Sheryl Kirby

Product of Canada

Did you know that Canada grows some fine pineapples? Or that we have many thriving chocolate plantations? If you’re a grocery label reader, it might be easy to assume that all of those prepared products labelled “product of Canada” were grown here. But the current law is a little bit slippery.

A recent Reuters piece about changes to labelling laws indicates:

Current rules state that a label can say “Made in Canada” or “Product of Canada” if 51 percent of the production costs are Canadian and the last substantial transformation of the product took place in Canada.

So cocoa beans shipped to Canada to be made into chocolate bars here go to the stores with a “product of Canada” label, even though they came from somewhere else.

The Calgary Herald explains the changes:

The new standards require that any label claiming a food product is a “Product of Canada” necessarily needs to have all or virtually all of its contents be Canadian. That includes ingredients, the processing and the labour used to make the product; an exception has been made for some foreign content to be included in a Canadian product and labelled as such if minor additives or spices are not available in Canada.

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Sunday Brunch – Gayley’s Cafe

Gayley’s Cafe
1424 Dundas Street West
416-538-3443
brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $28 (cash only)

The choosing of this brunch review was left up to fate. We’d ride the Dufferin bus north in the drizzle than permeated the city on the Victoria Day Sunday, and if there was a streetcar coming at Dundas, we’d head as far as Ossington and try our luck at the communal table at the Dakota Tavern. If there was no streetcar in sight, we’d cross the street and head to Gayley’s. a local place that we had passed a hundred times but had never been to.

Fate saved me from communal table brunch with jam-handed toddlers (with music for the kids!), but I’m not sure we chose the less frustrating option.

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Rhubarb Coffee Cake

My Mom and Dad have a massive rhubarb patch in their back yard. I think it might actually be one gigantic plant, in fact, but it keeps them well-stocked in rhubarb all summer long. This recipe gets made a lot in their house, to use up the rhubarb, but also because it’s really good. My Mom cuts these smaller, into squares (16 from an 8-inch pan), but I tend to think of this as more of a coffee cake, and given the small amount of fat in the recipe, don’t feel terribly guilty serving up larger pieces and thinking of it as cake.

I cook this at a slightly higher heat than the original recipe calls for, and I also tend to find the original a bit too sweet for me, so I’ve switched the topping to brown sugar from white, and cut the amount slightly.

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If It’s Not a Food, and It’s Not a Drug, Then What Is It?

Ladies and gentlemen, please take a moment to fashion yourself a lovely piece of millinery out of some kitchen foil. You’ll need it to ward off the gamma rays, because the guberment is out to get us all!!

The issue of Bill C-51 puts me in the unfortunate position of finding myself agreeing with the Conservative Federal government. But more than I despise conservatives, I detest people who get rich selling green powder and snake oil to unwitting chumps searching for a way to cure what ails them.

In most cases, big pharma has let them down, and yes, yes, yes, no doubt big pharma is in no small part responsible for pushing the government to pass this bill and force “natural health products” to the same standards used for pharmaceuticals. Undoubtedly, the bill will force some small companies out of business – but a lot of those companies will be shysters selling magic powder and a basket of hope to people who have already gone through enough.

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Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain…

For some, it’s a dream come true, for others, it’s something they fall into and love, but lots of people end up running food-prep businesses that they start from home. Some of these are catering businesses, many more are baking businesses where folks use their love of pastry and mad skills to bake, decorate and sell cakes and pastries, doing what they love and making a little cash on the side.

I have family members, friends and know of a number of online (blogger) acquaintances who are all either running or starting a home-based food business.

Unfortunately, they’re all really, really illegal.

Home Business Advocate Beverly Williams explains about food-prep businesses on her site:

You must call the Department of Health in your area FIRST to find out if you are allowed to prepare food for sale in your home kitchen. The answer will be NO! I have never found a jurisdiction that allowed food for sale to be prepared in a home kitchen. Some areas do allow you to have a separate commercial kitchen for this purpose but the cost may be prohibitive. In some areas, you may be able to find a commercial kitchen that is not being used all day that might be willing to rent their kitchen to you. Most jurisdictions will require you to have your own business license as well.

