Even though alternative food distribution represents less than 4 per cent of market, according to the folks at Local Food Plus, lately I’ve managed to eat out only in restaurants that serve local (and hopefully sustainable) food. Granted, I don’t eat out as much as I’d like these days. With two small children, dinner en famille […]
I’ve been trying to piece together the history of pesticide use in Canada for my book, Locavore. It’s just a small detail in the project, but I’m nevertheless intrigued to find out when exactly Canadian farmers started to use pesticides in large quantities. According to Harvey Levenstein, professor and author of books like Revolution at the Table whom
This past week, my family and I drove to Quebec and backalong the 401 Highway. Even though I’d just spent the last year researching the food system here and learning about all the ways food travels to our plates for my book, I was stunned to see just how many of the trucks on the
A bad case of hand, foot and mouth disease has made its way through our family and so I’ve been home with the kids a lot. We’ve been strolling around the neighbourhood in our convalescence and have had the chance to gawk at the incredible number of fruit trees. We’d come across sidewalks stained with
Last night my friend Zoe was visiting from NYC–the same night the local, sustainably grown peaches arrived that my sister and I planned to can. Instead of yacking around the kitchen table sipping mint tea, the three of us got to work. As soon as the kids were in bed, we put the pots of
I’m thrilled to report that the solar food dryer my dad built me last year for my birthday is on my roof and drying away. I’ve got a tray of organic strawberries shrivelling down into delicious dried pellets as I write. They’ve only been out there for two hours but the edges have already started
I met up with food writer Margaret Webb at the Riverdale Farmers’ Market last night and was thinking out loud about what I would make for dinner: “Oh I know. We’ll have the turkey and duck eggs,” I said. “Just an ordinary Tuesday night dinner at your house?” she mused. Not at all ordinary, that’s for sure.
It is still not too late to sign up with a CSA this summer. Here are three in the Toronto area that I have written about:www.thefreshveggies.com has pick up locations in both the city and the suburbs. Highlights are okra and other South Asian vegetables. www.thecuttingveg.com I wrote about Daniel Hoffman’s new farm in Locavore,
Last night, my daughters built an incredible pillow-comforter-foot stool-bed sheet fort palace in our living room, before dinner. They came to the table in character, the elder as the queen and the younger as the princess. When the princess ate her first bite of the cross rib roast (meat from my dad’s cow) prepared just
There is something incongruous about urban bees. The idea of tending to a community of non-human life—a bee city—amid the skyscrapers, the traffic, the bustle, and the pollution of the modern metropolis is truly amazing. I think, at least in part, it explains the rapid and growing interest in keeping bees today. But urban beehives