Sheryl Kirby

Food, Life and the World at Large

Archive for March, 2008

Last One in is a Rotten Egg

March 31st 2008 - Posted in flora and fauna, The World at Large, toronto
Comments Off

I sort of wish I had used the video function for this. This is a huge puddle created by a blocked storm drain on a side street off Queen Street West. It doesn’t seem warm enough for bathing, but these pigeons didn’t seem to care.  The funniest was when they’d all flutter their wings and duck their heads in the water in unison. Unfortunately the water had a greasy mucky crust on the top, so nobody here was actually getting clean. But it sure looks like fun.

Butter Is Better

March 31st 2008 - Posted in baking, Food
Comments Off

As a red-blooded Canuckistanian gal, I get the occasional craving for that wholly Canadian of treats, the butter tart. I used to make butter tarts fairly often as a kid because they were my Dad’s favourite treat, but I can’t actually recall making a batch since I moved out of my parents’ house in 1987. It’s not that they’re necessarily difficult to make, it’s just that, like most pastry items, I never really want a full batch. Generally I want one butter tart, maybe two, not twelve. So I tend to buy the things, preferably at bakeries where I can get a limited number and where they’re decently tasty.

My recent craving happened when I was nowhere near a decent bakery and a stroll through the bakery department of my admittedly low-end supermarket offered the option of a half-dozen of some pretty sad looking tarts, with an ingredient list that scared the beejeezus out of me.

At home, I realized that I don’t actually have a butter tart recipe. Not a one. I’ve got plenty of recipes for maple syrup pie/tarts, and I can drag out a number of books with southern-style pecan pie recipes, but none of those are butter tarts. So I turned to the intarwebs, but it got even more confusing.

Read More...

Scrambled Eggs

March 21st 2008 - Posted in flora and fauna, The World at Large, weather
Comments Off

The coo of a mourning dove is very distinctive. Likewise the whistling noise their wings make as they fly. The two sounds alerted me to some mourning dove action in the pine trees outside our apartment window last week and I was delighted when it appeared a pair of them were building a nest.

At first they only worked half days, appearing in the morning, back and forth with twigs and branches. Eventually the hen settled in while the male did the work; she waited patiently for hours at a time for him to return.

Earlier this week she took up full nesting behaviour, and settled into her spot for the long haul. They had chosen a lowish branch about 15 feet outside the kitchen window that seemed to accommodate the nest, and also gave me a good view of the proceedings. I named them Irma and Irving and found myself checking on them regularly.

Read More...

I’ll See Your Organic Free-Range Chicken and Raise You a Tin of Lamb Mince

March 19th 2008 - Posted in celebrity chefs, Food, in the news, media, wtf?
Comments Off

While the name Delia Smith is familiar to me, I’ll have to admit that I’m not especially familiar with her cookbooks. Given the recent fuss about her newest cookbook How To Cheat at Cooking, I sort of assumed she was one of those slack-assed Rachel Ray types with the canned goods and bagged greens, teaching fans how to spread salmonella in three easy steps.

But it turns out that Smith is more well-known for being the UK’s answer to Martha Stewart. She spent years teaching Britons how to cook real food, teaching them basic cookery techniques and classical dishes. How to Cheat at Cooking is apparently a rewrite of her first book published in 1971, but from there, her work was all about cooking with real, fresh ingredients.

Any new book sells better with a wave of press, and there is some speculation that Smith’s recent public comments about Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s campaign against battery chickens might simply be desperate publicity spin. Smith claims that her recipes are designed to feed the poor, especially the chyllldrunnn (who will think of them?), but even poor kids are likely to turn up their noses at some of the stuff in her new book.

Read More...

That Day

March 16th 2008 - Posted in The World at Large, toronto, weather
Comments Off

Torontonians are like hibernating groundhogs. All winter, we stay holed up in our burrows, occasionally sticking our noses out for a sniff. Then, on the first nice day, that one day where it’s possible to believe that yes, spring will indeed come, we emerge en masse to frolic.

Queen Street West was packed solid yesterday – like the business district at 5pm when the office workers emerge and flow to Union Station to get their trains back to the ‘burbs. We walked home from Queen and Bathurst, and on the sunny north side of the street, the sidewalk was at a crawl, so packed with people still bound by dirty snowbanks that passing the slowpokes was all but impossible.

Hipsters, dog walking, stroller pushing, cellphone talking,  adult coffee-sippy-cup drinking, trendy rubber boots and cute scarf-wearing… they were all represented. The frantic energy of a glorious day and the sight of the sun was palpable. I almost expected everyone to stop, face south and throw open their coats to warm their bellies like meercats.

