Castillo de Canena Smoked Arbequino Olive Oil 250 ml, $33.95 available at fine food stores to order on line visit qualifirst.com Call us easily dazzled, but Shelf Life is well disposed towards a product whose website offers the option: ‘request visit to the castle’. Named for the Vano family’s 16th century pile on their estate [...]
Mini Oliva Single serve olive oil vials 12 X 14ml, $5.99 available at fine food stores for more information visit lavitaimports.com Salads are uneasy riders, which is to say that Shelf Life has always found it difficult to pack greens for take-away lunches. Carrot sticks are fine, but at the office or on the go [...]
McClure’s Spicy Bloody Mary Mix 32 fl. oz. $8.79 available at fine food stores for more information visit McClure’s Pickles Don’t know about you, Canada, but we could use a drink. It’s been an infuriatingly persistent winter, and it seems like just yesterday Shelf Life toiled over a massive holiday dinner. Now Easter is nearly [...]
Yakami Orchard Yuzu Mararedo (Marmalade) 300g, $19.99 available at fine food stores for more information visit waimports.com In the world of citrus, yuzu is considered quite the bomb. This rugged, strongly aromatic fruit is highly valued in Japanese cuisine but almost never eaten from whole, as the skin is tough (but makes superb zest) and [...]
Alba Lisa – All Natural Gourmet Food Jalapeño Cream 300 ml., $8.29 available at fine food stores for more information visit albalisagourmetfood.com Back in the day, when Mexican-born Lisa Alba settled in Toronto her first priority was to unpack her tortilla press, and Shelf Life likes to think that her all-natural Mexican products came out [...]
Bella Cucina Artful Food Meyer Lemon Relish 212g, $11.99 available at fine food stores for more information visit bellacucina.com Aside from its too-precious name – calling yourself Artful is awful – everything about Bella Cucina Artful Foods is impressive. Twenty years ago founder Alisa Berry opened a café in Atlanta; today her much-loved global brand [...]
Sticky Spoon Carrot Jam Sticky Spoon B.C. Kiwi Jam 250 ml; $9.95 available at select B.C. retailers for more information on retailers or to contact, visit stickyspooonpreserves.blogspot.ca Vancouver’s Granville Island Market features a gem of a locavore shop called Edible B.C., and every year Shelf Life likes to investigate its new wares (the story so [...]
The Italians have the right idea: if life hands you lemons, make agrumato. On the Adriatic coast in the province of Abruzzo, agrumato is produced during the final stages of the harvest. Whole, fresh citrus fruit is crushed simultaneously with ripe olives (agrume means citrus). Because the oil from the fruit and the oil from [...]
Christine Cushing’s Fired Up – Roasted Pepper Spread 270g, $7.99 available at fine food store for more information visit christinecushing.com These pert and irresistible red peppers are the result of a Eureka moment; Cushing was traveling in the Balkans with her Serb husband when she was introduced to a traditional sweet red pepper-based mashup – [...]
About Malcolm Gladwell’s famous ketchup declaration – could he have been wrong? Charming, Canadian-born, mad-haired Gladwell is a public intellectual, a decoder of the whys and hows of everyday life. In 2004 he had a ‘what gives?’ moment regarding Heinz classic ketchup. Why, in all 136 years of its existence, has no other product bumped [...]
