To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

Every week we get to hang out with some of my favourite people.

The funny thing is, for the most part, I don’t know their last names. I’ve never been to their house, nor they to mine. I’ve met their kids and family members by chance, not design. You might say we’re casual acquaintances at best.

Yet these friends sustain and nourish us every week. Their backbreaking labour is in evidence every time we meet, their painstaking care on display. No matter the weather or circumstances, they are by and large an upbeat group, seeing the silver lining in every rain cloud, and the opportunity in every dry spell. Maybe those feet that are firmly planted on the ground give them another kind of grounding too.

They’re our local farmers, and they’re a special breed indeed.

Setting the seasonal table

I don’t know how many of you go to the grocery store on speed dial, but my guess is it’s a pretty high percentage. Need flour? Aisle one. Butter, eggs, milk? Head to the dairy section in the back. Green peppers, bananas, potatoes? Each item has its designated, never-deviating spot in the produce section. The best grocery stores highlight and feature local produce as it becomes available, but it’s a likely bet that those peaches and plums will come from regions further afield before long.

On the other hand, go to the farmers’ market, and it’s a bit like Christmas morning every week. The vagaries of weather and whim wreak havoc on the best-laid harvesting plans, so even the farmers aren’t quite sure what will be on the table. This is Mother Nature’s just-in-time inventory system, invented long before Walmart decided to get into the agri-food business.

Eating my fill

This week we had Christmas in July, courtesy of Nicole Prins from Wooler Dale Farm. Wooler Dale is a wonderful organic farm in the Bay of Quinte, started by Ann and John van der Heyden, and now being managed by the second generation. While there are many farmers that have beautiful tomatoes, those from Wooler Dale are sweeter than candy. When I saw these beauties at Nicole’s stand on Saturday, I did my special summer happy dance. Tomato season is officially upon us.

John from Bees Universe provided our weekly egg haul. Over at Paul’s Footsteps Organics, we picked up some freshly harvested zucchini flowers, sweet carrots and radicchio. From Milan at Bizjak Farms, Niagara cherries, strawberries and the season’s first blueberries were on offer—and in my basket without a moment’s hesitation. Beautiful just-the-right-size zucchini from Soznicki Organics were perfect for my first batch of zucchini-pea soup with pesto. And, look, more carrots.

With this type of bounty, spreading our love amongst these amazingly hardy and generous souls seems like the right thing to do.

The joy that is the midsummer season of harvest feels like a fairy godmother gone wild, gifts bestowed with abandon. If there are tomatoes, corn is coming. Blueberries buddy up to peaches, apricots and plums. Shell beans and eggplant are on their way. Is it any wonder that I’m in my happy place?

Sugarplums can wait. In this midsummer’s night’s dream, I’ll be thinking about the glorious treasures that will await me when next Saturday comes.

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A Georgian Summer Salad

serves 2; can easily be doubled

This week's recipe comes from my friend Cheryl, whose wonderful newsletter, Cheryl, Queen of Markets, is a love letter to farmers' markets and the people who bring them to life. Drawing on more than two decades of running London's farmers' markets, Cheryl weaves together stories of growers, producers, food history, seasonality and sustainability with thoughtful recipes that celebrate what's at its best. She reminds us that the best meals begin long before we step into the kitchen—with the people who grow our food and the markets that connect us to them.

In her latest newsletter, Cheryl featured Silk Roads: A Flavour Odyssey with Recipes from Baku to Beijing by Anna Ansari, a cookbook that explores the cuisines and cultures woven together along the ancient Silk Roads.

The combination of ripe tomatoes, sweet strawberries, fragrant tarragon and basil with a few capers thrown in for good measure may sound unexpected, but after one bite you'll wonder why you've never paired them before. We had this salad for dinner tonight with a simply grilled Denver steak that Richard made, marinated quickly in a bit of soy sauce, honey, the grated zest and juice of a lime and just enough minced red Thai chili peppers to give the meat a lovely zing.

For an unusual and excellent wine paring, check out Christian Binner Si Rose. I've been returning to this wine since we first discovered it in 2019, and this meal was a reminder why. Made primarily from Gewürztraminer, it has intense aromas of roses, citrus, Valencia orange, and tropical fruits that takes comfortably to the soy, lime and chili marinade on the steak, while still leaving plenty of room for the strawberries, tomatoes and herbs to do their thing.

Ingredients

2 cups ripe strawberries, sliced

2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh basil

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh tarragon

1 tablespoon capers, rinsed and drained

1½ teaspoons raw sunflower seeds

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Maldon or other flaky sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1. Combine the strawberries, cherry tomatoes, basil, tarragon and capers in a medium serving bowl.

2. Just before serving, sprinkle the sunflower seeds over the salad and drizzle with the olive oil. Season generously with Maldon or other flaky sea salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Toss gently and serve immediately.

Adapted from Silk Roads: A Flavour Odyssey with Recipes from Baku to Beijing by Anna Ansari. Discover more of Anna's work at annaansari.com, and follow her on Instagram at @thisplacetastesdelicious.

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

If there’s an easy way to do something, I might very well take the hard route instead.

It’s not by design, of course. After all, why would making something more difficult, or stressful, be better? It’s more a matter of ingrained habits, the by-rote thinking that we rely on. This is both the gift and curse of aging. We don’t think about how to tie a shoe lace anymore, and that’s true of a million things, big and small, that have become second nature.

We apply our learned habits to everything. The way we make a bed, cut an avocado, park a car. More profoundly, the way we react to a compliment or a criticism, tackle a problem, respond to anger.

Snapping out of our customary ways requires one step that, on the surface, seems simple but can be profoundly hard. In those moments when one of our buttons is pushed, and our reaction triggered, getting grounded in the moment and pausing, if only for a breath, can help us unravel the twisted skein of our hard wiring.

Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’

― Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher

We kick open all the doors by asking that question. It takes us out of autopilot mode and allows us to see there are other ways to respond.

Most of us assume a difficult situation comes with only one way to deal with it. We grab hold instinctively, without stopping to consider whether there’s a better grip. But as with lifting something heavy, how we take hold often matters as much as the weight itself. Think of it as weight training for the mind. Every pause strengthens our ability to approach the next challenge with a little more skill and a little less strain.

Another Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, explained it this way: “Every circumstance comes with two handles, one of which you can hold, while with the other conditions are insupportable.”

Or as Thomas Jefferson said more simply, “Take things always by their smooth handle.”

Looking for the smooth handle

Don’t you sometimes feel the weight of life on your shoulders? And with every stress, real or imagined, we allow the screws to tighten even more.

Listen, I’m not saying this is easy to do. It takes deliberate thought, and that in itself can feel like heavy lifting.

Recognizing these moments takes a skill of its own They’re almost always ordinary. A delayed flight. A disagreement over something trivial. Someone cutting us off in traffic. Life doesn’t usually hand us dramatic tests of character. It hands us dozens of tiny opportunities each day to either reinforce our old knob and tube wiring or lay down something new.

That’s why asking, “Is this necessary?” matters so much. The answer doesn’t simply change the next few minutes; it shapes the person we’ll be the next time life presses one of those familiar buttons. Every pause weakens the grip of habit just a little. Every time we choose the smooth handle, we teach ourselves that there is another way to carry the weight.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

– Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor, and author of Man's Search for Meaning

Few people have written more credibly about the limits of our control than Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust. After enduring years in Nazi concentration camps, he emerged convinced that while much can be taken from us, our response remains our own. His most enduring insight is as relevant to the ordinary frustrations of daily life as it was to the unimaginable circumstances that gave rise to it.

Eventually, those moments become less about managing a million small situations and more about changing the way we move through the world. By doing so, we discover that much of what exhausts us isn’t life itself, but the unnecessary resistance we bring to it.

Perhaps that’s the real value of looking for the smooth handle. It isn’t that life becomes lighter. It’s that we stop adding unnecessary weight of our own.

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Cracker for a crowd

from Food & Drink magazine

serves four

As much as I love hosting friends for dinner, I think if I could only serve appetizers for the rest of my life, I’d be happy. A good aperitivo spread allows infinite possibilities to experiment and try new ways to serve longtime favourites.

I have served crackers and dip countless times; always delicious but a little bit finicky. What if the whole thing was reimagined and served as one beautiful giant dish? This recipe from Food & Drink magazine does just that. The crisped up flatbread becomes a vehicle for just about whatever your imagination conjures. Here it’s kept fresh and light with cucumber, radishes and plenty of herbs atop a curry-scented cream cheese spread.

For the cracker

1 large flatbread (such as lavash or a large flour tortilla) about 1/8 inch (3 mm) thick, or 2 large, thin Middle-Eastern style pitas

2 tablespoons olive oil

¼ teaspoon kosher salt

For the cream cheese spread

4 ounces (125 g) cream cheese, softened

1 clove garlic, finely grated

½ teaspoon curry powder

1 green onion, finely chopped

1 teaspoon lemon juice

Pinch salt

1 cup loosely packed assorted tender herbs, such as mint, basil, dill, cilantro, chives and tarragon, large leaves torn in half

1 Persian cucumber, thinly sliced

2 radishes, thinly sliced

Coarsely ground black pepper

Maldon or other flaky salt to finish

1. Heat oven to 400°F.

2. Cut the flatbread into a rectangle roughly 8 x 12 inches (20 x 30 cm) or cut two thin-style pitas into two rectangles, each half that size. Place on a baking sheet and brush with olive oil. Bake for 6 to 8 minutes, turning once, until golden and crisp. Set aside and allow to cool.

3. In a medium bowl mix together the cream cheese, garlic, curry powder, green onion, lemon juice and salt. Taste and adjust seasonings. If you’re not serving the cracker right away, cover and chill. Allow to come to room temperature before assembling.

4. When you’re ready to serve, spread the cream cheese topping on the cracker. Scatter the cucumber and radish on top, then the herbs. Finish with a few grinds of black pepper and sprinkle with a little Maldon salt. Serve whole and let your guests break off pieces to enjoy.

Sources

Aurelius, Marcus. (2002). Meditations (G. Hays, Trans.). Modern Library.

Epictetus. (2008). The Handbook (The Encheiridion) (N. P. White, Trans.). Hackett Publishing.

Jefferson, T. (1816, August 6). Letter to John Wayles Eppes. In The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series.

Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man's Search for Meaning. Beacon Press

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

Me: “It’s too bad you don’t like jam.”

Him: “If you make it, are you going to eat it?”

Me: (considering)

Him: “Well, make it for someone else then. Give it away.”

Me: (still thinking)

Him: “When are you going to make it?”

Me: “This weekend,” I say confidently.

And that’s when a perfect stranger caught my eye and said:

“I have faith in you.”

Perhaps she had witnessed my indecisiveness as I hovered over a large basket of strawberries that were just $20 (STRAWBERRY OVERLOAD! screamed the farmer’s sign), or overheard a fragment of what is surely a weekly exchange between me and Richard.

“I have a fruit situation at home too,” she said. It was like we had exchanged a secret handshake, our overflowing bags badges of honour to the bounty of summer.

And therein lies the dilemma of the seasonal eater, when the pure physics of balancing capacity, time, appetite, and perishability becomes an impossible equation. But then again, I was never good at science.

A full dance card

In the beginning there is rhubarb, followed closely by the radishes. Sometimes the asparagus surprises me by making an early appearance. Fiddleheads are fickle, morels even more so, making the clock watchers amongst us anxious by their absence. All of them invited to early summer’s debutante ball, shaking dirt and the memory of frosty nights off their bare shoulders.

Then the berries and peas come marching in, followed closely by cherries, and the sweetest baby carrots. By the time the stone fruit and the zucchini and the tomatoes and the corn show up, the most fashionably late of the group, I throw in the towel and buy everything.

Every week the struggle is the same... what to buy, what to leave behind, what to risk skipping that may not be there a week hence.

But if I’m being perfectly honest, the real struggle is to cook my way through the lot before it goes in the compost bin.

That’s where preserving can be a real friend in the kitchen.

Playing for keeps

It’s true that Richard doesn’t really like jam (although weirdly at a European continental breakfast he suddenly discovers its appeal). Nor are we big breakfast eaters, where well-buttered toast and marmalade or scones slathered with clotted cream and strawberry jam are welcome treats.

Yet still.

The appeal of canning, preserving, putting aside for future feeding…visions of my parents’ gleaming jars of passata, plum jam, pickles, peaches in syrup, filling our basement cupboards…the understanding that everything was saved and nothing tossed until its purpose was spent. All of that is hardwired and mapped in my mind, even though my intentions fall very short of the provisioning that was the hallmark of my thrifty childhood household.

I don’t expect to live off my pantry all winter as my parents did. But, slowly, I'm building a repertoire of my own: bread-and-butter pickles, a rhubarb shrub that's currently chilling in the refrigerator, pickled cherries for those who just can't abide olives, and now this strawberry balsamic jam.

Opening a jar in February and tasting June feels a bit like cheating the calendar, each a gift and small promise that I'll find a use for summer long after the markets have packed up their stalls for the long winter ahead.

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Strawberry balsamic jam

Eugenia Bone, Well Preserved

makes 4-5 250 ml jars

Canning is like having an investment or retirement fund in your pantry. You make small deposits over time, and there's a huge payoff in convenience, in flavor.

—Eugenia Bone

After a lifetime of learning the art of Italian cooking, preserving and foraging from her father, Edward Giobbi, a James Beard Award-winning chef and celebrated artist, Eugenia Bone wrote Well Preserved in 2009. Modernizing classic techniques and using current food safety knowledge. Well-Preserved is a practical manual dedicated to small-batch preservation with detailed explanations of both water-bath and pressure canning.

Traditional jam recipes can be surprisingly sugar-heavy, but this one uses a lighter hand. It's still unmistakably jam—sweet enough to spread on toast—but the strawberries remain the star, with the balsamic adding just enough depth to keep things interesting.

This delicious and sophisticated twist on strawberry jam is the perfect embodiment of why canning is worth it. I may just eat some myself instead of giving it all away.

