This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the launch of Sarah B. Hood’s new book, “We Sure Can!—How Jams and Pickles are Reviving the Lure and Lore of Local Food”. Sarah was on hand to chat about preserves and to sign copies of her new book, which, by the way, is filled with tons of recipes and gorgeous photographs.

Sarah also brought with her three samples of the recipes from the book, including Lemon Balm Jelly, Masala Chai Jelly and my favourite of the three, Anise-Hyssop Jelly, made from one of the anise-hyssop plants I gave to Sarah for her community garden plot. An extra jar of it came home with me.

The launch was held at the Leslieville Farmer’s Market, and this was my first visit to the new market, which is held every Sunday from 9-2 on Eastern Avenue just westward across from the McDonald’s in the park that is there. I sure do wish that farmer’s market had been there when I lived in the Toronto neighbourhood of Leslieville…what a fabulous place to shop for produce and to get out of the house on a Sunday afternoon!

Sarah’s book, “We Sure Can!—How Jams and Pickles are Reviving the Lure and Lore of Local Food” is available at Arsenal Pulp Press.

My friend Kelly gave me a cutting from her blackberries and I planted it outside the kitchen door, near the herb garden.  I realize this means that someday soon I’ll have to carry a machete to hack my way through the patch into the kitchen, but with the fruit growing closer to the house, I really think it will be harvested more regularly than oh, say, the raspberries, which are currently at the very back of our yard.

These berries have a much milder taste than the raspberries but are just as lovely.  I simply eat them raw, so far, but I have visions of blackberry wine someday…

A Senior Engineer/Scientist/Tech Officer for Ontario Power Generation recently sent out a call for participants in what I think is a very cool program:

Do You Grow Fruits, Vegetables or Use Well Water?

If you live within 10 km of the Darlington or Pickering sites and grow fruits, vegetables or use well water as a drinking source, then our Environment Programs Department is looking for your support.

As part of the Radiological Environmental Monitoring Program (REMP), samples of air, rain water, drinking water, soil, fruits, vegetables and fish are taken in the communities around the Pickering and Darlington stations. These samples and their analyses are used to assess the dose impact to the public resulting from operations of our stations (which is quite low and well below regulatory limits).

Since the inception of this program, we have relied on the support of local residents to provide the above mentioned samples. Over the years, there have been new subdivisions built in previously uninhabited areas and therefore additional sample locations are desired to better represent these areas. Also, due to the mobility of local community members we are always looking for new participants to replace those who have moved out of the areas.

To that end, we are seeking participants who live within 10 km of Darlington or Pickering Station and can provide us with:

• Annual samples of fruits and/or vegetables grown from their own garden, and/or
• Monthly samples of well water that are used as a drinking source—sample bottle will be provided.

All samples will be collected by an OPG Health Physics Laboratory technologist during working hours with advanced arrangement of pick-up times.

The results are published every April 30 in an annual REMP report to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). All names, addresses and contact information are confidential and will not be published. Participants will receive a letter every June summarizing the public dose impact in your area and a small token of appreciation.

I contacted the name provided, indicating an interest in participating, since I live within the desired radius at about 6 km from the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station. I haven’t really thought too much about the impact living near a nuclear generating station has on the food that is grown and eaten in this region, but participating in this program is likely to bring about some awareness on that front. I’ll be sure to share my findings here!

Last summer a local resident of my town responded to an ad I placed on Freecycle looking for a rhubarb cutting.  This year the plant is doing spectacularly, and although I didn’t harvest any rhubarb this season, the dramatic plant is a welcome addition to my vegetable garden.

Something unexpected has happened, however: the plant has bloomed!

My instinct is to cut the bloom off, but I thought I’d consult some of my trusted gardening books to see what should be done.

How to Grow Vegetables & Fruits by the Organic Method (1961, edited by J.I. Rodale and Staff, page 500): “Flower stalks should be removed as soon as they develop.  They are unlikely to develop seeds, but if they do, they will take more of the plant’s vigor than the dubious offspring are worth.”   Dubious offspring!

