Ontario Wine Spot #2- Frogpond Organics

Frogpond Farm Organics-
All organic farm, done with bullfrog energy and owned by two germans. The first and only entirely organic estate winery in Niagara. The tasting room is in a small house, and the winery is called frogpond because the way they gauge their environmental success is by the population of frogs in their property’s pond. It’s a good thing they don’t gauge their wines similarly otherwise there would be a pile of dead frogs somewhere. Most of the wines here were pretty unbalanced, lacked harmony, too much ying, not enough yang, you get the idea. I don't mean to knock them, because I really admire their beliefs and the execution thereof. Just not the wines and the execution thereof.

Cab Franc- Musty, but with some nice characteristics. Tar, peppers.

Chambourcin- Actually my favorite of the winery and one I hadn’t tried before or ever heard of. A bit sweet, nice pepperiness, and rounds out with berries and dark fruit. Relatively decent, but nothing I would pay for.

Cab Merlot-Lots of leathery, green pepper tones, some spices, really full bodied, but not so tasty.

Rose-A really confused tasting rose. Not very tasteful, in my opinion.

Ontario Wine Spot #1- Ravine

Ravine Vineyards
The story- Ravine is a newcomer to the scene, but one of the most enterprising wineries we came across. They have a multi-angled assault on the Niagara market, with a fair amount of cash and success to back it up. Suresh from Spotlight Toronto told us he thinks Paul Harber, the chef and son of the owners, is Ontarios newest up and comer. Far from being just the son of some winery owners, Paul has worked all over. He worked for Michael Stadtlander north of Toronto, before being sent by Michael to Germany to work for local celebrity and chef Victor Klinz. He also spent time in New York at famed nuvo-italian restaurant A Voce. They fiercely battled it out with Mario Batali’s Babbo to be the best Italian in New York. Either way, Paul is not only a good chef, but also an ambitious chef, already running a deli and bakery with some friends from Stadtlander’s Eigensinn Farm, he has plans for a fine dining restaurant and is already working on an oyster bay. So, talented, ambitious, and luckily rich, he is rocking out some serious stuff and I’m going to have to keep an eye out for him.

The wines

Cab Sauv-
Ripe flavours, fun to drink and easy to polish off. I can imagine several bottles disappearing before anyone stopped to wonder why it’s so drinkable. It’s relatively light bodied for a Cab Sauv, but nevertheless keeps it’s flavours.

Cab Franc-
Gamey, nice flavours. Easy match with certain game or wild meats. Definite wild boar sausages. Nice smoke from the oakey undertones.

Chardonnay- Mineral aroma, hints of beeswax, honey, wood and some light berry tones.

Gewurtraminer- Sweet, but not offensively so. Not too much of the common characters of lychee or rose, not a wine I felt was impressive or bad, just a meh wine.

Niagara Peninsula Overview

So I've decided to do an overview of the Niagara region, and then proceed with my usual troublesome winery spotlights. Niagara is a beautiful place, natural splendor, gorgeous falls, beaches, and all the other poetic stuff. The fact is, the falls were a big let down for me. Not to say they weren't impressive, but they don't hold a candle to Iguazu. Like, not even a small tealight. The falls are big, and they spray, but they don't have much wonder-inducing qualities to me. We arrived midday and went to see them, walked through the hell hole that is Niagara Falls the city, and checked into the natural wonder. It's really touristy and kitchy, lacks realism and honesty, and was way smaller than I thought. The pictures I've seen show it dwarfing boats on a massive scale. Not so. It's still a great place, but I really do wish it was a bit more true to life. Everyone is a huge American, theres a midway, a bunch of really lame restaurants, movie theatres, candy shops, and burger joints. I was superbly dissappointed, but had to walk around. It was like being inside a car accident. There was no reality here, just hyper-culture gone horribly wrong. The buildings were something a child would envision, the exposure to the main street far too prevalent. It is a city that sold it's soul to the devil that is it's tourist office. Though millions of dollars pour in every year from all over the world, there is no honesty. To walk through the city is to know people are guessing how much money you have and if you are dumb enough to give some to them. It's brutal. Nevertheless, there are some interesting food upsides. Pingue prosciutto would be chief among them. Though he was slow to respond to us, too slow, in fact, for us to visit him, I still appreciate what he's up to. Mario Pingue is one of the only people making old style Italian prosciutto here in Ontario. Him and his brother run their shop out of Niagara falls. They were taught the craft by their dad, and continue doing it to this day. We had the chance to try it a couple times, and it's actually quite tasty. Funny story, though he doesn't anymore, he also used to get his pigs from the same farmer Black Hoof does, who we met at the Slow Food picnic. Small world, especially in food. We stayed in Niagara falls that evening, ate Pingue prosciutto pizza, and relaxed. The following day was going to be a busy one. Winery Madness. After a pile of wineries we went to Lake Erie at Crystal Beach and swam, tossed around the disc, and generally hung out. After that we went to a couple more wineries, ending off with Cave Spring, near closing time. At that point, they shoveled all their bread onto us, and we had three loaves in hand, as well as two t shirts, which they provided us for free. Pretty epic. We decided to make bread bowl soup. So we made a bacon and leek cream soup, and filled it into these dark round loaves we had hollowed out as bowls. It was mindblowingly delicious. I was super satisfied, and after that, we checked into the library to see it's ability to serve our wireless addiction. It had some ability, but not the most I've ever seen. So we slowly phased out, I ended up on a local network of a village there, and progressed on that until bedtime. Dinner was delicious and I got to post on some stuff and realize just how far behind I actually am, so that was nice. The next day we also spent almost entirely at wineries, though also one cheesemonger. Upper Canada Cheese is another pretty soulless place, owned by the same gentleman who owns Hidden Bench, which we were to visit. The cheesemaker apparently supports his winery hobby, which is lame, because it's a pretty lame cheesemaker. They make some decent cheese, but very limited in variety and flavour profiles. They do a good job importing other peoples cheeses and selling them in their Niagara style gift shop. A pretty disappointing place, but they have benches outside, where we made breakfast and prepped our lunch, so not all bad. We continued from there to a variety of wineries around the area. At one we met a gentleman by the name of Mark Walpole, who we had talked to over the phone and agreed to meet at a winery. Mark makes vinifera grape flour, a product that is somewhat interesting to anyone who likes a little colour in their food. He gave us a couple packs to play with, and we've been doing a little experimenting so far, not with tremendous success, but I think that with a little more effort and tweaking a couple of the ideas could work. Mark is a pretty welcoming guy, and introduced to Eric, who runs the tasting bar at the winery we were at, where we received a sweet tour of their gravity fed systems. Mark had to hurry off to dinner engagements, but we gave him our best, and returned to our cooking spot from the night before to make a cabbage and beef stew. Before we had the chance to, however, we both passed out, so no dinner, just sleep, after all the wine, not such a surprise. The next morning we awoke early and made the best out of our last day on the peninsula. Visited a few more wineries and a meadery before heading out back to Toronto.

