Dish: Memories, Recipes, and Delicious Bites

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Kane, a columnist for the Toronto Star, has compiled 75 of her columns
and more than 100 of her favourite recipes into a whirlwind tour of her
encounters with food and those who prepare and sell it. Each column is
short—two or three pages—yet each succeeds in exploring in some
small way the bonding that occurs when people share a love of food. The
columns cover subjects as varied as lunch with a movie star and a visit
to a shelter for the homeless, interviews with celebrity chefs and
visits with her former nanny. She flits from private homes to top-rated
restaurants, from potluck at her own home to delis and bakeries in
Canada, the United States, England, and Europe. She touches on
fair-trade coffee, raw food, TV food shows, local produce, and numerous
cookbook authors and chefs. The food discussed in the columns, and
shared by recipes, covers traditional Canadian fare (chocolate chip
cookies, scrambled eggs, shepherd’s pie, Caesar salad), nostalgia
(banana bread, toad-in-the-hole, vanilla cupcakes, Waldorf salad) and
lots of more exotic dishes, often with an international touch (souse,
perogis, rosti, lamb tagine). In essay after essay, she shares the job
of making food and demonstrates her belief that “writing about food
means … writing about life.” The book verbalizes Kane’s philosophy
that food is a great equalizer and that “sharing and preparing food
can feed and heal body and soul.”

The author’s enthusiasm, honesty (“everything and everyone’s a
column”), and energy do much to offset a weak, sophomoric writing
style and make the collection a fun addition to any “foodie’s”
bookshelf.