Grow Vegetables (2008, Alan Buckingham, page 270): “Cut off any stems that go to flower and any leaves that turn yellow and die.”

The Cook’s Garden (2003, edited by Liz Primeau, page 30): “The flower stalks are striking additions to vegetable plots or perennial beds.  But for tender rhubarb, remove flower stalks as they appear.”

That settles it.  Now where are my garden clippers?

(Do you consider rhubarb to be a fruit or a vegetable?)

Whether you prefer to call this time of year “late summer” or “early autumn”, there is no doubt that tomato season is in full swing. Local farmer’s markets, grocery stores and home garden stands are bursting with fresh tomatoes of countless varieties.

One of the easiest ways to preserve the unique flavour of summer vegetables, especially tomatoes, is by making a basic, roasted tomato sauce that can be adapted later on when the winter chill has set in and the tastes of summer have faded from our taste buds. Roasted sauce requires very little effort, and roasting the tomatoes brings out a layer of richness in taste that fresh tomatoes simply do not possess. The sauce can be frozen and enjoyed for months to come.

Roma tomatoes are the ideal variety, since they are a paste tomato containing few seeds, but any variety will work just as well.

For each batch of roasted tomato sauce, you will need :

• Approximately 25 Roma tomatoes. This number will vary with the variety used. Essentially, you will need enough tomatoes, halved, to cover a large baking sheet, cut side down.
• Two cloves of garlic, peeled.
• Half a medium-sized yellow onion.
• Extra virgin olive oil.
• Coarse salt and fresh pepper, to taste.

To make the sauce:

• Pre-heat oven to 375°F.
• Wash and core the tomatoes.
• Using a sharp paring knife, remove the core and stem, if present, from the tomatoes.
• Slice the tomatoes in half and place, cut side down, on a baking sheet or disposable aluminum oven liner.
• Tuck peeled garlic cloves in among the tomatoes.
• Slice the onion in half, peel, and then slice. Separate onion pieces and scatter among tomatoes.
• Drizzle all with olive oil.
• Sprinkle salt and pepper over all.
• Roast in the oven for approximately 40 minutes, or until tomatoes are soft and skins begin to brown.
• Transfer roasted tomatoes in batches to a blender and pulse until the sauce has reached the desired consistency.
• Transfer sauce into Ziploc freezer bags, marked clearly with the date and contents. Freeze bags horizontally on a cookie sheet. Once the bags are frozen, store them in the most convenient way in your freezer.

This sauce can be adopted for use in pasta recipes, Mexican cooking, or simply slathered over a fresh crust of Italian bread, to be enjoyed during a snowstorm. This sauce is exceptionally good when fresh or dried herbs are added before eating.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of cooking with fresh tomatoes this season, head on out to your local farmer’s market to find some before tomato season winds completely down for the year!

To make fresh salsa, you will need tomatoes and peppers, any kind or colour. I like to use an assortment of pepper varieties because I like my salsa to be pretty. I like to use a spicy pepper because my husband, Graham, likes his salsa HOT.

You’ll also need an onion, lemon or lime juice and salt and pepper to taste. If you like cilantro, or have it growing in your garden, it’s great to add to a fresh salsa. I hate the stuff, personally, so I don’t use it. Sometimes I’ll chop up some flat-leaf parsley to add a hit of green to the bowl.

The recipe is slightly different each time I make this. The last time I made it, I used one each of Golden Marconi and Purple Beauty peppers, two Oxhearts and one Paul Robeson tomato, half a white onion, salt, pepper and the juice of half a lemon.

Simply chop everything up (wear latex gloves when cutting up hot peppers or risk burning your hands), toss in a bowl to combine and wash your hands thoroughly to prevent the condition I call “hot pepper eyes of fire”. Allow the flavours to mellow together for an hour or so. Even if you can’t wait that long, this will still be tasty. We eat it with multigrain corn tortilla chips.