Slow Food Pig Roast and Cheesemaking

Before that happened, we had to leave to get to a Slow Food Pig Roast near Stratford, which Danielle had invited us to. The Pig Roast itself didn't have as large a turnout as Slow Food had hoped, but it was still a bundle of fun. We met a couple farmers, including the gentleman who raises pigs for Grant at Black Hoof. We met our hosts, Kris and Mark, who are a potter and a farmer, respectively. Mark does pigs, corn and a couple other crops, and Kris and her potter pals built an Anagama, an ancient Japanese pottery oven that is pretty amazing. I know what your thinking, what does that have to do with food? But let me assure you, she makes functional dishware, casseroles, and cookware, so ha! It is food related!
Anyways, this oven is insane, it fires for six days, and needs to be fed wood every five minutes. It runs so hot that ash is really a non issue. It glazes the pots and melts, so clean up is minimal after a firing. She has a list of people who want to come and fire. These ovens are relatively scarce, so potters flock to them. Moving on to the roast itself. The piggy was nicely cooked for handful of hours, and had just come out when we arrived. We lended hands where deemed necessary, so we shucked and cooked all the corn, and helped out with the focaccia. The wood oven was firing too high for the first round of bread, and we got a nice peice of burnt madness, which was nevertheless tasty. After that round we shoveled a bunch of smoking hot coals into the corn pit, so that the temp would stay up there. Worked out well, but there was a lot of excess food. On the upside, the ring of people we got to hang out with after all the normal folks were gone was a blast. Everyone was really relaxed, and had a good time. We met Suresh Doss and first lady Nina Popovic, of Spotlight Toronto, a wicked online publication revolving around food and wine of Toronto and it's region. They are awesome folks, and we got to meet up with them again on our second pass through Toronto. After the roast was complete, we all went down to a local pub to wind down the evening and relax a little. Little by little, our group got smaller and the conversation wandered from subject to subject. Eventually we asked the bartender if we could leave our van in the back and just stay there, which he permitted because he knows Mark. It was a pretty excellent evening, and we were to awake early to go make cheese. As darkness closed in we decided to call it a night and rolled out to the van.

The following morning we awoke to the back alley sounds of garbage trucks and angry squirrels, and decided that perhaps it was time to leave this place and get cheesemaking. Ruth's pal Paul let us shower at his house, at her insistence that we be as clean as humanly possible before entering the dairy. We then changed garb into our finest livery of hair and beard nets and dairy clothes before being sanitized and washed in. The dairy is awesome, not only is the facility pretty kick ass, but the people who work there are fun. We got to make cheddar, which I will never look down on again. When cheddar is mentioned, my neural nets light up. I make a lot of associations. From favourite dishes, defintely, but also associations to processed cheese, Kraft, bad cheddar cheeses and cheap shreddded cheddars. Now I have one more which trumps all. The process of making cheddar is not a simple one, nor even just as simply complex as regular cheese. Cheddar is a wild scene. Cheddar is grunt work. After pasteurization, the whey gets pumped into a massive vat with paddles that basically get it heated up enough to have fun with rennet. The microbial enzymes are added, and then the curd starts forming. My first task was to keep the curds small, so I was arms deep in a tub of warm whey, getting slapped around by paddles and trying to find large chunks to break up. It was fun. After the curds have formed, the whey is drained off for the piggys, and we are left with pure hot curds. These are pressed, left to coagulate, then cut to drain. After they have solidified slightly, they are cut again and then flipped. We flip them a bundle of times over around an hour, ensuring each side has proper exposure to being pressed on the steel. This forms blocks. I was astonished at these blocks, thinking they would be pressed into cheddar themselves.
However, it was not to be. You then run the blocks through a curd mill, which slices them into pieces small enough to be curds again. The first press is just to drain whey. After the cutting, the real work begins. The cheese must then be salted and kept moving. Two shovels are needed, as well as one person to salt the cheese and break up chunks by hand. It is a prodigious amount of labour. Larger facilities do have a mechanical process, but I was much happier to do it by hand, as it meant not only was I doing it the original way, but also the only way I'll likely ever be able to afford to. The curds, after salting and vigorous mobility, are then put into a box lined with cheesecloth and pressed pneumatically. The structure is pretty brilliant.
After cheddar, and in between steps of cheddar, it was camembert time. The camembert is a much more delicate cheese, and has less procedural difficulties than cheddar. It is cut with small, harp like objects into tiny cubes, then someone(me and fabian) will drain off the whey with a basket and sieve. Keeping in mind that the whey is for ricotta and pig feed, and not the floor. After most of the whey is carefully drained, the curds are packed into molds with holes to help keep maximum drainage going. These molds are really cool because they not only shape the cheese and give it it's finished consistency, but they stack like lego! In one massive block of plastic, around 50 wheels of camembert sit and get ready for edibility. It's a pretty awesome enterprise. The third cheese we started we did not get to finish was the ricotta, because we cleaned, scrubbed down, and then went to hang out in the ripening room with Daniel, the prodigal son. The ripening room doubles as the hang out and packing facility, and we were prepping cheeses for the upcoming markets. We had been tasked with rolling up the little prince, an ash covered softy with gooey goodness inside. After another hour or so of wrapping, we had a brief discussion about our next step, and decided that due to our schedule being so far behind it is incredible, we would move on. We thanked everyone profusely, gave Ruth a bottle of wine, and partied on. The next step was the legendary Niagara Peninsula, and it had a lot of wine in store for us, so we needed our time there. It turned out we needed more time than we even we thought. Again. Thanks again to the slow foodies and cheesemakers of Stratford, you will not be forgotten!

