July 2nd, 2008 writerspice
Every now and then, at dinner parties, over hors d’oeuvres and desserts, I like to raise the question: what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten? The answers are memorable. One friend snacked on groundhog in Ecuador while another sampled rotten shark, a delicacy in Iceland.
And then there are the bugs.
It seems a lot of people have eaten bugs while traveling. While in South America, I snarfed down a giant maggot sauteed with wild onions before being baked in a banana leaf.
A long-time later, I don’t exactly crave it, but the taste-test wasn’t so bad. And lots of people have tried chocolate ants or crunchy locusts.
Since only some twenty percent of the world doesn’t eat bugs as part of their regular diet, eating creepy-crawlies while on vacation is a common “when in Rome” activity. But some enterprising cooks, biologists, locavores and environmental activitists are starting to point out that a snack of insects is actually a very smart source of plentiful and sustainable protein.
I go into depth in my latest piece for Celsias.com, a story that made me ask myself ‘could I do it?’… What do you think? What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten and could you do that dish on a daily basis?
Posted in Food, Going Green | 10 Comments »
June 11th, 2008 writerspice
Never mind all the questions – where’s it grown, how’s it grown, is it grass-fed or corn? You can leave those at home for this trip to market. Entirely made up of local ecological farmers (many members of the Simcoe County Chapter of Ecological Farmers’ Association of Ontario) the annual Eco-Farmers’ Market is all organic and ecological, all the time.
Now in its fifth season, the market operates on the grounds of Hempola Farms, just north of Barrie (from Highway 400, take the Forbes Road exit or take Highway 93 north from the intersection with Highway 11, just past Barrie. Hempola is at the corner of Highway 93 and Forbes Road).
A bustling collection of health-conscious farmers and shoppers milling around food-laden tables, the market features fresh non-chemically treated vegetables pulled from the ground or plucked from their bushes as soon as they’re ready.
Start with radishes, greens, peas and strawberries or potted perennials ready to be planted and move into tomatoes, carrots, green onions and corn as the summer season moves along. Simcoe County meat farmers also sell healthy and hormone free animal products like grass-fed beef and free-range pork. Dandelion and lavender jellies, herbs, baked goods and cheeses round out this selection of fresh, local, healthy food.
Opening this Friday, June 13th at 3:30 p.m., the market runs until about dusk and continues all summer, until Thanksgiving weekend.
Photo by Julia Manzerova
Posted in Food, Going Green, Simcoe County | No Comments »
June 3rd, 2008 writerspice
Last year I spent some time chatting with a few local farmers to produce an article about the importance and ease of eating from the fields in the county I call home. Called Think Fresh, Eat Locally, the article is in the May/June issue of Simcoe Life magazine.
With my ever-burgeoning interest in growing food and using wild edibles and herbs (my newly-planted veggie garden is sprouting and a batch of mullien from a neighbour’s driveway is drying in the dehydrator as I type), I poured my heart and soul into this piece.
Unfortunately, in the print issue, it ran with the wrong byline.
Although this has never happened to me before, it is a fairly common occurrence for lots of writers (a few colleagues were quick to share their own tales of woe when I released my sorrows in a forum).
But do me a favour. Should you live somewhere within Simcoe County and come across the magazine, take out your pen, cross out the wrong name and write mine in. That would make me feel a whole lot better.
Chef Doug Porter puts together some locally-grown greens at Collingwood’s Simcoe County Restaurant (photo by Lauren Carter)
Posted in Food, Going Green, Issues, Ontario, Recommended, Seasons, Simcoe County, World, Writing Life | No Comments »
May 23rd, 2008 writerspice
Last week, I went to the countryside town of Uxbridge, Ontario on assignment. While there, I wandered into Bredin’s Bakery, bell jingling and old-fashioned porch door slamming behind me.
Inside, as a fourth-generation baker toiled away in the background, I tasted some cookies I’m pretty sure they are serving on simple china plates on a fluffy white cloud in, um, heaven.
Here’s a photo of a baked-goods buyer, perplexed over what delicious bit of paradise pastries she should purchase.
Either that, or she’s wondering what I’m doing, bent over, aiming a camera at her face. Ah, well. It made for a good shot of this simple bakery with delicious fare.
I’m glad I went. Who can argue with contented crumb-fingered sighs?
