Guest Post-Food Nation

Food Nation

By Suzanne Taylor, erstwhile farm blogger, nosy foodie, and inept topical jokester.

It has to be said that some of my opinions on local eating are….controversial, and that I get a little ornery-assed when people don't get it, as my southern friend Susan likes to say.

I ran into my neighbours a few weeks ago at the farmer's market. They're nice people and very kind to my husband and me. But….they belong to a certain generation; they're kind of classic boomers who retired from well-paying unionized factory jobs, and always vote the same way. It's just a different point of view than mine, and I don't want to be rude. But with such a generation, I often find a particular mindset when it comes to food. 

The neighbour lady came over to say hi and inspect my purchases, of which I had many, and inquired about my variety of hot peppers, while I made ice cream recommendations to her. But then she said something that chapped my hide a bit. 

"Well, for 60 bucks spent here, I could have filled up three bags at Food Basics."

It isn't the first time I've heard this sort of remark. All I could reply was that I vastly preferred to eat the local fresh stuff over the imports, but my heart cringed inside. Because this belief, that the stuff at the grocery store, shipped from Guatemala and Mexico and China and wherever else, is somehow just as good as the amazing fresh stuff to be had across the region, is false and exasperates me to no end. 

I am sure if I lived in Mexico, California, Guatemala, Argentina, or any other agricultural community of that sort, I'd love living there and their produce.  I'm sure it's a delight to pull fresh oranges off a tree in Florida in the winter, pick pomegranates in California, and get fresh fruit off the carts in Baja. I know that the produce is good and that the locals enjoy it very much.

But this is the thing; for all the cheapness of the marked-down fruit and veg at the local Food Basics, I don't take any delight in waiting for that right moment for my avocados to ripen to use them for what I bought them for, which is always on a night when I don't have time to cook. I mostly gave up on bananas, since there is like a four hour window of time in which those mealy little fruits are at the correct ripeness to enjoy. Rock hard green mangoes break my heart. Variety in Canadian grocery stores has slowly improved over the years, but in the depths of winter, I still finger the imported produce and sniff haughtily. 

Here's the thing. A few weeks ago I dropped my husband off at work and drove back on Highway 8, as my husband had told me that there was a guy with squashes for sale on a cart on the side of the road in Beamsville, and told me to buy $20 worth. 

The cart was there, and it was one of those classic "throw your money in the bucket on the honour system" unattended produce stands that can still be found throughout the region, god bless the trusting farmer souls. There were about 10 varieties of squash, and I began loading up my car and toting up my purchases; getting a lovely mix of various Hubbards, Russian blue pumpkins, red Kuri, grey ghost, buttercup and sweet potato squashes. 

I now have a big storage bin in my basement full of about 15 different squashes that will last me through the winter. I threw my $20 in the bucket and drove on home, and thought about what my neighbour had said, and the next time I was in Food Basics checked out their squash section. Sure enough, there were anemic-looking butternut squash from Mexico that ran for 2.99 a pound, which is certainly far more than I paid at that stand in Beamsville when you do the math, if cost is your only motivator for grocery shopping. 

I am, truth be told, a wee bit tired of people just appending the words 'artisanal' and 'heirloom' and 'organic' to their offerings, be it farmer's market goods or restaurant dishes, and just using that as a way to mark up their grub without any meaningful commitment to sustainable local eating. Sometimes you can look at your plate when you eat at a farm-to-table style resto and see the care put into each dish, but sometimes it just feels mailed in, nothing more than an upmarket Jack Astor's.  

This is why I like the food trucks, hot debate topic that they are these days in Niagara, because they are bringing fresh innovation and adding fun to winery events in staid old tourist areas overrun with more traditional eateries, where the most imaginative menu item is something that has the word "Supreme" in the title. (A good rule of thumb is to never order that dish, I find). 

