room floor amid the Bionicles and Bakugans and Bidimons (I believe I have those spelled close to correctly) and got busy making tiny little pieces of paper all over the carpet. I remembered how it always takes a while to get into the snowflake groove, to decide if angular is better (easier) or curves and arabesque shapes rule. You have to turn out a few three-pointed snowflakes before you realize you have to fold the whole thing over again to get six points. And so on. Then I remembered as I was ripping around the web one early morning I’d sent myself a cool snowflake-making site, where you can cut virtual snowflakes, and do your experimenting in a fraction of the time, and with no teensy-weensy paper scraps. The site comes complete with a catch-a-snowflake game of sorts where you can catch snowflakes and read the messages from the people who made them. Luka loved that. And there’s a counter too—it’s up to 5,634,236 snowflakes created, with 477 flakers online right now, I just checked. So cool. So go play.

One of my favourite things about winter is roasting chestnuts. They make me think of being at my parents home when, after the dishes had been cleaned up from dinner, my mom would pop them into the oven and we would crack and eat them while watching the hockey game trying not to burn our fingers. They need to be eaten with a glass of red wine or a really cold slightly bitter beer - my favourite! (more…)

This weekend the wheels fell off the cart. We got the tree, Graydon recut the base, we put it up and by the time the branches fell we realized it had to be the most deformed tree on the lot. No amount of decorating will fix this thing. We face a decision tonight.
Daughter Tessa had her Three People Christmas Party, took lots of photos for the Mom Blog, and can’t find the right cable. So no pix of sugar houses today, sorry. Try again tomorrow.
It snowed all weekend. Our wonderful happily married neighbour, Scott, blew the driveway clear, thank you, thank you, but the snow kept coming and my children are shovel-phobic. The garage is therefore inaccessible, and it’s garbage day.
Christmas cards are arriving, none have gone out. (more…)

I was just checking out what everyone is interested in on our forums today and I see that a lot of you are interested in brunch ideas for Christmas. Well if you are reading this you are in the right place for ideas! Canadian Living has so many brunch ideas. Lots of then are make-ahead, so very easy if you have a houseful during the holidays and are experiencing cooking fatigue!

Here are a few other ideas for Christmas or Boxing Day brunch: (more…)

Fight dirt and cancer at the same time

I hope you played Works for Me Wednesday yesterday. These blog festivals are the best! Where else can you get such good info in one place, from so many funny, talented, engaging people? (Except, of course, from Canadian Living!). I’ll be playing it for a few weeks, so we can all decide.

So today I bring you feel-good gift-giving again, this time in the form of luxurious, hand-made soaps from Nakee Handcrafted Natural Skincare. Candy the owner and creator, (more…)

I have been taking Italian language classes for the last few months. Last night we had a potluck for our final class. Everyone brought a little something, and we had quite a feast. The highlights had to be Elsie’s Bouretikas: a sepharic recipe of little hand shaped pastries filled with ground meat, or potatoes or eggplant (I think the eggplant were the best), Michael’s excellent espresso coffee served “correto” (that means with a shot of booze, in this case Sambuca) and my fathers home made prosciutto and dried sausages. (more…)