Where Does the Time Go

Since I’ve been back from Montreal, I don’t know where the time has gone. Too much going on I guess. I’m spending lots of time on the design for the cover of my cookbook Every Kitchen Tells Its Stories, that hopefully will be out late Fall. It’s a labour of love and very exciting, but also time consuming. You would not believe the time spent on finding the right color and texture for the background. I finally found it at The Japanese Paper Place which has the most beautiful handmade papers. It’s like going to a museum, except that the art is affordable. If you’re in Toronto, you have to check it out.

A friend asked me to contribute a cooking class home party for a silent auction fundraising event for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada to be held at the Indian Motorcycle Café & Lounge sometime in August. Stay tuned for more details. So I’ve been busy coming up with a cool marketing piece for that.

I’ve also been feeling guilty about not keeping up with all the festivals around town or local markets. Good thing I gave you all links to them and you can try them out for yourself since I’m not doing a very good job of it. That said, Summerlicious starts tomorrow. It's the opportunity to try out fixed menus at restaurants all over the city (I stopped counting at 50). They each offer three options for appetizers, mains plus dessert for either $20 or $35, depending on the restaurant. Although, every restaurant is booked for day one, I will test some out before July 24th when it ends. Now I’m not a restaurant critic. In fact, I’m like the person who said I don’t know anything about art – I just know what I like. I also go by the adage my father told me when I was little – if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything. So over the next couple of weeks I will be writing about the meals I really liked and ignoring any that don’t ring any bells.

The next Sugar High Friday is coming up next week and the focus is on honey, which is not usually my favourite ingredient except for adding to salad dressings, making my traditional honey cake for the Jewish New Year celebrations and pouring some into tea when I’m feeling sickly. My favourite sweetener is brown sugar so I really am wracking my brain to come up with something wonderful. I’ll be heading over to Dufferin Grove Market today to talk to the honey experts and get some inspiration.

In the meantime, all this talk about food is making me hungry. I'm still in Montreal food mode, so today for lunch I'll be having a salami sandwich on challah with mustard.

Since I ate the last of the Whippets (chocolate coated marshmallow cookies I favored in my childhood) yesterday, I guess I'll just have to eat some cherries for dessert.