Sheryl Kirby

Harvest Wednesday Dinner

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?

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

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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Hail to the ‘Dale

gatefish People don’t really think of Parkdale as being a foodie paradise. And yes, if you’re looking for high-end health food items, organic meat or artisanal bread or cheese, you’d be mostly out of luck. But as one of the most multi-cultural neighbours in one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world, we’ve got a lot of variety working in our favour.

Most folks tend to think of the ‘Dale as a low-end neighbourhood full of nothing but greasy spoons and burger joints. For sure, we’ve got two of the best. The Gate (1206 King Street West) sits at the corner of King and Dufferin and offers up filling breakfast, burgers and some damn fine fish and chips. Peggy, the waitress who’s been working the tables here since the late 60s when she came to Toronto to be a go-go dancer, tells regulars to help themselves to coffee. Further west along Queen, The Skyline (1402 Queen Street West) is about as retro as you can get in terms of diners, with that famous neon sign out front, and fast and efficient service inside from the flurry of activity that is Doris, once voted “best waitress in Toronto”. Other places that serve up a mean burger or all-day breakfast includes Harry’s Burgers (160 Springhurst Avenue) and Stavros (1530 Queen Street West).

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How Do You Like Them Apples?

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I am eating a Gingergold as I write this. The first of the season – they’re weeks early due to the hot dry weather. The skin is crisp, the flesh is sweet and if I allow it to linger on my tongue… yes, just the slightest bit gingery. The second best thing of summer is finding the pinkish-green apples piled in baskets at the farmer’s market. The first is the moment I bite into one. Neither the first corn, the first blueberries or the first peaches can match the moment of the first Gingergold. Oh, there’s other apples, and they’ll keep me happy throughout the winter and into the spring, but the Gingergolds never last; there’s not enough of them to start with and fans like me buy them in bushel baskets, hoarding them in cool closets or cellars, desperate to make them last as long as possible.

Probably those Gingergold fans are going to be out for my head, having shared a harvest secret with TasteTO readers. See, we apple-lovers count on most of you to think of apples as coming in red, green and yellow, and to be ignorant of the over one hundred varieties of apples currently grown in Ontario.

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Good Eats at the CNE

cnecorndogs Immediately after entering the CNE grounds on opening day, we ran into a neighbour and her young daughter. The little girl was eating slices of fruit. Not an odd sight normally, but at the Ex, not the kind of thing you’d expect to see. The mind really isn’t able to connect watermelon slices and the midway full of vendors selling cotton candy, candy apples and corn dogs.

On one hand, I sort of felt sorry for my little friend – coming home from the fair with a big bag of spun sugar was always part of the allure when I was a kid. But given the fuss about childhood obesity, trans fats, plus additives and preservatives, I can understand why her Mom would want to limit the amount of junk. Which left us wondering if it was even possible to eat healthy, let along vegetarian or vegan at the CNE. The midway is almost a barren wasteland of healthy options; burgers, corn dogs and candy corn aren’t going to register on anyone’s healthy eating scale. We did encounter a couple of booths with roasted corn, and if you lay off too much butter, this could be considered a passable treat.

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What do You Want From Your Farmers?

market3 The trend of eating locally, while nothing new for many people, seems to have brought some additional concerns with its renewed popularity. Maybe it’s the necessary role food plays in our lives, but we as consumers seem to want a lot more from our food shopping experience than any other shopping we do. Where we are encouraged to get to know the people selling and creating the food we eat, this philosophy doesn’t seem to extend toward other items we purchase. No one is insisting we develop an ongoing relationship with our real estate agent, or form a “community” with the salegirls from the Gap. Heck, for that matter, the “buy local” trend seems to go no further than food, as the same people who search out wheat grown within a 100-mile radius have no qualms whatsoever about wearing yoga pants made in China, or shoes that have come from Italy.

No, we have a twisted and sometimes perverse relationship with food and with the act of procuring said food. We’re no longer content to just go, shop and bring the stuff home. Now we need events, family-friendly activities, entertainment, a sense of community and added value. That’s a lot for your average farmer and a table of tomatoes to live up to.

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Potato Baby

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.”

Who You Calling Cupcake?

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As I mentioned last week when discussing sandwiches, there are a number of food trends that have taken off south of the border that just never got a footing here. Cupcake bakeries or boutiques – shops dedicated solely to cupcakes – is one of those trends that seems to have passed us by.

It looked like Toronto might ride the waves of buttercream frosting when The Cupcake Shoppe opened a few years ago, but no real competition stepped up. Sure there were plenty of bakeries that started offering the tasty treats in addition to their regular selection of pastries, but none willing to deal exclusively in the little, sweetly decorated cakes.

Which leaves anyone jonesing for a cupcake fix with no choice but to run around searching for good ones. Because not all cupcakes are created equal.

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Turning the Tables

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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