Toronto Round 1

I love Toronto, just putting that out there. I know that apparently half of Canada hates the other half that lives in Toronto, but I think it is an amazing city. I guess I was technically born there, so it does have to be at the very least incredible, just for surviving my first living years. Beyond that though, there are other boasts. It is a phenomenal place full of awesome people of every age, race, sexual orientation and culinary preference. It has little Italies, Portugals, Greeces, Chinas and Koreas, though the Chinas are not so little. Nor are the Italies, I guess. It is a city with surface culture, sub culture, counter culture, and some obscure other culture so sneaky it has yet to be named. I think it kicks ass in a million ways. I could walk around and eat in Toronto until I was homeless, and then build back up my bank to do it again at all different restaurants. The city is so saturated with food it's insane. We picked up Greg in Guelph on the way back into Toronto, and rode out as the three horsemen of the apocalypse. Toronto was great, though difficult to find a place to sleep in. For the moment, we parked at Home Depot and took a short train ride downtown to wander. We walked through the Eaton Center and around, all the way to Chinatown and Kensington market. We had a couple pints and something to eat in Kensington and then split with Greg to bring the van to it's overnight location. We ended up at a friend of my mom's, who was at her cottage, and therefore had a free driveway. It was way too far out of town for us to really manage comfortably, but we did it. After that, we took the train back into town and went to 'the hot and spicy festival' which was an embarassing place, though we had good posole. After that we met up with a motley crew of people and proceeded to drink pitchers of gin and tonic. That night got pretty out of hand, with Greg and myself meeting some friends from university and generally causing a fuss. It was nice to see people again, and great to get some social life back into the scene. You get tired of one another after a couple months in tight quarters, so it's a refreshing change. After the night out, it was a hell of a hike back to the van to sleep, but I eventually made it. I'm serious when I say it was grueling to find. The next morning we were late to get to the market, as the hangovers were in full effect. We managed to show up an hour before closing, have some interesting chats, and see the Monforte Dairy truck get painted up. Ruth was hanging out at her market table, so we chatted a bit. She introduced us to Luis, a mexican chef currently running the restaurant Torito in Kensington. I'd read about the STOP community program that his restaurant was part of. He's a genuinely concerned chef with a lot of plans and things on the go. He invited me to visit the restaurant when we return, and see what he is doing there. I was glad to accept. Other people at the market were interesting, but time was limited and we already had plans to re-visit Stratford for a cheesemaking mission and pig festival. We decided we would try to chance it with the car, and move closer to the city. Somewhere accesible by train at night would be optimal. We found said spot in the beaches. It also had easy access to showers, which are provided free down at the beach. Why there are so many dirty homeless people in Toronto boggles me. You can just go mutter to yourself in the shower for a bit. No biggy. That was a joke, some will take it in poor taste, but they have no sense of humour. We then decided we were going to take the thirty thousand or so recommendations we'd received to go to the Black Hoof, because though thirty thousand people can be wrong, it still improves the odds. It was amazing. We ended up eating seven courses, lots of wine and beer, and having some decent conversation with Grant, the resident chef and charcuterie fiend. It was a lavish meal, very rustic and refined at once. I was extremely impressed with the level of craftsmanship that he puts into his food, particularly the charcuterie. We had a platter with 7 different types of cured meats and pates, followed by a big peice of bone, full of juicy marrow, served with toasted points. After that it was horse tartare, complete with hot sauce. To chase that awesomeness we had sweetbreads, which he lightly smokes before cooking, with chanterelles and peas. Stellar dish. A tongue sandwich on brioche with tarragon mayo rounded out the parts of the animal we were used to. More uncommon than even I'm used to was a crispy pigs ear salad with radishes and a buttermilk dressing. Delicious and super crisp. The last and most confusingly delicious dish of the evening was pork belly, squid, and watermelon. I can't imagine how he came up with this combination, but it is amazing. He reduces watermelon juice with a variety of spices and fun seasonings until the sweetness is altered into a fruity, red sauce, reminiscent of tomato sauce. In that, he heats chunks of what I think was compressed watermelon, pressed in the sous-vide machine, or could have been just extremely dense melon he got somewhere. Underneath is a huge slab of pork belly, and it has a couple peices of seasoned, cooked squid resting atop the whole thing. I was astonished when I saw it on the menu, astonished that I asked for it, and even more astonished that it was so good. It is a dish that would suffer hugely from poor execution, and happily didn't have to. The owners, Jen and Grant, were both hugely kind to us, and we had a great time picking Jen's brain about places to visit for wine in the Niagara area. I really admire Grant for his mentality about the whole business. He says that he doesn't want the hoof to last forever. I respect that hugely. He likes it for now, but the day it becomes a stressful, hard place for him, he'll be happy to shut it down and commence something else. For now, they've opened the hoof cafe across the street, where not only their overflow, but it's own loyal followers, go to eat. Intelligent business practices, wicked cuisine, and a sound ethical philosophy based mainly around flavour. He gets the best pigs around, which happen to be the most free, natural and ethically treated pigs. He wants more control over the produce he is getting in, so he plans to open a grocery next door. Chef and his cooks go out picking mushrooms and foraging for what they can, run specials and run out. It is an awesome arrangement. I'm extremely impressed with the food, the people, and their dedication. I can't wait to see what happens next.

