You might be one of those people who wouldn’t touch an anchovy with a 10-foot pole—but if you’ve decided you’re a total tinned fish hater, you probably just haven’t tried the right one. Tinned fish goes well beyond cans of flaked tuna: You can find everything from jalapeño-infused mackerel to silky smoked mussels to lobster meat in lemony olive oil, all in display-worthy packaging. Better yet, these convenient protein sources pack plenty of heart-healthy nutrients into their shelf-stable vessels, proving that, sometimes, the best things really do come in small packages.

The first thing to know about tinned fish is that it’s just as good for you as its fresh equivalent, providing identical omega-3 fatty acids. Tinned fish is also a source of vitamin B2 and vitamin D, which support strong bones and immune function.

Since our bodies can’t actually produce essential omega-3 fatty acids, they are arguably the most important nutrients that tinned fish can provide. Two particularly valuable forms of omega-3s, DHA and EPA, are only present in fish and fish oil, so we need to consume them directly from foods or dietary supplements in order to increase their levels in our bodies. Research has shown that people who consume omega-3s regularly, by eating two or more servings of oily fish per week, reduce their risk for heart disease and stroke. DHA is also important for brain function, and regular intake is thought to help prevent cognitive decline like Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.

Another underrated benefit of tinned fish? Some varieties, like canned salmon and mackerel, are a good source of calcium, thanks to the presence of their tiny bones. (Don’t worry: High-heat cooking during the canning process makes those bones soft, digestible and barely noticeable.) Half a cup of canned salmon contains around 25 to 30 percent of your daily calcium needs—roughly the same as a glass of milk—so it’s a good option for those who don’t eat dairy regularly.

In European countries where tinned fish is a staple, like Portugal and Spain, it can be the star of a dish as often as it can be a background player. But tinned fish newbies can try incorporating small amounts of fish with stronger flavours (like sardines or anchovies) into pasta sauces and salad dressings, or layering them on top of pizza—don’t knock it till you try it! One of my favourite moves is to blend anchovies into softened butter, add in some minced garlic and spread it on a crusty loaf before baking for an umami-packed spin on garlic bread.

Milder, grocery-aisle standards, like smoked mackerel or salmon, can be added to grain bowls and salads for a quick no-cook lunch, or can be turned into easy fish cakes—I love including scallions and grated ginger and serving the cakes with a zippy chili aioli. Smoked mussels work well in a homemade chowder, or you can sauté tinned razor clams in butter, garlic and white wine before scooping onto toasted bread or tossing with pasta for an easy pantry dish. These types of fish do tend to be more pricey, so I find they’re best reserved for appetizers, where their flavour won’t be disguised, or served alongside bread, olives and pickles for a fancy tinned fish spread.

Because cost and proximity to a coastline can be barriers to fresh fish consumption, tinned varieties are an excellent and easy way to get in your protein and omega-3s with minimal effort. Work your way through the tinned fish aisle until you land on one that blows you out of the water.

Next: An Easy Recipe for a Healthy Smoked Mackerel Bowl

Canada has one of the highest rates of multiple sclerosis, which is a neurodegenerative disease, but researchers have yet to determine why. Rates are higher in northern latitudes, and women are more than twice as likely as men to develop it. The cause of MS is unknown, but scientists believe it has to do with people who have a certain combination of genes being exposed to certain environmental triggers. 

I would say my multiple sclerosis diagnosis wasn’t really remarkable because, I’m hardly the only one diagnosed at a young age—the majority of people are diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40. But it’s certainly traumatizing when your life is upended at just 23. Some people have years of tingling or sensory symptoms, but for me, my symptoms came out of the blue.

I felt like I had a hangover living in my eye. It had felt that way since the day before, and I was in the car with my friends in Hamilton, where I lived, driving to Buffalo, to go shopping. It got so bad that I asked them to stop at Shoppers Drug Mart so I could take a handful of Tylenol. I couldn’t function. Any time I moved my eyes left or right, I felt this unbelievable stabbing pain.

A couple days later, I went to a walk-in clinic. The doctor told me I was stressed and needed to take time off work. A few days after that, my vision got blurry. I could barely see out of my left eye. I still thought I just needed antibiotics or something. I walked to the emergency room and a doctor did a battery of tests and told me to come back the next day. When I did, I was told I had optic neuritis, I needed an MRI and there’s a 50 percent chance I have MS.

Of course, I couldn’t believe it. I fell apart. I lost my mind. I was sobbing, hysterical, inconsolable. A month felt incredibly long. This time ended up being one of the most stressful periods of my life.

Two weeks later, I got a migraine and starting losing my vision, hearing and balance. I developed numbness in my feet and on my face, and started having trouble getting up the stairs. I spent a lot of time at my parents’ house, letting them cook for me and care for me. Friends and family kept saying, there’s no way you have MS, but I knew what was going on in my body, so it wasn’t comforting for people to tell me that. By the time that month had ended, I knew I had MS.

One of the burdens of this disease is having to reassure other people that you’re okay. Even the doctor diagnosing you. People don’t know what to say. When I was diagnosed, there was a lot of championing. You know, God doesn’t give us more than what we can handle, and You can fight this, and looking back now, I feel that was really toxic. What would’ve been helpful is, We hope you get your best-case scenario, but if things don’t go as expected, here are the tools, support and resources that will help you adapt and learn to live with this. Messaging is very strong when you’re first diagnosed. It doesn’t help to hear that not everyone ends up in a wheelchair. That doesn’t prepare us to handle it if that’s the case. It just means cross your fingers and hope for the best. What we need to hear is, These are the ways to go on and you will adapt, and here’s how other people have adapted.

I had a considerable recovery after that first attack. I’d taken time off work, was resting and changed my diet to pay attention to the things I could control. I started medication to help in my recovery. Six months later, my vision had improved, but it wasn’t back to baseline. My walking improved, and my balance. It’s an amazing feeling to struggle to walk and then have recovery and to be able to again. But it took high-dose steroids plus months of rest and recovery for my walking to get back to baseline after my first spinal cord attack. I don’t know why I wasn’t offered physiotherapy at the time. It’s something I still have to fight for today.

