The Great Manitoba Food Bloggers' Bake Sale!

Chocolate dipped marshmallow pops

My presumptuous brownies

 Wow. That was quite the experience. The Manitoba Food Bloggers were having a bake sale in support of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, so I decided to join in. They were being supported by the Manitoba Canola Growers, so I modified the Better Brownies recipe I got through the Fast Paleo website. Paleo frowns on vegetable oils such as canola, but I found some local non-GMO oil and went with that. I also used Cocoa Camino organic fair-trade chocolate chips, which are probably also not strictly paleo as they may contain traces of dairy, etc. Hence, Almost Paleo Brownies ;-). I didn't have time to make a blog post about making them, but that will come.

Chocolate bourbon balls

Man, was I intimidated when I got to Aqua Books and saw what the pros had brought. Some of them actually were professional bakers. I stupidly didn't record the names but just look at these pictures and drool ...

I did receive some kind words from some people who tried the brownies. I wasn't surprised that they didn't sell out ... believe me, those pops above were gone within the first hour!

I also received a very cool white apron, courtesy of the Manitoba Canola Growers, which, as you can see, received very good use when I was cooking for Shabbat after I got home from the bake sale. I hope it washes out, but if it doesn't, it's a well-loved apron and my kids all went gaga over it.

There was a photographer there from the Winnipeg Free Press, who took a picture of those of us who were there in our fancy white aprons, so stay tuned for that.






 Of course, the absolutely best part was hanging out with all these foodies for a few hours. They are very cool, knowledgeable, friendly and welcoming to amateurs like me. The odd chef wandered in and I managed not to fan-girl too badly.

 Thanks again, Shel and others, for letting me play with the big kids and I hope we raised lots of cash for Jamie Oliver's good cause! Looking forward to spending more time with you and learning more about good, local food.

Why Blogging About Food in Manitoba is Really Cool

Chef Michael Shafer demonstrates

Sometimes you just have to step out in faith and ask to play with the big kids. I have recently joined a FaceBook group called Manitoba Food Bloggers. I'm fortunate to be in a group there with people like Shel Zolkewich, Rebecca Hadfield, Ron Cantiveros and other luminaries of the Manitoba food blogging world. They talk about food and farming and restaurants in Manitoba and are generally awesome.

Now I am still recovering from an amazing lunch that I enjoyed on Monday, courtesy of Tourism Winnipeg as part of their kickoff of national Tourism Week. In particular, they were launching Peg City Grub, a very cool blog featuring as many as possible of Winnipeg's 1100 restaurants. It is written and photographed by Robin Summerfield, who totally rocks, and not just because she checked out this blog and decided I was a good fit.

The event at the Forks started with a demonstration by Chef Michael Shafer, of Sydney's at the Forks and the newly opened Rudy's Eat and Drink. Not being a pork eater, I am not clear on the details of the tenderloin he was working on, but I do know it involved Fort Garry Dark Ale, and the smell made me hungry.

That was a good thing as we then moved on to an impressive lunch, which I live-tweeted - how nerdy can you get? Luckily so did a few other people, so I didn't feel too freakish. I also got to meet and share a table with some delightful bloggers. Now I have some real-life faces to put to the posts I see in the FB group!

The lunch consisted of a lot of tiny courses, each supplied by a different restaurant at the Forks. I didn't partake of all of them (in particular, I passed on the crab, bison and chicken), but those I had were delectable. A few pictures (by no means everything we were offered!) just to make you hungry, too.

Empanada from Chilean Corner

Greek Salad from Zorba's Pizza

MB pickerel from Fergie's Fish 'n Chips

Seasonal mini-pie from Tall Grass Prairie Bakery

Three-chocolate canolli from Casa Bella

 So now I am really happy I plucked up the courage to ask Robin if this event was only for the important people with big blogs. It wasn't, and that is what this city is like.

Oh, and one more thing. Those awesome folks from Manitoba Food Bloggers are holding a bake sale on Friday at Aqua Books, 274 Garry Street, from 10 am to 2 pm, in support of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Day. I will be contributing some almost-paleo brownies, which are currently making my kitchen smell good and about which I will be blogging shortly. I hope to see you there!

