4 September 2010 by pat.

It’s time to test out my hypothesis that the apple & blue cheese tart recipe can be made, with appropriate substitutions, with almost any fruit.

Today I went to the St. Lawrence Market, and found these beauties at the farmers’ market.

SO:I’m substituting:

• peaches for apples
• fresh goat sheep cheese for gorgonzola
• lemon thyme for thyme
• toasted sliced almonds for walnuts

I’ll be making it tomorrow. The woman who sold me the peaches told me to keep them in a paper bag in a warm place until tomorrow to ripen them up a bit more for the tart.

Posted in Food - farmers' market, Food, recipes, Food | 3 Comments »

3 September 2010 by pat.

I was contacted by a marketing manager at Lassonde, a Canadian conglomerate that sells a number of well-known brands of juices, asking if he could send me a new product. I told him sure, but was clear that there was no onus on me to blog about it, or to give it a good review.Well, I’ve now had all six bottles: three teas, three fruit-flavoured beverages.

Honestly? I can’t think of a single reason to buy these beverages. The tea flavour (black, white, and green teas) was very muted. They need to be steeping their teas more. The most strongly flavoured tea was the pomegranate green tea, which did taste of pomegranate (moreso than of tea).

For all three of them, sweetness overwhelmed the flavours.  The teas are flavoured with organic cane sugar (about 40 grams per 473ml bottle, which is supposed to be almost two servings). To my mind, that’s a lot of sugar, organic or not.

The organic designation comes from an American company, Quality Assurance International, which has approval from the US FDA to certify products as organic. I emailed Lassonde to ask why the products don’t have Canadian certification; to this date, I haven’t received an answer.The three fruit “beverages”:

• “Take it easy” Red Orange Guava Hibiscus
• “Live calm” Lemon Honey Aloe
• “Peak [sic] Your Senses” Strawberry Dragon Fruit Ginseng”

Suffered similarly from being overly sweet. The beverages were sweetened with beet or chicory syrup instead of cane sugar. As with the teas, sugar was ingredient #2, right after water. The fruit flavours were muted — strawberry came through most strongly — and I think one thing that really appalled me is that the predominant fruit juice seems to be apple juice, which is probably considered mostly neutral in fruit flavours, but adds more sweetness.

For the Red Orange Guava Hibiscus beverage, the fruit juice list is: concentrated (lemon, apple, blood orange) juices, natural hibiscus, guava, and other fruit flavours, citrus pectin

For Lemon Honey Aloe, it’s: concentrated (lemon, apple) juices, natural fruit flavours and honey, aloe vera gel, citrus pectin

For Strawberry Dragon Fruit Ginseng, it’s: concentrated (lemon, apple, elderberry, strawberry) juices, natural dragon fruit and other fruit flavours, ginseng extract).

Why bother?

Just buy some fruit juice and dilute it if you want a weak beverage. I don’t recommend buying these beverages, which don’t seem to be offering much over kool-aid.

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29 August 2010 by pat.

Steve stopped by briefly this afternoon on his way over to the spit for a bike ride.

While here, we talked about this and that, jobs, software, travel, food…

And while talking about food, we started talking about eggplant. What to do with eggplant? Other than the standards (baba ganouj, grilled eggplant, moussaka) what do you do with it? I’ve used it in spaghetti sauce (it pretty much disappears: thickens the sauce a bit, but doesn’t hold together).

While continuing to catch up on my RSS feed this afternoon, I ran across a description of eggplant terrine and the photos look delicious. Vegetarian gourmet terrine, recipe in Marc Vetri’s book. I found the recipe on Google Books.

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27 August 2010 by pat.

How’s that for a subject line to push all the buttons?I attended a seminar by Lorraine Johnson at the Brick Works, back in July, on just that subject. Lots of food for thought, and lots of books to consider getting, including:

• Identifying and harvesting edible and medicinal plants  - Steve Brill
• City Farmer - Lorraine Johnson
• Peterson Field guide to edible wild plants

It was a fact-filled morning, discussed fruit, veggies, and mushrooms, and included some things I hadn’t even considered. We’re at the northern edge of the Paw-paw’s range (Carolingian forest), and it seems they were never commercially grown because there wasn’t much of a way to save them — they don’t transport well, they don’t stay fresh long — so they never caught on big with the population. I’d only heard of them in a southern play that got used a lot in scene study classes (can’t even remember what it was called! about 3 sisters).

She described it as very tropical looking… like a small mango, and with an interesting taste, like banana and pineapple and custard all together. To me, it sounds like it should be ice cream at the very least, and probably would make a good cream pie flavour.