About hulling strawberries

"Hulling" simply means removing the leafy green top and the small white core beneath it. I use a glass straw to poke it out from the bottom of the berry, but a plastic one (if you still have one hanging about) works just as well. A small paring knife or strawberry huller will do the job too.

Note: If you’ve not done water bath canning before, be sure to get familiar with the technique. This guide from Bernardin is a good one to follow.

Ingredients

8 cups washed, hulled and sliced strawberries (about 3 lbs), lightly mashed

5 cups sugar

½ teaspoon unsalted butter

5 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1. Put the strawberries into a large, deep, heavy pot and bring to a boil over medium high heat. Once the strawberries are boiling, add the sugar and stir until it is dissolved. The sugar tends to burn on the bottom, so keep it moving until it is thoroughly dissolved. Bring to a boil and then add the butter (the butter helps to keep foaming to a minimum).

2. Turn the heat down to medium and keep the jam boiling at a merry bubble for one hour, stirring regularly, until thickened to a loose, soft jam or until a thermometer reads 220 degrees F, indicating that the jam has jelled properly. Depending on how much liquid the strawberries expel, the set time can be longer; start checking the jam’s consistency and temperature regularly at the one hour mark.

3. Fill clean, hot jars with jam, leaving ¼ to ½-inch headspace. Wipe rims and apply lids and rings. Process in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes (for 4 oz. jelly jars or 8 oz. half pint jars) or 15 minutes (for 16 oz. pint jars). Turn off heat and let jars sit in canner for 3 to 5 minutes before removing. Allow jars to rest on a dishtowel undisturbed for 6 to 8 hours or overnight. Check seals and store in a cool dark place for up to a year. If any jars did not seal properly, place them in the fridge and use first.

Sources

Diane Leach, "Beyond Compost: An Interview with Eugenia Bone," PopMatters, March 5, 2015

Eugenia Bone. Well-Preserved: Recipes and Techniques for Putting Up Small Batches of Seasonal Foods. Clarkson Potter, 2009

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

It is a perfect morning. Liquid cardinal notes, the kind of cotton-candy clouds you can imagine floating on, an ever-so-gentle breeze.

But like the three red-tailed hawks that have taken to circling above my building, summer is a prey we haven’t quite caught—an elusive rabbit slipping underneath the hedge.

As the longest day of the year unfolds and welcomes summer in its wake, my gardening list seems impossibly long for the end of June. There is still so much to do, promises I am planting for a summer just started, a season waiting in the future.

Is it a reflection of my age, the passages of time around me—news of dear ones gone too soon, the racing clock, the grey roots of my hair that I still vainly cover—that beat a certain refrain in the air?

Life is short.

There are only twenty summers left.

The cats may outlive me.

…say the people around me.

An ever-present sense of finality even as I transplant my fledging lilac tree to a bigger pot so that it may grow and thrive for many more summers than I might be here for.

And so.

I go into the garden for a summer’s eve reset. Apparently I have no time to waste.

There is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.

—Alfred Austin, English poet, essayist, and gardener

In garden time, the summer solstice usually announces the beginning of the end of planting, and the move to enjoyment. For once, nature has lined up with the calendar, bestowing the most glorious of first summer weekends of recent note.

Yet it is a truth that every gardener, novice or expert, comes to know: as in life, perfection is an ever-receding goal. With this late start to summer proper, as I walk around my aerie terraces, I am steeled for both disappointment and unbridled joy. The garden, as always, offers both in equal measure.

The lavender’s come back, I see, a very cold spring keeping it hostage until now. The flower spikes are just beginning to unfurl, their tiny florets shyly waiting to open. Lovely green and variegated hostas came back too, the tiny ones that survived ready to find a more permanent home in a bigger pot.

The roses, sadly, are gone. I poke at the canes that showed early glimmers of green, but they have given up the ghost of their blood red blooms, now stubbornly brown and stiff and shrivelled up.

The pansies…well, the pansies were another story entirely. A miracle of defiance. My favourite summer annual, with their wide-open smiling faces, the first to arrive at the garden centre, waving hello wildly in early spring’s brisk bluster. The last to be pulled from amongst my Japanese Hakone grasses, where they add merriment with their constant to-ing and fro-ing.

Yet somehow last autumn I didn’t get around to covering the grasses or pulling out the pansies. They lay enshrouded, hidden under mounds of snow tombs, a fairytale slumber without certainty of a happy ending.

When the sodden and heavy rains of April finally washed away the last of the snow, the beds seemed defeated. Clumps of dead-looking grasses had given up any pretense of standing at attention. Anise hyssop, my most intrepid garden nomad, was beginning to pop up uninvited, trying to gain dominion over the lot. I had no thought of pansies other than to put them at the top of my garden shopping list.

And yet, in the way that nature always reminds us who holds sway, the pansies had other ideas. What I took for a snow-covered grave was merely a long winter’s sleep. As the grasses slowly roused themselves, there among them appeared familiar leaves, then buds, then blooms—larger, brighter, and more exuberant than the year before. Their purple-and-gold faces bobbed above the soil as though nothing remarkable had happened at all.

Once again, the garden had offered its gentle correction. The pansies I had already replaced in my mind were the very ones greeting me first, smiling up from the terrace with all the confidence of old friends who knew they would be back long before I did.

To garden is to let optimism get the better of judgment.

Eleanor Perényi, gardener and author

So, how did I do on my list?

I didn’t find Apricot Drift, but instead planted a lovely Yukon Gold shrub, full of pretty fragrant yellow roses. Another lavender joined the terrace family, and begonias were nicer than the leggy geraniums that dawdled on the garden centre shelves. I made up a grouping of perennials that I’ll divide later this autumn (she said optimistically), potted the hostas, bought more herbs.

The garden rarely delivers exactly what I set out for, and perhaps that is part of its charm. It asks for plans, rewards flexibility; invites intention, then leaves room for surprise. By season's end, I suspect I will have forgotten what was on the list and remember only the pleasure of what came home instead.

Rhubarb shrub

adapted from Lynn Crawford

Makes about 3 cups of shrub syrup

Last weekend, we joined friends to watch Canada play its first game of the World Cup. It was a great backyard setting, with plenty of delicious bites and drinks, including gin cocktails made with my favourite cocktail/mocktail mixer: rhubarb shrub.

The game ended in a draw against Bosnia and Herzegovina, but Canada scored its first-ever goal in a World Cup tournament. We happily raised our glasses to mark the occasion.

Do you know shrubs?

A fruit-based drinking vinegar with roots that stretch back centuries, the word shrub comes from the Arabic sharāb, meaning “to drink”. These types of sweetened fruit beverages have been enjoyed throughout the Middle East and Europe for generations. The vinegar-based shrub we know today became popular as a way to preserve seasonal fruit before refrigeration.

Today, shrubs are experiencing a revival thanks to the craft cocktail and mocktail movement. This rhubarb version balances the fruit’s natural tartness with ginger, bright lemon, and the essential vinegar, creating a syrup that’s both refreshing and complex. Mixed with sparkling water, tonic, or gin, it delivers a distinctive sweet-and-sour flavour that adds depth to any drink and can be enjoyed year-round.

Note: Stored in a clean, sealed bottle in the refrigerator, this recipe should keep for at least two to three months. The combination of sugar and vinegar acts as a natural preservative, creating an environment that inhibits spoilage. Some homemade shrubs can last up to six months under ideal conditions, though the flavour is usually brightest in the first few months. If you notice any mould, off odours, unusual cloudiness, or signs of fermentation, it's best to discard it.

Ingredients

4 cups rhubarb, chopped into ½-inch pieces

2 strips lemon zest

2-inch (5 cm) piece fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced

1¾ cups granulated sugar

2 cups white vinegar

1. Combine rhubarb, lemon zest, ginger, sugar, and vinegar in a heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer very gently for 30–40 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the fruit is soft.

2. Set a fine-mesh sieve over a large bowl. Pour the rhubarb through the sieve and leave to drain, without pressing on the fruit. To extract the most syrup, leave to drain for at least 45 minutes.

3. Carefully pour the syrup into a clean bottle, cover, and refrigerate for up to six months (see Note).

Sources

Eleanor Perényi, Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden (New York: Random House, 1981).

National Library of Medicine. “Sip on a Shrub.” Circulating Now. December 21, 2015.

Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity. “Shrub.” Ark of Taste.

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

I have a growing dread that I won’t get all my reading done.

Not a school assignment, a management report, the emails that breed like rabbits multiplying and thriving on the bare necessities of my inbox to deposit their offspring.

No, the reading that weighs on me is the best seller, the buzzy debut novel, my bookclub’s latest selection. Not to mention the ever-growing piles around the house that, even after being culled, stubbornly refuse to decrease in numbers.

The never-ending story

It doesn’t help that my work life is centred around writing.

Said emails, yes. But also quarterly financial reports, marketing strategies, employee communications, the delicate art of navigating and ideally shutting down a potential crisis. That kind of writing uses a different muscle, one where words are valued in ounces and grams, a single passage changing meaning and intent so subtly yet decisively that the work of an hour suddenly seems for naught.

What I seek in my curled up reading nook is the antithesis of all that.

Give me tales of Jane fleeing across the moors, a modern retelling of Cain and Abel, the story of a horse or a boy and his horse. Show me the left hand of darkness, introduce me to a Jinni and a Golem, tell me what Katie did and how Julia came to be.*

It’s making me think I might just follow my 92-year-old friend Stan’s approach and spend happy hours rereading all of my favourites.

The way we were

When we first read a book, we bring ourselves to the experience, and it’s a moment in time, crystallized under glass. Our perspective and ideas reflect our singular self captured in the relationship we form with the written word. It reflects not only who we are, but how we read—what we ask of books, and what we hope they might give in return.

Does a book need to change your life? Reaffirm your beliefs, have characters you can understand and empathize with, fundamentally shift something inside you? Or are you satisfied to have a more detached relationship: an observer of the story arc, the writing skill, passages of dialogue that resonate, the characterization as much as the characters themselves?

Neither one is better, of course. Just different. One, reading for immersion and emotional connection; the other, reading with a more detached appreciation of craft. Both providing the richness of experience that makes the endeavor worthwhile. But it is in the reread that a peculiar magic happens.

Turning over a new leaf

If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.

― Francois Mauriac, French novelist and Nobel Prize laureate

Much like bumping into an old friend, revisiting a book gives us a sense of grounding. The books we return to voluntarily are the stories that comfort us, challenge us, accompany us, or help us make sense of ourselves. They survive changing tastes, passing trends, and the pressure of novelty. In a sense, they become part of our inner furniture. We can walk in the dark without stubbing our toes.

The first time we travel through a book, we are chasing the plot—impatiently hunting for what happens next. But when we return, that urgency is cleared away. Our eyes are finally free to wander the architecture of the story, noticing the subtle joints and fine grain of the writer’s craft that we were simply moving too fast to see the first time. The furniture has an added patina.

It also gives us the opportunity to see if what stirred or moved us still ring true, but even more exciting, to see what new diamonds are discovered down the mine shaft of our memories. The material hasn't changed; it's we, the readers, that have shifted. We're seeing things through a different prism, or the view from our past may have shifted altogether.

Mauriac asks, Tell me what you reread, and I'll tell you who you are.

Perhaps the question becomes: Tell me what you discover when you reread, and I'll tell you who you've become.

Tell me: do you reread books and what are your favourites? Leave a comment and join the conversation!

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* A key to my reading nook

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Geraldine Brooks, Horse

C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Helene Wecker, The Golem and the Jinni

Lenora Mattingly Weber, Don’t Call Me Katie Rose

Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme, My Life in France

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Pasta with agretti, asparagus, peas and lemon

adapted from Laurel Evans

serves 4

If you’ve been hanging out with me for a while, you know that seasonal cooking is my jam. And what that means is for the next few weeks I will be on asparagus overload, adding peas, strawberries, rhubarb and spring radishes to the mix. It’s my happy place.

So when I discover something new it makes my heart sing.

I first tasted agretti this past May at a tiny trattoria in Rome, where it arrived at the table simply prepared: steamed and dressed with excellent olive oil, lemon zest and a touch of chili pepper. Sometimes called monk’s beard, agretti looks a bit like a cross between chives and seaweed—long, wiry green strands with a delicate crunch and a pleasantly saline flavour that tastes faintly of the sea. Its season is fleeting, appearing for only a few weeks each spring, which makes spotting it at the market feel like a small gift. Here, it's paired with sweet peas, tender asparagus, and lemon in a simple pasta that celebrates some of spring’s most ephemeral treasures.

If you can’t find agretti, don’t worry—the dish is still lovely made with a little extra asparagus.

Ingredients

1½ lb (680 g) asparagus

2 bunches agretti (about 14 oz/400 g), cleaned

1⅓ cups (200 g) frozen peas

1 lb (454 g) spaghetti or fettucine

1–2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

1–2 tsp finely grated lemon zest, plus more for serving

Extra-virgin olive oil

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

If you can’t find agretti, substitute an additional ½ lb (225 g) asparagus.

1. Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil.

2. Trim the woody ends from the asparagus. Cut off the tips and set aside. Slice the remaining stalks into small rounds.

3. Add the asparagus rounds to the boiling water and cook for 5 minutes. Add the asparagus tips and peas and cook for 2 minutes more. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the vegetables to a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. Drain well.

4. Set aside the asparagus tips and a small handful of peas for garnish. Transfer the remaining asparagus and peas to a blender. Add 1 teaspoon lemon juice, 1 teaspoon lemon zest, 1 tablespoon olive oil, and a pinch each of salt and pepper. Blend until smooth.

5. Trim the roots from the agretti and wash thoroughly to remove any grit. Return the asparagus cooking water to a boil and cook the agretti for about 4 minutes, until tender. Drain well and pat dry. Toss with a drizzle of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice, and salt and pepper.

6. Cook the spaghetti according to the package directions until al dente. Reserve about ½ cup of the pasta cooking water before draining.

7. Return the pasta to the pot and add the agretti and a drizzle of olive oil. Add the asparagus-pea purée and toss until evenly coated, adding a splash of the reserved pasta water as needed to create a silky sauce.

