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Although this month’s Daring Baker’s challenge was to make one of my favourite pastries, time and life conspired to prevent me from rising to the challenge.

I’ll be back in triple double dare shape for next month, but in the meantime, I’ll be enjoying the handy work of other intrepid bakers. I hope you’ll sample their virtual wares, too: Daring Bakers Blogroll.

 Occasionally, we all need a little help to stand straight (especially after tequila!) and it turns out tomatoes are just like us.

I’ve learned a lot with my big gardening adventure experiment. One of my recent lessons is that tomato cages aren’t strong enough to support a healthy tomato plant. Stakes, I’ve learned, are the way to go.

When I planted my tomato seedlings in late May they were less than 6 inches tall and the cages I found at the local garden centre seemed more than adequate support for the mature plants I envisioned they would grow into; however, as you can see above, I was wrong. So very, very wrong. This picture was taken right after I got home from holiday two weeks ago. While I was away in the Yukon, my poor tomato plants had fallen and couldn’t get up!

It’s so hard for me to believe that in April these bushes, now waist high and laden with heavy fruit, were but mere tomato seeds. Their growth is really astonishing!

I made an emergency run to the garden centre and picked up some lightweight but stiff metal stakes and some stretchy garden tape. After working the stakes into the soil near where the plants are rooted, I carefully untangled the arms of each plant and did my best to tether them to the stakes. So far my bindings are holding and within the next day or so I’ll be eating tomatoes!

To heck with running away and joining the circus. If I go missing, look for me in New Orleans. I won’t be whooping it up on Bourbon Street but “soaking” up culture at the newly opened Museum of the American Cocktail.

Now that I read about their seminars and tasting events, I wonder how the world coped without a destination like this one before now? Can you imagine how great their gift shop must be?

Although most of us likely won’t finish this blog post and head for the airport to experience this museum today, I thought I’d share a cocktail inspiration that you can use at home right now.

Floral flavours and accents such as rose and hibiscus are hot beverage trends right now so I suggest that you pick up some Australian wild hibiscus flowers in syrup (available from the Designer Cocktail Company) and use them to make stylish cocktails like this hibiscus sour to create a stylish, museum quality cocktail experience!

Hibiscus Sour*

2 oz Whiskey
1oz Fresh Lime Juice
1 oz Pressed Pineapple Juice
3/4 oz Hibiscus Syrup
1/2 oz Pasteurized Egg White
Hibiscus Flower

Shake whiskey, lime juice, pineapple juice, hibiscus flower syrup and egg white vigorously in an ice filled cocktail shaker for 20 to 30 seconds then strain over cracked ice into an old fashioned glass. Garnish with a skewered Hibiscus Flower.

What was your signature drink this summer?

*Recipe and image courtesy of Designer Cocktail Company

My name is Dana McCauley and I am no longer a perfectionist.

After a couple of weeks away from home and work, I realized that I make a big deal of too many things. Take entertaining for example: I’ve been known to obsess over every detail before a party, staying up to all hours to get my house, the food and the table ready for a get-together. Last winter, I worked for two days to get ready for my Christmas Eve cocktail party and then stayed up until the wee hours of Christmas morning cleaning up. Was the party a wonderful success? Absolutely. Did my guests ooh and ahh over the food and the table? Certainly. Did I enjoy Christmas day? Not really. In fact, I had a pounding headache and a crick in my back that hurt when I stood or sat.

Refreshed from my holiday, I have a new outlook and attitude and I’m going to do my best to keep it up. See that table above? That level of detail was the old me. The new me eschews such finery! From now on guests will get what they get:
• If I have time to make something fabulous, it will be served. If I don’t, I’ll buy something.
• If my linen napkins are ironed and folded, we’ll use them. If not, paper will do.
• If someone offers to help with the clean up, I’ll gladly accept his or her help.
• And, from now on my larger parties are going to include a new budget line; I’m going to hire someone to help serve and clean up so that I can have my party, a good time and a clean house, too.

Do any of you dread entertaining because of all the schlepping and cleaning? If so, maybe you should join my new club.

If not, what strategies have you developed to help you enjoy your parties from the planning stages to unloading the dishwasher the morning after?

