I found a very welcome news story last week. Apparently, the federal government is proposing a review of the “Product of Canada” label on food. Currently, so long as 51% of the production costs were incurred in Canada, the item can be labelled “Product of Canada.”

This, understandably, creates a lot of confusion for shoppers. When you pick up a can of peaches, for example, and read “Product of Canada,” wouldn’t you assume that they were grown in Canada? Not so. Bob Friesen, the president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, has been working towards a voluntary “Grown in Canada” label that would clear up this confusion.

Friesen gave the example of chopped garlic. The garlic itself is grown in China but it is processed and bottled in Canada. Since the value added in Canada can be more than 50- per cent of the cost, it qualified for a Product of Canada label. The same is true of orange juice and a range of products, such as honey, which may be labeled “Canada No. 1″ leaving the consumer to think that he or she is purchasing a Canadian product when in fact the label is simply a quality standard.

I first became aware of the problem when my husband and I were trying to buy local foods. First, I found pineapples that were a “Product of Canada.” Then, coffee and chocolate. Then, orange juice. Hmm! I investigated, and realized that the “product” part of the label was all about production costs, not where the food was actually grown.

While Friesen is trying to make this a mandatory label, I think it would be great if it could be federally mandated. That would open consumers’ eyes to the fact that their “Canadian” food might not be as Canadian as they think it is.

Loblaw’s Inc. is voluntarilly recalling two types of pear juice that may have been laced with arsenic. They were distributed nationally, including here in Winnipeg.

The products are:
* President’s Choice Organics Pear Juice from Concentrate for Toddlers (UPC: 0 60383 70935 8; 1 liter size)
* All Beech Nut Pear Juice from concentrate with Vitamin C added (Codes: 0 523842 8 128 mL 2009 FE 02; A0384B0935)

The juice is supposed to be organic, which brings into question how the arsenic got into the juice in the first place. (The arsenic was found in very small quantities, but because the juice was for children a recall was advised.) Arsenic is commonly found in pesticides, and can remain in the soil for years.

So let’s get the straight. Consumers were paying extra to get organic fruit juice, but (possibly) because the soil that the fruit was grown on used to be treated with pesticides, the juice is now contaminated with arsenic? Why bother paying the premium for organic produce, if this is the case?

I’m not trying to be alarmist here, but think about it: if you’re paying extra for food that was produced in a specific way, wouldn’t you expect it to be true? Consumers are flocking to the organic label based on these promises: no pesticides, no herbicides, and no artifical fertilizers. Who tests their food to see if how true the promise is?

Michael Pollan has written at length about the Organic-Industrial Complex. (It also takes up a section in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemmna, which I highly recommend.) He calls it “supermarket pastoral.” You buy organic milk with the picture of the happy cow on the front. Do you think the milk comes from that smiling cow? Or is the cow living on in a feedlot with hundreds of other cows? How long did it take to get the US government to take action on Aurora Organic Dairy?

This is just one of the reasons that I tend to select local over organic foods. (Even then, though, there are tripping points: “Product of Canada” does not mean the same as “Packaged in Canada,” and why I would totally support a country of origin label law like the States’ new COOL law. Canada shouldn’t be complaining about the US implementing this law - they should be emulating them. But that’s an entry for another day.)

Anyway, check your fridges and cupboards for the recalled juices… And keep a skeptical mind when buying organic. “Organic” doesn’t always magically mean “safe.”

Almost every one I know follows the same formula when constructing a “well balanced” dinner: you need a protein, a vegetable, and a starch. Steak and green beans and potatoes. Chicken and broccoli and rice. Ham and leek soup and a dinner roll. I think that’s one of the minor reasons why “one dish” meals and casseroles have become so popular on large recipe sites: they’re usually quick, don’t have a lot to clean up, and generally include all three legs of a balanced meal - no additional thinking required.

Anyway, one of the starches that I grew up with doesn’t seem to be well known in North America, as I discovered after I got married. Spaetzle (or “little sparrow” in German) is an egg noodle or dumpling that’s often served alongside dishes
with a lot of sauce, or under a meat with a lot of juices. I remembered my mother making these occasionally, but I was a bit fuzzy on the details… Like, how. And I didn’t have a spaetzle maker!

