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Photo credit: www.coolest-homemade-costumes.com

I’ve just today realized that I’ve never had a food-related Halloween costume. I once dressed my infant son as a pumpkin but I’ve always had scary costumes myself.

One year my brother was a marshmallow but it was a costume of convenience: he was five and just out of the hospital from having pneumonia so my mom dressed him in a fuzzy white ‘fun’ fur coat of hers and threw a white hat on him so that he could go out trick or treating without catching a chill. Most people thought he was a Russian czar but he didn’t mind; he was just glad to be allowed out of bed!

Some of the best food inspired costumes I’ve ever seen are here on thee Serious Eats blog.

How about you? Any good food inspired Halloween costumes in your past or present?

Tacos. They aren’t just filled with chili powder spiced ground beef anymore. Recent trends have seen fish tacos win fans from coast-to-coast and so-called Korean Tacos trucks are cruising the streets in big US cities like LA, New York and Seattle. Likewise, meatless tacos and tacos that feature slices of meatloaf as the star filling have recently been featured in national magazines.

At our house, tacos are a regular menu item. We’re soft taco lovers and I’ve been known to fill our shells with pulled pork, vegetarian chili, seared hoisin glazed duck and even stir-fry.

What happens at your house? Are you a taco kit household or an anything-goes-in-a-tortilla household like ours?

When the new book All the Best Recipes by Jane Rodmell came out earlier this fall, I was thrilled! Long before I met Jane Rodmell or Sue Bowman (the dynamic perfectionistas who run All the Best Fine Foods) and became their friends, I was a devoted customer.

In fact, this shop was (and remains) my ‘go to it’ destination for prepared foods that are as good as I’d make myself. From the roasted vegetable lasagna that I’ve had them make in casserole dishes so that I could serve it up like it was homemade, to the buttery, super crisp gingerbread cookies (recipe below) I buy in the store as a special treat for my son, this is a book filled with fantastic recipes.

What I’m really trying to say is: if you buy one cookbook this fall, make it this one! Happy Anniversary All the Best!

The Best Gingerbread

MAKES ABOUT 4 DOZEN COOKIES

•Cookie cutters (gingerbread boys and girls),
about 21⁄2 inches (6 cm)
•Baking sheets

61⁄2 cups all-purpose flour 1.625 L
4 tsp ground cinnamon 20 mL
4 tsp ground ginger 20 mL
1 tsp ground cloves 5 mL
1 tsp baking soda 5 mL
1⁄4 tsp salt 1 mL
2 cups butter, softened 500 mL
2 cups packed dark brown sugar500 mL
1 cup light (fancy) molasses 250 mL
Decorative (Royal) Icing

1. In a bowl, combine flour, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

2. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed or a wooden spoon, cream butter and brown sugar until blended. Add molasses and beat until smooth. On low speed or with a wooden spoon, gradually add flour mixture, mixing until blended. Divide gingerbread dough into 2 disks. Wrap securely in parchment or plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes or for up to 8 hours.

3. On a lightly floured surface, roll dough out to 1⁄8- to 1⁄4-inch (3 mm to 0.5 cm) thickness. Stamp out shapes with floured cookie cutters as desired. Place on baking sheets, about 1 inch (2.5 cm) apart. Bake in preheated oven until firm and lightly browned, 10 to 15 minutes, depending on size of cutouts. Be vigilant, as cookies brown quickly in the last few minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes on baking sheets, then transfer to racks to cool completely. Gingerbread becomes crisp when cool. Decorate with icing when completely cooled.

Do you have a store that you can depend on for top quality food that actually tastes as good as it looks? If so, give them a plug in the comments section. In my experience, these places deserve all the support we can give them.

Even if they can’t recite technical definitions of words such as organic and all-natural, most people have a strong sense of what these terms mean. However, when it comes to biodynamics, I doubt there are very many Canadians who can confidently spout a definition.

Yet, some people believe that biodynamics is the next big thing. So, to help all of us (until I started researching this post, biodynamics confused me, too) here are the essential things you need to know about biodynamics. Seariously, keep reading and you’ll easily carry on a cocktail party conversation about biodyamics! (Your grateful hosts are welcome to send me thank you cards if they like. Email me for my address.)

Biodynamics:
1. is a specific method of organic farming.
2. strives to be a unified approach to agriculture that relates the ecology of the earth to the movement of the cosmos.
3. looks upon the soil and the farm as living organisms that are holistically linked and interdependent.
4. regards the maintenance and feeding of soil life as a basic necessity that will preserve soil quality for generations.
5. uses an astronomical sowing and planting calendar.

Still having trouble envisioning how biodynamics can impact your life? Check out these real-life biodynamic food and beverage products:
• Southbrook Farm’s Biodynamic Wine
• Zhena’s Biodynamic Tea
• Australian William’s River Beef and lamb

Want to take your level of biodynamic knowledge to the moon? Check out the Demeter website.

Have you ever bought a biodynamic product? If not, will you now that you know more about this farming system? Or, is this just some crazy idea whipped up by pot-smoke addled hippies?

