The Hungry Squid

When I lived in Kingston, 2-odd years ago, we used to order People magazine. Please, don’t judge – 5 girls, hard at work, need some mindless celebrity gossip once in a while. Our ever-growing stack of magazines was always precariously perched on our hand-me-down coffee table, and one or two of them would be strew, half open, on the dinner table, to be glanced over during a rushed breakfast before morning class. It’s those small details that I miss about those days in our undergrad, the camaraderie that came with being collectively poor and the built-in fun of living in a house with your best friends (and a handsome cat named Jones). After moving to Montreal, for a while, I kept up my subscription to America’s favorite cash register staple, my guilty secret   - hey, every grad student has one. And that is when I discovered Coolio chicken. Not familiar with Coolio? Check out the link and see for yourself why he is one of the iconic rappers of the 90s ...

I have never really understood the Twilight phenomenon. A story about a whiny girl madly in love with a moody, aloof and slightly stalker-ish vampire? No thanks. A badly acted film series punctuated by poor attempts at humor and even poorer attempts at creative cinematography? I’ll pass. Gaggles of screaming and crying girls fighting over which mythical creature, vampire or werewolf, is stronger, nobler and looks better shirtless? Definitely not for me. Please don’t get me wrong, I do have a healthy appreciation for cheesy cinema; one of my favorite movies is “George of the Jungle” (seriously). But I draw the line at movies that portray women as victims of their love and portray vampires as sparkly. Because, let’s be honest, I don’t think Bram Stoker, Anne Rice or Richard Matheson would approve. BUT, I will say this: if you are in need of a good laugh, the latest “Twilight” is sure to fit the bill. This is precisely the reason that last Wednesday, I got tog...

A short post, for a quick and lovely meal. Today’s rice and bean salad was taken from the food section of the Ottawa Citizen a long time ago, and was resurrected from behind a thick wad of papers on the push pin board in my kitchen. A simple main dish, with a few fresh ingredients, is livened up by the addition of orange and lime; the tartness complements the sweetness of the red peppers and the corn nicely. The most important component of this salad is rice, which much be cooked well, until the grains are tender but still a bit firm and don’t collapse into a starchy mush between your teeth (hence, the addition of slightly less water than is used normally). I was liberal with the Tabasco, but you can adjust the spice to your taste, as well as the sweetness – I would suggest being a little bit conservative when you add the sugar, and to increase it slightly if you so desire. I sadly didn’t have any cilantro, but I would imagine that it would be a great addition. This dis...

Everyone has, at some point in their grocery-shopping lives, bought too many bananas. The “On Special” signs in neon orange entice you, and you walk, mesmerized, to the pyramid of yellow-green fruit, stacked high, proudly occupying the sweetest spot of the produce section. Your grocery cart, most likely empty, longs to be filled, and you oblige, putting bunch after bunch of half-ripened fruit into the welcoming arms of the metal food-cage. It isn’t until you reach home that you discover that you have made a terrible mistake. If you are like me, you always, always , buy too many bananas. Every trip to the grocery store seems like it is not complete without the purchase of at least 1 banana, and I come home only to find that I already have 2 waiting for me, disapprovingly it seems, yellow almost to the point of over-sweetness. Don’t get me wrong – I like bananas as much as the next person; I just seem to have an inability to gage my banana needs. So it is inevitable...

I have a confession to make: I am an autumn junkie. Please don’t get me wrong – a squid likes nothing more than to lie by the poolside on a hot July afternoon, or to barbeque in the park, or to have a drink (or a few) with friends on a terasse late into the summer night. But to be honest, the lack of air-conditioning in my apartment and the subsequent restless sleeps were getting to be a bit more than I could handle, not to mention the fact that turning the stove on heated the apartment up faster than you can say “incoming jellyfish!”. No, for all its ice cream-filled virtues, summer will always be a close second to the austere beauty and serenity of early autumn. The crisp   air and the soft sun against a pale blue sky evoke images of leather boots, red leaves and... fall cooking. Because let’s face it, I am unabashedly and incurably food-crazed. Emboldended by the cool late-summer breeze, I decided to turn the oven on for the first time in months and celebr...

Post-thesis submission (5 days ahead of the deadline, thank you very much) and pre-employment (scheduled to begin next week), I have been in transit, first to M’s lair and then home, where I entered a household bursting to the brim with out-of-town guests. A wildly busy and often hilarious week ensued, and I am just now getting used to the quiet of my Montreal 3 ½ . On of my favorite things about going home is the availability of cupboard upon cupboard of spices, powders, extracts and flours, many of which are required in ¼ teaspoon amounts in the recipes I like to try my hand at. My mother, the avid cook that she is, loves to experiment with cuisines, and she has an enthusiastic tasting panel in my brother and my dad (and occasionally me). Unfortunately, I have no such luxury; every recipe essentially serves one, which limits my experimentation with cooking to healthy foods that can be consumed guilt-free for 5 days. And the occasionally chocolate pear cake… S...

The shoulder of pork was huge. Dark brown marrow, exposed in a thick shell of dense, mother-of pearl bone, was nestled in a sea of deep red meat and marbled with creamy ribbons of fat, which spread luxuriously across the top of the cut like a triumphant, artery-clogging crown. 6 lbs of pure, unadulterated pork, and it was our job to turn it into a sumptuous barbequed meal – sans barbeque. Challenge accepted. Earlier that weekend, I had been tempted by an invitation for pulled pork, but alas, travel plans already in place, I had to decline. However, the idea of tender pulled pork, drowning in a sea of smoky, tangy barbeque sauce, lingered in my brain, and, in the midst of my celebratory culinary binge, I had the idea to try my hand at the dish. M could not be more enthusiastic – being the carnivorous mammal he is, he jumped at the chance to prepare such a protein-heavy meal, and was more than willing to handle the raw meat (something that I am still a bit squeamish about). The...