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  • simonathibault 4:40 pm on February 17, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , local, Milk,   

    IT’S HERE! 


    Image courtesy Fox Hill Cheese House

    If the picture doesn’t make it any clearer, Fox Hill Cheese House is finally, after months of paperwork and hard work, selling their own non-homogenised, locally produced milk. The dairy house talked about the sale of milk in a previous article on this website. It’s available at their flagship store in Port Williams as well at the Halifax Seaport Market storefront.

    In an interview with Passable, Fox Hill’s Jeanita Rand tells us that, “Our first day of sales, Friday February 11th, in Halifax was good but our second day on Saturday was awesome!! Our customers were very excited, they have been very patient with the whole process.”

    The milk is available in glass bottles, a system that harkens back to the days of daily milk delivery and the clink of the glass as it was placed on doorsteps. According to the company’s website, the whole milk retails for $3.00 per litre plus $2.25 for the bottle. The milk and bottle are sold separately so that the bottles can be exchanged, (you bring them your clean empty bottles, they supply you with another bottle of milk for $3.00) while customers are able to buy the milk separately. And just like in the old days, you need to clean out your bottles before your return them, and broken or chipped bottles will not be accepted for a return. You can find out more by checking out the FAQ on their website. According to Rand, “Consumers are very positive about have sustainable packaging that can be returned.”

    As for the lack of homogenization in the product, which leads to separation of the fat (read: cream) from the thinner milk, not to fret. Rand suggests that, “gently turning the bottle will integrate the cream throughout the milk.”

    You can get updates from Fox Hill Cheese House by following them on Twitter.

     

  • MB 6:04 pm on July 30, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , food day, local,   

    Food Day! 

    Annapolis Valley

    Tomorrow, July 31, is the 8th annual celebration of Food Day, which in a local sense celebrates the food we produce and offer here in Halifax and Nova Scotia, and on the whole celebrates diversity, creativity and the wonderful cuisine that is available to and from different communities across the country. Whether it’s at a restaurant that is committed to local food, meat and vegetables you purchase from a local farmer at a nearby market, or food grown in your own garden, this is a chance to celebrate Nova Scotia’s amazing culinary landscape.

    “The genesis of Food Day was in  2003 when the BSE crisis was at it height,” Anita Stewart, the culinary activist (not to mention award-winning author, CBC broadcaster and gastronomy superstar) behind the day of action, tells me. “Whole families were ruined and communities, particularly in the Prairies, were devastated. I called my friends and colleagues from across Canada to their barbecues to have a national party on the August long weekend. I asked them to grill at 6 pm in whatever time zone they were in so we could join hands in a virtual fashion and show solidarity for our farmers. In 2004 the request went out again but I felt that we should just cook and grill ALL Canadian ingredients. It became very apparent that that weekend was THE time in the summer that Canadians from  all regions had parties and reunions and camping trips…and local/regional food was constantly involved. It hit me…hey…this IS Canada’s food day so why not name it?”

    “I believe strongly that we must be in control of our own food supply and this is one way of raising awareness….and besides, food from here tastes better. There are 136 restaurants across Canada participating…they were chosen because they walk the talk.  Many have risked a lot financially to use local ingredients.” In Nova Scotia this includes Fid Resto, Le Caveau, Tempest, Fleur de Sel, Chives, the Wooden Monkey and Chanterelle Country Inn all have Food Day celebrations.

    “It demonstrates that chefs and restaurateurs from across the breadth of this great land are united in their belief that regional cuisines borne of great local products are to be celebrated with those who love to dine out,” says Chef Michael Howell, from Wolfville’s Tempest Restaurant. Howell is a huge proponent of local food and the leader of the slow food movement here in Nova Scotia.

    “We have the bounty of both the land AND the sea at our doorstep. Showcasing both Lobster AND Pork from local producers is an easy and delicious way for me to let my customers know that far from Canada’s largest cities we can have great food too!” Along with local lobster and pork, the Tempest menu includes sorbets made from seasonal fruits, and lots of greens that were doubtlessly purchased from Wolfville’s amazing farmers’ market.

    One note: tomorrow is also the last day that the Brewery Market as we know it will be operating, so make sure you take a bit of time to celebrate local food with your last trip to that delightful little labyrinth. Next week the Halifax Seaport Farmers’ Market opens and the Brewery Market becomes the Historic Farmers’ Market Co-operative Ltd. There will still be around 60 vendors there, while around 100 will be at the new Seaport market, which will only be open on Saturdays for the first month or so, but will eventually extend to weekdays as well.

     

  • MB 3:05 pm on July 30, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: culinary crack cocaine, junk food, local   

    Corn Pop Explosion 

    I honestly think that anybody who says they hate childrens’ cereals is nothing more than a lying liar who lies. Whether it’s Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Froot Loops or Corn Pops, there is some bowl of sugar out there that you can’t resist. I know it. Deep down inside, I know it. Because it’s a truth more universally acknowledged than anything Jane Austen ever wrote.

