Save Your Fork… There’s Pie

Sometimes it pays to be critical. Many bloggers and writers work on the Thumper policy - if you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything at all. But twice in the past few months, I’ve been offered opportunities to do something based on a snarky or critical comment I’ve made on TasteTO. The first was an offer to appear on a live call-in talk show on a local cable station (which I didn’t actually do) because of my “City of Toronto, What the Fuck?” rant about street cart vending, and the second was an invitation that showed up in my email box to take part in Dinner in the Sky, after I had referred to it as “some crazy-ass French scheme to feed people dinner while they’re hoisted 50 metres in the air”. The original company is Belgian, actually, but the folks running the Toronto arm are from Montreal.

And since I’m never one to turn down a challenge, I agreed to do it, dragging Greg along for support.

I predicted that Dinner in the Sky would be like an amusement park ride with snacks and I wasn’t far off the mark. Upon arriving at Yonge-Dundas Square and signing three pages of waivers (none of which were of the “I will not sue if I fall off” variety, but all disclaimers allowing use of video and photographic images if I chose to take part) I was directed to a swank lounge area to wait for my “table” to be ready.

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This is a completely gratuitous post, the purpose of which is to make readers crave cupcakes with strawberry buttercream. I think this officially qualifies as sexy. And yes, with real berries added to the icing, it tastes even better than it looks.

Who says strawberry shortcake can’t be for breakfast?

With berry season upon us, I’ve been shoving juicy Ontario strawberries into my face whenever I can get them, and while I like the idea of shortcake, I’ve never come across a recipe that I really enjoy, finding many that I’ve tried too dry. And those odd yellow spongy things from the supermarket and just odd… and yellow.

Enter the oatmeal scone. Perfect consistency to replace a shortcake, plus you know, oatmeal, so we can pretend it’s healthy. Top it off with sliced berries and vanilla yogurt instead of whipped cream, and suddenly it’s breakfast!

Scottish Oatmeal Scones

1-1/2 cups flour
2 cups rolled oats
1/4 cup granulated sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup melted butter
1/3 cup milk

Preheat oven to 425′F. Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Make a well in the centre.

In another bowl, beat egg until frothy. Mix in melted butter and milk. Pour into well and stir to make a soft dough. Pat into two 6 to 7 inch circles, and transfer to a greased baking sheet. Score each top into 8 pie-shaped wedges, then sprinkle lightly with sugar.

Bake for 15 minutes until risen and brown.

It could have been, truly, a clusterfuck, but the weather gods and organizing gods shined down on the One City One Table event today at the Distillery District. Part of the Luminato arts festival, this food fair took over a whole block with one long table down the centre, and local restaurants offering tastings and street food items for $5 a pop along one side.

While it was busy, it wasn’t stupid packed, and there was very little wait time at each booth to get the food. Most chefs had put some thought into their offerings so it was mostly hand-held stuff like sandwiches, tacos or things that didn’t need a fork and knife.

Enamoured of the food as I was, I completely missed getting a shot of the 500-seat table, although it was never all full at once as people kept getting up and moving around as they tried new things. I missed photographing a few things that we tried and really enjoyed like the baked perogies from Chef Nathan Isberg at Coca, and the braised hangar steak sandwich from Chef Ted Corrado at C5.

My only complaints - I’d have liked to have seen more vegetarian options, as there really weren’t many. And also, a plate of oysters on a sunny afternoon really deserves a beer to go with it. I’m sure getting a liquor license for such an event would have been a nightmare, but we actually sat and strategized at one point, trying to figure out if we could sneak a plate of oysters onto the patio at the Mill Street Brew Pub just so we could have beer with our bi-valves. Instead we just plunked down in front of the Starfish booth and enjoyed some Malpeques at a buck a shuck (photo above).

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It’s okay to eat chicken again. Or at least chicken from KFC. In Canada.

After years of protests and campaigns by animal rights groups PETA, KFC has bowed to pressure and has agreed to work only with suppliers that can ensure less crowding for the chickens it uses, as well as phasing out non-essential growth hormones and drugs. KFC will also source chicken only from suppliers who slaughter birds with gas, considered the most humane method of processing.

An added caveat will be that KFC will add vegan and vegetarian “unchicken” options to its menu, making the chain a consideration for a demographic of customers who might never have eaten there, and allowing those of us who love the magical 11 herbs and spices coating to get our fix without guilt.

Full story at the CBC website.

I grew up reading and re-reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder “Little House” series, but it wasn’t until years later that I realized that the pie plant she uses to make a pie for the field workers was actually rhubarb. (I think I imagined it to be eggplant, which we never ate as a kid.)

While we always had rhubarb in our house growing up, it usually got made into squares or stewed with sweet dumplings and after acquiring a pretty huge bunch a couple of weeks ago, I considered a pie. Turns out most of the rhubarb pie recipes I have are sour cream-based, which is odd to me. They’re probably good, but I dunno, something just doesn’t sound right. Greg always likes the strawberry rhubarb pie, although I am not a fan - I find it too mushy and wet.

