Category: Eating and thinking and thinking about eating

Photos of the day: Red hot chili peppers!

If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you know that Chef Michael Smith is my food bae. I credit him for pretty much single-handedly empowering me to cook, something I’ve grown to love doing over the past few years. This year for Christmas, though, after watching the Netflix series together, Beloved gave me Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat, and it is hands down the BEST cookbook I’ve ever read. It has 200 pages of food science, art and magic, woven together with humour and great stories, and then 150 pages of recipes based on the principles in the beginning of the book.

I couldn’t wait to take the recipes out for a test drive! The first one that made my mouth water was Pork Braised with Chilies. One of the ingredients was eight dried chilies. I’d never purchased dried chilies before, but was sure I’d seen then somewhere in my travels.

My first stop was the produce section of the grocery store. Don’t they keep them beside the sun-dried tomatoes in the little pouches? Nope. Mexican foods? Nada. Spices? Ethnic foods? Nope.

Thwarted, I rescheduled the menu and tried Farm Boy the next day. Farm Boy rarely disappoints, but the first person I asked for dried chilies took me to the ground spices section and the next two just shrugged apologetically. I grabbed a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce and figured I’d make due with that. We were on our way home from the Barrhaven Farm Boy when we passed the street we used to live on, and the little shopping plaza with — the Indian food shop! I bet they have dried chilies.

Hoo boy, did they ever! To my delight, I got what seemed like a lifetime supply of dried peppers for the astonishing price of $2.50. (We lived for years on the same street as Nasa Food Centre, a South Asian grocery store, but never went in. Tristan said the smell was an assault to all his senses, but it left me drooling and promising to go back!)

They were so beautiful that I had to dump the bag onto the counter and have an improptu photo shoot before I started putting some in the pot.

There were so many of them!

Do you love spicy food? ME TOO!

So, two questions. First, seriously, how do you spell the plural of chili? Is it chiles, like on Samin Nosrat’s site, or chilies? Spell check favours the latter, but also throws an error on the u in favour, so it’s not exactly reliable to me. And second — what the holy heck am I going to do with all those peppers? I used six of what must be a hundred! Ideas?

Oh yeah, and the pork braise is smelling amazing, too. If it tastes half as good as it smells, Samin may be my new kitchen BFF. I’ll keep you posted!

Our favourite shepherd’s pie recipe

I found a great Shepherd’s pie recipe a couple of years ago, and it became one of my Dad’s favourites – so much so that I stopped making it for about a year after he died, just because it reminded me a little too much of him. Last year, I tried out a couple of vegetarian and vegan versions (this Minimalist Baker vegan one is especially good) and to my delight, the kids actually liked the lentils in lieu of meat. So then I had an “aha” moment and pulled them together – half the lamb (because ouch, lamb is expensive) and all the lentil and potato goodness. Here’s how we do it. This will serve 5 – 6 comfortably, and I make it in our 5Q dutch oven.

1 cup green lentils, rinsed
2 cups water
1 – 2 bay leaves
Generous pinch of kosher salt
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
300g ground lamb
1 cup low sodium broth
1 156 ml (5.5 oz) can of tomato paste
1 teaspoon chopped fresh or dry rosemary
1 cup frozen peas
4 russet potatoes, (peeling optional – I don’t) and cut into small chunks
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/4 cup sour cream

90 minutes before dinner is served, add rinsed lentils, bay leaves and water to a small saucepan. This article gives good tips on how to cook lentils. Bring to a rolling boil and then turn down to a simmer. After approximately 10 minutes, add salt and continue simmering another 10 or 15 minutes, for a total of 20 to 25 minutes. The lentils should be underdone and still slightly tough. Drain any excess water.

Preheat oven to 375F.

Heat up a dutch oven on medium-high. Add canola oil and heat until it shimmers. Add onion, carrots and lamb, breaking up lamb with the back of a spoon as it browns. Cook 7 to 10 minutes, until meat is no longer pink. Carefully drain the fat and return dutch oven to stovetop. Add the broth, tomato paste, and herbs. Simmer until the juices thicken, about 10 minutes, then add the frozen peas and the lentils. Stir until combined

Meanwhile, add potatoes and enough water to cover them to a large pot, toss in another generous pinch (or handful) of kosher salt, and bring to a boil. Boil until fork tender, approximately 15 to 20 minutes. Drain, add butter and sour cream and mash. Scoop the potatoes onto the meat and lentil mixture in the dutch oven and use a fork to even out the top and make cross-hatching marks for browning.

