Thanksgiving

Just so I don't appear insensitive, and in case anyone missed my e-mails, I want to take this opportunity to live up to the name of the occasion. Thanksgiving is a great time to thank everyone who helped us out along the way, be they family, friends, or strangers. It was truly an amazing trip, and adjusting to life is hard now. I just want to hit the road again and tear off.

So though I had two massive family dinners for thanksgiving, I only got a few pictures. It works that way when you've been away and go to a big family occasion. Most of the time is occupied catching up, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Here are a couple shots to give a brief overview.


Pumpkin pie with whip

Guava and mustard roasted pork loin.

Leftover pork turned breakfast sandwich. Blue cheese and red onion on toasted rye.

Oh yeah, and I'm staging at a couple restaurants around Ottawa right now, as well as making beer and apple cider with the pops. Check back for that stuff.

Birthday Tour Pt.2: The Dinner

After the halibut farm, we also visited a small organic farmer tucked nicely into a wind sheltered valley. It was a pretty nice operation, very freedom to let things grow kinda thing. Massive amounts of squash, eggplant, herbs, particularly basil in quantities that could put a pesto manufacturer on his knees. It was really nice. We wandered the garden, picked some stuff for the nights dinner, and headed back to the house to have it weighed up and costed. An awesome part about the whole thing is this guy's house. It's totally octagonal, and rocks my socks. He bitched about it being impossible to renovate, which I totally believe, because everything has to be custom made to fit inside. Still, a striking building. Sadly we didn't take any shots of the farm itself, we were too busy picking tasty business for dinner. Speaking of dinner, after the farm we went to the liquor store to stock up before going back to John's for a mad amount of food.


When I say a mad amount of food. I mean it. John had slotted some pork belly scraps in the oven to just braise to soft gooey-ness before leaving the house this morning, and we had a whole halibut, on top of a bunch of mussels and bar clams that he had kicking in the fridge. We basically got madly out of control, but before I describe anything that happened, let me tell you about John's house and the kitchen that lies thereunder. This is no wimpy home kitchen, he's got one of those upstairs. What John did, and all real cooks would give an arm and a leg to do, was outfit his back cellar as a professional kitchen. For him, it makes perfect sense, he works from home. For all of us, it was an absolute playground of delicacies. We haven't worked in a professional kitchen for almost four months. It felt like returning home after an epic saga into the wilderness, like nothing had ever been so civilized as this kitchen. In all seriousness, he has a spotless kitchen with a six burner range, two deck ovens, two massive tall boy fridges, stainless steel everywhere, a dishpit, massive spice rack and dry storage, and all the space you'll ever need. It was stellar. And we used it fully. As soon as he had introduced us to the kitchen, it was time for us to get to work. I'd decided to make flatbread pizzas with the mussels, whilst Fabian got his hands dirty cleaning to bar clams, I made dough.
John pulled the pork belly, shredded it, and spiced it up into a terrine. I let my dough rest and butchered the fish, ze german made sauce and a quick heirloom tomato and salami salad and we had first course: Bar clams with white wine sauce. We had already finished all the beer and started our first bottle of wine, there would be many more to come.
Next I rolled out the dough and pre baked it for a stretch, it was going to be thin crust and sogginess was not an option. When the edges started to colour, I pulled it out and laid the toppings down. John had meanwhile baked some croustini to eat the terrine with, so we baked off the pizzas and had second course together. His terrine, and one flatbread with mussels, chanterelles, ricotta and a slew of different herbs from the farm including basil, nasturtium, arugula, dill and some edible flowers. The other flatbread had sungold tomatoes, sopressata, and more mussels. The terrine was mental good, and the flatbreads came out pretty well also. We had already gotten two bottles of wine down and finished another of champagne. And the beer.


Fabian also made a white eggplant caponata, very sweet and sour goodness. John made up a sauce to hit the top, and I seared off two fillets of halibut to cap off the meal. A little bit of chopped basil and the dish was complete.It was a hit, and needed another bottle and a half of wine. After that we sat and chatted, digested a bit, and then spoke of dessert. We were getting out of hand, and reined it in for the moment, then John got a wacky idea. What about searing chocolate cake in nice olive oil? I don't know where it came from, but it came strong, so he did it. It was actually nice, though it was all I could do to take a bite and concentrate on tasting in my stuffed and drunken state. It was good, but I could stomach no more, so after a wee drahm of whisky, we called it a night. I was buzzing like a celebrity cell phone on vibrate at this point. It was an excellent end to an excellent day full of excellent food. Who could ask for more?

Poutine Fest!

It was finally time, the climactic 'festival de la poutine' was at hand. We had left the vast majority of the country in shambles behind us. We were ready, even Martin Picard couldn't stop us. It was to be an epic festival of debauchery. A parade of poutine, a gargantuan orgy in a gravy pot, among other things.