In the early stages, most people are diagnosed with a kind of MS called relapsing-remitting, characterized by periods of super dramatic attacks followed by periods we’ll call remission, but it’s definitely a misnomer because you never get quite back to baseline. As the years and MS attacks go on, you recover but never back to the way you were. It’s like the damage accumulates with every attack—that’s why time is of the essence when it comes to an MS diagnosis. The sooner you can get on a therapy, the better.

Although the doctor at the walk-in clinic delayed my diagnosis, I can’t fault him. I feel very lucky to have found the doctor, nurse and neurologist in the emergency room who recognized what I had right away. I got a diagnosis faster than most people. We need to do better about that globally. Some people have to wait months for approval from insurance companies to get on therapies. You’re gambling with that whole time period. Anything can happen. I had a devastating relapse between medications at one point and I lost function that I’ll never get back. That didn’t have to happen. That’s a particularly hard pain point, when you’re working within a healthcare system.

It’s been a while since my diagnosis. I’m not going to share my age because I feel like people with MS will make comparisons, like how many years it took me to go from walking to using a rollator. MS is different for everyone, so I don’t want to be used as a gauge. I’m now a blogger and podcaster, creating the content that I wish had been available to me when I was first diagnosed. I share things I’ve learned over the years, but even as a veteran, I’m still learning stuff all the time—my body’s still changing all the time.

Canada has the highest rate of MS in the world. And there’s so much stigma around chronic illness and disability that a lot of people are not very open about it. I spoke at an event hosted by EMD Serono for the #soTHISisMS movement, which aims to retell the narrative around Multiple Sclerosis in Canada. I got to tell people This is what MS is really like, and that included sharing some of the hidden difficulties and stresses of an invisible illness, in particular the symptoms that we can’t see, like numbness, pain and fatigue. I also talked about the stress and anxiety that comes with MS, and what happens to relationships, your job, your sense of self—the MS symptoms on top of the physical ones. The #soTHISisMS campaign allows us to bring more awareness to the disease, but also to help destigmatize chronic illness and others find a community.

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On June 27, 2019, a stranger crawled through the bedroom window of Sloane Crosley’s New York apartment and made off with her grandmother’s jewellery. One month later and one state away, her closest friend, Russell Perreault, took his own life. “It’s hard to know the size of things,” Crosley writes in Grief Is for People, and in their immediate aftermath, these two losses—both sudden, both mystifying, but very differently shaped—kept pulling together like magnets, “keeping each other company in the dark.”

Crosley has written novels and essays, but this book is something altogether different: at times a wild caper (she goes to great lengths to retrieve a necklace), at times a black office comedy (both publicists, she and Perrault had a front-row seat to James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces implosion) and, often, a warm portrait of the ways a good friendship can contour so much of our identity. Mostly, though, it is a patient investigation into the unruly, ongoing work of grief, especially when suicide is involved. “Suicide warps the mourning process,” Crosley says. “You’re stuck in the past longer—you’re working the math backwards, trying to pin the loss down, as opposed to working forward through the process.” Here, she discusses finding the permission to feel as wretched as you want to and why it’s no good to pre-grieve.

You’ve said that one should approach new people as if they were grieving. How do you do that?

It’s not necessarily about watching your language, or policing your humour. It’s more about being gentle. I think there should be a baseline of ignorance—you have no idea what it took for people to get out of bed that morning.

I know you read a lot of grief books and listened to a lot of grief podcasts after Russell died. It sounds like, when it comes to loss, friendships rank pretty low in the relationship hierarchy.

Which is funny, because this is the relationship that we all have. We don’t all have children or siblings. Most of us have parents, though that relationship varies in quality. But everybody has a friend. So it was surprising to see how neglected that relationship was. I am not implying any jealousy over friends or relatives who have lost their partner or son, but there’s a bit more of a road map in our culture for that relationship, and for how terrible that loss is. Whereas, as much as I was supported by people who loved me, I felt on my own in terms of navigating the topography of my loss. What was my role? What was our relationship? Was I entitled to be as upset as I was? It felt really amorphous at a time when I could have used more of a foregone conclusion about my grief. I wish other people knew how it was going to affect me. And I wish I knew.

Why don’t friendships get that standing?

Well, the assumption is, it’s less biologically unmooring, right? You’re not missing something you created or that created you. I do think, culturally, we’ve outgrown the assumption of what family looks like—it’s not just Leave It to Beaver. But from a grief perspective, we maybe still think that the nuclear family reigns supreme, and we’re not ready to have friendship fill in that gap.

But there’s so much that is created inside a friendship—a whole language of references and jokes and intimacy.

And you have to work for it, right? It doesn’t come for free. Sometimes I call Russell my best friend, but I’m more apt to call him my favourite person, and I feel like I always try to stress all the different connections that we had. If he was annoying me, it was like a brother. If he was hard on me, it was like a boss. If he was proud of me, it was like a parent. And all these things add up, but that relationship is greater than the sum of its parts, because it’s just a very deep friendship. I’m still caught up short by the fact that he’s not here.

You learned that, between the theft of your jewellery and Russell’s death, you were experiencing something called “grief overload.” That’s such an interesting term, because it assumes there’s a threshold after which grief’s burden becomes too much.

I had a friend growing up whose family was Christian, and they had all sorts of decorative things on the walls. And there was a little sign in the bathroom that said, “God wouldn’t give you more than you could handle.” And I remember even as a kid thinking, that doesn’t seem right. I’m not trying to fact check your bathroom, but that makes no sense. Grief overload was something I researched and found, and it did help to put a label on the strange sort of numbness and blur that I was feeling. And that label did make me feel better, because I think I wanted permission to feel as god awful as I did.

Succession introduced us to the futile concept of pre-grieving. Fine, we can’t game grief in advance, but are there ways we can brace for impact?

