Imagine a morning like this one. The air is cool, the sky stretches impossibly high above in lovely blueness. There are birds singing, and Beethoven is coming from somewhere. Even though it’s still early, there are children laughing in the park, their mothers sitting quietly, soaking in the sun. The breeze smells of spring, of [...]
Spring has come late to Montreal this year. Less than two weeks ago, I could look out my window and see flurries of snow. Not long before that, a blizzard erased all the dirt and grime of spring snow-melt, painting the mountain a brilliant, blinding white. But now it is indisputably spring, and well worth [...]
Breakfast is a strange beast, sometimes. On hurried mornings I used to compose variations on toast. Toast, almond butter, and banana. Toast and jam with yogurt. Toast with eggs—poached, scrambled, fried. Toast with avocado and soy sauce. Once, to my roommates’ collective horror, sardines and pickled carrots on toast. Now that toast is off the [...]
A new year. Does it keep getting faster? Sometimes I worry I’ll wake up in what I think is a week or two and discover that it’s 2082, that a lifetime has sped by in the blink of an eye. But for a heartbeat, at least, it’s 2013. I’m an inveterate list-maker, so New Year’s [...]
December is always an odd point in the year. It’s an in-between time, especially for those of us in school. Classes have ended, disrupting three months of routine. The exam-time panic starts to seep out of the library as more and more people leave for the holidays. There is a lot more silence, a lot [...]
When I was little I only liked eating oatmeal when we went camping. There was something special about it then—something about sitting by my dad’s ancient campstove early on a clear, cold morning, something about the taste of maple syrup mixed up with the smell of smoke and pine needles, something about the novelty of [...]
One of the things finding out I’m gluten intolerant has pushed me to do is pay attention to potatoes. I don’t dislike potatoes; on the contrary, one of my favourite winter meals is a piping hot baked potato stuffed with plenty of vegetables and cheese. But potatoes were never a food I thought about very [...]
My mother once told me a story about one of her friends’ Thanksgiving traditions. (Perhaps it was a friend of her friend, or completely fictional—I can’t remember now.) Every year, the family would saw the legs off of the turkey before putting it into the oven, baking them separately in their own dish. Year after [...]
For the summer I’m down to one roommate (from my usual four or five), the pair of us crammed into a 2 1/2 sublet with a small fridge and a postage-stamp sized kitchen. We’ve been making a virtue of necessity by experimenting with communal cooking. Instead of getting in one another’s way cooking two meals [...]
If someone asks you to housesit, say yes. There is, certainly, the mild inconvenience of moving your clothes and having to find your way around someone else’s kitchen, but there are so many advantages. You might have the chance to explore a new neighbourhood, to explore new bookstores, walk through new parks, and meet different [...]
