This story category covers quick, easy, healthy recipes; it also covers entertaining plus tools and techniques that make cooking easier.

Steam Train-iStock

Use Meal Train To Take Food To Sick Friends

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Popping by with a casserole for someone who is ill or in distress is a time-honoured tradition. Now, the free website mealTrain.com takes the guesswork out of when and what to bring.

Steam Train-iStock

 

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

Kinfolk Dinner

Entertain “Kinfolk” Style This Summer

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Instead of booking a last-minute summer trip, take a page from Kinfolk magazine —and make the most of staying home.

Kinfolk Dinner

 

SUMMER FARE | If you use the school calendar—June through August—as a way to measure summer days and have yet to find the time to get away or relax absolutely, you have six weeks remaining to do something fun and seasonal. But these six weeks will slip away on you like the last six did if you don’t make kicking back a priority. Read more

All-Clad

Where To Find The Best Pots & Pans For Less

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Stratospherically expensive All-Clad pots are among the most coveted cooking equipment on the planet, and for good reason: they last forever! Here’s how to slice their price.

All-Clad

 

SHOP WISE | My family and I have been in a horribly abusive relationship with our All-Clad Master Chef pots and pans (pictured below) every day for the past 15 years. Poor things! We cook on an open burner gas range and routinely scorch their bottoms; we’ve also allowed them to cook dry and blacken more times than we’d care to mention (gotta love built-in smoke detectors). Read more

Gluten Free Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Gluten-Free Cloud 9 Flour Is Heavenly

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With this made-in-Canada gluten-free flour, Gwyneth Paltrow’s oatmeal raisin cookies are even more heavenly. (RECIPE)

Gluten Free Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

 

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

Fresh Strawberry and Pineapple Popsicles - iStock

All-Fruit Popsicles Are Easy & Quick to Make

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Make super fresh all-fruit popsicles from scratch in a few minutes flat.

Fresh Strawberry and Pineapple Popsicles - iStock

 

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

Orka Steamer - Mastrad

The Easiest Way To Steam Vegetables

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When time is tight, a silicone steamer in the microwave can take the place of stovetop cooking.

Orka Steamer - Mastrad

 

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

Puff Pastry Pinwheel-iStock

Puff Pastry Sweets & Savouries In Under 10 Minutes

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These delicious puff pastry sweets and savouries are oven-ready in less than 10 minutes. (RECIPES)

Puff Pastry Pinwheel-iStock

 

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

Jamie Oliver Pizza Slicer

Why The Mezzaluna Is Best For Slicing Pizza

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Seriously, this is the only utensil you’ll ever need to cut perfect pizza slices every time.

Jamie Oliver Pizza Slicer

 

BUY RIGHT | Google pizza slicer images and you’ll find an amusing looking assortment of scissors, wheels and other contraptions designed to cut effortlessly through homemade pie. The only trouble with most of these gizmos is that they don’t work all that well. I know because I have a drawer full of them and not one delivers a decent wedge without struggle and concentration, including Jamie Oliver’s pizza wheel pictured above. Read more

Breast Or Thigh: Which Chicken Part Is Best?

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Chicken breasts have long been considered the healthiest part of the bird, but top chefs favour the flavour of dark meat. (RECIPES)

 

WHAT THE PROS KNOW | Why it took so long, I’ll never know, but North Americans are beginning to wean themselves from the breast—the chicken breast, that is. “The dark, tender meat of the chicken thigh is the most flavorful part of the bird,” writes Nate Appleman in his cookbook A16 Food + Wine, the International Association of Culinary Professionals cookbook of the year in 2008. To prove it, he includes THIS AWESOME RECIPE for Chicken Meatballs with Peperonata.

International superstar chef Daniel Boulud (who once set up shop in Vancouver) gave chicken thighs two thumbs up this past winter when he used them in THIS GREAT RECIPE for Chicken Lasagna, which appeared in Elle Décor.

Neither of these chefs would ever stint on ingredients or sacrifice quality because of cost. Both cook with chicken thighs not because they are always cheaper than breasts but because they taste better than breasts. Simple as that.

But here a small voice interjects, “But what about health? Aren’t chicken breasts a whole lot better for you?” Read more

Three Glasses Of Beer

Craft Beers Really Are Quite Simple To Make

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Craft beers are surprisingly simple to make—economical, too. All you need is a little equipment and the advice of a homebrew guru.

Three Glasses Of Beer

 

DO IT YOURSELF | Vancouver has made a name for itself as Canada’s microbrew capitol. As the trend and palates for craft beer continue to grow, artistic DIYers are brewing up their own spins on flavourful favourites at home for little more than pennies a pint.

Not so long ago my husband and I tried some delicious homebrew. Intrigued, we questioned the couple who’d made it on the ins and outs of their hobby while our silent glances said, “We could totally do that!” And we did. Read more