As we trekked through the puddles, the dry rotting snowbanks turning into piles of dirt and cigarette butts, it felt good to share the collective brain; to get out and soak up some sun after a long arduous winter, to celebrate “that day” with a promenade along the sidewalk.

The Real Food Revival

March 10th 2008 - Posted in books, eating locally, ethics, field to table, Food
Comments Off

Three years is such a short time in the grand scheme of things, but in the publishing world, it can be an eternity. Books come and books go, and a lot of great books don’t get the publicity they deserve. Which is likely why I was able to find Real Food Revival by Sherri Brooks Vinton and Ann Clark Espuelas at one of those deep-discount remaindered stores back before Christmas.

With a sub-title of “aisle by aisle, morsel by morsel”, Vinton’s search for real food in the supermarket aisles predates not just Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, but also Marion Nestle’s What to Eat. Taking on everything from baked goods to bottled water, Vinton gives a common-sense approach to finding, and demanding real food.

Neither Vinton or Espuelas are experts; they don’t have the nutritional background of Nestle or the science background of Pollan, yet they do their research and present a well-documented case for each of their claims. This makes the book refreshingly free of jargon and chemistry, something that can make for a dry read at best in similar works, and can be downright off-putting in some cases.

Read More...

Ladies, Please

March 6th 2008 - Posted in media, people are silly, The World at Large, wtf?
Comments Off

When we started TasteTO last year, I subscribed to a bunch of Canadian women’s magazines because I thought they might be useful references for stories. They haven’t been especially, as they’re not Toronto-specific enough, and they also run to seriously mainstream tastes and trends – generally enough that I find something about every issue that annoys and frustrates me.

The most recent issue of Canadian Living is billed on the cover as their “Go Green Issue” with a whole lot of lip-service paid to the recent trend of eco-activism without any real commitment required on the part of the reader/consumer *or* the magazine. There’s your typical spread of eco-friendly shopping bags, tips on eco-friendly laundering, and generally a whole lot of articles on how we can all be good little consumers yet still save the earth. (ie. Don’t stop buying *stuff* just buy environmentally-friendly stuff!) I saw no mention of important actions like hey – get out of your fucking car! Or – stop taking the annual family trip to Disneyworld! Just a lot of suggestions of how to renovate your house with beach stone tiles or stuff that *looks* like it’s from nature (ie, plastic photo frame that looks like logs).

Read More...

The Real Food Dilemma

March 4th 2008 - Posted in Food, health and nutrition, in the news, The World at Large, what's in your food?
Comments Off

I haven’t had time in the past week to talk about the Michael Pollan lecture. Mostly, I think, because it’s wasn’t actually that inspiring. It wasn’t bad, don’t get me wrong, he just didn’t say much of anything new. The brief hour started with Pollan reading an excerpt from In Defense of Food, then being interviewed by CBC’s Matt Galloway. His answers were informative, articulate and witty, but it felt very much as if he’d done it all a hundred times before. And of course, he had. Disappointingly, there was no audience Q&A, so anyone who had questions for the author had to stand in line for an autograph, and I’m told, was rushed through pretty quickly.

The following day, there was an interview with Pollan in the Toronto Star in which he pretty much skewered the vegetarian community based on his three vegetarian sisters who apparently eat a lot of mock meat. I’m torn on this point between being chagrined and flipping the bird in his general direction, and nodding in agreement. During my time as a vegetarian, and even today when cooking at home, I used a lot of soy-based products to recreate comfort food dishes like cabbage rolls and sheperd’s pie. I know how processed these products are, but I’m drawn into the trap of it being easier than coming up with a straight-up vegetarian dish, especially when trying to include protein. On the other hand, I really like my rule of no meat at home, because my job has me out a couple of times a week stuffing my face with everything from chicken wings to foie gras. I don’t need more meat in my diet, and relying on the protein in eggs and peanut butter gets tired really fast.

The desire to eat “real food” has left me with a bit of a conundrum.

The other issue with Pollan is this so-called manifesto. I hate lists of rules and regulations like this, because there’s always so many exceptions, and people either try to live by them devotedly and feel guilty (or make excuses) when they can’t; i.e. The Hundred Mile Diet. So while I agree that we should be paying more for better quality food, the rule about not eating alone is just asinine.

Read More...

  • What’cha looking for?

  • What’s going on

  • What came before


All contents © 2006–2012 Sheryl Kirby | Powered by WordPress