One late summer day, many years ago, I had found some nice fresh crab meat at the market and also some beautiful sweet corn. My original idea was to make some nice corn pancakes, and when I found the crab, I decided to combine the two and invent a crab pancake recipe. It was a [...]
I was just watching some cooking and wine shows on TV and noticed that some of us in the food and wine business definitely take ourselves too seriously. I have to confess that I have a tendency to do the same thing myself at times, but it seems that the older I get the less [...]
Today we did some extensive food shopping at the Mercado de Jamaica as over the last 8 months the price of food in and around the area we have moved to, has increased dramatically. Now that we are finally motorized again we can easily go back shopping to that fantastic covered market that specializes in [...]
Last Wednesday I did not know what to prepare for my lunch for the next day as we did not have much time to go to the supermarket and we were running out of everything. I looked into the cupboard and found some cans of tuna and I decided to prepare one of my favorite [...]
Last weekend I was reminded by Normita that we have not had cheese fondue in a long time, especially since we did not have a fondue pot until recently and we have not even broken-in it yet. It is a dish we both like, but we normally indulge in it only a few times a [...]
Last night ’somebody who does not want to be named’ (SWDNWTBN), an experienced cook who excels at making fantastic soups, had a fun little adventure in cooking. People always assume that experienced cooks always get perfect results, but I am the first to acknowledge that I make my share of mistakes and blunders in the [...]
Yesterday Kurtito discussed at length the various Easter traditions that his family followed in Vienna. Today I want to talk a bit on how we celebrated in Québec. I grew up in a Catholic family and Easter was normally celebrated with the entire family getting together for dinner at my paternal grandparent’s house in St-Jovite. [...]
Every country with a noticeable Christian population has its own traditions around Easter. What’s more, there are even different traditions for subpopulations in a single country due to religious and regional distinctions. The longer the Christian history, the more diversity you will find and even in a small country like Austria with barely 8 million [...]
You might have noticed that posting has been light lately, so I wanted to briefly chime in and check around the place before resuming regular topical postings tomorrow. The last few weeks have been incredibly busy ones around here from both work and entertainment. Last Friday was the wedding of Marcelita, Normita’s younger sister, and [...]
Palm Sunday has mostly clerical traditions over here in Austria, a country with a noticeable catholic majority, though the nonbelievers are catching up. Typically kids take ‘palm twigs’ (willow catkin) to church and get them blessed and not much more. Also the palm weekend is the start of local school holidays and people in Vienna [...]