Photo credit: Martin Kouprie

This picture features a glass of iceberg-cooled scotch my husband drank earlier this summer in Newfoundland. While Martin loved this drink experience, I’m sure it won’t surprise you to learn that it never crossed his mind to have iceberg chunks shipped to our home in Ontario. That would be crazy, right?

After reading a few recent articles, I’m not so sure everyone reading my blog will agree. If the recent news about ice cube aficionadoism is the tip of a trend iceberg, then harvesting and selling glacial and ice floe ice may not be such a far-fetched idea after all.

Early last spring I wrote in my Topline Trends newsletter about ice aficionados who covet the disc-shaped ice chips available at quick service restaurants in the US such as Sonic and Taco Time. At these restaurants a glass of tap water is free of charge but a cup of ice cubes will cost $1 or more.

I thought this was pretty silly stuff but now I learn from a recent NY Times article that the ice snobbery trend is accelerating. From bottled ice to consumer awareness of branded cube makers such as Kold-Draft ice makers (which produces ice in three unique forms) and Hoshizaki machine (which can flake or cube ice in various sizes).

As result, ice is now a product that, at least for a select and privileged few, has gained an element of connoisseurship.

When I received a sample of Ice Rocks almost two years ago, I thought this product would be pretty much impossible to sell except as a novelty but now, I wonder if I was wrong.

What about you? Do you have strong ice preferences? Do you go for cubed or crushed? Do you chew it, suck it or let it melt in your drink? Go ahead, take the plunge and reveal your frozen water secrets.

For years I endured an electric range and oven (and yes, before you say it out loud, I will admit habitually overstating my misfortunes!). Since statistically few Canadian homes had gas, I couldn’t indulge my chef’s preference for this kind of appliance and still develop recipes for cookbooks, magazines and major corporations and be able to say that the cooking times would work for most people. I was sad in a stoic, noble way.

Thankfully, today many more Canadian (and American for that matter) households are installing gas stoves so I can have one again, too. (Although readers should know that I often do a final test of recipes I develop on an electric stove if I have any doubts about timing.)

When choosing my gas range I went for one with heavy-duty cast iron burner racks and pilot lights with automatic starters. Although I didn’t realize it until my range was installed and in use, another benefit of the model I chose is that it has a very low simmer setting. I use this ultra low setting often for braising since it makes slow cooking very efficient and allows me to coax the maximum tenderness out of tough cuts of meat such as brisket and shanks. Likewise, it makes regulating the temperature for poaching very easy, too. Interestingly, a friend of mine who purchased a very high-end gas cook top found that her flame could never be tamed adequately to use these two cooking methods. In fact, she had to use a slow cooker for all braising because her stove was just too hot on its lowest setting.

Whether I move one day or live long enough to wear this unit out, I’d replace it in a heartbeat. I love my gas range!

What kind of a stovetop do you prefer? Although all comments are welcome, I’d love to hear from any of you that have chosen the new induction models. I’m very curious to hear how home cooks like this technology.

If you’ve ever wondered how backyard gardeners deal when summertime travel and harvest season coincide, then this post is for you!

As it turns out, being away for over two weeks in August and leaving your garden to cope for itself is not the end of the world when you’re in the midst of the wettest summer on record. Not only was there no need to worry about my plants dehydrating, I came back to find that the garden was almost too moist in the low spots.

The side effect of this kind of moisture is that the weeds bolted as did water dense veggies like my cucumbers. As you can see from the picture above, my pickling cucumbers range from Chernobyl Betty-sized to the normal lovely pickle size I was hoping to grow. Although quite a few of my cukes are past the point of use, there are still blossoms and I found a number of smaller-sized specimens to cut up, sprinkle with cider vinegar and salt and serve to Oliver (one of his favorite TV time snacks!).

Besides putting them in the compost heap, does anyone have any ideas for things one can do with an overgrown cucumber? And, yes, since your mind went ‘there’ I will ask you to limit your suggestions to culinary uses only!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock somewhere in the desert where it’s too hot to want to drink tea or to store chocolate in its solid form, it won’t be news to you that chocolate and tea are hot trends. In the last two years literally hundreds of new products in both categories have been launched.