Bake, uncovered, for approximately 30 minutes. If you can get the peaks of the cross-hatched potatoes to brown just a bit, you win!

Served here with steamed green beans tossed with lemon, butter and salt, and pickles. Yum!

By the way, you can sub out the ground lamb for any ground meat, but technically then it’s cottage pie instead of shepherd’s pie. I always thought those shepherds were doing a questionable job, turning their wee lambs into pie, but it IS delicious, so there’s that.

🙂

The one with the veggie dog fail

We’re trying to eat more thoughtfully these days. I still like Michael Pollan’s advice: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” My brother has been trying to follow a mostly vegan diet for a while now, and while I don’t think I want to give up meat entirely, and I know for a fact I don’t want to give up dairy and eggs, it has made me think about including more meat alternatives in our weekly meal plans.

It has not gone unnoticed. A week or so ago, one of the boys walked into the kitchen and eyed a few pots and pans full of a new recipe I was trying out. “Is there any meat in this meal?” he asked with not-so thinly veiled suspicion, and a very slight linguistic thump on the word meat. One week I had so many misses in a row that I stopped on the way home from work one day to pick up hot dogs and Doritos for dinner by way of apology and to mollify the masses before they started a revolution against the cook.

And then, I crossed a line. I admit in hindsight that it was a mistake, but give myself high marks for optimism. I thought I could pass off veggie dogs for “real” hot dogs. Spoiler alert: epic fail. Epic. But more about that in a minute.

It actually took me a bit to find veggie dogs. I don’t know where they hide them in my regular grocery store, and I had to ask for help finding them in Farm Boy. (If you don’t learn your lesson in my cautionary tale, you’ll find them in the dairy aisle.) So I pick up a pack and I know the name brand is one that I’ve seen folks speak poorly of, but there’s only one brand available and I figure I’ll give it a whirl. I take a look at the ingredient list and I’m troubled. First, it’s about 50 ingredients long. Second, I can identify very few of them as actual food. So now I’m conflicted. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” But you never know if you don’t try, right?

The minute I tear open the package, I know I’m doomed. There is no. way. these are going to masquerade as regular hot dogs. The texture is… wrong. The edges where they pressed together in the package are too hard and the corners too sharp. Hot dogs should not have sharp corners. But the grill is preheated and everything else is ready to go, so I forge ahead.

The situation does not improve. They don’t behave like hot dogs on the grill. I’ve had turkey, chicken, beef and pork variations of hot dogs on the grill, and these don’t cook like any of them. They don’t FEEL like any of them.

Not Dogs - veggie hot dogs

So I figure maybe if I char them real good, it will hide the “not dog”-ness of them. And then, to my dismay, they don’t really char evenly so much as develop carbuncles.

Not dogs indeed.

Not dogs - close up

Well, I’m in too deep to quit now, so I serve them up. I’ve let Beloved in on the secret, but casually deflect the boys’ questions about the provenance of the not-dogs. “Is this a new kind of hot dog, Mom?” and I nod, traitorously ambiguous.

And then I take a bite of one and it’s – wrong. So wrong. I mean, I am not a hot dog or sausage purist by any stretch of the imagination, but I know for a fact I should not have to work that hard to get through the skin of the wiener and the texture is… wrong. A level of wrong even I cannot overlook. And they’re utterly flavourless. The boys have been taught not to be overly critical, and if they don’t like something, their feedback should be along the lines of “this isn’t really to my taste” as opposed to “ewww, gross!” I would have forgiven them if they transgressed, but their comments are carefully equivocal: “I find the texture a little offputting” and “are you sure these are hot dogs?”

The asparagus I’ve grilled to go with the not-dogs disappears quickly. Buns are picked off and eaten. Nobody reaches for a second helping. When I confess later, the boys are outraged in a hilarious and understandable sort of way. This experience has become a bit of family lore that I suspect will stay with us.

And so we learned. Yves brand, at least, is “not to our taste”. I’d be willing to try again (shhhh, don’t tell the boys!) if you have a favourite brand of veggie dogs or sausages that mimic at least a little bit more closely the experience of an actual hot dog or sausage. And, ideally, have more actual food bits in the much shorter ingredient list.

I’ll have to bide my time, though. That’s okay, I can be patient and ply them with real hot dogs until their sense of trust is re-established. I’m in for the long haul.