It was some of these things.

The festival, we discovered, is actually more a festival for the music than the poutine, though the poutine plays a big part. Martin Picard, from Au pied de Cochon, a restaurant we certainly would have visited were funds allowing, was the guest chef of the year. He created a calamari poutine with squid ink in the gravy, and a lobster poutine for purely luxurious purposes. His restaurant uses more foie gras than any other in the world, and is famous for it's foie gras poutine. He is a large, burly dude and really really really reminds me of Quebec. We pulled him aside and had a brief chat, but he is a celebrity, and was busy, so we didn't have much time with him. Good guy though. His regular poutine won best of the festival for me. The curds were the squeakiest by far that we've had in the province, and though the frites weren't perfect, they were passable. The gravy was good, and all together it made a real mess, which is what it should do. Poutine.....ahhhh. La Banquise was also there, serving up a taco poutine, complete with tomato, guac and sour cream, which was surprisingly quite decent. They had the best altered poutine. The third party was Lemaire, a cheesemaker who's curds are in every store in the area, including Esso gas stations and everything. Never refrigerated. An extremely popular road snack in these parts. Lemaire had wicked awesome fries, but lacked in the gravy department. The curds were good as well, but still not as fresh as Picard's who had clearly done some planning. The festival itself was fun as well. Though headlining the whole fest was 'les trois accords' who frankly sounded like Sum41 in french, similarly whiney and not even rocking as hard, it was the first day's headliners who really kicked ass. 'Les Cowboys Fringants' are fucking amazing, and I highly recommend anybody who likes neo-folk quebecois music to check them out. Not only do they sound good, but their live show is incredible. I was jacked, even throughout the waves of Quebec nationalist sentiment that were liberally sprinkled into the concert. I was as happy about finding out about them as I was about any of the poutines we tried, none of which held a candle to the first one in a true poutinerie. The festival was fun as hell, but not as debauchery laden as I had hoped.

Other cool things about Drummondville are a massive chessboard set up in the square each evening, a confusing amount of well attended bars and lounges, and free parking not far from the festival. All is good.

Montreal Madness

After being home a stretch, it was time to continue our saga into the heart of eastern Canada. We weren't the most productive we could have been in Montreal, though we saw quite a bit, we didn't get our hands dirty anywhere. This is because it's a big city, more expensive and one of us doesn't speak the language. We called my aunt and uncle the day of to ask for a place to stay, but only their son got the message. They didn't get it by the time we'd arrived, so when we came to the door, my uncle looked at us like two strangers. On account of vastly altered appearances, that's totally acceptable and not unexpected. He got it after a little while of wondering why there were two akward men at his door, looking like they wanted something. After that, we were fully welcome, and actually stayed a little longer than anticipated, a full 4 nights. Montreal is a nice introduction to Quebec for foreigners(like my traveling partner) because you can typically get by with english, yet it is obvious what the province's main language is.
After some initial confusion, and me doing some translating, we were well on our way. We visited the Atwater market, which is a pretty stellar place, full of butchers, producers and wicked little boutiques of Quebecois products. A wider variety than your regular butcher is available at most places here. In the rest of Canada you don't get terrines, pates, torchons, or headcheese at every butcher, here you do. On top of the regular cuts, many of the butchers also dress animals, making ballotines and gallantines, or sausages and cured meats. It's an amazing thing to compare to the rest of Canadian markets.


We also went to the Jean-Talon market, which is proudly proclaimed by the Quebec tourist pamphlets as 'the largest in north america'. I don't know if that is true or not, but the market is huge. And cheap. Like, crazy cheap. It's also surrounded by useful stores and has a permanent section of built stores that are equally awesome. A large cheese store, a wicked mushroom forager, and a "boutique de les saveurs de la Quebec" are just a couple among the awesome shit here. This could be your supermarket. The marchet des saveurs was of particular value, and a place where we took a lot of notes on what was of quality. There are some really cool products in Quebec, and we'll never be able to visit them all, but a select few unique ones will get their deserved attention on our way back through the province.

Montreal was also nice for breweries. As many of you likely know and have probably over-indulged in, MTL is packed to the brim with trendy little brewpubs rocking out craft-brews for the masses. We visited a couple, notably Dieu-du-ciel, which is a new heavy hitter coming late in the game. We saw their brews as far away as Alberta, in the wine-merchants there. I said we had to visit, and when we arrived, who would have known, but it is my cousin's favorite brewery of the week. So we visit. I have to say that some beers were good, some not so wonderful. It was still a worthwhile experience, but the place was also overly jammed to the max, so no chance to talk to anyone who could tell us anything. My cousin later informed me that they have a main production facility elsewhere, and just brew here for the pub. Maybe one day I'll get around to their actual brewery, we can just slot it on the list of things regrettably missed, which is long.

