Sheryl Kirby

Food, Life and the World at Large

Archive for May, 2007

Culinary Mis-Adventures

May 29th 2007 - Posted in Food, products, The World at Large, wtf?
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Giving props where props are due, I’ve got a lot of respect for Loblaws and their President’s Choice line for opening up new gastronomic horizons for the good people of our country and our neighbours to the south. Without the folks from PC offering us everything from peanut sauce to cheesecake, mango dressing to balsamic vinegar, we’d likely still be a society in which meat and two veg was the order of the day. President’s Choice has allowed Canadians to expand their palates and learn about the food of other cultures without shrinking their wallets.

I buy a lot of PC products, and have been known to get ornery as a bear when various items that I like but which sell poorly are discontinued – hello! Wasabi rice chips!!

However, the one thing President’s Choice really doesn’t do well – at least to my taste – is their prepared foods. Their chana masala is bland. Their fish pie lacking in fish, their pad thai is a glommy clomp of noodles that tastes of ketchup.

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Is Something Fishy?

May 28th 2007 - Posted in fish and seafood, Food, politics
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This article is from last week, but I’ve had it bookmarked because I really wanted to talk about it. It needed some thinking first though, some pondering. I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

I stopped eating imported shrimp many years ago after reading one of the many books by Dr. Vandana Shiva in which she details how shrimp farms in India and Thailand are destroying the local ecosystems.

To operate effectively, shrimp farmers destroy mangrove swamps to create a flat, shallow area underwater – conditions in which shrimp thrive. This allows them to harvest the shrimp by trawling.

However, the mangrove swaps are home to many sea creatures whose habitats are destroyed and trawling is indiscriminate – anything in the way of the trawler – including thousands of sea turtles – gets scooped up.

The removal of the mangrove swamps also removes a layer of protection against tidal waves caused by tsunamis. It is widely believed that the Tsunami of 2004 would have done considerably less damage were it not for the shrimp farms that lined the coast of Thailand. Shrimp farms also cause seawater to leach into nearby groundwater, ruining other crops, such as rice.

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Hello Alphanso!

May 27th 2007 - Posted in Food, fruit, seasonal food
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Look what I have… All the way from India, aboard a British Airways flight. 6 whole luscious, juicy, much-coveted Alphanso mangoes.

Okay… now there’s only 5.

Quite possibly the best mangoes in the world, definitely the best in North America, available for only a few short weeks. Actually, I advise my readers not to seek these out, because once you have one, regular old supermarket mangoes will be dead to you. You’ll never be able to eat another one of those hard, yellow woody things.

We went across town yesterday with the sole purpose of bringing home a box of these babies. The flesh is dark orange, juicy and sweet. They’re smooth, melting away to the consistency of purée in the mouth. They’re so fragrant, you can smell them through box and all the paper. All are perfectly ripe.

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If this is the Gospel of Food, Maybe that Explains Why I’m Not Religious

May 21st 2007 - Posted in books, Food, wtf?
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You know how you can go through life believing and trusting someone until you catch them, maybe not in an outright lie, but in a tiny fib, or an omission, and then everything after that is tainted with confusion as you try to determine just how honest they’re being?

Thus is my relationship with author Barry Glassner and his book The Gospel of Food.

Glassner attempts to debunk a variety of theories and commonly held opinions and beliefs about food and eating, and for the most part, he writes a well-thought-out argument in which he supports his claims. When it suits him. That is, he tends not to bring up any documentation that might refute his claims, which makes me question not just the issues in dispute, but everything he writes.

I can agree with his opening claim that people who enjoy what they eat have more joyful lives overall, as opposed to people who deny themselves real food on the pretense of health or dieting. In the chapter False Prophets he references writer Emily Green who has written against non-fat dairy products and similar items which she refers to as “nonundelows” for their prefixes of non-, un- de- or low-; foods that have been modified to have their nutritional value, fat, calories etc., removed.

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Caving to the Craving

May 16th 2007 - Posted in eating locally, Food, fruit, seasonal food
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I didn’t, but man, it was tough.

Something happens to my brain in May. New produce starts appearing and my brain decides it is bored with those same old apples, oranges, pears and bananas. There is “summer” fruit in the supermarkets, imported of course, and it taunts me so very much.

I almost bought a hunk of watermelon today, but thought better of it and tore myself away. I knew it must have travelled from California and was probably bland and watery and tasteless . Then I fondled peaches, some imported muskmelon and peered sceptically at strawberries. I wanted them all, just not these ones. I wanted local produce, picked at the peak of freshness and sold to me by a cheery farmer. Hey Californians – does the fruit there taste bland and nasty or is it the travelling that makes it so unappealing? I mean, if I was in Cali, this would be “local” produce.

There will be strawberries in a few weeks. Raspberries after that. Some early blueberries maybe. Then apricots, peaches, melons, oh my. But each melon must have its time, and May is not melon time. May is, unfortunately, not time for anything, but those same apples, pears and bananas.

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If you Can’t Stand the Heat

May 9th 2007 - Posted in books, celebrity chefs, Food
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Bill Buford hurts my head. That’s really my first thought when I try to size up the book Heat, An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany.

He hurts my head because he may well be obsessive-compulsive, and the book is really the literary equivalent of a man obsessed, grabbing the reader by the hand and dragging them off on some wild goose chase in search of knowledge that no one cares about. Well, except Bill Buford.

I’m guessing that most people picked this book up because of Buford’s links to celebrity chef Mario Batali. Buford convinces the chef to give him what is basically an apprenticeship (Bill works for free to learn the ropes) in his flagship restaurant Babbo, and the writer documents his journey through the back of house. There are a few dirt-digging scenes to keep the Batali fans amused; one describes Batali digging through the garbage bin and pulling up celery tops and peelings, insisting they can be used for a soup; but the story is ultimately about Buford himself.

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Totally Fun

May 2nd 2007 - Posted in Food, in the news, toronto
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I have a friend who is a music journalist. Over the years, she has become quite respected in her field and is often asked to give quotes and interviews on certain bands or music-industry-related issues. She once told me that she refuses to do any interviews for print media, and will only do radio or television, preferably live. This is not, as I had joked to her, that she thought especially highly of herself, but rather that she was frustrated with her words being used out of context in print. Radio and TV allowed her to have more control over how her comments were used. And remember, she is a print journalist herself.

Which makes me wonder if they offer a course at journalism school called “How to make your subjects look like idiots through the wonders of selective editing.” Because the Globe and Mail interview I did is up, and man, did they ever do a fantastic job at making me look like an airhead. (At least in the online version you’re all spared the scary photo that makes me look like I have no neck.)

But, just to set the record straight, here are some “corrections”…

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