Edible Tulip

Grapefruit Moon Restaurant Part II

I thought I should mention something about the rather 'interesting' dialogue going on in the comments section of an old post about a diner called Grapefruit Moon in Toronto that I wrote about in an earlier post. I went blindly to this restaurant because at the time my brother lived around the corner from it and it's hard enough to drag him out with a family member especially if his mother is going to be there. So we lured him with the promise of mid-day caesar's and BLT's. Now that I've read some of the comments I would have to say I doubt I would have chosen the place as the spot to try out my new bacon fetish. The food was decent although they brought my brother the wrong meal and as I mentioned in that post there was a whole breakfast worth of food under my chair from a former patron that the servers weren't too worried about. On a second point, I don't even own a t.v. (and I don't say that in a patronizing way, it's just true, I prefer to spend my hard earned money on booze) so there's no way I would've ever seen, let alone heard of, a show about 'restaurant make-overs'.

So argue away about the ethics of owning a restaurant and the level of cleanliness you ought to provide. Just try to keep from being so NASTY!

The Taste of Honey

When I was in Creemore over Thankgsiving weekend I visited my favourite apple factory in Glen Huron. Grandma Giffin is world famous or at least locally famous for her incredible pies, butter tarts, and muffins. I used to buy her pies to serve at the art retreat centre I cooked at and when the vegetarians of the group oohed and aahed over her pies I thought keeping the lard factor a secret wouldn't really hurt anyone (especially those vegetarians who were lactose/gluten/sugar intolerant and allergic to garlic AND onions which obviously made my life absolute hell). There were huge wooden boxes of apples and each bushel was $5 with the second bushel FREE.

I bought 1/2 bushels of Mutsu/Crispin, Honeycrisp, and Spy apples. The honeycrisps are smallish in size (perfect for a child) and a total balance between sweet and tart with a reddish skin and a firm crisp flesh. Mom and I first came across this new hybrid apple a few years ago (it's the offspring of the Macoun and the Honeygold Apple and was first cross-pollinated at the University of Minnesota in the 60s) and it's quickly become a favourite. In fact it's so popular that fruit growers in Nova Scotia are ripping out the traditional McIntosh orchards and replacing them with the more lucrative Honeycrisp trees according to CBC news.

Food News

This newsletter comes into my inbox every Thursday and it's a complete delight to read. It features food and drink columns from the a number of American newspapers and the layout is consisted of 3 food feature articles (long essay type stories with recipes), a food column (a personal food column), a quick recipe section and then two drink articles (one is usually a profile on something like scotch or beer and the other is a personal column on something like what to do if you drink red wine and your partner drinks only white). The writing is excellent, informative, quirky, well-written. The recipes are interesting and often manageable. An example of one newsletter I recieved: an article on a woman connecting to her grandchildren through the Japanese cooking taught to her by her mother; an exporation of a new cookbook that demystifies Middle Eastern cuisine; and an article about the evolution of corn and how and why the flavour has been modified. If you want to subscribe go here and register for free. It's worth it!

Hoegaarden

Sometimes a beer, like a certain smell or piece of music, can evoke all sorts of feelings and memories. Last night my evening out began just after 11 p.m. 8 years ago I would have been listening to Rachmaninoff and smoking and making a collage of cut and paste words at 11 p.m. 5 years ago I would've been at my typewriter in some foreign country drinking Georgian red wine and smoking Russian made Marlboroughs in a dirty apartment block building at 11 p.m. 3 years ago I would've been in front of a hot burning woodstove in overalls playing boardgames after cooking dinner for our country neighbours and getting ready to take a pre-bedtime bundled up walk through the woods at 11 p.m. 1 year ago I was in such anguish over a decision that I had to make that for 3 months every night at 11 p.m. was like every other hour, and every other second, eternal and damning. I've gone off on a tangent. Hoegaarden beer started my evening last night. It's a tangy, slightly carbonated beer that goes down oh so easily and leaves a faint citrus taste on the tongue rather than a bitter coating like a Heineken. It's naturally cloudy as though fruit zest has been added which apparently it has - the spicy hint is from orange peel and coriander. Delicious! If you like complex white wine then this is a perfect drink to make the transition to beer.

Pond Life

"Never lose a holy curiosity", Einstein said.

