Category Archives: Writing

November 8, 2018 · 6:22 am

Indian Food and the Families Behind it in Calgary

Dhal Bat - a multi-dish meal from The Himalayan restaurant in Calgary

Dhal Bat from The Himalayan by Jared Sych – Avenue Magazine Calgary

For this month’s Avenue Magazine – Calgary, I had the delight of writing two freelance pieces on one of my favourite topics: Indian food and where to find it in our city. And, even better, I got to interview some of the key families behind the best Indian restaurants and share their stories.

I spent several evenings in late July, traversing the city’s trails so my taste buds could verify the authenticity and quality of the myriad of masalas, curries, dosas, naans, dom biryannis, chettiyar cuisine, kebabs, dals, bhajias and burfis on offer. I came home with bags of leftovers, squeezed them into a bulging refrigerator, loosened my belt and sat at my desktop. Off I went again. This time I was chewing through the words needed to meet my deadline. Research and writing are done with the same vigour when excellence in eating is the common denominator connecting them. I hope you enjoy the results.

These are the people behind some of the city’s best Indian restaurants: 5 Families Influencing Calgary’s Indian Food Scene

Check out one of these restaurants when you’re craving the flavours of North, South or East Indian cuisine: Source: Where to Eat Indian Food in Calgary

All photos for this post are used with permission from Avenue Magazine – Calgary.

Two Indian chefs with a very large dosa crepe and accompaniments

Executive Chef Philip Thomas and chef Baskaran Kesavan – photographed by Jared Sych – Avenue Magazine – Calgary

Moti Mahal’s famous dishes – photographed by Jared Sych – Avenue Magazine Calgary

Bombay Sweet House’s Pistachio Burfi – photographe by Jared Sych – Avenue Magazine Calgary

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October 30, 2018 · 5:40 pm

The 2018 Taste Canada Award Winners

This morning the official release from Taste Canada Awards / Les Lauréats des Saveurs du Canada came to announce the winners of the country’s only national, bilingual food writing awards. October is National Cookbook Month with hashtags #LoveCookbooks #MoreThanRecipes and so this is the perfect way to wrap up the month long celebration of how tasteful Canadian food is, through the words and recipes of Canada’s best food writers and bloggers.

The full release follows and as a former Taste Canada winner, for A Spicy Touch with my mentor Noorbanu Nimji, I’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate all the winners and especially my friends Lindsay Anderson and Dana Van Veller of Feast: Recipes and Stories from a Canadian Road Trip and Vikram Vij, the most genuinely gifted hospitality person I know , for his book Vij: A Chef’s One-Way Ticket to Canada with Indian Spices in his Suitcase.

Continue reading →

Talking Food Travel and Food Artisans of Alberta on CBC Radio’s Alberta at Noon

People spend 25 per cent or more of their travel budget on food. We need to eat three meals a day and thanks to the influence of TV chefs like the late, great Anthony Bourdain, we want them to be authentically local. That means the food should be made with recipes that are historically relevant for the place we are travelling and that those recipes should be made from ingredients that originate there as well.

While Eric Wolfe, the head of the World Food Travel Association says that Spain, France, Italy and Thailand are still the top food travel destinations (and the top destinations period!) he also says that with some brand building Alberta could become an increasingly popular food travel destination. Listen to this CBC Alberta at Noon podcast to hear how my co-author Matilde Sanchez-Turri and I are working to help build that brand for our province as we talk about our new book, Food Artisans of Alberta.

Food Artisans of Alberta

Today begins an exciting week. After about two years of research, travel, photography, writing, editing and editing some more, the book I co-authored with my friend Matilda (Tilly) Sanchez-Turri, Food Artisans of Alberta, is for real and is starting to hit the shelves of bookstores, cafes, cooking schools, food artisans and even the odd gas station around the province. It’s even for sale nationally through Indigo/Chapters. Continue reading →

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June 25, 2017 · 7:53 pm

#ArtInstallation no. 25 – The Maritime [Edit] magazine

“If something doesn’t exist, that you want to exist – create it,” says The Maritime Edit magazine editor James Mullinger in the video above.

I’m just back from a quick trip home to New Brunswick to check in on my folks. I picked up the first edition of this magazine at the Saint John airport and devoured it on the Halifax to Calgary leg of my trek back to where I live with my husband and son. The magazine is fresh in that it exists “to celebrate and highlight the discreet luxury of living in Atlantic Canada.”

I love that wording.

The people of the Atlantic are discreet, low key, unpretentious, muted, restrained and intentionally unobtrusive as they go about the luxury of living their lives. Their lives are a luxury because living at a slower pace, in proximity to ocean and earth and connected to family and culture is an antidote to the fast pace world of carpools and commutes, distance and indifference that is existence for most of us. I’m so happy someone will be celebrating and highlighting this wee corner of Canada. I’ve subscribed.

I’m looking forward to including this quarterly art installation in my life. My Atlantic roots and values help me savour it all.

#CanadianHumour – Thx to @OutandAbouter for this quiet little piece of satirical #writing

Read the article at the source: Concerned, But Not Wanting To Offend, Canada Quietly Plants Privacy Hedge Along Entire U.S. Border.

outandabouter blog, satirical humour, quite little hedge, canadian humour

photo via @outandabouter with gratitude

That was a beauty, eh? The Canadian sense of humour is officially cool thing no. 52 on this blog. I love our True North Strong and Free and this is likely the only “hedge fund” I’d ever invest in but seriously, I’d never let one silly orange president (small “p” – if you know what I mean) stop me from loving my friends and their country.

It’s even more important to be our nice Canadian selves right now. It’s the only way to truly savour it all.

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April 6, 2017 · 5:16 pm

On carrots and writing for Alberta Health Services’ applemag.ca

I was a nurse for over 20 years. I was a Masters-prepared Nurse Practitioner for 10 of those years. I left that profession because, though I loved working with people, I wanted find ways to help people stay healthy instead of caring for them once they’d become very ill. I saw that the further we got from food as a society the sicker we were getting. I thought writing about food and starting up food tours would be fun ways to engage and connect people with the source of food and all the health and joy it can bring to our lives.

I’m very pleased that after 11 years in my new career I have the opportunity to go full circle and to write for Alberta Health Services’ health magazine (applemag.ca) on the topic of healthy food. It’s a dream come true to write for a magazine whose credo is “Be healthy. Be Well. Be informed.”

In my regular “Food Sight” column I’ll be writing about a different great ingredient each issue. For the food issue I also got to write about five ways to build a healthy plate. Here are the first two pieces. Grab a carrot to munch on and have a read.