Tiny Bites: a visual Vancouver food blog
Welcome to Tiny Bites! I’m Karen Hamilton: techie by day, foodie by night. And day. All the time, really.
What is Tiny Bites all about?
This site chronicles my attempts to savour everything that Vancouver’s culinary scene can offer. All this food writing and photography took shape on my personal blog, karenhamilton.ca, and now has its own home here at Tiny Bites. I hope to help you not only decide what to chew on tonight, but to keep you abreast of what the community is doing to promote sustainable dining and local, seasonal produce. You may also see recipes from our own kitchen whenever inspiration hits.
How did you get into food writing and photography?
My obsession with food has its origins in my family’s love of food. My mother is an amazing and adventurous home cook; we were happy to be her guinea pigs whenever she found something new to feed us. Once a month, the extended family would get together to bond around a smorgasbord of dishes. Food became associated with notable conversations and happy memories. It was only natural to follow in my mother’s cooking footsteps and meet up with friends over my or someone else’s dinner table.
When I moved to Winnipeg in 2003, it was like cutting a cord not only from friends and family but from this life of cooking and eating that I had taken for granted. In an effort to keep in touch with the people we left behind in Vancouver, I started a personal blog documenting our new life in the Prairies. It was peppered with my first foibles in the world of baking. My techie job at the time happened to be at a digital photo lab, so I was endowed with an informal education in digital post-processing and unlimited use of a Canon Powershot A60 that got me hooked on photography.
Upon returning to Vancouver in late 2004, I kept up the blog, this time to stay in touch with the new friends and family that we were leaving in Winnipeg. My husband and I got into cooking gourmet meals at home and we started to explore the restaurants in Vancouver as if we had never eaten in the city before. When my husband gifted me with a Canon Powershot S2 complete with supermacro functionality, I went from being camera happy to being supermacro obsessed. My main subject matter was food. Sharing these photos on Flickr introduced me to an entire community of foodies that also took photos of their meals. Friendships were established and people began to suggest that I start a blog just for food.
I was reluctant to maintain a separate blog for food, so I put it off for a long time. It was mostly due to laziness. But a lot of it was committment phobia: I have so many other hobbies that it seemed unfair to place my love of food over my other long-established passions like swing and salsa dancing.
Since my upgrade to a dSLR in Fall 2007, I noticed that the food-related articles had started to take over my personal blog. My brother and select friends routinely called for restaurant recommendations. It also dawned on me that toting my giant camera to eateries had become second nature, and that our circle of friends have become so resigned to my frantic food photography that they already expect to starve a little while I set up the shots. When I won a local restaurant reviewing contest, and when Salt Tasting Room linked to my Flickr photo album from their home page, it was made clear that my obsession with food is more than just a passing fancy.
And thusly, Tiny Bites was born.
Can I hire you to do photography?
Why yes, you certainly can. Jump on over to Tiny Bites Consulting and take a look at my photography services overview.
May I borrow your photos for [insert reason here]?
You can purchase the appropriate rights to use my photography outside of Tiny Bites. This holds especially true for commercial use.
I’m not happy to find that my photos have been “borrowed” for sites and blogs without my a) prior knowledge and b) written consent. If you do want to use some of my work and want to see whether you can skip the usage fee, drop me a line. You may not need to pay if you ask nicely.
If you run a commercial site (one that makes money through the site or displays ads) and you use my photo without prior consent, you may hear from me in the form of an invoice. So be forewarned.
Are you open to trying a restaurant or checking out an event with me?
Of course! I’m up for taste testing anything in the Greater Vancouver area or buddying up for local foodie gatherings. So submit your questions, recommendations, or requests and I’ll do my best to accommodate.
Enough about me…what about you? Leave me a comment to say hi!
Comments
19 Responses to “Tiny Bites: a visual Vancouver food blog”
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About Tiny Bites
Tiny Bites is a food blog that explores all things edible and imbibable in Vancouver, British Columbia. More >
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yay – first commenter! i like the font for ‘tinybites’ … looking forward to more ‘bite’ photos …
Hi Karen
I love your new website tinybites……….the photos are wonderful and your comments are fun. The recipes are great too! I always love new recipes. I tried these “tiny bites” last week for my Book Club and the ladies loved them and all asked for the recipe. So thought I’d share it with you.
Love, Mom H.
BLUE CHEESE & PECAN SHORTBREAD
1 c. crumbled Blue Cheese (about 125 g.), chilled
½ c. unsalted butter, room temperature
¼ t. coarsely ground black pepper
1 c. flour
½ c. chopped pecans, lightly toasted
32 pecan halves, lightly toasted
Using electric mixer, beat together cheese, butter & pepper. Stir in flour and chopped pecans. I rolled dough into a long “snake” and cut into 32 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball and place on an ungreased baking sheet. Flatten each ball and place a pecan half on top. Bake at 350 for 30 – 35 minutes.