Good ole Soupy Sales. What a life he lived! He almost single handedly supported the cream pie industry. By the comics own count he was hit in the face with at least 20,000 pies – almost all of them filled with creamy, custardy goodness.

Friday night, driving to the Chocolate Ball, I heard an archive interview between Soupy and the late, great Canadian journalist Barbara Frum where Soupy admitted that there was, even for him, always a moment of pure humiliation when you’re hit in the face with pie.

Inspiring words that had me making a mental list of the people I’d like to hit in the face with pies…

1. Lady Gaga who is so over played on Toronto radio stations that I want to scream. (Seriously. If I hear that crappy Papparazi song one more time, I’ll start whipping cream and rolling out pastry!)
2. The dude too busy talking on his phone while he drove to take a moment to wave when I totally went out of my way to let him in on Saturday.
3. Every air-duct cleaning company owner that calls me – despite being on the do not call list – while I’m watching Jeopardy! or eating my dinner. (For them, I’ll use salt instead of sugar in the pie since I really want them to suffer.)

I’m sure there are more but I don’t really want to dig too deep into my bitterness reserve. Soupy likely wouldn’t approve. He was a man who devoted his life to making people laugh after all.

But, I will ask you these questions before I sign off for today:  have you ever been hit in the face with a pie?  If so, what was it like?  And, if you could wallop someone with a cream topped pastry crust, who would it be?

Reduce, I support. Recycle, I support. But, reuse, I love!

Check out this great ‘green’ package. It’s a wine gift box that is also a hummingbird house! So clever.

As we proceed into the holiday dinner and cocktail party season, many people will pick up gifts, flowers or bottles of cheer to take to their hosts. What other smart double-duty packages can be used to carry a gift and then be used for something else? Gift bags don’t count – I want you to dig deeper today, dear readers.

PS: Here are instructions on how to make a wine bottle birdhouse.

We have all been asked to ponder that philosophical question: if a tree falls in the woods and no is there to hear it, does it make a sound? I say, unless it was a fruit tree and I can score some free apples or pears without having to risk my neck on a ladder, who really cares?

No, I’m more concerned about things that really matter such as: is a pizza still pizza if it isn’t flat?

Consider the Calzone, the Cone (pictured here) and the much advertised microwavable Pizza Pocket… true iterations of pizza or pretenders? Discuss.

In other pizza related news: check out this modernized new pizza box made from recycled paper.

(click image for larger version)

I come from a long line of blood thirsty hunters. On both sides of the family my ancestors were immigrants to Canada who settled crown land. That means that they arrived here and bought settler’s packages that consisted of unbroken land, a shovel, a pick axe and a few other tools. They were also given some of the bare essentials like a cast iron frying pan (I still have the frying pan from our McCauley homestead on the Manitoulin Island) and a few bags of seed. Needless to say, they needed to hunt to survive, especially in those first few years while they were breaking the fields and building houses and barns.

While several of my cousins and even some of their kids still hunt each autumn, I’ve never had the urge. My motto is: Why go shoot some animal when the store is full of yummy steaks?

But, my attitude is not necessarily representative. Not only are hunting and cooking more often topics that go hand-in-hand in the blogosphere, but those in the know tell me that interest in hunting is on the rise. “Hunting is definitely trending up among women in the US. Anecdotally, overall hunter numbers are slowly declining, but the ‘replacement’ hunters for those who die off are increasingly yuppies — or whatever we’re calling them now,” notes Hank Shaw, author of the very popular blog Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook.

According to the Ministry of Natural Resources, in 2007, the purchase of hunting licenses was up in all categories including small game, moose, bear and deer. In 2008 there were an estimated 450,000 hunting licenses sold in Ontario. Likewise, Lezlie Goodwin of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters says that participation in Hunter Education programs is growing. “Hunting is such a holistic approach to food,” adds Lezlie. “It provides delicious, wholesome, fresh meat and it helps people to become more respectful of their food.”

I like what Lezlie has to say because I think she’s right: seeing your dinner on the hoof (or on the wing) makes you realize that every bite is precious. That said, It’s my guess that hunting is like meat eating. Either you do it, you did it or you won’t ever do it. Use the chart above to rate your hunting interest and tell me how blood thirsty you are. I’m a 4 on this blood thirsty scale.

Two weeks ago when I was getting ready to send out a notice to my food trend newsletter subscribers that the Autumn of issue of Topline Trends was posted, I discovered that the company that handled my subscriber list was no longer in business. Vanished. Vamoosed. Gone.

To be honest I was heart broken. Topline Trends has been building its readership for over 10 years and to lose contact with all of those loyal readers was a blow. I really didn’t know what to do. Sometimes life gives you lemons and you just don’t have a good lemonade recipe at hand. Then it hits you: you can always ask others for help. What’s the worst that can happen?  People can say ‘no’ but so what?

That’s where you come in:  Hoi En Tang, my  technical guruess, has already been a tremendous help by rising to the occasion to create a new subscription system. What you can do now is to please follow this link, read the autumn issue and sign up to be notified when each quarterly installment is ready for viewing. You could even tell a few friends about it. Or not. I get that you’re busy.