I find myself drawn to ponds and bogs and swamps. I think the life (the protazoans the larvae the snakes the ducks the frogs the spiders the herons the wind-borne insects are indeed life at its most elemental) that exists among weeds and rushes and fetid marshy waters is not only fascinating but great fun: Waders. Snake hunting. Duck watching. Sketchpad in hand. Sun going down. Down vest. Scuffed boots. Wood smoke creeping across the water. The smell of wet reeds and fresh mud. Bright butterflies on brown bullrushes. Swamp walking makes a great date; a tryst among the mulch that replenishes the bark that creates colour the delicate gathering of wing parts and tidal pools.

Come join me for moonshine and we'll flow so freely wild and fringed.

Suggested reading: David Carroll's "Swampwalker's Journal: A Wetlands Year" published by Hougton Mifflin and winner of The John Burroughs Medal for Best Natural History Book of the Year.

Two Very Cool but Different Events

Since I don't live in the woods anymore and I can't be a "woman who runs with the wolves" these fall days, I've decided to unleash my inner primal knot of addiction and aggressive and compulsion and obsession and flames via a new sport: mountain biking. There are no mountains in Toronto to be sure not even in Ontario and if I had my say I'd move to Arkansas but I don't right now so I'm going to go to the Toronto International Bicycle Show's BLOWOUT SALE and see what the cycling retailers have to offer. I want something cheap that I can scrape and bottom out on and tramp through mud with. A mule with treads. Check out the sale if you like unmotorized modes of transport. It costs $5. And the doors open at 10:00 a.m. but you're advised to get there earlier.

(*Please note: Above picture of 1920s women's lingerie is taken from the www.costumes.org website)

For anyone in Toronto who is into Vintage Clothing well have I got THE sale for you! On Sunday, October 16th at The Paddock Pub (178 Bathurst Street) from 4 p.m. - 7 p.m. a woman affiliated with Comrags Clothing is having a sale of clothing from the 20s through to the 70s. Her family comes from Manitoulin Island and her cousin at one point ran an old General Store in a village on the island. She helped him clean out his attic and they came across boxes of clothes with their original tags still affixed to them. All manufacture in Canada and all in near perfect condition. I'm totally slumming for some garter belts!

Fall Light

There is something about the way the light falls towards the end of day in the fall that reminds me of being a child. This year was extra special - a Thanksgiving family celebration with two children under 2 (my nieces, with another on the way). I spent most of my weekend doing the under-dog with the tree swing, swooshing the kids down the slide on the new playground my dad built for the girls, picking green tomatoes with the baby, playing hide and seek, taking them out to the barn to see the horses and the cats, reading stories, wiping tears, and giving baths. We took long walks in the woods and picked pine cones, leaves, and shiny chestnuts. Our dining table had a centrepiece of baby gourds stuffed with fall flowers. We ate turkey and pumpkin pie. I drove home in the fall of light and it was beautiful.

The Host - Fine Indian Food

Tucked away down a few steps on Prince Arthur Boulevard in the Annex/Yorkville neighbourhood of Toronto is one of the city's best restaurants. Voted #1 Indian Food restaurant by NOW magazine and others, The Host is a sophisticated and elegant venue with totally delicious food. The atmosphere is mellow but proper: there are white table cloths, dark wood, a mahogany bar, several separate eating rooms, decorative Indian relics like over-sized copper camels, and a sense of privacy at each table. I work around the corner so we often frequent the Friday $10 buffet lunch.

The past couple of weeks has been a bit retro. I've reacquainted with girls I went to highschool with in grade 9 - that would be eek 17 years ago. We partied on the weekend and refreshingly they were as fun and pretention-free as I remember. Same laughs. Same kooky mannerisms. Same crunched eye smiles. We got bombed on red wine and champagne while sharing stories and adventures. And today I took my little brother's old girlfriend from high school to lunch. A quirky fun chick with many of the same passions as I have despite a 6 year age difference and we laughed and howled over a long Indian buffet. I had no idea my life over the past decade could induce such hysterics. It was definitely full of drama, most of which I found at the time to be unbearably mis-timed and rather tragic, but in retrospective in full narrative is pretty hilarious - islands of inbreds, vans traversing the country with furniture only to return back, rural living nightmares, foreign city nightmares, robbings, sociopath ex-boyfriends, Chechnyan bandits, stolen identities, on and on... a life well lived obviously translates into a life well told I guess. She too had stories galore as a journalist graduate - newsroom horrors, interesting internships, and a brand new adventure awaiting her as a reporter in one of the most scenic spots in Ontario. I envied her next move, getting out of Dodge (Toronto) and moving to a very character driven unique progessive intellectual and rural/urban spots. These are the spots where characters live on every corner. I've been there. It's a glorious way to live especially for a writer. Cities get congested with corporate desires (take the subway and see the advertising), an awful amount of pretension, rampant consumerism, trendy styles rammed down your throat, a constant bevvy of new and desirable exhibits/movies/shows to see, and a lot of expensive restaurants that serve so-so food. I love cities. And I do love Toronto. But I miss the groundedness that comes from living in a more secluded hub.

