Mató & Maple Syrup » markets

Diversity

alexandra — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 11:52:30 +0000

It was only after I began to shop at Farmers’ market and buying local produce that I began to understand a bit more what food activists were complaining about when they talked about the loss of biodiversity that the current centralization of agriculture in the hands of fewer corporate farms, who buy their seeds from a handful of companies. Fruits and vegetables come in every shape and colour. But this reality is not seen at a local supermarket. When I was growing up, in Brazil, this was evident if we talked about tropical fruits. There were so many different kinds of mangoes! But that was mostly because most people didn’t really buy mangoes from the supermarket. Everyone knew someone who had a mango tree in his or her backyard. But in the grocery store everything was more uniform – tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, lettuce, – it all came in one size, colour, shape. The same is true here. But the closer to the family farms you can get, the more diversity. When we went to the harvest party in the Kawarthas a few weeks ago,our hosts had a tomato tasting table set up. It was heaven and I took these pictures (after I ate several or each kind, of course):

Summer brings sweetness

alexandra — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 12:07:28 +0000

Reading Barry Estabrook’s Tomatoland: How Modern Agriculture Destroyed our Most Alluring Fruit has only confirmed the importance of eating seasonally. I’ll talk more about the book in another occasion, today I just wanted to say how excited seeing the first tomatoes of the season make me feel. The past couple of weeks have brought grape tomatoes to my vegetable basket and their sweetness have been magnified from the months of impatient waiting. This morning I caramelized a green onion from this week’s share, sprinkled some salt and petter, added chopped grape tomatoes at the end of the cooking, a bit of balsamic vinegar and voilà: the perfect base for egg on toast! Friday began well.

Winter CSA

alexandra — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 02:13:14 +0000

It’s the end of february and my share at the CSA is as large as usual:

rainbow carrrots, sweet potatoes, red potatoes, onions, squash, eggs, mache greens, wheat berries, black walnuts, radish sprouts, popping corn, herbs, menonite summer sausage

Farmers’ Market

alexandra — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 19:00:57 +0000

Saturday is my day off. There are few things I would rather do on my day off than go to a market so saturday is also the day we go shopping. Although we have a lot of fun going to Kensington on saturday mornings, this weekend we decided to visit a new market. I had heard a lot about Green Barns Farmers’ Market at Christie & St Clair and decided to give it a try this morning. I knew my CSA co-op had a stand there so I wanted to stop for a visit. So after a lovely breakfast at CoccoaLatte on St Clair we walked down to a very busy market:

I walked up and down a couple of times; stopped to chat with people I recognized from the Riverdale Farmers’ Market in the summer while Alan chatted with one farmer who was interested in his medium format camera.

I got a nice bounty:

Farm fresh eggs, bread from St John’s Bakery, honey, popping corn, kale, two different types of broccoli, shelling beans, onions, oyster mushrooms, cheese from Fifth Town Dairy, Blackberry and Black Chokecherry jam, hot sauce, and fresh pasta made with red fife wheat.

Summer colours

alexandra — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 23:38:06 +0000

KEG Share: week of August 4th

I have only two weeks before handing in my thesis and time is at a premium. There’s no time to blog or try anything too time consuming in the kitchen. Luckily it is summer, time for colourful salads and tomatoes, LOTS of tomatoes. I don’t think I discovered what truly good tomatoes were until about two years ago. Up until then I still stored my tomatoes in the fridge (if you still do, STOP, trust me on this one). I did notice, however, that tomatoes in Spain were much nicer. Sweeter, at times more complex. Always much smaller. I dismissed it to the weather – surely I could not hope to find tasty tomatoes in Canada. Boy was I ever wrong. Last summer I discovered the joys of local heirloom tomatoes at the farmers’ market. It was so good I couldn’t resist having it even for breakfast. I took to chopping small, colourful tomatoes, sprinkling some olive oil and having it with toast, on steel cut oats, or any other grain I ate for breakfast. This summer I used it on top of polenta. Yum. Once I had real tomatoes, I couldn’t go back to the bland grocery store tomato that was probably shipped from Florida. I stocked on summer tomato sauce and sun dried tomatoes for the winter and patiently waited for this summer’s bounty. I have not been disappointed – they have started to appear at the farmers’ market and the feast has began:

Love it!