My husband, who had never heard of spaetzle before he met me (let alone tasted it) scoured the city from top to bottom before landing me the spaetzle maker. The one he found consists of a steel plate with large holes, and a plastic hopper that slides back and forth on top. The batter goes in the hopper, and drools through the holes into the boiling water below. If you can’t find anything like this, there are lots of different types of spatezle makers, or you could just use a potato ricer. (I’ve seen some recipes suggest pressing the batter through a colander, but that seems like a recipe for disaster and heartache.) The only thing that’s really affected by how you make the spaetzle is what shape it is. Most commercial dried spaetzle consists of skinny noodles about an inch long, about the size of flat chow mein noodles, while my homemade spaetzle looks like little round-ish marbles.

Shaping the noodles is really the most complicated part of this; the batter is insanely easy. You’ll need:

* 4 large eggs, slightly beaten
* 2 cups flour (not self-rising)
* 1/2 cup milk (I use 1%)
* 1/2 tsp salt
* pepper
* 1 TB butter for serving

Start a large pot of water boiling. Don’t salt the water.

Mix the eggs, flour, milk, salt, and a dash of pepper in a large bowl. The batter will be fairly thick.

Using your spaetzle maker, form the spatzle directly into the boiling water. (This is why I like my tool: it rests directly on the pot and minimizes my contact with hot steam from the water.) Stir the water gently to make sure the spaetzle isn’t sticking to the bottom.

You shouldn’t overcrowd the pot, but I usually end up doing it anyway. Be aware that the spaetzle will “fluff up” a bit when cooked, so watch out for boilovers. A prudent cook will boil the spaetzle in two or more batches; an impatient one like me does it all at once.

Let cook for about five minutes, or until all of the spaetzle is floating. Lift out of the water using a slotted spoon or a skimmer and place in a serving bowl. Add butter to the spaetzle and toss well when melted.

This makes a HUGE bowl of spatzle, especially for just two people. The beauty, though, is that this reheats very well. Refridgerate the leftovers in a microwavable container, and then just nuke until hot. (You shouldn’t have to add more butter.)

A while ago I wrote about my quest for a “proper” soft sourdough pretzel in Winnipeg. I wanted the salty, puffy, toothsome, slightly bitter outside and a soft chewy interior - not the horrible, sweet bready things you get from a place like Auntie Anne’s. Some people knew what I was talking about, but the only place they could recall seeing them was at a fair. (And I wasn’t able to find them on our trip to the Red River Ex.) Most people, though, directed me back to a place like Auntie Anne’s, or told me about a product like Snyder’s (a product which 1) wasn’t what I was looking for, as those pretzels are hard, not soft, and 2) aren’t available in Winnipeg.)

Looking for recipes led me down dead ends as well, since I’m still looking for a good sourdough starter. The starter that I made myself was rather anemic, and didn’t actually taste very sour. I know that you can buy authentic San Francisco starter at various places, but I haven’t found anywhere in town that sells it. (I may have to mail order some.)

It wasn’t until I went home to visit family and we went to Quaker Steak and Lube that I realized there was another name for these soft pretzels: Bavarian. A quick visit to Google, and suddenly I was swimming in recipes that didn’t call for sourdough starter. Why had I never connected Bavarian pretzels with “sourdough” pretzels? After talking to a few friends back home, I found that “sourdough pretzel” was used interchangably with “Bavarian pretzel,” except when they were different things, or when “sourdough” was used as a modifier for a Bavarian-style pretzel. Confused? So was I. After sitting down with some charts and graphs, I figured out that there were actually three different pretzels in question here: the hard sourdough pretzels (ala Snyder’s), Bavarian-style pretzels (the puffy, chewy pretzels I have been craving), and Bavarian-style sourdough pretzels (puffy, chewy pretzels made with a sourdough yeast).

Once I sorted that out, I began looking for a usable recipe. Most of them looked easy enough - flour, yeast, sugar of some sort. My next difficulty I had was the process of making the pretzels. Authentic Bavarian pretzels are boiled in a weak lye solution. The chemical reaction of the hot lye with the dough in the water bath is the difference between making pretzels and salty bagels. Problem: I didn’t want lye in the house, in any form. Not with the cats and such - it just didn’t seem worth it. (That, and boiling lye in the house? No way!) Lye is sodium hydroxide (NaOH); a quick Google search showed that sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) is often used as a substitute, especially in cooking applications. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem as though you could pop down to the corner store and pick up a box of food-grade sodium carbonate.