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Mr. Ramsay Has a Cupcake

Reputation is an odd thing. By making sweepingly asshatted pronouncements (SAP), Chef Gordon Ramsay has gotten himself a reputation for saying really stupidly elitist things that piss people off and show a real lack of common sense. Last week it was his SAP that restaurants should all be fined if they don’t serve seasonal food. As bloggers and mainstream media jumped to point out the hypocrisy (Ramsay owns a restaurant in Dubai – where absolutely nothing served is seasonal or local), Gordon Ramsay Holdings was forced to issue a statement.

Because of this reputation, any similar SAP attributed to Ramsay will be believed.

Today while reading the blog Cupcake Takes the Cake, I came across a post that indicated Ramsay had made a rather inflammatory SAP against everyone’s favourite treat, the cupcake.

The whole cupcake thing has been done to death. I thought we were through the woods, done hearing about how fucking cool and “retro” cupcakes were. I thought we were finished with interviews with the bakery proprietors telling mind-numbing stories about how they found their grandmother’s old recipe box in the attic and dusted one of the recipe cards off and lo! there was a glorious cupcake recipe and they just jazzed it up a bit to make it “cutting-edge” and it is the perfect marriage of great memories and contemporary cuisine.

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Everyone’s Crazy For Seasonal Italian Food

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Seasonal is the new local. Think about it, it makes so much more sense. Eating things in season, regardless of where they might be from, means eating foods when they taste the best and when they are most in balance with the world around them. Bright green things in spring, hearty root vegetable stews in winter.

For centuries before our modern food distribution systems were created, people had no choice but to eat seasonally and locally. Many of the most famous dishes, particularly in countries renowned for hearty peasant food, such as Italy, stem from eating what was both in season and locally grown. The differences in the cuisines of various regions are most obvious when we realize that regional specialties are almost always based on seasonal and local availability.

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The Glorious Glamour Years

Maybe it’s because of my background in vintage clothing, but I’ve noted on more than one occasion that people dress too darn casually. Jeans, ballcaps and those hateful flipflops make Torontonians look like slobs as they walk down our city streets. There was a time when no one would be seen in public without a proper hat, or gloves, and where “dressing up” wasn’t so much about putting on a clean t-shirt but actually dressing appropriately.

Which is why it was so delightful to see people dressed up at the Santé wine event we attended last week at the Carlu. Men wore jackets, crisp shirts and polished shoes. Ladies arrived in a variety of pretty dresses – not evening gowns, but something a bit more dressy than they’d wear to work.

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Sunday Brunch – Rustic Cosmo

Rustic Cosmo
1278 Queen Street West
416-531-4924
brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $30

I am, admittedly, one of those people who go out for brunch specifically because I hate making eggs benedict at home. It’s not that I can’t, but the endeavour inevitably leaves me cranky, covered in hollandaise and left with piles of pots and pans to wash.

But the dish is a favourite of mine, especially from places like Rustic Cosmo where an order of eggs benny comes with options. For out of this tiny open kitchen, customers are offered eggs benny ($9.95) with 6 different toppings, and are allowed to mix and match. Along with the traditional peameal bacon, spinach or smoked salmon, café owner Nicole Crowe also offers mixed grilled vegetables with brie, portobello mushrooms or grilled asparagus. On our most recent visit, I opted for oozing brie atop grilled peppers, eggplant and broccoli, along with lovely green asparagus, grilled al dente.

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Would You Like Fries With That?

friedebate In Lauren Simmons’ piece earlier this morning, we ran what we’ll refer to as an essay from a server working at a local restaurant. The article started out as the details of a basic restaurant service day, but one comment from the subject caught my attention as I was editing the piece. It was about how customers who order half fries/half salad make the server “cry inside”. I asked Lauren to delve further, hoping to truly find out why this order creates such a fuss at many establishments, and her piece this morning was the response she received.

When the essay arrived in my email inbox, my first thought was that it completely and utterly exemplified the rude, snotty attitude that we, as customers, fear from restaurant servers, and that has given particular areas of town a deplorable reputation in terms of restaurant service. (Okay, actually, my first thought was that it was a huge joke, because I can’t strip the little faith I have left in humanity to believe that there are people out there who think like this.)

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