Fate decided for me, as I was at the grocery store bagging apples and dropped a bag of half a dozen Empires. I felt too guilty putting them back and taking unbruised ones, so apple-rhubarb pie it was.

And it turned out great. I used about 2 cups of sliced apples and 2 cups diced rhubarb with a good amount of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger plus about a cup of sugar and some flour. We ate a couple of slices and put the rest in the freezer, along with a 4-cup container of diced rhubarb for a similar treat next winter.

Did you know that Canada grows some fine pineapples? Or that we have many thriving chocolate plantations? If you’re a grocery label reader, it might be easy to assume that all of those prepared products labelled “product of Canada” were grown here. But the current law is a little bit slippery.

A recent Reuters piece about changes to labelling laws indicates:

Current rules state that a label can say “Made in Canada” or “Product of Canada” if 51 percent of the production costs are Canadian and the last substantial transformation of the product took place in Canada.

So cocoa beans shipped to Canada to be made into chocolate bars here go to the stores with a “product of Canada” label, even though they came from somewhere else.

The Calgary Herald explains the changes:

The new standards require that any label claiming a food product is a “Product of Canada” necessarily needs to have all or virtually all of its contents be Canadian. That includes ingredients, the processing and the labour used to make the product; an exception has been made for some foreign content to be included in a Canadian product and labelled as such if minor additives or spices are not available in Canada.

This will make a huge difference for consumers, who have been mislead for years into believing that they were buying products that were grown and created in Canada, but will also be a boon for Canadian farmers and producers, who are forced to compete with imported items incorrectly labelled as being a product of this country. For example, apples grown in China that are shipped to Canada as concentrate can, under the current laws, be listed as a product of Canada, putting Canadian apple growers at a gross disadvantage.

As consumers become more aware of movements to eat locally-grown food, we put our trust in those “product of Canada” labels. We want local first, and then Canadian second. But much of what we were buying was made from imported items that were simply processed here, and we had no way of knowing if these products were grown according to Canadian health and safety guidelines. The new laws will make it clear to consumers just where their food is coming from.

To see just how confusing the current labelling system can be, CBC’s Marketplace ran a piece on “product of Canada” labelling last fall.

No word on exactly when the labelling changes will take place, but expect plenty of whining from the processed foods sector, both because of the disadvantage it will create for them on store shelves and also because of the cost of redesigning labels, which have to be done in both English and French.

My Mom and Dad have a massive rhubarb patch in their back yard. I think it might actually be one gigantic plant, in fact, but it keeps them well-stocked in rhubarb all summer long. This recipe gets made a lot in their house, to use up the rhubarb, but also because it’s really good. My Mom cuts these smaller, into squares (16 from an 8-inch pan), but I tend to think of this as more of a coffee cake, and given the small amount of fat in the recipe, don’t feel terribly guilty serving up larger pieces and thinking of it as cake.

I cook this at a slightly higher heat than the original recipe calls for, and I also tend to find the original a bit too sweet for me, so I’ve switched the topping to brown sugar from white, and cut the amount slightly.

Rhubarb Coffee Cake

Cake:
1/4 cup margarine
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup rhubarb, chopped
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla

Topping:
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup coconut

Cream together margarine and sugar, adding egg and vanilla and blending well. Combine dry ingredients and add to wet mixture interspersed with milk, blending well after each amount. Add rhubarb last and spread into an 8-inch square pan. Combine topping ingredients and sprinkle on top. Bake at 325’F for 45 - 50 minutes.

For some, it’s a dream come true, for others, it’s something they fall into and love, but lots of people end up running food-prep businesses that they start from home. Some of these are catering businesses, many more are baking businesses where folks use their love of pastry and mad skills to bake, decorate and sell cakes and pastries, doing what they love and making a little cash on the side.

I have family members, friends and know of a number of online (blogger) acquaintances who are all either running or starting a home-based food business.

Unfortunately, they’re all really, really illegal.

Home Business Advocate Beverly Williams explains about food-prep businesses on her site:

You must call the Department of Health in your area FIRST to find out if you are allowed to prepare food for sale in your home kitchen. The answer will be NO! I have never found a jurisdiction that allowed food for sale to be prepared in a home kitchen. Some areas do allow you to have a separate commercial kitchen for this purpose but the cost may be prohibitive. In some areas, you may be able to find a commercial kitchen that is not being used all day that might be willing to rent their kitchen to you. Most jurisdictions will require you to have your own business license as well.

Enterprise Toronto offers some details on what is required to operate a food-making business from home - essentially a completely separate kitchen from the one in which family meals are prepared. But these generally also have specific requirements regarding prep surfaces, storage areas and sinks. In the City of Toronto, we have a number of food-based business incubators and start-up organizations such as FoodShare that rent out industrial kitchen space for people looking to start food-based businesses but with no capital to rent a permanent space.

