Let's Eat!

More than anything else so far this diet has made us expand our cooking creativity and pushed us to experiment a bit more. We've always been used to substituting ingredients when we don't have what the recipe calls for, but this has really forced us to a new level. Straight substitution isn't always possible so often we've really had to find new ways to get flavor. And perhaps even more than finding flavor, we've taken on making from scratch the foods that used to easily come from the store. It feels in a strange kind of way like pioneers, everything we want to eat takes thought, preparation, and of course time. But, now about three weeks into our experiment, the preparation time seems to be paying off: our food is tasting better, each success feels bigger, the effort even seems easier and it is increasingly clear that the best way to eat locally is to just always have great food around. We barely even miss any of the simple staples like baking soda, sugar, condiments, or canned tomatoes and beans. We feel like we've come a long way in these three weeks so here's a quick run-down of some of our highlights in the past week.

Fresh pasta with alfredo sauce.

So not exactly an experiment in new flavors, but this was our first attempt at making pasta from scratch. Using the red fife was a bit tricky, it is thinker and can't be rolled out as finely as regular dough, but it worked and the flavor was terrific! Mixed with some raw sheep's parmesan we found, butter, cream, and egg it really made any dried pasta seem pretty weak in comparison.

Real Ranch Dressing

Why ever have it from a bottle when a little bit of milk, yogurt, sour cream (all from Hewitt's Dairy) blended with a hand mixer and some fresh chive, garlic scapes, and a touch of salt gives you the real thing in about 5 minutes. It gets better the longer it sits. A few days is perfect.

Herbal Ice Tea

We found some great local teas - mint and chamomile. Nice with some honey added when you steep the tea. Simple but delicious!

Spicy Tomato Sauce

This was Dave's proudest feat of the challenge so far. Didn't even miss the olive oil! Slow cooked some onions in butter, red wine, red wine vinegar and a bit of smoked chipotles (from Kawartha,these have really been a gift). Add to it about 6 chopped tomatoes and some porcini mushroom broth. Simmer it down for a good few hours. Sweet, spicy, and full of flavor. We put this on top of a black bean burrito casserole we made the night before with some sour cream. We also ate it on top of homemade wheat crackers with a hewitt's dairy chevre (another great find that will become a staple).

Preparing food from scratch like this has also made us more careful to use every drop of food we have, leaving nothing to waste. Vegetable scraps are saved for stock, water from boiling beans or mushrooms is saved for soup or sauces, extra dough is made into dumplings or crackers. When you have quality ingredients and you have put a lot of effort into preparing your meals, you don't want to waste one bit! What a lovely gift it has been to gain this appreciation for what we consume and where it comes from.

These are just a few examples of our recent culinary feats, and we hope to have a lot more to report to you soon. So take some chances yourself, try an all local meal and see what kind of kitchen confidence you discover. We'd love to hear your results too!

Post Wedding Reflections (taste of the forbidden fruit)

So we have returned from south of the border after a marvelous time at Dave's sister Allie's wedding, an a marvelous food experience. We first would like to pay tribute to a fantastic chef, a very close family friend and an all-around great guy, Lennon Lewandowski who catered the event. He is the heart and soul of the kitchen at Oliver's restaurant in Buffalo, NY and has a great commitment to developing the local food movement in B-lo. Check him out at oliverscuisine.com where you can watch videos of him preparing some of the dishes they had on their winter menu. Thanks for the spectacular strawberry shortcake! (made w/ fresh picked strawberries from their CSA)

Our trip was a time of learning as well as a time of reflection as to why we are doing this diet (or as the groom renamed it "our alternative food lifestyle experiment") an how it makes us feel on all levels. Firstly, as you can imagine, we spent most of our weekend explaining to people what this crazy experiment we are doing is, and why in the world we would possibly take it on. Our comments fell to mixed reviews. Some people thought it was progressive, allowing us to connect with where we live and have a greater independence from the global food market. Others though we were down right nuts! Why live without convenience food when you don't have to? Some of this is likely largely due to the relative infancy of the Buffalo locavore movement itself. While we only had a limited time to explore the local food scene, it seemed that finding meats and produce was fairly easy, but the less obvious and more challenging ingredients were a bit lacking. No local oils, flours, grains, vinegar, and a surprising paucity of niagara wine (in restaurants especially). Now granted, we are coming from Toronto and the vastly different size, economy, and active food culture between the two are really not comparable, but we do think there is one specific difference separating the two: in Buffalo it seemed that the restaurants using local ingredients source specific items that easily fit into their style of cuisine. For example, using a local pork chop and local tomatoes to enhance a classic Italian style pork chop. The 'localness' of the ingredients is certainly highlighted, but it is not integral to the composition of the dish. In Toronto, however, the local ingredients drive the development of the menu. If local pork isn't around, you'll be having local chicken as the special. There is a greater emphasis on eating seasonally and allowing the creative development to come from what's available, rather than having the idea and finding a few local ingredients that fit in. That is the true meaning of local eating, something we are discovering very quickly.

