I made a batch of mint jelly today, just like my grandmother used to do. There was nothing tastier than her mint jelly with lamb, peas and some mashed potatoes she’d serve in her British royalty tea-cup lined dining room. My first attempt went well; the colour is a lovely, glowing chartreuse and the taste […]
Category: LOCAL BOUNTY
Just got a comment from a reader in the UK, I believe, who suggests that the little red currant stems could be strained off after cooking, rather than the time consuming process of picking them off the raw berries by hand. Has anyone ever boiled red currants with their stems? Does it change the flavour? I’d
This weekend when I stopped by our local market-style shop selling mostly Mennonite products, I picked up a new kind of milk from the cooler: Harmony Organic non-homogenized milk. That’s old fashioned milk with cream that rises to the top just like my dad used to drink when he was a boy. Apparently, non-homogenized milk is back. It’s being sold across
They look like small jewels: round like pearls, scarlet like rubies. The red currant, a small berry I remember from my grandmother’s red fruit dessert–a compote of summer berries she’d make in August and freeze so we could eat the sweet summery stuff when snow lay on the ground. She used to pick them at her friend Brenda’s house, a sloped-roof cottage-like
Gooseberries, red currants-What to do with an old fashioned fruit?Read More »
I must admit that I was totally shocked when I walked into Loblaws this week and, low and behold, there was a big huge box of fiddleheads. And not only were these fiddleheads fresh and local, but they were on sale for a helluva lot less than I’d paid for the spring delicacies the day before at The Big Carrot.
So, I’ve been enjoying my fiddlehead stash, purchased and none other than my neighbourhood mainstream grocer, much to my shock and surprise (see last post for more on this). I decided to make fiddlehead soup with a few local ingredients I have kicking around the kitchen. Here’s the recipe: Fiddlehead Soup 1/2 a large onion
There it sat, round, green with a hint of yellow and all the promise of a hot summer day: a fresh watermelon, AKA, the locavore’s conundrum (a tip-of-the-hat to Michael Pollan). It was a lovely Saturday in May, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, the red wing blackbirds were trilling in the park. Summer was in the air.
After posting about how we should embrace the red currant, I went downstairs and made some red currant mousse. It turned out to be quite pink and quite good–a very unusual taste of tartness and tang, sweet and perfumy. Here’s what I did: I cooked the red currants with some sugar for about 15 minutes.
It wasn’t long ago it seems that rhubarb was considered to be not much more than a weed. Certainly not worth the buck-and-a-bit-more it’s selling for at my local health food emporium. And never, ever, would it have been called organic. At least that’s how I remember it. Rhubard was something my grandmother grew in
The news just came in that the Ontario Municipal Board turned down SmartCentres’ application for a 700,000 square food complex in the industrial lands between Eastern and Lakeshore Blvd. This is fantastic news. Instead of acres of retail (it was likely to be Walmart) and a desert of parking, why not clean up the soil