I am not an expert on grief or psychology, but I do know a bit about storytelling, and the human aversion to grey areas and to not knowing things. Like, the first flirtation game we play is: Do you like me, check yes or no. So the idea that there will be this unknown in mourning is so scary. You have a sense of it—you’ve seen a movie, you’ve seen friends go through grief, you’ve had someone die before. But you want the full handle on it, and I just don’t think that’s possible or healthy. But it comes from a place where human beings really want to know what’s around the corner.

There’s a line early in the book that I found reassuring: “No one is obliged to learn anything from loss.”

You mentioned the books I had read—I think that line is sort of a rejoinder to those books, because they did feel lesson-y to me. When you have a book about grief, or that is self-help, you get to the end and there’s this tacit sign off: “I hope this has helped you on your grief journey.” I found it almost offensive the way they wrapped up so neatly. I mean, Russell died in 2019. Do I still sometimes think he’s just on a very long vacation and dropped his phone in the toilet? I do.

What do you want readers to take from your book instead?

There’s this strange jockeying, etiquette-wise, that goes on after a death—like, who gets to ride shotgun—and also within ourselves about how long we’re supposed to grieve. And so as this book runs the gamut through different kinds of loss—whether it’s a burglary, a suicide, COVID, even the absence of a certain period of youth—I want people to feel permission to mourn the things that they mourn. The secondary thing is, it’s meant to speak to people who share my aversion to self-help. It says that you can have this emotional, very true, very earnest experience, without having to read a book that has a butterfly on the cover.

Next: How Mental Illness Shapes Our Identities

Even before the pandemic forced so many of us into our homes and behind our screens, Canada was a nation of lonely folks. In 2019, nearly a quarter of Canadians said they experienced social isolation and loneliness. By 2021, that number had climbed to 35 percent. And, as with most health conditions, people who are already marginalized in society—including queer and racialized folks and seniors—find themselves at higher risk. “It’s rare that loneliness is caused by the individual,” says Kate Mulligan, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. “It’s a response to what’s going on in their lives.”

(Related: What to Do When You’re Feeling Lonely)  

Since loneliness is making us sick—it’s as bad for our bodies as 15 daily cigarettes—it stands to reason that social connection can help. Mulligan is also the senior director of the Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing, a two-year-old national hub that can link people to community-based supports—and to each other. Prescriptions might include time in nature, or an exercise class, or a visit to a museum, or stellar advice around money, housing or work. “It will depend on what you need and what matters to you,” she says. “But we see people reconnect with a sense of purpose and belonging in their own lives.”

And that can have real consequences for an overburdened health-care system. While formalized social prescribing is still pretty new, research out of the U.K. has shown it can reduce hospital admissions and doctor appointments, decrease feelings of loneliness and improve overall health. Here, Mulligan discusses who can benefit from a social prescription (spoiler: we all can) and why, sometimes, good health care is as simple as having someone watch your dog.

When we talk about social isolation, we’re not exactly talking about loneliness, are we?

They’re different. Usually, loneliness is the feeling we have when our social connections aren’t what we want or expect them to be. It feels bad, and it’s a signal that we need to be spending more time with other people. Social isolation is a descriptive term of having fewer social contacts in your life, and sometimes we’re okay with it. We don’t feel lonely about it.

Even before the pandemic, health researchers were sounding the alarm about the risks of loneliness. What do we know about those risks?

Social isolation and loneliness hurts our cardiovascular systems, our brains and our mental health; we’re at higher risk for dementia and heart attacks and strokes. And this is because we’re biologically designed to be in relationships with other people. When we don’t have relationships, we don’t have life.

Do we know more about the risks of loneliness than we do about the benefits of socializing?

Yes, but I think that’s because it’s taken quite a long time even to get the risks on the radar. I’d argue it was the pandemic that really shifted our understanding, because, finally, everybody had an experience of isolation. It wasn’t just people who are already facing marginalization. I think the research on the benefits of connection will start to catch up, and that’s where social prescribing can really help, because it’s a way to help us measure and evaluate the impact of people doing this reconnection.

What are the benefits, especially when it comes to our health-care system?

We’ve got this system that was basically designed at the time of Confederation. After that, the one major innovation was medicare . So the vast majority of our health spending goes to doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical drugs, even though we’ve got a good 30 to 50 years of evidence that upwards of 80 percent of our health is determined by non-clinical factors [like food, housing and social inclusion]. People are going to the ER or the hospital for things that are beyond the design of our current system, and they’re being discharged back into the conditions that made them sick in the first place. That’s hard for people and for health-care providers. We’re doing the research now to see whether, if we move people even one step upstream, that can save money and relieve some of the burden that health-care providers face.

What does moving people upstream look like?

We tried out social prescribing in 11 different communities in Ontario in 2019, mostly within community health centres. Some people did gardening groups. Bereavement groups cropped up that allowed people to come together to talk, but also to cook together or do art or activities. Community health workers helped people apply for benefits, do their taxes or go through the hoops of accessing affordable housing. It really varied—we say that social prescribing shifts the focus from “what’s the matter with me?” to “what matters to me?” In Timiskaming [Ontario] one of the reasons older adults weren’t attending their health- and social-care appointments is because there was no one to take care of their pets. If nobody had asked what mattered to them, it wouldn’t have come up. Little things like that can mean a lot. In some ways, it goes against the hierarchy of needs, the idea that, you know, first you need shelter. Sometimes, first you need pet-sitting.

What did you hear from people in those 11 pilot projects?

I think it was a real lifeline. The community health worker—in the U.K., they’re called link workers—is so important, because it’s someone who gets what you’re going through, knows what’s available in the community and can help you actually follow through. Sometimes they might go with you to the first few swimming lessons, until you’ve made a friend and are feeling comfortable. That can mean a lot when you’re in a time of need.

How do you know if you could benefit from a social prescription?

