July 28th 2008 - Posted in books, chocolate, Food
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Today I will write the post about the GD chocolate book!!!
In fact, there’s no need for cursing. The chocolate book, aka. Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light
What’s important to note is that Rosenblum lives in Paris, so much of his research is centred on European chocolatiers in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy, as well as much national posturing over who has the best stuff.
July 27th 2008 - Posted in blogging, Food, Life, The World at Large
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When I started editing the Fit Fare blog on the Well Fed Network back in February of 2006, one of the first writers we hired was a firecracker of a lady named Sherry Cermak. She had trouble figuring out the blog interface we used and would email me regularly to ask me how to upload something or to fix a technical glitch.
In between work stuff, we also started to chat about other things – food, farmers markets, cats, and squirrels. When I left Well Fed, Sher was one of the few people I kept in touch with, and still have her blog What Did You Eat? in my RSS feed. Her weekly updates about her cats, as well as the many recipes she posted, kept me well-entertained.
Last Sunday, Sher died suddenly of a heart attack. She had had a couple of health issues when we worked together – I remember some vision concerns that prompted her to ask me to do careful edits on her work because she had trouble seeing what she had been writing – but the heart attack was apparently completely unexpected.
July 25th 2008 - Posted in Food, memorable meals, toronto
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I never manage to take decent photos of the food at the Harvest Wednesdays tasting nights, but at the actual prix fixe dinners, where the food isn’t rushing past with a hundred hands grabbing at it, the photos are a little easier to snap.
As a recap, Harvest Wednesdays is a weekly event at the Gladstone Hotel throughout the summer where Chef Marc Breton creates a four course dinner based on products from CSA farm Chick-A-Biddy Acres as well as a number of other local suppliers. The fun part is that he often doesn’t know until the day before as to what ingredients and in what quantities he’ll be working with, so the project keeps the kitchen staff on their toes.
We went last week with some friends, and here’s what we had…
Red Fife biscuits, Raisin-Walnut Bun, Epi, and Rosemary Foccacia with herb butter rosettes – didn’t get a photo of these, but they were great; I’m really digging the red fife flour that’s coming available.
Amuse Bouche (above)
Broccoli and Black River cheddar-filled ravioli with basil and toasted walnut pesto.
We all loved this, and wished there was more!
Garden Antipasto
Marinated white and orange carrots, red and candy striped beets, cauliflower and fingerling potatoes tossed with cold pressed canola oil, mixed tender herbs, heirloom radishes and cracked black pepper.
A few complaints at our table that the vinaigrette on this was too strong, but the vegetables were a really nice combination, and were all crisp and bright and tasty.
Honey-Lavender Fresh Ham Roast
Red Tamworth-Large Black Cross brined overnight, slow roasted and sliced thin
This was one of the pigs I met when I went to Chick-A-Biddy with the Gladstone staff, although Chef Marc said it wasn’t the mama pig pictured in the photos for my TasteTO post.
Broiled Leek and Tofu stuffed portobello mushroom
with a honey-sherry glaze
Our guests each had the vegetarian option, but I didn’t try this.
Mains were served with stir-fried three colour beans, shredded baby cabbage and a wedge of chickpea ‘Socca’. We all loved the socca, which was a chickpea flatbread that sort of resembled naan.
Raspberry Whip n Chill
Fresh raspberry jelly topped with raspberry streaked whipped cream served with fresh berries and a ChocoSol chocolate dipped Tuille.
Dessert was perfect – fresh, bright, not too sweet. My only complaint was that the tuiles must have been set out with the dessert early on because they had lost their sharp crispness, but I was overruled when everyone else at our table said they liked the cookie chewy.
Greg and I also had the wine pairing for the meal, although it was a bit much for me in terms of alcohol, particularly because we headed down the street to a pub for another drink afterwards.
We’ll be attending the remaining three tasting events and at least two or three more weekly dinners before the Harvest Wednesday series ends in late October. If you’re in Toronto, the tasting events are $15, and the 4-course dinners are $35 – a great deal all around.
July 23rd 2008 - Posted in candy, comfort food, Food, Halifax, The World at Large, toronto
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When I was a wee thing, one of my greatest delights was stopping at the bakery counter at Simpson’s where my Mom would buy me a gingerbread man. Simpson’s was an old Canadian department store, at that time paired with Sears (old folks referred to it as “Simpson-Sears”), and then later bought out by the Hudson’s Bay Company.
The bakery and candy counter at the Simpson’s store in Halifax was right by the main doors that opened onto the city bus depot, convenient for anyone who had to switch buses to get to where they were going.
In those days, upscale department stores stocked a huge variety of sweets, particularly penny candy, and as a kid, it was a place of true wonderment. I’d clutch my gingerbread man tightly all the way home, careful not to let an arm or leg break off before I could eat him.
At some point in my early teens, Simpson’s moved to the other end of the mall, and Sears took over the space, removing the candy and bakery counter and forcing a bit of a trek for anyone who wanted a gingerbread man or a bag of Chinese Chews for the bus ride home.
July 19th 2008 - Posted in events and festivals, government, The World at Large, toronto
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Despite the fact that more and more people are finally seeing the light and are realizing that cars are stinky, obnoxious, and unnecessary within a city, we still live in a society obsessed with the personalized motor vehicle. Everyone above the age of 16 is expected to have a driver’s license, and even in situations that have absolutely nothing to do with driving, or as we encountered last night, in situations where people should absolutely be encouraged to NOT drive and leave the car at home, the almighty driver’s license still sets the standard.
We arrived at the Drinks Show and were asked for ID. Being almost 40, this was flattering, but yes, the rule. I pulled out my Nova Scotia age of majority card; Greg, his Ontario health card.
