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Posts Tagged ‘Environment’

Restauran-TO

Chef survey lists the top 10 food trends of 2010

Celiac-safe beer: gluten is so 2009 (Image: Joe Lewis)

Health nuts and celiac sufferers, rejoice. A survey of chefs reveals that 2010 will be the year of simplicity, sustainability and gluten-free beer. The list of top Canadian menu trends isn’t terribly surprising, as environmentally conscious diners have been forgoing imported produce in favour of all things Ontario for several years now, but considering all the poutine, burger and charcuterie joints that have been popping up in the city, we’re surprised these lists don’t show animal fat a little love. (The full lists, after the jump.)

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| 1 Comment » March 6, 2010 | 11:03 am | Karon Liu

Rumours & Rumblings

Toronto group wants to tap trees to make maple syrup, City of Toronto not impressed

A typical Ontario sugar bush (Photo by Mac Armstrong)

Maple syrup might be as iconic a Canadian food as Timbits, but the City of Toronto is discouraging residents from tapping, the process by which the sugary sap is procured. It’s strange that the city would even weigh in on the issue; who has time to tap, then evaporate the sap, especially when maple syrup is one locavore-friendly food that is always available on grocery store shelves?

It turns out that enviro-activist Laura Reinsborough and her Not Far From the Tree initiative, which normally harvests fruit from backyards and the urban forest, wants to take up the task. Reinsborough, whose efforts made our list of Reasons to Love Toronto in 2009, has started the aptly named We’d Tap That project in the hopes that homeowners will offer five to 10 Norway maples for tapping; their sap will be collected and boiled down for a community party.

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| 4 Comments » February 23, 2010 | 3:14 pm | Matthew Hague

Pantry Raid

University of Toronto prof says buying local won’t save environment

Ontario strawberries: friend or foe? (Photo by Catherine Bulinski)

More bad news for 100-mile dieters: a new study says that local-only eating is impractical and does little to help the environment. The report was released by the Montreal Economic Institute and U of T professor Pierre Desrochers (whose views on locavorism were among Toronto Life’s 25 ideas that are changing the world) and states that people are too focused on the mileage produce travels from farm to store. According to Desrochers, the real problem is that people drive to grocery stores (which emits more greenhouse gases than transporting the food). He also makes the plainly obvious argument that certain places are better at growing certain produce. California’s consistent weather conditions enable the state to grow more strawberries than Ontario, which requires more energy to heat production facilities.

• Will Buying Food Locally Save the Planet? [Montreal Economic Institute]

| 5 Comments » February 16, 2010 | 3:35 pm | Karon Liu

Pantry Raid

Something is a lot less fishy at Loblaws seafood counters

(Photo by Calc-tufa)

Loblaws put its green foot forward this week, with a pledge to sell only sustainable seafood by the end of 2013. This means that all the seafood products in its stores—from frozen or canned items to cat food that contains fish—will adhere to strict guidelines that prove their makers have harvested and grown the food in a manner that preserves marine life. The grocery chain, which is one of the largest buyers and sellers of seafood in Canada, has already begun prepping consumers for the eco-friendly move. Trays that once sold such endangered species as Chilean sea bass now contain only signs suggesting alternative products (Pacific halibut in this case). Apparently Loblaws has come a long way since this time last year, when its stock of shark fin soup sparked a fishy fiasco among animal protectionists.

• Loblaw displays empty fish trays to highlight at-risk species [CBC]

| 3 Comments » February 10, 2010 | 8:24 am | Natalie Goldenberg-Fife

Culinary Curiosities

Supper club Charlie’s Burgers serves bug-centric menu in Toronto

Water beetles: sustainable and delicious? (Photo by Kent Wang)

The environment has long been a hot topic among foodies, and this weekend, surreptitious supper club Charlie’s Burgers is planning an unsettling menu centred around bugs, which sustainability gurus say are a readily available source of protein, vitamins and minerals.

But before you pull out the knife and fork, know that not just anyone can chow on crickets at Charlie’s. A prospective diner must give their e-mail address at Charlie’s Web site, answer a questionnaire about their food fixations and, if the Charlie’s team likes the responses, meet at a secret location at an exact time and pay with cash.

