So that I don’t have to, but can still enjoy the culinary artistry you’ve created with tobacco.

Chef Nathan Isberg of Atlantic on Dundas infuses his crème brûlée with the loveliest flavours of vanilla, bourbon and cherry notes from Khyber Pass tobacco, a Cavendish type tobacco that is generally known for its sweet, mild flavour.

The flavour gets top marks, and you’ll want to keep digging for more. But the execution is not perfect – instead of having a silky jiggly texture, this was a little too dense and grainy. The caramelized sugar on top was over-burnt, leaving a slightly bitter aftertaste that was just barely salvaged by the fragrance of the crème brûlée.

If you are concerned about the impact of tobacco on your health, the chef assures the amount used in his crème brûlée is very tiny, hardly enough to turn anyone into a smoker. Worry instead about the cream, eggs and sugar, which we all know add up slyly on our hips and thighs after one too many dessert.

Where to Get It: Atlantic on Dundas, 1597 Dundas St. West, (416) 219-3819.

Price: $7.

Tip:  Non-smokers may feel a little light-headed from the tobacco-infused brûlée (as I experienced). Sharing is a good idea if you are not accustomed to tobacco.

These caramels came at an opportune time, since  it was a particularly rainy bit of my summer and if sugar and bacon fat can’t make the day seem just a little bit brighter, I don’t know what will. (In other news, I am going to consume a head of lettuce for dinner. All by its lonesome. WOOT!)

Anyway…

For this recipe, you’ll need a candy thermometer. It’s pretty important that your candy thermometer be accurate. I bought a super cheap-o one from Walmart last fall when I decided to make candied apples and I sorely regretted it. The gage was something like 15 degrees off. And if you’ve ever made candy before, you’ll know 15 degrees can be the difference between a delightfully crunchy outer shell on the candy apple and a cement-your-mouth-shut kind of sticky. (You can learn to compensate for the difference here, if you’d like.) I chose to take the lazy path and bought myself a new one.

To make these delectable Bacon Maple Caramels, you’ll need:

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

1 cup corn sugar

1/2 cup butter

1 cup heavy cream (I used whipping cream), divided

1/4 cup maple syrup

8 – 12 crispy bacon strips, cut into little bits.

Butter your pan. I used an 8″ x 8″ foil pan. If you like your caramels to be thinner, you can use a bigger pan. Either way, butter it up good. I like to keep the foil wrappers from the blocks of used butter to grease the baking pans. Set it aside for later.

In a medium-sized sauce pan with the candy thermometer clipped to the side, combine white sugar, brown sugar, butter, corn syrup, maple syrup and 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Stir it together and place over medium-high heat.

Stir occasionally until the mixture reaches 240 degrees; once it does, remove from your heat source and carefully add in the remaining 1/2 cup of cream.

Place the sauce pan back on the heating element and cook until the mixture reaches 245 degrees. Immediately remove from heat and mix in a portion of the bacon pieces. Pour caramel into your buttered pan and sprinkle remaining bacon on top.

Leave the caramel sitting out, uncovered, to set for at least 3 hours before cutting.  Or, if you’re impatient like me, you can stick it into the fridge for around an hour and a half. Cut into squares. Or an approximation of a square if you’re having trouble cutting in straight lines like I do. It gets sticky, but don’t worry. The deliciousness makes it all worth it.

After cutting into cubes, I would be careful with how you store them. Too warm and they become melty and stick together. I kept mine in the fridge and when I was feeling like a piece I took it out and let it sit for about 5 minutes before consuming.

Now, sit back and enjoy the melty caramel with just a hint of maple, and crunchy, salty bacon bits. Yummmm.

If your Monday is already sucking, make sure you have a plan to make it better, possibly by going to The Bellevue’s Monday night dinner? Tonight ex-Woodlot/Ursa chef Robbie Hojilla is cooking a five-course Filipino-inspired meal. Tickets are $35. Call The Bellevue at 647-700-8092, or email them at info@thebellevue.ca, in order to reserve a spot.

There’s a new app called Food Network on the Road that helps you locate restaurants profiled on various Food Network shows. Whether you saw the place on Throwdown with Bobby Flay or Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, this app will tell you where it is and how to get there. More info here. The real question: is there a Food Network Canada version? Not sure.