These days, we can refrigerate or freeze fruit, which wasn’t available back when.

So it was interesting to hear Lorraine talk about them, and what’s needed to actually get harvestable fruit in the fall.

The tree, which under the most optimal conditions, can grow up to 30 feet tall, is more likely to max out at about 10-15 in our climate, so a medium-height shrub. And they grow slowly. It needs filtered light in its early years, and then full sun when it is established. It doesn’t like wind; it does like high humidity (sounds like Toronto summers!)

The one problem? Lorraine said 3 trees are needed for cross-pollination.

Hey, who says they all have to be in one yard? Given the size of downtown backyards — about 17 feet across, maybe 20-30 feet deep, if three neighbours got together and each planted one, there’d be plenty of paw-paws to go around. Sounds like fertilization is mostly through insects (but not bees). So they can’t be too far apart. Most insects aren’t known for long-term memory.

It’s hard to find them in garden centers now, because there isn’t demand. And there isn’t demand, because people don’t know about them. So it’s kind of a vicious circle. But just as the whole 100-mile diet thing really got started with two writers reporting for the Tyee, maybe Lorraine can start things up here… she told a bunch of us, and if we each tell a bunch of people, and can collectively get people to plant them, then we’d bring back a tree that’s almost been completely extirpated from our ecosystem. And who knows what else that might help?  Definitely the zebra-swallowtail butterfly!

More info about Paw-paws here.

I think it sounds like an interesting project… some garden centres may carry them: Lorraine mentioned Grimo, in Niagara.

What do you think?

Posted in Urban nature, Home gardens, Food, grown, Food, SOLE food | No Comments »

27 August 2010 by pat.

So it seems that, now that I’m blogging, I occasionally get asked my opinion on things. I’ve been asked to write positive things, and do a link exchange (said no). I’ve been asked to taste things. To that, I said yes. But that I wouldn’t promise I’d blog about it, and I wouldn’t promise to say positive things about it.  Despite those caveats, Lassonde Canada wanted to send me the different flavours of *ahem* Flavür (wow, I’m glad I’m on a Mac and could find the umlaut).

I got home this afternoon, and a Purolator box was on my front porch. I opened the box to find another box, this one with pretty pictures and marketing speak about it being samples. I opened it, and took the bottles outside and photographed them.

I’ll tell you what they taste like as I work my way through the samples. Right now they’re in the fridge, cooling.

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19 August 2010 by pat.

Two pictures I took while in Nova Scotia visiting my sister are now up for sale over on FinerWorks. Both are of sailboats in the fog, and prints on canvas.

Foggy Harbour, Three Boats

Foggy Harbour, Two Boats

Posted in Photography sales and marketing, Photography | No Comments »

15 August 2010 by pat.

Wondering why my blog posts have been so few and far between?

I’ve been rehearsing for Agnes of God. I’m playing Mother Superior. Tijuana Layne is Agnes, and Cathy Young is Dr. Livingstone, the psychiatrist.

The show runs tonight (Aug. 15) and next weekend (Aug. 21 and 22), at Nobody Writes to the Colonel, 460 College St. at 8pm. Tickets are $20 at the door.

Hope to see you there!

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

10 August 2010 by pat.

I bought and froze a cornish hen (little chicken) a while ago, and thawed it on the weekend to eat.

Didn’t get around to eating it. Must cook it, and can then choose to either (a) feed actress and stage manager this evening while we run lines or (b) freeze it once cooked.

I had some leftover fat and drippings from an organic chicken I roasted for an earlier rehearsal, so that went into the roasting pan along with half a lemon in the cavity, two anchovy strips on top, and all my leftover cherry tomatoes that needed to be cooked up (I halved them, and sprinkled them around the bird). Oh yes, and oregano over all.

Now it’s in the oven roasting. I’m cooking it at 300F, and may cook it to the point that I can pull it apart with a fork and then serve it and the tomatoes on top of some grilled polenta.

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5 August 2010 by pat.

I’ve got rehearsals at my house this week for Agnes of God (if you’re in Toronto, come to see it! I’m playing Mother Superior).

We’ve been starting at 3:30 in the afternoon and working through until 10:30 or 11:30 at night. Some days I prepare an easy dinner for the cast, so we can eat between running lines and actual rehearsal. Yesterday I roasted a naturally raised chicken that I bought at Meat on Queen (corner of Queen E. and Jones). I kept it simple: took an organic lemon, cut it in half and put that in the cavity, and rubbed kosher salt and cracked pepper into the skin on the outside. Into a 450 oven that I reduced to 300F, and roasted for an hour and a half, basting regularly.