At this point, I have to give credit where credit is due. When I bemoaned the fact that “authentic” pretzels needed lye, my husband suggested that I use baking soda (aka sodium bicarbonate, or NaHCO3) instead. I foolishly disregarded his command of chemistry. So when I found a recipe which called for a bath of (gasp!) baking soda in water, I apologized to him. Baking soda is an alkali salt, just like lye; it just isn’t as strong. So instead of using a very weak lye solution, you could use a strong baking soda solution.

All of the pieces were in place. I knew what to call the pretzels, I had a promising recipe, and I had the alkaline pre-baking bath to put them in. It was time to make pretzels!

I’ve made this recipe several times now since getting back home from Ohio, and I’ve slowly tweaked the process. The very first time I made the pretzels, so many things went wrong! The pretzels were covered in so much flour (from rolling them out into pretzel shapes) that the pot of baking soda water foamed up tremendously as soon as they touched the water. I didn’t drain them completely before putting them on the baking sheet, so the baking soda baked onto the sheets and made a mess. I didn’t have any coarse salt; I tried using chunks of sea salt (like, before they go into a grinder)… Just picture a pretzel with a 10-carat size chunk of salt stuck to it. And I was still getting the hang of how big to make them, so I ended up with some really fat pretzels (which browned too much on top and set off the smoke alarm), and ones that were way too skinny.

But after three or four attempts, I think I have it! I used this recipe without any substantial changes, so I won’t reproduce it here. (My only tweak to the dough was to add a bit more water than was called for in order for the dough to come together, but I think that was because our winter air is so dry.) I floured my hands rather than the table surface (to prevent the dough from sticking to my hands when I was rolling out the “sticks.”) I used silicone baking pads, which worked fantastically. I also let the pretzels rest for a few minutes on a baking rack after they were removed from the water bath in order to let them drain. And coarse salt is essential: these pretzels are not for people on a low-sodium diet!

They are fantastic, and taste “authentic” to me. I’m sure some purist will complain that they aren’t real pretzels unless they’ve been dipped in lye. To that I say: “Then go make your own damn pretzels!” These have exactly the
right mouth feel, and just the right touch of a bitter/sweet twang when they hit your mouth. Colour me pleased.

The only problem I have left is storing them. These are moist pretzels. They are best when consumed right away (and still warm from the oven), but it is nice to store them for later. (A few seconds in the microwave heats them up wonderfully. Serve with nacho cheese or a spicy mustard.) But if you put them in a plastic bag, the salt “melts” off of them, and they come out of the bag feeling a bit soggy. If you leave them out, like in a bread box or something, they turn into little rocks. I tried just wrapping them in wax paper, but that’s like putting them in a bag. My next try will be a cookie tin, since those aren’t 100% airtight, but they keep stuff from going stale so fast. Does anyone have any other ideas?

I now have two legs of my holy trinity: beer and pretzels. All I need now are some excellent wings. The quest continues: stay tuned!

We are about to head off for our Christmas dinner. While we are used to home-cooked meals on Christmas Eve - ham, turkey or roast beef were the usual suspects - several years ago we just…. stopped making Christmas dinner for the two of us. There were so many things we wanted to make, but after all of the rush around getting ready for Christmas and the stress of work leading up to the holidays, neither of us ever feel like making a huge dinner Christmas Eve for just the two of us. (Now, on the rare occasions when we have a vistor over for Christmas (for example, a friend who can’t make it home for the holiday), we’ll pull out all the stops. It just seems silly to do all that for the two of us.)

Instead, we go out for Chinese. Horrors, I know, but we love it. Our usual MO when we go for Chinese on Christmas Eve is to order way more than we could possibly eat, get it packaged up, and then have the leftovers for dinner on Christmas Day.

