Food for Thought

For those of us who read and enjoyed The 100-Mile Diet, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon’s chronicles of a year spent eating close to home, the past couple of weeks have offered up a plethora of opportunities to learn more.

The authors were here the week before last to do several readings in support of the region’s One Book, One Community project. And plenty of others around town who support local and sustainable eating have been offering up workshops on gardening and preserving, screening agriculture-related films, hosting local food nights and facilitating lots of discussion.

As things quiet down, we still find ourselves in the blessed midst of harvest season. But with the threat of the nighttime frost ever-looming and the inevitable stretch of winter ahead, eating close to home isn’t so easy. A little inspiration may be required, so I’ve put together a list of books to hunker down with on the chilly nights to come, ones that might further inform and inspire.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
American novelist Kingsolver and her family move from the city to their farm in Appalachia, where they make a concentrated effort to eat only what they or their neighbours grow. I read this book in July and immediately wanted to press it into the hands of anyone and everyone. It’s a perfect balance of politics, investigation and memoir and Kingsolver captures all the joys of local eating like no one else could. You’ll laugh, you’ll be appalled, and, when she finally becomes proud mama to hatching turkey chicks, you might even shed a tear.

Apples to Oysters: A Food Lover’s Tour of Canadian Farms
Margaret Webb
This book takes you along with Webb, a journalist who herself grew up on a farm, as she takes a series of cross-Canada trips over the course of a couple of years in an effort to attach faces and personalities to the growers of the foods we’ve come to think of as especially-Canadian – cod, flax, apples, potatoes, pork and the like. Webb describes the farmers as “chefs of the soil and the sea, tractor-seat philosophers, poet biologists, thingamajig inventors and zealous educators,” and argues that they are “the critical ingredient too often missing from our discussions of food.”

Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean and Fair and Slow Food Revolution: A New Case for Eating and Living
Carlo Petrini
Petrini, an Italian gourmand, is the Slow Food movement’s founder and guru. He outlines his philosophies in both books – the need for sustainable food production and fair treatment of food producers and the need for food to be both healthful and delicious. He also shows us North Americans how much we can learn from other countries and cultures when it comes to eating well in all senses of the word.

In Defence of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Michael Pollan
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” So sums up Michael Pollan in his In Defence of Food. The first two words of that statement seem unnecessary at first glance, but Pollan argues that what most of us take in is not food, but rather “edible foodlike substances.” Eek. He also reminds us that it’s not just about what you eat, but how you eat it, encouraging us to get “out of the car and back to the table.” (Eek again. Guilty as charged.) In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan investigates the good, bad and ugly of the journey our food, be it industrial or organic, takes as it makes its way to our plate.
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Little City Farm

Is it weird to want to stay in a B&B in your own town – and mainly so you can eat the breakfast? Maybe so. But Little City Farm in Kitchener makes it a tempting thought.

The eco-friendly guest house is run by Karin Kliewer and Greg Roberts who (along with new baby Maya) run an urban homestead of sorts on their Duke Street property near downtown. They grow much of their own food there in a massive garden, bake and cook in their backyard cob oven and are committed to supporting local farmers and eating organically and sustainably.

“It’s like a regular working farm,” Kliewer says of their home. “People come knowing it’s not a regular B&B. They end up interacting, helping with baking or helping in the greenhouse or weeding. We really encourage people to get involved.”

Kliewer says she enjoys knowing that they may be introducing guests to new ways of eating and living and inspiring them to adopt new habits. “Hopefully people will take a little bit home with them,” she says. “Much of it is simple stuff that we can all do. I hope we even just inspire guests to think, ‘Maybe I can plant some tomatoes next year.’ ”

As for those breakfasts, they look and sound fantastic. There’s plenty on the menu, says Kliewer – frittatas made with local goat cheese, organic free-range eggs, and herbs and vegetables from the garden; wholegrain breads from the cob oven with local fruit jams and honey; homemade organic yogurt with seasonal fruit and maple syrup. Kliewer even makes her own herbal teas.

Apparently my temptation to stay someplace a few kilometers from home isn’t out of the ordinary, either. Kliewer tells me they’ve had several local guests.

“People have biked and walked over," she says. "We had people from around the corner that had a new baby and never had a honeymoon. It’s an easy getaway and a neat way for people to get to know their own community. Often we neglect what’s right there in our backyard.”

