Community Gardening

This year I became a gardener!

Apart from the bits of lawn that I dug up this year to plant a few tomato plants, our yard doesn't have a lot of productive dirt. I had been thinking about digging up our whole back yard to plant veggies, but it's so shady back there that the only thing worth planting back there are hostas.

Thank goodness for community gardens! My dear friend Kreesta had planted almost the whole space in this community garden on Maryland Street last year and this year wanted to share the burden/joy with some others. I got a 5 by 20 foot plot to use for my own growing pleasure.

It was a lot of fun to watch everything explode into delicious green yumminess throughout the summer. Certain things produced very well - I had a good month and a half of sugar snap peas and green beans. I probably didn't take very good care of the tomato plants though... They kind of got huge and unruly mid-summer and then a little diseasy by the time they were supposed to be pumping out the fruit. We also got a few small green peppers but strangely enough the plants at home did a lot better.

The cucumbers also started off really strong but eventually got some kind of musty nastiness half way through August that kept them from producing more cukes. I did manage to get enough from these plants for a couple of jars of baby dills, so I can't complain.

I also planted some cantaloupe plants near the back that didn't do too well, apart from the one lovely little melon I picked mid-August.

Tiny but tasty!

This picture kind of shows the risks of community gardening in a poor neighbourhood. I was so proud of my potatoes (you can kind of see them at the back). I had planted fingerlings because I thought it might be nice to have baby size potatoes throughout the growing season.

Unfortunately a few days after I took the picture on the right, I came to the garden to see that all the potato plants in the entire garden had been uprooted. Kreesta had warned me about planting potatoes - along with carrots and corn they're the most popular veggies in the neighbourhood, and you shouldn't expect to harvest everything you grew. I was pretty upset when I first saw them gone - I REALLY love potatoes and I had gotten quite attached to my plants - but them's the breaks. It's easy for me to go and buy baby potatoes at the Farmer's Market if I really want to - but it's probably not much of an option for whoever pulled up my plants.

My Brussels Sprouts on the other hand, have been left entirely for me! I've already picked a few of the biggest ones near the bottom of the stalks, but if this mild autumn continues the way it's been going, I'll be swimming in sprouts for the next few weeks! Yum.

Crampton's Market Part 2 - Smoked Garlic!

This is a short story about a good thing I found at a nice store called Crampton's Market. This good thing is Local Smoked Garlic.

Local Smoked Garlic are big heads of juicy garlic roasted over smoke until they're almost soft, but not quite.
Local Smoked Garlic tastes really good in things like three bean salad.

Go and buy some Local Smoked Garlic.

A tale of two pizzas

The pizza pictured above was consumed on a warm sunny patio in Quebec City. It consisted of brie, artichokes, prosciutto, and sundried tomatoes. It was very tasty. It was very French.

When I came home I had a lot of vegetables to eat. But I wanted to make it exciting like the food I had on holidays so I made a pizza like the one in Quebec City but not like the one in Quebec city. Mine had roasted green and yellow zucchini, fresh tomatoes, black olives, feta and Parmesan, drizzled in balsamic vinegar. It made the zucchini taste special and not like a burden. This was my goal.

Lovely Treats from La Belle Province

I can't quite make the transition to talking about autumn food until I have the summer food posts out of the way. This summer, the funnest food I had was definitely in Montreal and Quebec City.
Jeff and I usually manage to get away for a roadtrip every summer, but this summer he couldn't get time off work so I had to make other plans. My lovely friend Deb obliged me with a 5 day girls' getaway to Montreal and Quebec City for a shopping - eating - drinking extravaganza. It was fantastic on all points, but we're here to talk about food. Each meal could probably be its own post, but here are the highlights:

1. Breakfasts.

Every morning started with a cafe breakfast with a huge mug of cafe au lait. This particular breakfast also had a toasted bagel with cretons. Pork pate for breakfast. I love it.