We also visited the McAuslan brewery, which some people know as St. Ambroise because of it's craftily bilingual labeling. They have a window overlooking their entire production facility, but don't let people in without appointments, which we were sadly without. It was still nice to see, and they also have a back patio where you can indulge in a couple beers they serve nowhere else besides Montreal, such as their pumpkin lager. This beer is really stellar in the realm of flavoured beers, and I think McAuslan is the number one brewery in Canada for well-crafted flavoured brews. They have an amazing apricot beer as well as a raspberry beer that are both outstanding in the category. The pumpkin may just be number one.

On top of the breweries and markets, we did have an endless quest for poutine here in Montreal as well. We visited the AA restaurant, in a little bit of a back corner of town, on my cousin Tullya's recommendation. She was an awesome recommender. I'm aware that isn't a word. It was an amazing poutine, heaped high with cheese, almost in equal portions to the fries. The gravy was good, and the portion was monstrous. Just like it should be. We tried another poutine at "la banquise", a famous poutinerie, with like 26 different varietals or something. Not even close to the quality of AA. It appears skeezy poutineries are the way things should be done. I mean, at AA, she was screaming at some guy for being at the bar next door when he should be at the restaurant paying for the meal he ordered. How much more authentic can you get? It's practically like being in a home kitchen. Amazing. La banquise wasn't bad quality, but the gravy wasn't very flavourful, and my poutine with sausages was tantamount to poutine with hot dogs, which weren't even fried crispy. A somewhat dissappointing meal for a place boasting awards for best poutine. It's open 24hrs, so I can imagine it is perhaps drunk eats for the masses, who later vote for it favorably because they were wasted and it was 'the best meal of their lives'. For the record, after going out one night, I got my Montreal vice drunk food, which is of course, 2$ chow mein with peanut sauce. Like everything, inflation has taken it's toll, and it's now 2.50$. Still a steal really. You get two tiny springrolls, and a mad heap of chow mein with peanut butter sauce. Those of you who know me well know why I love this. They cook the peanut butter sauce inside peanut butter jars, in a chafing dish. It's majorly unprofessional, cheap, and tastes awesome when your wasted, but horrible when your sober. I have the field research to prove it. I once forced a portion on our DD upon a party trip to Montreal. Suffice to say I ate two portions that evening. He hated it. I loved it. The difference? Alcohol.


We also cooked in Montreal. We tried to treat our hosts to purple gnocchi, making another attempt at that vinifera flour. It was decent, and everyone said they enjoyed it, but I think it needed quite a bit of work to be worthy of a real thumbs up. The vinifera adds an odd flavour to things, not bad, just strange. To counter that flavour, we'll have to be crafty. The gnocchi also came out a little soft for my liking, but alas, thus is life. We also made an epic salad a couple days later, with pears, asparagus, leeks and soft tofu. My Montreal family are almost entirely vegetarians or vegans, and therefore gain much respect from me, but present some restrictions in terms of cooking.

After a fine and relaxed few days in what is, for my vote, by far one of the best cities in Canada, it was time to move on. There is still much to be done, and time and money are running short.

Prince Edward County

Hello all. This is a post about an oft-overlooked area northeast of Toronto on a relatively small jut out into Lake Ontario. Though locals know of it, some swear by it, and I discovered that I've been there before, it's still awesome to come by. Above is a photo of a really surprisingly delicious cauliflower salad we had the first night on the beach with a bottle of gewurztraminer that only the VQA judges, ourselves, and the winemaker have tried. Pre-release party! Back to the county. In the last years, Prince Edward County has really gotten it's food-tourism legs, publishing gourmet routes and a wicked map detailing the vast majority of the region's producers, vintners and many farms as well. We drove in and immediately visited a winery, where I met the previous owner of a bistro in Ottawa. The reason for the significance of this is that where his bistro stood now stands Murray St., a charcuterie driven restaurant which is part of Ottawa's recent renaissance of decent food. The ex-owner not only lives in PEC now, he works for a winery, Hillier Creek Estates, and grows his own vineyard for personal and family consumption.

Besides wineries, the county also has a couple things extra. They have one of the only Canadian coopers, a guy named Pete, who kicks major ass. We wandered up into Pete's workshop after hearing about him at a local winery, and he was welcoming as hell. He stopped work mid barrel to talk to us for almost two hours, passionate the whole time as the first minute. He is barrel-crazy. He started a couple years ago, though his own shop has only been open a year. He used to go down to Kansas City for his apprenticeship, and his mentor and him still meet at least once a year to discuss cooperage.