After a wicked meal, we went for a pint nearby, and then wandered the entertainment district. I had gotten home late the night before, so I retired while Fabian went out to work the scene alone. The next day showers and such were directly down the street, and then we went to a blueberry festival in the Brickworks market we had visited the previous day. At the blueberry festival we met a few new people and a swath of folks we already knew. The festival itself was relatively tame, and we had to leave before the pie competition, so we didn't really see the pinnacle of it all.
Not dissappointing, however, because we were off back to Stratford, to see both our friends and a pig, who would likely be delicious.

Missed Post: Wanuskewin Cultural center

K so I missed this post. It's somewhere in between Saskatoon and Regina, so slot it in there memory style. We visited a native heritage center in a desperate search for the so far elusive native cuisine. Though it by far yielded the best results of any effort so far, it was nevertheless disappointing. We've been looking for any kind of refined traditional cuisine, but have found very little. Certainly preserved foods, by wind, smoke and salt, but no real effort to make it taste amazing. They had a restaurant at the heritage center, which meant we were able to sample the goods. Sadly it was wildly westernized. The bannock was baked, which is intrinsically wrong, due to the lack of ovens, and there was pot pie and other European dishes on the menu. We had bison bannock pizza, fries, salad, and a venison pot pie. The flavours weren't great, and the tradition was definitely not there. After eating in the restaurant we asked the cultural interpreter what he knew about it. Very little. He had a spoon carved from a bison hoof, some hunting tools and a few other doodads, but no real history of cuisine among the aboriginal peoples. He spoke a little bit about how they boiled water and cured skins, but not much about eating on a day to day basis. It was really a mind blowing thing, because I think culture revolves around food and the ability to feed yourself. Once a society has developed a cuisine, it usually has reached a point where high culture is present, because it has become so comfortable with it's food source that other things are possible. Aboriginal cuisine is difficult for two reasons. The first is that they didn't have much in the way of permanent agriculture, and lived a nomadic existence, following the herds of buffalo. This lifestyle entailed rapid preservation of food to survive the long journey it inevitably had to undergo. Rapid preservation doesn't lend itself to flavours that we know scientifically humans are geared to go far. Fats, salts and sugars. There was also very little industrial process, so flour, sugar and many other refined foods were unavailable. A mill would be impossible to follow the buffalo with. The second reason their food is difficult to decipher is that they lack a written tradition to delineate what they ate. Maybe they did have massive feasts with whole animals, rubbed in roots and berries to enhance the flavour. We won't know, because they didn't write it down. Even the interpretive center was open to a lot of speculation on traditions and the interpreter gave his personal opinion on a bunch of things. Sad to see. I hope theres somewhere that has preserved the food traditions and we'll know more, but I don't hold out much hope.

Stratford Madness

Upon arrival in Stratford, we didn't really arrive. I called Ruth, the cheesemaker and owner of Monforte, and she told me I should show up and have a chat at the dairy. She did have an appointment for lunch though, so we were to be there bright and early in order to have enough brain picking time. We got lost, like three times, partly because it's in a small industrial subdivision off a main strip with no connection to any other road, and partly because a corn farmer led me astray. Either way, we were lost, and by the time we got there, she had to leave for her meeting. But Ruth Klahsen is no slouch, and instead of telling us to fuck off, she just brought us to her lunch. Good thing too, because we met up with Danielle, the food representative for the area, and she proved a great contact as well. Over a couple of inside out burgers ((cheese inside the meat, see?)clever, isn't it?) we discussed everything from the dairy to the current situation of food in the world, all the way through to our goals and dreams. We have a lot of things in common. Ruth is an amazing person, honest and blunt to a fault, no bullshit, all business, and concerned with all the right things. She has been in Stratford a long time, cooking, teaching cuisine, and finally making cheese. It was an awesome experience to be able to hang out in Strat with not only her, but her team and the people she surrounds herself with. Her right hand man, Paul, is also an awesome individual, and even let us shower at his house. We decided we had better stick around. Ruth and one of her team were kind enough to give us tickets to see the opening show of 'Dangerous Liasons'. A rather lecherous but amazingly executed play about a couple of manipulative aristocrats in pre revolutionary France. It was awesome, and it was a nice touch of civility to our otherwise quite rugged trip. It reminded me how much I enjoy live theatre as well, which was something I'd lost. I now intend to go frequently when I'm older and economically secure. Neither of which are certain. In any case, it was really enjoyable, and we even sat next to Ruth's son and his girlfriend. Though Daniel was on the verge of collapse from exhaustion, we did convince them to join us for a drink afterwards at a local bar. After that we returned to the dairy to catch a couple hours of sleep before the next day. The following day there wasn't much going on, but we promised to return after a short jaunt to Toronto and party in the pig roast/make cheese. It was a good promise, and the easiest to keep. For now, we went to the big city to see what was going on.