In fact, as I was compiling items for my editor at Canadian House and Home to consider for the November and December 2008 food news pages assigned to me, I was almost playing eenie-meenie-minie-mo to choose between all the tea and chocolate options.

So, when I got a packet containing samples of Chocolatea, a product line that combines 100% organic leaf teas with good quality Belgian (but oddly not organic) chocolate, I wasn’t terribly excited. I admired the pretty packaging and colourful press materials and set the sample bars aside.

Truthfully, I was skeptical about how a delicate flavour like white tea could stand up to a dominant force like bittersweet chocolate. I’d been down this road before with Dolfin’s massala chai and chocolate bar and hadn’t really loved the texture or found that the tea made the chocolate more delicious than it would have been on its own.

So, when I got a note from my blogger pal Cheryl Sternman Rule who writes 5 Second Rule saying that she had just eaten all of her samples in one sitting, I took notice and cracked open the very dark chocolate and white tea bar. Even as I was pulling back the foil, I was still skeptical. But as the chocolate melted smoothly on my tongue, I was wonderfully surprised to taste both tea and chocolate in balance. Since then I’ve tried several other flavours. The wild raspberry tea and dark chocolate is particularly lovely with a nice fruity finish.

What do you think of chocolate and tea? Are they the next cookies and milk or just a fad? I urge you to tell me your thoughts below and to read Cheryl’s post about Chocolatea so that you can experience her impressions first hand.

It seems that weddings are in the air for many of my young friends this year. Martin and I will have attended four weddings and as many wedding related parties in twelve months by the time Thanksgiving arrives.

I have to say that I’ve been impressed by the diversity of celebrations I’ve been asked to share. From traditional to quirky, the brides and grooms we know are letting their personalities shine through so that their weddings are anything but magazine layout knock offs. We’ve witnessed belly dancing and heard a bride pledge in her wedding vows to help her groom cope with the pain and anguish of being a lifelong Toronto Maple Leafs fan. Good times!

At a recent engagement party with a Hawaiian theme, I was particularly impressed by Heather and Mike, an enthusiastic young couple who trekked to T&T, bought whole coconuts and cleaned them to create pina colada glasses for the guests. (That’s Heather and Mike holding their own well-earned drinks above.)

Although the hostess had already taken every necessary step to make the party a success, I loved that this couple spent the afternoon before their party wielding machetes, joined in a mutual goal to encase alcoholic beverages in thematically sound barware. After all, if a couple can band together on a creative project that requires this magnitude of violence and still smile at one another, their chances of staying together have to be pretty damn good!

Have you been to a wedding or engagement party that entertained you in unexpected ways?  If so, tell us about it.

I spent my summer holiday in the far north exploring Alaska and the Yukon. One of the joys of a holiday that takes you to towns and cities with small populations is that you get to see entrepreneurial creativity in full flourish since the chains don’t see many of these markets as viable. Nowhere is this more evident than in the coffee houses of the north. Consider this list of whimsical coffee house concepts:

• Brewed Awakening (Ketchikan, Alaska)
• Pour House (Ketchikan, Alaska)
• The Black Bean: Burritos and Espresso to Go (Skagway, Alaska)

Fun stuff, no?

Sadly, I don’t think the residents of these towns fully appreciate how good they have it. I met a man in Juneau, Alaska who told me that when McDonald’s opened there several years ago that a 2-mile line up for food formed on opening day. Even if the line was only 200 yards long this is disheartening news. But, to make matters worse, the mayor of neighbouring Ketchikan had a plane load of Big Mac combos air-lifted out for his citizens (or at least cronies) to eat. (I guess he hadn’t been to the Sandpiper Café in Juneau where, despite being in Alaska, the hand formed burger patties are piled high with romaine lettuce and ripe tomato slices. An airlift of those burgers I could understand!)

My plea to you today, whether you live in a big city or in a backwater, is to find a locally owned food shop, restaurant or coffee cart and show them some love by making a purchase. And, if you want to tell others about these great local finds, I hope you’ll jot a note about them below.