Kingston Market

I finally made it to Kingston Market this a.m. and of course all sorts of goodies were to be found...

First off, I did find fresh lettuce from Cedar Lane Farms. And great sunflower and pea sprouts from Homesteader Farms. The salads in this house will be fabulous this week.

And I got some of the Cedar Lane pork chops - will try those later.

Most exciting was a chat with Fred Decker, who was the first to point me in the direction of NB cheeses a few years back. He's now running Bounty of New Brunswick catering (http://bountynb.ca/) which is focused on "local, seasonal and regional cuisine." And he's cooking at the Kingston Farmers' Market this summer. He made me a fabulous "Maple Peppercorn Egg and Cheese Sandwich" (Cedar Lane Farm eggs, Sussex cheese) and Decker's own Maple Peppercorn Bacon. He also reminded me to check out Mott's Winery near Cambridge Narrows(which I shall surely do) and gestured over to the marketer carrying those fabulous NB cheese. (A man after my own heart, wine and cheese as the key ingredients to anything.)
More on the cheese later...

But the Deckers also had marvellous breads and, be still my beating heart, Belgian waffles. Tomorrow morning I have a date with those Begian waffles, some NB organic maple syrup a friend gave me, Armadale's Balkan yoghurt and last year's Pennfield blueberries turned into a compote...

I also met Cynthia Liberty of Cynfully Delicious Who had gorgeous looking baked goods - using Speerville products of course - including her very cute bagels. If I didn't already have waffles in hand I'd have to get the bagels. I made off with some focaccia bread however and she has quite a raft of other things she makes.

There's always more than one can take in at the Kingston Market - there were the organic herb plants I picked up for my balcony garden from Northern Arrow for example. But more on that later, I have some cheese to taste...

Local Food Resources

Check it out: here some other resources for finding local food:

The NB Conservation Council has its Local Food page with a search engine much like ACORN's:
http://conservationcouncil.ca/Local-Food/

AND: Check *this* out: a friend pointed me to this new site:
http://smarteat.tv/
Apparently it's a "web-tv", social network site, 13 episodes (coming soon) dedicated to NB food producers. Cool yes? Will explore more and keep you posted...

Granola Girls

So it may not be seasonal but before I forget I wanted to mention a lovely local food product in Saint John that people may or may not be aware of. A mother-daugher team here is producing homemade granola bars - the kind without all that scary stuff like high fructose corn syrup, the stuff that Michael Pollan warns is everywhere and contributes massively to our obesity and diabetes crises. Even as I sit here now I have pulled two tired "granola bars" from my briefcase - they are handy things in a hunger crisis - and see that they definitely would not pass Pollan's tests for "real" food. They have many more ingredients than five (his rule of thumb); and one contains many unpronounceable ingredients and high maltose corn syrup (not sure how this differs from high fructose corn syrup). What ticks me off about things like commercial "granola bars" is how we quite innocently assume that they're good for us - they contain good things like nuts and seeds and dried fruit. Oh but the things that are done to those nuts and seeds and dried fruits when they become part of what is loosely called a "granola bar" (or now increasingly "cereal bar"). It makes me crazy how people's efforts to eat well have been used and abused by the food industry. In any case, there is help at hand. The Granola Girls are now selling actual granola bars i.e. organic oats, raw nuts and seeds and dried fruit (and a little dark chocolate). I can attest to their excellence. They're making their bars available by order through their website http://www.granolagirls.ca as well as at Feel Good Store, Ambience Spa and the Kingston Farmers' Market.

Beet Greens are in!

They're here! Okay spring is definitely full on now, and summer is around the corner. Popped by Baleman's in the Saint John City Market this afternoon and ta-da! Rob Baleman's brother had just brought in some gorgeous beet greens. These are those lovely tender baby beet greens that are only around at the beginning of the season when the beets are being thinned. Steam them up and add a little butter and maybe even a bit of vinegar and they are lovely. Only debate around here is baby beets on or off. I like them on, others find them stringy and gritty. I like them on because the beets (tiny as they are at this stage) are so good for you (as are the greens, lots of calcium and Vit C in those babies according to my Laurel's Kitchen). The beets themselves, once they come around, are loaded with goodies. I'm determined to cook beets regularly this summer now that I'm not so scared of dealing with them. At a cooking course in Australia they just made me peel them while they were raw and then steam them and I realized this was actually easier than the whole steaming process where the skins are supposed to just "slip off" and never do.


So, the green season is upon us. Glad I froze some fiddleheads before they disappeared (I'll let you know this fall how that worked out). Rob Baleman tells me that the peas on their farm are already in blossom - that means peas should be here in a couple of weeks, as will the first potatoes. There are visions of hodge podge dancing through my head.

Now I'm on the hunt for more sources of local baby salad greens....