It’s August, which means you’re probably going somewhere to escape from your ever-stressful job and the impending doom of autumn/winter. If so, check out this cool new feature from Saveur Magazine: Room Service lets you click on a country then see a list of corresponding hotels pop up where the food itself is worth the stay as much as the room is.

You can now get Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s drink of choice: Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. I am not a Trekkie, but it’s nice to know that he & I would be able to sit down and enjoy the same beverage. Also, I love the tea tin. It’s beautiful.

Who doesn’t want to be able to make and consume cotton candy at whim? Learn to build your own cotton candy machine right at home. The gentleman in the video even tried using crushed hard candies to make flavored cotton candy!

And because I have a weak spot for beautiful cookbooks and dessert, a peak at the new Baked Elements cookbook set to be released September 1.

My first reaction to this early onset of shivery raincoat weather was to curl up under my blankie and hibernate until next spring. My next reaction was to buy a bottle of whiskey, as that’s what gets me through our horrific winters, which apparently now start in mid-August.

But then, whiskey in hand, I reminded myself that the odd blustery cold snap is a Canadian inevitability regardless of the season, and I took comfort in the fact that it would soon be warm again, and that also I had a big bottle of whiskey.

As you may have gathered by now, this week is whiskey week! In honour of our fluctuating temperatures, I’ve decided to make something that can be served hot and toasty for rainy days, or over ice for when I can take these jeans off and start sweating again. It’s…

The Sweet Tea Toddy!

Ingredients:

2 ounces Jamieson’s Whiskey, or whichever kind you like

3 ounces Earl Grey Tea

Simple syrup (for the cold version)

Sugar (for the hot version)

Mint

I got this recipe from a roundup of Scotch cocktails in the New York Post. It’s served at a restaurant called Thor on Rivington Street between Ludlow and Essex in Manhattan. Gwen Stefani and James Blunt apparently drink there, so chances are good you and I will never see the inside of the place. Anywho, they do it with scotch, but I do it with Irish whiskey. It works both ways. Thor food and beverage manager Trey Wilder describes the cold version (they don’t have the hot version because I made it up) of this drink as “Perfect for those looking to leave fruity mojitos behind and try something that’s harder, but nowhere near as hard as neat whiskey.” Funny, I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I won’t wear myself out trying.

Instructions:

This is a pretty simple one. First make the simple syrup. This is exactly how it sounds: simple. One part sugar, two parts water. Bring to a boil on stovetop, let cool, and bottle. Next, lets make some tea! I use Twinings Earl Grey, because I’m old school like that. Notice how I tied my five tea bags together – cute! Also, it makes it easier to fish them out after they’ve steeped. I used about three litres of water and five tea bags, which made a nice dark tea.

If you want a Hot Sweet Tea Toddy, simply pour the whiskey in a mug, add the tea, a teaspoon of sugar, and then tear up a bunch of mint leaves and muddle them in. Leave it for a couple of minutes, and then fish out the mint leaves with a spoon (they float), otherwise it will be hard to drink.

For a Cold Sweet Tea Toddy, pour the whiskey and chilled tea into a shaker with some ice and give it a shake. Fill a glass with ice and add the muddled mint and simple syrup. Pour in the whiskey tea mixture and garnish with a lemon.

Now get out from under that blanket and have a sip.

The next exclusive Feast On It! event just went up for sale. Join us for a one-of-a-kind evening with Chef Jason Parsons at the Vineyard of Dreams.

Modern Meadow is prototyping 3D printed meat. Would you eat slaughter-house free medical-grade tissue that has both the taste and texture of beef?

If meat’s not your thing, the 28th annual Vegetarian Food Festival is coming soon. Organizers are expecting 40,000 people to be checking out vendors, exhibitors, and speakers from September 7th-9th at the Harbour Front Centre. Details here.

If you weren’t there last night, you missed out. Feast On It! partnered with the Feasting Room for an exclusive guided nose-to-tail dining experience. See photos as well as a review from a participant.