8. Divide among bowls and top with the reserved asparagus tips, peas, and a little extra lemon zest. Finish with a drizzle of olive oil and serve immediately.

Sources

Renaissance Learning, The Power of Close, Repeated Reading: Why Our Brains Crave a Reread (Wisconsin Rapids, WI: Renaissance Learning, 2014).

Cristel Antonia Russell and Sidney J. Levy, “The Temporal and Focal Dynamics of Volitional Reconsumption,” Journal of Consumer Research 39, no. 2 (2012): 341–359.

Saniya Ahmad Khan, “The Psychology Behind Why We Re-Read Certain Books,” YourStory, May 25, 2026, https://yourstory.com/2026/05/psychology-behind-why-we-reread-books

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

Listen to presences inside poems.
Let them take you where they will.
Follow those private hints,
and never leave the premises.

—The Tent, Rumi

Do you know if you have a poet’s heart? Are you a lover of words, iambic pentameter, rhyming couplets, a clever haiku, reading about roads not taken, walks in the woods, a red wheelbarrow?

Or have I lost your interest in what seems like a narrow topic, perhaps of not much interest?

Stay with me for a few minutes more.

It is a serious thing just to
be alive on this fresh morning
in the broken world.

—Invitation, Mary Oliver

With the tardy start of the fine June weather, I finally feel the lengthening of the days. Never mind that the trend will reverse itself in a short matter of weeks. There are the early birds coaxing me awake, the city stirring at my feet, a bus trundling and groaning as it stops for a sleepy-eyed passenger, the still-chill air snapping at my toes while the rosy sun warms my back.

In this cacophony of urban living, my summer routine emerges. Eyes opening with alacrity, the alarm clock unnecessary. Coffee on, phone set aside for my notebook, thoughts that are raw, fragmentary, unpolished and real.

I’m ready to take up my pen once again.

Poetry in motion

I started the practice of writing morning poetry last summer.

Tucked amongst half-recalled dreams, post ideas, and more traditional journal entries are verses chronicling my foray into scuba diving, eating a ripe tomato or breaking open the skin of a peach, the complicated symphony of cars and birdsong, rudimentary haikus intermingled with stream of consciousness imagery. It’s as if my pen is an independent agent, dictating a web of language not quite my own.

It is here and now that my morning catechism often turns to thoughts of Mary Oliver, the high priestess of the minute beauty of life. In language so simple and piercing that it takes my breath away, Oliver might be said to have lived by this singular maxim:

Pay attention
Be astonished
Tell about it

The cardinal singing liquid notes behind me agrees.

Rhyme and reason

The almost unconscious act of writing poetry and the deep connection I have to that daily practice got me thinking about whether there is a link between meditation and the written word. It turns out, there is a profound one. It’s a state of being that poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer captured as a complete surrender to the moment in this beautiful poem:

As Dr. Ron Passfield, an emeritus professor and organizational consultant, writes on his website Grow Mindfulness, writing verse isn’t about chasing literary perfection; rather, it’s a direct “practice of presence.”

Drawing on the work of Trommer, Passfield explores how arriving daily at the page with just two questions—“What is here?” and “What is true right now?”—acts as an anchor, grounding us in the reality of our everyday lives.

By casting aside the inner critic and simply naming the things outside our bodies, we spark a revelation within it. Passfield notes that this ritual does more than just shift our perspective; it actively builds a bridge between our inner and outer worlds, cultivating a deep emotional resilience.

It’s a powerful reminder that poetry is profound…a way to withstand the tough stuff and stay open to the extraordinary richness of being alive.

Want to explore more about poetry and mindfulness? You may find these two books of interest:

Poetry of Presence II: More Mindfulness Poems

Exploring Poetry of Presence II: A Companion Guide for Readers, Writers, and Groups

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Little Gem lettuce and strawberry salad with brown butter breadcrumbs

Recipe courtesy of Leslie Bulut, A Bite of Delight

Serves 2 as a main, 4 as a side

With every passing week, I am more and more inspired by the fantastic community of writers, food and otherwise, that have become my Substack tribe. I am saving posts for future reference, bookmarking recipes to try, and expanding my own kitchen adventures.

It’s time to start spreading the wealth! This week’s fantastic seasonal recipe comes courtesy of Leslie Bulut, who writes A Bite of Delight. And Leslie really is a delight. Leslie describes herself as someone who believes …”amazing global cuisine shouldn't require a culinary degree or an overflowing pantry of single-use items. As someone who's been cooking my way around the world—literally and figuratively—for over 10 years, I love to share internationally-inspired, nutritious meals that can be made at home.”

When I saw the highly anticipated first strawberries at the farmers’ market last week, I knew exactly which one of Leslie’s recipes I’d try. This fresh salad captures summer strawberries at their peak and can be a glorious light dinner or a wonderful side dish.

Ingredients

For the dressing

⅔ cup whole milk Greek yogurt (170 g)

1 tablespoon water or milk (15 g)

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice (10 g)

1 medium garlic clove, grated or finely minced

scant ½ teaspoon fine sea salt

2 tablespoons olive oil (25 g)

3 tablespoons chopped dill, tender parts only

Optional: 2 tablespoons finely sliced green onions or chives

For the salad

1 cup fresh breadcrumbs (65 g)

2 tablespoons butter (30 g)

2 heads little gem lettuce (~300 g), rinsed and dried

8 medium strawberries (160 g), hulled and thinly sliced

1 mini (Persian) cucumber, thinly sliced

Make ahead: The dressing can be made up to 1 day in advance and refrigerated. Stir before using.

1. Make the dressing: In a medium bowl, whisk together the yogurt, water or milk, lemon juice, garlic, and salt. Whisk in the olive oil, then stir in the dill and green onion or chives, if using. Set aside while you prepare the salad.

2. Melt the butter in a medium frying pan over medium heat. When it begins to foam and lightly brown, add the breadcrumbs and reduce the heat to low. Cook, stirring often, for 5 to 7 minutes, until golden brown and crisp. Transfer to a bowl to cool.

3. Place the lettuce and cucumber in a large bowl. Tear any large lettuce leaves into bite-size pieces. Add 1⁄3 cup of the dressing and toss to coat. Taste and add more dressing or a little salt, if needed.

4. Arrange the dressed salad on a serving plate or divide among individual plates. Top with the strawberries and toasted breadcrumbs. Serve right away.

Sources

Rumi. The Essential Rumi. Translated by Coleman Barks. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. “Still Life at Dusk.” Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems. Edited by Phyllis Cole-Dai & Ruby R. Wilson. Grayson Books, 2017.

Oliver, Mary. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver. New York: Penguin Press, 2017.

Passfield, Ron. “Poetry as Mindfulness.” Grow Mindfulness (blog), May 15, 2024. https://growmindfulness.com/poetry-as-mindfulness/.

There is something wonderfully improbable about rhubarb. After months of cold and dormancy, up it comes—vivid, vigorous, and seemingly indifferent to the season that preceded it.

Tart, crisp, long and colourful, rhubarb spreads like a weed, grows in the most inhospitable conditions, puts up with neglect, allows us to force it into existence and generally tolerates our bad behaviour. It is a plant that resists easy categorization: a vegetable that appears most often at dessert, a medicinal herb turned comfort food, a harbinger of spring that is harvested by candlelight in the depths of winter.

Cut into a fresh stalk and you are rewarded with an indefinable scent: green and fresh, sharp yet subtle, a whiff of freshly cut grass and a promise of good things. Oh what a thing of beauty.

A seasonal centrepiece

Rooted in medicine, harvested by candlelight

Rhubarb fans are legion, nowhere more so than in Britain and North America, where this humble plant has found its way onto the dessert course for hundreds of years. But rhubarb didn’t start its journey as a compote, cake, cordial or jam.

The Chinese first discovered rhubarb’s astringency to be effective as a laxative. Greek and Roman writers recorded the medicinal use of rhubarb and transmitted the name through the Latin term rhabarbarum, from which the modern word ‘rhubarb’ ultimately derives: rheum, the plant genus of which rhubarb is a cultivar, and barbarum, the Latin for barbarian.

It wasn’t until the 1800s that rhubarb’s culinary prowess came to the fore. According to Dennis Duncan of High Altitude Rhubarb, widespread consumption of rhubarb began in Britain in the early 19th century, growing in popularity as an ingredient in desserts and wine making. With a short growing season, the discovery that rhubarb could be “forced” (grown out of season in the winter), caused its popularity to reach fever pitch, peaking just before World War II.

And this is where the most romantic part of rhubarb’s history comes into play.

The rhubarb triangle

In long dark barns across a small patch of West Yorkshire, a great agricultural tradition continues. This is the “rhubarb triangle,” a nine-square-mile area between Wakefield, Morley and Rothwell. Here, from January to March, fuchsia-pink forced rhubarb, prized for its subtle flavour, is picked by hand, by candlelight, so that the delicate stems are not turned green and hard by photosynthesis.

from Mysteries of the Rhubarb Triangle, The Guardian

Forcing is not the exclusive domain of rhubarb. Greenhouses, cold frames, and hotbeds have long been used to satisfy our thirst for delicious things that are not “in season”. An advocate for buying asparagus in May and tomatoes in August, I’m not usually in a hurry to get something before Mother Nature delivers it. Yet the decidedly romantic Rhubarb Triangle in England makes the practice more palatable.

Forced rhubarb from the Triangle once made up nearly 90% of winter rhubarb. While the quantities are far lower today, Yorkshire’s fuchsia-pink, delicately flavoured stalks are still prized for making ruby-coloured treats. You can experience this delicacy at Wakefield’s annual Rhubarb Festival.

Across the Atlantic, rhubarb has inspired its own celebrations. In Sumner, Washington — the self-proclaimed Rhubarb Pie Capital of the World — summer arrives with Rhubarb Days, a festival devoted to ruby-red stalks in all their forms. There is something comforting in knowing that a plant is still capable of drawing crowds together in celebration. Few crops carry such a curious mixture of folklore, history, and affection.

Moments of pleasure

The Rhubarb Triangle, family desserts, spring itself—these are all layers of remembrance. Rhubarb is exactly that kind of trigger food: a smell, a taste, a colour that carries entire seasons and histories with it.

Perhaps that is why rhubarb inspires such devotion. Every spring, we greet it as though it were an old friend returned. We cut into those vivid stalks and find the same scent waiting for us: green and fresh, sharp yet subtle, a promise of good things.

Its presence marks not abundance but anticipation—the brightest note in spring’s unfolding song.

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Rhubarb upside-down cake

adapted from Melissa Clark, The New York Times

serves 8-10

While strawberries and rhubarb have long had a love affair with one another, I prefer to give this most ephemeral of vegetables a starring role all of its own. Rhubarb comes in rainbow of colours, from the palest tender green to deep vibrant red. For this cake, try to seek out the deeper-hued stalks. They make for the prettiest topping.

Ever since this recipe appeared in the New York Times in 2011, I’ve made it at least a dozen times. The minute those long scarlet stalks of crisp-tart rhubarb appear at the market, I reach for this tried and true favourite. But what if it could be made better, easier and even more delicious?

With some modifications I now have the ultimate version of this spring classic. This buttery upside-down cake showcases rhubarb at its best: tart, jammy, and nestled beneath a tender lemon-scented crumb.

Note: Use a 9-inch cake pan with a minimum of 3-inch sides, as the batter rises generously during baking and the pan will be quite full. Once inverted, the cake settles considerably, but the extra depth is important while it bakes. Check the cake periodically toward the end of baking; if the top is browning before the centre is fully baked, loosely cover it with a piece of tin foil and continue baking until done.

Ingredients

2 sticks plus ½ stick (284 g total) unsalted butter, at room temperature

6 cups (680 g / about 1½ lb) trimmed rhubarb, cut into ½-inch pieces

2 tsp cornstarch

¼ cup plus ½ cup (150 g total) granulated sugar

¾ cup plus ½ cup (280 g total) light or dark brown sugar

2 cups (227 g) cake flour

1½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp fine sea salt

Zest of 1 lemon, grated

1 tsp vanilla extract

4 large eggs

⅓ cup full-fat sour cream

2 tsp lemon juice

1. Heat the oven to 325°F (165°C). Generously butter a 9-inch cake pan with a minimum of 3-inch sides (or a 10-inch cake pan with 2-inch sides) and line the bottom with parchment paper.

2. Put the rhubarb in a medium bowl. Whisk together the cornstarch and ¼ cup of the granulated sugar, sprinkle over the rhubarb, and toss to combine. Set aside.

3. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

4. In a small bowl, rub the lemon zest into the remaining ½ cup granulated sugar with your fingers until fragrant and evenly combined.

5. Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream 2 sticks (227 g) butter for 2 minutes. Add the lemon sugar and ¾ cup brown sugar and beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes, scraping down the bowl as needed. Beat in the vanilla, then add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the sour cream and then the lemon juice. The mixture may look slightly separated, but it will come together once the flour is added.

6. With the mixer on low, gradually add the flour mixture and mix just until combined, scraping down the bowl as needed.

7. In a small skillet over medium heat, melt the remaining ½ stick (57 g) butter and the remaining ½ cup brown sugar. Whisk together until smooth and bubbling, about 2-3 minutes. Pour into the prepared cake pan, then spoon the rhubarb and any juices evenly over top.

8. Spoon the batter over the rhubarb, covering it completely, and smooth the top. The pan will be quite full, but the cake will bake up beautifully.

9. Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes, or until the top is firm and springs back lightly when touched and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. If the top is browning before the cake is fully baked, loosely cover it with foil and continue baking, checking every 10 minutes.

10. Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes. Run a knife around the edge, place a serving plate over the pan, and invert the cake while still warm. If any rhubarb sticks to the pan, simply scrape it onto the top of the cake. Let cool for about 1 hour before serving.

Sources

Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Duncan, Dennis. “Mysteries of the Rhubarb Triangle.” The Guardian.

Lee, M. R. “Rhubarb (Rheum Species): The Role of Edinburgh in Its Cultivation and Development.” Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh 47, no. 1 (2017): 85–90.