Northern Ontario to Southern Ontario

Now the Yukon was something we expected to be remote and difficult to get to. But this time, we weren't going to the Yukon, we were going to Thunder Bay and over Lake Superior. Turns out the drive time is the same. Northern Ontario is a crazy remote place, with lots of nothing, and lots of space. I know space is something, but lets not get too philosophical here. Thunder Bay is sort of like the event horizon for Northern Ontario's proverbial black hole. The Bay is a great place actually, although somebody 50 years ago in the city planning commission deserves a bullet in the head. The whole waterfront is industrial land, and most of it unused. There is access only in a couple of places, and it's in the spots where fun is in scant supply. They should re-vamp their ancient industrial complex (whose replacement is 200m away and looks the same) into a park of some sort, or some useful structure, instead of allowing it to remain the bane of the beach as it is. We only stopped there a day, came in the morning, left early evening, but I still had a good feeling about the city. We visited the Hoito, which is basically a Thunder Bay breakfast institution. A little background on why and how this place exists is that there are lots of Finnish people in Thunder Bay. That is all I know. The have a big Finnish population, hence lots of Finnish restaurants, including this one, in the basement of the Finnish cultural center. The restaurant has the mandate to provide cheap and tasty Scandinavian food for the masses, and it does it extremely well. We not only had awesome pancakes, which are the house specialty, but also a rye bread and rice pasty with warm egg salad on top, which was damn delicious. I forget the name, but online they call them Karelian pastries. Tasty stuff. The meal was pretty cheap, and the pancakes were also good enough not to complain. Afterwards we made the conclusion to push East, in order to keep up with schedule, which has since turned into a farce, but nevertheless, at the time, was important. We did this in spite of an invitation from a friend of mine to visit her cottage near Thunder Bay, so you can imagine it wasn't an easy decision.
Nevertheless, we visited the Terry Fox monument and set on our way, stopping only to eat some smoked goldeye fish, which was decent, but far from spectacular. This had nothing to do with our treatment of it, because we bought it as is, so ha. With the fish we had leftover bean salad, a nice green salad, more pickled herring, onion relish, and our favorite, bannock. It was a light meal in terms of flavour, but I remember wanting to be unconcious after eating all of it. It was so filling and heavy in the stomach as to be unpleasant.
We kept going for a while and stopped at the Agawa petroglyphs, a series of native paintings on a rock right by the river. It's a bit of a precarious climb, so I did it without hesitation, other members of my party were more hesitant. Cough. They weren't really worth risking my life for, so I can't say much about it. You basically climb down onto a wet shelf to look at half drawings of imaginary creatures. Though their longevity is pretty impressive, it basically stops there. That was our last stop before sleep that evening, in some random small town along the way. Our first truck stop. No stories, sadly, it was a dark and uneventful evening.

We kept on keeping on until Sudbury the following day, where we prepared a simple dinner of rice, peas and sauteed mushrooms under the big nickel. Though it was a super simple and fast meal, it was tasty, and the location was pretty decent. The nickel is actually somewhat of a disappointment, being constructed not of one piece, but actually many pieces of stainless steel. The effect of the multiple pieces is patchwork and looks almost, dare I say it, unprofessional? I realize logistics aren't easy when making a massive replica of a coin, but I felt the execution was poor. After Sudbury we rolled down the coast quickly to Wasaga beach. Though I didn't know it, I remembered immediately that I had been here as a child. I remember feeling weird about how trashy it was. I felt the same way this time around. Not only is it full of tourists and Torontonians (who I have nothing against), it's so packed that it's bordering on claustrophobia. The water actually feels a slight artificially warm because it's clogged with people. Gross I'm aware. There was also some kind of bacterial scare recently, so double bonus extra fun was in effect. Don't swallow the water!

All jokes aside, the beach was mediocre, but a nice refresher. We drove from there straight through to Guelph, stopping only to get snack supplies from the local Foodland. We pulled up at the Meron family homestead late that evening, and my beard received it's due gasps. I haven't seen Greg since I left Vancouver this most recent time, but after living together for a long time, that's kind of like losing a limb or something similar but not so difficult to remove. We get along like a house on fire, it's almost an issue. We hung around that night, enjoyed the company of his family, and relaxed. The following day we played some Frisbee in the yard, where Howie demonstrated his prowess with the disc. After that we moved downtown for a wander about, visited a brewery that doesn't give tours, therefore doesn't get me to drink it's beer, and jammed. One shop we found extremely interesting was Ouderkirk and Taylor. It's a small downtown Guelph cheese shop, host to mainly local cheeses, but also a variety of produce from the area, especially specialty food items. They have a mass of locally made jellies, meats, vinegars, oils, and other specialty Canadian stuff. We bought a pack of Red Fife wheat flour, which is a dense wheat native to Canada, and was a staple product until industrial agriculture edged it out with GMO's. It has recently had a renaissance since the local food movement caught on, and sells more and more every year. It's a landrace variety, which means not only that it grows well in a variety of conditions, but there is genetic variability within the strain of wheat itself. In any case, it makes for awesome flour, though ideas are scant as what we can do with it on the road. From a recommendation by Katie, the lovely young lady in Ouderkirk and Taylor, we decided the next day to visit Monforte cheese in Straford, which is a bit of a backtrack, but no big deal. Wrong. Huge deal, huge awesome deal. The saga continues.

Winnipeg Proper

Winnipeg is a mildly charming city. It smacks of history, but also has a rough around the edges appeal that either gets you going or doesn't. It's all about how much you like feeling more muggable than average. We had a couple orders of business there. One was Ukranian food, another was the farmer's market, and yet another was getting our hands on the local fish delicacies. Lake Manitoba is massive, almost a great lake sized lake, in my humble opinion. Inside it's murky mysterious depths hide many delicious fish. One in particular is [ickerel, and another in particular is goldeye. Goldeye is most often served smoked, so we decided we should get fresh pickerel and smoked goldeye. There was a good fish market around the farmers market, so we decided instead of getting the fish and finding somewhere sketchy to eat them, we would invest in their deliciousness on our way out of the city, and find a more suitable arena for their consumption. We decided to visit the perogy house for lunch the first day, then split up and 'experience' the city before rejoining and playing frisbee on government property. Alycia's is "the most authentic" perogy house in Winnipeg. Authentic means a lot of things to a lot of people, in this case specifically that it was slightly shabby and dirty but had uncompromisingly amazing perogies. They were damn good. I also had cabbage rolls, which were less good, but still edible, which, judging by the interior of this place, was a feat in itself. They also keep a deli on the side, where you can buy most of the products they sell in the restaurant for home consumption. As Fabian took to the streets to absorb the culture of Winnipeg, of which there is lots, I was feeling more lazy and relaxed, and thus took to the library to read, listen to music, and catch up a little bit on this platform of communication that seems to avoid my catching up like the plague.