New Startup mor.sl features curated recipes from the top food bloggers and publishers around the world – based on what you like and the time you have.

There’s nothing quite like art you can eat – Toxel is showcasing a fascinating listing of food sculptures.

The internet celebrates Julia Child’s 100th birthday today with her own Google Doodle & PBS remix video

A friend of Feast On It! is launching City Scavenger this weekend with a “Food Scadventure” in the St. Lawrence Market. Interesting a Foodie oriented scavenger hunt is also one of the top voted for ideas on the Feast On It! community ideas page.

I love sweet potato anything, and the word butter is just so wonderfully manipulative.

Anyway, once I got it home, this stuff lived up to the reputation I had already crafted for it in my mind; it tastes like pumpkin pie, though less heavy on the spices and with definite fruity notes. Although it calls itself butter, it’s more like a jam, but with a thicker, more gritty texture reminiscent of mashed sweet potatoes.

I could eat this with a spoon directly from the jar (and I did), but it is also wonderful on toast, particularly in the company of peanut butter. With PB, the mouthfeel becomes luxuriously thick.

I also like that this is an all-natural product; made with sweet potatoes, pure cane sugar, lemon juice, pectin, spices and pure vanilla extract, I feel pretty good about eating this. Also, it comes in a glass – like a real glass, one you can drink out of when all that sweet potato butter is gone.

Where to Get It: Blue Banana Market, Kensington Market, 250 Augusta Avenue, 416-594-6600

Price: $9.99 for a jar

Tip: Maybe you should try this swirled in some yoghurt?!

A new sustainable seafood restaurant, Red Fish, has popped up on College Street. Post City reviews it here. And if you’re interested in sustainability, head to TedxToronto’s free salon this evening called Epicurious: how food affects us and how we can affect food.

The future is here. Zhu Jingxuan has come up with a device that will extract smell, take a photo, and print a postcard. Imagine opening a friend’s letter from Southeast Asia, the  fragrant smell of their lemongrass soup and fiery curry wafting out of the envelope. This sounds pretty amazing, and gives me hope that the smell-o-vision tv I’ve been dreaming about all my life could be close to materializing! Still, I can think of a few not-so-pleasant things you could do with this contraption. Check it out here.

Artist and chef Julia Ziegler-Haynes has recreated and photographed 24 inmates’ last meals, one of which is a single black pitted olive. The meals are set against over-saturated colourful backgrounds on stark white plates, making the food look sterile and unappetizing. It is a bit of an odd norm, offering up any meal an inmate can dream up on the eve of their death. What would your last meal be?

David Cross makes me laugh. Here he is as Chef Bellini Pastafangu cooking his favourite meal.

Rosemary Lemonade is a fantastic drink to sip on those days when you feel like you need another dose summer. Plus you get the added bonus of cherries that have soaked up lemonade to chew on when you get to the bottom of your glass.

To make Rosemary Lemonade, you will need:

1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup white sugar
7 – 8 cups water, divided
3 sprigs of rosemary (you can play with it if you like more, or less rosemary flavor)
2 cups of freshly squeezed lemon juice (approximately 8 lemons)
Cherries to garnish

Start off by putting the honey, sugar and 2 cups of water into a small sauce pan and bring to a boil. Turn off heat and stir once quickly to make sure all the sugar is melted. Throw in the sprigs of rosemary and let steep until the mixture is cool.

Now for the fantastically fun part, except if you have dry skin or open abrasions on your hands. Then it would probably be smart to put on some plastic gloves. Juice your lemons until you have approximately 2 cups of lemon juice. Strain the lemon juice to make sure you get all those little bitty pieces of seeds and pulp out. If you like pulpy lemonade, feel free to add some back into your lemon mixture.

Once the honey/sugar/rosemary/water mixture is cooled, add it to a pitcher with the lemon juice. Then add the remaining water to taste. If you like tangier lemonade, add less water. Or if you don’t like tangy lemonade, add more water.

Remove the pit from your cherries and place them at the bottom of your glass. Use a spoon to muddle them a little. Add a couple ice cubes and then pour the lemonade over and enjoy. If it’s the end of a particularly long week, a little bit of gin might just make your week that much better.