A few thoughts on maximizing nutrition in holiday food drive donations

I was standing in the cereal aisle at Loblaws, having a conversation with their in-house dietitian about making thoughtful, nutritious donations to local food banks during the holidays. We were comparing the sugar and fibre content of various cereals, when she looked at a box that was higher in sugar and lower in fibre than the thresholds she’d recommended and said, “If it’s a choice between a child eating a bowl of this or going to school with an empty stomach, this is still by far the better choice.”

My own stomach clenched at the very idea of one of my boys – of any child — spending the whole day at school with an empty stomach simply because there was no food in the cupboard to feed them. I felt tears prick my eyes and very nearly swept the whole shelf into a donation bin. How is it that we have so much and that there are families in our community who don’t have enough food to get them through the day?

Did you know that for more than 850,000 Canadians, one-third of whom are children, the holiday menu will be determined by what’s available in the local food bank? If you’re a long-time reader, you know that for the last few years I have been on a nutritional learning curve of my own, learning to cook from scratch and make smarter food choices for myself and my family. I have to admit, though, that I never put much thought specifically into the nutritional content of the food we donate to the canned food drive or the various food hampers put together in our communities. I was intrigued when Loblaw reached out to me to collaborate on a blog post about the importance of choosing nutritious foods and ingredients to donate to local food drives instead of just emptying the cupboards of whatever your family hasn’t eaten. Loblaw grocery stores have been active in promoting and supporting local food drives this holiday season, and have set a goal to raise $1.8 million and 1.3 million pounds of food for Canadians.

Look for the donation bin at Lobaw food stores near you
Look for the donation bin at Loblaw grocery stores near you

To be honest, I didn’t even know Loblaws offered an in-store Registered Dietitian program before they reached out through this promotion. You can get personalized advice, attend a group session or register for a class in many Loblaws stores across Canada. I went to the Robertson Road Loblaws to speak with Chantal, a dietitian who covers several local stores. We did a little store tour and she gave me insight on making smarter donations to local food drives. Although every donation is welcome, here are some ways to make donations that are healthier and more nutritious:

  • Choose canned protein sources that are packed in water instead of oil
  • Pick low-sodium or no-salt-added food products
  • Consider donating ingredients instead of processed food products (e.g. flour, sugar, spices, nuts and seeds, oils, etc.)
  • For added fibre, donate brown rice instead of white rice
  • Choose whole-grain food products like cereals, crackers and pasta instead of ones made with white flour
  • Granola bars and cereals should contain less than eight grams of sugar and more than five grams of fibre

(Bonus: not only are these good tips for making healthier food drive donations, they’re good rules of thumb to follow for your own family’s nutrition, too! I learned other great tips from her as well. Did you know that longer-grain rice has a lower glycemic index, meaning that it is digested more slowly and makes you feel full longer? And that while green lentils tend to hold their shape when you cook them, red lentils turn mushy and virtually disappear, so they’re a good way to hide a little extra fibre in your soups?)

I’m a big fan of peanut butter donations. Whenever peanut butter goes on sale, I pick up a few for us and a few extra and drop them in the donation bin. One thing I hadn’t really thought of is that the food banks also serve people with special dietary needs like diabetes, gluten sensitivities and high blood pressure, so donating products specifically for people with dietary restrictions is a great choice. Meal supplements for seniors (like Ensure) are welcome donations. Donating dried beans and legumes or shelf-stable nut milks could be beneficial for vegans and vegetarians. And anything for babies (diapers, wipes, formula, iron-fortified cereals and other baby foods) would help young families in need.

Some great food drive items, as recommended by a dietician
Some great food drive items, as recommended by a dietitian

Chantal was full of terrific suggestions for smart food donations beyond peanut butter and processed box foods. She gave me a list of a dozen most-needed food items:

  1. baby food and formula
  2. no-salt-added canned fish and meat (e.g. salmon, tuna and chicken)
  3. no-salt-added canned vegetables
  4. no-sugar-added canned fruit
  5. whole-grain cereals
  6. whole wheat pasta
  7. low-sodium pasta sauce
  8. legumes (both canned – watch for no-salt-added – and dried beans, lentils and chick peas)
  9. peanut butter
  10. rice and whole grain products
  11. snack foods such as granola bars (watch for less than 8g of sugar and more than 4g of fibre), apple sauce, unsalted nuts and seeds, and dried fruit
  12. soup broth

Loblaws also has a “guiding stars” program, where foods with more stars point you toward nutritious foods that contain vitamins, minerals, fibre, omega-3 and whole grains versus saturated fat, trans fat, added sodium and added sugar. The more nutritional value a food has, the more stars it receives, so you can look for the two- and three-star foods to help you make nutrition-conscientious food drive donations.