Unschuld, Paul U. Medicine in China: A History of Pharmaceutics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

Xiang, H., Y. Zhang, Q. Xu, et al. “What We Already Know About Rhubarb: A Comprehensive Review.” Chinese Medicine 15, no. 88 (2020).

Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) Specification. UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

It seems as unlikely a place as any to forage for wild mushrooms. But I see the picture in my mind’s eye, details diminished with time, like a faded photo that’s curled around the edges. Maybe I’m 4 or 5. My sister and I are with my mother and one of her friends. We’re in an overgrown field of rough green terrain. Close by, and surreal to my adult memory, there are likely signs of Windsor’s industry – electronic grids, metal towers. I imagine that the treasures discovered, gently unearthed, brushed of dirt, and carefully placed in a plastic bucket, must have seemed all the more precious to my mother, found as they were in this mechanised landscape. A world away from the Italy where she was born.

Magic Mushrooms

What kind of mushrooms were they? How did they know where they were? Or for that matter, whether they were edible? What did she make with them? Unanswered questions, untold stories. And memories that remained submerged in my mind until a trip to Italy in 1993, and my second encounter with the art and magic of foraging.

My cousin Giacomo was an opera lover, mountain climber, a gardener and the fastest driver I’ve been in a car with. He was also a forager of the highest order, and his specialty was porcini mushrooms.

Everyone gets excited by fresh truffles. And undoubtedly those rare and expensive creatures deserve a special place in the kitchen. But I will never forget the meal that Giacomo made us with his cache of fresh porcini mushrooms. Huge, meaty and gorgeous, quartered and sautéed simply with garlic, parsley, olive oil and splash of white wine, this was dinner, with nothing more than crusty bread needed to make a meal.

The Landscape of Ideas

Fast forward to 2017, when I went to Sicily to participate in a 10 week farm to table program called Cook the Farm. An accumulation of ideas, questions, knowledge, and above all a program focused on fundamental curiosity about the intersection of food, tradition, modernity, sustainability and globalization.

Foraging in Sicily

Which brought me back to foraging, and to Claudio Bincoletto, who came to spend two days with us during the program. Claudio grew up on a 60-acre farm just north of Venice, and remembers foraging with his mother from a very young age. An organic farmer, a chef, a horticulturist and sustainable landscape expert, Claudio sees foraging as a way to connect with something elemental in us all.

In a setting as different as it could be from my childhood roots, the day we spent in the fields of Sicily revealed an abundance of riches. Wild fennel, mallow, borage, wild leeks, mustard greens…all picked with restraint, leaving the bounty behind to continue to propagate and flourish. The best part, of course was spending the next day in the kitchen with Claudio, cleaning and cooking our treasures into delicious dishes: wild greens soup, salad, and frittatas.

Back home, there are plenty of wild things to find. One of my favourite market vendors, Forbes Wild Foods, employs a network of foragers across the country to find, harvest and preserve the goodness growing right in front of our eyes. Like all responsible foragers, Forbes doesn’t plunder the land, which is why their products are so precious.

In the abundant months ahead, what appears on our plates goes beyond what’s at the grocery store. The farmers who care and till the land, especially our smaller producers, often delight in experimenting and coaxing fine things to eat out of the land that are rare finds.

With care and imagination, we can bring the landscape of ideas to our plates and bellies, and in doing so, really sink our feet into the soil and connect to a wellspring of sustenance that’s increasingly rare to find.

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Spring onion loaf

adapted from Olive magazine

When I go to the farmers’ market, I always take a look at what’s on display at the Forbes stand. Beyond the cedar jelly, preserved fiddleheads, wild Saskatoon berry compote and other delicious goods, there’s often something freshly foraged. Like the best harbingers of spring, seeing something green at Forbes means that winter is loosening its claw hold, one stubborn finger at a time. If I’m lucky, Forbes will have wild onions or ramps, also known as wild leeks. This precious greens, harvested with care, can be used in place of standard spring onions with delicious results.

This loaf recipe uses readily available spring onions (scallions), but if you have a source for ramps, try the variation in the headnote below.

Ramps (Wild Leeks) Variation:
Instead of the spring onions, use 8–10 medium ramps (wild leeks). Use all of the leaves, but only the bulbs from about 5–6 ramps, as the bulbs are much stronger in flavour. Slice the bulbs thinly and roughly chop the leaves. Cook the bulbs for 3–4 minutes before adding the leaves for the final 30–60 seconds.

Ingredients

7 ounces (200 gr) spring onions (green onions/scallions), bottoms trimmed and finely sliced (about 12–16 spring onions, depending on size). Use both green and white parts

10 ounces (300 gr/2½ sticks) butter, plus more for the loaf pan

2 cups (480 ml) buttermilk

9 ounces (260 gr) self-rising flour

8½ ounces (240 gr) polenta

2 teaspoons baking powder

4 teaspoons granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1. Heat the oven to 375°F / 190°C.

2. Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the spring onions and cook for about 2 minutes until softened but not browned.

3. Add the remaining butter and the buttermilk to the pan and heat gently until the butter melts completely. The mixture may look slightly separated. Set aside to cool.

4. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, polenta, baking powder, sugar, salt, and black pepper.

5. Whisk the eggs lightly into the warm buttermilk mixture.

6. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Do not overmix.

7. Butter a 9×5-inch loaf pan and line it with parchment paper. Pour the batter into the prepared tin and smooth the top.

8. Bake for 45–65 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean, or the internal temperature reaches 205–210°F. If the top begins browning too quickly, cover loosely with foil for the remaining baking time.

9. Cool in the pan until just warm before removing and slicing.

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

Mother Nature is a clever matchmaker.

Yet in the antiseptic world of the modern grocery store, we’ve long ignored her inherent wisdom. Why else would we be able to buy wooden tomatoes and anemic corn in December, or strawberries and asparagus in October? If we followed the rhythms of the seasons, the produce aisle would be decidedly less varied in the long months of winter.

We’d understand that our cold storage friends - carrots, potatoes, turnips, beets, cabbage, apples - were designed to play well together. Whether in a savoury stew, a roasted veggie platter, or a deep dish apple pie, the winter harvest is meant to satisfy our somnambulant desires for richness, warmth and depth.

I can accept all of that, really I can. Still, the changing of the guard sure has taken its time in coming around this year.

A change of scenery

It’s been the dreariest of springs. Cold, wet, the sun as aloof as the prettiest girl at the dance. With every false start of a warm sunny day, the clouds have quickly followed, nascent sprouts shivering and nary a bee in sight.

You might say that it was serendipity that brought us to Italy in one of the coldest Aprils I can remember. We had originally planned to travel to Jordan and Egypt, but when the war with Iran made those plans seem unwise, Italy stepped in almost effortlessly.

Maybe it was the comfort of returning to a place we know so well, or the promise that even after so many visits Italy always surprises. But really, in my heart, I know it was something deeper — a longing to return to the homeland of my parents after being away for nearly ten years…to steal away, to unplug, wander slowly, and let beauty overcome me.

And as it always does, Italy did not disappoint. With a world of new discoveries in Puglia, it was the spring markets brimming with fresh bright things to eat that brought me the most joy.

But when we arrived back in Toronto last Wednesday, we were greeted with the same sombre grey skies we had left behind, the thermostat an inhospitable 6C. Spring, it seemed, was still under its Sleeping Beauty spell.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

—Lao Tzu, 6th century Chinese philosopher

Yet there’s a pleasure in the slowness too…the understanding that we’re not calling the shots here. It’s not nature’s petulance we’re experiencing but her selectivity, with a healthy dose of patience on the side. It matters not that my British friends have been greedily eating rhubarb for weeks. In the here and now it’s our turn to feast.

As we shake off our slumber and run gladly into spring’s open arms, Mother Nature wakes us up ever so subtly, softly, gently. Not for spring the intense flavours of summer’s sultry heat. The season’s best mirrors the fresh tender green of our awakening appetites. Sugar snap peas, ramps, artichokes, fiddleheads. The tender pink of rhubarb and the slightly spicy pale red of radishes.

And of course asparagus. Asparagus, with its stalwart spears always at attention, the king of my spring heart.

So let the revelry begin. Let me keep my fluffy blanket ready for chilly mornings, my extra socks handy, my hot tea at hand and the thermostat humming. The intemperate weather is not in my control but as spring’s offerings find their way to my table, I can feel their tender goodness coursing through my veins and I feel the gladness that only this delicate season can bring.

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Roasted asparagus and morel mushrooms with shallot-tarragon butter

serves 2-4 as a side dish

Asparagus may well be my favourite of spring’s green things. There is nothing like the squiggle of joy I feel when the first tender stalks appear at my local farmers’ market. For a few frantic weeks, it’s everything asparagus.

I’m always on the lookout for new ways to prepare asparagus. Before the season is over, I’ll be trying this salad from , with its combination of asparagus, redcurrants, lemon and mint with plum & olive tapenade, and this gorgeous 20 minute penne alle bice with asparagus, walnuts and robiola from .

But no matter how I cook asparagus—in a bright green soup, baked into a quiche, or served simply with gribiche—the pairing I return to most is with morel mushrooms, another fleeting treasure of the season. Earthy yet delicate as feathers, morels are the perfect dance partner with asparagus.

A note on cleaning morels:

Those gorgeous honeycombs that give morels their unique and beautiful appearance are also perfect tiny repositories for dirt and grit. This simple three-step process takes but a few minutes. Be gentle and only clean the morels just before you will cook them.

1. Gently shake the loose dirt and debris from the mushrooms. Place your mushrooms in a paper bag and ever so gently shake. Remove the mushrooms from the bag, leaving the dirt and grit behind.

2. Give them a bath. Submerge the mushrooms in a large bowl of cool water. Gently swish them around to remove more dirt. Using a slotted spoon, lift the mushrooms out of the water, allowing as much water to drain before placing them on a clean tea or paper towel.

3. Dry the mushrooms. Gently pat the morels dry, shaking them to remove more water from the honeycombs.

Ingredients

1½ pounds (680 gr) asparagus spears, tough ends removed

¼ pound (113 gr) fresh morel mushrooms, cleaned and dried (see headnote)

4 tablespoons (56 gr, ½ stick) unsalted butter

2 shallots, minced

2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon

1 teaspoon kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, more to taste

1. Heat oven to 450°F.

2. Clean the morels (see headnote). Cut large morels crosswise into rings 1/4 inch wide, leaving smaller ones whole.

3. Place the asparagus and morels in a 9x13 rectangular casserole dish or rimmed baking sheet large enough to hold them in a single layer. Set aside.

4. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Add the shallots and sauté for 1-2 minutes. Stir in the chopped tarragon, salt and pepper.

5. Drizzle the shallot butter evenly over the asparagus and morels and using your hands, carefully toss the asparagus and morels until evenly coated, then spread them into a single layer again.

6. Roast until the asparagus is starting to brown but is still crisp and the morels have browned, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a serving dish, and drizzle any pan juices on top. Serve immediately.

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

Among twisted olive trees and the whiteness of the masserie, Puglia appears both ancient and young at the same time.

—Guido Piovene, Viaggio in Italia

By the time RAI, Italy’s national radio broadcaster, commissioned him to travel across the country in 1953, Guido Piovene was already an established novelist, foreign correspondent, and cultural critic. He was chosen not because of his travel writing credentials, but rather as an astute and thoughtful observer. Piovene had the sensibility to capture through a discerning lens the atmosphere, contradictions, and regional identities of a nation rapidly transforming in the aftermath of war.

Over more than three years of travel, Piovene documented an Italy suspended between tradition and modernization as it emerged from wartime devastation and began a fragile economic boom. Originally conceived as a series of radio reports, the project evolved into a book, Viaggio in Italia, now considered one of the defining works of modern Italian travel literature.1

But Piovene was not just cataloguing monuments or history. He was trying to answer a broader question: What kind of country was Italy becoming after the war? And what kind of legacy would be left after decades of Fascism, in a country still in so many ways not a single nation?

That perspective makes Viaggio in Italia much more than a travelogue. It became a cultural portrait of Italy at a transitional historical moment.

As I’ve travelled along this magical stretch of Italy from calf to heel, Poivene’s characterizations of Puglia are as true and timeless as they were when he wrote them more than 70 years ago.

May I offer some of his beautiful words and images we’ve captured during our time here to invite you to discover it for yourself? (All quotes from Guidi Piovene’s Viaggio in Italia).

A white region, dissolved in light

The olive tree here is not decoration but destiny.

There is in the towns of Puglia an ancient, almost eastern calm.

Time here seems slower and more remote.

The wind shapes everything: trees, walls, even character.

The sea enters daily life like a continuous light.

I hope you have enjoyed this taste of Puglia.

Ciao for now, ragazzi. I’m off to soak up more of Puglia before I go.

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To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

My love affair with Italy started at birth.

With a father born in Veneto, and a mother from Istria, with its mixed Italian heritage, Italy always felt like a home I didn’t really know but would recognise immediately the minute I got there.

Over many years and many trips back to this magical place, that sense of belonging, of being part of something I didn’t know before, has never failed to surprise me with a catch in my throat and a deep tug in my heart.

And although it’s taken me nearly a lifetime to make my way down to the heel of the boot, to Apulia, that same sense of belonging is here, waiting.

Tutto fa brodo

—Italian idiom; every little bit counts

If you’re not Italian, you might argue that the food is more or less the same, the imposing cathedrals in tiny towns equally mystifying, the fast drivers who are always in a rush to get somewhere so they can go senza fretta.1

To see all of Italy as one is to lose sight of the nuances, the little things, that give it the richness of a thousand regions.

So let me share these subtle cues, these small but significant differences that make Apuglia a region apart. And let me remind you that I still have many days to spend here to find those beautiful gifts that I know will be uniquely Pugliese. With thanks to Richard, who took many of these beautiful photos.

Colour…

…in ceramics, on doorways, mosaic domes.

Bread…

…in all its guises. As friselle, tarelli, a whole grain grissini, an imaginative sauce for la cucina povera2, a beautiful addition to soup or as a substitute for meat in polpette.3

Living things…

…in every corner, nook and alley.