But… the next time I decide to make a big dinner for us or friends, I would like to try cooking a duck. I’ve heard horror stories about how greasy they are, but this Christmas there is a blogger who is detailing her duck-cooking step-by-step. Her method looks like a winner, and I’ll be sure to try it out when the opportunity presents itself.

Aaah, it’s that time of the year again. Snow on the ground, Christmas trees in living rooms and delicious cookies on every desk at work. Yes, it’s time for… gardening catalogues??

That’s right! As any home gardener knows, this is the time of year when the first seed and plant catalogues begin to arrive on your doorstep, mixed in with your Christmas cards and credit card bills. It may seem counter-intuitive to curl up with a plate of cookies, a notebook and a gardening catalogue in front of the Christmas tree, but it’s actually a great time to plan out what you want to grow next summer.

* First, assess how the summer went for you. What did you grow? How did it go? Was anything more trouble than it was worth? Was something really good, and you want to grow more of it? This past summer, aside from the rhubarb
and blue honeysuckle bushes (which have yet to produce anything… hmm…), we grew: sweet corn, sugar snap peas, pole beans, grape tomatoes and zucchini.

For the past few years I’d been growing the sweet corn using the three sisters’ technique: interplanting corn, zucchini and beans so that the squash shaded the ground and prevented weeds from growing, and the corn provided support for the beans. After two windstorms two years in a row devastated my little plot of corn (it’s amazing how easily such large plants can be ripped out of the ground in wet soil), I’m through with corn. It’s too much work, takes too much water, too much babying, for too little payoff. If you have about an acre on which to grow vegetables, it’s worth planting corn… But not when your garden is about 20′ square. From now on, our corn will come from the farmers’ market.

The beans did poorly this year because of that same windstorm; many of their stems were snapped off when the corn started whipping around in the wind. But I love beans, and the ones we did get were good. So the beans stay on the list, although I haven’t decided between pole beans and bush beans.

The zucchini also did well… as always. I have a feeling that one zucchini plant could feed a whole village. I had about ten plants this past summer - waaaaaay more zucchini than any sane person needs. So, since I won’t be doing the corn/interplanting trick this year, I’ll scale back the number of plants. Two plants ought to be plenty.

Tomatoes are a staple in any home garden. They’re relatively easy to grow, and the produce you get is so much better than the waxy, watery, tasteless fruit you find in the grocery store this time of year. This year I grew two plants from heirloom seeds sent to me from a friend in California. Sooo good - definitely a do-again. I’ll probably add another plant in there, a slicing variety this time, so we’ll have both grape tomatoes and slicing.

Finally, we have the sugar snap peas. Early summer just isn’t the same without these little sweet morsels. I insist on these every year, and I get no arguments from my husband.

* After you’ve decided what to keep from last year, make a quick sketch of your garden and plan out next year’s crops. This doesn’t need to be to scale, unless you’re into making detailed maps; just a rough idea of where your walkways are and the general size of the garden is enough. The first few years you might want to measure how much room you have, but after a while you’ll get a good idea of how much you can cram into an area.

Keep in mind that you don’t want to plant the same things in the same spot over and over. Rotate things around as best you can. This allows the soil to regenerate between heavy-feeding crops (like corn) and lets you grow nitrogen-fixing plants (like beans) in different places. This next year, for example, I’m going to relocate the peas and sunflowers (which I always plant in with the peas).

* Now that you’ve got your sketch, you might have some blank spots in it. Because I’m not growing corn or nearly as many zucchini plants this year, I took the opportunity to move everything around. This is where you decide what new things to grow, or if you should grow more of something. Being added to the garden this summer will be lettuce (I used to grow it but stopped because I always ran out of room), and potatoes. I’m also considering growing broccoli, although I might decide not to do this because we’re going to be away during a critical part of the summer.

My first harvestable pea pod probably won’t arrive for five to six more months, but I’m already looking forward to getting my hands dirty in the garden again. No food is as local as the stuff growing 20′ from your back door!

I have a soft spot in my heart for popovers, and I’m not sure why. I’m pretty sure I remember my mother (or maybe my grandmother) making them for dinner, usually as an accompaniment for a saucy main dish. (I think that they might have actually been Yorkshire puddings that we had, but they are very similar to popovers.) I do know that they were a bit of a pain to make, which is why they may have faded from our dinner menu as I got older.

