Posts tagged ‘calgary farmer’s market’
Tomato Basil Sauce (taste of summer)
This summer I spent a whole day chopping up a 25lb box of tomatoes and cooking them into a tomato basil sauce that could be stored away for winter. Well, winter is here. No doubt about that. It’s snowy and cold here in Calgary, and it was frosty even in Vancouver, where we spent the Christmas week.
So, freshly home from our trip and with not much food in the fridge, it was time to bring out a jar of that heavenly sauce for a simple pasta meal. I added a small tin of tomato paste to it along with about 2 cups of fresh spinach, some finely chopped almonds, grated asiago and hot chili flakes and served it over brown rice pasta for a delicious, simple supper that tasted just like summer. Vegetarian and gluten free, of course.
The recipe for the sauce is below. I highly recommend devoting a day next summer to finding a big box of tomatoes and making it. It was a beautiful way to spend a day, and the experience of pulling out a jar of your own tomato sauce in winter time is about a million times better than opening up a jar of Prego. (more…)
Welcome to fall
Calgary’s fall has been less than idyllic so far. We spent 10 days vacationing on Vancouver Island in mid-September, and when we came back the weather was hot and balmy, as if it was still summer. A few days after that it turned cold with the first frosts of the season. Since then, we’ve experienced chilly rains and more than a few days of snow, most recently paired with blustering winds and temperatures dipping to -10C.
Aside from braving the cold for a few brief moments today to hang this beautiful sunflower head from Eagle Creek Flowers for our backyard birds to snack on, I’ve felt mostly deprived of the usual joys of experiencing the fall season outdoors. At its best, fall is one of my favourite seasons. It is soothing and peaceful to watch the plant life in our garden reach its full life cycle and prepare to rest for the winter months. And while I miss the warmth of the summer months, enjoying more time nesting in our cozy house is a welcome shift as the seasons change.
We’re spending this weekend, Thanksgiving weekend in Canada, visiting Lake Louise for a couple of days and after that we’ll enjoy a family dinner to celebrate the holiday. With luck we might also squeeze in the Harvest Country Drive, which is happening between Calgary and Red Deer – a seasonal, farm-friendly activity in our region that I’ve never experienced. My hope is that the whole weekend will provide a thorough dose of fall and some much-needed time outdoors, walking, taking photographs and experiencing nature before the long winter settles in.
Caprese salad
Caprese (ka-pree-see) salad, aka the delightful combination of fresh tomatoes, basil and buffalo mozzarella. The latter is pricey (about $10 for a chunk that will serve 4 people), but worth it, especially in the summer when basil and tomatoes are at their most delicious. The salad pictured above was made with tomatoes and mozza from our local farmer’s market, and basil grown on our back deck.
Not sure this is even worth calling a recipe – here’s how to make: Place a few tomato slices on a plate. A combination of different coloured tomatoes is nice, as are the funky shapes and colours of some heirloom tomatoes. Use a serrated knife to gently saw off a few slices from a round of buffalo mozzarella and place the cheese on top of the tomatoes. Scatter some fresh basil leaves on top. Drizzle each plate with a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and dust with freshly ground pepper. Eat!
Dead simple to make, but incredibly tasty.
25lb of tomatoes!
Caselot season has begun at the farmer’s market. Big beautiful boxes of tomatoes, peaches, nectarines, apricots, blueberries and raspberries were all on display when we made our weekly shopping trip. As part of our quest to be more conscious about the transportation footprint of our food, I am making a point of stocking up while local produce is abundant. Already I have a couple of pounds of spinach from our very own garden and half a case of blueberries packaged and stored in our freezer. Next up is tomatoes! We purchased a 25lb case of pesticide-free BC roma tomatoes at the market today. This is obviously a huge amount of tomatoes, as you can see from the photo. It’s a long winter, though, and I make a lot of tomato-based dishes like lasagna, pizza sauce and chili, especially in the winter. I’m sure we’ll have no trouble eating our way through them.
Up until now, I’ve relied on crushed canned tomatoes, organic and delicious, but shipped in from California. Plus, that infamous chemical BPA is found in the top of tin can liners, so I’ve mostly given up buying food in cans. So the case of tomatoes is good – we’ll be eating local and doing away with tinned food almost altogether.
My plan for our case of tomatoes is to eat some this week in salads and salsa, to make a huge vat of the tomato sauce recipe from the Rebar cookbook to freeze, and then to chop and freeze the rest. There’s a character in The Stone Diaries, one of my favourite Carol Shields novels, who accidentally poisons her mother-in-law to death with some improperly canned runner beans (botulism). So although I’ve thought about learning how to can food several times, freezing seems safest. I’m quite fond of my mother-in-law and just can’t shake that story out of my head!
Wish me luck with the tomato preparations over the next few days. Have already sliced a finger with my lovely (but sharp!) tomato knife making caprese salad for this evening’s dinner. Hopefully I’ll fare better with the remaining 24.5lb.
A better way to eat
Over the past year we’ve made a conscious choice to shift our purchasing patterns and lifestyle choices to align with the very intelligent movement around food that is unprocessed, ethical, local, organic and seasonal. In other words, real food. It’s sad and crazy that our North American culture has leaned so far in the wrong direction when it comes to industrial, unsustainable food production practices, not to mention the fact that we as consumers continue to put these products into our bodies and then wonder why health care costs, cancer rates, obesity, fatigue, stress and many other diseases and symptoms plague our society.
The main thing we changed was to drastically reduce our use of traditional grocery stores like Safeway, Sobeys, Superstore etc. Our routine now includes a weekly trip to the Calgary Farmer’s Market, a weekly order from Spud and occasional visits to Planet Organic for staples we can’t find at those other locations. Sunnyside Market is also conveniently located for picking up last minute items and fresh produce. We still make a trip to Safeway once in a while, but it’s less than once a month and it’s starting to seem more and more unnecessary. We’re also growing some of our own food. We have a tiny yard, so it’s not much, but every handful of fresh herbs and plate of salad that we harvest from the deck brings huge satisfaction – it tastes amazing and reinforces what we’re trying to do.
Slowly but surely we’re filling our cupboards and fridge with local foods instead of products that are shipped from thousands of miles away. I’m sure we’ve never been healthier. We’re eating better and we’re cooking better, inspired by more interesting ingredients. I’m thrilled to part with an extra dollar or two knowing that more of my money is going into the local economy and into the hands of a producer who actually cares about the quality of the food we’re eating and is also investing their time, money and effort into creating a more sustainable food system.
