Long Road to Osaka
I have experienced success, but I've always had to take the long, unscenic route to get there. It looked to me like these kids had found the shortcut that I had looked for, but I had never found it. While sipping my Old Fashioned, I wondered to myself, "Did I waste my twenties?"
Sake Runneth Over
Restaurants live and die by keeping a close eye on cost controls. A spilled tablespoon of Sake with every customer adds up quickly and ultimately requires the business to buy additional bottles with no opportunity to recover those costs. Restaurant owners want their guests to be happy, but not...too happy.
Shepherds and Short Ribs
I wonder if the fear the shepherds experienced in the Christmas story was not just because they were seeing a supernatural event in the sky but because it was an army. Powerful armies have always been used to push aside and kill their nomadic people.
Tables and Walls
With terror and horrific stories coming out of Israel and Gaza these last weeks, I feel the deafening roar of both sides of the conflict in my ears. I find myself feeling angry and sad all at once with no clear direction on what I should believe.
We Went to Quebec
"Your French is better than my English." said the taxi driver to me as he drove my family to Jean Lesage Airport to catch our flight back to Edmonton. I hadn't put much thought into the quality of my French on our family trip to Quebec City, but I did feel a sense of gratitude for my parents' decision when I was five years old to put me in a French immersion school program.
The Pentecostal Diet
This kind of faith pushes Christians beyond the boundaries of comfort and into a world where they could one day sit at a restaurant and enjoy Filipino Sisig or an Argentine Choripan. Not just to enjoy the food but to love the people who serve it. A faith where Christians would learn to speak new languages not just to become comfortable in the world but to better understand and appreciate it.
We Went to Portland: Part II
This is the second of a two-part series of travel blog posts on good reasons to visit Portland, Oregon. In this post, I want to talk about food. Now, I don't want to talk about food from the perspective of a food critic. Food critic blogs are legion, and I'm not interested in joining them anytime soon. I am, however, drawn to talk about food in the context of value and connection.
Worf’s a Vegan
So I asked myself again with an added condition; could I switch to an entirely plant-based diet if my life depended on it? My answer to that is, I hope so. I sincerely hope that if confronted with the choice to either survive or die early, I'd do everything I can to choose life.
Hangry Community
…I get hangry. I eat a very early breakfast, and the result of this habit is that by 11:30, I'm starting to get hungry. If I haven't started to eat by noon, I'm ok, but I am now a ticking time bomb. By 12:30, I will be irritable if I have yet to have a bite to eat. In the tragic event that I have not eaten lunch by 1:00 PM, I am now a potential work hazard.
BBQ Heaven
What is heaven like? Well, friend, I think it's like an afternoon barbeque with everyone at the table. Experiences like this bring heaven to earth. The world would look so much better with open doors and full plates.
Smoky Kashmiri Spiced Wings
Hey, so in the spirit of my last post; I’m going to put myself out there a bit and share a recipe. This is a bit of a break from my usual content, but this is also a blog about hospitality and I can think of no better snack to share with guests when they come over for a visit. Hope you give these a try.
Pass the Mujadara
I'm an explorer at heart. My hope for you today is that if you have the chance to sit down and enjoy a meal and conversation with someone different from you, you seize the opportunity. The world will open up and become a bigger place.