However, the popover managed to wiggle itself into my subconcious as the representation of a hearty, wholesome meal. Ideally, a popover is a light, puffy bread that is steam-leavened. There is some pretty cool chemistry behind what makes them rise, which makes them interesting to teach kids some kitchen science. As a bonus, you can eat the experiment after you’re done!

They can be tricky, though. So many things have to be right: the heat, the pan, the batter. If anything goes wrong, you can end up with popovers that have a glassy finish (overcooked), too doughy or not “popped over” (undercooked), or they might collapse (the leavening process was interrupted by having the oven opened, or the heat was disrupted at a critical moment).

If you’re lucky, you can find a popover pan. These look like ancient cupcake tins: deep cups held together with a rack, rather than a solid surface. Cupcake tins are too shallow to be used for popovers, and the solid surface between the cups doesn’t allow for enough air circulation between the tops of the cups. For years I was unable to find a proper popover pan, so I made do with custard dishes placed on a baking sheet. It was servicable, but I always had to be careful when moving the popovers in or out of the oven, since the cups would slide.

Finally, I found a popover pan at Canadian Superstore. As you can see in the photo below, the cups are suspended by a rack that holds them together, but still allows for lots of air circulation. My one complaint about the pan was that the cups didn’t seem quite deep enough, but they were still deeper than your typical cupcake tin (and, upon reflection I realized they were the same depth as my custard dishes). The instructions that came with the pan also emphasized that you could not use any type of grease (I was using butter in my recipe) in the cups, because it would react with the finish and create a gooey mess. My recipe was emphatic about greasing the cups to make them slide out easier, but I decided to follow the pan’s instructions first.

After I used the pan the first time, I was thrilled. I didn’t need any grease at all - the popovers slid out with no problem. (Hooray for technology!) The popovers also rose much more than they did using the custard cups, but I noticed one oddity that probably has more to do with my oven than the pan. The photo below shows the popovers I made using my new popover pan. The popover on the right is absolutely perfect. The popover on the left has an odd little turret at the top. It either didn’t finish rising, or it rose fully and then fell a bit. The popover on the right was in a cup closer to the front of the oven, and the popover on the left was near the back of the oven. Since you cannot open the oven while baking the popovers (because they’ll collapse), I can’t turn the pan halfway through the cooking process to even them out. Oh well - it still tasted fine.

If you want to try making your own popovers, you don’t need a special pan - it just makes it easier. Six glass custard dishes like this one, balanced on a cookie sheet, will work just as well. (You can try using ceramic ramekins, but I can’t vouch for how well they work, as I never tried them.) Or, if you live in Canada, stop by your local Superstore and pick up one of their pans. (The pan was $9.99 at our Superstore.)

You’ll need:

* 1 TB butter (for greasing the pan if needed)
* 2 eggs
* 1 cup flour (not self-rising!)
* 1 cup milk (not skim - I use 1%, but 2% or whole would work too)
* 1/2 tsp salt

Heat the oven to 450° F. Divide 1 TB six ways between your tin or custard cups. Place the pan/cups in the oven to heat up. (If you’re using the Superstore pan, you can skip the butter, but still put the pan in the oven to heat it.)

Meanwhile, beat eggs in a bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients; mix just until smooth, making sure all large lumps have been incorporated. Don’t overmix. Empty bowl into a liquid measuring cup, or something with with a spout for easy pouring. Set batter aside at room temperature until oven is finished preheating.

Remove pan from oven. If greased with butter, swirl the melted butter around and up the side of each cup to coat. (You’ll need to cover about 3/4 of the way up the sides.) Pour the batter into the hot cups, filling 1/2 way.

Bake for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 350° F and bake for an additional 20 minutes or until golden brown. It is extremely important that you do not open the oven - not even for a moment - at any time during the baking process. The first 30 minutes are especially critical.

When popovers are done, remove from oven and immediately turn out onto a cooling rack. Serve hot. Makes 6 popovers.

Popovers can be frozen for several months, provided they are cooled completed and pierced to let the steam out. However, they never last long enough to be frozen in our house. While they’re perfect for a substitute for dinner rolls, I like serving them for breakfast alongside an egg and a slice of tomato.

