Corn Goo is Sometimes Fun

We had a party yesterday for my son and his friends. We made a Thomas the Tank Engine cake out of a packaged cake mix. We slathered it in Betty Crocker icing that we coloured with questionable food dye. We stuck on Oreos for the wheels.
It was awesome!
Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.

Revenge of the Killer Tomatoes

My thumb must be rated at least khaki now. Six months ago I was having trouble keeping my cactus alive and now I have grown tomato plants that as of today are taller than my almost 5 year old (seriously, she's not even crouching!). The veggie patch is a jungle of tomatoes, many already with green fruit. My pseudo-earth boxes on my porch are also doing spectacularly, in fact, I can barely see out my front windows. It's not even the end of the school year and we've already harvested spinach, bok choy, lettuce, chard, and a handful of peas and beans. My cucumbers are now visible, the zucchini and squash plants are set to take over the world.
And to think I doubted that my seedlings could ever actually produce food! Now I'm starting to doubt my ability to eat and preserve the glut I see coming down the pipe!

Grainstorm

Every time I bake cookies, I make the same variety. I don't even have a recipe anymore, I can make them from memory- my Grandma's famous "Cowboy Cookies". This week however, I mixed it up a bit and tried a yummy new concoction, with some help from Grainstorm.

My new food adventure has introduced me to alot of people doing amazing things, and the people at Grainstorm are no exception. As usual, I came across my new source for baking mixes by coincidence. I met Lark from Grainstorm while I was buying a train table for my son from her through Craigslist. She happened to live less than five minutes from me, and happened to have a van labeled "Grainstorm - fresh milled organic grains" (or something to that effect). I couldn't not ask about it, and of course we got to talking about "real" food. Turns out her business is organic baking mixes (muffins, cookies, pancakes) made from Ontario grown heritage grains like red fife and kamut. In the small world of local, organic grains, it turns out that Grainstorm buys their grains from Grassroots Organics, the same farmers who supply our weekly eggs and organic flour through Mama Earth.

This week I made the oatmeal cookies according to the basic recipe (add butter, oil, 2 eggs) and they were a big hit with me and my son (daughter and husband don't really eat cookies...yeah, weirdos). I took some cookies into work and they were given the universal thumbs up. I guess I should also admit that I ate the last 3 for breakfast before my son woke up yesterday. I didn't want to share...

If you're a reluctant baker, but want to eat some guilt-free but tasty cookies or muffins (or pancakes!), check out Grainstorm online or in store at various locations in Toronto.

Paying more for food...a good thing?

This is my spinach crop. We had our first homegrown spinach salad last night with sprouts and garden herbs. It was alot of work to coax this spinach out of the ground. I could have bought similar stuff for about $3. Almost too cheap to bother.
It leads me to a concept that I believe in deeply, but feel is heresy to speak aloud: We need to start paying more for food. What kind of moron wants to see prices for something as basic as food to rise, you may ask? Well, me. And the author of the article Why Is Organic Food So...Cheap?.
The fact of the matter is, in my mind at least, our current system of pricing is totally out of whack with reality. It ignores the "external costs"of things like obesity and diabetes, the potential costs we may face by exposing ourselves to pesticides, herbicides and GMOs (genetically modified organisms), and the environmental costs of reliance on fossil fuels to grow, package, process and transport food massive distances. Our current food economy asks farmers to work hard and take incredible financial risk for tiny slivers of our supermarket prices. We also maintain cheap prices by outsourcing our food production to the developing world, which once again keeps us feeling full by keeping people food insecure in the majority of the world. In the developing world, the best land is used for specialty export crops, leaving little land for people to grow foods they actually get to eat. Then they need to buy our cheap corn. And so it goes...

I like a bargain just as much as the next person...but cheap food is no bargain. Just a deal with the devil. I'm willing to pay more to make sure I get food that is not degrading the land for my kids, that is not putting farmers out of business, and that is not going to make me fat and sick. Last night we ate a whole chicken that cost about $6/kg. Not too cheap...but we bought it directly from the farmer and it was raised without a tiny cage or hormones and antibiotics. Good news all around.

