The Hungry Squid

There is no better antidote to the Sunday night ritual of harried workweek prep/Monday dread than a steaming bowl of nutritious and filling soup. I planned to be extra-productive this weekend, putting the finishing touches on my thesis for final submission, and Saturday was excellent for that; however Sunday, which followed a very late night, was a total bust. Nevertheless, after lazing around all day and watching reruns of Lie to Me , I decided to try my hand at a new recipe for one of my all-time favorites, broccoli cheddar soup. Surprisingly easy to make, this broccoli cheddar soup has a mild kick to it that plays nicely off of its cheesy richness. The only major change that I made to the original recipe was the addition of extra milk and broth to thin the soup out; the original yielded a soup that was far too thick and chowder-like. I added a couple of extra dashes of Tabasco at the end just before serving as well, but then again, I add Tabasco to pretty mu...

My parents have a tradition of growing huge zucchinis. Like really huge. 4 kg huge. And more of them that we can use without becoming zucchinified – especially since my teenage brother has sworn off zucchini bread (I believe, on principle at this point). However, after finding and creating as many dinner recipes has she could, a couple of year ago, my mother came across one recipe that seemed like the perfect disguise for these beautiful monstrosities: zucchini bread. Zucchini bread is very similar to carrot bread in texture – both are grated finely and mixed in with the usual yeast-free bread ingredients, and both add a moistness to the bread similar to that added by bananas, but without the sweetness. Zucchinis have the added bonus of lacing the bread with strings of dark green zucchini, threaded throughout the earthy brown loaves like fine capillaries. My mom’s go-to recipes for zucchini bread involve adding ingredients such a pineapple, raisins, pecans and chocola...

The combination of sweet and salty is something that I was brought up with. For as long as I can remember, my mother has made variations of a sweet, aromatic chai that I love, milky black tea with strong notes of green cardamom and cinnamon. Some weekends, taking a break from the hundred-and-one errands that inevitably pile up during the all-too-busy week, she and my father would sit at the kitchen table and pause, drinking large, piping hot mugs of chai and snacking on a salty treat known to us kids simply as the “mixture”   - puffed rice, flattened rice, dried bay leaves, peanuts, bits of fried chickpea dough and dried coconut slivers, tossed in a melange of a hundred different spices, roasted and then studded with dried raisins. A strange mix of ingredients, maybe, but dangerously addictive . The sweetness of the tea, combined with the crunch and spice of the “mixture”, brought out the spice in the cardamom and the cinnamon, gave the sweetness dimension, added de...

On a blustery, miserable, dark, cold, rainy Sunday, I did not want to leave the house. Oh yes, I know that I extolled the virtues of fall a little while ago, declaring it to be my favorite season. And it still is….well, the sunny days are. Rainy days in the fall are a whole other story. Holed up in my apartment, drinking tea under a warm blanket and struggling with writer’s block, I couldn’t help but crave a teeny, tiny bit of sunshine. So I did what any normal person would do: I made lemon squares. H is the queen of lemon squares – in our tiny Kingston apartment she would whip up those bad boys like there was nothing to it; her lemon squares were a delight, and would inevitably disappear before the night was over. But in light of her great skill, I had never tried my had at lemon squares, so on that blustery, miserable, dark, cold and rainy Sunday, I thought, why not now? This recipe for lemon squares is exquisitely simple and the results are divine. The cru...

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...