While food donations are always welcome, many food banks such as the Ottawa Food Bank are able to make cash donations stretch much further by buying in bulk. Cash donations also allow food banks to invest in perishable items like fresh fruit and vegetables.

Each year, my teenagers’ school hosts a canned food drive where they collect tonnes of food for donation to smaller food banks such as the Shepherds of Good Hope. I’ll be more conscientious next year when making my donations, and resist the urge to simply reach into the back of the cupboard for the food we haven’t gotten around to eating. In fact, Loblaws has provided compensation for this blog post, and I want to use part of that to take the boys on a dedicated trip to do some shopping specifically for our local food bank via the bin at the Loblaws here in Manotick. I have some great ideas on which foods I want to pick up! I can talk to the boys about the importance of giving AND squeeze in a lesson about healthy food choices, too. That’s a win-win!

Disclosure: I was compensated for my time in researching and writing this blog post. However, as always, all opinions are my own.

A taste of summer all year long: Baked s’mores dip recipe

I didn’t learn about s’mores until I was an adult. We weren’t a camping family, though toasting marshmallows was an occasional but revered treat growing up. How I survived into adulthood without the melty, sticky joy of toasted marshmallows and chocolate smushed between graham crackers in my life is a mystery.

I saw a variation of this fire-pit free oven-baked s’mores recipe online, and adapted it to what we had on hand one day when I was looking for a quick treat for the kids. Yes, of course it was for the kids. Lucas loved it so much we had s’mores instead of birthday cake for him one year. I think it might even be easier than the authentic version!

oven-bakeds'mores dip

You’ll need a bag of marshmallows (we use the big ones, but not the giant ones), a bag of chocolate chips (we used milk chocolate, for the classic s’mores flavour, approximate bag size 270 grams) and a box of graham crackers. This recipe is ridiculously forgiving – use skor chips, rainbow marshmallows and bacon dippers if that floats your boat!

You’ll also need a baking dish. The original recipe I saw used a cast iron pan, but my version pre-dates my cast iron pan ownership, and now that I do own one, I’m not sure I’d want marshmallow glue glommed all over it. I use a pyrex pie plate, but just about any baking dish approximately 8 to 9 inches across would do the trick.

Preheat your oven to 400F and move your rack up to one of the higher levels.

Sprinkle half the bag of the chocolate chips into the bottom of your baking dish, distributing them more or less evenly across the bottom of the dish. Add a few more, and maybe eat a couple when the kids aren’t looking.

S'mores oven baked dip

Now place the marshmallows on top, flat side down, touching each other. It took about half a bag to fill the pan.

Place the dish in the oven and WATCH IT CAREFULLY. It will only take a few minutes for the marshmallows to start to puff up and toast on top.

Marshmallow dip in the oven

You want to hit the sweet spot (pardon the pun) where the marshmallows are toasty on top, gooey in the middle, and the chocolate chips are melted. Five, maybe ten minutes, but seriously, don’t take your eyes off them or the whole thing will burn. Ask me now I know!

Take it out of the oven and serve immediately. Serve with graham crackers for scooping and dipping. We were so keen to eat ours that I entirely forgot to photograph this important step.

My kids each have a different approach on how to eat this. One dips his crackers like chips in dip, but another scoops and uses a second graham cracker to make a more classic squashed and sticky s’mores experience. Make sure you scoop deeply enough to get some chocolate with each bite!

CAUTION: the dish is very hot. You may want to scoop some out on to a separate plate for really little fingers.

2017-08-12 18.25.47

This is the simplest dessert I know, and one of the boys’ favourites! Let me know if you try it. It’s a great way to have the summery flavour of s’mores all year long!

The one with the banana bread

It’s a weeknight and Beloved is working late, which almost never happens. I’m in charge of making school lunches, which happens as seldom as I’m able to get away with, and I realize that we have no home-baked snacks. Beloved, who is usually in charge of lunches, has taken to heart my preference that we reduce our processed food consumption as much as possible, and pretty much every day, the boys have some sort of home-baked snack in their lunches.

Except, Beloved is away and we are out of cookies. This is a confluence of events I could not have foreseen in my wildest nightmares, let alone foreseeing it in the Bearpaw aisle when I did the groceries earlier this week. This is my comeuppance for being the uppity family that doesn’t rely on Oreos and Pirate cookies anymore. We don’t buy that kind of snack food BUT WE’RE OUT OF COOKIES on my lunch duty day.