I think the only debate that is being had is at the hands of the sorta lazy restaurant owners in Niagara-on-the-lake who are used to marking up their dull and poorly made tourist grub and making easy cash through the summer months, and don't want anyone cutting into that, and that in actual truth people who like good food will happily support both the trucks as well as the good restaurants that put their heart into imaginative, fun cuisine. I mean, sorry you have to compete, guys, but that's the business. 

I realize my neighbours aren't going to come around to my way of thinking about food, anymore than the people I see at the grocery store with carts filled with margarine, factory-made bread and frozen dinners, whom I desperately want to clutch to my bosom and whisper that there is better, real food out there. For them, food is about a number on the bottom of a grocery bill, little more, and their idea of a fancy night out is probably The Keg, even though for the same amount of money much nicer local fare can be had. 

Fortunately there is a growing movement of people in Niagara who see food differently; who understand what food should be and is worth, who get why it's important to shop locally, and who turn such offerings into amazing dishes, be it at home or at a restaurant. You can feel the very heart and soul, the commitment, and the joy emanate from every dish, the creativity it inspires and the delight people take in it.

So, since I have all these squashes, it's time for me to put my locally spent money where my mouth is, and whip up a batch of pumpkin-sage polenta, thanks to the site http://kitchenconfidante.com/"> Kitchen Confidante.

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Pumpkin Sage Polenta

YIELD: Serves 4-6

PREP TIME: 5 minutes

COOK TIME: 20 minutes

TOTAL TIME: 25 minutes

A hint of pumpkin and the taste of sage brings the glow of autumn to a simple polenta. If pumpkin isn't your thing, any autumn squash would work nicely, or if you prefer, leave it out for a more straightforward polenta.

Ingredients:

3 cups water
1 cup polenta
3 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 cup pumpkin puree (can be canned if you don't have fresh)
1 teaspoon sage, chopped
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed

Directions:

In a medium saucepan, whisk together the water, polenta and salt. Bring to a boil over medium heat, whisking periodically. Lower the heat and let the polenta simmer, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Add the pumpkin and sage, and continue stirring for about 15-20 minutes, until the polenta begins to pull away from the sides of the saucepan. Stir in the parmesan cheese and butter. Serve immediately while hot and creamy, or if you prefer, place in a square dish to cool and serve in slices.

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See? A dish for us all, local eaters or not. 

But since you read this blog, fair readers, it's likely you feel the same as I do, and shop carefully like me to support your local farmer. I know I'm probably preaching to the choir here and that you are nodding along with my wee rant. All you can do to convince others is probably share your polenta and explain that the squash and sage came from that amazing veg farm back in Wellandport, and that the pumpkin was a lovely Amish Pie heirloom pumpkin, made with lovely purple sage? Or show them your CSA basket some week and explain what the vegetables are?

So, carry on, Food Nation. Support the food trucks and the farm to table restaurants. Eat local. Visit your farmers. Make eating more of an experience than just cost. It's up to the foodie generation to lead by example, and we're vastly less likely to be caught in an ugly drug scandal, despite today's news of http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/31/woman-caught-smuggling-drugs-inside-pumpkins-at-montreal-airport-rcmp/>pumpkin cocaine smuggling.

Vegetable Curry and Life on the Farm

The nights have been pretty cool lately and this morning, a first for the season, the duck's water had a bit of ice on it.
Tomorrow we'll take the pump off the pond before it freezes up and any watering that needs to be done in the hoophouses will be done with a watering can.
There's still so much in the garden, which I'm thankful for. The hoophouse crops are growing so slowly and I had to replant the arugula after some apparently poor seed wouldn't germinate. So it is the outdoor garden that keeps us going.
Up until yesterday, some plants were continuing to produce. Hot peppers, tomatillos, cape goose berries still figured it was summer, but today it was all over.
Alas, it's true. The cold weather has arrived and I've had to start the woodstove in earnest now, not briefly to take the chill off, but early in the afternoon before the sun goes down and the cool weather arrives. The hoophouse peppers, eggplants and tomatoes are still surviving with a layer of agricultural fabric. But they won't last too long now.