    But as much as I love a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch (ok, I love a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, because that stuff is like heroin), a local product has totally eclipsed everything the Superstore cereal aisle has to offer. I present to you Hennigar’s Corn Pops, my new drug of choice:

    Hennigar's Corn Pops

    I can not leave the town of Wolfville without a bag of these in my possession.

    Light, crispy and with a honeyed taste that would make bees clutch their pearls and pass out from delight, these corn pops are, I declare, the best local junk food ever.

    Hennigar's Corn Pops

    SO GOOD.

    If there is another Nova Scotia junk food that you think rivals this, I’d be interested in hearing about it. And then telling you that you’re wrong.

     

  • MB 11:24 pm on July 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , local, ,   

    That’s IncrEDIBLE 

    One of my favourite events of the year, the IncrEDIBLE Picnic put on by Select Nova Scotia, is coming back to exhibition halls, parks, markets and community centres across Nova Scotia in August. Picnic fans may remember that in the past the Halifax picnic has been on Citadel Hill’s Garrison Grounds, and that last year there was no Halifax picnic due to weather that was so consistently dastardly that you’d think Mother Nature had tied sunshine to some train tracks, and spent the last half of August twirling her moustache.

    If it’s not clear by now, I am pretty excited about the prospect of this year’s community get-together.

    In case you’re not familiar with the IncrEDIBLE Picnic, it brings together local farmers, producers and restaurants at a picnic site where members of the community can sit down in a big communal picnic and enjoy some excellent Nova Scotian food. The picnics are peppered throughout the province, so ants are going to get a workout wandering from one location to another. If while the ants are carrying 20 times their body weight from picnic to picnic, you want to try to eat 20 times your body weight by hitting all of them, here’s when and where they’re happening:

    August 1 – Windsor
    Hants County Exhibition

    August 8 - Truro
    Downtown Civic Square

    August 15 – Wolfville
    Noggins Corner Farm
    Muir Murray Winery

    August  22 - Dartmouth
    Alderney Landing

    August 22 - Mabou
    Mabou Community Centre

    August 22 - Musquodoboit Harbour
    Musquodoboit Harbour Farmers Market

    August 22 - Annapolis Royal
    Annapolis Royal Farmers and Traders Market

    Incidentally, there was just a report on CBC about how Nova Scotia’s don’t eat local. This is our chance to ‘em wrong!

     

    • Christine 4:39 pm on August 5, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Great event and we can’t wait to go either! Taste of Nova Scotia and Adventures in Taste will be at the Alderney Landing Picnic. Taste will be selling a Scotian Gold Apple, Fox Hill Cheese Fenugreek Salad with a blueberry honey vinaigrette. See you there!

  • MB 9:01 pm on June 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , local,   

    Chef Battle 

    When I aarrived at CATCH: the Nova Scotia Seafood Festival on Sunday, it was in the middle of the last semi-final round of the Great CATCH Chef Competition. Chef Bee Choo Char, Executive Chef at Gio restaurant at the Prince George Hotel in Halifax vs. Chef Luis Clavel, Executive Chef at the Holiday Inn Harbourview in Dartmouth. Last year, Char came in second to Chef Andrew Stevens, Chef de Cuisine at Little Louis’ Restaurant in Moncton, NB. After a well-fought match, and some seriously delicious plates getting handed off to the judges, Clavel — who I profiled in The Coast earlier this year — was victorious.

    Chef Competition

    After a brief intermission, it all came down to Chef Peter Dewar, Professional Chef/ Teacher at Nova Scotia Community College, and Clavel. Chef Ray Bear (who is opening a new restaurant soon, called MIX Fresh Kitchen) hosted and poked a lot of fun at the two chefs, promising at least a year of ridicule and derision to the loser. (More …)

     

  • simonathibault 3:51 pm on May 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: local,   

    Changing seasons in the first person 

    My kitchen and I are in between seasons.

    I have spent the past few months eating root veggies and squash, cooking meats over slow heat, to help heat the house and make decent dinners.  If only I could have some fresh greens to go with my wine-braised rabbit.  I’m getting tired of celeriac.  It’s not easy to eat seasonally in this province.

    Spring is a time of birth.  It is also a very brief and occasionally difficult time of transience in Nova Scotia.

    Farmers are still worrying about frost damaging their crops.  People in kitchens are dreaming of the upcoming bounty.  And I’m already starting to miss the heat of the oven, the slowing down of time that comes with simmering and roasting.  No matter how excited we get for the first green shoots to come up out of the ground -  the early rhubarb, the asparagus- there’s a part of me that still wishes we had room to make slow-simmered pots of food.

    It’s late May, on a sunny afternoon, and I am in the kitchen, making an apple crisp with frozen apples that I had already cored and peeled and put into Ziploc baggies for the dead of winter.  I also added some frozen cranberries that my mother and father have picked themselves, in a small bog not far from there home.  If my memory serves me, my father got poison ivy getting me these berries.  Thanks again Dad.

    For dinner tonight, I am making a salad with some of the first radishes of the season.  But I am making a compromise to the seasons:  braised ox tails are slowly simmering in the oven.  I open the windows to make the best of both world. Fresh air coming in, and the heat of the oven slowly dissipating toward the incoming season.

     

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