Along with it I made a potato salad. I took new potatoes (and boiled them in the microwave oven — the silly thing has a potato setting that I find very useful). When they cooled, I roughly chopped them into fork-sized hunks, and added a bunch of sliced celery, halved cherry tomatoes, chopped manzanilla olives stuffed with pimento, and capers. For a dressing, I used a manufactured Greek-oregano-and-feta low fat dressing, and globbed a bunch of that onto it, tossed everything, and let it refrigerate for a couple of hours before serving. It made for a yummy salad with lots of flavour, and I had some of the leftovers for breakfast this morning.

Now, had I known the people and their tastes better, I might have added some chopped hard-boiled egg and anchovies into the mix… Alas, not everyone’s an anchovy fan. Good thing I left the anchovies out. One person’s face puckered when I talked about them later (in the context of strips of anchovy arranged on a roasting chicken).

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14 July 2010 by pat.

From a link on Facebook, I discovered that the Brick Works, through Green City Workshops, is running a number of gardening workshops this year, for only $15 each (sign up by emailing ebw@evergreen.ca! limited space available!)

 The workshops are:

• Edible Native Landscapes (July 17)
• Harvesting & Preserving Toronto’s Urban Orchard (Aug 15)
• The Natural Beauty of Native Plants: Great Plant Pairings (Sept 11)
• A Drought-Tolerant Toronto Garden (Sept 18)
• Gardening for Songbird Conservation (Oct 2)
• Food Cycles Urban Farm Project (Nov 6)

I’m planning to attend three of them (first and last two). Maybe I’ll see you there?

Posted in Home gardens, Gardening, Food, grown, Food | No Comments »

9 July 2010 by pat.

You never know what will prompt someone to make a visit to your website.

I am, I’ll admit, fairly opinionated, and leave my opinions in a number of places, like comments on articles in The Toronto Star, or on Antonia Zerbisias’ blog, Broadsides.

At most sites where comments are accepted, there’s frequently the choice of attaching a URL to one’s name, so I usually attach my website to my name. (If I’m not willing to stand behind my comments, I’d have to ask myself why, and reconsider the comment.)

One person with whom I have sparred on a number of occasions followed the link. Last night, he bought two prints of the lighthouse at Peggy’s Cove (#2).

So I will continue to put my name to my comments, state my opinions (civilly, usually), and take what customers that may bring me.

Posted in Photography sales and marketing | No Comments »

8 July 2010 by pat.

I guess I should say websites, because I updated both my webspace on FinerWorks and my own website.

Today I completed image adjustments to some photos I had taken of windows and doors and uploaded them to FinerWorks for sale.

So I can track number of views on different subjects, I’ve split the images for sale across three galleries:

• Still life,
• Peggy’s Cove,
• and Windows and Doors.

In the future, I’ll be adding more galleries, and also some merchandise, like ceramic tiles, mugs, and calendars.

Posted in Photography sales and marketing, Photography | No Comments »

28 June 2010 by pat.

This afternoon I finally removed the gummy bears from the refrigerator to see how they looked, and more importantly, how they tasted.

Here’s the line-up, in the same order as the before picture. You can see the changes (I’ve put both the before and after images in line so you can compare easily. Lots of expansion on the bears, not so much on the wine gums.

I really don’t like the look of the wine gums. They’ve gone pale and pastel, and make me think of waterlogged dead things. Not to be recommended.

The large gummy bears, next in line, fared better.

The fruit juice gummy bears, next two containers, both absorbed a lot of alcohol. But look how shiny and clear the ones at the end are: these are the ones soaking in rum.

I took them out of the alcohol and put them all on a plate to check that it wasn’t just the fact they were continuing to soak in the alcohol that made the visual difference: the gummies are arranged clockwise from top left, which means the rum-soaked bears are in the lower left.

Somehow, they’re more reflective and more refractive than the vodka ones.  So visually, the rum-soaked gummy bears are definitely the winners.

Next: how do they taste? The wine gums have a really awful texture. They’re slimy on the outside, and still overly chewy on the inside. The taste isn’t that great either. I give them a big Fail. I’m not quite sure how I’ll dispose of them… do they go in the compost, or flush?

The large gummi bears are sweet. The taste of alcohol does come through after a couple of chews. The texture has improved, and it’s more like some jello that’s a bit hard-set instead of overcooked squid. Meh. It works, but doesn’t thrill me.

The fruit juice gummi bears soaked in vodka first hit you with a fruity flavour (honestly, I couldn’t tell you what kind of fruit flavour it is, just that it’s fruity) and then, like with the large gummi bears, the alcohol hits. It’s a pretty intense taste of vodka.