Well, I think we all can, because of how much of our health is determined by these nonclinical factors. But especially if we’re repeatedly going to health care and not feeling better or getting the support we need. Sometimes we’ve been diagnosed with depression and medication is only doing so much. Sometimes we’re going to the doctor because we’re grieving. Sometimes we’re malnourished or living with food-related health conditions. Those are some indications that social prescribing could be for you.

And how do you find link workers?

They’re not a formal part of our health system right now, and I would resist making them another registered health professional. [The Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing] has been spending the past couple of years co-designing what we think social prescribing could look like across Canada. Even that conversation is rare, because we don’t have a Canadian health system, we have provincial health systems. But we’re having a lot of success already. British Columbia has gone from 20 communities with link workers to 100, funded by the Ministry of Health there, linking regional health authorities with smaller community organizations. So it’s not going back in the bottle—people can see the benefits. I wanted to ask about weak ties, because increasing those sorts of interactions may be less daunting than trying to widen your social network. Why are weak ties important?

Weak ties are the people that you kind of know, and they’re really important. They might be a fellow dog walker. They might be the barista at your coffee shop or your bus driver. People whose name you might not even know, but who you encounter in your daily life. We had so little of this during the pandemic, right? We maintained our family Zoom calls, but those everyday weak ties were very much eroded. And we need them because that’s what creates a strong community. We expand the boundaries of who we are when we bump into people who are different from ourselves.

I really missed that in the early months of the pandemic—the way that someone on a streetcar or in a yoga class just, like, existentially affirms me. It makes me feel, “okay, I am seen, I exist.”

Absolutely. And I think there is something biophysical about that. We are physically exchanging all sorts of information with other people all the time—we’re touching them, we’re smelling them, we’re having all these interactions. We’re disconnected from so many of those sensory experiences on a Zoom screen, and we forget that they’re a big part of human life. We’re not just brains, right? We have all these other senses that need to be engaged, and sometimes we need a little bit of coaching to get back into that.

Next: 10 Ways to Enrich Your Life and Beat Loneliness

When I first became vegan, I gravitated toward sweet breakfasts, partly because there were fewer savory recipes online at the time. However, as I experimented in the kitchen, I discovered ingredients that could be easily incorporated into savory plant-based breakfasts, including chickpea flour. It’s amazing in so many dishes, but one of my favorites is savory pancakes. They’re simple and versatile, so after making this recipe as written, try it again with other ingredients. Have fun by folding in up to ⅓ cup of chopped veggies, or play around with various herbs to replace the green onions.

(Related: Mini Bilinis With Smoked Tomato are the Perfect Bite-Sized Appetizers)

Crispy Chickpea Pancakes with Avocado and Salsa

4 servings

Ingredients

Pancake batter

• 1 cup chickpea flour
• 1 cup water
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp sambal oelek or sriracha, optional
• ¼ tsp sea salt
• Black pepper, to taste
• 3 Tbsp  nutritional yeast
• 4 green onions, sliced (white and green parts), or ¼ cup chopped fresh herbs
• 2 tsp extra virgin olive oil

Toppings

• Salsa
• Sliced avocado
• Chili flakes, optional
• Sliced green onions, optional

Directions

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the chickpea flour, water, garlic powder, sambal oelek, salt, and pepper. Add the nutritional yeast and sliced green onions and stir. Let sit for 15 minutes. Preheat the oven to 200°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Preheat a 9-inch nonstick frying pan or cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat.
2. Use a silicone brush to evenly brush the skillet with ½ teaspoon of olive oil. Give the batter a stir, then pour about ⅓ cup of it into the skillet and swirl the pan to spread the mixture fairly evenly. Cook for 3 minutes or until the edges have browned up and the bottom of the pancake is brown in color. Flip and cook for another 1 to 2 minutes, until lightly browned. Transfer to the prepared baking sheet and put in the oven to keep warm.
3. Reduce the stove heat to medium and repeat the process with the remaining batter, greasing the pan with ½ teaspoon of olive oil each time. Enjoy with the salsa, sliced avocado, chili flakes, and more green onions, if desired.

Excerpted from Savoring by Murielle Banackissa. Copyright © 2024 Murielle Banackissa. Photographs by Murielle Banackissa. Published by Appetite by Random House®, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

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Seija Parnanen-Matthews didn’t lace up hockey skates until she was 38. Her on-ice conversion happened about the same time her eldest son, now 11, started playing. Rather than warming the benches while shivering in the stands, she decided to try the sport herself.

In 2018, she joined a Kelowna co-ed recreational hockey team before moving to a women’s league. Parnanen-Matthews now plays hockey every week for 10 months of the year. Her teammates—some of whom have been playing for years, while others are just learning—range in age from their early 20s to late 40s. Because Parnanen-Matthews had figure skated competitively into her teens, she was confident she could excel at the sport if she put her mind to it.

(Related: This Basketball League Is Breaking the Gender Barrier)

“I make an effort to stay active,” says Parnanen-Matthews, who is now 42. “I think it sets a good example for my kids.” Growing up in Gold River, a small town on Vancouver Island, Parnanen-Matthews had her own sports mentor—her dad. George Parnanen was the phys ed and health teacher for the local high school, and she credits him with showing her how to throw a football and swing a golf club, and for encouraging her to try out for the volleyball and basketball teams. Her main passion in sports, though, was ice skating.

“Dad would take me every Friday to the rink in Gold River,” she recalls. “He would skate backwards and guide me. I became really comfortable on the ice; it’s second nature to me.” Today, Parnanen-Matthews enjoys the cardio exercise, the challenge of learning stick-handling skills and being part of a team. She also loves it when her boys are in the stands, and says all their friends think it’s “so cool” their mom plays hockey.

Unfortunately, George never got to watch his daughter play. He was diagnosed with Stage 4 Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and died just 10 months later. Parnanen-Matthews says that playing hockey during his cancer journey gave her comfort and support. The sport has also helped her grieve. “I feel so much closer to him when I play. I imagine he’s watching me,” she says. “My boys do the same. They know Grandpa is at every game of ours cheering us on.”

