Bonny Reichert's Blog

Field & Pantry friends, I am sorry. I began this post on September 17, intending to write about the Jewish high holidays, the fall, the cakes and tarts and preserves of the season. I stepped away from my desk for a moment and clearly entered some kind of time machine because here I am, many weeks later, sitting down to complete the post. Where did the time go, we all like to say? On one level, I know where the time has gone: I have been touring and travelling, hosting book events, talking and li...

My Baba Sarah didn’t invent blueberry varenikes, but I didn’t know that when I was a kid. The boiled dumplings she made every August filled not with potato or cheese or meat, as you might expect, but with fresh berries, seemed completely her own, and growing up on the Canadian prairie, I wasn’t aware of another kid or family who ate them — just me, my sisters and my cousins, together in our delicious, foreign secret. Now I know that varenikes belong to the entire nation of Ukraine, and that we w...

Until very recently, I hated photos of myself. I could always find something wrong with them, or rather, with me. Bad hair, double chin; too many wrinkles, wrong shade of lipstick. In fact, before the release of How to Share an Egg last winter, I stayed behind the camera as much as possible, taking photos and using my Instagram account to document what I was looking at — mostly food, with bits of art and nature thrown in. Weaned on Laura Mulvey and feminist film theory in the late 80s, I didn’t ...

The longest days of the year have this kind of magical feel that comes back to me every June. I wake up full of energy at around 5:45, often catching the sunrise. Morning is my favourite time to write, listen to birds and, if I’m at the cottage, maybe have a swim. Two afternoons this past week, I took myself berry picking at a local farm, and this seasonal ritual is another practice that makes me feel grounded and sane in the chaos of the world.

The other thing about seasonal rhythms: They remind...

Several summers ago, my best friend came to visit me at our cabin in the woods, on a spring-fed lake north of Toronto. It was mid-July and gorgeously warm outside. I had a lot of food ready to cook — marinated salmon for the grill, eggplant Parm to go into the oven, a salad to toss. Wanting to take a dip before dinner, we carried a bottle of rosé down to the dock, along with a pile of French breakfast radishes, a cold block of salted butter, and a loaf of crusty bread. My little lake rarely has...

I haven't been to Paris for seven or eight years, but lately, it’s a place that’s very much on my mind. A big part of that is people — wonderful food people like and , Carrie Solomon and , some of whom I know, a little, and some who I just admire from afar. It’s fun to imagine popping into town and strolling to the market with Jane, or harvesting wild garlic with Carrie. Maybe I could sample Dorie’s new strawberry melba, or join David on an artisanal food field trip? My imagination lets me be b...

In some ways, I’m a traditionalist. When the holidays come around, I’m usually making lists of what my mom and my baba Sarah made, of what so many wonderful Jewish cooks, near and far, will be making right now. There’s a tremendous amount of satisfaction in this obedience — this carrying forward of what has come before. Of imagining yourself as part of a long line of cooks, preserving memory and identity by separating eggs and peeling apples.

And yet, sometimes putting together a traditional menu...

Welcome readers — the new subscribers who’ve signed up in the past few weeks and months, as well as those of you who’ve been here since the beginning. I’m grateful for all of you! Field & Pantry newsletters are often essays about food experiences, with an accompanying recipe, but a few times a year, when I’m away from home and away from my kitchen, I post more of a food and travel essay, not so different from some of the work I used to do for The Globe and Mail newspaper. Today’s is one such pos...

Wellness month. That is what I renamed February, maybe fifteen years ago, when the end of January found me exhausted and ragged, with a story assignment that was late, three young kids and a spouse travelling for work. The driveway was full of snow, the sink was full of dishes. Stuff was growing at the back of the fridge.

Looking back, I see I was manifesting — trying to create what I needed by naming it. With the weight of burnout pressing down on me, even trips to the grocery store were tiring...

Honestly, I’ve never had a week like the one that just passed. How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love and Plenty was released on Tuesday, and since then, life has been a very busy, very exciting blur of interviews and emails; social-media messages and phone calls. It is wonderful — absolutely thrilling — to get this warm and robust response to the book after five years of working alone at my desk on the second floor (where I sit right now, before the sun has even come up) but for a qu...