When I started writing for The Kitchen Party, I was pretty confident in the kitchen and fairly sure that I didn't have that much more to learn. It's been startling to realize how much I didn't know - pressure cookers are all kinds of amazing, I cannot make a good pie crust, people will send you weird hate mail whenever you write about allergy stuff, and a good espresso maker will make my husband practically sob with happiness. It's been a lot of fun.I think that what we end up eating as a family says a lot about who we... More »

We collect Turn Of The Last Century children’s activity books, and some of the activities – taxidermy, anyone? – are a bit questionable now, while some of them – making candy and kites, “nutting parties” – are sadly rather lost. And that’s the way time goes, I guess, sweetness getting left behind along with all of the long-gone horrors. You can still do these things with your kids, but there’s an odd-element of playacting as you do, since we can only raise our children in the time we’re living in now…. I mean, I could wear a corset and a... More »

  So we threw a birthday party for our middle kid this weekend and even though our birthday parties are reasonably modest affairs, at one point during the post-party lull, my husband added up the tab and we both just about fainted. But it was WORTH it, even though we've spent our grocery money for the next two weeks and will have to live on the canned stuff deemed unworthy in other, wealthier weeks. What is having dusty bamboo shoots for dinner compared to the joy of one's child? My husband made that awesome Spongebob cake, of course. "I... More »

So something very bad almost happened to us last night. We were at my parent's house for dinner, and I was sitting beside The Girl. My husband had little kid duty and I was squabbling with my dad and taking an extra-large helping of mashed turnips - seriously, they're delicious - when The Girl decided that the food was moving around the table too slowly and upended a LARGE bowl  of gravy (still steaming from the stove) onto herself - her arms, her torso, her legs. She started screaming, and I yanked her to her feet and pulled her sodden, burning... More »

My husband is normally up and gone an hour before we even get up in the mornings, but last week saw him drinking coffee in the kitchen one day as the kids headed off to school. The kids waved out the door, he drank down his coffee, and as he kissed me goodbye, he said "I am SO, SO SORRY, Beck." And that is because mornings here are just awful. I am not a morning person. Not one of my children is a morning person. And in the short hour between getting up and leaving, they have to get their... More »

There are some things that my mom made when I was a child that I still remember with a poignant, nostalgic hunger: cinnamon buns at Christmas with white frosting and red maraschino cherries on the top (memorable because my mother, a responsible mother of the 70s and 80s, shunned red food colouring); tea biscuits with winter suppers, to be devoured afterwards with margarine and homemade jam; hot milk sponge cakes on lazy Sunday afternoons; pancakes on Saturday mornings while we watched HOURS of cartoons. It's funny what we take away from our childhood, this brief, haunting space of time. I... More »

Everyone is back to school/work today! I spent much of yesterday feeling a bit downcast about this, but now that everyone is out the door and my house is quiet - except for the happy Baby, playing with her Littlest Pet Shop toys from Christmas, and singing Jingle Bells again, God help me - it's quite lovely. And it's probably for the best that we're forced back into our regular routine, since having my husband home for nearly TWO WEEKS caused us to nearly get beri-beri or rickets or some other exotic malnutrition-related disease. I made some half-hearted Eating Healthier... More »

It's almost impossible for me to believe that it's nearly 2009, which sounds like a freaky-leaky sci-fi year and not a year that we actually will be LIVING in. I think that in my mind, real years start with 19-something, despite the fact that 2/5 of my household were born in the 2000s and another 1/5 was hanging out in diapers in the latter half of 1999. Still, though. 2008 hasn't been - and I'm knocking on wood here - that bad. It was pretty busy, but I managed to not nearly die this year, which is always a plus,... More »

We took a large group of little girls caroling on the weekend, which I'd dreaded for the past week. Last week, I walked around in this state of just constant stress - I'm having a ZILLION people over for Christmas dinner! I was taking a ZILLION little girls caroling on Saturday! And so I'd wake up in the middle of the night and wonder what exactly was wrong with my head that I'd sign up voluntarily for these things. Because we've had -30 temperatures for the past week - oh, that's been delightful - we had to make sure there... More »

Another snow day! On the last one, ten kids made it to school, which amuses me. The Girl has heard such wonderful things about snow days that she's insisting that she MUST GO, which also amuses me - I would never, ever have voluntarily missed out on a chance to legitimately Not Go To School as a kid (or now. School. Shudder.), but my daughter is made of different stuff. Yikes! There are gusts of freezing rain and howling winds wrapping themselves around my cozy house. I think I'm keeping her home, anyhow. This is a more wintry winter then... More »