Tabbouleh is a Lebanese herb salad that I first got turned on to by our friends over at Baba Gannouj, Campbell River’s Syrian/Lebanese restaurant. It’s since become my absolute favourite salad! Read More
Tag: summer
BBQ Pork Spareribs with Blackberry Hoisin Sauce
This BBQ Sauce is as close to an original recipe as I’ve ever come up with. I know, nothing is new and every recipe has already been thought of by someone, but I take some pride piecing this frankensauce concept together. It’s a traditional American backyard BBQ sauce at heart (with a built-in balance of sweet, sour, spicy and salty that I learned from Nick at Memphis Blues BBQ House) with summer blackberry sweet-tartness as it’s body and the brain of a Chinese fire-roasted duck. It’s just thing to slather all over fatty pork ribs. Read More
Space Invaders – A Word on Himalayan Blackberries
Here in Beautiful British Columbia we get a lot of immigrants from all over the world. Sure it’s Canada, the “melting pot” and all that, but here in BC it’s especially common to run into people, products and flavours from far off places. It’s one of the things that I love the most about the West coast. Sometimes though, adding some new spice into the pot can be disruptive. A brief story to illustrate:
Once upon a time an immigrant came to the Northwestern Coast of BC. Read More
Radishes Gone Wild!
Seeds are incredible things. They can lay dormant for eons in the most inhospitable soil, waiting for environmental equilibrium and then for no rhyme or reason (perceptible to us big, lumbering bipedal mammals) it will hit that perfect balance of this or that and go Boom! And a living thing will spurt up out of the scrub and welcome the new day. It’s crazy stuff.
The same thing happens once the seed grows into a big, strong, adult, taxpaying plant. The sun and soil send those mysterious vibrations through the ether and the plant goes nuts. Shazam! It sloughs off it’s fruit and abandons any plans to expand it’s meticulously constructed root system and instead builds up and up, higher and higher until it towers above the garden. There, swaying crazily in the breeze it covers itself in flowers and (with a bit of luck) will score some pollination and grow tiny triffid-like capsules meant for the future.
It’s the plant equivalent of leaving a steady job and family and just trucking out to burning man. It’s plants gone wild! And, I’m sorry to report… It’s what most of my garden looks like right now. Read More
Ten BC Beers You Have to Try This Summer!
Summer. Beer.
No two words have ever been so flawlessly in simpatico. One is the perfect complement to the other, it’s twin and companion. Without one, the other is incomplete. There is nothing like sun, surf and a beer that has been freshly plucked from a slightly sand-crusted cooler’s cold, slushy recesses. Big sunglasses and good tunes naturally accompany such moments and bikini parties are sure to spontaneously occur. It’s science. Read More