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| 1 Comment » January 22, 2010 | 10:25 am | Fraser Abe

Read All About It

Booze may have led to the founding of civilization, ranking the world’s weight woes, the 10 most common fast food ingredients

Confirming the obvious: Big Macs are "unnatural" (Photo by Geronimo De Francesco)

• Breaking news: Big Macs are unnatural. TLC’s Fun Facts section presents a list of the top 10 ingredients in fast food, including citric acid (#10), MSG (#6) and chicken (#1). Profiles of each entry reveal disturbing facts, like a statistic indicating that North Americans consume an average of 41.5 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup per year. [TLC]

• Alcohol motivated early humans to adopt agriculture, says archaeologist Patrick McGovern. The University of Pennsylvania scientist has discovered tartaric acid (a booze-related compound) in pottery shards at the 9,000-year-old Jiahu site in China. The first neolithic encounter with fermented grains may have occurred when someone ate a sprouted grain that had fallen into a shallow pool of water. Once consumed, the grain would have triggered the brain’s reward centres, causing our enthusiastic ancestors to domesticate crops in order to get their next fix. [The Independent]

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| Leave a Comment » January 21, 2010 | 8:09 am | Robert Furtado

Read All About It

Toward a gourmet doughnut, remembering the old Annex, the perfect cup of tea

Rethinking the humble dooughnut (Photo by mamaloco)

Rethinking the humble doughnut (Photo by mamaloco)

• Chefs across the U.S. are attempting to trick out Canada’s most modest treats: doughnuts. People can indulge in such flavours as pomegranate-thyme and bing cherry–balsamic, priced at $5 or $6 each. Kirsten Anderson, the chef at Glazed Donuts Chicago, has mint leaves springing from the holes of her iced mint mojito doughnuts and adds grape jelly to the dough of her peanut butter doughnuts to make PB&Js. [Coloradoan]

• Until the mid-1980s, fried schnitzel and pogácsa joints were clustered along the crowded strip of Bloor Street West between Walmer Road and Markham Street. The Annex’s so-called Goulash Archipelago has since disbanded—only the 45-year-old Country Style Hungarian Restaurant remains—but Susan Sampson, food columnist at the Toronto Star, remembers it well. She writes about her formative years in the area, before it was taken over by wing shacks and frat dudes. [Toronto Star]

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| Leave a Comment » January 15, 2010 | 11:23 am | Robert Furtado

Required Reading

Toronto sex shop and MP Carolyn Bennett fight for eco-friendly orgasms

Eco-orgasm crusader Carolyn Bennett (Photo by Jerad Gallinger)

“Let the warm waves of eco-friendly orgasms curl your toes.” That’s the greeting message on ecosex.ca, the on-line home of Toronto sex shop Red Tent Sisters. The titular sisters, Amy and Kim Sedgwick, opened the Danforth and Pape store in 2007, stocking it with such environmentally friendly products as organic lubricant and vegan condoms. Is there any industry that Al Gore hasn’t touched?

Recently, the Sedgwicks wrote to Toronto Liberal MP (and physician) Carolyn Bennett, outlining the potentially dangerous chemicals that are found in most sex toys on the Canadian market. Bennett has responded with a letter to the minister of health, Leona Aglukkaq, outlining the “urgent need for responsible regulation in the adult toy industry in Canada.” Plastics like bisphenol-A and chemicals like phthalates are banned in baby products but not in adult toys.

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| 3 Comments » December 18, 2009 | 12:01 pm | Carley Fortune

Read All About It

Michelle Obama on Iron Chef, Lea and Perrins recipe revealed, Canada’s cod comeback

lea-perrins-worcestershire-sauce • What is the best way to get rid of unwanted Halloween candy? Serious Eats recommends burying it in a shallow grave—a pie shell—and making candy pie. The dessert is exactly what it sounds like: simply melt the candy in the crust for 30 to 40 minutes at 350 degrees, let cool, then serve. The site advocates a chocolate-heavy filling (Tootsie Rolls, Snickers, M&Ms, Kit Kats and candy corn) that reduces in size when it melts. The final product is sure to make guests frightened and dentists wealthy. [Serious Eats]

• After over 170 years of secrecy, the recipe for Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce has been revealed. Or has it? The Guardian trains its cynical eye on the list of ingredients allegedly found by a former company accountant in a skip next to the sauce factory. Forty pounds of pickles? Twenty-four pounds of fish? Eighteen gallons of vinegar? Could that really taste good? We guess that if anyone would know, it would be a Brit. [Guardian]

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| 1 Comment » November 5, 2009 | 8:48 am | Matthew Hague

Read All About It

The marshmallow craze, the baffling DIY wine critic, the case for doggy bags

• “Bouquet of Nerds candy” good; “notes of Bazooka Joe gum” bad. So says the populist, DIY wine critic Gary Vaynerchuk, who has broken out of YouTube into the wine-tasting big leagues , according to the New York Times. Old-fashioned vinophiles have no idea what to do with the guy. He once wrapped a smelly old gym sock around asparagus to demonstrate how a good Burgundy bottle should smell. [New York Times]