As I’m poking through the cupboards thinking of sending them with crunchy lentil surprise (SURPRISE!), I come across three audaciously freckled bananas. Just this past weekend, I threw away the 352 frozen freckled bananas that we have been keeping stashed in the freezer in case the banana bread fairy were to drop by and find herself impelled to bake a loaf or seventy. Huh, I think. I could make banana bread.

So you might have noticed earlier that I made reference to Beloved doing the baking. I don’t bake. I will admit that over the last five years or so, I’ve turned into a confident, creative cook of the sort I did not even know existed within me five years ago. But baking, with its reliance on measuring and recipes and exactitude paying attention, has always eluded me. Beloved is a much better baker than I am. But it’s banana bread. How hard could it be? *insert ominous music here*

I find a decent recipe on Canadian Living, and run a comparison of the ingredient list to what we have in the pantry and we have a match. (Seriously, when did I become a person with a pantry sufficiently stocked that I can bake on a whim? Probably around the same time I became a person who bakes on a whim? Perhaps you might keep a watchful eye for other signs of the pending apocalypse.)

I’ve got the dry ingredients done when we develop a banana issue. Apparently three bananas fall far short of the required two cups. I look longingly at the now-empty banana hook, but additional ripe bananas fail to materialize. I figure the bananas are probably only adding flavour anyway, and I am not fond of an overly obnoxious banana taste, so I carry on with about 2/3 of the prescribed banana. In mixing the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, the additional purpose of the bananas becomes clear: my batter has the consistency of, um, not batter. Something drier than batter, more like the houseplant that you forgot behind the shutter for a year. I cast one more longing glance at the empty banana hook, and then start rooting through the fridge thinking of banana alternatives. More eggs or milk will mess with the structure too much. What else do we have?

Cream cheese? Great for mashed potatoes, not so much for banana bread. Spicy adobe peppers? I’d actually eat that, but the kids’ mouths would burst into flames. I’m reaching for the sour cream and have to move the apple sauce out of the way when I realize – APPLE SAUCE! Substituting one mashed-up fruit for another seems like a decently plausible idea, and it vastly improves the texture of the batter.

It sure LOOKS like banana bread.

IMG_2477

Beloved will be so surprised when he gets home from his meeting and he finds my first ever loaf of chocolate-chip banana bread a sink load of every dirty dish in the kitchen waiting for him!

Potato bacon leek soup: My first from-scratch recipe

We ended up with leeks in our CSA share last autumn. This is not a food I’d ordinarily eat, and I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with them. Beloved has long had an affection for potato leek soup, and we conveniently also had potatoes in our share, so I surfed around the internet to get some ideas. I pulled together some inspiration and what I have learned over the last couple of years from Chef Michael Smith, and created my own recipe: potato bacon leek soup.

Potato bacon leek soup (7 of 7)

It’s deliciously easy! This is what you need:

Potato bacon leek soup (1 of 7)

White potatoes (probably any kind of russet or non-baking potato would do), four or five medium ones
One leek, tip cut off and half and half green and white
Stock or broth, about two cups. You can also substitute white wine, or even water, or any combination of the above.
Four or five strips of bacon

Potato bacon leek soup (6 of 7)

And I forgot to add these to the first ingredient photo – they come later!
One or so cups of cream
One or more cups of frozen peas
Salt and pepper

Start with the bacon: cut it into chunks and fry it up in a heavy soup pot. (I heart my dutch oven!)

Potato bacon leek soup (3 of 7)

While the bacon is frying, chop the potatoes into chunks (leave the skin on) and slice the leek lengthwise to rinse between the layers. I read online you are supposed to do this, so I do. Not sure how necessary it is, but I don’t like sand in my soup. Slice the halved, rinsed leeks into 1 cm pieces.

Use a slotted spoon or tongs to remove the crisped bacon and set aside. Pour off some, or most, or none, of the fat. (Save it for frying up perogies later in the week!)

Potato bacon leek soup (2 of 7)

Toss the leeks into the rendered bacon fat and fry for just a few minutes, until they start to soften.

Potato bacon leek soup (4 of 7)

Toss the potatoes on top, stir to coat with the bacon fat and fry a bit longer. Add salt and pepper liberally.

