Countdown to one sweet launch. On August 14th, Lyndsay Sung – one of Vancouver’s hyper-creative baker bloggers – will see the release of her first cookbook: Coco Cake Land: Cute and Pretty Party Cakes to Bake and Decorate, published by Roost Books. ~ ~ Inside you’ll find photos of her

Not all artists swoon over elderflowers. Shakespeare did call them ‘the stinking Elder.’  But to many, the little white flowers that precede the fat purple berry bunches smell heavenly. In Victorian floral messaging, the elderflower was said to represent compassion, kindness, humility or zealousness. 17th Century Dutch still-life painters often

Your task is to come up with a recipe inspired by the 1919 Manly MacDonald painting above. On your marks, get set, bake! What did you dream up? Canadian Chef Craig Flinn looked to the same Canadian War Museum painting for inspiration. “My mother owns an orchard in Port Williams,

If you are hiking in the deep woods and want to avoid a grisly bear encounter, the advice is clear: make lots of noise to let them know you’re coming. Avoid areas with fresh bear tracks and droppings. Keep your pets at your side and leave the bacon and fish fries

If you’re in the market for a spouse, eat your summer cherries with care. And by all means don’t leave four pits – or any pit multiplier of four – on your plate. According to an old British superstition, you can determine your wedding date by counting the cherry stones

The sweet-toothed among us know that the best part of baking is munching sugary ingredients. Back in the day, raw cookie dough was the thing – worth all manner of baker distraction and kitchen subterfuge. These days, what with all the free-floating salmonella horror stories, sneaking cookie dough doesn’t feel

Happy Italian Day! On Sunday June 10th, from 12 to 8 pm, Vancouver will celebrate Italian Day on Commercial Drive, aka Little Italy. ~ ~ Just in time for Italian Day 2016, the City of Vancouver made it official. Commercial Drive – from 4 blocks north of 1st Avenue to

Which Vancouver-born actor can be found in a red and black full-body tactical suit when he’s not trolling his favourite van der Woodsen and her traveling town pants? It’s Ryan Reynolds, of course, whose BC-filmed Deadpool 2 is now into the hundreds of millions. Reynolds can celebrate with a Rye ‘N

Three sips. That’s what it takes, according to the Summerland sommelier. The first will still have traces of your last taste – lunch, 3 pm chocolate, another wine. With the second sip, your mouth is preparing itself for the wine at hand. By the third sip, you are fully into

‘Charlie Bucket found himself standing in a long corridor that stretched away in front of him as far as he could see. The corridor was so wide that a car could easily have been driven along it. The walls were pale pink, the lighting was soft and pleasant. ‘How lovely