Hi Mom, nice to see you here! I love all your recipes so thank you for this one. Will be going to a blind wine tasting on Friday. This sounds like just the thing for the communal table.
[...] check out the cooking demos at 11am, 1pm, and 3pm. I’ll also be visiting the Edible BC store (as requested by Christina) and dropping by the Artisan SakeMaker Studio that I learned of during last week’s Memphis [...]
Hi Karen
I really like your website and would like to know if you would like to get involved with our website http://www.hihenry.com
Love your website…we miss you at the office…do drop by sometime and bring a platter of tiny bites with!I’m looking forward to going to Memphis Blues soon. Thanks for the review.
Vanessa
David: Thanks for dropping by. Email me at karenATtinybitesDOTca and let me know what you had in mind.
Vanessa: Hello my dear! Yes, a visit is long overdue. Don’t know how it can be done as I’m all the way in Gastown now, but we’ll work something out. There is a Memphis Blues nearer to you in Lonsdale that has live jazz on Fri / Sat night. Once you do dine there, please come by again and share your experience.
Hello Karen,
I just found your website today as I googled “prime rib dinner vancouver”. It led me to the “Misadventures at the Brave Bull” which I found amusing and made me want to find out more about the website and its creator. Reading your story of growing up with an “amazing and adventurous” cook for a mother reminds me of my childhood as well. I am also of Filipino heritage and grew up here in Vancouver. Food as you well know is a big part of Filipino social and cultural interaction. Any visit to a Filipino home would always entail eating no matter what time of day. My mother is also a great cook and I have not tasted filipino food from anywhere that has come close to comparing to her dishes. My favourites are palabok, kare-kare and pinakbet. I read that menudo is a favourite of yours and hers is the best! I invite you to try her menudo. This talent for cooking was sadly not passed down to me but I do love eating as my waist line can attest. My younger brother however, inherited the “cooking” gene and he is a corporate chef with the Hy’s Restaurant Group which includes Gotham’s and the Shore Club restaurants downtown. Anyways, I really like your visual blog site and although I’m not one to leave comments on these things, your well written story inspired me to. I will be sure to check back here regularly.
Ciao
Myrla
Hi Myrla,
Thank you for such a lovely comment. I very much enjoyed reading about your take on food and family. I wish more people that visit Tiny Bites introduce themselves in such a way!
A friend and I were at Hy’s Encore recently. Had their prime rib for lunch…yum yum. Have had good prime rib at the Brown’s in Yaletown as well. Go there early or be prepared to hear that they’ve sold out of it.
Kare-kare is probably my favourite Filipino dish, but I’m sad to report that my husband doesn’t feel the same way. Consequently, I don’t have a lot of opportunity to enjoy it except at family potlucks. Thank goodness my mother and aunts make great kare-kare!
A small piece of trivia: one of my husband’s nicknames for me is “kare-kare” (but deliberately pronounced “care-care”) =)
Hi Karen this is your Papa, I am presently at the Pam’s office. Please acknowledge.
Hi Karen,
I was wondering if I could bug you for a link to my blog from yours? I’m trying to find ways to generate more traffic to my site. Knowing your blog is doing so well I thought that could help tonnes.
I might see you the 29th for the Social Bites outing in Kits, this concept in my eyes is a brilliant idea and I’m glad to be a part of it.
Take care.
Hi Oliver,
I’ve linked to your blog; sorry, I thought you were already on there!
It would be great to see you again on the 29th =)
Karen
Hi Karen,
I found this nice Filipino restaurant that’s located in Richmond, called Little Ongpin Family Restaurant. They have a wide variety of filipino and chinese dishes and the staff are super friendly. It was a wonderful experience going there because everyone just feels at home and everyone is super friendly and the food is great, definitely a place i would recommend everyone to go and visit
Hi,
Great site! I just added it to SU so it’s now swirling through the StumbleUpon universe. =) I noticed in the mail that people were talking about Filipino food; if people are around Main Street and King Ed, check out Rekados Grill – it’s really good, I think. The Straight also did a review:
http://www.straight.com/article/rekados-takes-diners-on-a-filipino-journey-0
Hi David,
Thanks for the stumble! I have been to Rekado’s a few times and have been meaning to postdate another review to my Filipino Restaurant Series while my husband and I are away in the Philippines this Christmas (thought it’d be fitting).
If you’re looking for other Filipino restaurants in the vicinity, try PinPin on Fraser between 41st and 49th.
[...] such friend is Karen of Tiny Bites. Back when I met Karen she was a food crazy, salsa dancing, photo snapping, Vancouverite. Merrily [...]
Your pictures of the sausage course were great. Any idea who sells sausage casing for use at home? I’m thinking more of the collagen type.
Keep up the great writing.
Best,
Chris.
Hi Chris,
Sebastian & Co. (who led the artisan sausage workshop) can supply you with collagen casings. They stock them in their kitchen off-site so you may need to give Sebastian a heads up before you drive over to buy a batch.
Find them online at http://sebastianandco.ca or call them at 604-925-1636.
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