Unique architecture…

And of course:

Beautiful things to eat…

…from chicoria, nespole, puntarelle, artichokes, agretti and salt cod.

I’ll be back next week with more of my impressions of this wonderful corner of La bella Italia. Until then, take in all the beauty that surrounds you.

A presto.

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To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

This week I’m sharing my latest piece from the Abundance Writing Group Gathering, led by the delightful . If you’re a recent subscriber, I’ve also included a couple of links below to previous issues of the Dispatch, so you can get a flavour of what I usually cook up every week.

Each month, Abundance Group Gathering attendees are given a prompt with the singular instruction to take no more than an hour to write and see what results. When we meet, we discuss where the prompt led us, what the process was like and a few brave souls share their writing with the group.

This month’s prompt: Too much

The piece below was more or less what I wrote in an hour, with some tiny edits. When you look at what I scribble down, you can understand why it’s sometimes difficult to decipher my original meaning!

Too much

In my life of food, it’s always been too much or not enough.

The “not enough” part is, of course, a fallacy. As anyone with an Italian mama knows, abundance at the table, even in the most modest of homes, is always assured, the result of time, ingenuity, and the lurking fear that not everyone will get their fill.

Perhaps it is the immigrant’s story—the understanding that coming to an unfamiliar place is no guarantee that it will, in fact, be the land of plenty.

My mother took this brave new world in stride. The modern conveniences of row upon row of packaged food…the peanut butter and jelly swirled together in a single jar that I longed for her to buy…a bright orange concoction named Cheez Whiz that did make it home, meant to be spread on toast (or in my case, eaten by the spoonful), a can of “meat” mimicking ham and made with God only knows what…the hotdog of the tinned food world. All of it strange and somehow comforting in its abundance on the store shelves. Most of it bypassed for more familiar fare.

In our tiny kitchen, with its bright yellow Formica table, Italy was always on the plate. All manner of good things came forth: homemade pastas and gnocchi, cabbage rolls and baking sheets of pizza, bubbling pots of minestrone, lasagna when time and occasion merited it. We could eat to our heart’s content and know that the proverbial pot would never really be scraped clean.

In sharp contrast to the full table, one of my sisters barely ate enough. A picky eater made worse by being continually forced to finish her plate, she eschewed tomatoes wholesale, a sound and stunning rebuke of all the delicious things my mother made. I knew pizza bianca before it was trendy, gnocchi dressed with breadcrumbs toasted in brown butter, lasagna and cabbage rolls with nary a hint of tomato sauce.

All these variations, delicious because that was the only way my mother knew how to make food, were in addition to all the things. So along with the brightly hued pizza and pasta and cabbage rolls, there were the anemic versions of the same dishes, everything looking like it had been kept in a dark basement too long with the mushrooms.

There was simply too much of everything.

Perhaps it was these schizophrenic meals that mapped in my mind, making me believe that in order to get my fill, I needed to have it all.

And so I began to eat too much, but in the surreptitious way that a crafty overeater does: a stack of saltine crackers mortared together with salty butter, an extra piece of pizza, a row of cookies from the package, not joyfully, but with a guilty tinge.

It’s been the work of a lifetime to find the balance and strike the “I’m full” chord in my mind no matter what’s left on the plate. I’m learning to revel in plenty without having to eat every bite. Now, I’m just as likely to say “it’s too much,” to trade plates with my husband so he can finish mine too.

It’s complicated, I know.

Still, I am an avowed eater, a cook who will always make an extra dish for fear of running out, get a thrill from the farmer’s market stalls full to overflowing with far more things than I can ever buy, dither over menu choices, never be able to decide what that last meal might comprise.

And still, there’s a deep gratefulness shaped by knowing how fragile “enough” can be for many, how little separates having it from nothing at all.

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Check out these recent Dispatches for my usual style of writing and some good recipes to try, including my favourite granola recipe, and a fantastic sardine rillettes.

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

It was shortly into my marriage that I knew I was in trouble.

We were having dinner at my in-laws’ house in August when my mother-in-law asked me “So, what are your plans for Thanksgiving?”

My heart sank. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to spend time with my husband’s family. It was more about the unknown, the moments that I couldn’t imagine yet but that just might happen and that I just might miss if we locked in. Committing so far in advance to anything was closing all the doors of possibility that lay ahead.

Spontaneous combustion

In my childhood home, planning ahead, much less being on time, was an ever-receding goal. There never seemed to be a moment when someone wasn’t being rushed or was rushing out the door, a family of White Rabbits continually checking their pocket watches. It was the way things were, and with my innate lack of understanding of how long things actually take, it was all right by me.

When you’re not a planner by nature - or nurture - living in a scheduled, plan-ahead world can seem stifling. And while there’s no question that planning is critical…in business, in our personal lives, to help us achieve our goals, ambitions and the right outcomes…there’s also an element of flexibility and creativity that can get lost.

The stage door moment

But sometimes all it takes is a spontaneous decision to elevate an already perfect experience.

We were in New York seeing Der Rosenkavalier, one of my husband’s favourite operas, with some of his favourite performers. This was to be one of the last times that soprano Renee Fleming and mezzo soprano Elīna Garanča were performing in roles that had help define their careers. In an epic production lasting more than three hours, the two women shone, their performances as soaring as their voices.

Standing ovations complete, we wafted our way out of the Lincoln Center close to midnight. As we headed to the street to hail a taxi, on impulse, I asked my husband if he knew where the stage door was. No, he did not, and anyway it was late. But I persisted. Why not find that stage door, meet those women, be groupies for a moment, and prolong the evening’s magic?

Reluctantly, he followed me as I used technology to guide us into the labyrinthine underbelly of the Center. And there we were, amidst a clutch of super fans. As the performers came out, relieved of heavy makeup and wigs, we applauded them, they generously posed for selfies and the connection created a magical memory.

It was made all the more special because it was unplanned, a moment we would not have mourned if it did not happen, yet made all the more precious because it was spontaneous.

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

— Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living (1960)

And yet, when it comes to planning a trip, something switches in my brain. Perhaps it’s the idea that there are so many possibilities, the fear that I will overlook an extraordinary experience, that prompts me to start planning in advance. I go down the rabbit hole of seeking out the best local restaurants, overlooked sites, off-season activities, festas and sagras and saint’s days and street festivals and unexpected happenings.

I admit to an old-fashioned love of travel guidebooks and I still have a decent number on my shelf. The Colosseum and its history hasn’t changed, nor have the locations of the Senso-Ji temple in Tokyo or the Lion Rock fortress in Sri Lanka. And like clothes that were tucked in the back of my closet that now fit me, I revisit these old friends gladly when travel is on the horizon.

This time around, there’s been neither the luxury of time nor the comforting illusion that I could just wing it. There had been a plan—Jordan and Egypt in mid-April—but with everything unfolding in the world, that didn’t seem exactly wise. Why not Puglia in June? Until suddenly the dates moved up and departure is now a week from today. Phew. I don’t think we’ve ever planned a trip this quickly. The big pieces are in place—flights, hotels, a car. And now it’s time to sit back and let serendipity and a handful of really good personal recommendations guide us.

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.

—Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher, from the Tao Te Ching

If this quote from Lao Tzu sounds like advice for people who travel without bookings, digging a deeper reveals a more nuanced and thoughtful meaning.

This reflects the Taoist principle of Wu wei, or effortless action. The point is not to force outcomes or cling to rigid plans, but to let things unfold as they are. Being not intent on arriving does not mean you never reach a destination. It means you are not obsessed with the endpoint or rushing through everything just to get there.

What I’ve learned over a lifetime of travel is that planning only gets you so far.

Leaving room for the unexpected, days with plenty of white space and wide open windows. It’s being a flanneur with a three-hour glass of wine at a streetside cafe in Paris; visiting a Jain temple in Mumbai and, by chance, arriving during Paryushana, a joyful religious festival, and being invited to the communal table; travelling the rural roads of Ireland to seek out a young cutler and having an oyster knife made.

The memories that make a trip meaningful, the replays that spring unbidden to mind, are most often the ones that had no plan or forethought. They bloom naturally, revealing themselves with patience, waiting for us to pay attention, to look beyond the monument.

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Smoked trout salad with pesto beans and greens

serves 2

It was 5 pm on Tuesday and I hadn’t planned anything for dinner. I went to my freezer and saw that I had a whole smoked trout filet waiting patiently on the shelf. Why not a smoked trout salad? Dinner dilemma solved. It’s also as tasty with a good quality oil-packed tuna instead, and since you’re much more likely to have a jar or tin of tuna on the pantry shelf, it’s made easier by half.

Making the leap from spontaneous moments to spontaneous cooking requires the same spirit of flexibility, creativity, and ingenuity that might lead you to a stage door…or a delicious dinner. It’s all about having the right staples in the cupboard.

The key is to choose good quality ingredients to start with. Yes, beans are probably better from dried, freshly made pesto can’t be beat, and seared tuna is divine in a salad. Still, a jar of high quality imported tuna, organic canned beans, and top drawer jarred pesto are excellent sub-ins. With a little imagination and some greens, a lovely salad can be made in minutes.

Note: At the height of summer and basil season, I make a large batch of Marcella Hazan’s excellent pesto and freeze it in small containers. It’s made better by following Marcella’s advice: don’t add the cheese and butter before freezing, but only after you’ve defrosted the pesto. The flavour will be brighter and fresher as a result.

Ingredients

1 14-ounce (398 ml) can of cannellini beans (about 2 cups)

⅓ cup pesto (homemade or store bought), more to taste (see Note)

1 8-ounce (226 gr) whole smoked trout filet* or a 6-ounce jar of good quality oil-packed tuna

4 cups mixed salad greens

Fresh herbs to finish, optional

Salt, pepper, olive oil and lemon juice to taste

1. Drain and rinse beans and gently heat in a small saucepan, or microwave for one minute. Stir the pesto into the warmed beans and set aside. The beans can be made ahead and left at room temperature until ready to serve.

2. In a medium bowl, mix salad greens with salt, pepper, olive oil and lemon juice to taste. Start with a teaspoon or two of the lemon juice; you want it to heighten the flavour, not overpower it. Place in a serving platter or immediately divide between two bowls, and top each bowl with 1 cup of beans.

3. Remove skin from the smoked trout and break into bite sized pieces. Divide the trout between the two salad bowls, finish with herbs if using and serve.

Sources:

Pluralism Project. “Paryushana and the Festival of Forgiveness.” Pluralism.org. Harvard University.

Eva Wong. Taoism: An Essential Guide. Boston: Shambhala Publications.

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

We April babies know the travails of navigating capricious weather.

April is a month of all feast or famine, some of that being perilous to more than just our mood. Days of blindingly welcome sun make the growing things snap to attention, only to be nipped in the bud by a late-to-the-party frost. The regret of putting seedlings out or planting prematurely. And the rain, the interminable rain.

Those persistent grey skies burrow deep into our psyches. In the downpour, we can get lost in the dreary thoughts that come floating to the surface of our minds. When everything’s wet, it can take a long time to get dry.

That’s when we need rainy day people.

Rainy day people always seem to know when it’s time to call
Rainy day people don’t talk, they just listen till they’ve heard it all
Rainy day lovers don’t lie when they tell ‘ya they’ve been down like you
Rainy day people don’t mind if you’re cryin’ a tear or two

—Rainy Day People, Gordon Lightfoot

There’s a certain kind of friend that always knows what to do. Rain or shine, they’re the reliable ones, the ones you can call for anything at all.

Yet with their dependability, rainy day friends sometimes get forgotten when it’s sunny weather. When you’re flying high, their subtle and sure friendship can get overshadowed by the dazzling light of your busy social scene. It’s in the slump, the gathering dark storm clouds, that rainy day people shine.

Our rainy day friends don’t need our energy to fuel their spirits. They’re comfortable illuminating and reflecting our light back, letting us bask in the warmth they exude. The quiet certitude of rainy day people is as sure and true as a steady rain pattering on our gardens, feeding and nurturing the deep roots beneath.

And so I’ve learned to love the rain, and never more than when I can sit in a sheltered spot, surrounded by greenery, hearing the drip drip of the drops on my terrace umbrella, watch the rivulets wind down the tender plants, trace the watercolour grey in the sky.

In the stillness of those moments, I tend to my own rainy day nature, with the same nourishment and gentle care I get from my rainy day friends. And, as my friend pointed out, to remind myself to shine a light back on those steadfast and true companions. Because as any gardener knows, it’s not the cloudburst that keeps the earth growing; it’s the sure steady rain that slowly, carefully seeps far down to the roots below.

When the rain comes down, listen closely. The laughter you hear is all the good things growing.

Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night—
And I love the rain.

— Langston Hughes, “April Rain Song,” The Brownies’ Book

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Scenes from a birthday weekend

The days leading up to my birthday yesterday were anything but sunny. Temperatures dipped and swung like a runaway kite, Tuesday brought snow, and by week’s end the sodden sky seemed determined to empty a season’s worth of rain.

The combination of pelting rain and a one hurtling 18-wheeler after another whizzing by made our six-hour drive to Montreal on Friday pretty miserable. But as we drove into the city the rain stopped, the sky loosening its grip at last. With hand on heart, Mr. Cohen welcomed us to his city and all was right with the world.

Montreal’s vibe is both European and modern, a city whose mother tongue is French but whose culture has a world beat. One-way streets, incredible museums, excellent restaurants at every turn, cobblestones and cathedrals and cafes with really good coffee…Montreal is a city in which to walk, to explore and most of all to dine.

And dine we did.

Consider this a highly selective, far-from-exhaustive list of places to eat the next time you find yourself there. We zeroed in on the Griffintown/Little Burgundy stretch of Notre Dame West for many of our meals, but don’t miss my Old Montreal favourite and Saint-Henri’s hottest breakfast spot.

Note: While the quality of the food and service is top notch at all these places, none are “fine dining” white tablecloth kind of places. Above all else, the focus of the service and hospitality is to ensure that guests are comfortable and having a really great experience.

Seasonality rules most menus, so while I’ve offered up reccos on what we enjoyed this weekend, items often change to reflect what the local framers have on offer.

