Recipe Swap, May 10, 2012

Make more muffins If you bake, muffins are probably one of your most frequent productions. To your mothers and grandmothers, who had plenty of recipes for small quick breads, though, muffins may have been somewhat new or “trendy.” I recently came across a Country Guide column from August 1984 where writer Kathy Baranovsky described muffins

Recipe Swap, April 12, 2012

Asparagus reigns as a favourite It sounds like the name of a Roman ruler, and for a while it dominates like one in our gardens and fridges too. I’m talking about asparagus, of course, which may show earlier and oftener this spring. As those who grow it know, you can be picking every day as



Recipe Swap March 29, 2012

Spring out of bed and eat “like a king” Even if you’re not a morning person it’s so much easier getting up with earlier sun these bright spring mornings. It’s also more tempting to skip breakfast when the weather’s fine and there’s so much to do outside. But the old saying “breakfast like a king


Make The Grade

As children start a new school year, parents start getting back into morning routines. Adding eggs into school-day breakfasts can help kids make the grade. Research has shown that children who eat a nutritious breakfast that is high in protein perform better at school. They need proper nourishment to give them the energy they need

High Prices May Push Bacon Off Menus

The recent royal wedding celebrations at London’s Buckingham Palace featured bacon sandwiches on the menu for the morning after the night before. The fact that bacon featured so prominently alongside other delicacies in such revered surroundings is quite fitting given that bacon prices are closing in on all-time highs and look set to continue pressing


Breakfast Never Needs To Be Boring

ith the sun up earlier each morning now, many of us are getting earlier starts to the day. Mornings should always include eating breakfast, of course, yet many of us skip it. I’ve seen reports that say about 40 per cent skip breakfast, often with the notion that it will help with weight loss. (The

Enjoying The Cupcake Revival

We yearn for certain foods for lots of reasons, but a big one is nostalgia. We will always love what we enjoyed eating as little kids. So as more of us hit middle age, the comeback of the cupcake is no surprise. Food magazines everywhere are carrying recipes and photos of cupcakes these days, reminding


The Difference One Ingredient Makes

One bite of these delicious muffins and I had to know what the baker’s secret was. It was the use of pure vanilla extract, explained Maureen Penner of Carman, who’d made them. She’s used it ever since friends brought her some from California a few years ago. This piqued my interest because we’d just been

Celebrate Local Flavours

Celebrating Local Flavours was the theme of the evening kickoff to the 2011 Direct Farm Marketing Conference held in Portage la Prairie March 4 and 5. Twenty direct marketers of fine jellies, greenhouse-grown greens, artisanal baked goods, wines, gourmet sausages and other fine Manitoba-made foods and beverages brought their wares for the public to sample.