“I need to see a driver’s license,” barked the security woman.
“This is all I have,” said Greg, “I don’t have a license.” She looked at him like he had two heads. “I’m not supposed to take this.” “It’s the only photo ID I’ve got,” he replied.
Then she turned to me. “What’s this?”
“Age of majority card for Nova Scotia.” I rolled my eyes, because I’ve gone through this so many times before. I expect it in Buffalo, or San Francisco where they’re not familiar with, you know, provinces, but in Ontario, I expect someone checking ID to be at least vaguely familiar with forms of identification from other areas of the country.
July 16th 2008 - Posted in flora and fauna, Life, pets
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We moved into an apartment building totally paranoid about sharing our space with the usual suspects – that is, roaches and bed bugs. We have neither. What we do have is an ongoing gnawing inside the wall under the windowsill in our office, and the occasional sighting of small grey mice in our kitchen.
Having come from an old turn-of-the-century house, we were accustomed to mice. And roaches and one particularly bad infestation of moths. So Mr. Mouse and his family aren’t finding much to eat in my kitchen where food is always stored in containers and never left out.
Before Spook died of cancer in March, the two cats would do regular kitchen stake-outs, and would catch the occasional mouse. One night Bowie joined in and proved that dogs are actually better mousers than cats. But since then, our remaining cat Mollie hasn’t had much interest.
July 14th 2008 - Posted in Food, health and nutrition, in the news, politics, wtf?
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Saturday’s National Post had an article about how the Canadian Food Inspection Agency plans to allow companies to police themselves when it comes to health and safety inspections.
The document, addressed to the president of the agency, details how the inspection of meat and meat products will downgrade agency inspectors to an “oversight role, allowing industry to implement food safety control programs and to manage key risks.”
Obviously this is a bad, bad thing. With diseases like bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) still present in our food systems, government inspection is imperative. But it seems that the government doesn’t care, as funding for BSE testing is also slated to be cut.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is also ending funding to producers to test cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease) as part of a surveillance program, the document indicates, a move expected to save the agency about $24-million over the next three years.
Given the number of food borne illnesses that have shown up in the US factory-style food system in recent years, is that really something we want to be emulating here in Canada?
If you weren’t already concerned about where your food comes from, if you haven’t already made friends with a farmer, a baker and especially a butcher, now might be a good time to get that ball rolling. Because once this deregulation comes into effect and food companies don’t have to answer to a government inspector, it’s pretty safe to assume that an already screwed-up system is going to look like the wild wild west.
July 11th 2008 - Posted in family, fashion, Life, music, people are silly
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There was a post the other day on Shapely Prose, a kickass fat acceptance blog, that included a heart-breaking letter from a 13-year-old girl who was considering suicide because of pressure from her classmates and her family. As of this writing there are over 150 responses, the majority of which seek to reassure the girl of how it all gets better because thirteen sucks so heartily for everyone.
The letter caused a lot of upset, sending almost all readers back into the depths of their own pasts to recall being thirteen.
For anyone who has been fat, heavy, plump, etc., their whole life, thirteen was likely a pretty shitty year. I know it was for me. I wasn’t actually the heaviest kid in my class, but as the other heavy kids were athletic in some way, and appeared on the surface to have a higher sense of self-esteem, I was the lucky pariah of the class who got picked on. Constantly.
July 11th 2008 - Posted in eating locally, Food, in the news, seasonal food
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First, let me say that I’m not happy about the world food crisis in so much as people are starving and dying and rioting over the cost of rice. That’s not really what this post is about. However, in the western world, we’ve had it pretty easy for a very long time in terms of food costs. We’ve demanded cheap food and the corporations have met that demand. Governments are subsidizing farmers to notgrow food, and cheap junk or processed food is contributing to a variety of health concerns.
But as food commodity prices rise, along with the cost of the oil required to produce and acquire those foods, it’s kind of refreshing to see articles like this one in USA Today that shows people reverting back to real food, and even growing their own.
For a long time, advocates of Slow, ethical, local and organic food have been bewildered at the fact that people are just not willing to pay higher prices for food. The same person willing to spends $1000 on a sofa, or (sweet sassy molassy) $3000 on a handbag, will go eat at a fast food drive-through because it’s cheap. We care more about the quality of what we put on our bodies, or what we put our bodies on, than we do about the quality of the food we’re putting in our bodies. Which is absolutely shameful.
So while I’m not celebrating the fact that higher food prices are putting people in dire straits, I can’t help but hope that maybe higher food prices will get people thinking more about what they eat, or that it will get them into the kitchen to cook their food from scratch, or out to a farmers market to spend their hard-earned money on real food, not processed fillers and crap.
July 8th 2008 - Posted in beverages, books, Food
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A Social History of Tea
Jane Pettigrew
The National Trust
Every afternoon at 3pm, I have a cup of tea. It doesn’t matter the weather or the season, if it’s hot I’ll have it iced, but every afternoon, barring some great calamity, I take a break from my day to have a cup of tea and something sweet.
Tea is one of those things that we sort of take for granted; less popular than coffee, it’s still typical in many homes, particularly in Eastern Canada where I’m from originally. There, harsh orange pekoe tea can sit and stew for hours, with a couple more bags and a top up of water the only acknowledgement that the pot might need dumping or cleaning.
Jane Pettigrew is one of the UK’s tea experts, having run a tea shop for many years and written a number of other books on the subject .
A Social History of Tea traces the importance of tea to Britain from the seventeenth century onward, exploring its arrival in England, its origins and the politics surrounding the commodity. Pettigrew looks at how tea became popular, first with the upper classes, then with the middle classes and the poor.
