Photo: Lamb Cranberry Patty Melts from Dana's Top Ten Table

Lamb is a meat choice that's trending up with Canadians. In fact according to Norma Collette, one of the head honchos at the Ontario Sheep Marketing Association, demand has sky-rocketed to the point where Ontario producers can only keep up with 50% of the local consumer demand for this red meat. And from what I hear from industry insiders, that story is true in other provinces, too.

Are you curious about cooking with lamb but not sure where to start or how to branch out beyond mom's roasted lamb leg with mint sauce? Below I've listed some classic lamb dishes and provided a brief description of each one. I encourage you to use my list to find recipes that will appeal to your family. Although lamb isn't a top ten dinner time choice yet. You'll find it makes a nice change from the ordinary.

• Navarin of lamb: A ragout of mutton (mature lamb) containing potatoes and various spring vegetables such as turnip. This classic French dish gets its name from the French word for turnip, navet.

• Braised lamb shanks: A popular “bonne femme” or French Bistro dish. Braised lamb shanks frequently turn up on trendy Canadian menus in cool weather.

• Stuffed milk lamb: a Kurdish recipe featuring a whole, milk fed lamb filled with a stuffing made from dried apricots, rice and pan-fried giblets.

• Irish Stew: an unbrowned stew of neck mutton, potatoes and onions. Traditionally (and deliciously!) served with pickled red cabbage.

• Roast leg of lamb: A British Sunday dinner favourite served with mint sauce. Modernize this classic buy making a fresh sauce made from mint leaves, olive oil, garlic and a little white wine vinegar.

• Shish Kebobs: Originating in Turkey and eventually spreading to the Balkans and the Middle East, these lamb or mutton skewers were traditionally made from nuggets of marinated meat alternating with nuggets of fat (which basted the meat during grilling). Today kebobs, minus the fat, are a standard item in Canadian Greek and Middle Eastern restaurants and are often served in pitas with tzatziki, a garlicky yogurt sauce.

• Sali Boti: An Indian wedding specialty for Parsi people. This dish features tender lamb cubes stewed with freshly ground spices, dried apricots and straw potatoes.


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As regular readers of this blog and my Topline Trends newsletter know, I spend a lot of time researching new products so that I can discuss trends. In the course of almost every business day I see a mention or news release of at least one new drink. Over the last several years many of these new releases have been for energy drinks. Some are formulated to appeal to athletes and others are designed for hardcore partiers. I thought I'd seen it all until I came across an energy drink designed specifically for Christians.

1in3Trinity is definitely unique in its category. When I contacted the manufacturer for more information, this is what their vice president had to say: “Our company is aggressively teaming up with popular Christian music artists and athletes, fusing faith, fashion and music to reflect a bold Christian lifestyle. Our brand is truly the place where fashion meets truth-and where art expresses God's love.”

Although this very earnest woman couldn't send me a sample of the drink (it's not yet available in Canada) she did send me wishes to “continue to abundantly receive love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” All much appreciated sentiments but I ask you, if a person had self-control would they really buy a drink like this one?


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Given the many books for sale on dream analysis, it seems like there must be a lot of people having interesting and enigmatic dreams. I feel left out. My own dreams are rather mundane; I'm often just shopping or doing regular routine stuff in my dreams (I hate to admit it but sometimes I'm cooking in my dreams – talk about mirroring reality.)

Worried about being left out while others are having a rich and textured dream life, I sought help. And, as is so often the case, the cure for what concerns me turns out to be cheese!

You see a 2005 study carried out by the British Cheese Board has produced conclusions that eating different cheeses can affect our dreams.

The researchers studied 200 late night cheese eaters and found that not only does eating cheese make falling asleep easier, but that the type of cheese you eat influences the type of dreams you'll have. They proved their point by each night giving study participants 20 g of a specific kind of cheese before bed. In the end they found that if you eat:

• Cheddar you're more likely to dream about celebrities.
• Stilton you'll have bizarre dreams.
• Brie you'll have nice relaxing dreams if you're a girl but inscrutable dreams if you're a boy.
• Red Leicester you'll dream about work.
• Cheshire you'll dream of nothing at all.