Joey prefers his meals in his home and has given up sun bathing, and my 3 dogs step lively when we walk in the morning. The chickens and ducks are still happy to scratch and slurp mud respectively but the cats stay indoors and catch a sun ray beaming through the windows.

Ellie

Bandit

Darwin 

The baskets were pretty heavy today, with the root crops dominating-peppers too!
It is kind of nice when I deliver the baskets now as the greens stand up, perky with the coolness...instead of the sad and wilted from the heat.
Here is the basket laid out:

Sorrel, kale, rosemary, celeriac, peppers, carrots, hot peppers, rosemary, jerusalem artichokes, onions, tomatillos, cape gooseberries 

I wanted to include the tomatillos so everyone could try Suzanne's recipe on the last blog post...check it out here

As for me, I'm in a curry mood. Warms the tummy and soul.

Vegetable Curry

2 Tbsp olive oil
medium onion, (or the onions in your basket)
2 cloves minced garlic
1 Tbsp grated ginger
3 cups chopped assorted veggies
3 tsp curry paste
1 14 oz can coconut milk
handful kale
salt to taste

Saute onion in olive oil for several minutes over medium heat, then add chopped garlic and saute for 1 more minute.
Add ginger,veggies, kale, then curry paste and coconut milk and cook until the veggies are tender and the liquid has reduced.
Easy...I add tofu at the beginning as well and it's a complete meal.

Scary Mollie-have a fun Hallowe'en!

Guest Post: I got the Salsa Verde Blues

by Suzanne Taylor

It's late October, and my tomatillo plants are still flowering and fruiting very well. I also got a gorgeous pile of the purple ones from Linda Crago last week in my basket. 

My tomatillo bucket runneth over as we head towards winter, and the gardening blogs assure me I can cut down the plants before frost and hang them upside down someplace and they will keep on ripening. 

It's a nice idea, but considering each plant is the size of a small child, it isn't very feasible to find house room for such an endeavour. Those things are beasts. And I must confess, I am getting salsa verde fatigue. 

Now, tomatillos are something I love, don't get me wrong. Before the dawn of foodieism in southern Ontario, where the most exotic thing you'd see at a grocery store was a jalapeno pepper or a coconut, you couldn't find these little paper-husked delights anywhere around these parts. 

Being a foodie explorer type, I constantly looked at Mexican food recipes that called for tomatillos and sighed. "Find them at your local ethnic grocery store!" the recipe advised. Yes, but in St. Catharines in 2004, that was nowhere to be found. I had similar problems with Thai food recipes; you should see the blank stares you get when you go into the A&P and ask for Kafir lime leaves or bird's eye chilis. 

Once I had a friend who visited Mexico bring me back some canned tomatillos. I was so excited and whipped up a green enchilada sauce right away. It wasn't bad, but it was soon over and I spent more time poring over Rick Bayless and wondering if I could find a Mexican grocery store someplace over the border and smuggle some back. 

Well, then I met Linda Crago in 2006 at the Fielding Winery tomato festival, and her vegetable baskets brimming with purple tomatillos, and positively annoyed her with all kinds of questions about them. Did she always grow them? How many did she grow? Could I buy some? Could I buy a lot? Where was Wellandport, anyway? (I still don't think I know the answer to that). 

So, tomatillo bliss ensued. Every season since, we have made vats of what my husband calls his 'bastard sauce', using all of Linda's hot peppers too, and it is delightful, even if it makes police officers cry. 

Even when we lived up north, in the land where tomatoes don't really grow, I found a guy growing tomatillos and bought out his stash, since nobody else knew what they were. I am quite sure he thought I was clinically insane, but I am used to that. 