Potato bacon leek soup (5 of 7)

Add liquid (stock, water, wine, whatever you have on hand) to just cover the works, sprinkle about 1/3 of the cooked bacon back in and bring the works to a steady boil. Simmer long enough for the potatoes to become very soft, at least 20 – 30 minutes. (Pro tip: if you’re late getting started, cut your potatoes into smaller chunks. They soften faster!)

I use an immersion blender to blend the soup, but I’m sure you could carefully do it in a blender or even food processor, or with a very vigourous potato masher, if you don’t mind a chunkier soup. Once it is blended to your taste (we like it thick), pour in the cream and stir well. Give it another few minutes on the heat to warm it back up and season again to taste if necessary. When you are ready to serve, pour in the frozen peas. They’ll instantly thaw AND bring your piping hot soup down to a perfectly slurpable temperature.

Scoop into serving bowls and sprinkle the reserved bacon on top.

Potato bacon leek soup (7 of 7)

This is the only soup that my kids actively love – most soups and stews are just tolerated. It is ridiculously easy to make, reasonably nutritious and stores well in the fridge for terrific next-day lunches. This may be a soup that we keep eating all year ’round!

Ketchup wars

I have been following with interest the story of French’s versus Heinz ketchup. If you’ve missed it, the story so far goes something like this.

Screen Shot 2016-03-15 at 8.26.25 AM

Last year, worlds collided in the condiment aisle when Heinz introduced mustard not too long after French’s introduced ketchup. There was a lot more going on behind the scenes than just new product launches, though. If you grew up, as I did, in southern Ontario, you knew that Heinz ketchup was made in Leamington, a small town just outside of Windsor. In 2014, Heinz stopped making ketchup at the Leamington plant, which meant that not only were those factory workers out of work but all the local farms who supplied tomatoes to the plant were devastated as well. This article says Heinz consumed more than HALF of Ontario’s processing tomato crop, and Leamington’s economy was so inextricably bound to Heinz that it was called “Tomato Town.” The Toronto Star reported in May 2014:

This much is certain: Leamington ketchup is done. No longer will 200 bottles of the red stuff roll off the Leamington line every minute. No longer will the plant, which really has played a muscular role in the growth of the global conglomerate, boast of 80 million bottles of ketchup made annually. No longer will Heinz ketchup sport the “Proudly Prepared in Canada” label, the one with the red maple leaf, a claim made since the first bottle of Leamington ketchup was stoppered in 1910.

As a result, that monster-sized rendering of a ketchup bottle on the Oak Street side of the factory, the one with the crowing banner “Home of Canada’s Finest Ketchup,” will have to go. As for the argument over whether the Canadian version is sweeter than the Heinz ketchup made in the U.S. of A. — well, that conversation is over.

Into that giant footprint stepped French’s in January of 2016. French’s started making tomato paste for ketchup at the Highbury Canco plant formerly occupied by Heinz, using local Canadian tomatoes. Then suddenly everyone was talking about French’s ketchup in a social media groundswell after one fellow’s impassioned Facebook post went viral last month. As more and more people shared Brian Fernandez’ post about how he loves French’s because its ketchup is free of preservatives, artificial flavours and high fructose corn syrup, French’s ketchup flew off the store shelves. Each time I visited the grocery store this month, I chuckled to myself seeing the nearly sold-out shelves of French’s ketchup.

It was an easy decision for me as a consumer. Canadian made? Yes please. Inputs produced by Canadian farmers? Yes please. Free from high fructose corn syrup and preservatives? Yes please. I have been a lifelong fan of Heinz ketchup, but it was clear to me which brand I’d be buying from now on.

And so my jaw literally dropped open when I read this morning that Loblaws has said it will no longer carry French’s ketchup.

Loblaws told CBC News it has sold French’s ketchup since 2014, but the particular brand of the condiment was not extremely popular.

“Demand for the product has been consistently low,” a company official wrote in an email. “As a result, we have decided to no longer offer it as part of our regular inventory.”

The article goes on to say that “French’s ketchup stock is still available in some Loblaws stores, but not all.” I can tell you this for sure: I shop at my local Your Independent Grocer with fierce loyalty, and I’ve been a Loblaws customer for decades, but I will go to whatever store I need to in order to stock up on French’s ketchup, and I will never buy another Heinz product.

I hope Loblaws realizes how utterly tone-deaf and ham-fisted their actions appear and retracts this decision. I’m not saying they should exclusively carry one brand or another, but to exclude a brand riding a wave of popular support because it is made locally, supports Canadian farmers AND is more healthy? What were they thinking? I think Beloved put it best: here in Canada, it should not be the President’s Choice, but the Prime Minister’s choice, and the people’s choice. We’ll be a French’s ketchup family from now on.

