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COMFORT FOOD FOR BREAKUPS
The Memoir of a Hungry Girl
By Marusya Bociurkiw, Arsenal Pulp Press, April 2007, $19.95


A widely syndicated sex advice columnist recently offered up this nugget of truth: men may constantly hanker after sex, but deep down, what women perpetually crave the most are carbohydrates.

Perhaps Marusha Bociurkiw, the author of Comfort Food For Breakups, longs for both. Bociurkiw -- filmmaker, teacher, foodblogger – fills the pages of her little red book with mash notes to such edible pacifiers as chocolate cake, soup, pasta, cabbage rolls and perogies. Sandwiched in between these she layers memories of grandmother, mother, father, and friends, not to mention the occasional comfort found in dimly lit lesbian bars.

As it flits between locales in Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver, her text muses upon the ways in which food intersects with a nexus of hungers: for intimacy, for sex, and for home. In essence it is a Canadian memoir more than a westcoast one, yet many of our local foodie icons can be found here: grilled salmon, oysters, Portobello mushroom burgers at the Templeton Diner, shopping for Oyama sausage at the Granville Island Public Market, feasting on a picnic lunch of Natural Pastures Cheese from the Comox Valley.

Says Bociurkiw, "The pages of my cookbooks are a palimpsest, layered with notes and food stains and the complex flavours of love and loss. It might take years and years for me to cook up that buckwheat, but when I do it will be the gesture of making it, as much as the food, that feeds the hungry girl inside of me."

To be filed in MEDIA/books

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KEEP YOUR PERKER UP!

What a little caffeine will do for some people!

If it makes you want to get buck naked and roll around in the (coffee bean) sack, then we’d say you are lucky. Most people would be happy to settle for just a bit of mental stimulation, or at least enough to stay awake at the desk.

Lavazza however, has decided to promise a whole lot more. Yes, the stately Italian coffee company has decided that what works for automobiles and fashion, will work for their product too -- they’re using sex appeal to sell coffee.

But then in Europe, that’s what marketing trends have been brewing down to for years.

The art direction and creative photography of the graphics were produced by advertising photographer Eryk Fitkau who is best known for using special techniques with double exposure and hand colouring prints with food dyes.


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WINE FESTIVAL CHOICE

TRY THIS ONE

Everyday throughout the month of March, the Wine Diva will choose a wine that you shouldn't pass by without tasting when you visit the upcoming Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival.

Today's pick:

A masculine romantic.