My Favourite Grocery Store!

There are quite a few wonderful local grocery stores here in Winnipeg, and this time of year the farmers' markets start popping up like mushrooms after the rain, too. But I want to tell you about my favourite of all, year-round.

It's a little operation on Wall St., just north of Portage, if you happen to be local and want to check it out. It's called Eatit.ca, because it started purely as a website, but branched out into a real store.

It started as a family operation, but was bought up by Vita Health, also a local company, a couple of years ago. I was a little concerned when the original owners burned out, but Ryan, the current manager, has done an excellent job of keeping the atmosphere and the high standards that were its hallmark. Most of the original staff are still there, which I think is quite telling.

One of the many things I love about this store is its emphasis on locally grown produce. Living in Winnipeg, that is not something we take for granted. For six months of the year, the ground is covered in snow and all we have by way of local produce is carrots and potatoes from last year, and of course the local mushrooms. But when the tomatoes come in, we know spring is on its way. These are hothouse tomatoes, it is still too early to hope for field ones. But they make my heart sing anyway.






But here is the real kicker - fiddlehead ferns. They are only available for a couple of weeks every year. They aren't even the tastiest greens around. But they are local, they grow outside without plastic or heating, and if you blink, you'll miss them. Every year without fail, I find them at Eatit.ca, and my spring is just not complete without them.

Of course the store also carries local organic milk and local free-run or organic eggs, pickerel and pike from the local lakes, as well as salmon that didn't come from China, bison and elk and halal chickens. You can find most of the organic big names on the shelves, but also Manitoba maple syrup (not this year, alas) and locally grown and ground flour. Most of the produce is still from far away, but those "Manitoba Grown" signs are becoming more and more frequent. I can't wait till they cover the whole cooler.

If you visit that little store at 603 Wall St., be sure to say hello to the staff from me. If all else fails, there's always Eatit.ca.

What is your favourite grocery store?

Quick test post

Trying out the Blogger app on my iPhone. My laptop charger died and I can't use my computer, so sad.

Let me know if you can see this!

On Jian Ghomeshi and Feminism

OK, I will admit it. I'm a groupie. This cutie here is Jian Ghomeshi, host of the CBC show Q (which you USAmericans can hear on PRI and Sirius Radio! Check out the website). He's an impeccable interviewer and his velvety tones are really sexy. If I miss hearing him in the morning, more often than not I'll download the podcast so I can catch him later. Hearing him flirt with Dr. Ruth should make you an addict, too.

He's also an avid Twitter user, and unlike many people in his position, he reads fan responses and sometimes even engages in conversation. Not too many thrills compare to that, even though his tone in our latest exchange was distinctly irritated. Can't say I blame him too much - I do keep coming back to the same thing, and here it is.

Jian likes to address male interviewees as "Sir". Nothing wrong with that - courtly and old-fashioned is extremely charming, especially when combined with above-mentioned velvety tones. The problem is that he has not yet found an appropriate female equivalent, and tends to address his female interviewees by their names. I have been bugging him on Twitter for a couple of years now to find an equally respectful mode of address for women (or girls, or gals, or ladies - see the problem?). In our latest Twitter exchange, Jian suggested that I should find a larger issue to concern myself with. But actually, I think that is a pretty darned large issue, and it comes down to the question of how, and why, women earn respect in our society, and more importantly, from themselves.

The "official" or formal equivalent of Sir is Madam, as in Dear Sir or Madam. I did suggest to Jian that he should experiment with using Ma'am, as is so prevalent in the American South. He responded that many women are not comfortable with that form of address. When I queried whether anybody knows or cares whether men are comfortable with the term Sir, he said that he'd been using it for five years and no man has ever complained.

So, why would a young woman squirm at being addressed as Madam (or perhaps My Lady, as the medieval equivalent of Sir?) or Ma'am, while a young man is fine with being addressed as Sir? We use Madam for women in formal positions of power - Madam Justice, Madam Speaker. I can't imagine the Speaker of the House (any house) feeling uncomfortable with that form of address. So why is it not appropriate for a female actor or activist, regardless of age? Does it imply an old woman to you, more than Sir would for a man? Or is it an enhancement in status for a man to be addressed with that form of respect, while it detracts from a woman's status? Why would it be a detraction for a woman to be addressed as being mature and worthy of respect? This is coming from the women themselves - but the internalisation of the patriarchy is no new phenomenon for us. See Ashley Judd's fabulous essay on the subject. 