If you can’t get your head the local travel idea, there are other ways to enjoy Little City Farm. Kliewer and Roberts regularly hold workshops that are open to the public – on subjects like canning and preserving, bread-making and gardening. Next Saturday they’ll run one on beekeeping, complete with a honey tasting. And they’ll be sharing their experiences this Wednesday evening when they speak at the Kitchener Public Library’s main branch. See the couple’s website at http://www.littlecityfarm.ca/ for more details.

I asked Kliewer to share a recipe and she provided this one, which I then made myself – and loved – on a recent, rainy Sunday. Now is certainly the time to enjoy pears.

Kliewer serves guests this cake (adapted from Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert’s Simply In Season) with homemade yogurt and garnished with edible flowers. I can't think of a better way to start the day.

Pear Gingerbread Upside-Down Cake

1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp white sugar
1 tbsp margarine
1 tbsp water
2 ripe pears, peeled, cored and sliced
1/3 cup margarine
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp each nutmeg, allspice, sea salt
1/2 cup molasses or honey
1/2 cup buttermilk, soymilk, or regular milk

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Prepare syrup by melting first four ingredients together in small saucepan. Stir until well combined. Pour into 8x12 glass baking dish.
3. Arrange sliced pears evenly on top of the syrup.
4. In medium sized mixing bowl, beat margarine, brown sugar and egg.
5. Mix all dry ingredients together in small bowl.
6. Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture alternately with molasses/milk.
7. Spoon cake batter over pears in baking dish.
8. Bake about 30 to 35 minutes or until knife inserted in cake comes out clean. Remove from oven, cool a few minutes and turn onto a platter.
9. Serve warm or cold with homemade yogurt or whipped cream.
Serves 8.
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Taste Local! Taste Fresh!

There are a million reasons to head to Victoria Park in Kitchener next Sunday afternoon for the fifth annual Taste Local! Taste Fresh! event, and though I’d had every intention of getting tickets eventually, a recent conversation with Anna Contini, who helps organize the outdoor local food smorgasbord, served as all the incentive I needed in order to stop procrastinating.

Perhaps it was the mention of braised short ribs with honeycrisp tartare and shitake mushroom salt. Maybe it was the thought of spit roasted lamb or the mouth-watering curiousity that came with the mention of basil and beet biscotti. All and more, no doubt, as each of those items and plenty of others are on the menu for the event, which pairs area chefs with local farmers in an effort to showcase and celebrate the best of what grows in Waterloo region.

Taste Local! Taste Fresh! is organized by Foodlink, a regional non-profit organization whose mandate is to link farmers, chefs, food processors and consumers with the hope of creating a more localized and sustainable food system. For its first three years, Taste Local was held at The Waterlot in New Hamburg; last year the venue changed to Victoria Park when the City of Kitchener came on as the event’s main sponsor. But, as Foodlink’s Contini points out, it’s also a more accessible – not to mention picturesque – venue.

There are nineteen chef/farmer pairings in all and, for the price of admission ($55 per ticket), hungry guests are given a passport and invited to hit every booth to sample the tasty wares – all to the sounds of live music (and, fingers crossed, under sunny skies).

“They’re like a team,” Contini says of the farmer/chef partners. “They serve the food together and the idea is for people to talk to the farmer about how the food is produced or grown or to the chef about how they’ve prepared it.”

Jennifer Pfenning of Pfenning’s Organic Farm near Baden, says she loves participating in the event simply because it gives her a sense of community involvement.

“Our product is well represented in the community but we don’t actually get a lot of face time with the consumer,” she says. “It’s a great time for me personally to stand there and talk to the people who eat our food.”

Pfenning is paired with chef Darryl Haus of New Hamburg’s Peel Street Bistro. Pfenning’s will provide carrots in a variety of shades from white to yellow to purple and Haus will be making three dishes, including a very intriguing sounding sorbet.

Gusto Catering Company is paired with Elmira’s Floralane Produce, who will provide chef Doug Westover with fresh tomatoes. Gusto’s executive director Dominic Ellis said they were linked with beef and emu farmers in years past and are excited about the prospect of a new partnership.

“We haven’t worked with Floralane before so we’re quite excited about it,” Ellis said. “We’d like to start using some of their product. It’s really important to us to support local farmers. The food just tastes better.”

Ultimately, Jennifer Pfenning says, the Taste Local! Taste Fresh! event serves as an excellent and all-important way of helping people contemplate what’s on their plate.