But, I gotta be honest too; tomatillos are kind of a one-trick pony, recipe-wise. Everything is a variation of green sauce or salsa. Linda has mentioned people eating them raw recently, but I just don't think that's my thing. 

Still, I was determined to find something that wasn't sauce to use them in. But, stick 'tomatillo recipes' into ye olde Googles, and you just get endless variations on sauce. It's good with pork or chicken, on tacos, etc. But that's all Google was telling me. I realize it is a seedy little husk cherry type veg, and that when it gets cooked it reduces down to sauce naturally, but surely there has to be something else to do with them. 

So, I asked my favourite cooking blog, The Kitchn (www.thekitchn.com) in their Good Questions section, and didn't really get the answer I was looking for. Lots of variations on the same; add them to chilis and stews, etc. There were more exotic things like tomatillo dal and curry offered too, which are intriguing but weren't grabbing me the way I wanted.  

I wanted a star recipe for the tomatillo that didn't involve cooking it down into some sort of mushy sauce thing. I wanted it to have another dimension. I wanted it to stand out as the main ingredient. 

And this morning, after reading the just-okay suggestions to my question, I had a brainwave; if you can fry green tomatoes with batter, why not tomatillos? I mean, we all saw the movie Fried Green Tomatoes back in the early 1990s, right? How could I have forgotten? After that came out, it seemed like every specialty shop with 'gourmet' food sections offered fried green tomato batter as a novelty gift item to rot in the back of your pantry, which was silly as it's just breadcrumbs and seasoning at heart. 

But, could the tomatillo stand in place of the green tomato?

Tomatillo-loving friends everywhere, I was right. This IS a thing, and I found the recipe to prove it, thanks to Country Living magazine. Bring it onnnnn!

Fried Tomatillos with Creamy Cumin Dip

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup(s) sour cream
• 1/3 cup(s) mayonnaise
• 1 tablespoon(s) hot sauce
• 1 1/4 teaspoon(s) ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon(s) fresh lime juice
• 1/4 teaspoon(s) ground coriander
• 8 large tomatillos, husked and rinsed
• 3 large eggs
• 2 cup(s) breadcrumbs
• 1 cup(s) flour
• 2 teaspoon(s) salt
• 1 cup(s) canola oil

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, combine sour cream, mayonnaise, hot sauce, 1/4 teaspoon cumin, lime juice, and coriander. Refrigerate dip until ready to serve.
2. Cut tomatillos into 1/4-inch-thick slices and set aside. In a shallow small bowl, beat eggs. In a shallow medium bowl, combine breadcrumbs, flour, salt, and remaining cumin.
3. In a skillet over medium-high heat, heat canola oil. Working in batches, dip tomatillo slices in egg, then in breading; shake off excess. Repeat. Fry the slices until deep golden brown, 2 to 4 minutes per side. Drain on a paper-towel-lined plate. Serve immediately with reserved creamy cumin dip.

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Now, this is the kind of thing I was looking for. I needed to get inspired by these little bundles that drew bees to my garden in droves all summer. I mean, these plants are huge tree-like things that spring from a tiny little plant in a very short period of time, and produce an astonishing amount of fruit. Even for a crazy Mexican food lover like me, that's a lot of green salsa. 

But it's one thing to find a recipe, it's another to make it fly. So I decided to whip up a batch of these. I had everything to make it, and there is no time like the tomatillo-laden present to try it. 

Well, I am here to tell you that fried tomatillos and dip are quite a remarkable treat. They keep their crispness nicely with a quick batter and fry, and dipped in the sauce, made with my husband's month-long fermented Louisiana style hot pepper sauce, was a delightful lemony-spicy treat. I ate the entire plate and texted my husband a photo with a caption of "WHO IS YOUR MOMMA?"

I am his momma. His tomatillo-frying momma. This recipe will become a household staple, because I am pretty sure we're going to bring one of those giant plants inside and have them ripening until January, simply because we're kind of food-crazy like that. 

