Local food Tag

Spirited fruit preserves - TheMessyBaker.com I am not to be trusted. I head to the Farmers' Market with a clearly written list and rock solid resolve. And what do I return with? Way more items than intended and a feeling of panic. Where will I store all these plums? When will I have time to make pear jam? Should I freeze, can or hide the peaches? Of course, things fall apart when I toss tomatoes designated for preserving into a salad or gobble a handful of blueberries because they are too perfect for anything else but in-the-moment indulgence. You cannot imagine my relief -- your maybe you can-- when I stumbled up  a couple of preserving methods that are as flexible on quantity as I am about my shopping list. The methods are outlined in the ever-so-handy Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (Robert Rose ©2012).
Update: Since The Three Farmers won their bid on Dragon's Den, I have been getting a lot of questions about this oil. If you are interested in buying some, there is a list of retail outlets on the Three Farmers' site. Click here to see the list.
Is bright yellow the new olive green? These tiny mustard-coloured seeds are from the Camelina plant. Although popular in Europe since the 1940s, Camelina oil has been commercially available in Canada only since December 2010. I'm no trend spotter, but if I'm right, Camelina might be Canada's answer to imported extra virgin olive oil. 
With dozens of product pitches landing in my inbox daily, it takes a lot for one to stand out. Yesterday, one jumped off the monitor and poked me in the eyeball. Their selling point. "[It] takes just 2 minutes to prepare in the microwave  -- no extra pots or dishes to wash." Oh, they had me at "microwave". But not in the way they intended. What left me rubbing my eyes in disbelief? Their approach. Was it to promote their product? Not so much. The aim of this campaign is: "To create humorous posts about how potatoes are a boring alternative to Fake Food In a Canister." (Note: I have changed the name of the product in question to protect The Shameless.) Too dumb to insult a root vegetable all on your own? Maybe one of these suggestions will get the creative juices flowing:
  • An image and story of talk show host potato that has put its guests to sleep
  • An image and story of a potato totally underdressed in it's (sic) plain old skin for an event
  • Showcase kids talking about how boring potatoes are and how they love Fake Food In a Canister
  • Showcase how potatoes don't cut it - they're so worthless to eat - doorstoppers, brick-fixes (spoof on home entertainment show sponsored by Fake Food in a Canister)
Apparently, it's even funnier if you drag children into it. Nothing like teaching them how to run a smear campaign early. As a proponent of real food -- and a potato lover -- I'm not taking this sitting down.
Had the pears held up I would likely be writing about broccoli or Swiss chard. Health food fans lament; pie lovers rejoice. On Saturday, with guests arriving and the clock ticking loudly in my ears, I tossed my dessert plans into the garbage along with the perfect-on-the-outside, punky-on-the-inside pears. Unable to rest upon the laurels of a well-tested dessert, the pressure was on. With little on hand but plums and leftover ingredients from my recent stone-fruit baking exploits, I tossed components together like Dr. Frankenstein creating a new life from. All that was missing were lightning flashes and ominous organ chords. The crust was the leftover pate sucree dough (which froze beautifully). I sprinkled in a layer of chocolate borrowed from the Pear Chocolate Tart,  slathered on butterless frangipane lifted from the recent Peach, Apricot & Plum Galette and topped it all with a generous coating of sliced plums. Using the only egg left in the fridge I whisked in some cream for a custard to hold it all together.
Here, in all her glory, is Green Leaf Platter in what turned out to be her final performance. Less than 24 hours before her untimely demise, GLP was working the salad like nobody's business. A true artist to the end, she presented like no one was watching. As promised, here is the recipe for the peach and arugula salad demonstrated a couple of days ago on CTV's News at Noon. You can watch the video
3  Peach Recipes - The Messy Baker I'm on Kitchener CTV's News at Noon talking about peaches. While they're generously allotting me 5 minutes, the entire news hour isn't enough time to tell you how much I love peaches. And just how much do I love peaches? Last year, I bought an upright freezer to accommodate my lust for Blazing Stars. To keep Andrew happy, I allow the odd batch of homemade Italian meatballs and bag of oven-dried tomatoes to take up precious freezer space, but peaches are the real reason a honking big white box sits in our basement sucking up energy at a horrific rate. Last year I looked at buying and storing peaches. But based on emails and discussions, a few unanswered questions.

I didn't take this picture. I wish I did. But I didn't. This is just a taste of the mouthwatering photos that illustrate Earth to Table: Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm. While eating local is a hot topic these days, this book is not a...

The comments are rolling in in response to the cookbook give away. Your fabulous ideas make me want to rent a delightful, impractically located venue and throw a great big bash. (If you missed the post, Rose Murray's wonderful A Taste of Canada is up...

Despite the amber hue of the resulting preserves, this is green tomato marmalade. And no, I didn't use the teeny-tiny yellow tomatoes on the left. They're just there for show. Instead, I used small to mid-sized green tomatoes like the ones below. I figured since I...

It's been quite the week. Over the weekend I co-hosted a 24-hour playwriting contest for the playwright development centre I'm involved with. While my co-host and I ensured the entrants never ran out of coffee or junk food, a dozen writers pounded out scripts on...