Pasta puttanesca.

Gifts for aging parents

First We Eat: A home-cooked birthday meal for Dad and friends helped to solve the gift-giving challenge

I recently spent a considerable amount of time perusing old photographs as I edited a vanity press family history book written by my mother. When I showed Dave the wedding photo of my parents — taken 63 years ago — he confessed he would not have recognized the young and handsome couple in the image. […] Read more

Chicken soup made with really good homemade broth

Chicken soup made with really good homemade broth

First We Eat: Make a batch of stock and freeze to have on hand when you want to make soup

Our globe tracks a circular route around the sun, and life often mimics that pattern. As does culture. Skirt lengths go up and come down, narrow lapels and three buttons come in and out of style. And crafts too, come in and out of fashion. These days, it’s common to see young people perusing websites […] Read more


Try this bread recipe — baked in a pot

Try this bread recipe — baked in a pot

First We Eat: This method of baking in a heavy pot will produce an amazing crust

When Mom learned that Dave and I were going to spend two weeks writing at Wallace Stegner House in Eastend, she said, “Make sure you say hi to Shon and Steve. They’re good folks.” So, soon after our arrival, I parsed the village’s streets, looking for evidence of potters. When I found a front yard […] Read more

We can’t wait for rhubarb!

We can’t wait for rhubarb!

First We Eat: Here’s a pie recipe to use up the last of the 
frozen or the first of this season’s rhubarb

Dave and I celebrated a significant anniversary recently. We’d met in Banff, at a writing retreat. During that two-week span, he’d flirted shamelessly, held my chair, chatted me up, sat with me at meals, taken me swimming and to dinner, everything but serenaded me. For that, we waited 10 years, and then it was an […] Read more


Is there even such a thing as too many cookbooks?

Is there even such a thing as too many cookbooks?

First We Eat: Curried Salmon with Spinach and Chickpeas

Dave and I are writers. Every room in our house is filled with books and literary journals, framing windows and filling every shelf. Upstairs in my studio, half the room is devoted to my culinary library. The kitchen, too, has a bookshelf, thanks to my mother. Mom is in her early 80s. Back in the […] Read more

The scoop on making cookies

The scoop on making cookies

First We Eat: What kind of fat is best? What kind of sweetener? Does it really matter?

I started baking at six, the same age I first climbed onto a horse. I was too short to mount a tall gelding unaided, and in the kitchen, I didn’t realize that what I wanted to make first — cookies — were among the most challenging of any sweet. But at my first gymkhana, when […] Read more


Korean Style Flank Steak.

Making room in the freezer

First We Eat: The offer of some grass-fed beef was incentive to finally dig 
through all that frozen food — some really old frozen food

I was sitting at my neighbour Sharon’s kitchen counter on a Sunday morning, enjoying our weekly coffee. My puppy, Jake, fussed at my feet, so I didn’t hear what Sharon had said, just held out my empty mug for a refill and shrugged. Sharon, who has known me for nearly 30 years, poured more coffee […] Read more



Darl's Honey Lemon Chicken.

And this is how it all began…

First We Eat: … and now I’m back home — really home — in Saskatchewan

I was an Air Force brat, born on a French airbase, raised on bases in Manitoba, northern Alberta, Quebec, Vancouver Island. In 1973, after my dad had mustered out and went on to earn a degree and teaching certificate, my grandparents were deciding to retire from farming. Teaching did not agree with Dad, and when […] Read more

Kutya

Just in time for Christmas — kutya

Prairie Palate: This meatless dish of Ukrainian heritage is the first 
of 12 served on Christmas Eve

What sets Manitoba’s cuisine apart from the rest of Canada? I asked that question of Christine Hanlon, author of the new cookbook Out of Old Manitoba Kitchens, which arrived on store shelves in September. It’s chock full of old recipes that characterize the early cuisine of the postage stamp province. Some of the recipes are […] Read more