Open View Gardens

Just a short while ago, I thought I’d be sitting in a fabulous Indian restaurant in London right about now, during a two-day stopover on  the way to Fes, Morocco for a month to think, to write, to cook, to take photos, to taste living in that incredible city. And then on to Italy for […]

When I first dreamed up Open View Gardens, I wanted to help expand our sense of what we grow and eat locally, and to encourage community building by exploring our culinary diversity. As our mission reads: “Growing food grounds us in the relationships between earth and nourishment; preparing food brings us into relationship with our […]

When I first started planning a trip to Bruges, a gorgeous medieval city in north-western Belgium, food immediately came to mind. I imagined walking the ancient, winding streets along the canals and stopping for a hot chocolate in a cozy café to warm up along the way, while my boyfriend dreamed of the sausage-and-frites stalls. […]

There’s nothing like coming home. Especially at Christmas time. Before packing my bags I wrote a list of all the foods I missed — almond butter, puff pastry tart, sweet potatoes, homemade corn tortillas, gado gado– and all the items I wanted to bring home with me: champagne vinegar, pomegranate molasses, raw cacao powder, cheddar […]

Elizabeth’s Note: After a brief pause, we’ve got a new guest post to share, this time from one of my close friends, Maxime Billick, a native of Montreal. I first met Maxime many years ago on a volunteer trip to Dominica (pronounced Domih-NEEKah and not to be confused with the Dominican Republic) in the Caribbean. I’ve […]

This past weekend cooking for my best friend Julia, who was visiting for a few days from England, I was reminded of how much I enjoy cooking for the people I love. I find pleasure in every aspect — the planning, shopping, preparing and eating of a meal I know will bring joy to the […]

I know I know… I own too many cookbooks.  Even I have to admit it now that I can no longer fit my collection into the kitchen bookcase and the shelves in the pantry cleared for the overflow. And yet I just bought another cookbook, a big heavy one.  Do I have a cookbook-buying disorder?  […]

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. My boyfriend and I had just enough time to settle into our new home in Mestre, Venice before discovering the food festival hosted in the main piazza just a few days after our arrival. Il gusto della cultura: una giornata di saperi e sapori or “The Flavor of […]

On a table in my house sits what most people, including my entire extended family, find quite bizarre, something they cannot align with what they know of me.  After all, I pride myself on being an ecological gardener who tries to consider the impact of my actions on all the inhabitants of the garden, not […]

It’s only been a week and a half since I arrived in Bologna and already I miss the variety of ingredients I was able to find in the United States. How ironic to be surrounded by traditional, local ingredients yet search for products that are anything but common in Italy. Suddenly, the Italian staples I […]