Edible Tulip

The Pomegranate Restaurant

*photo taken from restaurant website created by legofish.

Tucked into the nook of a cove of frontal windows that overlook College Street (through the flattering light of candleabras and tall piller candles), this bed sits beside a tiled reflection tub filled with fish. It is covered in Persian weavings and pilllows for rear-end comfort. You take off your shoes and recline and wait for the charming waitress to come and offer you a beverage - they have a fairly decent collection of wine, mostly favouring the richer heavier varieties (Chardonnay and Shiraz) from Australia and Chile that complement the Persian flavours of walnuts, pomegranates, saffron, lamb, split peas, lentils, dates.

I always favoured (they don't make it regularly anymore) the Qeymeh which is exquisite and suits my palate perfectly. It is a bowl of yellow split peas stewed with a tangy fresh herb green sauce with lamb chunks and dried lime. The taste is overwhelmingly (in a pleasant aphrodisiacal sort of way) citrusy and herbaceous. They will make many of their evening specials with a similar flavourful sauce using fish (last time it was a perch) or chicken. The Baqali Polo has a lot of dried dill in the rice (a turn off) but the large green fava beans were flavourful and buttery and it was served alongside a braised lamb shank and persian pickles. The Fesenjen is a stew of ground walnuts and pomegranates served with portobello and button mushrooms, boneless chicken or lamb. The dishes are served in small bowls atop a large platter with one side perfectly cooked saffron basmati rice and the other a lime dressed mixed green salad. There are also serving size portions of creamy yogurt and persian pickles. Is there anything more delicious than placing a dollop of cool slightly sour yogurt atop a simmering spicy heady stew?

I've frequented the Pomegranate a few times in the past year and I find myself going back - on dates, with family, with out of town guests. It's cozy, reliable, family run, excellent home cuisine, authentically ethnic, not pretentious, reasonably priced (think 44$ for two for 2 mains and 2 glasses of wine and food leftover!).

Housewares Store - Bianco Plus

Always alert and on the hunt for excellent gift shops, I stumbled into Bianco Plus today sort of as a reason to duck out of the torrential rain and sort of as a way to extend my lunch break from just going to the flower markets at Av and Dav into something more productive? fulfilling? money consuming? Not sure. But it worked. I felt grand after my visit.

The store is located at 130 Avenue Road and is tucked in between all the luscious flower markets on the corner. Their storefront always has wildly colourful and fun aprons in the window or umbrellas that pop open with the touch of a finger. The shelves are stacked high with bud vases and blenders, odor free parafin for oil lamps and any utensil you could think of for a barbecue, linens and fancy shower curtains, spice racks and gadgets like natural face sponge holders. Baby whisks? Yup. Silicone pastry brushes? Ditto. Plain white square plates, colourful table runners, drip free candles. Everything is marked at market value and the 2 women I keep coming across in the store (wearing aprons!) are always charming and helpful to the point of nearing an embarassing level of kindness. I love a store where you can buy a trio of bubble glass coloured bud vases that costs under $15 and they'll wrap it in paper, seal it with a kiss sticker and put a colourful crimson bow on it. They'll pack it up in a plastic bag with a knot so it doesn't get wet in the downpour and then send you off warmly at the door.

Plant Sale at FoodShare

Last summer I dug up the entire backyard of my new apartment. I pulled up (with the help of my muscular friend Dave) the squared concrete slabs that so many Portuguese, Polish and Italian families love to use to simplify lawncare and I mixed in to the rocky dirt some fresh soil and manure and we built beds and I planted my little heart out. By August, I had a garden in full bloom with some plants extending to 4 feet in height and the smell of the herbs attracting nightly visits from the racoons and the colour of the blossoms attracting swarms of butterflies. I had to move that same month and bid my newly created garden farewell but the one thing I never feel angst about leaving behind is the beauty of a garden for someone else to enjoy.

If you have a plot of land that is plantable then you must get yourself to the annual plant sale at the Field to Table headquarters at 200 Eastern Avenue this Saturday. There will be a host of incredible offerings in the form of both heirloom seeds and already burgeoning organic seedlings which simply need to be transplanted!

Check out their website for further details and location.

Hope to see you there!

Grapefruit Moon Restaurant Part III

In February of 2005, I went to the Grapefruit Moon Cafe in Toronto with my mother and my brother for brunch. I wrote about our experience not so much to provide a restaurant review but simply to expand on the pleasure of being able to eat a BLT since I had forgone meat for the prior 15 years. Well, that post generated a lot of cacophany in the manner of comments. Apparently the restaurant had been showcased on a restaurant makeover t.v. series and it was not pretty. They focused in on grime and dirt and portrayed the owner, Sandy Moon, as a selfish nasty restaurant owner of the worst kind. At first I allowed the comments because the site is open forum but then I closed them because they got ridiculous - they became a bantering back and forth of American versus Canadian values and other nonsense that people write on websites when they have too much time on their hands, too little to offer in the form of well thought out argumentation and no one to listen to them.

