The Yum Yum Factor

sweet potato gnocchi with wild boar ragu from Le Select Bistro Oh my, what a busy week in YUM. The whole thing started with dinner at Splendido on Saturday night. We were attending an awards celebration later in the evening so a big group of us started it all off with a dinner in the private dining room downstairs. I have actually never been to Splendido and was ridiculously excited about the prospect of taking a meal there and starved all day so I could eat my fill. There were at least 30 of us so they had laid out two long tables and had the bar set up in the corner with at least five or six servers to cater to our every whim. I have to say, service at this place is impeccable and the party room or "the cellar" as it's called is very warm and cosy. We were served a couple of lovely little apps while we milled about, chatting and drinking wine and, in retrospect, they were among the best things we ate so I wished that I had paid more attention. This...

strawberry skor pavolva This past weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving which means I was busy shopping, cooking and cleaning in preparation for our Sunday dinner. We had the MVP family over as well as my mother in law and enjoyed a thankful feast of roast turkey, port gravy, portuguese cornbread stuffing (recipe coming soon), mashed buttermilk potatoes, lots of veggies and salad and two desserts. I made an apple pecan upside down cake  and a strawberry skor pavlova loaded up with dulce de leche drizzle and dark chocolate curls. I have to say that a big turkey dinner is truly one of my favourite things on earth and I am always especially thankful that the Canadian holiday usually falls early enough that it doesn't spoil my desire for turkey again by Christmas. Thank you Canada.

I was invited to an event at beautiful The St Lawrence Market Kitchen (upstairs at the market) to introduce me to Fresh Canteen  , a new dinner prep concept launched earlier this summer here in Toronto. It's a service that caters to people who want to cook fresh, delicious dinners in their own kitchens but are often just too busy to shop for all the ingredients they need. They are quite committed to using locally sourced products whenever possible and that appeals to me very much. I have used Supperworks in the past to stock up for those times that I am too busy to shop but you still have to put aside time to drive down there, put all of the stuff together and get it back home. You also have to remember to take those damned bags out of the freezer the night before so it will be thawed by dinner time so you can actually cook it which doesn't come easily to me.  I love the idea of everything for a dish being brought to my house for me by a handsome stranger. Okay, I just li...