2. Jean-Talon Market.
We were blessed with a hotel room with a full kitchen so I wanted to make sure I got to cook at least one tasty meal in it. We spent a lovely morning at the market perusing the veggies (spherical eggplant!) and the wonderful cheese shops and bakeries and meatshops.
Duck fat in a jar! Horse meat! Duck sausages! Purple peppers! Yup - this market has it all.

Alas, cooking options were limited in the hotel kitchen (no oil, no spices) so the spherical eggplants and purple peppers and horse meat were left behind at the market. We still managed to bring home a feast of sausages, wine, cheeses, garden fresh berries and some lovely bread.

3. Schwartz's Deli.

Restaurants with ritualized ordering procedures have a fond place in my heart. This place has exactly the same spirit as the best BBQ places I've been in the southern States. The ritual is equal to the pleasure of actually eating the food.

There are two lineups here - one for take-out and one for eating in. We were in the take-out line and still waited 25 minutes for a smoked meat sandwich. Would I stand in line here if I lived here? I don't know for sure, but all that waiting, staring at the meat through the window did make me yearn to learn how to smoke beef.

I had read somewhere that you should order your sandwiches medium-fat because then they're more juicy. And so I did because I always do what I'm told.

Mmmm, medium fat. They perhaps were a trifle too juicy for Deb's delicate hands.

4. Au Pied de Cochon.

This restaurant has gotten a lot of press for two things - for really pushing the whole 'snout to tail' philosophy of enjoying and preparing meat (a philosophy to which I try to subscribe) and also for putting foie gras on practially everything on their menu. This was my first time with foie gras, and I've got to say that it's damn tasty. I'm not exactly sure how I feel about the ethical aspects of eating the fattened livers of force-fed ducks but it seemed like something I should try at least once. Next time I come here, I'll go for the 'pied de cochon', which is what the guy beside me was eating. A roasted pig's foot, stuffed with sausage and triumphantly topped with a thick slice of foie gras.

This time we decided to eat light and shared an order of fried clams and a foie gras pizza with prosciutto, arugula, figs and goat cheese. Thumbs up, indeed.


Finally it was off to Quebec city for...

5. Classic French dining

Quebec City was a little more fancy pants than Montreal and it was definitely harder to get a seat in a restaurant due to the massive tourism that the 400th Anniversary Celebrations brought to the town. On our first night, our concierge suggested that we make a reservation if we wanted to eat out. At his suggestion we ended up at this little bistro at the end of a very long day. It was a little pricey, but duck confit with frisee salad and cretons on toast seemed like a perfect French meal, with the added Quebecois touch of having everything served on a slab of slate.

There was plenty of other great food on this trip, but there's simply too much to post here. You'll just have to go and eat for yourself.

Crampton's Market

Crampton's has been around for a couple of years but only recently have I discovered the amazing goodness of this place.

I had seen this place at the corner of Waverley and Kenaston before - I always thought it was something affiliated with the driving range that's right behind it. I had seen the signs on the road advertising fresh fruit and the like but I assumed it was another one of those road-side price-gouging markets. One day this summer on the way to St. Norbert Farmer's Market I decided to take a closer look. As soon as you make it to the driveway, the character of the place starts to come through. There's lots of cute hand painted signs, lots of nice potted plants and a gelati window on the deck. And the most amazing fresh bread smell!

I don't have any shots inside the shop, but it's packed full of local produce, dairy, meat, fruit and baked goods. It's the closest thing I've seen in an actual store that can compare to the Farmer's Market in quality and variety of produce. They're serious about sourcing local grub but doesn't shy away from offering other non-local stuff that still tastes yummy. Thus you can still buy avocados and limes and peaches at the same time you buy your New Bothwell and Oak Island cheese, Halbstadt corn, Ste. Anne chips, green tomatoes, and Manitoba Berkshire pork. The prices are a little on the high side for certain things - similar to the farmer's markets but it's worth it when you know there are farmers in our own backyard that get to make a living by growing our food.

Erin is SERIOUS about her produce. She sends out a weekly newsletter to those who subscribe and it makes for really good reading. Her last newsletter was a 2000 word explanation of the corn industry - the variety of species, the marketing, the merits of hand-picked vs. machine picked corn, and lots of cooking ideas.