Breakfast/Lunch

1. Arthur’s Nosh Bar, Jewish classics served with a twist and a lot of family pride. No-reservations breakfast-only hot spot that closes early in what is otherwise a quiet stretch of Saint-Henri.

   Pro tips: if you’re in Montreal for a four day weekend, go to Arthur’s on Monday to beat the weekend brunch crowd. Whenever you go, ask about half portions so you can try a variety of things.

   Don’t miss: Salmon gravlax; syrniki (cottage cheese pancakes); citrus tahini crunch; chocolate babka

2. Barley, a Middle-Eastern inspired breakfast place in Little Burgundy.

   Pro tips: Barley is a great option for either breakfast or lunch; they also close mid-afternoon. Barley takes reservations but we were seated immediately without one. Don’t be tempted by the very long lines down the street at September; Barley’s menu is way more interesting than the pancakes September is famous for.

   Don’t miss: Avocado toast that is all about the avocado, plus some zhoug for good measure; fatteh—a fabulous one dish bowl that combines toasted pita chips, eggplant, chickpeas, labneh, chili, pickled red onions and pomegranate arils. Barley also has killer coffee.

Dinner

1. Vin Papillon, a cosy neighbourhood wine bar and restaurant in Little Burgundy from chef Marc-Olivier Frappier, with a vegetable-forward seasonal menu. This is the place that other chefs go and relax when they want excellent food, great service and a stellar, unusual wine list.

   Pro tip: Like many popular spots, Vin Papillon only reserves one month out. Mark your calendar and opt to sit at the bar. The restaurant also has adorable booths built just for two so request one for a chummy date with your beau.

   Don’t miss: Cabbage is having a moment and every place we dined had a unique take on this most versatile veg. Razor clams were spectacular, calamari and beef skewers exceptional and charred broccolini special a highlight. We were so hungry that we acted like normal diners and didn’t take any photos.

2. Garde Manger, opened in 2006 by chef Chuck Hughes, delivers a high-energy, seafood-forward experience in Old Montreal—think oysters, seafood towers, and a dining room that gets louder as the night goes on. It’s as much about the atmosphere as the food. This is a must visit for us every time we’re in Montreal, and while the crowd leans heavily towards visitors as opposed to locals, the staff make you feel like they saw you just last week.

   Pro tip: The same one month out deal here. Mark your calendar and be ready to have FUN with the staff. Jian, who served us on Saturday when we sat at the bar, was bartender/eagle eye/server and co-conspirator with David, the front of house manager, keeping the vibe lively. You may just down a shot or two in comradeship with this hospitable bunch.

   Don’t miss: Seafood is the star, and seasons matter here. Snow crab, white asparagus, rhubarb were all offer and we opted for a number of appetizers, rounded out by fois gras. Cabbage showed up here too and a refreshing chicory salad was the right balance for all the richness.

3. Foxy rounds out the list, and is another Little Burgundy gem, and true neighbourhood spot. After visiting a cabane au sucre for lunch (more on that in a future post!), we wanted our last meal to be a shareable and delicious lighter bite. Like many of Montreal’s best, there is a very marked focus on the seasons, on vegetables and plants and making what’s at the market the star. The menu proudly features a deep list of all of the local producers and farmers that Foxy sources from.

   Pro tip: Foxy is a casual place; there was a multi-generational table celebrating a family birthday, three girlfriends having dinner, couples like us hanging out. You’ll fit right in with jeans or whatever makes you feel at home.

   Don’t miss: Cabbage again! This time with a delicate made-in-house jambon blanc (white ham). The carrots were on a bed of mixed herb and carrot top sauce, and scattered with toasted quinoa, cardamom and sesame. Our shared sweet potato gnocchi with rabbit were delicately delicious.

Let me know if you’re heading to Montreal! There’s so much to discover and I’d love to share more of my favourites with you 💕

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

Is there anything more intimidating than a blank page?

Perhaps a blank mind, that panicky feeling that, just when you need to have a burst of inspiration, start that project, finish the outline, write the strategy, suddenly everything has dried up, as arid as the Sahara.

Or perhaps you don’t think of yourself as creative at all. Creativity is often framed as output…being “good at something”: having a talent that’s distinctive and recognizable, whether that’s drawing, singing, photography, fashion design, woodworking or even arranging the flowers just so. Creativity becomes performance art, something we do for someone else instead of ourselves.

When we hesitate and start second-guessing our innate ability to create something wonderful, we become our own worst enemies. What if creativity isn’t something that you do, but something that you let happen?

All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

We all know this and see it: children have an abundance of creativity. They dance spontaneously, they combine clothing in the most, ermmm, imaginative way, they draw outside the lines, using the printed page as a starting point for unbridled energy, colour and confusion.

For those lucky amongst us to have been raised by families that cherished this outpouring, our creativity can continue to flower and grow, branching off and winding tendrils around our life choices, whatever they may be. All that joie de vivre wells up unbidden, a natural spring source that started bubbling in our childhood, and never runs dry.

In the weeks leading up to the Food Writers’ Retreat, that spring of creativity was on my mind. As and I prepared to lead a conversation at the retreat on living a creative life, the conversations we had—and later shared with the group—began to crystallize my own sense of what keeps me open, curious, and alive to the world of possibility.

It also led me to the work of Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.

Flow state

Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives… when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life.

—Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

We all know what being in the zone, in the groove or having everything click means.

What you may not know is that the concept of a flow state was first developed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, a Hungarian-American psychologist whose work focused on optimal experience and human flourishing.

Having grown up in wartime Hungary, Csíkszentmihályi was shaped early by the question of what makes life worth living, a curiosity born out of witnessing the suffering around him during the Second World War. After moving to the United States, he began developing his ideas about flow in the 1960s and 1970s, drawn to moments of deep absorption and engagement.

While studying creativity, he noticed that painters would become so immersed in their work that they lost track of everything else—food, time, even themselves—and that the act of creation mattered more than the finished piece. He began to see that this kind of experience wasn’t limited to art, but showed up across all kinds of activities, wherever people were fully engaged and doing something for its own sake.

At a time when psychology was largely focused on illness and dysfunction, Csíkszentmihályi turned his attention instead to these moments of aliveness—an approach that would later help shape the field of positive psychology—eventually naming this state “flow.”1

Creating is about being our most human selves.

—Jason McBride, Canadian writer, editor, and cultural critic

Understanding creativity as a central source of meaning can be revelatory, especially when we’re surrounded by those we consider to be “more than” us. More talented. More successful. But what if the “more” is really about being the most we can be, as McBride says?

Since the retreat weekend that sparked all this rumination, I’ve been thinking about how to keep the wellspring of creativity as that central source of meaning—not just in a space and time where the travails of daily life fall away, but even more so when the demands of our busy minds, lives, and the grief of the world weigh us down.

If I might sum it up somehow, I think it comes down to three truths: notice more; follow curiosity; let things be imperfect. As Rebecca said so beautifully:

About that blank journal at the top of this post.

It was the same journal we gave everyone at the start of the weekend. Along with inspirational and thought-provoking journaling prompts: How will you give your creative mind the space and freedom it requires?… What does it mean to create without attachment to outcome?… What is here now?, the blank cover was meant to prime the pump and get the creative waters flowing through our veins.

We provided a beautiful John Derian sticker book, full of botanicals, colours, fragments of images, oddities and wonderments. Over the course of the weekend, everyone shared the book, creating their own magical stories born out of their imaginations and some inspiration.

A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.

—Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Hungarian-American psychologist

What will your creative life recipe be? How will you decide the ingredients, choose the implements, bake the cake? What will you notice, pour yourself into, leave behind?

There’s no single way to fill a page, or decorate a journal’s cover, just as there’s no single way to live a creative life. It begins the same way, every time—with something blank, a moment of attention, and the willingness to begin.

*The beautiful journals of Retreat attendees , Alex Sharp, , and yours truly

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Creamy cauliflower soup

adapted from Lidey Heuck, The New York Times

serves 6

When it comes to cooking for others, we can get caught up in believing that elaborate is best. The show of effort, the complexity of techniques or ingredients can fool us into believing that the end result will be worth the stressful effort. That may seem particularly true when it’s high-stakes cooking for a group of food writers, recipe developers and cookbook authors. But people who are obsessed with food are generous souls, and seek nothing more than to gather round the feast; we know that every dish is made with love and offered with generosity.

So when and I made lunch at the Food Writers’ Retreat, I chose what I would make based on two criteria: what I love to eat and how simple it could be. But I also wanted to put my imprint on these familiar, simple dishes. I loved the sound of cauliflower soup with rosemary and with a little imagination, made it even better. Roasting the cauliflower, amping up the aromatics with the rosemary oil…little touches made a big flavour difference.

Note: You’ll use the same skillet to make both the rosemary oil and the croutons, so leave the thin layer of rosemary oil in the pan. Leftover rosemary oil will keep in a sealed container at room temperature for up to 1 week. You can make more of the delicious croutons. Cool them completely, and keep them in an airtight container for a few days or as long as they will last.

1 medium head cauliflower, cored and broken into 1½-inch florets (about 2½ pounds)

1 tablespoon olive oil

For the rosemary oil

¾ cup olive oil

4 x 4-inch sprigs fresh rosemary

For the soup

2 tablespoons rosemary oil (see Note)

1 medium yellow onion, chopped (about 1 cup)

1 garlic clove, minced

1 quart low-sodium vegetable or chicken stock, plus more as needed for reheating

2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste

3-4 grinds fresh black pepper, plus more to taste

2-3 cups rustic country bread, torn into bite-sized pieces (see Note)

1. Heat the oven to 400°F / 200°C. In a bowl, toss the cauliflower with the olive oil and season lightly with salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Spread the cauliflower on a baking sheet in an even layer and roast until just tender and starting to turn golden brown in spots. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.

2. Make the rosemary oil: In a medium skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the rosemary sprigs, then reduce the heat to low and sauté for 5–7 minutes, until the sprigs begin to gently sizzle. Remove the skillet from the heat and take out the rosemary sprigs. Pour the oil into a bowl and let it cool. If desired, return the rosemary sprigs to the oil to further infuse as it cools.

3. In a heavy pot or Dutch oven, heat 2 tablespoons of the rosemary oil over medium-low. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender and translucent, 6 to 8 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

4. Add the stock, roasted cauliflower, salt and pepper, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat, cover, and simmer until the cauliflower is fully tender when pierced with a fork, about 7-10 minutes.

5. Transfer the vegetables, stock and ¼ cup rosemary oil to a blender in batches and blend on high until creamy. Taste and add more rosemary oil, salt and pepper to taste, and blend to combine.

6. Make the croutons: Heat the reserved skillet over medium heat. Add the bread cubes, sprinkle generously with salt and pepper, and sauté, tossing often, until golden and toasted, 4 to 5 minutes. Set aside to cool.

7. To serve, garnish each serving with a swirl of rosemary oil and a few croutons. The soup will thicken as it sits; add more stock as necessary when reheating.

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To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

I’ve been trying to find my way into a story about the inaugural Food Writers’ Retreat I attended last weekend.

I had an idea that I would write about storytelling; the power and magic that’s inherent in hearing someone share something deeply personal, meaningful, or just plain funny. And maybe the moment when, with a startled gasp, you recognise yourself in the story being told.

Or about the way that a house full of nearly strangers, some acquaintances and a few good friends can be woven into a tapestry full of diverse and colourful threads.

Through travelling to the Poconos together…making meals as a team…learning how to do improv…write a cookbook proposal…take better food photographs…expand our culinary horizons by using Indian cookery techniques…having deep and personal conversations...every opportunity for interaction tightened the warp and weft of the beautiful magic carpet we were making.

All wrapped up in a generosity of spirit and a welcoming hospitality that was as big as the state of Pennsylvania and as intimate as a family gathering. It was all of this and so much more.

Scenes from a Food Writers’ Retreat

1. A warm welcome and personal touch from

2. Travelling to the Poconos with newfound friends Betty Williams & Kerry Faber

3. Jenn making first night cocktails

4. Dynamic mother-daughters trio Marjory Pilley Sarah Pilley and Emily Pilley

5. Rebecca Blackwell teaching us how to point and shoot

6. The Morning Glories: Betty, Anne-Marie Pietersma & Elizabeth Baer

7. Dianne Jacob imparting wit and wisdom

8. Lunch chefs Janet Mary Cobb, Rachel Ciordas & Lori Olson White

9. Jenn with her kids Colton and Alex.

Digital relationships in a virtual world

When I started my first food blog in 2009, I was on a simple mission: to find and follow like-minded folks who loved food as much as I did. And boy, did I find them.

It was the first time that I formed friendships and close relationships through technology. Twitter and Instagram led me to IRL events, meet-ups and food happenings, from Pistoia in Italy to Ottsville, Pennsylvania. Those in turn, led to friendships that have persevered over time and miles.

I’ve had cocktails in Umbria, ice cream in London, a nifty Sazerac in SoHo, frozen yogurt in Washington D.C., a kitchen meet-up here in Toronto, all with friends I met first online. There is something that gets stripped away when you communicate first through technology, an immediacy that can be both fast and meaningful.

But it’s been a long time since I bought a plane ticket to spend the weekend with people I’ve never met before. And in a world where we can rightly blame social media for making us feel more isolated than ever, it was Substack that brought us together.

This magical, marvelous food on our plate, this sustenance we absorb, has a story to tell. It has a journey.

—Joel Salatin, American farmer, author, and speaker

Writing can be a lonely endeavour. The solitary effort, internal focus, the feast or famine of words flowing versus a dry well…it’s the exact opposite of a team activity.

And for the most part, that’s okay. But still, great writing most often comes from inspiration, from being of the world and in the world. There’s something singularly energizing when you find your people. They are the ones who can understand your impulse to do the laundry or tackle some weeding in the garden at a particularly thorny juncture in your story, or your obsession with styling every dinner just so, in case anything turns out to be camera-worthy. It’s finding them that’s the hard part.

And so it was that Jenn Sharp decided to do something about it. An early member of the Food Writers Forum and Mastermind for Food Writers on Substack, Jenn—who is a born hostess and people convener—saw an opportunity to make our nascent community a truly thriving one.