Am I crazy to be hearing echoes of the old Madonna/Whore dichotomy here? A mature, powerful man is sexually attractive, whereas a mature, powerful woman is a cougar, unless she abandons all claim to sex altogether. A Madam is a woman who runs brothels, where young, low-status but attractive women cater to the desires of men who are addressed as Sir. The waters become successively murkier the deeper we delve into this.

Jian himself is a strong feminist - just this morning his opening essay was a stirring indictment of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for their neglect of women musicians. But even he is stuck on this thorny issue of address. Yes, it seems a small thing, but I think it is a canary in the coal mine - if we can find a satisfactory mode of expressing respect to women, it will indicate that there is more true respect for women in the bedrock of our society. Call me a dreamer.

What do you think?

True Confessions about Fish

OK, I'm going to come out of the closet. After 18 years as a lacto-ovo vegetarian, I've decided to include fish in my diet. Not just any fish - it's got to be wild-caught, not farmed, and preferably labelled with one of the sustainable fishery seals, so I can be reasonably confident no dolphins, whales or seals were harmed in the process. Also, given the laws of kashrut, the fish have to have fins and visible scales - so no shellfish for us.

I've got some nice Pacific salmon filets in my freezer, and even better, northern pike and pickerel (walleye to you Amurricans) from Lake Winnipeg - as close to local as you can get in a landlocked province like mine. Well, OK, it isn't really landlocked, but I don't know how much of a fishery they have up in Hudson's Bay. Some people dream of  ice fishing up there ... but I digress.

Now, of course, I'm looking for some good recipes. I've marinated the salmon and baked it in aluminium foil - I guess that's the default for any fish, but I'd like to expand a little, especially for Shabbat. All constructive suggestions welcome!

Dashing through the Snow

So, I didn't run barefoot or in a skirt, but I am still recovering from a 5K I ran on Sunday in St. Vital Park. It was called the First Annual Run Your Heart Out Run/Walk in support of the Canadian Diabetes Association. I have to admit, my heart was fine, but I did have some concerns about my ears and toes.

It was my own silly fault, of course. It was -16C and I decided not to bother with a hat because I tend to get very hot on top of my head when I exercise. The obvious answer is a headband, and I do actually own one, but unfortunately I didn't bring it. I did have gloves on (not really warm enough), and I was the only person not wearing a windbreaker (although I did have a warm jacket from Iceland). I was wearing my normal padded running socks and outdoor running shoes (which hadn't seen any use since November or so).

I have to say, it was fun, except for the cold ears and toes. I definitely did not miss the windbreaker - I was sweating inside my Iceland jacket. We ran on the road that loops around the park (about 2.5 times around to make up the 5K). The snow was freshly plowed, there was no visible ice and it was in fact not slippery at all. My husband had expressed some concern about breathing freezing air but I, at least, did not experience any difficulty from this. My ears did warm up after about 2K, on their own so I'm not concerned about frostbite. My toes took longer to recover but appear to have suffered no ill effects. I probably should have put more moisturiser on my hands and face.

I'm a slow runner at the best of times, and of course, what with the snow and the preoccupation with my sore bits, I clocked in just over 40 minutes, one of the last people in (if not the last). I honestly don't care. I did it, I finished it, and I'm very proud of myself. The people who were ahead of me ran faster but also took walking breaks. I decided to stick to a steady slow jog - maybe it's not the best way to go, but I did run the entire 5K without a single break. I do know about the advantages of intervals, so I'm debating in my mind what to do next time.

Runs can only get warmer from here on out. I'm trying to decide whether to stick with 5Ks and try to get faster, or look at moving up to a 10K - although, if I stay with this pace it would take me nearly an hour and a half! Not even thinking about the half marathon at this stage ... and I'm not looking for distance for distance's sake. I just want to be healthy and happy and do things that make me feel good.

What do you think? Which way should I go?