Edible Tulip

Peepers, Star Light, and Sewers

 

I have spent my life divided between the country and the city. Like those mice we all read about as children. A fedora and vintage heels, an aimless walk through the ivy cloaked alleyways of Toronto, ethnic neighbourhood diversity, world music in a dive bar, living on a block that shares its beat with Koreans, Greeks, Ethiopians, Italians, and Peruvians. My grocery store is a veritable global food bank. The owners are Koreans who speak Spanish. That said, my favourite moments in the city are the silent ones. Winter is the best season in Toronto. Everything is illuminated but there is no echo. Summer is dreadful. The streets, slick with green bin acrid juices, smell like a sewer. A car pulsating with music and spraying exhaust in its wake is multiplied into a million clones and strewn across the entire city. Sure, there are parades and festivals and events. But there's nothing passively reflective about them. For an introvert, summer in the city can be debilitating.

I have experienced rural living a handful of times. And they were magical times. One of my favourite books, "Stalking the Wild Asparagus", has the most charming author bio I've read - amongst the many things Euell Gibbons has accomplished in his life, the one that smacked my senses upside down was the inclusion of the term 'hobo'. A man who wanders the land in search of edible things to feed his family has his finger on the pulse of life, for it's survival he's after. Nothing goes unnoticed. Everything means something else. The way a leaf curls can indicate weather changes to come. Everything is singular, because in spring, life is fragile and fleeting. There are small windows to forage wild leeks. The ground cover changes and overtakes small growth almost cannibalistically. A wild grove of daffodils gently waves in the early morning breeze grazing the fresh carcass of a baby deer alongside the rhythmic trickle of spring water flowing down the mountain. Everything is fragile and fleeting. Joyful and tragic.

On Saturday, walking along the Humber river, we came upon several adult Canadian Geese and about 12 fluffy goslings. Simon went wading into the river out of curiosity and a Goose swept up, spread its wings, and came rushing forth sideswiping its wing across the water, spraying Simon in the face and sending him back to shore. Impressive. We walked into the grove of forest the runs along the eastern side of the river and came across a lone young deer. City life.

On Sunday, north of the city, near Creemore, Ontario, the Bruce Trail wends it way through the incredible topography of the escarpment. Tiny yellow and purple violets cover the forest floor. Ferns unfurl in the marshes. The wild leeks and the trilliums near the end of their brief existence. The peepers start to quiet. A dead mole is on the trail. Simon learns to navigate a river's current. All is good in the world in a moment's reflection

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For the Love of Salad

My salads inspire wide eyed curiosity at my office. They are dense, colourful, jam packed with varying flavours and textures, and a veritable concoction culled from my cupboard and fridge. They take up an entire shelf in the office refrigerator. It can take two hands to carry my tupperware to my office. But the snap crackle freshness that a salad provides me is just one of the simple ways I kick ass during my day. Even when I temped downtown in an office tower in mid-February gale force snowstorms, I still ate my lunch outside on a parkbench. In a down coat with fur lined boots. Having to work indoors will never turn me into a Manchu Wok food court fanatic. That I promise you.

Things to make salad assembling easier:

1. Wash all of your produce when you get in from the store. I dump it all into my double sink in water with a bit of natural detergent to take off any residue or pesticide or grubby finger goo. I drain it all in a big colander that fits over my sink and then I pack it in resealable large plastic bags. The lettuce I spin and put also into large sealed bags.

2. Kinds of lettuces. Sometimes I get the large bags or boxes of organic spring mix (mesclun lettuces) or baby spinach. It can help when I'm in a midweek time crunch and haven't done appropriate grocery shopping. Although, be forewarned, I bought a President's Choice box of spring mix, washed and cleaned as the package promised, and bit into an enormous twig with thorns on it. Can't get more organic and farm to table than that, I guess. Head lettuce I use too, for crunch, for a watery contrast to something rich like creamy blue cheese. Otherwise, green or red lettuce, romaine, endive, raddichio, arugula and dandelion are all excellent to experiment. Butter lettuce is, unsurprisingly, soft and sweet. Arugula is peppery. Dandelion and raddichio are bitter - great with savoury candied nuts.