Jenn sent out a call to the Substack community last July with a simple idea: what if some of the people who’d been chatting, and liking and subscribing and generally supporting each other’s Substacks met up in person? That she miraculously, effortlessly made this happen was a gift to the 20 of us in attendance.

Just one post won’t capture everything, so over the next two weeks I’m going to dive a little deeper into what we learned, ate, shared and laughed about.

As I pour through the photos and my fulsome memories, I’m reminded that stories unfold over time and space, that the telling in one place of a singular event might capture the essence, but not the whole. But that’s okay. Because I know I will be telling stories, as I have already done, about this extraordinary weekend for months to come. Stay tuned for more on how this magical weekend came together and what we did there.

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You can read other Retreat reflections here:

: Food People are the Best People

: IRL. But with magic.

: Finding Your Tribe: A Food Writer’s Retreat That Changed Everything

My favourite radicchio, orange and fennel salad

serves 4-6, scales up or down

There is no doubt that whoever first invented this brilliant combination of of citrus and anise was Italian, and all roads lead to Sicily as the source. A bread basket of an island that grows just about everything I want to eat, its abundance of citrus and wild fennel have long been combined to make a refreshing salad, served Italian-style at the end of the meal. Common add ons have come to include slivered red onion and briny black olives for a wonderful combination of flavours.

But my roots and heart lie in Veneto and it is there that I turn to inspiration for my take on this classic. Combining a mix of Radicchio di Chioggia (deep red) and Variegato di Castelfranco (a pale pink and creamy white variety), the radicchio’s bitter edge is softened and enhanced by both the citrus and the fennel.

I give the salad a further nod to Sicily’s Arabic roots with a healthy scattering of pomegranate arils and a drizzle of pomegranate molasses to finish and enhance the vinaigrette.

Best of all this salad can easily be made for a crowd, as I did at the Food Writers’ Retreat, where my salad complemented a creamy cauliflower soup I made, along with ’s potato-scallion flatbreads and chickpea salad. Watch for those recipes in future Dispatches!

Ingredients

Note: before you start, have an attractive wide serving bowl ready to put the ingredients in as you prep them

2 heads Radicchio di Chioggia or a mix of Radicchio di Chioggia and Castelfranco, leaves separated and washed, torn into bite sized pieces

4 oranges (varieties like blood, Cara Cara, or navel), peeled, pith removed, halved and cut into chunks.

Half a large white fennel bulb, cored, trimmed and cut into thin slices

½ cup pomegranate arils (seeds)

1 teaspoon Maldon or other flaky salt

Three turns of freshly ground pepper

1 tablespoon good quality olive oil

1 teaspoon aged white wine vinager

A drizzle of pomegranate molasses

Put all the ingredients in the bowl in which you will serve the salad and toss to combine. Season with salt, pepper, olive oil, vinegar and a drizzle of pomegranate molasses. Toss again to distribute the vinaigrette, taste and adjust the seasonings to your liking.

If you’re drawn to discovery, reflection and the shared experience of food, subscribe to The Delicious Bits Dispatch. You’ll feel right at home with this weekly newsletter that finds magic in the beautiful details of everyday life.

Subscribe now

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

I’m sharing a bonus post this week that’s not the usual.

In January, I joined a merry band of writers under the gentle and witty hand of Mark Diacono to practice our writing skills. Called the Abundance Writing Group Gathering, every month, we’re given a prompt with the singular instruction to take no more than an hour to write and see what results.

When we gather, we discuss where the prompt led us, what the process was like and a few brave souls put up our hands to share our writing with the group.

This month’s prompt was: I didn’t, but I like it now

, , Kelly and I shared our writing, and the disparate places this simple prompt took us could not have been more gloriously different.

To read aloud what you sit and produce in the silence of your mind is both exhilarating and intimidating. But in this intimate online setting, the words hold deeper meaning, the feedback is generous and the hour flies by.

Here’s what I wrote in an hour.

I didn’t but I like it now, this getting up early.

The edge of light like icing on top of the buildings, the moon saying how’d you do to the sun before passing the baton.

The city looks weirdly futuristic, even though an old fire hall…a church steeple… an ancient tree belie the idea.

In the predawn morning, I feel the sense of possibility, an unbroken egg teetering on the edge of the bowl waiting for the decisive wrist flick to crack it wide open. In the here and now, I am not yet late or run out of time or impatiently waiting on the subway car.

I can still choose the skin I want to inhabit today…

…casual chic in denim and leather;
…buttoned up corporate in navy head to toe;
…flirty and feeling 40 in a floral dress.

The early morning is an offering that allows me to think of the hours ahead and make decisions. Not exactly planned or within the lines, but loose, confident, a cocky teen swaggering down the street of my schedule.

The best kind of early morning, of course, is before the alarm clock rings: a slow fluttering of my eyes awake, knowing without looking that I had a full 45 minutes more.

But still, I’m awake now, and the aerie view from my bird’s nest terrace is an ever-changing canvas. Not quite and sometimes never an arbiter of the day ahead…a tease of pink and fiery clear sky, or a brute of an angry Zeus, busily gathering thunderbolts hidden behind a grey roiling curtain of clouds, both as petulant and changeable as toddlers.

That I missed so much of this in my idle and frivolous youth, is not to be mistaken for regret. Because I really didn’t like it then, the unwilling separation of my warm body away from a tangle of sheets and blankets, my mother’s insistent voice calling me to svegliati! the reluctant making of the bed.

There I might have found the book I tried to vainly read until the end, with a purloined flashlight. I might have wanted to wander back into a dream, cinematic in length and scale, me the star player in a melodrama so like the old black and whites I adored.

When, then, the shift?

It wasn’t in the early days of my irresponsible adulthood, with its all-nighters and projects left to the very last moment. Never a planner, I; the midnight hour was my friend, the darkness and silence of nights in that tiny first flat as comforting as a weighted blanket. Part vampire, perhaps, my senses alert as a nocturnal creature, eyes adjusting to the dark, a cat on the prowl.

It was only when I moved into a wee fairy tale house with my husband that Helios started to claim my early morning devotion with a sentinel’s clarion call, its first early beckoning at an ungodly hour.

What messenger was this?

I remember going outside and peering into the trees, trying to train my eyes to follow that thread of sound as if it were a scored line of music. And there, there, it was, brilliant red, high, high on the tree branches, full-throated and glorious—as thrilling as anything I’d seen or heard before. A cardinal, a morning miracle.

Now, I sit above the city, a condo dweller who feels like she can touch the sky. It is harder to see the cardinals as I peer into the leafy trees that front my view, but if I’m quiet enough, early enough, I can still hear them along with abundant house wrens and song sparrows, humble kin to their more glamorous cousin but no less joyful and effusive in their song.

The rituals of morning…the steaming coffee, the hungry cats arching at my feet, a snatch of lovely reading before I’m beset with news… my husband still soundly asleep. I am in my element.

And while it is true the glorious sunrise I saw at 6:40 am might have ducked behind rain clouds by the time I leave home at 8:30 still, I know it is there. My little secret, a gift, a reminder that brighter days are always in the offing.

And if I didn’t like it now, that preternatural dawn, how flat and bereft might the day be in its absence.

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If you’re curious where this prompt took other writers in the group, I’d encourage you to read the pieces and wrote.

Taisty Bytes

I didn't, but I like it now

Hello, friends…

Read more

4 months ago · 6 likes · 11 comments · Mark Thomas

The Greedy Gardener

I didn’t, but I like it now

The gardening bug didn’t bite until I was well into my thirties. I didn’t have parents or grandparents who were keen gardeners, mostly due to the fact they had no garden or at least not until much later in life. Most of my younger years were spent living in flats too, where the only outdoor space was a balcony. My first English boyfriend’s mother (the…

Read more

4 months ago · 5 likes · 8 comments · Marjan

And if you want to be inspired by a generous community of writers who love words as much as you, consider joining Mark Diacono for this group, and so much more.

Visit Mark Diacono's Substack

I’ll be back with my usual Dispatch on Sunday, with a full report on the inaugural Food Writers’ Retreat plus some delicious recipes to share from that fabulous gathering.

If you’re drawn to discovery, reflection and the shared experience of food, subscribe to The Delicious Bits Dispatch. You’ll feel right at home with this weekly newsletter that finds magic in the beautiful details of everyday life.

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

There’s a feeling of expectancy in the air.

The first day of spring arrived last week, and I don’t need an artificial springing forward of the clocks to tell me so. Even before last weekend, the birds have been calling to me earlier and earlier with their morning song. “Wake up, sleepyhead,” they beckon. “The shoots are poking through the ground, the snow is melting. Wake up!”

March 20 also marked Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Always coincident with the spring equinox, Nowruz is a 13-day festival centred around the earth’s cycle, fresh starts, growth, rebirth and a celebration of nature. The lead up to Nowruz might also involve khune tekuni: spring cleaning. It literally means shaking the house up. In the act of opening the windows wide, beating the carpets, washing the windows to a sparkling shine, the path forward is paved for fresh beginnings.

And yet, renewal is never untouched by the world around us.

It’s impossible not to acknowledge the war in the Middle East and the weight it carries for so many. For those living through violence, uncertainty, and loss, the idea of fresh beginnings can feel painfully out of reach. And yet, spring and Nowruz endure. They arrive, a reminder that even in the darkest of times, the cycle of life continues. That cycle offers something important…the promise, however fragile, that hope can still take root.

Spring drew on…and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.

—Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

What is it we want? So many things, right now. Immeasurable. Small and personal. Vast and wide-reaching. Above all, we want the promise of spring to seep into the heart of darkness that surrounds us.

It’s no coincidence that as the earth awakens and shrugs off its winter mantle, it shakes our foundations. We are propelled forward, sometimes with our heels dragging, towards the sun.

It’s been easy to fall back into despair, to lose faith, to abandon hope. But the earth around us is wise beyond measure. She marches forward with a springtime palette of tender green, daffodil yellow, crocus white, rhubarb pink. Awakening us to the possibility of tomorrow. Above all, spring reminds us that hope is perhaps Mother Nature’s best gift.

I don’t know about you, but I am finding that in this season of new beginnings, I have a naive faith in human goodness.

Spring will come and so will happiness. Hold on. Life will get warmer.

—Anita Krizzan

Indeed.

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Rhubarb khoresh (khoresh-e rivas)

Food of Life, Najmieh Batmanglij

serves 6-8

While forced rhubarb hasn’t found its way to the greengrocer yet, visions of the delicate pink stalks have been haunting me from my friends across the pond. As I wait impatiently for its arrival, I’ve been thinking about what I’ll make first.

When I thumb through my cookbooks for recipes with rhubarb, desserts top the list. But if I dig a little deeper, the savoury side of rhubarb makes an appearance. Beyond rhubarb chutney or a mostarda, there are new treasures to be discovered.

In Persian cuisine, the use of the word khoresh is a general term that refers to stews of all kinds. Many Persian stews are known for their tangy character, often achieved through the use of souring agents such as sour grape juice (verjus) or dried limes. Rhubarb finds a unique place in khoresh-e rivas, a slow braised stew that combines meat or chicken with the vibrant flavours of parsley, mint, saffron, and fresh rhubarb. It’s not the work of thirty minutes; this stew is braised in stages, with a final finish in the oven to gently cook the rhubarb.

You’ll be well rewarded for the effort with this highly flavourful dish. Serve it over rice or, if you want to stay true to its Persian roots, a rice scented with saffron is lovely too.

Ingredients

4 tablespoons neutral oil, butter, or ghee

2 medium onions, peeled and thinly sliced

1 pound stewing meat (spring lamb is best but you can also use beef or veal, or boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 2-inch cubes)

1½ teaspoons sea salt

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

½ teaspoon turmeric

3 cups chopped fresh parsley

½ cup chopped fresh mint

¼ teaspoon ground saffron dissolved in 1 tablespoon rose water or water

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1 pound fresh rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces

1. In an ovenproof Dutch oven, heat 2 tablespoons oil over medium heat and brown onions and meat, about 10 minutes. Add salt, pepper, and turmeric, and sauté for 1 minute.

2. Pour in water—2½ cups for meat and 1½ cups for chicken. Bring to a boil, lower to a simmer, cover and cook over low heat: 1 hour for meat and 1¼ hours for chicken, stirring occasionally.

3. While the meat is cooking, in a wide skillet, sauté parsley and mint in the remaining 2 tablespoons oil over medium heat for 10 to 15 minutes until aromatic.

4. When the meat has simmered for an hour, add parsley and mint mixture, saffron-rose water, tomato paste, and lime juice to the Dutch oven. Cover and simmer 55 minutes longer over low heat.

5. Heat oven to 350°F (180°C). Arrange the rhubarb on top of the meat. Place a piece of parchment paper over the khoresh and pierce several holes in the paper with a skewer. Secure the parchment paper in place with a tight layer of aluminum foil. Pierce several holes in the foil and place the Dutch oven in the oven. Cook for 25 to 35 minutes or until the rhubarb is tender. Rhubarb is fragile; the pieces must be cooked but not to the point of dissolving or falling apart.

6. Gently mix the rhubarb into the khoresh, taste and adjust seasoning. If the khoresh is too sour, add 1 tablespoon sugar.

7. Serve over saffron-scented or plain steamed rice.

Sources

National Geographic, “What Is Nowruz? Persian New Year Traditions Explained” .

History.com, “Nowruz: Persian New Year, Origins & Traditions.”

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

Today I saw the first green chive shoots in my container garden.

Tiny bright and brave, they were pushing up through the hardened earth and the freshly fallen snow of a winter that seems twice as long as usual. I have yet to see a robin, but I know it’s only a matter of short weeks until we can fling open the windows, and only a few short days until spring is officially here.

All of this conspires to make us feel lighter—the anticipation of sweaters being put away, the snow tires removed, missing gloves forgotten—but even before the early rhubarb or sweet spring asparagus come out from under cover and beckon us to eat beautiful green things, this coming week is one that gives us an opportunity for a bit of early spring indulgence.