TRY IT ON “As I got older, I really started to miss skating,” says Parnanen-Matthews. Not only did she get back on the ice, she also broke through it, cold plunging in Okanagan Lake. She does this at least once a week all winter long to stay present and grounded. After, she’ll have tea by the lake, which always has a calming effect. Team captain Parnanen-Matthews strives to be a positive sports role model for her sons, like her father was for her. She hopes early exposure to sports will rub off on her boys, and that they’ll benefit from the positive impact that exercise and teamwork has on physical and mental health.

LEARNING CURVE The skating part of hockey has been easy. It’s the stick handling, hand-eye coordination and cardiovascular endurance that have delivered a happy challenge on the ice. “I’m still learning and growing in the sport, but I’ve come a long way,” she says. “When my boys watch me play, it’s their turn to give me pointers!”

CHARACTER STUDY One thing Parnanen-Matthews loves about sports is how playing—and losing—builds resilience. “When I take my kids out to hockey, especially my oldest, I say to him, ‘I really do hope you have a few failures this year because those are the games where you will learn the most.’”

CAPTIVE AUDIENCE “My life is at the rink and I love every minute of it,” says Parnanen-Matthews. It’s not in her nature to be a spectator, but she enjoys sitting in the stands during her sons’ practices and games and catching up with other parents. Watching them grow in the sport also inspires her to improve each time she plays.

DINNER PARTIES Family meals that fuel the body and mind are important to Parnanen-Matthews. She aims to put fruit, fibre, salad and even seaweed on the plate: “The kids know there’s always gotta be a vegetable with everything I make,” she says with a laugh. But good conversation around the table matters most.

INTERMISSION When the gloves are off and the hockey sticks stowed, it’s down time. Parnanen-Matthews loves bonding with her sons over movies, reading books with them at bedtime or just snuggling. Parenting two active boys is busy work, so she cherishes these quiet moments.

PARTING GIFT After Parnanen-Matthews’s father died, she found hockey gear that he had been saving for presents for the boys, plus some of his sports memorabilia, including his whistle and jacket. Now, every time she and the kids play hockey, it feels like his legacy lives on.

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Mini blinis (blinis is Russian for crepes) have been one of my mom’s traditional Christmas dishes for decades. Usually topped with smoked salmon, a dollop of sour cream, and capers, this dish is synonymous with celebrations. My veganized version features a star ingredient: marinated Roma tomatoes as the “smoked salmon.” Preparing them requires you to employ a few fun techniques: blanching, coring, and marinating the tomatoes overnight in a mixture of tamari, liquid smoke, and seaweed. These are then served on pillowy mini blinis, along with silky vegan cream cheese, salty capers, and herbaceous dill. All the flavors build on each other to create the perfect little appetizer or amuse-bouche that is sure to be a crowd-pleaser!

(Related: Make Dinner in Just 20 Minutes With This Recipe for Spicy Gochujang Tofu)

Mini Bilinis

Makes 24-26 mini bilinis

Ingredients

Smoked Tomato

• 1 Tbsp + 1½ tsp water
• 1 Tbsp + ½ tsp tamari
• 1½ tsp olive oil
• ¼ tsp liquid smoke (see note)
• ¼ tsp ground seaweed (see note)
• 2 firm Roma tomatoes

Mini Blinis

• ¾ cup all-purpose flour
• 1½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp organic cane sugar
• ¼ tsp sea salt
• ¾ cup unsweetened soy milk
• 1 tsp avocado oil
• Melted vegan butter or margarine, for cooking

For Assembly

• Vegan cream cheese or vegan sour cream
• Capers
• Fresh dill
• Freshly cracked black pepper

Directions

1. Prepare the smoked tomato. Place the water, tamari, olive oil, liquid smoke, and seaweed in a glass container with a lid. Set aside. Fill a saucepan with water and bring it to a boil. Meanwhile, make 4 long and shallow lengthwise incisions in each tomato, from end to end. Place the tomatoes in the boiling water and cook for 1 minute. Drain the tomatoes, then run them under cold water for 2 minutes. Remove the tomatoes’ skins (it should come off easily after blanching) and quarter the tomatoes lengthwise. Scoop out the core and the seeds (freeze these to use in sauces). Cut each tomato quarter into 4 to 6 pieces, depending on the size of tomatoes, and add to the tamari mixture. Put the lid on the container, then shake it a few times to fully coat the tomatoes with the marinade. Place in the fridge to marinate overnight.
2. Prepare the blinis. In a small bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Add the soy milk and avocado oil and stir until well combined. Heat a medium or large pan over medium heat. Using a silicone brush, brush the entire surface of the pan with melted butter. Scoop the blini batter into the pan, using 1 heaping teaspoon of batter per blini, spreading the batter slightly into a circle using your spoon. Fit in as many blinis as you can while still leaving space between them to facilitate their flipping. Cook for one to two minutes, until golden. Flip and cook for another minute. Repeat until you have used all the batter. If the pan gets too hot and starts to smoke, reduce the heat to medium-low. Let the mini blinis cool completely before serving.
3. Assemble the blinis. Dollop some vegan cream cheese onto the mini blinis. Top with 1 or 2 slices of smoked tomato, 1 or 2 capers, fresh dill, and a crack of pepper. Enjoy after assembly. Alternatively, store all the elements separately in the fridge for up to 3 days. You can eat your mini blinis cold or warm by microwaving them on medium power for 15 to 30 seconds.

Excerpted from Savoring by Murielle Banackissa. Copyright © 2024 Murielle Banackissa. Photographs by Murielle Banackissa. Published by Appetite by Random House®, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

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I am a Montrealer at heart, so I had to include a poutine recipe in this cookbook. Poutine is a Quebecois dish of fries topped with hot gravy and squeaky cheese. Although traditional poutine has never been my favorite fast-food item, creating elevated versions like this one has awoken my love for this cherished dish. I have spent countless weekends creating new variations of poutine using all kinds of potatoes, leftover gravy, vegan sausage and ground meat, and various veggies. Poutines are like burgers in that they are an amazing blank canvas on which to express your creativity, practice your culinary skills, and develop your palate. For this recipe, I use sweet potato fries; their sweetness complements all the umami flavors of the decadent gravy that features miso, tamari, and shiitakes.