Regardless, thanks for reading today and thanks for any help you can offer!

During these difficult economic times have you lost any of your favourite or trusted suppliers?

Photo credit: Angela Y. Martin

A few weeks ago I was a guest at the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance’s Farmed Seafood Extravaganza held at Starfish Restaurant in Toronto. The food was fantastic and spokespeople representing every aspect of the industry were present to tell their story and answer questions. While I learned a lot, I left the event feeling unsure about how to evaluate the many aspects of aquaculture. After all, it’s not really just one topic but dozens since different methods and species face different challenges.

I turned to Theodora (Teddie) Geach, Ocean Wise’s Eastern Coordinator, to help sort out my thoughts. Not only was she eager and able to answer my questions, she did such a great job that I’m excerpting her email here so that you can learn more about the pros and cons of Aquaculture, too!

“Aquaculture is the fastest growing food production system in the world and definitely has benefits if done correctly. It has the potential to relieve the pressure from over-exploited aquatic resources; however, it also has the potential to negatively impact the surrounding environment and wild fish stocks.

Five main criteria need to be taken into consideration:

1. Use of marine resources: This would be for example, the amount of wild fish used in fishmeal. If you’re feeding your farmed fish with more wild fish than you’re producing, you’re still putting pressure on the wild fish stocks. Ideally more fish protein is produced using aquaculture, than is used to facilitate it.

2. Risk of disease and parasite transfer to wild stocks: Since farmed fish are confined, they generally live closer together than they would in the wild. This increases the risk of disease and parasites. Therefore, the stock density needs to be considered. As I’m sure you know, with farmed salmon there is the issue of sea lice which can be transferred to juvenile wild salmon, increasing their mortality. In order to reduce this risk, antibiotics are sometimes added to the water which can result in stronger more resistant strains. However, today in BC, you need to get approval from a veterinarian before using any antibiotics. (I’m not sure if this is the case on the east coast as well.)

3. Risk of escapes to wild stocks: Most salmon farms are open-net pens or floating net pens in the ocean, therefore there is the risk of escape. These escaped fish can then compete with wild stocks for resources and may reproduce with wild stocks, thus reducing their genetic viability.

4. Risk of Pollution and habitat effects: These open-net pens can have a significant impact on the surrounding environment since anything added to the water is able to leach out. There can be a build-up of excessive fish feed and feces, which pollute the water and creates a very anoxic environment where nothing can grow except for sulfur loving bacteria. These open-net pens are usually in sheltered coves to protect the nets from extreme weather, but this also means that there is no current flowing through to flush out all the build-up of chemicals and feces, etc.

5. Effectiveness of the management regime: As with any fishery, there needs to be an effective management system in place to ensure that aquaculture practices favour conservation of the environment. For example the use of licensing to control the location, number, size and stocking density of farms; the existence of better management practices; and regulations for release of chemicals into the environment.

So for Atlantic salmon and cod farms, if they are able to address all these issues and support their claims with the data and sound science they would be considered sustainable. However, it is difficult for any open-net pen farm to address all these issues sufficiently.

6. The best option for farmed fish is a land-based, closed containment system. This way there is no risk of transfer of disease to wild stocks, no risk of escapes and you are able to treat and control the effluent water. An excellent example of one of these farms is in Agassiz, B.C. where Bruce Swift as created a land based Coho salmon farm. He is able to treat the effluent water and collect the solid waste, which is then used as fertilizer for garlic and bean crops. The wastewater is used to grow wasabi, watercress and algae. The algae are then used to feed his freshwater crayfish.

In addition to the land based farmed salmon that Bruce Swift is doing, there are some species of fin-fish which are better candidates for farming than others. Other examples of sustainable-farmed fish would include raceway-raised rainbow trout, land based arctic char and land based catfish

Tilapia offers and excellent case study: tilapia provides more protein than it takes to raise it and are relatively resistant to disease. Tilapia are also vegetarian and can be raised on soy protein and rice, which obviously does not put any pressure on the wild fish stocks. However, you still have to be careful where you get farmed tilapia. The best choice is tilapia farmed in the US, which generally uses land-based, closed containment systems. Farmed tilapia from Central America can also be found in our markets. In CA, regulations can vary and the farms may not always be land based; likewise, farmed tilapia from Asia would generally always be considered unsustainable since they are mostly produced in open-net pens.

7. In general farmed shellfish is considered sustainable. This is because they are filter feeders, eating the plankton out of the water column, so they don’t need supplemental feed and don’t put pressure on wild fish stocks. They can even improve the water quality as they clear excess plankton. Shellfish such as oysters and mussels are often grown on suspended cages or in bags off the seafloor so there is little damage when they’re harvested. (This is called off-bottom culture.) Clams can be farmed on-bottom and there can be an issue if they are harvested by dredge. However, the impact of farmed dredging is far less than dredging wild clams.”

Thanks Teddie! I think my readers will agree that you’ve done a great job explaining the benefits and pitfalls of current aquaculture practices!

Do any of you have questions about seafood? If so, jot them below and I’ll invite folks from the CAIA and Ocean Wise to pop in and answer your concerns.