A
family legend has it that I invented Aglio
Olio. This was back in the early 1960s when most kids were
eating bologna sandwiches with processed cheese on white bread.
Tidingsmag.com now has over 50 recipes in 30 different categories. Visit the Tidings Eats section and you'll be able to search your favorite ingredients and cooking styles. Eat up!
There are few more
daring ways to grasp the proverbial bureaucratic dragon by the tail
than to make spirits in British Columbia. But diehard lover of
eau-de-vie and grappa Frank Deiter has succeeded where others have
failed — and where few, in fact, have even dared to go before.
The retired
forester, who learned his spirit skills from a German master
distiller, was always a keen amateur. A relative newcomer to the
rough-and-tumble world of commercial distilling, he established
Okanagan Spirits in Vernon, BC, just a couple of years ago.
Tea
is an amazing beverage. A water-based infusion of leaves (and
sometimes flowers, dried fruit, spices and other flavouring agents),
it’s one of those rare items that’s both delicious and healthful.
Stained pottery remains suggest that people have been drinking tea
since the Stone Age, before such things could be written about.
Chinese emperor Shen Nung did write about it in Pen ts’ao,
one of the world’s first medical texts (2,737 BC). Buddhist monks
brought it to Japan in 805 AD. The first tea shipment to Canada
arrived in 1716. Clearly, this drink was loved all over the world —
while hot chocolate, cola and coffee were still just a gleam in some
Inca’s eye.
Various
cultures have regarded tea highly enough to construct elaborate
rituals around drinking it. Japan’s Cha No Yu ceremony, which dates
back to the 1600s, involves thirty seven steps — ranging
from how the cups are washed and the tea prepared to the food which
accompanies the drink and how it is presented. Like many Japanese
cultural traditions, Cha No Yu is a refinement of a 500-year-older
Chinese text, the Ch’a Ching, dedicated to the proper
preparation of tea.
When
we have big family dinners, we never seem to pick wines that please
the whole clan. Can you recommend some choices with universal appeal?
A wise
man once said, “You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick
your relatives.” And I know from experience that nothing fans the
flames of smouldering opinions like a big family food-fest. Whether
it’s your sister’s know-it-all husband (the expert on everything)
or the mother-in-law who never met a pause in conversation she
couldn’t fill, you should realize right now that nitpicking will
always be more important to some people than finding satisfaction
with what’s put in front of them to drink.
Prince Edward County (PEC), the most-talked about new wine region in Ontario, may be scoffed at as being too intemperate for vines to survive there, but wineries like Norm Hardie, the Grange, Rosehall Run and Long Dog are changing the way we think about winemaking in the cold, cold north.
“The County,” as locals call it, is home to approximately fourteen
wineries, fifty growers, 450 to 500 acres of vineyards planted with
vinifera, with a few hybrids scattered about. The largest wineries are
the Grange of Prince Edward County and Huff Estate Winery at
approximately 8,000 cases each annually; the smallest is Sandbanks at
1,200 cases. The region may be small in size but it produces some
fabulous wines that have writers raving they’re the best in the country.
While
the Mexican wines available here lack the elegance and sophistication
of the New World wines we’re getting from New Zealand and
Argentina, on the terrain they tell a whole different story.
Just
one hour into a long road trip from Tijuana to Cabo San Lucas we
spotted a sign for a “Ruta del Vino” by the side of Baja’s
main highway. It pointed eastward at a barren landscape of hills
strewn with boulders that looked like they could only have fallen
from the sky — not the place you’d expect to find much of
anything, let alone a winery … For a trip that promised to be heavy
in desert, cactus, beer and margarita, the sign made us wonder: was
the wine here worth a detour?
Its
location on the western edge of the Iberian Peninsula, a weak economy
in the early 1900s and a military dictatorship that lasted for almost
forty years essentially put Portugal in self-imposed isolation for
most of the twentieth century. Without outside intervention,
vineyards were left to their own devices —at a time when other
European countries were playing Twister to see who could plant the
most international varietals.
This is
not to say that Portuguese wines were completely forgotten. Port and
Madeira continued to thrive. And the semi-sparkling pink wines known
under the Mateus, Casal Mendes and Lancers labels — a great
wine-marketing success story onto themselves — managed to flourish
through the turbulent times.
Even
today, now that it’s fully part of the European Union and has
complete access to everything wine-and-grape fashionable, Portugal
still embraces its heritage and concentrates on native grapes — at
last count some 500 or so. For reds, the top dog is Touriga Nacional,
the backbone of Port and of increasing amounts of powerful, dry reds.
Tinta Roriz (aka Aragonez, aka Spain’s Tempranillo) works well on
its own, but is often blended, providing a D. Wade touch to Touriga’s
Shaq.
Its
location on the western edge of the Iberian Peninsula, a weak economy
in the early 1900s and a military dictatorship that lasted for almost
forty years essentially put Portugal in self-imposed isolation for
most of the twentieth century. Without outside intervention,
vineyards were left to their own devices —at a time when other
European countries were playing Twister to see who could plant the
most international varietals.