Also, as of 2006, all food service operations in Toronto must have one person on site with a Food Handler’s Certificate, based on a course focusing on safety and sanitation in the food prep workplace.

People looking to do more work than just the occasional cake for friends will also need to acquire a provincial business registration and should be charging and remitting the appropriate PST. Believe me, if you’re selling something that should have retail sales tax applied to it (ie. prepared foods such as cake) the provincial government will want their slice (pun intended). PST registration will also benefit small businesses by allowing you to buy supplies, both wholesale and retail, exempt from paying provincial sales tax. Registering for GST, even if your business doesn’t make the minimum $30,000 a year can also be useful as it allows small businesses to recoup GST paid out on equipment and supplies.

If you’re operating your food prep business from a separate kitchen at home, you also have to register the business with the city so it can be inspected on a regular basis for health and safety issues.

Now I know that lots of people do a little cooking and baking for friends and acquaintances in exchange for money, and generally the powers that be turn a blind eye to that kind of stuff, but for anyone looking to start a full-fledged business, where they’ll be creating food on a larger scale and especially where - through a web site, business cards, flyers or word of mouth promotion - knowledge of their business eventually reaches strangers, I would strongly advise all the friends, family and online acquaintances to cover their asses by making sure they’re doing everything legally.

Turning a hobby into a small business can be a delightfully fun thing, but not if you find yourself in court because you didn’t follow the letter of the law or someone got sick from your products.

Ladies and gentlemen, please take a moment to fashion yourself a lovely piece of millinery out of some kitchen foil. You’ll need it to ward off the gamma rays, because the guberment is out to get us all!!

The issue of Bill C-51 puts me in the unfortunate position of finding myself agreeing with the Conservative Federal government. But more than I despise conservatives, I detest people who get rich selling green powder and snake oil to unwitting chumps searching for a way to cure what ails them.

In most cases, big pharma has let them down, and yes, yes, yes, no doubt big pharma is in no small part responsible for pushing the government to pass this bill and force “natural health products” to the same standards used for pharmaceuticals. Undoubtedly, the bill will force some small companies out of business - but a lot of those companies will be shysters selling magic powder and a basket of hope to people who have already gone through enough.

The bill would change the wording of the “Food and Drug” act to “food and natural therapeutic products”, and would thus encompass all products that purported to offer health benefits of any kind. Any products claiming health benefits from consumption would be subject to the same level of testing that mainstream drugs undergo.

The natural products industry claims this isn’t fair, as their products are neither food nor drugs, but are “therapeutic products”. But it’s got to be one or the other, no? We eat food for its nutritional benefit, and we take medicine for its medicinal benefit. These products fall somewhere in between, and the government wants the same testing standards to apply.

What I personally don’t understand is - why is this a bad thing???

If your product actually does what you say it does, wouldn’t you want to be able to prove that it’s just as good, if not better, than regular pharmaceuticals? Do you really expect people to believe all those damned testimonials?

But it’s not about the products, see… it’s about the money that can be made from those products.

I knew a couple once, a decade or so ago, who turned to a holistic nutritionist when they were feeling unwell. The nutritionist diagnosed them with a plethora of allergies and was selling them over $300 worth of vitamins, supplement and herbs each month. When the wife of the couple discovered she was pregnant, the holistic nutritionist advised her against seeing an ob/gyn. Instead she sold her more pills and supplements and encouraged her to look at natural birthing solutions. The wife had had a couple of miscarriages before and was distrustful of mainstream medicine, but at the insistence of her family, she finally, with much protest, went for an ultrasound. There was no baby. She had undergone a false pregnancy.

When the couple contacted the nutritionist, they were shocked to discover she had left town - in a huge rush. A visit for both of them to a regular doctor revealed that they didn’t have any of the allergies the nutritionist had diagnosed in them. They had paid her thousands of dollars for nothing, and had allowed her to instill considerable false hope in them with regards to them finally being able to conceive. They were heartbroken.

Now obviously, not everyone in the natural health products industry is like this nutritionist. Many of them manufacture products that work, and genuinely have their patients/customers’ best interests at heart. But it seems only logical that the folks who really do believe in their products, and aren’t just in the industry to scam people, would be happy about having their products on a level playing field with mainstream medicine.

But those who manufacture snake oil, or nutritionists who foresee finding themselves out of work when they’re no longer making a commission off the pills and powders because those products are now available at the regular pharmacy are mighty scared. Once these products are tested and doctors become more knowledgeable in their use, there’s a whole segment of the natural health products industry who will find themselves in the unemployment line.

Maybe, just maybe, that’s their real area of concern.

Note - comments are screened. Tinfoil hat-wearing, government-paranoid, patchouli-scented hippies who feel the need to comment, be forewarned that I will not publish any comments that are either personal attacks, or that attempt to promote or sell your magic beans.