Author: David

This week, with Steph off on a yoga retreat, and Shawn and I just off, we decided to just have our trio for MND.  When we saw how much food their was, we knew we needed reinforcements and called in Luke, because no one eats like a young Aussie.  I thought it would be the perfect night for Indian food, so we made a Greek feast.

Once we were gathered on Steph’s deck, with wine in hand, and the BBQ on standby, we started into our appetizers. Nothing like some grilled pita, tzatziki, and taramasalata.  This just didn’t seem to be enough, so we thought to add either grilled octopus, or stuffed vine leaves.  Then again why not both?  Then again, we love our Greek village salad.  Thankfully it all fit on the little table.  I have to say I was impressed how much we managed to polish off. read more

Passion Fruit Pavlova

So this Monday we have one of our regular guests.  Dave and I arrived at Steph’s with our usual accoutrements to serve our dinner and lo and behold Steph and Bruce were already sitting on the deck, chatting and enjoying a glass of wine.  We quickly put our stuff inside and a glass of wine was placed in our hand. Now, we were ready to start!  A last minute addition to our guest list was Luke, who arrived a little later.  This Monday the menu is heavily influenced by Asian cuisine.  The starter was Lobster Summer rolls with a chili mayonnaise : a dish I had attempted before but I think this time I have gotten the knack of tightly rolling them. read more

We missed a few Mondays while Steph was away at Podium. Luckily, we  have a set of her house keys and made ourselves  at home and started prepping since Steph wasn’t going to be home until 7PM.  She was greeted by Enzo (our dog) whilst coming up the driveway.  A glass of wine was quickly placed in her hand and we sat down to get caught up.  The weather was ideal so we ate al fresco on the deck. We started with a beautiful Tomato Egg Drop soup.

Tomato Eggdrop soup

Tomato Eggdrop soup

Tomato Eggdrop soup

This is a lovely and fragrant soup with notes of ginger, kaffir limes leaves, Thai chile,  and cilantro.  A nice rich soup, with a bit of a zing at the end. Check out the lovely dappled sunlight in the pictures. read more

We are now officially in the off season, meaning we no longer have to rush off to rehearsal and we can now take our time and savour the fruits of our labour and enjoy our company.  Tonight, our guests are Rob Castle and Joanne.  The meal tonight is clearly Thai inspired and consist of three dishes we have never made before. Let’s hope everything tastes as good as it sounds on the page. First, we start with a riff on crab cakes. In this version the crab cakes are bbqued on cedar planks and served with a Thai cucumber relish. read more

Planked crab cakes

When life gets rough, it can be therapeutic to turn to those things that seem familiar. For us, we cook and we gather to break bread.  This week, I needed a hug, so who better to invite than Trish…  Recently our friend Luke worked front of house, for Trish’s recital, and they have become fast friends… If I may quote his favorite part of the show, it was her rendition of “If you’re good to Mama, from Chicago” and as he described it, her boob juggling…. So with our trio, Trish and Luke, we gathered to break bread and share. read more

To our few but very faithful followers, we apologize for being so late with updates.  Truly we just have not had the heart. Losing someone so influential in our lives as Nanny-Mom-Jo has just left us with a huge gap in our hearts and our lives. For myself, it’s hard to put myself out there, when I feel so empty.  Finally I have forced myself to sit at the keyboard for a little blogging therapy, and hopefully start to emerge from the cocoon of grief. I wrote a short blog entry about Mom, but just couldn’t post it at the time. If you like you can access it here. read more

Lobster salad with green beans, corn and bell peppers

What can I say about this past weekend?  Two world premiers of new Canadian works, in one weekend. The first was a new opera by Peter-Anthony Togni and Sharon Singer.  I am always wary of new operas, and I probably shouldn’t be. Isis and Osiris was really excellent.  Staged with minimalist set and costumes, and a nine piece orchestra, this was still a large production for Opera in Concert. The singers were all on their game, especially Michael Nyby, as the dastardly Seth. When you consider that Michael Barrett (Osiris) stepped into the role only 2 weeks beforehand, it’s amazing how polished he was. read more

Gateau St. Honoré

This is a special week, for Monday Night Dining. It’s Easter Monday, so no rehearsal, which gives us time to relax after our meal. This is also Steph’s birthday week, so we will celebrate a day early. Easter is always a thoughtful time for me, with lots of build up to the day. This year was a bit of a low-key affair, as Shawn had rehearsals all weekend, but we still managed to have a quiet little dinner, to celebrate the occasion. For MND we want to celebrate Steph’s birthday, with proper sense of occasion. We had our dear friend Lois on hand to help with the celebration. read more

For Monday night dining, this week, we wanted to keep things simple, due to all of the events going on in our lives, with upcoming world premiers of Stephanie Martin’s Babel, and Opera in Concert’s world premier of Isis and Osiris. As we were trying to come up with some dishes that we could do, without much prep, Shawn came across a package of quails in the freezer.  “Well we need to make some room in here.”  And thus it was done….  To heck with simple, let’s debone quails. read more