(Related: These Mini Bilinis With Smoked Tomato Are the Perfect Bite-Sized Appetizers)

Sweet Potato Shiitake Poutine

4 servings

Sweet Potato Fries

• 4 sweet potatoes, unpeeled and cut in ½-inch-thick sticks (see note)
• 1 Tbsp avocado oil
• ¾ tsp sea salt
• ½ tsp chili powder
• ¼ tsp black pepper

Mushroom Gravy

• 4 cups vegan beef broth or vegetable broth
• 1 cup dried whole shiitakes
• ¼ cup unsalted vegan butter
• ½ cup finely diced shallots
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tsp fresh thyme
• 3 Tbsp all-purpose flour
• 1 Tbsp whiskey, optional (see note)
• 2 tsp tamari
• 2 tsp dark miso paste
• ½ tsp black pepper

Sautéed Shiitakes

• 2 Tbsp unsalted vegan butter
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tsp tamari
• Black pepper, to taste

Toppings

• Vegan feta cheese
• Sliced green onions

Directions

1. Prepare the sweet potato fries. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Drizzle the sweet potatoes with the avocado oil and sprinkle with the salt, chili powder, and pepper. Toss to coat, then arrange in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until tender and browning at the edges. Give the fries a toss halfway through the cooking time.
2. Prepare the mushroom gravy. In a small saucepan with the lid on, bring the broth and dried shiitakes to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes, covered. Remove the shiitakes from the saucepan and set aside. Transfer the broth to a bowl.
3. Return the saucepan to the stove and melt the butter over medium heat. Add the shallots and cook, stirring often using a silicone spatula, for 2 to 3 minutes, until softened. Add the garlic and thyme, and cook for 1 minute. Sprinkle in the flour and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the warmed broth, whiskey, tamari, miso, and pepper. Stir, then bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium and cook for 5 minutes, stirring often. Transfer the mixture to an immersion blender or a regular blender and blend until smooth. Return to the stove and cook over medium heat for 5 more minutes or until thickened. Set aside.
4. Prepare the sautéed shiitakes. Thinly slice the rehydrated shiitakes. Melt the butter in a pan, then add the shiitakes and cook until golden, about 2 minutes. Sprinkle in the garlic, tamari, and pepper. Stir, then remove the mixture from the heat to prevent burning.
5. Assemble the poutine. Divide the sweet potato fries among four individual bowls. Top with crumbled feta, gravy, and sautéed shiitakes. Sprinkle with sliced green onions and serve.

Excerpted from Savoring by Murielle Banackissa. Copyright © 2024 Murielle Banackissa. Photographs by Murielle Banackissa. Published by Appetite by Random House®, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

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When you’re late for work and frantically searching for something, such as a lost wallet, especially if you’re in a rush, you might start with a strategy based on semantic memory—by searching based on the knowledge of where you usually keep your wallet. But you can also tap into episodic memory to retrace your steps. Try to vividly remember where you were and what you were doing when you last recall having your wallet. If you can mentally time travel to the moment that you put your wallet down, the hippocampus can help you pull up other information from around the same time. The closer you can get to that context, the easier it will be to find the wallet.

Just as being in a particular place, situation, or state of mind makes it easier to access memories of other events that occurred in similar contexts, being in the wrong context can make it hard to find the right memory. Suppose you go to a party, and after a couple of glasses of wine, you find yourself deep in an animated conversation with a stranger. The next day, you run into her at the supermarket but can’t quite place who she is or how you know each other. The problem is that the hippocampus didn’t just store that person’s face in your memory, it connected it to the context—the midcentury-modern furniture in the house, your slight buzz from that second glass of merlot, and the ambient noise of dance music and party guests talking. Without any of those context cues, it can be hard to bring yourself back to a conversation you struck up with someone while you were both waiting in line for the bathroom.

The further back in time you try to go, the harder it is for your brain to pull up a past context, and in some cases you won’t be able to do it. Despite anecdotal claims to the contrary, scientific research has established that adults do not have reliable episodic memories from before the age of two. This phenomenon, known as infantile amnesia, is an enigma to scientists because very young children are fast learners and appear to be capable of forming episodic memories, but for some reason we can no longer access those experiences as we progress to adulthood. One possibility, based on research by my UC Davis colleague Simona Ghetti, is that the hippocampus is still developing during the first few years of life, so very young children lack the ability to link their experiences to specific spatial and temporal contexts. I also suspect that infantile amnesia happens because connections between neurons across the entire neocortex undergo massive reorganization during the first few years of development. It would be nearly impossible for an adult to travel back in time to infancy because our brains would have to undo years of wiring changes to get us back to the mental state we were in as babies.

You’ve probably had the experience of walking into a room and having no memory of why you went there in the first place. This doesn’t mean you have a memory problem—it’s actually a normal consequence of what memory researchers call event boundaries. When you’re in your home, you have a sense of where you are. If you step out the front door, that sense will dramatically change, even though you’ve only moved a short distance. We naturally update our sense of context when we experience a shift in our perception of the world around us, and those points mark the boundary between one event and another.

The context change that occurs with an event boundary has significant implications for episodic memory. Just as walls are physical boundaries dividing a house into separate rooms, event boundaries organize the timeline of our past experiences into manageable packets. People are better at remembering information that occurred at an event boundary than they are at remembering information from the middle of an event. Recent work from a number of labs suggests that this is because the hippocampus waits to store a memory for an event until right after an event boundary—that way, we only encode the memory once we have a full understanding of the event.

