Getting ready for the festive season isn’t just about ensuring we have enough Christmas balls and twinkly lights, it’s about planning what we will serve before, on, and after the big day.
Leanne Smoliak
Autumn is the best time of the year to have impromptu casual dinner parties. e larder is full, at least ours is.
The common denominator for my husband Brad and I has always been food.
Gido’s Farm is soon to be in full swing, and our backyard this year will struggle to contain all its glory. Why? We installed a greenhouse last year and that means more seedlings than ever need a home in our garden.
Just the thing after the excesses of the holidays
Our favourite part of the holiday season is staying in and having our own mini-cocktail parties. We pull out the stops and open our finest wine (especially bubbles) indulge in chilled oysters, paté or a classic jumbo shrimp cocktail, or feast on one of our favourite meals, cioppino, with an entire baguette.
We had some of the best eggs, hash browns and sausages in diners that had been around for 85 years and fantastic Reuben sandwiches from roadside truck-stops delivered by waitresses who had been working there since the sign went up.
Antonio is the first to arrive, the last to leave and never disappoints
When Brad and I married over 31 years ago, Brad’s idea of a yard was a concrete slab
Every parent of adult children has been caught saying ‘it feels like it was just yesterday that you were born.’
My husband Brad recently closed the doors to his 10-year-old business, Kitchen by Brad Smoliak, in downtown Edmonton