“I don’t think there can ever be enough work done to connect people to their food,” she says. “I view myself as very lucky to be on a farm and, with all of the food we eat, I know the people that grow it…Most people don’t have that opportunity. This gives people a chance to say, ‘Yeah, I met the people that grew that.’ ”

Tickets for Taste Local! Taste Fresh!, which runs from 2 to 5 p.m., are available online at foodlink.ca (where you’ll also see a full list of participating farms and chefs) or by calling the Foodlink office at 513-8998. You can also pick them up at a variety of restaurant around town, among them Charbries, The Walper Terrace Hotel, Hannah’s Bella Bistro and Golden Hearth Bakery.
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Thai Sweet Corn Soup

Nothing beats corn on the cob. The fresher and sweeter, the better – with butter, salt and pepper. It’s summer personified, and it was the late, great Edna Staebler (whose namesake public school opened its doors for the first time last week) who sang its praises best in the Vegetable chapter of her classic book Food That Really Schmecks.

“You don’t know how delicious corn can be until you taste it fresh off the stalk,” she wrote. “I phone the farmer’s wife down the lake to pick me some corn, put a big kettle of water on the stove, paddle down the lake in my canoe to get the corn, husk it, and pop it into the boiling salted water for 5 minutes. Then I eat it, 8 or 10 cobs of Golden Bantam slathered with butter; and that’s all I want for supper, thank you.”

I’m inclined to agree. When it’s in season, like anything, the temptation is to eat it in droves. The other night we had friends in for homemade pizza – with corn on the side. Not exactly a fitting accompaniment, but I’d just picked up a half-dozen pieces and it seemed disgraceful not to cook and enjoy it immediately.

Leafing through a favourite cookbook recently, I came across a recipe for Thai Sweet Corn soup. “Fresh sweet corn on the cob is the heart and soul of this recipe,” read the intro. “Summer is your only opportunity to make this soup, so don’t miss out.” I needed no further convincing.

I hit up the New City Supermarket on King Street in downtown Kitchener for some of the essential Thai ingredients – and came away with them for less than $10.

If you’ve never been to New City, do swing by. There’s all sorts of interesting produce and aisle upon aisle of all manner of cans, bottles and jars. Out of season, it’s an excellent source for fresh herbs – big, shrinkwrapped trays go for less than two bucks and are a far cry from the little packaged wisps you find at most grocery stores – you’ll be looking for new recipes to use up what’s leftover.

With the cooler nights upon us, this soup makes a great supper (8 to 10 cobs of corn, though, is a tempting alternative).Don’t be tempted to leave out any of the ingredients – they all add essential flavour. And for the love of Pete, don’t use frozen corn.

This comes from Rebar: Modern Food Cookbook, a collection of recipes from a well-loved vegetarian café in Victoria, B.C. It’s an essential cookbook for veggies and non-veggies alike.

Thai Sweet Corn Soup

Corn-Lemongrass Stock
8 ears fresh corn
8 cups water
2 lemongrass stalks
6 kaffir lime leaves, fresh or frozen
1 yellow onioin
1 garlic bulb
1 tsp salt

Soup
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 small yellow onion, diced
1 cup minced shallots
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 lemongrass stalk, trimmed and minced
4 tbsp minced ginger
6 kaffir lime leaves
2 tstp salt
1- 400 mL can light coconut milk
2 tsp sambal oelek
1/4 cup chopped Thai basil
1 lime, cut into wedges

1. To prepare stock remove corn kernels from uncooked cobs and reserve (you will need about 4 cups). Roughly chop the onion, lemongrass and garlic. Place cobs and stock ingredients in a stock pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 45 minutes. Strain and keep warm.

2. Heat oil in a soup pot over medium heat; add onion and sauté until translucent. Add shallots, garlic, lemongrass, ginger, lime leaves and 1 tsp salt. Gently sauté until golden and softened, adding a bit of stock to prevent sticking if necessary.

3. Add the reserved corn kernels, remaining salt and enough stock to cover. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until the corn is tender. Remove the lime leaves. Using an immersion blender or food processor, puree the soup (returning it to the pot, if necessary). Add the coconut milk, sambal and enough stock to make it the consistency of your liking. Simmer for 15 minutes.

4. Ladle into bowls and top with chopped basil and a squeeze of lime.
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