Author Archives: mykitchenandotherstories

It is kinda weird, this compulsion I have to leave the serenity of my lakeside home and go willingly to the insane intensity that is Toronto. From my deck I talk on the phone to my friends there and I can hear them and imagine them, in their homes on the streets I know soContinue reading “Toronto Love”

Three years ago on Valentines day my mother, six weeks before her 90th birthday, died. It was sudden, but not unexpected. She was done with her evermore restrictive and boring life. I could hear the desperation in her voice the last dozen times I talked to her on the phone from my home on VancouverContinue reading “Art Matters”

Twenty years ago this month I arrived in Oaxaca on a second class bus from wonderful chaotic Mexico City. It was early December and I had planned on spending a month studying Spanish and exploring the city and the area. On the walk from the bus station to my hostel I encountered a seemingly randomContinue reading “Christmas in Oaxaca”

I am posting this blog on the ninth anniversary of my Jimmy’s death. He died of an overdose of fentanyl that was prescribed by his doctor. He was 42. Like most addicts Jimmy experienced physical and mental trauma at a young age. He coped as well as he could but struggled and depended on variousContinue reading “Love, Oysters, Death”

The first time I ate or even heard of jerk was in Negril, Jamaica with my sister Madeline in March 1984. We were staying in a tiny bamboo shack on one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. We stumbled across a beach bar called De Bus one evening…named for an old school busContinue reading “Jamaican Holiday”

When I was a 21 I bought a plane ticket to Lisbon and set off to travel around Europe. I spent a few days in that beautiful city. It is built of old stone, brick streets, crumbling colonial era buildings and concrete high rises. Old and cold. So I took a train to the sunnyContinue reading “Caldo Verde, my ode to the Algarve”