The sacred origins of everyday foods

Many everyday foods also have a place in religious traditions.

Bread, apples, honey, ghee, dates: all are foods that have spiritual significance beyond their quotidien use. But as cultures became more secular, what we ate at the everyday table lost any special significance, and some of those original associations may have been lost in translation.

Still, in many parts of the world, particularly those with Christian roots, celebrations rooted in feast days remain a vibrant part of local culture and tradition, including the making of special recipes that have deeper meaning.

When the saints come marching in

This week in particular has two distinctly different celebrations, each born from a saint. The first is St. Patrick’s Day, celebrated on March 17. Why you’ve undoubtedly heard, and perhaps participated in a St. Paddy’s Day toast or two, what you may not know is that this massively popular celebration began in the United States, becoming an export back to Ireland in the 20th century.

Irish soldiers in the British army marched in a St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City in 1762, the beginning of an instant parade tradition that spread afar to Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Canada. And yes, Ireland. Although St. Patrick’s Day had long been observed as a religious feast in Ireland, the first official parade in Dublin did not take place until 1931.

Unlike other religious observances that were rooted in ritual first, the parades, wearing ‘o the green, silly hats and shamrocks of St. Patrick’s Day festivities lack deep food traditions. While a reveller might start March 17 with an Irish fry up, and there may be plenty of soda bread, corned beef and cabbage, Irish stew and Guinness on offer, food is a supporting player, not integral to the whole.

So to really understand the convergence of religious observance and its expression through food, we have to go to Italy. Naturalmente.

Feast days and food ways

Throughout Italy, many cities, towns and small villages celebrate feast days honouring their own santo patronos (patron saints). Both famous and obscure, these saints give rise to traditions that go back hundreds of years, creating a thread that weaves ancient beliefs and rites with modern day sensibilities (check this website to find out more).

If you live in an urban centre with an Italian community, you might have been lucky enough to stumble across one of these festivals. What you would have seen are processions, the saint’s icon floating high and reverently above the crowd. There might have been the wearing of traditional costumes, special markets, and most certainly food.

But to truly appreciate the all-encompassing nature of a feast day celebration, there’s no better place than in Italy itself.

Father’s Day, Italian style

In Italy, many people celebrate not just their birthday, but their onomastico—the feast day of the saint they’re named after. Rooted in Catholic tradition, each day of the year is dedicated to one or more saints, and if your name matches one, that day becomes your personal celebration. Rather than marking age, the onomastico honours identity, faith, and family heritage, since many Italians are traditionally named after saints or relatives. The day is often celebrated much like a birthday, with well-wishes, small gifts, sweets, or special foods—and in some regions, it’s considered just as important, or more important, than a birthday itself.

Take San Giuseppe. While my father was a Giuseppe, and we didn’t celebrate his name day, in Italy it’s a big deal.

The Festa diti San Giuseppe is celebrated across Italy on March 19, as that is officially Father’s Day (because Saint Joseph is kind of the ultimate dad). Of course Italians have to make every celebration their own, so you’ll find some specialties that are specific to a particular region: frittelle di riso from Tuscany, bigné di San Giuseppe in Rome, zeppole in Naples, pasta con le molliche in Basilicata and Puglia. You can find countless authentic recipes for these delicacies, each with their own special imprinteur.

What you might not find is the distinctly Sicilian iterations of the festa di papa. There, the food traditions are deeper, broader and somehow more mystical.

To the table

It is uniquely in Sicily where you will find the Tavola di San Giuseppe—St. Joseph’s Table. The practice of creating large food altars dates to the Middle Ages. According to legend, a severe drought and famine in Sicily miraculously ended when the farmers prayed to St. Joseph, and the rains arrived.

Thus was born the tradition of erecting altars of abundance as an expression of gratitude, and still today you will find these very elaborate tables, groaning with food, in private homes, churches and community centres across Sicily (to give you a sense of sheer volume, there can be up to 100 types of food on these altars).

Cooking for this festa is a serious business in Sicily. The foods represent both the past and the future. The past are the fava beans and lentils, the foods of winter. The future is represented by the greens of spring: wild mustard, wild fennel, chard. Spices are used to represent richness and prosperity. Savoury is balanced by sweet.

Two of my favourite Sicilian dishes are also consumed during the San Giuseppe feast. The first is a classic: pasta con le sarde: bucatini pasta served with a sauce of sardines, wild fennel, golden raisins, pine nuts, onions, white wine, olive oil, saffron and bread crumbs. The second is less recipe than staple: sautéed bitter greens served either alone or in combination with other ingredients.

And of course there are the sfinci: fried cream puffs served hot with a dusting of cinnamon, confectioner’s sugar, and honey, or, cold and open-faced with a smear of ricotta cream and decorated with candied orange.

You might want to try to make one or all three of these recipes on March 19. If you do, you’ll be part of an ancient tradition dating back hundreds of years. You’ll bring the spirit of Sicily into your kitchen. And you’ll be well-fed to boot.

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Pasta con le sarde

serves 4

I admit that, while this pasta dish is stellar, it loses a bit of of its authentic lustre because of the absence of wild fennel. Growing freely all over the island of Sicily, wild fennel is a harbinger of spring that gives a wonderfully unique flavour to the dishes it graces.

One other change of note: this dish is typically made with raisins or currants and pine nuts, but I like the clean crunch of chopped almonds instead, an authentic substitution that I learned in Sicily. Seek out a recipe for the original for a real treat.

Ingredients

Breadcrumb Topping

1 teaspoon ground fennel seeds

1¼ cup bread crumbs

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

¼ cup olive oil

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 large garlic clove, peeled and lightly smashed

Sardine Sauce

1½ cup minced peeled and cored fennel bulb, fronds chopped and reserved

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more as needed

1 cup minced yellow onion

1 large garlic clove, peeled and lightly smashed

¼ cup tomato sauce

⅓ cup raw almonds, roughly chopped

1 pound/340g sardines, cleaned and cut into 1-inch pieces

1 tablespoon tomato paste, dissolved in ½ cup (120ml) dry white wine

Pinch saffron (dissolve this in the wine too)

1 pound (450g) bucatini or spaghetti

Make the breadcrumb topping:

Heat the olive oil a medium skillet over medium heat. Add the ground fennel seed and cook until fragrant. Add breadcrumbs, salt, sugar and garlic clove and cook, tossing, until golden. Discard garlic and transfer breadcrumb mixture to a bowl and set aside.

Make the sardine sauce:

1. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Add the chopped fennel (not the fronds) and cook until the fennel is tender, about 15 minutes. Drain, reserving water.

2. In a large skillet or sauté pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onions, garlic and drained fennel and sauté until fragrant, being careful not to let either turn brown, 2 to 3 minutes.

3. Add the reserved fennel fronds, the tomato sauce, the almonds, the wine and saffron if using. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for 5-7 minutes and then add the sardines. Simmer a further 3-5 minutes, or until the sardines are cooked through (they will break up as they cook). Taste and adjust for seasoning.

4. Bring the reserved fennel cooking water to a boil, adding more water as needed and salting the water to cook the pasta. When just al dente, drain the pasta, reserving a cup of the cooking water.

5. Combine the pasta with the sardine sauce, adding some of the pasta water. Bring the sauce to a simmer and stir the pasta with tongs to ensure it is being coated with the sauce. When the liquid has absorbed, serve the pasta, passing the breadcrumb topping separately.

Sources

Ken Albala, ed. Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2011.

Martin Stack. “The First St. Patrick’s Day Parade.” Smithsonian Magazine, 2012.

Massimo Montanari. Italian Identity in the Kitchen, or Food and the Nation. Columbia University Press, 2013.

Mike Cronin and Daryl Adair. The Wearing of the Green: A History of St. Patrick’s Day. Routledge, 2002.

An American in Italy. What Is an Onomastico? https://www.anamericaninitaly.com/how-to-speak-italian/what-is-an-onomastico/

To everyone new here, welcome. I’m Elizabeth, the writer of The Delicious Bits Dispatch, a weekly missive for the curious, blending discovery, reflection, and musings, always wrapped up with a seasonal recipe worth lingering over.

In cooking, as with any science, there are rules of nature that bear following.

The rules usually based on chemistry. Eggs will curdle in a sauce if you cook them over high heat. Brown sugar becomes hard if not kept in an airtight container. Kneading dough forms gluten, essential for an excellent loaf of bread. You can freeze eggs but not milk. And salting your water while cooking pasta really is a good idea.

But unless you’ve gone to culinary school or spent time in a professional kitchen, the things we learn in the kitchen come over time, slowly and with trial and error. Most often, they come from our childhood kitchens. The “right” way to do something may be nothing more than a preference or a habit that our cooking parents taught us, and that we’ve made our own.

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.

―Pablo Picasso

Things become particularly heated when it comes to cult favourites. Don’t ask two Romans for the “right” way to make bucatini all’amatriciana. The debate could go on for hours about whether or not pancetta is an acceptable substitute for guanciale, if onions should be used, whether to cook the sugo with white wine. You’ll never get consensus. Substitute paella, chicken adobo, shepherd’s pie for the pasta, throw the gauntlet down between two aficionados and watch the dishes fly.

Yet, the luxury of rules comes from having all the right ingredients on hand…and isn’t that counterintuitive to how the best of these dishes were created in the first place? From la cucina povera in Italy, cocina de aprovechamiento in Spain, prosta kuchnia in Poland, and mottainai in Japan, cultural cuisines and signature dishes were often born in improvised moments.

That’s because cooking—and food itself—is a most generous teacher. With an open mind and a curious palate, even the most seasoned cook can learn something new, no matter if you are an amateur in your home kitchen or a professional. With curiosity comes flexibility.

We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything than when we are playing.

—Charles E. Schaefer, American psychologist

Cooking, at its best, is a form of play: an experiment, a conversation, a willingness to try something just to see what happens. It invites improvisation and rewards curiosity, asking us to engage with our senses and with one another. The kitchen becomes a place where rules are tested, ideas are shared, and discovery is constant.

Enter Jacques Pepin and Julia Child.

Separately Jacques and Julia are culinary icons. Together, they had a beautiful friendship of mutual love, respect, shared passions, and yes, heated debates. Watch any episode of Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, the well-loved and iconic PBS series that first ran in 1999, and you see the intense curiosity and interest in what each has to teach the other.

After a lifetime of cooking and creating, they demonstrated in their uniquely warm and approachable way that cooking is a journey, never a final destination. At the heart of each interaction, there is a spirit of play, each knowing there’s a rulebook to follow, and that the real fun comes when the experimenting starts.

The companion cookbook is one of my favourite gifts from my husband, and my signed first edition holds special pride of place on my shelf. Reading it is like eavesdropping on a conversation between two best friends, who invite you to pull up a seat to the table. Always instructive, interesting and with variations to try for every dish, it’s a book that holds infinitely more than a collection of recipes. The reader is invited to come along for the fun, and play in the kitchen.

More than that, it’s a reminder that an original recipe is like a pebble. Dropping it into a pond creates ripples worth exploring. And while every variation may not be to your liking, it may be a welcome reminder that there are many ways to be right in the kitchen.

Share Delicious Bits

Mediterranean seafood soup with rouille

from Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home

serves 6

This recipe may look a little daunting at first, with its long list of ingredients and many steps. But just take 10 minutes to watch this video of Jacques and Julia making the soup, and you’ll see that at its heart, this is an easy, infinitely flexible recipe. More of this, less of that, potatoes instead of fish: Jacques and Julia always remind us that there is no one right way, but the way that works best for you.

For the soup

1½ pounds fish fillets, a mixture of two or three different types of fish (you may skin them if you wish)

1½ pounds small clams (little necks or cherry stones)

½ pound scallops

3 tablespoons olive oil

1½ cups chopped onions

1 cup thinly sliced scallions, white and green parts

1 tablespoon chopped garlic

2 cups fresh or canned tomatoes, chopped into chunks (reserve any juices and no need to seed)

1 cup white wine

4 cups fish stock

1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme

Salt and pepper to taste

1 teaspoon saffron threads

1½ tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon

For the rouille

1 slice firm homestyle white bread

2 large garlic cloves, peeled and minced

1 small potato, peeled, cooked and cut into quarters

¼ cup chopped roasted red peppers from a jar

¼ cup broth from the soup base

Salt and pepper to taste

Pinch of cayenne

1 cup olive oil

For serving

1 baguette, sliced and toasted

Make the soup base

1. Cut the fish into even chunks about an inch thick. Scrub the clams and rinse both the clams and the scallops to remove any sand.

2. In a large stock pot or sauce pan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onions, scallions and garlic and cook until soft, about five minutes.

3. Add the tomatoes and their juices, wine and fish stock, and season lightly with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and then simmer briskly for 10 to 15 minutes, with the pot partially covered.

Make the rouille

While the soup is simmering, make the rouille.

1. Tear the bread slice into pieces and put the pieces in a food processor with the minced garlic and potato. Process until very finally chopped.

2. Add the red peppers, ¼ cup of broth from the soup base, and season lightly with salt, pepper and a pinch of cayenne. Process until completely smooth.

3. With the machine running, pour in the olive oil in a slow steady stream, taking about half a minute or more so that an emulsion forms. Process until completely smooth; taste and adjust seasoning. Place the rouille in a small bowl and set aside.

Continue with the soup

Bring the soup base to a boil and add the clams and the saffron. Cook for about two minutes. Add the fish and scallops, return to a gentle boil and cook for 2 to 3 minutes just until the fish pieces are cooked through and opaque and all the clams have opened. Stir in the tarragon, taste and adjust the seasonings for the final time.

To serve

Spoon some rouille on half the toasted baguette slices. Ladle the soup into large soup bowls and serve the croutons beside or on top of the soup, with the extra croutons and rouille alongside.

If you’re drawn to discovery, reflection and the shared experience of food, subscribe to The Delicious Bits Dispatch. You’ll feel right at home with this weekly newsletter that finds magic in the beautiful details of everyday life.

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Sources

Charles E. Schaefer, When Children Play: The Story of Right-Brain Development, New York: Play Therapy Press, 1993