You don’t need pumpkins or squash for a delicious fall soup. Roasted cauliflower, sweet pear and nutty browned butter come together in a silky bowl of guaranteed autumn deliciousness. Roasted Cauliflower & Pear Soup with Browned Butter Simple ingredients create a layered, scrumptious experience for your taste buds. Ingredients: 1 large head of cauliflower, cut into florets2 ripe pears, peeled and cored, and halved…

Twenty-five years ago today, the world went about its usual routines. Someone skipped a donut on their way to work, telling themselves they would start eating healthier. Travellers packed their bags, making sure they had everything they needed for the next day's flight. Parents with babies and small children were organizing ways to keep their young ones entertained on those flights.

We’ve all seen them. The social media videos. The influencers telling us we need more protein. Then come the protein shakes, protein cookies, protein chips, protein cereal, and of course, the protein bars. Personally, I’ve never tasted any that didn’t remind me of sweetened drywall with a hint of cocoa. I do agree that eating enough protein is important. But before you spend a small fortune on processed snacks wrapped in shiny packaging, remember that real food has been doing the job all along.

There’s something so satisfying about growing basil from seed, watering it, and over just a few weeks seeing tiny sprouts turn into lush, fragrant plants; every handful feels like a little reward for your patience. Every summer, one of the things I look forward to is harvesting fresh basil from my garden and turning it into homemade pesto. The best part of growing basil is that after you harvest the leaves, the plant keeps growing all summer.

Eight years ago, I said goodbye to my husband, my best friend, and the calm to my chaos. It still feels impossible that eight years have passed since I last held his hand. Some days, it feels like eight years. Other days, eight months. And sometimes, eight days. That’s the strange thing about grief. Time moves forward, whether we’re ready or not, but grief doesn’t follow a calendar.

Canadian Italian Heritage Month To celebrate Canadian Italian Heritage Month, I’m sharing Ryan Abigail Maria Benetti O’Flanagan’s secret Sunday Sauce recipe. Yes, I know, her name is quite a mouthful, but there is a good reason for that, and it’s explained in her book, Decoy In Stilettos. The hero, Gabe Marchetti, commits the ultimate good son offence and declares that Ryan’s Sunday sauce is better than his mother's.

This blog post is dedicated to my son, who keeps insisting I write down Nonna’s traditional recipes. Apparently, he believes our family recipes deserve their own historical preservation society. Some recipes aren’t meant to impress dinner guests; they’re meant to remind you where you came from. Every Friday night, my mom made a dish we called pasta e patate, (potatoes and pasta).

I went to Farmers Pick for my usual monthly haul of imported Italian staples because, as a full-blooded Italian, I’m deeply passionate about olive oil quality and pasta brands. I stood in the bakery aisle holding a package of Almond Biscotti, turned it over a few times, as we do when we are contemplating such a purchase, and then I put it back.

Some recipes are carefully planned. Others are born out of kitchen chaos. That was exactly the case with these zucchini-eggplant patties. I started out fully committed to making stuffed eggplants and stuffed zucchini. I had the vegetables, the filling idea, the whole vision. Then came the first plot twist. The shells for both the eggplants and zucchini fell apart. No neat little boats, no elegant presentation, just a tray of shredded chaos.

The humble carrot goes into the oven looking perfectly ordinary and comes out sweet, caramelized, and smelling like you’ve suddenly become the sort of person who can casually whip up a five-star soup on a weeknight. My goal has always been to have at least three or four vegetarian meals each week. Unlike Ryan (the heroine in my latest release, …

It’s disappointing to me that there were no paparazzi lurking around after Cindy (formerly Cinderella) lost her glass slipper and her clothes at midnight. One minute she’s dancing at a ball, the next she’s sprinting down the palace steps, lost her stiletto and turned into a hot mess at midnight. And then, the next day, she’s the most eligible bachelorette in the kingdom.

People often ask how I choose titles for my novels. Sometimes they come straight from the story, as they did with What A Girl Wants and Once Upon A Kiss. Decoy in Stilettos took a different path. M…