Sheryl Kirby

Food, Life and the World at Large

Archive for August, 2007

Harvest Wednesday Dinner

August 31st 2007 - Posted in eating locally, events and festivals, Food, seasonal food, The World at Large, toronto
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We attended our last of three Harvest Wednesdays this past week. The schedule rotated through Tasting Nights at $12 each, which were cocktail-party style, Buffet Dinner at $38 each, which was pre-set seating and a huge buffet table, and the Harvest Dinner, the most expensive at $48 each – a family style dinner where you sit with strangers, and pass large platters of food.

The event continues every Wednesday at the nearby Gladstone Hotel until September 19th, which is the finale of a 7-course meal for $110 with proceeds of that night going to FoodShare a local organization that sells weekly boxes of produce to low income people.

The premise of Harvest Wednesdays is that the hotel works with a CSA, and Chef Marc Breton pulls together a menu with only a day’s notice. He has an idea of what he’ll be getting based on seasonality and talking to the farmer, but it’s only when the boxes of produce arrive on Tuesday that he can really put together the menu for that week’s event.

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Will That be Paper, Cardboard, or Would You Like to Put Your Groceries in Your Pockets?

August 29th 2007 - Posted in Food, politics, The World at Large
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Imagine the world without plastic bags. More importantly, try to imagine buying groceries without the things. Now, many people are quite able and willing to do this (I use a backpack and/or bundle buggy along with canvas bags) but for most people, no bags = dilemma.

Loblaws, a Canadian grocery chain, announced today that one of their stores in Milton, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, would be the first bagless store in North America.

In its continued effort to become a more responsible GREEN retailer, and in response to Canadian consumer support for environmental initiatives, the new Milton Loblaw Superstore will be the first major grocery and general merchandise retail store in North America to eliminate traditional plastic grocery bags at the checkouts.

In April of this year, Loblaw Companies Limited made a commitment to reduce 1 billion plastic grocery bags from Canada’s landfills within one year. Reducing the amount of plastic grocery bags offered in stores, and offering more sustainable choices, will help achieve this goal. Currently, Ontarians use almost 80 plastic bags per second, close to 7 million plastic bags per day.

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Some “Local” Food Iniative That Really Make a Difference

August 27th 2007 - Posted in eating locally, Food, in the news, politics, The World at Large
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In all of the talk about eating locally, we often forget that North America exports a huge amount of food to other countries. Some of it with strings attached.

CARE ­ a major international development NGO ­ has announced a major policy shift in their food aid strategy. The aid organization will no longer accept American federal financing for food aid. US food aid funding comes with strings attached ­ it requires that the funds be used to purchase American commodities which are then resold in developing countries to finance poverty reduction programmes. But the practice undermines agricultural production in these regions, perpetuating the need for food aid while supporting major American agribusiness firms. CARE now faces the formidable challenge of making up lost funding.

In order to support US farms and to have an end user for an awful lot of US-grown food that would otherwise go to waste (because despite the fact that in poorer US cities, many people don’t have access to a supermarket, the US actually grows more food than they can use), food aid to foreign countries is handed out not in the form of money for those countries to buy the food they want and need, but in the form of US-grown foodstuffs. The deal was always if you want aid, you must take it in the form of US commodities in order to qualify for the additional cash.

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Potato Baby

August 14th 2007 - Posted in Food, wtf?
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Other people find the image of Jesus in their toast, an inspiring, enlightening experience that at least nets them some cash on eBay. Me, I find things that look like deformed unborn children in my fingering potatoes.

I was gonna give it little eyes made from cloves but that only made it a gazillion times creepier.

Maybe I should search out all the deformed vegetable and set up a freakshow at the local Farmer’s Market. I’d call it the “Sidedish Sideshow.”

Turning the Tables

August 9th 2007 - Posted in books, Food, restaurants
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I’ve had this book sitting on my desk for so long that I’ve partially forgotten what the damn thing’s about. But it’s been sitting here because I’ve been meaning to write about it, because I not only enjoyed it but found it incredibly useful. Food bloggers will likely recognize the name Steven Shaw as the founder of eGullet, the foodie website.

As a restaurant critic and food writer, Shaw shares his insight into the restaurant biz with chapters on everything from how to get a reservation, everything you needed to know about the Open Table system – live in fear people, Open Table is like identity theft for diners – plus how a restaurant kitchen is run, and even how the supply chains work.

As an internet foodie himself, Shaw also has strong feelings in support of food bloggers and discusses how the internet is changing everything about food writing. He also looks at the changing evolution of the restaurant business, from a shift to high-end cuisine to chefs like Tom Collicchio opening sandwich chains, or the creation of a restaurant from scratch such as Grant Achatz’s Alinea.

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Going to Hell(man’s) in a Garden Basket

August 5th 2007 - Posted in eating locally, Food, products, seasonal food, The World at Large, wtf?
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I saw an ad on TV the other night for Hellman’s Community Gardens. That is, Hellman’s mayonnaise.

Apparently Unilever the parent company, leased a number of empty lots in various cities across Canada, then sent out seed packets with an invitation to write a 150 word essay and submit it in a contest that would see a number of winners in each city.

The downside – the programme is a one-year project and is set to run only until September 15th, regardless of whether the gardeners still have crops in place.

Needless to say, a lot of people aren’t happy about this, accusing Hellman’s/Unilever of using community-oriented initiatives for their own corporate interests. In Halifax, The Coast, a weekly entertainment paper looked at the issue back in May:

“Hellmann’s wants to inspire Canadians to ‘eat for real’ by providing them with the space to grow their own fresh produce,” emailed Sharon MacLeod, the brand-building director at Hellmann’s Unilever Canada Inc.

As of two weeks ago, Hellmann’s had received more than 50 essays from Halifax residents eager to start gardening. But the company’s promotion has inspired something entirely different in at least one Haligonian—anger and scepticism.

“Community gardens are for people. They’re not for multinational corporations,” says north-end resident Geoff Tanner.

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