What do you think? Spring thaw means BBQ season here in Canada: will you be re-thinking what’s on YOUR burgers and dogs from now on?

Edited to add: Dang, I knew the blog was powerful, but I didn’t realize quite how powerful! *wink* The Toronto Star is reporting that Loblaws has relented!

“We’ve heard our Loblaws customers. We will re-stock French’s ketchup and hope that the enthusiasm we are seeing in the media and on social media translates into sales of the product,” said Kevin Groh, the company’s vice-president of corporate affairs and communication.

“We will work with French’s to make sure we are in-stock as soon as possible,” Groh said Tuesday.

Imma call that a victory. Thanks for listening Loblaws!

Disclaimer: This post is my personal opinion only, and does not in any way reflect the opinions of my employer.

In which I not only stalk Chef Michael Smith, but convince him to FaceTime with the boys

It’s been nearly two years since I first wrote about stalking my culinary hero, Chef Michael Smith. Since then we’ve been to his Flavour Shack in Souris several times, and for my birthday dinner last year we splurged on an incredible family dinner at his new FireWorks restaurant at the Inn at Bay Fortune. And yet, despite our best efforts to meet him in person, Chef Michael himself has managed to evade us.

Until Tuesday, that is! In a delightful and completely unexpected convergence of my day job, my love of photography and my celebrity crush, I had the amazing opportunity to take and tweet photos of Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAuley (how much do I love that my “boss” is from PEI?!) making soup with Chef Michael Smith at an industry reception hosted by the Canadian Produce Marketing Association. They’re the folks behind the #HalfYourPlate campaign.

I was more than a little anxious the day of the event. I alternated between worrying that I wouldn’t get a chance to meet Chef Michael and worrying that I would in fact get to meet him — but would babble like an idiot. There may be some precedence for the latter. I also worried about forgetting an important piece of gear at home; whether I’d be able to get a clean photo worthy of the subject matter; whether my equipment would fail; whether I could get it right in camera well enough to avoid the need for post-processing; whether there would be too many people in the room and where I should position myself for the best shot; which lens I should use; how I’d be able to get the photo from my camera to my phone to tweet the photo; whether I should use my flash on-camera, off-camera or not at all; whether I would get stuck in traffic on my way to the event and be late or miss it entirely; whether the egg salad I had for lunch would give me food poisoning and render me unable to attend; and, whether Beloved would ever forgive me for meeting Chef Michael without him.

By the time I actually got to the Chateau I was so frazzled that I was relieved to have simply made it to the site intact. I walked into the ballroom and nearly dropped my equipment – he was RIGHT THERE! Surprisingly, there were no heavenly beams shining on him, no chorus of foodies with harps and whisks around him. And after nearly hyperventilating, I was actually able to walk right up and talk to him and say hello, just like a normal human being. And then this happened:

Me and my bestie Chef Michael Smith

He was sweet enough to both indulge my request for a photo and to listen to me babble about our various trips to stalk him visit PEI, my love for the Island and how I credited him almost entirely for me learning to cook in my 40s. To my delight, he said that he took issue with me giving him credit, and that people have been figuring out how to cook food for generations. He said that all he did was give me the confidence to give myself permission to learn, which was a lovely way of framing it. He asked me about the boys and their ages, and told me about his three kids,and we chatted a bit about the Inn at Bay Fortune as well. By that point, I felt like I’d taken more than my share of his time and retreated to a corner of the ballroom to have a wee moment and get my wits about me while preparations for the reception went on around me. Luckily, I had more than an hour before I needed to take my one tweetable photo and my colleagues and I chatted amiably while we waited for the cooking demo with our Minister to begin.

To my immense relief, I was able to nail a couple of great shots and managed to get them out on the corporate Twitter account without incident.

Tweet

By the time the reception wrapped up, it had been a couple of hours of being in the room with Chef Michael and I really thought I’d shown tremendous restraint at not following him around like a puppy dog but kept a respectful and respectable demeanor – and distance. I was packing up my (largely unused) gear when I noticed him chatting with a few people nearby. I had an idea, shrugged it off as ridiculous and insane, and then decided to carpe my diem. When would I ever have an opportunity like this again?

I used my iPhone make a FaceTime connection to Beloved at home and told him to gather up the kids and stand by. Then I took a deep breath and I think I was already blushing when I approached Chef Michael, brandishing my iPhone. The emcee for the evening smiled and me and gestured at my phone, asking “Would you like me to take a picture?”

