Making the most of fall with Maple Shortbread
Food: Maple Shortbread Bar Recipe
The arrival of cool weather and woolly sweaters offers the perfect excuse to make a maple-based dessert featuring rich and gooey pecan filling over a shortbread base
By Louise Crosby
Well, here it is Thanksgiving already and plans are underway for a family get-together, not at the cottage on Lac Sam, in the Gatineau hills, where we often go for one last look at the lake and splendid fall colours, but here in the city, at my sister’s house, where a huge swing set has just been erected in the back yard for all the young ones to play on. (How’s that for an opening sentence?)
My contribution to our pot-luck feast is a vegetable dish to be determined, and a dessert. I did buy two small pie pumpkins a week ago thinking I’d make pies, but this being a busy time of year, when boilers need replacing, windows need washing, and the garden needs tidying, I’m considering alternatives. I’ll make something with those pumpkins when things settle ...
Macaroni and Beef Casserole: Comfort food gets all haute cuisine
Food: Recipe - Macaroni and Beef Casserole
As the modern food revolution continues to make the exotic feel everyday, it's also taking old standards such as the humble macaroni casserole and turning them into something that's not just comforting, but au courant
By Louise Crosby
Pick up a food magazine, check the Internet, or tune into your television and you’ll notice that the conversation around food these days is quite sophisticated – it’s all about cooking like the pros and how-to videos, organics and heritage crops, locally-grown and artisanal foods, and sustainable, small-scale farming. Ingredients that were once exotic are now everyday, there’s nothing the home cook can’t do. So a dish that harkens back to the 1950s and ’60s and calls to mind something Betty Draper might have taken to a neighbourhood pot luck in Mad Men, had she been friendlier, might strike you as passé.
But you’d be wrong if you thought this Macaroni and Beef Casserole, developed by ...
Warm, cheesy and super easy
Food: Cauliflower Gratin
A stray cat looking for warmth on a frigid winter's day serves as a furry reminder about the importance of comfort food, such as cauliflower gratin
By Louise Crosby
Late last winter, as the snow was melting, a strange creature appeared at our back door. Turns out it was a cat, or more accurately, half a cat, with bony haunches and huge matted clumps of black fur. He had obviously survived a terrible ordeal, an unusually harsh Canadian winter, apparently with little food. We fed him, of course, and he stuck around, making our back deck his home through the spring, summer and fall. And what an appetite. By late November he was as solid as a little black bear, with a good, thick coat.
We called him Charlie because he’s male and because it rings nicely with Chicklet, the name of our official cat. He’s a lovely guy, just a little skittish, and particular about who approaches him and from what angle, and he absolutely, positively, will not come ...
