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

MediterraneanSalmon - James Ingram

Chef Michael Smith Shares A Hot Fish Dish

In Chef Michael Smith’s new cookbook, the recipes are full of memorable flavours and the prep work’s a piece of cake.

MediterraneanSalmon - James IngramEASY & DELISH | Michael Smith had us at easy. The celebrated Canadian chef who, among his many other accomplishments has a James Beard award-winning television series to his credit, has just released a new cookbook with the “E” word in the title—Chef Michael Smith’s Kitchen: 100 of My Favourite Easy Recipes—and that’s music to our ears. Read more

Williams-Sonoma Citrus Reamer

2 Gizmos Good Cooks Could Use Right Now

The right tools make kitchen tasks easier. Here are two must-have gizmos that infinitely out perform their insignificant price.

Williams-Sonoma Citrus ReamerPoke, Squeeze, Twist—You can juice a fruit by hand—or by mouth as Oprah did on her now famous televised camping trip with Gayle last October (WATCH HERE)—but a tool devised for this task will extract juice more efficiently.

Stylish low-tech juicers abound, including Philippe Starck’s iconic Juicy Salif, but unless you’re looking for countertop décor, why would you pay a hefty $100 for a Salif, a product that serves but one purpose, when an inexpensive citrus reamer will do the trick and tuck away nicely in a drawer. Read more

Feeding Baby - iStock

Look What’s Number One With A Baby Bullet

If this product doesn’t persuade mothers to make their own baby food, nothing will.

Feeding Baby - iStockMONEY WELL SPENT | The number one reason for buying store-bought baby food is convenience, no small thing when you’re a newbie, have multiple offspring to attend to and/or juggle motherhood and a job. I used jar food when my kids were babies because I worked full time. I just never could get it together in the evenings to assemble the ingredients and equipment necessary to cook, purée and freeze multiple mini meals for my growing tribe, though I’m pretty sure if the Baby Bullet had been available back in my day, I’d be writing a different story now. Read more

Repro Paintings - Photo By Calvin Whitehurst

Throw A Fab Party With Dollar Store Supplies

Here’s how to throw a fabulous end-of-summer “arty party” with supplies from your friendly Dollar Giant.

Repro Paintings - Photo By Calvin WhitehurstDOLLAR STORE DAYS | I believe there’s an artist in everyone and I’m throwing an end-of-summer party to prove it. I’m inviting a close group of friends —many of whom have never picked up a paintbrush —to my first “arty party.” We’ll gather in a room with a raft of art supplies and let our imaginations take a walk on the wild side. We may unleash our inner Picassos, our native Carrs, our chaotic Pollocks (well, maybe paint-throwing Pollocks will get to create on the back lawn). Read more

Flour Sack Towel on Amazon.com

Serious Cooks Prefer Flour Sack Towels

Serious cooks say there is no better vehicle for hand drying dishes or mopping up spills than the humble flour sack towel.

Flour Sack Towel on Amazon.comCULT PRODUCT ALERT | Don’t you just love it when you discover a product that is beautiful, useful—and inexpensive? If you haven’t already replaced the fancy cotton or terrycloth tea towels in your kitchen with ones made of flour sack material, here a few good reasons to make the switch. Read more

The Dukan, The Duchess & Me: Diet Like Royalty

Kate Middleton followed the Dukan diet before her wedding. Now the book is also reduced.

Kate Middelton

 

LOSING IT | Losing weight wasn’t at the top of my To Do list. It hovered somewhere between sorting out the basement and organizing the family photos, promising to be just as much of a chore. Then recently, I looking around on Abebooks.com and I noticed that they are practically giving away copies of the The Dukan Diet.  Read more

Dorie Greenspan's French Apple Cake

Dorie Greenspan’s Apple Cake Is Easy

Taking over from Julia Child, Dorie Greenspan offers contemporary French cooking for those with more taste than time.

Dorie Greenspan's French Apple Cake

 

EASY & DELISH | In a world awash in cookbooks filled with pretty pictures and recipes that come up flat, Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan, published last fall, reads and eats like a classic—a book that will do for contemporary French cooking what Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking did for Cordon Bleu. Read more

In A Small Kitchen cookbook

Great Gifts For Grads & Starting-Out Cooks

These two how-to recipe books make thoughtful gifts for grads or other young starting-out cooks.

In A Small Kitchen cookbookCOOK THESE BOOKS | Given the frenetic lifestyle of working parents who spend every spare moment shuttling multiple kids to extra- curricular activities and almost no time sitting down with them for dinner, it’s no wonder young adults have gotten into the habit of grabbing snacks on the fly, relying on prepared meals (even good-quality ones) and watching pros whip up real food on the cooking channel rather than attempting to do it themselves.

In an effort to reverse this state of affairs and encourage twentysomethings to discover the joy of cooking, we recommend the following cookbooks, which make perfect starting-out gifts. Read more

beet & paneer salad

Make Bal Arneson’s Yummy Beet Salad

Celebrity chef and “Spice Goddess” Bal Arneson whips up an adventurous summer salad — plus fresh cheese in under 20 minutes!

beet & paneer saladDINNER IN A MINUTE | Quick and healthy may not be the first words most of us would use to describe Indian cuisine, but “healthy, aromatic and delicious meals that are quickly and easily prepared” were the mainstay of Vancouver bestselling cookbook author Bal Arneson’s childhood diet in India, and they are the focus of her recently released second cookbook Bal’s Quick & Healthy Indian. Read more

Classic Whoopie Pies With Sprinkles - Antonis Achilleos

Make Whoopie Pies

After overwrought cupcakes and posh macaroons, the next big sweet thing has just got to be humble {whoopie} pie.

Classic Whoopie Pies With Sprinkles - Antonis AchilleosSIMPLE TO MAKE | This past week, my favourite francophile foodie/writer Dorie Greenspan reported on her entertaining blog that while the cupcake craze is alive and well in Paris, “the cupcake’s American cousin, the whoopie pie, is squeezing in on its territory.” What she didn’t mention is that in North America, the whoopie pie is also squeezing in on the territory currently occupied by its French cousin, the chi-chi macaroon. Read more