As the days get shorter, the leaves fall from our favorite trees and it rains from the ground up ( atleast here in BC ) our kitchens are changing too. Away goes the BBQ to a covered location and out comes the slow cooker. This time of year is great for chefs and homecooks alike, often times the low and slow cooking methods draw out the best flavours and our houses are filled with the fragrances of braised meats, stews, chilis, roasted meats and fresh baked pies. Dig out your favorite cookbook and chop, chop.....

Hello again, as I had envisioned, the free time I had to keep this blog updated has fallen to the wayside with the back to school, my wife back to work and 3 kids climbing the curtains and chomping on our ankles! As any parent that has a few children knows, the challenges continue to pile up as time goes on and you learn to cope as certain things ( such as my blog ) fall by the wayside. Anyhow, now is one of my favorite time of the year from a culinary point of view....we move from quick and fresh preparations to low and slow. Yes, comfort food returns! Great! As time flys over the next few days I will begin to change over and move into some more seasonal cuisine and tips for that matter! Please stay tuned and continue to check back, I will have new tips, recipies and for sure pictures of our dinners for you all to enjoy!

So, over the course of the last few years, our 8 year old Riley has kept us well entertained with his take on the English language. I will keep adding to this as need be and finally after all these years of saying that we " have to start a list of his 'words' , finally have get ready for some serious belly laughs! Some are self explanatory and some I will put into the context from which he used them:

- "Yester-year"....kinda' makes sense now, doesn't it?

- "Principal Obama"......

- "Once in a time"

- We were at the petting zoo looking at a pot bellied pig feeding her babies and he says " look at all her gutters"

-Coming home from that same petting zoo we passed by our local lagoon on the way home and he says " check out all that 'allergy' on the water"

-"side bangs", aka...side burns

-hopping grass, aka Grass Hopper

-Here we were shopping and he tells us he wants to bring hot food to lunch with him and hands us a " furnace"....aka....thermos

-Tynol....aka...Tylenol

-"Please could you give me a 'piece of quiet' "

Surely there will be more to come. and as they do, we'll keep you up to date! Hope you had a good a chuckle as we did!

Wow! For all of you that are as inspired by Japanese cuisine as I am, Fujiya should be a destination point for you to build a foundation in your cupboard for a culinary journey! Located in Victoria, this gem has it all. All ingredients both for your cupboard and your fridge are neatly organized in a very small space, there are several freezers full of delicacies awating your tastebuds. Most of the store is not "english friendly", I would say about 90% of the ingredients in the store is in Japanese so if you have a few extra bucks, grab some sauces, dressings, vinegars, nori, rice bring them home and experiment with them...trial and error is a great way to go to keep your inner foodie entertained! I have rarely had misses in this place by the way. On your way out grab some sushi from the back, all in made in house and prepared through out the day and evening....trust me, you will never get anything "old" as this place is smoking busy all the time, exactlly what you want from a store like this! Go grab some today, you will not be disapointed!

Well, after the massive tsunami of sushi restaurants flooding our BC coast over the past decade, another one popped up in the shopping mall a few years back. Taking over a Vietnamese style restaurant that was a tad "shady", the location has a captive audience of a few hundred people who work in the complex and frequent the mall. I have been a dozen times or so and feel it needs recognition. I am a lover of all things Japanese. From a culinary standpoint, the Japanese culture is both beautiful to look at, and even better to eat. So, with that said, in all of my experiences, I have never had a bad one. The service, nor the decor is the greatest, but the food more than makes up for it. I have had many different offerings from the menu and my latest included tuna sashimi and the "hot night roll". The sashimi was cut by a skilled hand and presented very cleanly on a nest of daikon and one solitare shiso leaf...very elegant. The tuna was the perfect chilled temperature for my palate and melted in my mouth. The next course was the "hot night roll"...delicious, and far from the tradtional sushi you would find in Japan, but for me this "twisted" version of a few classics put together some great flavors. This roll filled with prawn tempura, crab and topped with a braised tuna belly is a flavor explosion in my mouth, the unagi sauce drizzled underneath the roll is the perfect balance to the salty tuna belly ( braised in a light soy sauce ). The prawn adds the crunch, while the rice and other textures round out a great roll. The prices are reasonable and the chefs are very prompt in their preparation. Now, if the service could pick up it's feet, this place could be a real winner! As it stands, I will continue to return. Give it a try on your lunch break, or bring some home for dinner. Yummy.

Ah yes, one of the last long weekends of summer and the older boys are camping with the inlaws...a week end of culinary frustation averted! ( for us at least )

The baby however is well on the way to discovery: we have now had yams, butternut squash, pears, peaches and the ever famous...Baby Mum Mum's. All has gone with out incident, although some amazing faces have come to be. The wife and I have had a nice bit of peace and quiet. We have enjoyed a few relaxing meals of sushi, fish and chips, and some great BBQ. Stay tuned for more culinary adventures!

Well, a few weeks back I went onto the back yard to retreive a few figs from one of our test trees we have on our property. I call this a test tree as I had a conversation with an Italian fellow who told me to leave figs that don't ripen on the tree that year, they will give you an early crop for next year. And low and behold, I left all last years fruit on the tree all winter and sure enough, a BUMPER crops of figs, the tree was just dripping with them....I waited until they were just perfectly soft and you could see their natural "honey" just about to burst from the bottom of thier swollen skin. I walked out into the yard with a bowl in hand only to discover they were ALL gone! What? I just couldn't believe it, the day before, there were dozens and dozens. Yup, the fury masked bandits strikes again! They ate every last one.....on a side note, our neighbors a few weeks later had all their peaches and cream corn destroyed by the same vermin! Ugh.

Welcome to my new blog, launched July 30th, 2013 I will try and keep it as entertaining as possible and let you all see into the life of a Vancouver Island chef and his family and their journeys both daily, and from a culinary aspect too! Enjoy! RSS feed.

Well, here we are at another crossroads of introducing a one year old to the wonders of finger food while struggling to get the older boys ( 7 and 8 ) to realize there's more to the world than quesadillas, chicken nuggets and sliders. While the baby takes bite after bite, making horrible faces when testing the new world of finger foods looking more like a drooling chipmunk, we battle to intoduce new items into our older boys' repetoire. You too have the same challenges? We understand and continually try to introduce new foods and constantly listen to the moaning..."what's this?" ...lovely, isn't it. To date, it's almost worth teaching them the ropes of the culinary world, and setting them free to eat grilled cheese 3 times a day, 7 days a week. Any ideas come greatly appreciated, in fact, just this week I ( the chef of the household ) just plain came to the end of my rope and passed the reins onto my wife Leah. By the way...she self admittedly doesn't cook...should be interesting. Last night the kids had some bbq chicken, broccoli, carrots and some instant pasta....it took an hour and a half for them to finish...lol....more to come...gotta' go!