Things in Columbus That I Love

Wandering around the Short North. Wee independent boutiques and galleries and restaurants.

Dragonfly Neo V Cuisine. Vegan cuisine that is the complete opposite of crunchy granola. Excellent. Last night's meal consisted of a miso glazed eggplant amuse, and shared dishes of sundried tomato risotto and matsutake on asparagus and mashed potatoes.

Rosendale's as a place to meet and sip wine. The room has a great feel to it. I wish to one day try their kitchen out.

V Power Yoga is a super fast paced workout, and I love, love, love it. Petro-Canada kids? Excellent, excellent, excellent choice.

On schedule next week: Blue Nile.

Random and odd thing that I very much miss: Pressed cottage cheese. But I found myself a recipe for making farmer's cheese, a close cousin that itself is difficult to find in-store, so once I get into a kitchen of my own, I'll be trying it out and reporting the results. Kitchen experiment!

Because We Covet

A Photo Essay dedicated to Brent.



From Kara Janx' Fall 2007 Collection - the Tuxedo Dress




I am an enabler. SoyQuick's Soy Milk Maker.



The (International) Noise Conspiracy to play Toronto, again, right quick. Because, Brent, Capitalism Stole My Virginity.

Why, Hellloooo, Creamy Goodness

This book arrived at my house today:


Since I have a tendency to bring in the bulk of my kitchen experiments into the office to share, I bet you're wishing you worked with me now.

Missing: One Sweet Tooth

For the past few years, I've pretty much revamped my mode o' eating, cutting out the masses of prepaired and highly processed foods that I used to live on (aside: I really believe that the chemical preservatives that I used to down with abandon have severely slowed down my own aging process. Really). In return, my palate has become more sensitive, and it allows me to actually taste the food that I eat. And until you make a major eating-style change like that, you really can't understand what that's like, but trust me, when I say taste, I really mean taste. Flavours explode. And sometimes overwhelm. Which brings me to last week.

I used to adore super-sweet things, and milk chocolate was my favourite type of snack. I avoided dark chocolate assiduously, as I found it far to bitter to enjoy.

These days, I adore dark chocolate and can't stand it's milky sister because all I can taste when I bite into it is sugar and milk fats, and nothing of the cocoa bean at all.

I bring this up because last week I gots me some Nutella, remembering how I loved to eat it directly from a spoon, and on top of things like ice cream. I loaded up a spoon, turned it over and, in turn, loaded up my taste buds. And pretty much gagged. Sugar - check. Milk - check. Fake vanilla - check. Where was the cocoa? Where were the hazelnuts? Overpowered by everything else, they were! And it made me sad. And it made me start to plot, and consider just what I would need to make my own, less sweet, less fake version of the spread. And then I pondered that since I already make an organic dark chocolate cinnamon peanut butter, how easy a cobbling a Nutella-like spread together would be.

Kitchen experiment ahead!