entertaining Archives - Page 5 of 9

Make Fat-Free Pototo Chips In 3 Minutes

April 24, 2012/2 Comments/in BUY THIS. MAKE THAT., Easy + Quick = Delicious, FOOD, Food & Drink, Tools & Techniques, View All Food Stories /by Editor

Potato chip lovers rejoice—TopChips makes fresh, yummy, fatfree crisps at home.

EASY & DELISH | I’m a complete potato chip queen, though most people who know me don’t know it. I seldom buy this yummy could-there-be-anything-unhealthier-with-more-empty-calories snack because I have a tendency to overindulge. Now, thankfully, with my new TopChips chips maker I never have to think about the quantity of crisps I consume or whether or not they’re good for me because chips made using this inexpensive, inventive microwave tray are 100 percent fat free—really. Read more

Why You Need To Grow Blueberries Right Now

April 10, 2012/4 Comments/in GARDEN, Gardening How-To, Home & Garden, View All Garden Stories /by Editor

Blueberry shrubs are easy to grow, attractive year round—and, of course, produce delicious berries.

GROW YOUR OWN | Blueberries thrive in our little corner of the planet—they love our climate and generally acidic soil—so if you want to grow something both good to eat and attractive to look at (what can I say, I’m married to a garden designer), you might want to leave room for a blueberry bush or three in your garden or grow this yummy fruit in tubs on your balcony. Read more

A Tasty Gluten-Free Sub For Wheat Pasta

April 9, 2012/0 Comments/in BUY THIS. MAKE THAT., CANADIAN CONTENT, Diet, FOOD, Food & Drink, HEALTH, Nutrition, View All Food Stories, View All Health Stories /by Editor

Yes, there is a guilt-free, gluten-free substitute for high-cal, high-carb wheat-based pasta.

EASY & DELISH | For anyone on a low-cal, low-carb or gluten-free diet, pasta can be a problem—at least the traditional wheat-based kind. But there is an alternative: shirataki noodles, used in Asian cuisine. Read more

How To Paint Cookies Without A Pastry Bag

April 4, 2012/3 Comments/in FOOD, Food & Drink, HOLIDAY, Tools & Techniques, View All Food Stories /by Editor

For decorating cookies, there is an alternative to both tricky pastry bags and pricey tubes of store-bought frosting.

SHOPPING AROUND | Nothing says spring (and Easter) like hand-painted sugar cookies. My kids are begging me to make some, but since I didn’t inherit Cake Boss genes, I decided to YouTube for decorating advice where I ran across Iron Chef America’s Cat Cora channelling her inner Martha by cranking out these adorable designs on holiday cookies. Hopeless at using a pastry bag, I was about to settle for uneconomical grocery-store tubes of icing with clip-off tips when a girlfriend suggested a cool alternative: squeezable frosting bottles with interchangeable decorating tips. Read more

Banana Ice Cream - In A Pinch -Amid Hattie

You’ll Scream For This: 5-Minute Ice Cream

March 9, 2012/2 Comments/in Easy + Quick = Delicious, FOOD, Food & Drink, Recipes, View All Food Stories /by Editor

Caren McSherry whips up the yummiest ice cream ever in under 5 minutes—flat!

EASY & DELISH | Talk about fingers in pies. Celebrity chef Caren McSherry is one of the hardest-working (and most upbeat) women in the food business in Vancouver. Not only is she hands-on at her cooking school, the longest-running private school of its type in the country, but she also runs the Gourmet Warehouse, her large specialty store on East Hastings Street that sells thousands of competitively priced gourmet food items and housewares to appreciative local foodies. Then there are her media gigs: weekly columnist for TV Guide magazine, twice monthly appearances on Global TV’s Saturday morning news and once a month on Bill Good’s radio talkfest. Oh, and there are the cookbooks. Read more

Toasted coconut marshmallows - Laura Flowers

Marshmallows Are Super Easy To Make

February 24, 2012/0 Comments/in Easy + Quick = Delicious, FOOD, Food & Drink, Recipes, View All Food Stories /by Editor

Gourmet marshmallows are sooo easy to make and sooo damn addictive.

EASY & DELISH | Made-from-scratch marshmallows are having a moment. That’s the headline that jumped out at me last month in T, the New York Times style magazine. This may be what T’s editors think, but actually, among foodies, fresh-made marshmallows have been enjoying a moment since 2008, which is around the time Vancouver’s Butter Baked Goods began making and marketing its delectable gourmet marshmallows ($7.99 for 10) to an appreciative audience—and famous food bloggers like Deb Perelman of smittenkitchen.com could be found whipping up marshmallows and visually documenting the process on their websites. Read more

Are These The Best Fire Roasted Tomatoes?

January 26, 2012/2 Comments/in FOOD, Food & Drink, View All Food Stories /by Editor

How to make pasta simply amazing by just opening a can of tomatoes.

DINNER IN A MINUTE | When I really don’t want to spend time making dinner but can’t be bothered to go out or even order in, I love to boil up a big pot of water, throw in dry pasta and open a can of tomatoes. Oookay, you say, making nice but imagining I’m nuts to think plain spaghetti and canned tomatoes “straight up” could be anything but spectacularly boring. And maybe it would be if I opened your Hunt’s garden-variety dice, but the canned tomatoes I’m talking about taste nothing like that. Read more

Trader Joe’s Comes To Vancouver—Sort Of!

January 18, 2012/3 Comments/in CANADIAN CONTENT, Food & Drink /by Editor

Taking a page, and products, from the quirky Trader Joe’s supermarket chain, one idealistic, enterprising Vancouverite offers great groceries at great prices.

SHOPPING AROUND | “Somebody had to do it.”

That’s the first line of the manifesto taped to the window of Transilvania Trading, a tiny food emporium that recently opened in the nether reaches of West Broadway Street in Kitsilano, a shop destined to become a haunt among Vancouver foodies on the lookout for interesting, healthy packaged foods at reasonable prices. Transilvania’s current raison d’être is to sell a selection of mostly dry products from Trader Joe’s, quite possibly the coolest, quirkiest supermarket chain in the U.S., though that’s by no means the only stuff shop owner Mike Hallatt plans to stock in the future. Read more

The One Meal Fits All Way To Entertain

January 17, 2012/1 Comment/in BUY THIS. MAKE THAT., Easy + Quick = Delicious, Entertaining, FOOD, Food & Drink, View All Food Stories /by Editor

Time crunched but wanting to entertain, here’s the creative way one woman takes care of business.

SAVE TIME & ENERGY | If in-home entertaining is something you’d like to do more of but you don’t have the extra time or energy to put into an elaborate production, consider adopting the game plan Janie Collier uses to host twice-monthly Saturday night suppers.

Collier has developed one wonderful meal that she can serve to carnivores, vegetarians and vegans—and she repeats it—with slight variations and tweaks—in perpetuity. “If I had to come up with a new menu and source new ingredients every time I wanted to have people over, I just wouldn’t get around to it much.”

Janie Collier’s One Meal Fits All Saturday Night Supper Read more

How To Make An Edible Place Card Super Quick

December 21, 2011/0 Comments/in Entertaining, FOOD, HOLIDAY, Holiday /by Editor

These unconventional place cards are beautiful, organic, yummy and take only minutes to make.

EASY & QUICK | Silver and pewter are traditional materials for decorating and never go out of fashion. These metal place markers were created by cutting bannerlike shapes with scissors from a disposable aluminum baking sheet. Read more

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