Standardby Julie6 Comments

I keep buying bags of lemons, thinking one day I’ll make a pan of lemon bars. They used to be in regular rotation – I’d make them so often I knew the recipe by heart – sometimes plain, sometimes with cranberries, coconut, blueberries or chopped rhubarb scattered over the base before the filling went on top. Everything goes well with lemon – especially a buttery shortbread base. I offered to bake a few things for a small memorial service – a little something to go with coffee and tea – and lemon bars seemed a good fit. The occasion reminded me of my grandma’s funeral, and of the small group of ladies in the old, high-ceilinged, whitewashed church kitchen, baking and arranging small squares – dainties – on trays. Nanaimo bars, matrimonial slice, those peanut butter marshmallow bars, butter tarts, triangles of egg salad sandwich on white bread and tuna on brown. I imagined how many times they had done this over the years –Continue reading

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Standardby Julie22 Comments

Second day of school. I offer this rebuttal: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! We’re making the leap from pie pans to lunchboxes. No biggie. It’s really not so bad – fall is my favourite time of year. I get all nostalgic and organizational and back-to-school pumped, without the teenage angst. (I’ve managed to hang on to my teenage skin, however.) Besides, right now I’m poolside (OK, the inflatable in my mom’s back yard that’s mostly a watery grave for hundreds of bug carcasses), Coke slurpee in hand, and the car thermometer reads 34 degrees. It’s still summer, despite these 6 1/2 hour interruptions in the middle of the day. The difference is I’m back to paying attention, to catching up and clearing out and organizing and noting deadlines in red on my calendar. Schedules constrict, expectations rise and all that. Aaaaaand I was just strafed by a sluggish wasp, who triggered me to grab madly for the bug zapper, upending my slurpee onto my laptop and into my shoe.Continue reading

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Standardby Julie12 Comments

Can this be short and sweet? That’s what people want on a Saturday morning- am I right? (Unless Molly has a new post up – it’s a good morning when something from her pops into my RSS feed.) So. I learned last week that bourbon blondies are my friend Gwendolyn‘s go-to recipe for ski trips and weekends with friends. That same day, chatting with my roomie about what we should buy/bake/pack for our weekend at the Food Bloggers of Canada conference (such a great event, if you have the opportunity to go next time, do!), Jan offered to bake a batch of drunk (bourbon) blondies – her go-to recipe for get-togethers, she said. When two of my favourite food writing people have a go-to recipe, I need to try it. Right?

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