We did have an interesting encounter with some delicious grapefruit. As part of the CSA Dave's Dad and stepmom Sandy receive a bi-weekly box of grapefruit, oranges, and tangerines. The neat part is that CSA owns a sister farm in Florida where all of the citrus is grown in the same organic way down south. Then twice a month, the fresh produce is trucked up to NY and CSA members get a box load of great citrus. They had one last grapefruit, and while, yes Florida is well outside of our local radius, we feel this is really the intent behind local eating anyway, and man it was good. This kind of co-operative farming reminds us a bit of Chocosol, a group of local Toronto chocolatiers. Stating that if possible, they would canoe the cacoa beans from Latin America to Toronto, the company is dedicated to developing sustainable and local driven farming practices. Working closely with local communities, they have been learning the traditional methods for growing cacoa and making all kinds of delicious chocolates from these ancient techniques. Pretty damn cool! While we won't be indulging in any more citrus, or chocolate from that matter, when we start eating it again, this is definitely the way to go. So props to Thorps (the local CSA) and all the other people, restaurants, and companies in Buffalo, Toronto, and everywhere else striving to bring into focus the connection between food, life, and culture.

Stay tuned for some postings of our recent local dinner recipes we'd love to share, especially our reconciliation with red fife wheat, which evidently makes wicked good pasta!

A Challenge!

This weekend we travel to Buffalo for Dave's sister's wedding, which means a basketful of fun alongside a basketful of temptation! Although we do not expect to eat local all weekend, there are some things we can't control, we are going to do our best. This means staying away from items we can avoid, such as coffee, chocolate, beer, citrus etc and with a great chef catering the event, this could be a bit difficult. Our first test of commitment, but we feel ready. Now hopefully our stomach's are! We'll keep you posted...

Ups and Downs

The past few days have been just that, a tidal wave of highs and lows as we adjust to a new way of eating and a new way of living.

Down:
Thursday, our second day of the diet was very challenging. Dave's persistent headache from the previous day returned with a vengeance. We were both ridiculously hungry all day, and had an icky, aching feeling radiating throughout out bodies that we just couldn't seen to get rid of. It was trying for sure! We started questioning our sanity for taking on a challenge such as this!
By dinner, however, we had gained some new perspective. We concluded that with this diet, we are essentially on a detox. Even though we do tend to eat foods that are low in sugar, organic and unprocessed, there are a whole lot of hidden sweeteners and fillers in food that are hard to avoid. As a result, we may have been burning through our food faster, as our bodies were previously used to heavier, more complex foods. We felt like we had low blood sugar! The truth, though, that we tempered ourselves with was that it was only day two and that it that it probably is natural for us to be feeling so physically confused and out of whack, at least we hoped so...

Up:
Now five days in we feel much better. We are no longer suffering from the aches and pains of earlier and we are actually feeling fully satisfied with what we eat, no more crazy cravings (at least for now). Dave actually remarked this evening that he has more energy than before and has an easier time getting up in the morning. This, he feels, is largely due to being rid of coffee. Coffee before had offered him a temporary burst of energy and then a big drop-off, leaving him longing for more coffee to regain the high he felt. Now with a steadier intake of healthy, whole foods, his energy levels are more consistent and he reluctantly admits that maybe a reduced diet of coffee upon the end of the diet my be a good idea.

Down:
Cooking has been a challenge. Mairin, a relatively confident hand in the kitchen, has found it a bit of a struggle to adapt to these new ingredients. It's not just the Red Fife, it's having to deal with dried beans and sunflower oil and the whole lack of condiments and flavourings we're used to having at hand. Gone are the steadfast go-to's of cumin, coriander, curry, cinnamon, chili powder, and pepper that pretty much make most of our cooking attempts legendary (well, ok hardly legendary, but quite tasty at least). Replacing all of these spices with fresh herbs is not exactly an unsurmountable task, but it is taking some time to learn what flavors mix well with each other and the other local ingredients we have to choose from.

Up:
While the spices are dearly missed, we are making some progress on finding alternatives in the local herb world too, so it has not been an entirely bland few days. Watercress apparently has a very strong pepper taste! Something I don't think either of us knew before. Mixed with some local salt (thank you Goderich), we've used it in salads, frittata, chicken salad, and grilled veggies and don't even notice there's no pepper. It also has its own spiciness to it that brings out a lot of other flavor in our food! We've rediscovered the value of a BBQ, (thanks to the kind neighbor who decided to get a new one and left, now our BBQ, on the side of the road) and that has made for a few very tasty local meals that don't required huge preparations. And to address the condiments issue, we successful had our first attempt at homemade local mayo! It was a bit dodgey at first as the oil egg mixture did not want to solidify for us, but after a night in the fridge it actually congealed quite well. We did use sunflower oil, which in the future is not ideal as it has a very strong sunflower taste that really isn't too great for mayo. We added enough salt, watercress, and dill however to mostly mask that and it worked brilliantly in our chicken salad.

So all in all after a few days of local eating, we've come to the happy mindset that, yes this may be difficult, but we are learning everyday and will continue to eat well all summer!