I went downtown after a short while, to catch up on the culture. Did a quick run around of 'The Forks', a port area re-designed for gullible tourists. It was pretty weak in a really general sense, without too much specific hate garnered towards any exact location, so I left. Rolled down to the governmental district and rocked out some serious frisbee on their preciously kept grass. We then visited a hostel staffed by the Australian bearded phenom, and showered for cheap because we got along. We also saw him the next day at the market. For dinner we did some research, and discovered that Winnipeg's best burger was nearby and supposedly quite delicious. Not so, but it was above par, and the guys had been doing it the same way for 25 years, so kudos to VJ's drive in for perseverance and generally keeping it real.

Furthermore, that evening we decided that nightlife in Winnipeg, though not a priority or, as it turns out, remotely close to as good as it looks, was something we should explore in the name of Canadian culture. After a run on sentence like that I generally like a short punchy one, like the following. Don't go out in Winnipeg. It looks like fun, like there are tons of people out there carousing and degenerating the fabric of our society. This is not so. It's mostly teenagers who needed better parenting. I was more than dissappointed, and actually decided to neglect further poisoning of self in order to get some sleep. Not a position I generally find myself in. I believe to this day it was the proper decision. Moving on.

Enthralling though Winnipeg is, we needed a change of pace, something like a drive across miles of nowhere seemed suited to us at the moment, so we followed instinct. Visiting the farmer's market and the fish market to ensure proper stocks, we pursued the quest of traveling across country in fine form. The Winnipeg farmer's market was relatively large and impressive, but had a whole wack of farmers who clearly order from sysco and repack into their own cases. It's depressing to see. However, there were a lot of good local products from good local people as well, so I can't hate too much. We picked up a few choice items, got there too late for the local chanterelles, and got on our way. We stopped on a beautiful plateau over Lake Superior, where we proceeded with an ambitious meal. Seared Pickerel fillets with yellow bean salad and tempura vegetables, along with some mini apples Fabian took from a mennonite village we visited. Don't think of it as stealing, because noone actually lives there, so it's all good. In any case, the pickerel was damn delicious, and a revelation, because it means you in fact can have good fish in the prairies. Thats news. We dolled the fish up with a basil and cucumber relish as well, just to round things out. Around this point we crossed into Ontario and therefore rendered any blog post about Winnipeg or Manitoba in general obsolete. I'd also like to mention that being in Ontario feels nice, which feels strange. Logically, one must asuume that Ontario is strangely nice. I think it fits. Either way, the future is big cities, bright lights, and cheese, so stay tuned for more adventures.

Route to Winnipeg

Though we circumnavigated Regina due to poor weather and no information, Winnipeg and it's surrounding area were a different story. On the westside of things, we visited a farmer we were set up with by Malcolm, of cow-slaughtering fame. Malcolm's brother, Tom, also runs a cattle ranch nearby to Lake Manitoba, where he pastures cattle in between birth and finishing. He has really interesting ideas, some sound opinions, and superb cattle vs. grass rotational system. It's something I've read about briefly in Omnivore's Dilemma, when describing Polyface Farms. He rotates his cattle according to the levels of grass going on, so that the grass always has the optimal chance to regrow as fast as possible. It's a traditional technique, but I know nothing about the traditions of farming, so it was nice to see in action. Tom also offered us delicious muffins and even lunch sandwiches. Highly appreciated. It was nice to meet with him and his wife Michelle and sit and talk with people about their business and what interests them most. Lucky for us it rained that morning and bailing hay wasn't an option, otherwise he would be out there wrapping things up with no time for strangers. Thanks to Tom and Michelle for their hospitality and baking skills.


After Tom's ranch, we thought hey, lets gear for a change of pace, maybe something along the lines of a viking village. So we went to Gimli. Gimli is the largest Icelandic community in Canada, and does it well. The weekend before we arrived was the Icelandic festival, which meant we arrived during wind-down, slightly disappointing. However, Gimli was still a great time. We tried Icelandic bread, baked for 13 hours and still moist as sin. We even got free pastries because the bakery was going to close soon. We also tried Brennevin, which is an Icelandic eau-de-vie, heavily spiced with caraway. Its good with iced tea. Long Iceland Ice Tea. Take that, Bobby Flay and your cocktails with dinner. We also had Pickerel and smoked Goldeye to take with us, and prepare as we saw fit. O yeah, and some white wine pickled herring, of which I'm not a big fan, but would maybe eat if it was an issue of survival. I guess that once upon a time it was. So we missed the festival, but still had the fun. Walked the beaches, went swimming and generally enjoyed what there was to enjoy. To round out the Icelandic experience, we ate a warm green bean salad with pickled herring, Icelandic Rye and pickles, helped down by a generous pour of Brennevin on ice. The day was still young however, and we made it to Winnipeg Beach by nightfall.

Winnipeg beach is a very touristed spot, providing the holiday vacation for hundreds of Manitobans who get tired of the city. Thankfully it wasn't very busy upon our arrival, and we swam, relaxed, cooked and even used the wireless from a hotel on the beach for free. Oh the glories of piracy. For dinner we decided that foreign was needed, as the beach has no real Culinary specialties outside of what we had in Gimli. We made a kind of sloppy joe burger thing with corned mayonnaise.

It was almost as good as it's description is useful. Basically we bought some wicked local plums, and cooked them into some ground beef with soy sauce and a couple other flavourful fixings. Spicy mayo with corn somehow reared it's head, which was promptly bitten off. After what was definitely not a health concious feast, we played a couple hours of frisbee, our on the road game, at which I have begun to excel. Post frisbee we took to the beach and showers to get nice and clean before getting to sleep. A small child said "Wassup fools!?" very loud, and that pretty well capped off our Winnipeg beach experience. On the road again, to Winnipeg.