So yeah, the produce is good, the ambiance is nice, but what really keeps me stopping here on the way to St. Norbert every weekend are these cinnamon buns!

Every time I've visited the shop on a Saturday morning they're still warm and glistening with melted butter and sugar. They're not gooey or syrupy - they're more like a super buttery soft cinnamon bread with lots of sugar. And at 75 cents each I usually get two.

And so should you.

Cedar Plank Salmon

But Man and Woman cannot live by greens alone. Sometimes tasty fish is good too.

Tasty fish cooked on a cedar plank basted with maple syrup and dill over charcoal is even better.
And tasty fish with the smoky maple dill glaze carmelized on top is the best.

Early Summer Greens

Oh Dear.

Yes, it's late summer now and I haven't posted for two months. If I have any excuse it's because I've been too busy enjoying my food and planning meals around the fresh produce to blog about it. But pictures have been taken all along, and the pictures and experiences must be shared.

So this post is about my life in early July of this summer.

This is the list of our veggie delivery on July 15. Notice the abundance of greens and herbs?

This was the story pretty much all of July. It didn't get boring though... Check out the gorgeous salads below...

My favourite way to eat our greens ended up being pictured below - stirfried scallions and chinese cabbage and chard and chard stems and kohlrabi and baby carrots mixed up with red thai curry paste and served with coconut rice. So decadent!

Homemade Halifax Donairs

I have posted about Halifax donairs before.
From what I've been able to gather over the past ten years, the Halifax donair is a strange Lebanese sub-genre of middle-eastern flatbread with sliced meat, descended from gyros. The meat tends to be a little spicier, the pita is a lot greasier, and a sweet milky sauce is used instead of a tangy tzatziki sauce.
My husband pines for donairs more than he pines for the fresh seafood from back home, so when we came across some fresh ground lamb at the St. Norbert Farmer's Market last weekend the wheels started turning. (Not that Halifax donair shops actually still use lamb. But it was our inspiration, nonetheless.)


We mixed the lamb equally with ground (grass fed) beef, also purchased at the market. The recipe I found on the internet gave specific instructions on mixing the spices with the meat:

Place the ground beef in a large bowl, and use your hands to blend in the spice mixture. If you want the smooth texture of meat that you see in a real donair shop, you must do this in a steel mixing bowl and on a sturdy surface. Pick up the meat, and throw it down with force about 20 times, kneading it after each throw.

Jeff took these instructions a step further and increased the meat force by throwing the meat up in the air and then slamming it down into the bowl. A very impressive performance.

The meat was truly exciting to mix, but the sauce really is the magic part of the meal - it's really what sets apart the Halifax donair apart from the rest of the crowd. And here's how to make it, again courtesy of Dash's Donair recipe. Add some sugar and garlic powder to a can of evaporated milk. Slowly mix in vinegar, a table spoon at a time. The vinegar will curdle the milk and thicken the sauce. Sweet goopy goodness.

Now fry your pita until it's soft, pile on the sliced meat, tomatoes and onions, and load on the sauce... and you've got yourself a reasonable facsimile of a Halifax donair.

Vietnamese Hot and Sour Soup

A recipe for Vietnamese Hot and Sour Soup (Canh Chua):

1. Steam three lobsters in a large pot partially filled with water, salt, peppercorns, and bay leaves. You may choose to do this on an occasion like... say, Mother's Day. Your mother will think it is all about treats for her, and you can let her think that the lobster was planned for her delight alone. This will increase the likelihood of pleasant thoughts by your mother toward you. There is nothing wrong with this. Reserve the steaming water.

2. You may choose to serve the lobster with a baked potato and some freshly steamed asparagus. You may choose to garnish your baked potato with chives freshly cut from your garden and drizzle your lobster in melted butter. If you are my husband, you will put lots of garlic in your melted butter.