The food? We worked our way through the buffet. There were several salads and pickles and tamarind sauces on table one. You then move on to vegetable samosas, Saag, Malai Mattar Paneer, Dal Makhni, Aloo Gobhi, Navrattan Curry, Tandoori Chicken, Basmati Rice, Khumani Steak, and Butter Chicken. You get served Naan bread and your meal is followed by stewed lychees or plums or prunes (not sure) and fresh fruit like watermelon. Odd, but cleanses the garlicky and oniony palate. A really good deal!

Forbes Wild Foods

This is a photo from a life passed. Not the fungi's life, mine! I lived in a fairly musky fairly dark cabin on a stretch of land that lined a river and backed into a cedar forest. In early spring and early fall, when the moisture was high and the sun wasn't in the sky long enough to shed light on all that was dormant.

Forbes Wildfoods reminds me of the spring and fall seasons. They are a Canadian company who forages for the every morsel they use in their products. They stress sustainable practices, they utilize local (often aboriginal, mostly rural) folks to seek out rare wild foods, plants, roots and seeds. And what they pick they replenish through propogation. Their food is 'organic' without the new-agey price attached. It's natural most of all.

Examples of their products:

Balsam jelly (this is a jelly made from the juice from Balsam needles taken from fir trees - it's yummy with lamb in lieu of that old standard mint jelly and has a refreshing distinctive fir tree tanginess)

Saskatoon Berries (these come from the Prairies and are sweet like an august blueberry)

Spruce Tips (literally these are the tips off the new shoots from spruce trees - used like capers, they can be chopped up and used in a sauce for fish)

Wild Mushroom Mustard (the ultimate mustard for a grilled chicken sandwich with french chaumes cheese... and arugula or alfalfa sprouts... ummm....)

Cedar Jelly (similar to the balsam jelly but this is made from the juice of the cedar branches. All I can say is that it tastes like what cedar smells like. Utterly delicious used with salmon.)

Ox-Eye Daisy Capers (prepared like capers in a vineger, they are lovely buds . Add to salads with cheese.)

Milkweed Pods (these are still pods at their most tender, small and flavourful. Put out on an hors d'oeuvres spread with olives, cheese, daikon radish, and smoked trout.)

Also try the wild grape jelly (from river grapes not concord grapes - excellent with cream cheese or peanut butter!) and the Birch Syrup (instead of Maple syrup, this is very sweet, and a bit spicy and excellent as a kick first thing in the morning).

Forbes is under-publicized. It's local, original, true to itself, eloquent, small-scale, and brave. Check out their website and order some products for Thanksgiving or Christmas. They make excellent and inventive hostess gifts.

Photography Show

I used to spend many a winter working a temp job at BCE place at the corner of Front and Bay. There were a few perks to the job - an excess amount of cool office-y supplies (notebooks, glue sticks, markers, roller ball pens), free food (pringles, granola bars, cookies, licorice, yogurt, etc), the proximity to St. Lawrence Market, and a lot of free time to read and do my own writing. There were a lot of drawbacks - lifer secretaries who eyeballed you up and down with their thickly clad mascara eyes; lifer secretaries who shrunk in terror of the big boss (oh yes sir, whatever you say sir) and I just called him Bob or George or Hank, whatever; lifer secretaries with their employee of the month plaque from 1989 as their only redemption to treating you like a minion; and, working with both lifer secretaries and investment banking men: one group has no confidence and the other rolls around like a pig in mud in it. For a few months each year I got to wear stiletto boots and fishnet stockings and revel in the fact that Bay and King is just so chockfull of testosterone YOWCH you can't help but feel like all woman. I can only handle playing off that sex kitten feminine mystique bull shit for a short while anyway.

The other great thing about BCE place is that it hosts the World Press Photo every year. This is a spectacular, vibrant, moving exhibition of the award winning photographs taken by members of the world press. It's also a way to celebrate or mourn the events of the past year through pictures.

It's open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Admission is FREE. It runs from Oct 3rd to Oct 23rd.