How to find organic in Atlantic Canada

So, a basic resource that you'll want for finding organic food in the Maritimes is the marvellous ACORN site. ACORN is the Atlantic Canadian Organic Regional Network - i.e. the association of organic producers and sellers in Atlantic Canada. Their head office is right here in NB in that hotbed of food activism: Sackville (I am dying to get to the Sackville market this summer). ACORN, bless them, has this marvellous on-line directory of organic sources in the Maritimes where you can just pump in "Blueberries" and up pops all the organic blueberry producers, sellers, u-picks, u-name-its in the region. You can also search by province or narrow it down to a producer or a market or a CSA. ACORN's fantastic site is here:

ACORN

And, doubly bless them, they now have a map of organics in the region on their homepage. You can also sign up to their Facebook page and receive newsletters and updates. It's really the best resource we have for at least finding those folks registered with ACORN. So check it out - you'll be amazed at what you find!

Two other sources you should know about:

The Conservation Council of NB's Find Local Food page - which also has a database for NB:
Find Local Food
Here you can pick your region and get a list of all the farms, farm stands, markets etc. in that region. Great if you're doing some touring this summer!

And, the Really Local Harvest Coop/ Recoltez de chez nous, which provides all sorts of resources on local, environmentally friendly producers in the Southeast region of NB:
Really Local Harvest
The Really Local Harvest folks came up with the "eco-logik" label that you'll see on some farms in south-eastern NB. The label is reserved for those producers who reduce their chemical inputs through more sustainable farming methods.

The Dirty Dozen and Clean 15

So since the local agricultural season is upon us I thought it might be useful to have this handy guide from the Environmental Working Group in the US that lays out the best and worst of fruits and veggies in terms of pesticides. Now I know it's American but given how many of our fruits and veggies are imported from there it's useful for Canadian too. The EWG is trying to keep things simple by going the practical route of dividing up those things you really should buy organic if at all possible and those where more traditional production methods are less problematic. I like their style. If anything, discovering local and organic foods should be fun, you don't have to be a puritan, but why not do it if you can? The EWG list helps you make some practical choices. I figure everyone has their own ethical guidelines, and those guidelines should be flexible. (Sometimes just getting people fed can take precedence I would say. Making fresh produce of any source available to people living in poverty is preferable to no fresh produce. However there's often little reason good why that produce can't be local. ... but I digress. More on that later). In any case, my guidelines run something like: organic and local is the best, but local still beats shipping over long distances and it supports a local sustainable economy, so I'll still go for local even if it's not organic. If I need something from a distance I'll try for at least organic and fair trade if it's coming from the global South. But that still won't cover everything so EWG's list of the clean 15 help me judge I don't have to worry about too much if it's coming from the States. Rules of thumb really. Not written in stone. Depends on the season and all that.

Anyways, for your personal shopping pleasure, here is link to the EWG's pocket guide on the "Dirty Dozen" (and the "Clean 15" as well). They've even got an I-phone app... So take it with you when you shop. And in any case, let me know where you're finding local and especially local and organic in NB!

The Dirty Dozen

Beef, Wild Boar and Buffalo

So while we await the appearance of more NB/Maritime veggies we should also note the growing availability of free range/grass fed meats in NB. Now while I'm cutting down on meat and agree that industrial meat production is a huge burden on the planet, what mean I do eat now I'm trying to make not only local but grass fed/free range/ sustainable etc. It's surpisingly not that hard to find in NB. I'm a big fan of Dave Bunnett's organic, grass fed beef. He's raising cattle in Havelock (where you can stop by to pick up your meat) but his beef is also available both at the Dieppe Market and the Kingston Peninsula Market. And you can order these terrific freezer packs from him which frankly I think are competetively priced with your generic grocery store beef. Check out his website: Bunnet Family Farm
The beef is excellent - way more flavour than grocery store beef and leaner too - so cook with care. Dave gives excellent advice on this.

There are other more esoteric options in NB however
One I found on my way through the old (890) highway from Sussex to Petitcodiac - Brabant's wild boar meat in Newtown/Knightville. Wild boar is very lean and tastier than pork. I had some lovely chops the other night - they need to be cooked slow and low to retain their moisture. It's very low in saturated fat, lower than pork, and only slightly higher than chicken. Brabants

The other night I cooked up their also very tasty and lean sausages along with sauerkraut from Lewis Mountain (outside Moncton)that I also picked up at the Dieppe Market. Apparently there's an organic Lewis Mountain sauerkraut as well.

And in the same trip, I picked up some buffalo meat at the Dieppe market from SeaWind Buffalo Ranch in Bouctouche. Fabulous hot Italian sausages from them. Again very lean and the sausages had a marvellous fennel flavour. Highly recommended if you like Hot Italian. The Buffalo at Seawind are grass fed - avoiding all the problems of grain fed meat.
Seawind Buffalo Farm

There are other sources I'm sure, in fact I'll check it out on the ACORN site....which I will introduce in the next post.