Skipping Regina to make up lost time.

Sorry Perry!

We did eat dinner on Regina Beach on the way through though! Quality spot!

The Hutterites

Alright, so as as I've previously stated, we were invited to tour a Hutterite colony with the most outrageously inviting people Saskatoon has to offer. We joined up in front of Souleio and organized a convoy out to the countryside to see this place of legend. I've never visited Hutterites, talked to Hutterites, or read about them. My basic impression was that they were a section of Mennonites who disagreed with some small insignificant rule and therefore needed their own name and religion, as religious groups do. Ii expected to be entering horse and buggy town, with log cabins, little to no electricity and not much in the way of interest. We had talked about visiting mennonites to see their food before, so this invitation came at a time when our interest was piqued in the area. I confess my utter ignorance on the subject, I have since been educated greatly by a wide variety of people who either love, hate or are indifferent to the Anabaptists(Mennonite, Hutterite, Amish, etc.). They all have different things to say, so I'll give you my personal view in this post.

When we pulled close to the colony, I thought perhaps it was a large scale farm. Clearly they didn't shun electricity or modern technology. Everything is spotlessly clean, rigorously maintained, and impressive to the point where you wonder how it is all possible. Well it turns out that you need an education on the subject.
Hutterites are unlike most other groups of Anabaptists in the way that they live in colonies. The rule they chose to take as their most intense is 'common goods'. That is what seperates them from the rest. There is little to no personal property. The closest thing to it is family property, most of which is made by the family for themselves. Everything else is divided among the colony corporation. How, you may ask, do they form such colonies? Well, my dear readers, allow me to enlighten you. They have a mother colony, and when that colony reaches 140-170 people, and no more, it splits. The idea of the colony is to procure enough income that when it splits it is well set up to start a new colony and continue its old colony. The colony we visited was 4 years old, looked around 1 day old, and was a 20 million dollar investment. On top of living conditions, they have an industrial bakery, kitchen, cow farm, turkey farm, feed mill, steel mill, and carpentry house. Also among the buildings is a cobbler, and automotive repair shop, and a 157 000 gallon water reservoir. All the floors are heated, they have more walk in cooler space than most hotels, and the entire facility is so clean I would eat off the floor. Even the turkey barn floor. I would sleep amongst the turkeys, and they would look upon me as one of their own. Moving on. Our guide, Mike, the Hutterite farmer and teacher, was the carpenter upon planning. He was very open with us, and answered all our questions. He loves farming, and is amazing at it. His organic farm is so pristine that finding weeds is a trial, and the only crop he struggles with is strawberries because he recently had a pest. He grows metric tons of carrots and beets. He has corn, squash and melons, onions, garlic so pungent your mouth burns, and rhubarb. They use a large quantity for pickling, but they also sell to locals, like Calories and Souleio. One of the coolest parts was Mike's keenness to try new things. Remi and Uwe would suggest a new plant, maybe celeriac, and he would be all over it, all he needs is an information sheet on it. How it grows, height, acidity of soil and such. He has such a large labour force, himself and the colony kids, coupled with the most modern machinery man can create, that anything is possible. He knows it, and he'll try anything. I think he'll likely succeed too. For the record, unlike your favorite industrial kitchen, they build all their counters and machinery in the steel shop. This is the most mind-blowing part. These guys can build a professional kitchen with naught but some wires and sheets of steel. They do buy some machinery, but only the perversely complex things, and usually they build it themselves after buying the parts. Why build it yourself, you may ask? Well dear readers, if they build it themselves, they have a blueprint, which can be sent to the rest of the colonies, and daughter colonies, who can then also build it. They do the same with truck trailers, tractors, scales, and a variety of small machinery. It is hands down the most insanely practical thing I've ever seen. If it wasn't for the religious bent, I would be there still. Possibly. As much as I love to see perfect communism work perfectly, I don't know if I'm suited for it after being raised in my society. At least I recognize that I suppose, and admire the people who do it. I was so thoroughly impressed with this whole enterprise that I was constantly asking questions. The most streamlined everything we'll see on the trip. After the tour we ate lunch with Mike and then visited his house for some rhubarb wine. Made on premises, and strong as can be. We discussed the cooking possibilities of pigs heads, tails and feet, and he was astonished that his efficient society should be throwing away such edible delicacies. He promised to send Uwe two pigs heads to see what could be done with them. I hope he finds them delicious enough to convince his colony that no longer should off cuts be thrown away. In a funny parallel to that story, I just ate a bunch of amazing off cuts in Toronto. More on that later. After the wine and some ginger snaps, it was time to go, so we loaded up the car, said goodbye, and began the drive to Regina. Oh yeah, by the way, they even have their own gravel pit and built their roads themselves....Badass. I'd also like to extend a final thank you to the folks who treated us so well in Regina and are continuing to grow the local food movement there. I hope your businesses prosper and you enjoy success in all areas, provided it's sustainable success. Thanks to Kevin, Melanie, Edyta, Uwe, Remi, Mike and his whole colony, and the lady from the tourist information who pointed us in the right direction. Hope to see you all in the future.

Saskatoon

After the most recent farm experience, checking into a city was a pretty unexpected change. Saskatoon is the largest city in Saskatchewan, it's only real competition being Regina. We had a really unexpectedly good experience here. The city is quite beautiful, boasting some quite decent character, and, luckily for us, mostly great weather. As a side note, I'm about to make cheese in real time, not blog time, so stay tuned for that as the story unfolds. I've run far behind here, and am hoping to do some power blogging ASAP. You'll know when it happens. Regardless, back to Saskatoon.