The fruit juice gummi bears soaked in rum (ah! so pretty! They look like gems) also first hit me with the fruity taste, but I think I can distinguish between some of the flavours: the dark red ones are more berry-ish, the clear ones are almost lemonade. (I was only eating half of each, so I don’t think I had a significant amount to drink). The transition to rum flavour was better than the transition to vodka, I think.

So the winners are fruit juice gummi bears in Bacardi rum.

The last question to resolve is: how to serve them?

On a ceramic spoon?

With chopsticks?

Voodoo doll gummi bears impaled with cocktail picks?

Hmm. Gummi bears on toothpicks didn’t work so well. Less than 5 minutes after this shot, all the picks had canted over to one side or the other, and beheaded all the bears!

Sandra had another suggestion when we were having a beer at Stratenger’s last night: freeze them.

Unfortunately, because all the rum ones had been beheaded, I had to conduct the experiment with vodka ones. I took a few of the leftover ones and put them on a piece of parchment paper in the freezer for an hour.  I then tried mounting them on cocktail picks like lollipops. It works with the vodka ones, which are a bit firmer than the rum ones. And it’s kind of like gellied antifreeze! They’re cold, but not frozen.

Go ahead! do your own experiments and tell me what the results are!

Postscript:

 I repeated the experiment using some vegan gummi bears (also from the Bulk Barn). They’re made using tapioca starch instead of gelatin, and all the coloring is vegetable-based. They absorbed the rum more slowly… they were still quite tough after 3 days, so I let them continue to soak until the next Leslieville Patio Club meeting, which was 9 days. Stuck toothpicks in them (worked better than with the fruit-juice gummis) and took them to the Patio Club for sampling. Responses indicate that they work!

Posted in Food, processed, Food | 2 Comments »

28 June 2010 by pat.

The American Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) has come up with a new acronym — SoFAS — to describe foods that are bad for us. SoFAS are Solid Fats and Added Sugars.Marion Nestle is analysing the report (difficult challenge!) and you can read more about it on her website about Food Politics.You can also follow her on Twitter  (marionnestle).

Posted in Food | No Comments »

23 June 2010 by pat.

I never had gummy bears growing up, or even tasted them until today. The most exposure I had was from Nicole Vogelzang’s paintings and I loved the way they reflected and refracted light.

A few months ago, I read a blog posting about an experiment to create vodka-infused gummy bears. Cute.

Sandy was recently talking about jello shooters, and it put me in mind of the blog posting, so I decided to try to replicate the experiment, with a few variations: no worms, no fish; no sugar-free gummy bears in the bulk barn, so I’m using fruit juice ones; trying some wine gums, since it sounds to me like something that should work with alcohol. Also going to try some rum with fruit juice gummy bears, since rum seems to go with sweet things.

To start, I tried one of each of the gummy bears (wine gums I know). Interesting. Very sweet. Texture is chewy. Given the texture, though, I’d generally prefer to eat squid or cuttlefish sashimi

I laid out the four different containers.  From left to right, they are:

• wine gums
• large gummy bears
• small fruit juice gummy bears
• small fruit juice gummy bears

Aren’t they cute? I arranged the bears like they’re in a hot tub. But I didn’t realize until I was looking at the photos that the orange gummy bear in vodka’s upside down. Oops. Guess he had too much already.

Then I added vodka to the first three dishes, enough to submerge the gums. To the fourth dish, some white Bacardi rum.

Here are the photos. This is the wine gums. Am a bit concerned, because there seemed to be some dissolving of the gums immediately, resulting in some floaty stuff. We’ll see what happens.

 These are the large regular type of gummy bears. Look at the way the green feet seem to glow! Oh, I just love that. Does the fact I’ve submerged them mean I’ve drowned them? Oh dear.

 These are the little fruit juice gummy bears in vodka. As you can see, the orange one (on the right) is upside down.

 Here are six more fruit juice gummy bears, but this time they’re in Bacardi rum. Since rum is used as a base with so many fruity drinks, I thought it might be more interesting than vodka, which is neutral.

We’ll see what happens! I’ve covered the dishes with plastic wrap and put them in the fridge. I’ll keep my eyes open to see when it looks like they’ve absorbed as much alcohol as they are likely to. We’ll see what the experiment differences are:

• Do wine gums fare better than fishies?
• Do fruit juice gummy bears do as well as, better, or worse than sugar-free gummys? (I didn’t see any sugar free ones at bulk barn).
• What happens to the large size gummy bears? Do they muscle their way out of my fridge?

Stay tuned for the results!

Posted in Food, processed, Food | No Comments »