Disclaimer: Yes, I have the luxury of not having to choose between rent or food. I have the good fortune of not being tied to a diet of white bread and $1.29 hot dogs. I did not forgot about the food insecure people of the rich world. Nooo, not at all. These are the people who are chained to the worst that the food industry has to offer. It is a complex issue that will require a variety of solutions, but at some point a first step must be taken. I say let it be a tax on highly processed foods of little nutritional value. Next, let's use the proceeds to subsidize fresh food for people who can't afford it. I am loathe to recommend much from Sun Media, but I have to agree with this article by Andrew Hanon.

Ups and downs of the urban garden

Here is my first tomato of the season. I guess my research paid off. This is a Stupice tomato, an heirloom variety from the Czech Republic that is supposed to be the earliest maturing tomato. Go figure, it really is. Hopefully this bodes well for the ones that are supposed to be the most sweet and delicious. I'll let you know if they also live up to their reputations! If you ever wondered where you find the details of seed varieties, you can peruse the seed catalogue from local, organic Terra Edibles.

In the "news-of-the-weird" category, I must also report the bizarre basil theft that occurred on my porch. It was a plump and aromatic plant purchased for the bank breaking price of $1.99 (at the convenience store at the bottom of the street to supplement my somewhat wimpy home seeded plants). It was neatly dug up, and the less robust plants were left behind. Racoons? Squirrels? I think not. Apparently there is a neighbourhood plant thief on the loose. Last year my next door neighbour had two shrubs go missing, down the street I saw a sign from someone lamenting the overnight disappearance of a favorite perennial. Weeeeeird. Where does one plant their stolen treasures? If you love basil so much, why don't you just spend the $1.99? Ahh, what's an urban garden without a little mystery?

Ode to Smoothies

Who doesn't love a good smoothie? I have a seasonal addiction that requires me to consume some sort of blender drink pretty much every day in spring and summer. I admit, some days it ends up being Kaluha, milk, and ice...but other days it's a touch more granola-ish than that.

I find my kids get excited for about the first two weeks of the smoothie season and then lose steam. However, I've found the cure to sustain smoothie enthusiasm. Popsicle molds. Feels like junk food, but isn't. Even better, I've started sneaking in veggies too - and they still beg for them.

While I think a recipe for smoothies is about as necessary as a recipe for a glass of water (my apologies to recipe hounds), here's a sample:

a banana
some strawberries (when organic ones go on sale, I stock up like a mad woman and freeze them for this purpose!)
some mango
enough fruit juice to lubricate the whole thing (orange in this case)
a few scoops of plain yogurt
a few ice cubes
a couple of carrots (blender will be happier if you slice them first) or a beet or both

Cheers!

Appliance Breakdown: The Mother of Invention

Our fridge kicked the bucket yesterday. The first sign was the curdling of 4 litres of ridiculously expensive organic milk. But it forced me to cook a meal using as many contents of the fridge as possible to prevent them from going rotten. What a surprise, it was our best veggie meal ever.

If you're looking for a stupidly quick, easy, and kick-ass vegetarian meal, try some variation of this:

1. Heat some olive oil in a frying pan, add some beans. The equivalent amount of about 1 can I guess (I used a mix of organic turtle and kidney beans which I had soaked and cooked the previous day)
2. Add a whack of salsa. I used about a cup. (I've tried this with other salsas, but have got to say Garden Fresh - Jack's Medium was the best. I know it's at Loblaw's but not sure where else. I like hot stuff, but if you're sensitive to spice, you should definitely go with the Mild since the Medium has some kick)
3. Throw in some chopped green pepper and a bit of extra tomato (especially if you're trying to clean out your fridge!)
4. Cook it all for 5-10 mins. While it's cooking mash up an avocado (I just added in a bit more salsa to it for pretty much instant guacamole)
5. (Optional- slater tortillas with some cream cheese. Really, I probably would skip this step if my fridge wasn't broken, but it was extra tasty this way)
6. Put a scoop of the bean mixture, a scoop of guacamole, and some shredded cheddar into the tortilla.
   
7. Eat the big sloppy mess, grinning the whole time!
   

Next step, learn to make homemade salsa that exactly replicates Jack's medium, OR find the equivalent organic salsa.

Cheers!