Features

Last night we attended the Festa delle Regioni with our friend Marco. This great celebration of Italian food and culture was the closing banquet for Italian Week 2002 at the Italian Cultural Centre.

Anne Garber, of MyBC and CBC fame, sent us an email about her new site, Evalu8.org. Thanks, Anne!

This site covers a lot of ground including a large number of food related topics.

When we were at Lumiere last Saturday, we overheard one of the patrons saying that the excellent pecan and dried fruit bread that is served with their cheese course comes from Terra Breads.

This inspired our friend Lisa from Ontario to buy us a loaf. For about 6 bucks, this bread is a steal whether Lumiere uses it or not!

Not only is it great toasted with cheese like we had at Lumiere, it's also great with peanut butter or nutella. Mmmm. Buy it, you won't regret it!

Local strawberries are finally in season! Hurray! The flavour of local berries is much more intense, deep and sweet than GMO berries shipped from California.

We bought local strawberries from Granville Island yesterday, but look for them at your nearest farmer's market or pop by a local farm!

For a cool treat, we whirled up slushy watermelon coolers with watermelon, triple sec, vodka and lime juice. To keep it extra slushy and to avoid diluting the drinks with ice cubes, I used frozen ripe seedless watermelon cut into one inch chunks. You could also use other frozen ripe fruit such as mangoes and pineapple and different liqueurs.

Like VanEats which is a website without ads, Cook's Illustrated is a magazine without ads as described in this New York Time's article.

Barb and I love going to Granville Island. I especially like chatting with the vendors about their wares.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a nice chat with Maureen Simon, proprietor of Maureen's Caribbean Foods of BC (12824 Anvil Way, Surrey V3W 8E7, no phone number on the label).

To make a long story short, we had such an enjoyable conversation that we ended up buying her Jamaican Jerk Seasoning which sells for about five bucks.

It's very spicy but has a nice Jamaican jerk flavour and it will go well with chicken and pork.

This New York Times articles documents the emergence of authentic regional Chinese cuisine in Hong Kong. Vancouver's Chinese cuisine scene also has a wide variety of restaurants serving the gamut of Chinese regional cuisines: you name it we have it here: Sichuan, Cantonese, Shanghaiese, Yunnan, etc.

I wonder if the regional cusine here is as authentic as the one now in Hong Kong!

The American Overseas Dietetic Association has a good overview and introduction to Filipino cuisine written by a Filipino dietician. Check it!

Filipino cuisine is not overly sophisticated or flashy or trendy, but I grew up with it and it has some great down home dishes like adobo and pancit. Reading articles like this makes me miss my Mom's home cooking even more.

Here's sneak peek at one of our future insider stories: Nattalia's Kitchen

See if you can spot the uttapam and name the other Indian breakfast delights that Nattalia was cooking.