Kimbo’s Slice

The food: buttermilk bread

The story:

I’ve become fond of an excellent buttermilk bread I found at the Alli’s Bread stall, pictured below, in the Evergreen Brick Works Farmers’ Market:

The market runs on Saturdays from spring through fall, at the Brickworks, a former quarry and brickyard turned meadow and community market space that also happens to be the site of a key scene in my mystery novel The Glenwood Treasure.

The bread is sturdy, dense – not airy – and slices well. To enjoy it, one need only toast it (preferably with a toaster that toasts more completely and evenly than mine), and butter it:

You may also, as I do, shower a buttered, toasted slice with watercress (I like the organic hydroponic variety), salt and pepper, and call it lunch on a hot day.

As cunningly assembled and summery, though it contains more ingredients than the 3-ingredient watercress sandwich, is the line-up for the Paul Quarrington Levee, which will take place, as part of the Leacock Summer Festival on Sunday July 25, at the Leacock Museum in Orillia, Ontario.

In the excellent company of my friends and fellow writers Nino Ricci, Antanas Sileika, and Joe Kertes, I’ll be paying tribute to Paul. I’ll reminisce about having had Paul Q as a mentor when I started writing and I’ll read from my first novel Looks Perfect, a romantic comedy about appearances (and being biracial) that I worked on with Paul, back in the day, through the Humber School for Writers correspondence course.

Here’s a short video shot last month in which I ramble on about the book and other things. Best viewed while eating a slice of hot buttered toast, made with buttermilk bread if possible.