One of the adopted traditions of my family is to have egg nog offered during the Christmas holidays to family and friends. Egg nog is a milk-based drink that’s offered at supermarkets just before and during Christmas. It also has eggs, nutmeg and may contain other spices. Often it gets spiked with rum, whiskey or [...]

Here in Ontario we live about 90 minutes from the Canada/US border which is also where Niagara Falls in situated. The stretch of land that hugs Lake Ontario from just south of Hamilton to Niagara Falls is the Niagara wineland. More and more wineries are popping up and I can see that other agriculture/farming is [...]

I have a confession: when I bought an ice cream machine last summer it was for the sole purpose of making this ice cream – baklava ice cream. Inspiration comes from many: I first saw this concept at Jenn The Leftover Queen’s. There’s George Calombaris’ take on it and then there’s my friend David Tsirekas’ [...]

I’m not sure how to break it you but this ice cream has olives in it…Kalamata olives that is! Before you begin to make funny faces, squint, bunch up and raise your nose at me, let me explain. First, the olives in this ice cream do not have the briny lemon flavour that one is [...]

Last year, I read a book about the Fall of Constantinople – figured it would be a pretty good way to prepare for my second visit to Istanbul (and it did). In the book (besides reading about the many battles), I was also interested in the subplot of this period in history – the psyche [...]

Inspiration arrives via many avenues but the sweetest, most satisfying are born of fond childhood memories. My dad worked the restaurant business all his life. He never worked in a “Greek” restaurant per se but one knew a Greek was in the kitchen or the owners were Greek with one look at the menu. Souvlaki [...]

Your first question probably is, “why is this guy making ice cream in the middle of winter”? The second question may be, “what’s the difference between vanilla ice cream and French Vanilla”? Third question, “why bother making my own ice cream when I can buy good ice cream at the market”? All good questions  – [...]

I would to share the third recipe I’ve made using my recently purchased ice cream maker. I made this near the end of June and only just posting it now as I crave it, I want another scoop, another batch. I never used to like pistachio ice cream when I was young. I was turned [...]

Growing up in Canada, kids would enjoy many of the refreshments other kids in the world would to beat the summer heat. There was lemonade, Kool-Aid, soft drinks, watermelon, ice cream and popsicles. A hybrid of the latter two was the “creamsicle”. Picture a vanilla ice cream on a stick that was covered by a [...]

Today’s post marks another first for me, my attempt at gelato/ice cream. There is a difference between ice cream and gelato: ice cream contains a higher ratio of cream to milk than gelato does. Here I was thinking the reverse all these years (that gelato was the richer of the two). When they say “ice [...]