(And, yeah, okay, I guess this is me officially coming-out as no longer gluten-free – a long, controversial story that can be summed up by saying, nobody knows one’s body like the person who has to live in it).
Posted in Food, Ontario, Pretty Pictures, Recommended | 1 Comment »
April 24th, 2008 writerspice
Maple syrup season is almost over, which means that the sugar shacks will soon be closing their doors.
Luckily, this spring, the members of my family who are based near Shaw’s Sugar Bush (watch the video about how do what they do), a 104-year-old maple syrup farm down the 14th Line, near Orillia, finally followed through on what has become an on-again, off-again tradition. Last weekend, we gathered for pancakes soaked in the sweet gleaming gold from our region’s special trees.
In the barn-like restaurant, we sat at a long table beneath historical photographs and watched the staff steadily serving French toast, sausages, maple baked beans, maple tea, spiced apple cider and other tasty elements of Canadian cuisine. After committing that classic eyes-bigger-than-the-stomach sin, my nephews, my sister, her husband, my mom, my step-dad, Jason and I wattled wandered out back to leisurely work off at least a fraction of those big buttermilk pancakes.
Tall, grey maples stood over a carpet of dead leaves, spotted with bunches of pale purple, white and yellow flowers, the first colour of the season.
We stood back as a team of Percheron horses pulled a wagon past us, following a 1.6 kilometre loop through the trees, roped together by the green tubing (they don’t actually use buckets anymore) that collects the precious sap. My nephews ran ahead and, in a moment of sugar-fueled-Indiana-Jones-adrenaline that only small boys and mothers with threatened children can muster, actually jumped on the wagon…
As the morning steadily promised to be a glorious day, J. and I said goodbye to go home and work on our garden and get busy refurbishing our thirsty canoe, in preparation for other eagerly-awaited warm-weather adventures.
Shaw’s is open for one more weekend. Visit their site for a menu and more information.
Photos by Lauren Carter
Posted in Food, Ontario, Orillia, Seasons | 1 Comment »
April 22nd, 2008 writerspice
Lately my interests keep moving towards food – how it’s produced, where it comes from, the costs in creating it, the sometimes hidden science behind it, the often invisible threats to our health that occupy many of our supermarkets.
Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t that I’m obsessed with my own health. It’s that I like a good mystery and food making in this day and age is rife with them.
Last week, for example, I spent a good two hours trying to find out exactly who supplies the organic fruits and vegetables to one of Canada’s main grocery chains. Do they come from California or Chile and what are the actual costs of buying organic in this way?, I wondered, imagining exposés a la Mother Jones. I rooted around in Google for awhile but never did figure anything out before setting it, still steaming, on the back burner.
As of today, I’ve combined my interests in this area with an increasingly bitter-sweet love of travel (have you seen the price of gas?) and started writing for Celsias, a wonderful blog out of New Zealand that covers everything from our country’s ban on BPAs to the current food crisis to the foolishness of biofuels (dubbed ‘the great biofuel hoax‘ by ecologist Eric Holt-Giménez).
My first post went live today, on Earth Day. How appropriate! I thought I’d let y’all know before I jump on my newly refurbished bike to head out for work – an act that may or may not prove insignificant in the grand scheme of things, writes Michael Pollen in this excellent article, perfect reading for the day.
Photo by Lauren Carter
Posted in Food, Going Green, Recommended, Writing Life | No Comments »
April 17th, 2008 writerspice
Just like I could never understand how equations fit together back in Grade 10, all the facts and figures of wine labeling elude me. What does it all mean? There’s the type of grape, the location and, among all that, the name of the winery (I think) and does any of it really matter?
For me, a trip to the wine store involves narrowing in on the bottles that are giving out extra AirMiles. I never ask the sales staff. I just grab a bottle and slink over to the cash register, eager to escape.
But wine has been appearing a bit more for me lately. First, an assignment to do a profile about a company building wine cellars and now, the arrival of a new release of Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine Soaked Journey From Grape to Glass
, a highly readable and compassionate book about the broad world of wine by award-winning Canadian wine writer Natalie MacLean.
Divided into an assortment of adventures from vineyard-hopping in France to a friendly and indulgent wine-soaked dinner with writer Jay McInerney (of Bright Lights, Big City fame and, more recently, Bacchus & Me), the book brought me out onto dusty earth, inside the crowded aisles of a neighbourhood wine store in San Francisco, to the tables of fancy restaurants (from a sommelier’s perspective) and right inside the contentious debate of scoring wines.