Given that our sense of context suddenly changes at event boundaries, it can sometimes be hard to recall things that occurred only moments earlier. At least once a week I find myself walking into the kitchen, scratching my head, and wondering, “What was I looking for again?” Inevitably, my frustration leads me to grab some junk food from the refrigerator, scarf it down, and walk back to my desk, only to realize as soon as I sit down that I went to the kitchen to retrieve my glasses. I’ve consumed many empty calories thanks to event boundaries.

Event boundaries happen all the time and don’t necessarily require a change in location. Anything that alters your sense of the current context— a shift in the topic of conversation, a change in your immediate goals, or the onset of something surprising—can lead you to put up an event boundary. You’ve likely experienced this if you’ve ever been in the middle of telling a story and someone interrupted your train of thought, say, to point out your shoe was untied, and you forgot entirely what you were about to say. It can be frustrating—even alarming as we approach middle age and beyond— to have to ask, “What were we talking about?” But rest assured, it’s a normal by-product of the way our brains use context to organize episodic memories.

Beyond causing these quirks in forgetting, event boundaries can also affect our sense of the passage of time. In 2020, millions of people all over the world endured months of lockdowns during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. The monotony of spending all day, every day in the same place, deprived of the usual activities that would normally provide structure to our daily lives, such as school schedules and work commutes, left many of us feeling as if we were no longer anchored in time and space. To get a sense of the time warp that people were experiencing, I polled the 120 students in my (online) Human Memory class about how they were experiencing the passage of time. After spending almost an entire semester stuck in the same room, staring at a computer screen, binge-watching television shows or attending online classes and lectures, an overwhelming majority (95 percent) said they felt that the days were going by slowly. Yet, without distinctive memories of what was happening during those days, most of them (80 percent) also felt that the weeks were passing by too quickly.

With few event boundaries to provide meaningful structure to their lives, my students—along with millions of other people all over the world—felt as if they were living in the twilight zone, floating aimlessly through time and space.

Making the most of mental time travel

Nostalgia, that bittersweet mixture of joy and sadness that infuses so many of our most precious memories, is one of the most powerful ways episodic memory influences our everyday lives. On average, people find it easier to recall positive experiences than negative ones, and this positivity bias increases as we get older.

An abundance of research suggests reliving happy experiences can improve our mood and self-confidence, and therefore our optimism about the future. A simple context cue can transport us back to a happier time, perhaps even changing our perspective and shifting how we see ourselves and our place in the world.

When we look back at the past, we tend to focus on a specific period of our lives, between the ages of 10 and 30. The predominance of memories from these years is called the reminiscence bump, and it isn’t just apparent when we ask people to recall events from their lives; it also shows up indirectly when people rattle off lists of favorite movies, books, and music. Something about listening to a song or watching a movie from those formative years can give us a sense of meaning, connecting us to an idealized sense of who we are.

Although nostalgia can make us happy, it can also have the opposite effect, depending on the memories we choose to reflect upon and the way in which we make sense of them. The term nostalgia was coined by a Swiss physician in the late seventeenth century to describe the particular kind of anxiety disorder he observed in mercenary soldiers living far from home. For them, memories of good times in a familiar place only highlighted their unhappiness in the present. More recently, researchers found that, if people felt lonely in their daily lives, engaging in nostalgia left them feeling even more isolated and alone. In other words, the cost of nostalgia is that it can leave us feeling disconnected from our lives in the present, giving us a sense that things aren’t as they were in the “good old days.”

Rumination—repeatedly circling back to negative events and spinning your wheels— is the evil twin of nostalgia, and a prime example of how not to use episodic memory. People who have been identified as having Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory because they can pull up detailed recollections for seemingly trivial experiences from the distant past tend to ruminate too much. As one such individual put it, “I do tend to dwell on things longer than the average person, and when something painful does happen, like a breakup or the loss of a family member, I don’t forget those feelings.”

To benefit from mental time travel, it’s helpful to think about why the human brain evolved that capability in the first place: to learn from singular experiences. When we travel to past contexts, we can access experiences that reorient our view of the present. Recalling negative events can remind us of past lessons we have learned, so we can make better decisions in the present. Recalling positive events can help us to be better, by increasing altruism and compassion. In one study, people who vividly recalled an event in which they helped someone were more empathetic to the plight of others and expressed more willingness to help a person in need. By recalling past moments of compassion, wisdom, perseverance, or courage, we can use our connection with the past to broaden our sense of what we can do and who we can be.

Adapted from Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold On to What Matters by Charan Ranganath, PhD. Copyright ©2024 by Charan Ranganath. Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited.

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Fun fact about me: I didn’t really drink until I was old. As a pup, I didn’t love the taste of liquor or how quickly a six-pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade could make you barf your dinner back up. (Moderation has, uh, never been my strong suit.) And I was a pretty confident person, meaning I didn’t feel the need to guzzle booze to boost my boldness the way many seemed to. But a few factors converged in my early thirties that made me start drinking at a slightly more normal rate. There were the endless fashion parties filled with free drinks. The hard-partying crew I ran with at the time and peer pressure from my pushy best friend. And going on dates. A lot of dates.

As I started drinking in my social life, I started drinking in my dating life, too. My bestie encouraged me to switch from watered-down vodka to straight whiskey because “boys like it.” It turned out I liked whiskey, too. There was something so nonchalant, so la-di-da, so sexy about ordering a scotch on the rocks. The clink of the ice in the glass, the smoky taste. Very femme fatale. If the date was going well, the hooch would calm my nerves. If the date was boring, getting slightly blitzed made it go by faster. My behaviour was, apparently, common. Tinder recently partnered with Ipsos on research around drinking and dating habits and found 7 in 10 young adults usually enjoy a drink on dates—and 37 percent admitted feeling social expectations to drink alcohol on a date. A release revealed that “a majority of the young adults surveyed in Canada find dating easier (55 percent) and more fun (51 percent) with alcohol, yet over half wish there wasn’t so much expectation to drink while dating.”

