dinner companions

Oliver, Gus and stacks and stacks of old (& current) cooking magazines

My usual dinner companions - flipping through my stacks of old and much coveted cooking magazines while sitting at my little round black table, which came from my other grandmother - Blanche's house. I'll drag out my old issues of Gourmet, Bon Appétit, Donna Hay & Vogue Australia Entertaining and sit enjoying my evening meal dreaming and scheming future meals. Lots of people say, including Peter - Susan, you can let go of those stacks and stacks of magazines there's epicurious.com - you can find anything there, any recipe. Yes that's the true but with epicurious.com (home of both Bon Appetite & Gourmet) you need to be looking and you have to know what it is you're looking for, if you're ever going to find it. The thing I like, the thing I love. LOVE, love, love about my big old stack of magazines is flipping the pages and seeing and being inspired by the ideas presented and the photography, oh my the photography - especially the photography in Gourmet of late, the feature stories as if you turned a page and happened upon someone's casual dinner party and often in some exotic far away land - all the realness - the rough edges included, natural light - and always staged to look completely unstaged that darn Miss R. Reichl she is a genius and then by contrast, the simple stark, less is more beauty of the images in the Donna Hay issues. Sigh.

I often haul them out by season -this time of year I'll look through all the July's & August's and see what's happening with summer fruit, with berries or garden tomatoes and fresh corn.

Hi, I'm Susan Black and I'm a magazine junkie and have been since my first seventeen magazine at about age 13. Oh, I've tried online subscriptions - it's just not the same. Many of the issues you now see piled on my dining room table had been slated for give away. They had been neatly squired away in the sun porch waiting to be driven to goodwill, sold in a yard sale (although that doesn't appear to be happening - those 7 mute invisible valets of mine, who had plans to host the sale have gone on a summer long cruise up the west coast and to Alaska) ... or some other similar fate. But now each evening slowly, slowly I've been grabbing 5 or 6 at a time and bringing them inside, into the inner sanctum. I flip through them while I have my dinner and I've been loving it. It always feels like I've never looked at them before - like they are brand new. That's either a fading memory thing or perhaps it's because I have such a large and varied collection and of course things change, you change, your thoughts change, your tastes change ... each night I think to myself, as I flip through many pages with delight - these babies aren't goin' anywhere. But don't tell Peter.

It's just me - les chats (and No ! of course I don't allow them on the table - while I'm eating), CBC radio - the world at 6 & as it happens (two more favourite shows) and my big, huge pile of cooking magazines - while I enjoy my evening meals.

Roasted Beet and Orange Salad

6 large *roasted beets - sliced
the zest from one orange
2 oranges cut into segments - supremed (with juice)
1/2 a small sweet onion finely sliced
a handful of fresh mint rough chopped
a drizzle of olive oil
a drizzle of cider vinegar
salt & pepper

toss together and let marinate 30 mins minimum before serving.

* rub beets with olive oil, skins on and roast in a hot oven 400 until soft enough to be pierced with a knife - or grill on the BBQ.