Having done little to no research on the area, we were relatively bent on getting to a canola oil producer and seeing that, but had no other real aim in mind. After a mediocre farmers market with only one thing bearing mention, a booth run by heat addicted, greenhouse owning psychopath, we were pretty miffed with the food scene.
The peppers we bought from him were of the highest quality though, including that hottest pepper in the world, which we mixed into some spicy bannock, apricot chutney and other things. It is called a naga, and skin contact results in blisters. It is 21x hotter than a Habanero, do not mess with me, I have a naga. We also procured some chipotle and a habanero, both of really high quality and freshness. Using the naga is like working with mouth dynamite that might blow your head off at any moment. We resorted to slicing fine slices off, chopping them intensly, then introducing the appropriate amount to our food. It worked, no open sores at all. Not even a skin blister. And now that it is safely packed in a basil and chili oil concoction, no more danger. We decided that beer was on the menu for this evenings dinner, and crossed the street to Cava,
Saskatoon's most exclusive wine and beer store. The store is pretty impressive, though it could be viewed as pretentious, our aide was extremely laid back and helpful. We got an unfiltered french wheat beer from Quebec. Les Trois Mousquetieres. We then cooked up a storm at the local campus and coasted out the rest of the night there. It was laid back.

The next day we did a bit of exploring. At the recommendation of the tourist information booth, we visited a bistro/deli/grocery thing that I don't know how to describe as anything else than it's name, Souleio. Souleio is the brainchild of a threesome of people based in and around Saskatoon, all doing good things with food. The farm connection is Kevin Boldt, who not only raises his own animals, but has a processing facility for others as well. He sells largely to Saskatoon, and provides both Souleio and Calories restaurant with their meat. Calories restaurant is the second connection, where chef Remi Cousyn and his wife run a restaurant bent on using local produce and establishing great relationships with producers. Out of his great relationship with producers Pineview farms, which is Kevin Boldts enterprise, came Souleio. The third connection is the people who are the foot soldiers for Souleio, Edyta and Uwe. Edyta was our consummate host and the first of this crew we got into contact with. After going into the deli/bistro/grocery just to observe, and seeing not only great products, but also products produced by people we had already visited, we needed to speak to whomever was doing the ordering. Hence, Edyta. She was delightful company the whole way through, and even went the extra mile, inviting us to visit a Hutterite colony from which they receive a fair amount of produce, both at Souleio and Calories. That will get it's own post, as it was an adventure in reality vs. perception that I won't soon forget, among other things. After we set up a lunch meeting with Edyta, she was kind enough to sit and talk with us a little while, and even introduced us to her Chef, Uwe, who brought out an excellent charcuterie plate, including a speciality of his home area in Germany. He also gave us a beer that is almost worthy of it's own post. We talked some more about their business, future prospects, and the local scene, before promising to meet again early Monday to join the convoy to the Hutterites. It had already been an awesome experience, and the fun was just beginning. Saskatoon was turning out great.

We had contacted the University of Saskatoon after visiting their campus earlier to eat somewhere. They have a massive and impressive array of greenhouses, which we were determined to tour. They let us. We met with Jackie, the greenhouse operator and overseer, to check what was going on. She not only gave us a rip around in the greenhouse facilities, which are epic, but also their agricultural territories, equally monstrous and perhaps more impressive. The greenhouses house largely cash crops, or pulse crops, so lots of corn varietals, lentils, chickpeas and barley. This is where the genetic modification goes on and varietals are bred at exceedingly fast speeds to favour a certain trait. It's a feat of great wildness, and the students have projects ranging from hydrangias to grapes. Thats right, grapes. Some awesome wacko is trying to breed pinot noir with a local strain of grapes in order to be able to grow grapes in the region. Apparently its working very well, and he intends to try wines relatively soon. Another amazing project is prairie lemons. A professor is working this one. He brought in lemons and limes from the climate he deemed the most similar to Saskatoon's, and is breeding them to be hardier fruiting trees, hoping eventually to have prairie citrus. Mind boggling stuff. On the tour of the grounds, we saw many different cherries, a load of Saskatoon berries, asparagus gone wild, lettuce gone wild, and whole wack of other things that fused particular areas of my brain shut, disallowing me from accessing the memories. Or maybe I'm just sworn to silence. Hopefully the latter. I have never seen anything more surprising than the asparagus. When it doesn't get picked, that plant gets crazy. Indescribably so, like a green cloud with hints of fennel. The lettuces were almost more surprising. Most of them were well tended to, but apparently a single student had decided to let his grow to the fullest extent possible. It turns out that the full extent is extremely full. It was a lettuce monster. Terrorizing other salad greens the world over. Probably standing around 4 feet tall with a stalk nearly the size of my waist. I was suitably impressed. We visited the Saturday market just to see what could be seen, as we had been told it far outstrips the Thursday market. That was true in the extreme. More producers, more variety, much more interesting products, and a more engaged crowd. We bought a few tidbits for dinner and decided we were in the agrarian mood.


We decided that visiting Pineview farms to see where the meats come from would be a good way to not only see what the buzz was about, but also meet some of the people we would be traveling with the next day. Kevin was kind enough to take us on a quick tour of both his slaughter facility and farm. The facility is really impressive, quite a bit more mechanized than rocking out the down home way in the Yukon, but we'll forgive that, because he does more than 10x as many birds, and no restrictions to chicken. The facility can also go geese, ducks, turkey, and rabbit. He has a wicked vegetable garden as well, and some tasty carrots. We were just about to leave when he decided that being vegetarian wasn't appropriate for us two large lads, and threw a pork loin at us. It was stellar. We cooked in the nearby town of Osler, with baby artichokes we nabbed at the market for pure interest sake. The artichokes were sadly disappointing, chewy and obnoxious. I think a butter poach would be more appropriate. They were definitely aesthetically pleasing. After eating we returned to Saskatoon, and bunked down nearby the farmer's market.


We were apparently visiting the past the next day, so I figured sleep would be good, having to deal with a bunch of religious junkies, hopped up on their farmed goods and god. I have never been more wrong than about these people. It was an eye-opener.