The reason Pete was of particular interest to us is that he makes barrels out of Canadian oak. They are awesome. He gets them cut by a local mennonite mill, who's work he is extremely proud of, and then staves the barrels himself. He even takes oak off certain winery properties, has it cut, milled, then coopers it, and returns it to the winery it was from. Talk about local. There is nothing more terroir than a local grape, grown in local soil, and barreled in a barrel made from trees on the same property. For the record, he let us smell the toasted barrels, which smell like pure heaven. He also uses cherry,ash,and hickory, and even has a CHOA barrel, with interspersed staves of all four types of wood. People in the region are making soy sauce, and pete himself plans to make balsamic vinegar in the barrels. Its an epic undertaking, and I hope he succeeds. I'm really excited about the potential for these barrels to take off. He hopes to be making three hundred a year next year, and already has most of them sold. I think he's awesome, and he explained a lot about coopering and wood types to us. He was gracious and so awesome we ran late for our appointment at the local cheese company, Fifth Town.

Happily, we got there in time to jump in on another couple folk's tour, and they happened to be from McEwan Foods, Mark McEwan's grocery store. Mark McEwan is a Toronto chef and Food Network dude, and we had almost stopped by his grocery, then discovered ourselves strapped for time. Thankfully, the guys from McEwans stood passively by while we did most of the question asking. Fifth Town is Canada's only LEED platinum food service facility and also is quite prolifically making damn decent cheese. We got suited up and entered by the pasteurization and delivery room, went into the piping room, wrapping rooms, and production facility, before visiting the aging caves and fridges. It was a nice tour, and our hosts were extremely helpful. They make 14 different kinds of cheese, heat the building geothermally, have every type of recycling possible, a bioremediation marsh, homemade structures from reclaimed building site materials, three different water bins and every other possible environmental benefit. Except one. They aren't really concerned with naturally raised animals producing their milk. I asked about their dairy herd, and if they were either organic, or ethically raised, or sustainably bred, and we got caught on a word. Organic was an anti-word around here. Organic meant all the good things, but also no anti-biotics, which meant more goat deaths! Wait...wait...are the goats pastured? No? Oh well maybe if the goats were raised the way they are supposed to be they would need less antibiotics than when they live in a pen full of hay covered in their own piss. I really really appreciate Fifth Town cheese, they make excellent product, have a wicked facility, and an even better book collection. However, getting answers like that at a similar facility hurt more than getting them from some dumbass who wasn't considering the environment at all. It hurt a lot. I was pretty miffed. Even people who are doing their best make the excuses. Is it scary to say that once you can, you will? I'm not demanding anything. I just want you to acknowledge the reality of the situation and tell me that it's not feasible to fix now, but it's in the plans. Like, the real plans, don't just tell me that. Anyways, they are still by far the most progressive foodservice place we've been, entirely worth a visit, a beautiful property, and they even have their own garden out front from which they pick flowers and herbs to flavour cheeses. I'm a fan. But that conversation left a bad taste in my mouth. Furthermore, they agreed that animals should be pastured when I raised the issue of taste, like the milk tastes different depending on the animal's diet, which changes the consistency and flavour of the cheese. I'm not ranting, and I know I'm being idealist, but hey, that's in my nature. So get with it. I also realize I'm driving across country in a old van with bad gas mileage and some other 22 year just did it in an entirely sustainable vehicle. The point is, I'm young, and highly critical of others despite my own faults, and I don't see a problem with that. If I ever undertake a massive project like that, it will be exactly the same with the extra little tidbits I've come to know and love as "seeing all aspects". I know it's difficult, but I hope one day I'll be able to show up at your facility and ask about the practices surrounding your dairy and you'll be able to tell me in confidence that they are amazing.
That would be even better than being LEED certified, because to be LEED, you changed yourself, but to get others in line, you had to change other people, which is teaching and education, which is what the world needs a lot more of, you just have the sharp stick of business to make sure the message is clear. Anyways. Awesome cheese. Ate it with some righteous beets and braised shallots, which are great. We also tried some bannock with grape flour, which I can't talk about mostly because it was really bad.

After the cheesemaker, we went to the cidery, which produces cider, sparkling cider, and Waupoos cider beer. They also make iced cider, and that probably about covers the variations on cider possible, besides frozen cider popsicles or something. Anyways, we got some cider and ice and saw the goofs from McEwan there again, having a drink with Fifth Town's sales manager. Either way, we moved on from there to beach to make dinner.

The next day we awoke, visited another winery, then the Barley Days Brewery, who let us taste their beers and buy some, I particularly enjoy the wind and sail dark ale. Post brewery, we moseyed to Picton, which is the biggest town in the county. There we had buddha dogs, which are small hot dogs made from local meat and dressed up with all local compotes, vegetables or spreads. They were good, but very small, and left me unfilled. After filling up on a couple car snacks, which if I remember correctly was bread and cottage cheese, we hit the road. Destination:Ottawa!

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.

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.