This category covers groceries, restaurants, bars, alcohol, entertaining and recipes.
QUICK & DELISH | Though no one seems to know exactly where the American phrase “easy as pie” originated, it appears to have nothing to do with actually making pie—unless you’re making a rustic pie like the one pictured here, which, with minimal practice, really can be oven ready in minutes. Read more
EASY + GOOD | Puff pastry is a flaky, crispy ingredient found in a surprising array of show- stopping appetizers, entrées and sweets. Of course you can make it from scratch if you want—à la Julia, perhaps?—but quality premade products found in the freezer section of grocery stores work fine, too.
Author Martha Holmberg used mostly frozen puff pastry for the 50 interesting and original recipes featured in her cookbook Puff—mains like the pizza alternative she shares with Frugalbits readers here. Read more
EASY & DELISH | If you’re addicted to Internet food and home décor porn like I am, you already know who Todd Selby is and can scroll straight down to the bottom of this intro for an awesomely easy nougat noir recipe. It was part of a recent photo essay he did for the New York Times on an out-of-the-way French bakery in Vermont. Read more
CULT RECIPE ALERT | Summer is dinner party season for us. Since early June, we’ve invited friends over for supper at least once a week. We manage this despite busy schedules by sticking to a few proven menus. First-time visitors, for example, invariably tuck into our number-one-favourite no-brainer entrée: Chicken Marbella, which usually results in their asking for the recipe. If you’ve ever made or been served Marbella, you already know the impact its exceptional flavour can have on all who take a bite. Read more
ON THE DOWNLOAD | A dear cousin who lives several hours away recently had major surgery. When I offered to come cook for her and her husband while she convalesced, she said she would welcome a visit but that meal prep had been generously wiped off her plate. “I’ve got a meal train coming,” she explained. Read more
DEAD EASY & QUICK | With forecasters predicating only the slightest possibility of showers on Canada Day, we’re betting you’ll want to get outside on July 1st, not drag around in the kitchen. To the rescue, then, three delicious-beyond-all-reason desserts with almost no prep time—after all, who’s got a minute for laborious productions when there are fireworks to view! Read more
BUY RIGHT | Everywhere you look these days in supermarkets, on restaurant menus and in deli display cases you’ll find gluten-free options. This is great for anyone with celiac disease, a serious gastrointestinal disorder marked by an inability to absorb the protein gluten. It’s good news, too, for those simply sensitive to wheat or who have “wheat belly,” extra body fat carried in the mid section and attributed to the wheat strains grown today (they supposedly contain more protein than they once did). Read more
WASTE NOT | My favourite way to enjoy extra overripe fruit happens to be the most fun and easy: a quick whirr in the blender, and I’ve got the makings for nutritious fruit popsicles. All-fruit popsicles look (they’re typically textured) and taste nothing like the coloured sugar-water popsicles most of us are familiar with, and they are certainly healthier. You can buy expensive all-fruit popsicles at the grocery store, but why would you want to when they are so simple to make from scratch? Read more
SAVE TIME | Where steaming vegetables is concerned, I’m lazy, I’ll admit it. During the week, I don’t want to have to haul out a saucepan, steamer insert and lid just to cook some stalks of broccoli or wait for them to go al dente on top of the stove. Read more
EASY & DELISH | Making authentic French puff pastry is no small accomplishment, even for the likes of Martha Stewart who confessed in her cookbook Martha Stewart Pies & Tarts that producing a classic puff takes time, “skill and practice,” and that she’s had her share of difficulties making one “because there are so many variables.”
While “quick-from-scratch puff pastry” is definitely easier and less time-consuming to make than the true classic version, it can still be a disaster as I learned not long ago when I tried to replicate THIS AWESOME RECIPE from the Los Angeles Times. Read more