Our First Dinner

So it is official, Dave is going through coffee withdrawal and all the lovely headaches, nausea, fatigue that go along with it. Though he is admirably trying to play it down by blaming the weather, we both know better...
Today proved to be a true test of wanting what you can't have. Mairin never, ever, throughout her entire University career had any desire to eat anything from the food trucks parked along St.George Street, but today was a different story. As we headed over to Hart House to pick up our 1st CSA share of the season, the wafting scent of grease from the fry trucks became unfortunately seductive. Looks like there is so much truth to the idea that you always want what you can't have!
Other than Dave's coffee hangover and Mairin's musing cravings, things have been going well. Since breakfast and lunch were prepared the pervious day, dinner proved to be the greatest "challenge".
Here are some things we learned this evening:

Red Fife Wheat Flour is a strange beast. Red Fife is the major wheat source in Ontario and is considered a heritage crop. That's all fine and dandy and doesn't mean very much, what it does boil down to though is a texture difference. This became highly apparent when we tried to bake a pie with it. Instead of being powdery like regular white flour, it is flakey and becomes a little mushy when you add water. Due to its flakiness though, it rolls out really easily, so it was a boost of confidence to our dough making skills. When cooked, though, it remains very dense and doesn't develop the buttery lightness of regular flour. The flavour was great, nutty, a little sweet and earthy, but it was definitely a heavy pie. We both agree it will make great pasta, but we may be on the hunt for some white flour very soon. Anyone feel like a road-trip to Peterborough?

Now without a heavy selection of condiments, spices and sauces available to douse all over our food, we really taste our food for what it is. Meat tastes like meat. Mashed potatoes with sour cream and chives from our garden taste like just that and nothing more. There is no subtly to our food now, it is what it is. This is not a bad thing in many ways, the potatoes were great, it really just speaks to quality of ingredients. It was a few months ago, actually, that we started eating Hewitt's Dairy yoghurt (a family dairy from Hangersville, ON). It is plain, skim, cows milk yoghurt, but after trying it for the first time, we never went back to big brands. It is creamy and smooth and has a brightness that we have never tasted before in yoghurt. Its not as widely available, so we have to make a point of getting it, but it is so worth it for that taste (and it's cheap)! But it proves the point that you don't need to disguise your food, if it is good quality and prepared with care.

So as the sun sets on our 1st 130 mile day, we remain hopeful about our success in the future. We are starting to realize how much time we are actually going to have to spend thinking about what we are going to eat, but that necessity is so much more appetizing with a fridge full of beautiful, fresh, green, spring produce...

Getting Ready

There is an odd sense of calm that comes before every storm... Seriously though, we do feel like we're ready, even though we have about 7 items of food in our cupboard and maybe a dozen more in the fridge.
We had originally planned on having a "last meal", to celebrate the day before our venture into the local eating. The necessity, however, of maneuvering the overcrowded subway to track down said 7 local ingredients meant that our pre d-day dinner consisted of gelato and spanakopita. This isn't so disappointing though considering that Monday was our anniversary and we ate more tacos than should be humanly possible from our favourite Annex taco joint, Tacos al Asador!
We have tried to prepare for tomorrow a bit, so as not to shock ourselves completely when we have to prepare meals. We made a granola to eat for breakfast out of oat flakes, dried niagara cherries, peanuts, honey and butter. We thought of making egg salad for lunch, but then realized we would have to make our own mayo and quickly decided to leave that for another day. Instead, tomorrow's lunch will likely be strawberry and spinach salad with hard boiled eggs. Not too shabby, we think!
Sometimes when you pare things down to their simplest form, you gain a sense of clarity and we think with the 7 items of food we own right now, we are hopefully on our way to learning to live more with less.
Now what are we going to make for dinner...

The Idea

As many have been inspired by the 100 mile diet of BC's Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, we have decided to embark on our own journey of local eating, straight from the heart of the smoggy Toronto summer!

Our Motivations:

A desire to be accountable for what we eat, to understand the effort and passion put into producing food, to engage in a dialogue about what we eat, to support a growing community of food producers big and small, expand our cooking skills, to walk the walk, to understand commitment to our bodies, to the environment, to the spirit of the world and to each other.

The terms of our diet have been altered slightly from the original 100 mile format.

First, we have extended our local eating zone to encompass 130 miles, taking out the area within 100 miles of Toronto in US and applying it to the outside area of our region to give us a total radius of 130 miles from the city.

Second, in congruence with our 130 mile region, we have committed to this challenge for 130 days beginning on June.9th, 2010. This will not necessarily account to 130 consecutive days. As the summer pulls us in many directions, requiring us to travel, we plan to tack on any days we spend outside of the city to the end of our diet, making it therefore a total of 130 days of eating locally in the city.

Things we already know we'll miss:

Coffee (Dave's lifeblood), Pepper (Mairin is in denial), Chocolate, Olive oil, Olives, Hot Sauce, Loukoumades, Cold Beer on a Patio.

We are Excited and Scared

Happy and Mournful

Prepared and Chaotic

Energized and Exhausted

by the prospect of the challenge to come!

So, come break some bread with us (if we can figure out how to make it...)as we journey to Eat More, With Less in 130 miles, for 130 days.