So, stop by my house some night. I'll fry you a few. It'll taste like summer in Baja, where my friend lives, even if the snow is piled high by then and the garden long frozen over. 

The Fall Garden and Mustard Greens with Dill, Lemon and Soy Sauce

Oops.
I'm not sure how many people actually look for a weekly post here from me, but I consider my blurbs here a regular part of my CSA work duties.
Yesterday I fell short however. Maybe it's the colder weather, darker skies or the cuddliness qualities of  my dogs and cats. All these factors made me lazy last night after a very busy and long harvest day.
So cuddling on the couch with my best friends and a good book was just a wee bit too enticing.
So here I am now this morning. It's early...Mollie is still sleeping before her day begins, and I am sitting beside my woodstove with a few of my kitty cats stretched out in front of me, try to warm ourselves from the remnants of coals from last nights fire.

Yesterday was the coolest day we have had so far this fall, and I've had to move my veg washing station into my garage, which I know was built for that purpose and other vegetable duties because it has never housed a car.
Yes, it's cool. But here in the Niagara Region of Southern Ontario, we haven't had a frost yet. I suspect that will all change tonight though.
Tonight before the sun goes down I'll take my agricultural fabric and cover up the remaining tomatoes, peppers and eggplants in my hoophouses and hope for a few more weeks from them.

Tomatoes in November. That would make me happy.
There are still lots and lots of crops outside that will survive regardless of the chance of frost tonight and hereafter. The chance of continued rain really is the biggest threat, with the bottoms ends of some of my carrots starting to rot, and my beautiful little french breakfast radishes sitting in pools of water.
Sun please!
There's still so much to get done in the garden, but the rain is problematic for these chores. There's still more garlic to get planted and mulch, compost and hay to spread over the garden, trenching, tilling and harvesting. I've still got lots of dry beans to pick for seed and food too, but the dry beans are a little damp from all the wet weather.
Still in the garden and for the foreseeable future regardless of a frost are carrots, beets, celeriac, turnips, winter radishes, many varieties of kale, jerusalem artichokes, chard. collards, walking onions, sorrel and herbs such as thyme, rosemary, sage and parley.

It always surprises me when I visit people I know and see their garden cleaned out and cleaned up for the next year's growing season. Poof-just like that things are gone. My garden is kind of like my house and that is never completely cleaned up. I try, I really do. That is, to keep the garden going. The house? Well that day will come, likely when my hair has a little more gray.
The baskets today contained squash, onions, garlic, beets, chard/mustard mix, salad greens, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, rosemary, thyme, parsley and basil. A good haul of good things from the fall garden.

If you want a great idea for your squash, stop in to visit my friend Karen at The Art of Doing Stuff. Her post today is for a delicious sounding Roasted Pumpkin Soup which you can find here. The acorn squash in your basket would be super duper for this.
When I make this soup tonight for supper, I'll substitute in vegetable stock and leave the bacon out of the topping for a nice veg soup. Sorry Karen, that's how I roll.

The following recipe is a good one for the mustard greens in your baskets. Add the chard as well, to good effect.
This recipe is from "Rodale's Basic Natural Foods Cookbook"

Mustard Greens with Dill, Lemon and Soy Sauce

3 cups vegetable stock
4 Tbsp soy sauce
1 cup barley
1 med size onion
2 Tbsp safflower oil
1 lb mustard greens
1/2 tsp dill
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste

Combine stock and 2 tbsp of soy sauce in medium size saucepan.Add barley and bring to a boil. Lower heat, cover and simmer for 45 to 60 minutes or until tender.
In a large skillet, saute onions in oil until translucent, stirring occasionally. Add mustard greens, stir to mix, cover and gently seam for 15 minutes. Add dill, lemon juice, remaining soy sauce and season to taste. Cover and steam for 5-10 more minutes
Serve greens over barley. Serves 4-6 people.