Me, a veritable ‘ignoramous’ (as my mother used to say), as far as talk of wine goes.
But this is the great thing about MacLean. She wants to blast the intimidation factor around choosing wine, pairing it and even tasting it right out of the water.
Near the end of the book, during the description of a warm dinner party with friends, she gives elaborate advice on pairing wines with food (without always going for the old school white-with-white-meat and red-with-red-meat) before gently putting it back in the court of the person who will actually be drinking the stuff. “First and foremost,” she writes,”drink what you like. Think of wine like clothing: most of us choose it based on comfort, not fashion. So pick wines you like to drink, not because they get high scores.”
By the time I read this invitation to trust my own tastes, I’m already armed with lots of new knowledge and the finish of a few hearty laughs.
Throughout the book, MacLean puts herself on display to cast a more human light on her profession. She even spins a hilarious story involving choking (and, um, coughing and spraying) during a professional wine tasting. This willingness to share some of her more embarrassing moments – and to work for a day in a wine store and serve snobby diners as an undercover sommelier – nicely flavours a book that dishes out enough information to turn a trip to the wine story into fun exploration rather than agony.
And there’s even lots of advice on deciphering those elusive labels. During her day-long job in New York City’s Discovery Wines, she gives a boat load.
Some words can simply be ignored, she writes. “A novice buyer might be … seduced by fancy label terms such as reserve, proprietor’s reserve, vintner’s blend, and cellar selection. While these may sound good, they don’t necessarily mean anything at all in most New World regions. They’re not regulated…”
And others can actually help: “…the more specific the place name, the better. When a region in narrowly defined, quality guidelines and laws are more stringent, so it’s less likely that grapes from good and bad vineyards will be blended.”
These are just a few samples of a lush crop of practical wisdom and compelling narrative. For the rest, you’ll just have to buy the book. I’m way too busy putting my new knowledge into action. Bottoms up!
For more information – and a nifty wine-pairing tool – check out Natalie MacLean’s website.
Photo by Lauren Carter
Posted in Food, People, Recommended | No Comments »
November 13th, 2007 writerspice
(Eaten while in Ecuador: Pan-fried Maggots on a Bed of Wild Onions, Served on Banana Leaf. Come to think of it, this was likely gluten-free…)
In my early days of travelling, eating was one of my favourite things. In Italy, a budget breakfast called for fresh olives from the market washed down with delicious cappuccino. In Ecuador, while trekking in the jungle, I sampled fruit that tasted like ice cream along with maggot-like critters harvested from rotten logs (cooked, mind you). Try everything has long been my motto.
But lately, I’ve discovered that I have a not-so-small problem with gluten. And this sensitivity has eliminated my ability to eat bread, anything breaded, anything thickened with flour or flavoured with some suspicious spice mix probably containing some sort of evil wheat. Eating while on the road is now a bit of a trial. It involves lengthy conversations with the wait staff before being told that my choices are limited to two things and the second has dairy, so, well, um, one.
Don’t get me wrong. That one thing is usually pretty good. Maybe it’s chicken with steamed veggies and rice or some such simple thing. But it isn’t the $1,000 bagel currently selling in New York City. And it isn’t that fresh croissant pulled out of an oven in Paris. And it isn’t that village-brewed beer I swilled a whole lot of during my days in the Czech Republic. Nor is it the chicken paprikash my husband and I packed ourselves with while hiking in Hungary… By now you get the point. Who I am becoming became instantly clear to me the last time I hit a Starbucks in some airport in the U.S. Instead of my usual coffee with cream, I ordered a grande-decaf-latte-with-soy. Oh, dear.
After spending so many years in denial, it makes sense that I am now fully grieving the loss of my former easy-going eating ways. On the other end of this, I’m sure, is acceptance. But part of that acceptance is finding places I can go where the chefs and servers are fully aware of this disease that affects an estimated one in every 133 people in North America.
Without gluten, my body feels like it’s brand new. That’s something to love. But so is eating out with gusto again. Here are a few resources I’ve found so far:
- 4D Gluten Free: the Durnford family is selling a table full of gluten free pleasure at the Orillia Farmers’ Market every Saturday. I went last week and stocked up on drop-dead delicious chocolate cake, four-berry pie and a bag full of banana-chocolate chip muffins. It’s now Tuesday and it’s all gone.
