This week's example: I don't know what a Texas sheetcake is. I also don't know how it's different from a sheetcake when I'm talking to a customer at work who wants to make a special order of salads and cake for a party. My locally-raised co-worker insists that all sheetcakes are Texas sheetcakes, but I know that the sheetcakes on our price list are ( Read more... )

At our hokey little neighborhood supper club last night, I decided to really get into the scene with a highball and a taste of a central Illinois sandwich favorite called the Horseshoe. For a little history of the sandwich and a nice photo of it (didn't have my camera on me), see http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Sandwiches/HorseshoeSandwich. ( Read more... )

This blog will continue with tales of odd stuff in Normal. Just wanted to let folks know that I now also have a cooking-specific blog that I'll be updating with recipes and details of cooking experiments. The address is ( Read more... )

Finished and delivered my first award scroll in the new kingdom -- with two scrolls this year, I will now consider myself to be a calligrapher. Illumination I'm still leaving to other more capable hands until really need to learn how to draw something myself. The stash of blank scrolls that the local scriptorium keeps is impressive. I had a hard ( Read more... )

We joined up with Larry, another prof in Andrew's dept who also lives in our neighborhood, to mosey down to Uptown Normal to visit the Sweet Corn Blues Festival. The title says it all: there is a lot of corn and there is a stage where blues bands are playing. In between the stage and the corn, there are food vendors and sidewalk sale booths for ( Read more... )

This year, Stampede was not something to squeeze in during one day off from working late nights, but was something we could savor all day. With guest tourists! My brother Dennis and his girlfriend Carrie visited for a long weekend just before we moved out of Calgary, so we had to show them the last weekend of the Stampede.

( photos and writeups )

I found recipes for some Canadian traditional favorites in a book called A Little Canadian Cookbook by Faustina Gilbey.
It has all the best ones like tourtière (the French-Canadian meat pie for Christmas), butter tarts (what happens when you fill a tart with nothing but sugar and butter and maybe some nuts or raisins? this thing), Nanaimo bars (mmm ( Read more... )

The annual Calgary Stampede and Exhibition is in the middle of its 10-day run, and the city is letting out all its energy that it's been storing up for months anticipating this thing. This city throws the biggest party I've ever seen, with the most people involved in it, and it's all outside of the actual Stampede itself.

Everybody's a cowgirl or ( Read more... )

TIME OF DAY: when it’s still light out till 11 p.m. in mid-June ( Read more... )

Thanks to Andrew doing all the work in replacing the broken computer and setting up the new one, the expat in Canada is back ( Read more... )