Over the weekend I got back out into the garden after over a week away.  There are a lot of weeds everywhere, since it’s been raining daily for the last week or so, with warm temperatures and high humidity.  My favourite thing growing in the back yard right now is a white acorn squash.  The compost area at the back is overrun with squash plants.  Beautiful, but crazy.  We are running out of places to throw our yard waste.

I harvested everything you see in this photo from our back yard, with the exception of the yellow zucchini, which came from my community plot.  There were other zucchinis, too, but they’re big ones that will be better for baking and stuffing, since they are larger.

My husband and I have decided to give vegetarianism a whole-hearted try, so we’re very happy to have such a bounty of fresh, organic food to harvest from the back yard and community plots.

This is the first year I’ve tried growing broccoli. I got it at the plant auction I attended back at the end of May. (I’ve been meaning to write about it here ever since.) I have three plants, and of the three, this is the only one that has so far produced such a beautiful head of broccoli. All were grown organically, without the use of any chemical pesticides or herbicides.

What a rewarding plant to grow! I will absolutely grow more broccoli next year.

This photo will give you a better idea what size the head actually was.

Broccoli should be picked well before the small florets open up.

We threw the broccoli into a fettucine alfredo for dinner.

Join

Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in every Sunday. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Last fall I bought some garlic from a local farmer at the Oshawa Centre farmer’s market and planted it in October.

Yesterday I decided to pull one of the plants to see how it was doing.  Most of the shoots have begun to yellow and flop over, and many of the plants have a little bulblet at the top, and I read that this was the time to begin to harvest fall-planted garlic.

I chose one with a nice, thick stem, and was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a good-sized bulb there!

When I opened up the bulb, I found about 8 beautiful, creamy white cloves inside!  It smelled heavenly.

I was thrilled.

“THIS is why we grow our own food!” I said to my husband, who promptly popped a clove into his mouth.

A private member’s bill supporting mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food in Canada was selected randomly for debate in our House of Commons this month.

Bill C-517 went to second reading on April 3, and a second hour of parliamentary debate could take place in as early as two weeks, as per the House of Commons calendar. After a second debate, the House will be called upon to vote on the bill. If you are concerned about feeding your children genetically engineered foods, it’s important to make sure that a majority of Members of Parliament vote in favour of Bill C-517. If the Bill passes second reading, it will be returned for a third and final reading, followed by a vote by all of Canada’s 301 Members of Parliament.

Right now you may be asking yourself, “What is so bad about genetically engineered food?

• Genetically engineered food destroys biodiversity. It promotes mono-agriculture and mass corporate farms while destroying soil nutrients.
• Genetically engineered food only benefits rich, large agri-businesses, not small farmers who will be forced to buy their seeds, and more fertilizer and chemicals.
• Genetically engineered food destroys millions of small family farms who can’t afford the annual additional cost of seeds, pesticides, fertilizers and equipment.
• The long-term health effects of genetically engineered foods on humans have yet to be discovered.
• Genetically engineered foods are not sustainable!

Mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods will allow you, as a parent and a consumer, to have access to information about the food you and your family are eating. It will also pave the way for a gradual withdrawal of genetically engineered foods from the food chain, reducing the dissemination of genetically engineered seeds in the environment.

If you’d like to help spread the word, here’s how you can help:

• Identify your federal Member of Parliament online.
• Locate the contact information for the MP in your riding.
• E-mail your MP’s riding office with the following message:

Dear Sir/Madam,

We all have the right to know what we are eating and the right to not eat genetically engineered foods. I support mandatory labelling of genetically engineered food, which is already practiced in over 40 countries in Europe and elsewhere. Bill C-517 would allow implementation of mandatory labelling in Canada. I am asking you to vote in favour of Bill C-517. Please confirm your intention to support this important bill.

Spread the word!

(Cross-posted at BlogHers ACT Canada.)

]]> http://playinginthedirt.ca/2008/04/19/support-bill-c-517/feed/ 1