Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day. This may come as a surprise, given my penchant for experimenting in the kitchen. I love a good, multi-course, try-something-new, dirty-all-the-dishes dinner now and then, but the satisfaction of such a herculean effort is elevated by the simple unworried recovery of breakfast. Just one dirty bowl at […] Read more
Breakfast is the best!
Prairie Palate: A morning muesli recipe
Grandma’s prize-winning flapper pie
Prairie Palate: Flapper Pie recipe
[Updated May 9, 2017] I’ve been going through a box of my grandma’s souvenirs and so I can tell you that, in 1957, she won first prize for her flapper pie at the Saskatoon fair. She also won red ribbons for her saskatoon pie, cherry pie with lattice crust, toffee, chocolate cake (layer), four fruit […] Read more
Meals in the field?
Harvesting season is so busy, but make meals a time to get together with family
In my family, harvest suppers were a simple affair. My dad preferred a cold supper in a lunch box containing no item he couldn’t eat with one hand while steering the combine with the other. The driver of the grain truck (usually my brother Tom) might come in for a quick supper in the time […] Read more
Cooking food on a stick
Prairie Palate: Fruit Kebabs
My dad celebrated a significant birthday recently so of course we had a wiener roast. It’s my dad’s favourite meal. Few things are more “summer” than an open fire and food cooked on a stick. When we were little (my siblings and me) we followed Dad into the “woods” around the dugout to hunt for […] Read more
Wild asparagus is hard to find
Prairie Palate: It prefers an undisturbed area, so the more land that is cultivated, the less it can find suitable habitat
Not long ago, I was asked if I had ever picked wild asparagus. The answer was “No,” but it got me thinking. I’ve picked wild mushrooms, wild strawberries and wild mint but I have never been so lucky as to come across a patch of wild asparagus while walking in the great outdoors. Come to […] Read more
Fondest food memories
Prairie Palate: So many good memories of my mom involved food
I lost my mom this spring. She had Alzheimer’s disease so, in a way, we had lost a great part of her already. It was incredibly sad. I was assigned the task of writing her obituary for the local newspapers. As I scanned the fondest memories of my mom, it seemed so many of them […] Read more
People of the Prairies, unite!
Join in solidarity with people from Arizona and have a potluck dinner – just to prove a point
I am about to break the law. Don’t be alarmed, I doubt it will land me in jail. In fact, it is quite possible the law will be changed before this appears in print and my actions will no longer constitute a misdemeanour. In the meantime, I feel obliged to break this law on principle. […] Read more
Don’t throw out that ham bone
Prairie Palate: If you served up an Easter ham, I hope you kept the bone to make soup
Sometimes I eat out of the garbage. Case in point: One year as we cleaned up Easter dinner, I asked my sister-in-law what she did with the ham bone. It was a good ham and we enjoyed it immensely. As I was eating it, I thought of the (even more) delicious soup I could make […] Read more
A good old-fashioned baked beans recipe
Prairie Palate: These will warm you up on a cold winter's day and may bring back some good memories
It seems every old cowboy movie had a camp cook serving up a mess of baked beans. I can see John Wayne eating them now… from a tin plate with an old battered spoon and a chunk of sourdough bread. So, it’s fitting that when I asked rancher Art Unsworth for a recipe from the […] Read more
Prairie Palate: A recipe for Swedish meatballs
By 2011 more than 152,000 people living in the Prairies claimed Swedish heritage
On a recent trip to Sweden, of course I had to try meatballs. Here on the Prairies, Swedish meatballs seem to represent the culinary tradition of an entire nation that sent so many sons and daughters to Western Canada in pioneer times. And it’s good to know that Swedish meatballs are still popular in their […] Read more
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
