A Chef’s Take On Slow Living and Seasonal Feasts

I spend my summers on the north shore of Nova Scotia, where when the tide is low you can walk forever before hitting the shore line. The water is also relatively warm. My favorite thing to do is to pack a beach sandwich and some wine and sit on a chair with a good book as the tide comes in and pools slowly around us.

My days here have a lovely, slow start. If it’s low tide, we’ll put our coffee in mugs and take our dog Sugo for a walk on the beach. He’s crazy for it! He loves chasing the birds – he never does anything to them mind you – he just loves to run alongside them. After we come home, I’ll spend the rest of the morning and early afternoon working on my forthcoming cookbook, which is due in September. Sometimes we’ll go back to the beach for a sundowner and our friends up the road will usually come to dinner. We have a wood-fired pizza oven and love having pizza parties as much as possible.

The kitchen and living space in our farmhouse. My husband took down a wall last summer, so it’s one large room, which is nice for me as I’m always in the kitchen and this means I can chat with people while I cook. The first thing I do when we get here is pull out an assortment of bowls to display seasonal produce on a vintage hutch that straddles both spaces. It immediately makes the house feel lived in and it’s pretty to look at too.

Kosher salt and lemon juice can fix anything! I mean that. Taste as you go, ingredients usually need more salt than you think. Also, if you happen to oversalt something, lemon juice or another acid such as vinegar can help counterbalance it.

I love them all, but currently I’m very into the Has Me Sweatin’. She’s really hot, but it has the perfect hit of vinegar. I love adding a few drops onto freshly shucked oysters. It also works beautifully in cocktail sauce or lobster dip. It’s also perfect on an egg sandwich.

I prefer stemless glasses for summer entertaining and the Still ones caught my eye. I love the shape of them! The Oli dessert cup is also so fun and adds a great touch of color – it’s perfect for berries and cream. These gorgeous Caractère plates would be beautiful on any table with lots of beeswax candles of course. And, who doesn’t need a gorgeous board for summer grazing?

Cooking and developing recipes that are as simple and fresh as possible. I don’t have much in my Nova Scotia kitchen in terms of spices, so I’m really leaning on what’s in season and letting those ingredients shine. I find creativity within constrictions.

We host a lot of friends throughout the summer and they usually arrive between lunch and dinner making room for a perfect snack meal. Nova Scotia is known for having an abundance of lobster, so I will always have a lobster salad waiting and people can either make a lobster roll or eat it with some greens. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like to be greeted with lobster!

Romancing Mr. Bridgerton – it’s funny because it’s true. I cannot get enough Polin in my life.

We have a number of different wildflowers growing on our property, which are fun to gather on a walk through the field. I love snipping beach roses and combining them with whatever I’ve foraged. I also currently have a collection of pheasant plumes I’ve found, which I’m keeping in a vase from a local potter with some dried wheat stems. I like bringing a bit of nature inside.