Then, I received an email from Sandy Moon that I will excerpt part of here:

"I am the owner of Grapefruit Moon at 968 Bathurst St in Toronto. We
have been open for seven years and have enjoyed some great reviews,
positive feedback and lots of neighbourhood support. I have struggled
over the years to maintain my commitment to buy organic or natural
supplies locally and create healthy yet comforting meals at reasonable
prices. I also strive to have a welcoming and friendly, cosy atmosphere
for everyone."

"Over a year ago I was approached to do a TV show called Restaurant
Makeover. I paid $16K for work to be done and they would have a TV show
to air. It sounded like a fair deal. It, however, did not turn out to
be so great for me. They were apparently looking for a restaurant that
they could turn into their shocker episode. -which is good for TV. They
edited the show to make me look ungrateful and undeserving. After
asking me to prepare for filming by leaving the premises
untidy they focused on whatever filth and grime they could find,
falsely implying that these conditions were standard and acceptable
during operation. The renovations were meager and unfinished. The end
result was an episode of disappointment for me to put it mildly and
lots of internet libel and hate mail."

She asked me to delete the comments from my website because they were defamatory. I agreed. She was friendly and forthright in her concern and she did not demand or threaten me if I didn't do what she asked. Rather she presented a case that I thought was fair. I have kept my initial review of Grapefuit Moon on the site where I talk about food on the floor and mixed up orders. However, I did not see the t.v. series that showcased her restaurant and I do not have evidence that how they portrayed her is correct or that the actual costs of the makeover were used for her own personal gain so I deleted the commentary in its entirety because the slanderous nature of it was something that I could not support in accuracy.

I will use this website to fairly express my personal views on experiences that I have had. I will not take purposely nasty tones to outcast those who struggle in the business of food and hospitality but I will warn the general public of things I feel they should be aware of. Sandy Moon offered to meet with me to discuss her side of the situation. I did not feel that that was necessary. I told her that I would do as she asked and that I would someday return to Grapefruit Moon unannounced (with an unsuspecting and objective guest at my side) for another shot at the neighbourhood popular eatery. Because I believe everyone deserves a second chance.

Gremolata

Life is always full of synchronicity and as soon as you become aware of it suddenly everything has links to various moments in your life. Take my dating life, each of the past 4 men that I've been in contact with (some solely on a correspondence level) have a single connection to my own life (and these are not people I met through friends of friends they are odd flutters of bytes in the atmosphere at large whose paths I simply crossed). One spent summer canoe tripping with my first year University boyfriend 17 years ago. One has siblings who are intricately connected to my current boss. One went to high school with my brother in law's cousin who lives in Montreal. And one, who sadly turned out to not be full of promise at all, lived exactly across the street from me last summer 8 months before we knew the other existed. Weird.

Gremolata is a web site hosted and run by Malcolm Jolly of Toronto. In another bizarre turn of events (let's call it the ol' six degrees of separation folly) when I ran into a friend 2 years ago at a supermarket across town after I'd been to my therapy appointment (I no longer go; said psychiatrist moved to Calgary darn her!) her fiance said "oh, you are interested in food - you should chat with my friend Malcolm". Well, I'd already been receiving his weekly Friday web log updates on my email. Then a year later, I had drinks with a woman who was recommended to me by the woman I was a chef for at the Artist's Retreat up in Dunedin and she said "Oh, I write for a website called Gremolata". Sigh. Is life really this predictable? Maybe only in the food world.

Anyway, aside from getting weekly updates from various American newsfeeds on their food stories, I also subscribe to Gremolata. It's fun, it's local and there's good tidbits to be had on cheese, wine, local eateries, etc. Check it out!

Eat Local Challenge

Jen, over at Life Begins at 30, is hosting an Eat Local Challenge. She lives in San Francisco where May, her month of local devotion, produces food similiar to an Ontario August - cucumbers, summer squash, beets, carrots, tomatoes, lettuces, peas, potatoes. So I will choose the month of August to eat entirely local food.