“Um, no,” I blushed, looking at Chef Michael. “I was wondering if I could trouble you to say hi to my boys?” and I held up the live FaceTime connection. I now know that Chef Michael is not only a passionate advocate for family cooking and a world class chef, but a genuinely lovely person, because he did not miss a beat and immediately leaned in to the screen to say hello to the boys.

“You know,” Chef Michael said to them, “your mom is pretty cool! Now EAT YOUR VEGETABLES!” He went on to say hi to everyone, and to smile and wave as everyone said hello back.

I couldn’t have asked for a better finish for a fun evening. Now not only have I met our culinary hero, but the whole family has as well. And it was one of those rare and delightful situations where someone you’ve been admiring for years turns out to be an even more lovely person than you’d imagined.

And also? Chef Michael told my kids that their mom is cool. I’ll be milking that one for YEARS!

🙂

The ultimate Canadian winter comfort food: Stew-tine

You know what food I love on a cold winter weekend? A hearty beef stew. You know what else I love? Thick, salty oven fries that are crispy on the outside and perfect on the inside. In a flash of brilliance, I pulled the two of them together into my new favourite winter-time dinner: stew-tine! (Stou-tine? Probably better than pou-stew, at least!)

Here’s my “recipe,” such as it is. You’ll need:

500g of stewing beef
1/4 cup flour
2 tbsp canola or vegetable oil
1 small cooking onion
several garlic cloves
1 cup red wine (optional)
2 cups stock
2 carrots
2 celery stalks
1 turnip
handful of mushrooms
1 cup frozen peas
3 – 4 large baking potatoes
2 tbsp olive oil
sea salt
ground pepper
2 bay leaves
1 tsp paprika (optional)
1 tbsp corn starch
1/4 cup very cold water

Over medium high heat, add canola/veg oil to a dutch oven or stew pot. While the pot and oil heat, cut the stewing beef into small pieces, maybe 2 cm cubes. Toss the the beef in the flour to coat liberally. Brown the beef in the oil. Make sure it browns very well on at least one side – it’s hard for me to be patient and not touch it while it browns!

While the beef is browning, dice the onions and garlic cloves. When the beef is well browned, add the onions and garlic and saute lightly. If the pan is dry, add a touch of the red wine or a bit more oil. Brown bits sticking to the bottom of the pan is good!

Chop the carrots, celery, turnip and mushrooms into pieces of similar size to the beef. When the onions are translucent, add the carrots, celery, turnip and mushrooms to the pot with the red wine and/or stock and add enough water to cover the works. Bring to a high boil and use a wooden or plastic spoon to scrape up the browned bits of flour off the bottom of the pot. Add the bay leaves, salt and pepper, reduce heat to a gentle simmer.

Ideally, simmer the stew for an hour or so before you start the fries. Pre-heat the oven to 450F. Wash the potatoes but don’t peel them, and cut them into thick slices. I cut them into quarters length and width-wise, then cut each quarter into slices about 1 cm thick. I like to have some skin on each piece. Soak the potato slices for a few minutes, up to 30 mins, in cold water. Drain and dry, and then toss the potato slices with olive oil, salt and optional paprika.

Line a baking sheet (we usually need two for four potato’s worth) with parchment paper and place the potato slices on the parchment paper. Bake for approx 25 mins, until they are toasty brown on the down side. Flip and bake another 10 to 15 mins to taste.

While the oven fries are finishing, if you want to thicken the stew gravy, turn the heat back up and bring the stew back to a boil. Mix the corn starch into the cold water and add gradually to the stew. Finally, just before you serve, add the frozen peas and stir.

Stew-tine

Place a serving of fries on each plate, and ladle the stew on top. If you’re not minding your carbs, serve with extra bread for sopping up the gravy!

The only thing I didn’t love about this was the texture of the gravy when I used corn starch as a thickener. Any recommendations to thicken a stew using options other than corn starch? The flour at the beginning certainly starts the job, but I think when you serve it as stew-tine, you want that extra thickness!

Mad props to Chef Michael Smith for the basics of the oven fries, from his Family Meals cookbook, and for teaching me the basics so I’m now comfortable freestyling in the kitchen!

My dirty little secret is that I love this with ketchup. There is something sublime about really good fries and gravy with ketchup, and having the beef and veg along for the ride justifies it as more than just a sometimes treat!