(Related: A Science-Backed, Data-Forward, Awfully Sobering Guide for Women Who Drink Alcohol)

Drinking on dates came with risks for me, too, however: hangovers, potentially nauseating makeouts, blurting out my deepest secrets. It could also, apparently, hamper real connections, according to holistic sober coach Amy C. Willis of HOL + WELL. Or even remembering the date at all. “Alcohol also slows us down cognitively, making how we think, speak and process information much slower, which can have a direct negative impact on our ability to connect with our dates,” she says. “In many cases of overconsumption, our brains’ ability to make and store memories is compromised, which isn’t in service to our mental and emotional well-being.”

I recently started dating again after a surprise split from my life partner of eight years. A few months into it,  I wrote a story about test-driving a drink-tracking app during Dry January. I was a bit horrified at the weekly tally; the numbers made it clear that dating anxiety was a trigger. I never really drink at home (I don’t like beer or wine), but I’d started having the occasional highball before dudes came over or while entertaining gentlemen. It was a good reminder that while I may be a confident gal, I wasn’t above tossing back a bourbon or two to smooth out sex nerves. The Tinder survey attributed drinking on dates to a variety of reasons, including the aforementioned nerve-soothing (38 percent), along with making it easier to chat (16 percent) and the nebulous “having a good time” (10 percent).

So when my editor asked if I wanted to go on a sober date again to see how it felt, I was game for something a little different, something a little healthier perhaps. As Willis says, “by choosing to date sober, not only are you able to be fully present for the experience, you are also giving your date the chance to get to know you, unfiltered, and vice versa if your date also isn’t drinking.” Without alcohol, we’re able to connect more authentically, says Willis, and figure out a little faster if we’re interested in getting to know this person more.

Since I’ve been dating people more casually at first—I use the term “dating” loosely—going for drinks has been a good option, since it’s really more of a perfunctory vibe check before you go home together. But what if you’re meeting for a sober date? Does that change the dynamic, or the type of person you choose? I decided to err on the side of caution and ask the one dude who I was more interested in and thus would hopefully be enjoyable to chit-chat with for an extended non-drinking period on this sober adventure. And, in a bit of a twist, he said he didn’t drink, either, so it would be a double-sober date.

This is becoming more and more normal. With the expansion of the sober-curious movement, the inception of mindful drinking and the ever-growing emphasis on wellness, more people are generally thinking differently about how and when they consume alcohol and the impact it has, according to Willis. “With this and in some circles, alcohol is no longer viewed in the same ways it once was. Folks seem to be more discerning about consumption; drunk dates are less appealing and many just aren’t interested in spending their time at the bar,” she says. Willis says that dating apps play a useful role in sober dating as well, as many apps now allow you to self-identify what your relationship to substances is on your profile, which can function as a filter for dating prospects while also normalizing the choice to not drink.

(Related: 10 Canned Mocktails for Buzz-Free Socializing)

As I was getting ready to go out, I had the urge to pour a nice li’l whiskey to sip on while getting dressed. I paused: what was I doing?! I couldn’t have a drink before the sober date! Who had I become?! As someone who had always seen myself as more of a non-drinker, it was utterly bizarre to see how within a few short months, drinking pre-date had become a standard option. I thought about the 10 percent of people in the Tinder survey who didn’t even know why they drank on dates. I decided to virtuously skip the liquor and finish getting ready, then hopped in an Uber to the bar.

I suggested meeting at one of my usual go-tos, Famous Last Words, a renowned cocktail bar in Toronto where all the drinks are based on books. Their libations are always delicious, and they have a selection of non-alcoholic options. I barrelled into the dim bar, slightly late as always, and was immediately flustered even further by how cute my date was, perched on the overstuffed couch. He asked me whereabouts I was coming from and I started blathering about intersections and neighbourhoods—and immediately started yearning for a stiff drink to help me calm down. Then I realized: there would be no stiff drink forthcoming, only a GIANT TUMBLER OF FRUIT JUICE AAARRRGHHHHH.

I paused, and took a beat to register the booze craving (boo, hiss) then reframed the scene as an opportunity to enjoy a yummy mocktail and be here, now, sans the chemical interference of substances. I ordered one made with non-alcoholic spirit, mango juice, elderflower and rhubarb bitters, while my date had one with pear juice, honey-thyme spirit and walnut bitters. While it didn’t have that tantalizing sting of alcohol, it was utterly delicious: refreshing, fun, vibrant.

I asked him why he had stopped drinking. He had, in fact, used Reframe, the same app I had test-driven for that story, and found that drinking less and then not at all had had many positive effects on his life: he lost weight, reduced anxiety over drunken-creeper risk (as an inveterate drunken creeper myself, that’s an appealing perk for me, too). He said it could be hard to go out with people who still drank a lot, or to places with few non-alcoholic options, but still, he didn’t want to go back to drinking. I thought the fact that he had made such a drastic change surprisingly…hot?

For my second drink, I chose a mocktail made with apple cider, cinnamon and cherry, and my date went for a custom virgin take on a Negroni. Trying all the non-alcoholic options together was also a nice date activity, it turned out, as we could sample each other’s novel drinks and ponder which of the exotic mocktails to try next. I also didn’t have to worry about how many drinks I was having (as my ex used to say about me, “third double, you’re in trouble”). The only risk I incurred was more frequent bathroom breaks.

The hours slipped by, even without the lubrication of alcohol, and we finished up with a third round. The bartender was starting to tidy up and I realized we had been chatting for 2.5 hours, not a drop of liquor consumed.

My date offered to drive me home and I was about to say he shouldn’t be driving since he had been drinking—and then remembered that neither of us had actually been drinking. Funny how ingrained these behaviours become. We strolled back to his house, and I shivered a little in the winter chill, no booze to warm my bones. But it was nice—I felt present, alive. He invited me in to hang out a little longer, and I cozied up in the corner of his couch, while he poured me a splash of rose-scented non-alcoholic spirit. “I just thought you might want to try it,” he said. “I do,” I said. And smiled.

Afterwards, he did drive me home. The next morning, there wasn’t a trace of a hangover, just the first small bloom of a crush, possibility unfurling.

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