No one knows why different cheeses encourage different kinds of dreams but scientists suspect that tryptophan, one of the amino acids in cheese, helps to reduce stress and leads cheese eaters to sleep well in general. Finally, I have a scientific reason to eat cheese and crackers before bed. Life is good!


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When I was writing Dana's Top Ten Table, I wasn't surprised to learn that chicken is one of the top 10 things that people eat for dinner. In fact, it turns out that Canadians eat 31.8 kg of chicken per person each year. I guess this isn't surprising considering the myriad cuisines and cooking methods that can be used to prepare this subtly flavoured white meat.

Although chicken has been a top 10 favourite Canadian dinnertime choice for decades, the way we use it in recipes has evolved over time. When I was a kid, my mom -- like most people -- used to buy a whole chicken and cut it into pieces. Chicken was a starting point for many of our meals but it came into the house in pretty much the same way regardless of how it would need to be butchered before it was used.

Today our chicken purchasing habits are very different. We most often purchase chicken that is already cleaned, and cut appropriately to be used in a specific recipe; or we buy whole chickens to be roasted intact.

According to the Chicken Farmers of Canada, the cut of chicken we're choosing more often is skinless chicken legs, drumsticks or thighs. In fact, 35 per cent of Canadians purchased these cuts in 2006; that's a 12 per cent increase since the last time our poultry-buying habits were measured in 2004.

Although dark meat is slightly higher in fat than breast meat, I'm thrilled to see this trend. I find that dark meat is more flavourful and juicier than white. As a result, it is far more suitable for using in stir-fries, on the grill or in slowly simmered stews and soups where white meat often becomes tough and rubbery.

So the next time you're thinking about serving chicken for dinner, consider choosing skinless chicken legs, drumsticks or thighs to check out this trend for yourself.


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Anyone who has ever chosen reading material solely based on the front cover will agree that sometimes the title can be better than the ensuing story. Such was the case in my real life earlier this month. I was scheduled for one of my frequent Canada AM appearances and slept through my alarm. Suddenly I was wakened by battle cries and my son saying, "Take that, ogre!" I jumped out of bed not in a panic about war in my house, that's a regular occurrence when you have a son hooked on World of Warcarft, but anxious about missing my segment.

As I hastily showered -- no time to exfoliate that morning! -- the perfect title for my morning crisis popped into my head: "How World of Warcraft Saved my Career". Now, if that title were on a magazine cover, people would snap up copies, right? Regrettably, they'd feel gypped when they read the story and discovered that I got to the studio only 15 minutes behind schedule but still in plenty of time for my segment. The End.

Interestingly sometimes the opposite can be true as well. I think I write really great cookbooks that are as fun to read as they are reliable to cook from. But, despite my creativity in the kitchen and on a conceptual level, I'm usually not great with titles, especially cookbook titles. In fact, of my five books, the two with the best titles were named by other people.

Last Dinner on the Titanic, my first book, was named by Hugh Brewster, a visionary publisher with a flair for the dramatic. And Pantry Raid got its wonderful double entendre name as a result of conversation two smart people had without me. What happened was my art director friend Adrian Doran told his friend Laurie McPhail about the book I was writing and that I was stuck and only had a working title: Out of the Cupboard. Smart Laurie heard about the concept and she said, "Wow, it sounds kinda like a pantry raid!"

As soon as I heard her title, I knew it was exactly what I'd been looking for. Regrettably, I don't always have such inspired friends and colleagues around when I need them. When it came to naming my latest book, the rather cryptically entitled Dana's Top Ten Table, I enlisted a committee of big brains but the perfect name remained elusive.

Fortunately, I can find solace in the fact that there are many more poorly named books on the bookstore shelves. Don't believe me? Check out this Disney title called Cooking with Pooh. How that title got past an editor, a sales team and a publisher is truly a puzzle!


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