This is family from last Thursday, right before the Honey Dinner. As such, it’s pretty basic. Also, it was comsumed in about 3 seconds flat so most of it was gone by the time I’d pulled my phone out of my pants to take a picture.

.

.

Egg and maple-smoked butternut squash sandwiches with Vegenaise. Also, grapefruit soda.

Today’s family meal: carrot soup with tofu, overly spicy burnt pecans and a feta, orange and melon salad. I was pretty surprised when I saw that, too.

.

.

Thanks to one of our purveyors who dropped off a rice and beans sampler, yesterday (Tuesday’s) family meal was rice and beans, leftover mushroom soup (we make it from portobello mousse), blueberry smoothies that inexplicably look red and salad with smoked tofu and yellow beets.

.

.

We have always depended on the kindness of purveyors.

.

The New York Times demonstrates that it knows all about that there Twitter thing the kids are playing with these days with their Dining section story, If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Don’t Read Me on Twitter.

.

“I’ll Twitter YOU, you

buncha whippersnappers.”

.

The article brings a welcome level of concise reportage (fancy word!) to what is essentially a round-up of online flare-ups from over the past year (my review of their review even gets a mention). But they do make one oversight when they write, “Not many chefs use Twitter to do more than promote their specials.” Actually, a lot of restaurants are using Twitter much more creatively than that. At the very least, Dirt Candy has been using it for almost a month to keep people abreast of last-minute tables that become available due to no-shows or cancellations. It’s been a booming success for us so far, with a fair number of reservations coming in throughout the evening that have heard about an open table on the Dirt Candy Twitter feed. So see? Twitter can be a force for good!

.

Don’t forget: if you have a reservation for the Honey Dinner then it’s tomorrow (Thursday, Feb. 18)!

.

Come prepared to communicate entirely with the waggle dance for the course of your meal.

.

As everyone gets all worked up over the Vancouver Olympics and one food writer after another weighs in on Vancouver restaurants and street food, I just want to represent for my hometown’s best street food: the veggie dogs of Toronto. Growing up in Toronto, you get used to seeing a cart on every corner grilling hot dogs, sausages and veggie dogs. A rack of condiments (olives, sauerkraut, bacon bits, banana peppers, corn relish) rings the cart like a hula skirt and they’ll grill you a hot dog, toast your bun and slap it down in front of you for a toonie (that’s a two dollar coin, Americans).

.

.

.

Read the rest of this entry »

Saturday’s family meal. Roasted root vegetables, homemade pineapple soda and scrambled eggs with smoked tofu and one plum tomato that we had lying around for some reason.

.

.

Again, nothing green. Is it the weather?

Grits with tofu, eggs, pineapple and peanut brittle scraps. We eat way more peanut brittle scraps than is advisable here. They’re like the crack cocaine of Dirt Candy.

.

.

Nothing green today.

Could it be any sadder?

.

.

From Thursday of this week it’s cabbage salad, scrambled eggs and a pumpkin salad left over from a photoshoot. What happened to us?

Did you know that February is Sweet Potato Month? To honor the ol’ Ipomoea batatas Dirt Candy will be serving its Sweet Potato Puffs for $9, instead of the standard $11 for the rest of the month. That’s right! You’ve got 18 days to get a $2 discount on Sweet Potato Puffs. In this economy I fully expect a $2 discount to start riots as people stockpile and hoard their puffs in anticipation of the collapse of the dollar or the next snowpocalypse.

.

Why is February Sweet Potato Month? Because the sweet potato is a root of elegance and charm.

.

Did You Know…that the ocarina is also called the “sweet potato?”

.

Zelda and the Sweet Potato of Time does not

sound very fun. But it does sound very delicious.

.

Did You Know…that dinosaurs ate sweet potatoes?

.

“I promise I will eat sweet potato next.”

.

Did You Know…George Washington Carver made postage stamp glue from sweet potatoes?

.

“I am sticking to this blog with glue made of

sweet potatoes.”

.

Did You Know…sweet potatoes are originally from Mexico?

.

Did You Know…there’s a sweet potato blog? And they get really ticked off if you call sweet potatoes yams?

.

Did You Know…Mr. Potato Head was born in 1952, married Mrs. Potato Head in 1953 and had a baby in 1955? Baby potatoes having baby potatoes. This is why potatoes never get ahead.

.

Did You Know…people in Papua, New Guinea eat the most sweet potatoes in the world?

.

“Send all your sweet potatoes here, please.

We are more hungry for them.”

.