3. Upon completion of your meal, remove all shells and place them back into the reserved lobster-steaming water. Simmer, and then simmer some more. You will now have some lobster stock, that although somewhat weak, will enhance the flavour of your hot and sour soup immeasurably.

4. Now, the soup!

Use some of the hot broth to soften a large chunk of tamarind paste. Strain the liquid into the soup and discard the pits. Add a can of pineapple chunks with the juices. Add some mushrooms, fresh bean sprouts, diced tomatoes, leeks and what ever else you would like to include. Add fish sauce and hot chili paste to taste.

Garnish with fresh cilantro, mint or basil, and you have supper.

A slip of the tongue.... Buffalo Tongue

What would YOU say if someone wanted to offer you free buffalo tongues? How could you say no? You wouldn't! You'd say YES YES YES YES gimme those tongues!



Or perhaps on viewing the fetus-like appendage, you might come to your senses and say, Sorry, no thanks, perhaps some other day I might accept a tongue, but not today.

Then you would not be me, apparently. I'm generally not much into organ meats, but I thought the tongue would be a good foray into the world of spare meat parts. I figured it's just a muscle, so it must taste like ordinary meat, right? Plus it was free, an important bonus. You can't go around wasting perfectly good food.


The first step for preparing the tongues was to cook them with herbs and spices in a slow-cooker for a few hours. This is important because the tongue has to be cooked in order for you to peel off the taste-bud laden skin which is not so tasty. Once the taste buds are gone, the tongue is ready to eat!

Here we have Tongue in Piquant Sauce over brown rice risotto. The texture of the meat in this dish was very, very tender. The flavour, beefy. (Recipe courtesy of Jodi Hildebrand)

The other tongue was reserved for sandwiches. Even though the flavour was pretty much like roast beef, eating it cold really emphasized the texture, which was not so good for me. It is a little denser than standard meat, and a little gnerply (or cartilaginous, for the non-Menno folk). Jeff was a big fan, but it kind of grossed me out.

Next time, I may just say no to the tongue.

Key Lime Pie

Key limes actually exist.

They are very small. It is hard to extract the juice from these small limes.

But we must juice these limes because key lime pie tastes so good.

A Frenzy of Baby Spinach

My darling husband came home last week with four pounds of organic baby spinach. (That's FOUR of the large bins pictured above.) It's a bit of a long story as to how we came into all this spinach - but it feels like freekin' Christmas. We've kind of stayed away from the fresh salad greens this winter - salads have been mostly cabbage and carrot based rather than composed of delicate tender leaves imported from far away lands.

Using the spinach as an excuse to take a break from the 'locavore' ideal was clandestinely thrilling!
We ate Greek salad with lovely hothouse tomatoes and cucumbers and Kalamata olives. Strawberry salad with California berries and almonds from who knows where. And the lovely wilted salad with (homemade) pancetta and hard boiled eggs.

I also finally made a recipe of Spinach Brownies that I first discovered from my cousin Lorna. The main ingredients in this were a pound of cheese, a cup of flour, two eggs, and a bunch of spinach. So cheesy. (So much better than chocolate brownies!)

And of course, it is a lot of spinach to eat fresh, so these lovely spanikopita went straight into the freezer for some future party appetizer.

I can't wait for June, when we get nothing but greens in our CSA veggie boxes! Bring it on!

My Second Kick at the can - Ham Edition

As mentioned in the Bacon Edition earlier, things were a little easier this year.
The ham was brined for 3-4 weeks in our cold, cold basement, and then the ham was smoked for about 10 hours without catching fire! Everything went nicely and according to plan.

I found myself wondering how I should store the ham until Easter - about three weeks later. Iwas trying to figure out how I could vacuum wrap or somehow seal it before freezing it until I realized that I had CURED A HAM. No refrigeration necessary. So up in the basement it went again until it was time to eat it.

I boiled it in several changes of boiling water to reduce the saltiness. Then I removed the rind, stuck some cloves in the fat, smothered it in honey and baked it up.


Ham to be proud of. Easter dinner will never be the same again.