3. What else? Cubes of hard cheese - Italian sheeps milk, Mozzarella, Mexican white queso, Asiago, sharp Cheddar, anything recommended by your local butcher! Crumbled bits of softer cheese, like creamy blue, different kinds of feta, halloum, goat's milk varieties. Any kind of nut - raw sunflowers, sesame seeds, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds. I buy these at my local strictly bulk store, along with cashews and almonds for sure fire stir fries. Pea shoots, alfalfa sprouts, ancient eastern blend sprouts... add total earthy tasting crunch. Toronto Sprouts is a good source and available at local specialty markets and Fiesta Farms grocery store on Christie Street. Cooked lentils, canned garbanzo or navy or fava beans, Italian tuna in olive oil, cooked rice from the night before, grape tomatoes, fresh whole sugar snap pea pods, avocado, cubes of barely ripe mango, cooked corn shaved off the cob, grated beets, hardboiled eggs, artichoke hearts, olives, chopped carrots/celery/cucumber/daikon radish...

GO WILD!!!

I'd love to hear what favourite ingredients other people add to cold salads?

Spring Began A Month Ago (or Rosedale Rant)

Violets on the north bank as I descended down the Old Beltline Trail in Rosedale on a hot day in mid-April. Simon, my dog, and I were actually looking to check out this dog area I had discovered online called Dog Patch. The website looked fantastic - an off leash rural playground with rivers and dales in a forested area near Don Valley Brick Works. I didn't much like the trail we took to get there, it was busy, not that secluded, and holy p'jesus was it ever obvious we were in Rosedale. Obviously Simon and I have been sheltered from dog prejudice because we tend to run the waterfront in the middle of winter, the marshy area around the Humber River where the fishermen flock, and the trails and parks and swamps and ponds and rivers and forests that extend for hundreds of miles beyond the outskirts of the city. I don't want to assume a stereotype and the idea certainly never crossed my mind when we began our walk but god almighty you'd think that the women who we ran into have never seen a dog over 10 lbs. Let alone a MIXED BREED. That looks like the wolf in little red riding hood. When he grins, I want to put a bonnet on his head. Simon is an exhuberant dog and the people we typically run into think he's one of the happiest, handsomest, most playful furry creatures they've ever met. Not so in Rosedale. On leash, Simon can pull when he sees another dog. He wants to say hello to everyone, human or canine, that we cross paths with. It appeared from our walk that most people in that neighbourhood have fluffy goofy (I won't say stupid) Golden Retrievers or lap dogs in booties (in spring, I might add). The exertion it must have taken to keep their dogs away from Simon and to also avoid making any eye contact with me must have enabled these women to scarf down a snickers bar after their walk in good conscience. It wasn't just one or two people we passed on the trail; it was EVERYONE. I kept whispering to Simon that it wasn't him; it was that I had worn my camoflauge capris and a tanktop and thus I had revealed us as interlopers. Simon did get into this enormous mucky creek toward the end of our walk and I was simply terrified/hopeful that we'd pass someone in an all white hiking outfit and he'd perform one of his more flamboyant shakes.

Re: Dog Patch. The places was desterted. One of the fences was buried under the weight of a mudslide from construction on a mega million dollar home up above. There was yellow caution tape wrapped around the entrances. A lock on the door. And a copy of a letter from the President of The Toronto Humane Society that had been sent to the Toronto Star about 6 months earlier denouncing the hysteria people have about dogs in public places and the very few incidents that actually do occur when people and dogs interact. I googled Dog Patch to see what went down. It looked like it had fantastic potential - an entirely cordoned off area in the middle of the forested ravine that included rocks and a water source. Did the ladies of Rosedale rebel? Was it too much like watching a cock fighting show? Too disgraceful to see dogs growl and hump and sniff as they are wont to do with one another in good fun. Dog Patch was a conjoined effort between the Toronto Humane Society and The City of Toronto to provide healthy dog play and interaction in a safe environment. Who shut it down?

As someone who has a rescue dog who has simply become the best dog in the world, I am saddened and discouraged that after all the Toronto Humane Society does for abandoned and abused dogs, that a positive intention and investment such as a fenced in dog patch would somehow cause an uproar.