The colours of summer

Breakfast: chopped cherry tomatoes with pesto, olive oil and balsamic vinegar on toast

Quick dinner: black lentil salad with fennel & tomatoes, grilled zuchini with olive oil and purple basil, sweet corn

Polenta w/ pesto topped with fresh heirloom tomatoes and fried egg

KEG CSA Week 3

alexandra — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 02:30:48 +0000

Starting today, I’ll post a picture of each week’s share, linking to anything I post about what I cooked with it.

This week my small share included:

rhubarb
green onions
radishes
strawberries
eggs
shelling peas

I added to that:

ground lamb
asian greens
garlic scapes
tomato salsa
raspberry jam

And they have become, so far:

Rhubarb & Strawberry custard pie
Lamb & bulgur patties (aka Kofta) served with tomato salsa
Braised radishes with goat’s milk butter, parsley, green onions, and sea salt

Farmers’ Market in Toronto

alexandra — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 17:02:11 +0000

Came across today this very cool map of the markets in the Toronto area:

View Toronto Farmers Markets 2010 in a larger map
But I can see it is missing the one I go to, which is at University College on Wednesday afternoons. It hasn’t officially re-started yet, but Kawartha Ecological Growers sets up besides Hart House on those days.

Last of the winter share

alexandra — Sun, 02 May 2010 20:47:24 +0000

As I mentioned a number of times here, I subscribed to the Kawartha Ecological Growers CSA about six weeks ago. This past week I picked my last share of the winter crop and I’m now getting ready for the long wait (about six weeks) for the beginning of the summer share.

This week I got: carrots, two kinds of potatoes, eggs from an amish farm, dandelion greens, green onions, wild leeks, garlic greens, broccoli sprouts, carrots & cabbage coleslaw, sausage, radishes, and some fun items – fiddleheads and popping corn on the cob!

A zoom on some of the items:

Putting my share to good use

alexandra — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:52:39 +0000

I picked up my share from KEG this afternoon and in it I got carrots, potatoes, sunchokes (aka Jerusalem artichokes), lentil sprouts (from 5 different kinds of lentils!), lettuce, salad greens, wild leeks, and green onions. With my share, I also get a $20 credit that I can use to buy anything else from the table. I chose eggs from an Amish farm, sausages, and blueberry jam. So tonight for dinner we had bangers and mash and nearly everything on that plate was from my share: I roasted two of the sausages in the oven sprinkled with some of the wild leek and green onions. I made some nice and fluffy mashed potatoes with this week’s potatoes and served it all alongside a very colourful if simple salad of lettuce, lentil sprouts and grapefruit. Link here to pictures of my shares.

Subscribing to a CSA

alexandra — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 01:23:28 +0000

CSA stands for Community Shared Agriculture. We all know that the best produce is grown locally in small farms that grow a diversity of produce. One of the greatest challenges facing farmers of such idyllic places is selling their food. Managing a farm is hard work and if a tomato doesn’t make it to someone’s table in five days, that tomato is gone. One of the creative ways around this problem is for farmers to sell their produce before harvest to guarantee their sales. The way it works is that customers buy a share of the farm’s production at the beginning of the season and from then on, the farmer delivers a basket of fresh produce every week. There are several options around Toronto but I finally found one that caught my eye. The Kawartha Ecological Growers is not one farm but rather a cooperative of over twenty small farms in the Kawarthas, a fertile area north of Toronto. Having so many farmers to draw from means also that the risk of crop failure is reduced. But what I really like about KEG is not only the variety of produce but also the extras they bring out each week – flours, jams, beans, meats, and the nicest eggs you’ll fine anywhere. So I stopped by to drop off my cheque last week to get the last three of the winter share and today I picked up my bounty. This is what I came home with:

Click on the picture to see the notes on flickr.

The eggs were the highlight for me. They are from Araucana chickens, a heritage breed I first read about last summer in Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.Unlike your regular brown or white eggs, the Araucana eggs are a striking light blue/green shade. Very photogenic:

Since I had a bit of tomato sauce leftover in the fridge, I made a simple dinner with the fresh eggs noodles and a salad with the greens, radish, sprouts, grated beets, and sunflower seeds. So comforting.

Click on the image to see the rest of the pictures