- In Traverse City, Michigan, popular riverside 310 Restaurant and Lounge actually has its own gluten-free menu! I wish I’d known that when I was there in September but, then again, I was still in denial (and therefore now have the memory of my last beloved beer).
- And for our next night out in the big city, I’ll be checking out the Canadian Celiac Association’s Toronto chapter’s whole list of restaurants willing and able to cooperate. Some highlights: Il Fornello Restaurant, where gluten-free pizza is always an option. They also mention the Outback Steakhouse chain because of its thorough listing of ingredients and attention to the issue. Who knew?
If you know of more resources or restaurants, please do comment. After all, enjoyable eating is at steak, er, stake!
Posted in Food | 3 Comments »
October 21st, 2007 writerspice
Shredded pork and pickled onion on a homemade tortilla might not sound like much but the succulent treat made my favourites list during today’s tastings at several restaurants in Collingwood, Ontario. A traditional dish from the Yucatan, the tiny tapa was served alongside a subtly sweet drink made mostly of strawberry pulp. Savoured while sitting in a cushy lounge chair, it was a dish I could have eaten a lot more of and a place I plan to go back to.
This was Frida’s Mexican Tapas Bistro, a restaurant that opened this past September and one of ten stops on the Autumn Restaurant Walking Tour, an enjoyable stroll (or stumble, depending on how you respond to the variety of drinks) to ten venues in the city’s historic downtown.
We started at Dags & Willow, a gourmet food shop with a selection of over 100 cheeses, fine olive oils, truffle honey, smoked trout and other items. There, another quick bite of heaven: grapes rolled in cream cheese and roquefort and encrusted with pecans.
But my very favourite stop was in an old house, off Huronia Street. Walking into Brunello at 27 on fourth is like entering a friend’s home. Intimate seating is arranged in what would have once been the parlour and back dining area of the Victorian home. There, we ate a sausage ravioli in a tangy tomato sauce, creamy with cheeses. The accompanying bruschetta sang with the flavours of olive oil, fresh tomatoes, chunks of cucumber and cheese.
Like the whole tasty day, this treat was but a brief introduction to all the available eating that downtown Collingwood has to offer.
Posted in Food, Simcoe County | No Comments »
October 15th, 2007 writerspice
Last weekend I bought some garlic that came from Italy.
Italy!
I thought about it a bit. Held it in my hand and stared at it, papery skin shining under the flourescent lights of Food Basics. There were excuses: not enough time, it’s cheap, I’m already here… But I hesitated before tossing it into the grocery cart.
All summer Jason and I have been working with excuses. Saturday mornings are long, slow affairs that involve our once-a-week cup of coffee as we read books and talk. Once up, we take our dog for a run in the woods. By the time we get home, it’s often past 12:30, the time when the weekly Orillia Farmers’ Market shuts down.
No local food for us. No wandering stalls full of green, orange and red vegetables, glowing jars of honey, chicken that once ran around under the sun and fresh baked bread while the local folk band takes to the stage. If we were travelling, we’d be here in a jiffy, awed by the richness and colour of this 135-year-old market, buying stuffed olives and homemade crepes while perusing the wooden crafts and knitted tea-cozies (nothing that isn’t handmade is allowed at this market). But at home, we’re just too lazy.
This weekend, we decided to go. All week I’d been thinking about the garlic, imagining how much fuel it took to get it here and how quickly we’d used it up. I was thinking about Doug Porter, too. The chef at Collingwood’s Simcoe County Restaurant, he’d talked passionately about apples when I interviewed him last week. Imports are cheaper to buy so orchards in one of Ontario’s lushest apple belts are being razed for condos, he said.
As the rain slowly grew stronger in the growing grey of the day, we bought a jar of lavender honey from a beekeeper who lives just past the edge of town and organic tomatoes, potatoes, onions, spinach, squash and, of course, garlic grown on a farm fifteen miles away. All for about $30. We missed the whole summer!, we said to each other on the way home. How can that be?
That day, I picked up a copy of The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating. The book details the expensive, difficult and rewarding effort by J.B. MacKinnon and Alisa Smith to survive on food grown within a tight radius of their apartment as opposed to the typical 1500 to 2500 miles it travels to get to the grocery store. Three chapters in and I’m already wondering where we can store enough beets and potatoes to last us the winter. I’ll keep you posted.
Posted in Food, Going Green, Orillia | 1 Comment »
