This is #ProjectNomad

This was by far the most involved project I'd tackled in the kitchen up to this point. It involved making two different sauces from scratch while also keeping an eye on an oversized vat full of lasagne noodles, and it kept me fairly frazzled for a solid hour of work. But the results were so worth it! In early April, I went to visit my friend Tara and her family in Halifax, and she served me a version of this vegetarian version of this lasagne and it was so delicious that I ph

I'm intending for #GetOutside to be a recurring series of posts about my ventures into the wilderness. Sloquet Hot Springs, near Pemberton, BC, is this week's instalment. The hot springs at Sloquet are simply marvellous. They're also very remote; about five hours' drive from Vancouver, much of it on unpaved road through the middle of nowhere. No gas stations. No cell service. (My friend Arthur somehow drove the very rough, very 85km gravel leg in his Acura RSX in the dark, bu

Mmmm, I just literally took a batch of these out of the oven as I'm typing this and they smell so good. I come by my sweet tooth honestly. My parents are also huge fans of delicious treats, and while I was at the farmhouse, the cupboards were often filled with cookies and cinnamon buns and all kinds of tasty concoctions. My dad was recovering from a leg injury that would keep him up at night, and to take his mind off of the pain, he would bake wonderful things. So every morni

I'm intending for #GetOutside to be a recurring series of posts about my ventures into the wilderness. Black Tusk, in BC's Garibaldi Provincial Park, is this week's feature. I'd wanted to climb the Black Tusk from the moment I saw it. It's the last remnant of an extinct volcano that towers above the highway between Vancouver and Whistler, a narrow, jagged finger of lava rock jutting out among snow-capped peaks, lonely and foreboding. One of my best childhood buddies, Jason, h

I don't expect to actually review books here, but I thought I would write a little bit periodically about books that I've read and what I've taken from them. Don Miguel Ruiz's THE FOUR AGREEMENTS is the third instalment. I'll be honest: I found a few parts of this book a little bit hokey. There's an assertion, for instance, that if only we loved more, war wouldn't exist, and while I suppose that's an okay argument in theory, to me it doesn't hold water in a world of, say, res

I used to date a woman who was spectacularly talented in the kitchen. She would make these incredible, complicated, delicious dinners, and top it off with, like, an orange chocolate cheesecake that was simply to die for. The thing that always got me was how she took as much if not more pleasure in feeding her family as she did in actually eating the food herself. Actually, scratch that; making the food and putting it on the table was clearly the appeal for her. And I always t

I don't expect to actually review books here, but I thought I would write a little bit periodically about books that I've read and what I've taken from them. Laurence Gonzales's SURVIVING SURVIVAL: THE ART AND SCIENCE OF RESILIENCE is this week's selection. "You're probably a lot more resilient than you think you are." That was one of the last things my partner said to me, before we parted ways for the last time, on the sidewalk outside the emergency room at St. Paul's Hospit

I had some ideas for where I wanted to take the blog moving forward, but a phone call last week has me rethinking this space. My dad's an avid reader of the blog. He took issue with my Canada Day post, and he called me on it, literally. Specifically, I guess he felt that when I talked about needing personal space and time for self-care during the big Canada Day party that I was being excessively self-absorbed and portraying a picture of myself that I really shouldn't want to

Here is a fifteen minute workout I found on BuiltLean.com, with whom I have absolutely no affiliation: On April 28th, I left the comfy confines of the farm to begin what amounts to Phase 2 of #ProjectNomad: the GALE FORCE book tour! From the end of April to the beginning of June, I'll be on the road more or less constantly, on a trip that will take me from the Yukon to the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic to Pacific. This is exciting, but I'm also apprehensive. My commitment to a hea

For the life of me, I can't remember why I decided to try making carrot cake. It's another one of those desserts that always seemed like a rip-off to me as a kid; if I could get away with only eating the frosting off the top, I totally would! But maybe my mom mentioned carrot cake or something or I just looked at a couple of carrots too long, because a while back I got it in my head that I wanted to do a healthy carrot cake, and I did some googling and came across this banana