Jen's 10 Reasons to Eat Local Food:

Eating local means more for the local economy

Locally grown produce is fresher

Local food just plain tastes better

Locally grown fruits and vegetables have longer to ripen

Eating local is better for air quality and pollution than eating organic

Buying local food keeps us in touch with the seasons

Buying locally grown food is fodder for a wonderful story (I agree - Farmer's markets, CSA food boxes, stores that carry local meats, cheeses and baked goods generally have a devotion to their food that is not apparent in larger box stores. Your food comes with a newsletter talking about the state of the maple syrup that summer or the blight that took out the tomato crop, the driest July ever or the floods that rotted the potatoes. The bakeries that hire local marginalized people in your city. It is a gift to buy a quart of blueberries straight from the weathered hands that picked them while you read your Sunday paper and drank coffee in bed)

Eating local protects us from bio-terrorism

Local food translates to more variety (I agree with Jen - my experience with the small apple producers up around Georgian Bay was two-fold; they had frustration at the supermarkets like Loblaws who wanted large yields and large oversized apples when the local producers tended to have small fist sized apples of an heirloom variety [the supermarket opted to buy big mushy shellac-ed granny smith's from Washington RIGHT DURING APPLE SEASON IN ONTARIO APPLE COUNTRY, and yes, I complained to the manager] but at the same time they served a local community of small green grocers and markets and therefore could experiment and produce many lower yield varieties)

Supporting Local providers supports responsible land development (help keep those who grow our food inspired, alive, in the black, sustainable, able to keep their family farm. Let's enable the farmers to maintain their small local business so we don't end up with a melange of tasteless imported food from large US manufacturer's on our grocery store shelves. It's one of the most social and political acts a person can do - to choose where your food comes from!)

The challenge asks that each blogger, or participant, sets ground rules he/she can live by that fall under the general umbrella of subsisting off a local foodshed for one month. When I get closer to the month I've chosen to eat locally I will write out my own ground rules detailing a) what constitutes local for me in geographical terms, b) what exemptions will I claim i.e. coffee I might choose a Canadian roaster but where will the beans come from?, c) what is my personal goal for the month.

In the mean time, to keep myself busy and distracted from the larger tasks I have at hand in this world, I will also begin documenting local finds (small businesses, interesting landmarks, quirky local folk) who make up the neighbourhood of Toronto that I live amongst. I may not always be able to eat locally (given our dang cold Canadian seasons) but I do live locally and shop locally and converse with those who make this neighbourhood tick. I'd like you to meet them all too.

Democrats Abroad Fundraiser

I get sent various press releases and I pick and choose what I will include on my website. This is primarily a food blog but because it's run by me and I happen to be a person of many conflicting and eclectic and diametric tastes and values more than not things slip onto this site that aren't food focused. Sometimes I later delete them. Because usually they were uploaded in haste, in response to a moment in time that I would rather forget than broadcast in detailed memory, but some experiences are worth savouring and airing to the larger public. This is one of those.

Roger from the organization Democrats Abroad Canada sent me an email about a fundraiser called Bites without Borders. It is being held at that fun loving Cajun/Creole restaurant on Markham Street called Southern Accent and it's to raise money for DAC (in advance of November's US elections) as well as for a New Orleans restaurant that was sadly destroyed by Hurrican Katrina. It's open to both American and Canadian citizens but I strongly suggest that you toe the blue line if you want to engage in playful debate.

The Scoop:

Date - Wednesday, April 19th, 2006
Time - 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. (not if they're serving up whiskey sours you can bet)
Grub - 12 dishes in the authentic New Orleans style i.e. Andouille sausage with chipotle maple hot sauce, blackened tiger shrimp with N'Awlins remoulade
the Damage - $45 purchased in advance by April 12th. Visit the website for details or to register.

Local Bakeries

I used to move a lot and I usually had very few criteria apart from the decency of the apartment as to what the locale had to offer. In no particular order the neighbourhood had to have a good coffee shop, a green grocer with some ethnic offerings, one good local drinking hole, one decent eating spot, an LCBO in walking distance, access to the TTC, a library within walking distance, and a BAKERY. Where I live now I have all of that and more. I can even walk to and from work if I happen to be wearing sensible shoes that day.

Across the street is a lovely cafe with an old copper ceiling, gleaming stainless steel cappuccino makers, imported from Mississauga baked goods of which my favourite is a croissant sprinkled with icing sugar and lined with a delicate strawberry compote. And you have to love the owner - he's there every morning at 6:00 a.m. sweeping then spraying down the sidewalk where his patio furniture sits and he's still there wiping down his machines and busying around the place even when there's not a soul inside when I'm grocery shopping for dinner at 7:00 p.m. He works 6 days a week and he's never in a bad mood. Around the corner is another bakery. One I go to on Sundays when the first one is closed. It's one of four or so in the city under the Nova Era ownership. It's a Portuguese joint with cakes View this photo and breads and mini tartlets and a pyriamid of croissants to choose from.

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!

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!