I started this blog just for fun, and I’ve been extremely flattered at the attention it’s received. Along with the attention, though, have come the product offers.

Usually it’s a marketing firm, acting on behalf of a company, who is looking for someone to send free samples to. They do a few Google searches, find some food blogs (like mine), and offer to send them some crackers or cookies or a box drink or something. The expectation is that the blogger will then write about the product that they’ve been sent, either mentioning it in passing (”Hey, I got this really cool salmon cheese spread from Acme Fish in the mail that went perfect with this dish…), or in a full-out review (”The No Salt Extra Flavour Fat Free Sesame Bar is a wonderful addition to a lunch…).

Now, I realize that 99% of the time, when a firm sends you a product sample you’re under no obligation to review it, or even to mention it. But when I got the first sample offer in my inbox (the first of many!), I struggled long and hard with whether I should accept the sample.

My problem was that if I did accept the product, and I did like the product, and I did write about it, then I would be ethically obligated to mention that I got the product for free. Then, after having mentioned that I got the product at no cost, a positive review would be suspect, even if it was totally heartfelt. After all, there’s a reason why Consumer Reports does not accept free samples.

Now, I have nothing against bloggers who do accept free samples and write about them, provided they fully disclose that they did not pay for the product. A lot of people consider free swag a perk of having a blog. That’s fine. In fact, some people have said that bloggers should accept free samples, and that there’s no ethical problem in doing so. Other people have chimed in with similar responses, and the mantra seems to be: disclose, disclose, be honest, and disclose. Honestly is really the best policy.

After a lot of consideration, though, I decided that I will not accept free product samples now, nor at any time in the future. If I review a product, a food or a restaurant, it was paid for out of my own pocket. Besides, this is not primarilly a review blog: I tend to range all over the map with my topics. So, my answer will be “no!” to the samples; hopefully this (and my amended About page) will help keep my inbox a bit cleaner!

Thanks for your patience! We’re back from our long road trip to the States, finally. It’s wonderful being able to see my family, but I’m happy to be home (and the cats are certainly happy to see us, too.)

One of the stops on our trip was to have Thanksgiving dinner with my mother’s family in Pennsylvania. Growing up, I had never given Thanksgiving a lot of thought as to what the holiday entailed. We either hosted a large number of family members at our house, or we travelled to someone else’s house where we became the visiting family. Large quantities of food were consumed, and the time was passed chatting and watching some of the various bowl games for college football.

Now, living in Canada, it’s interesting being able to see this American holiday from a Canadian perspective. At work, most of our clients are based in the States. As a result, we typically have the American holidays off. I was amused when I first heard my co-workers referring to the US Thanksgiving holiday as “bigger than Christmas,” but as I started to think about it I realized they were right. Christmas might be the most important holiday to the US economy, but Americans themselves place a lot of importance on Thanksgiving. After all, they usually only get one day off for Christmas, but Thanksgiving garners two days off (unless you work in retail).

I wondered about that for a while. After discussing it with my husband, we concluded that it might be due to a few things. First, Thanksgiving is a major holiday that has no religious implications, thus giving it a universal appeal. It doesn’t matter if you’re Christian, Muslim, Hindu or athiest, everyone can enjoy sitting down with family to a fantastic feast. After all, the “first Thanksgiving” was originally celebrated with the Christian pilgrims, a few converted Christian Native Americans, and a tribe of Native Americans who did not follow Christianity.

Secondly, Thanksgiving cannot be merchandised, no matter how hard companies may try. Oh, you can buy turkey decorations for your yard, and ceramic cornucopia centerpieces for the table, but the basic Thanksgiving boils down to family+friends+food=holiday. There are no gifts, except for the bottle of wine that your mother-in-law always insists on bringing. So unless you buy your friends, the only thing you need to spend money on is the food, as little or as much as you want.

Maybe it’s just a matter of perspective, but it just doesn’t seem that Thanksgiving is as big of a deal in Canada as it is the in the States. Oh, people will go all out with turkeys and whatnot, but it just seems to be lower-key here. I’m not sure why. (Maybe because it’s on a Monday? Or because it’s so far away from Christmas?) On the other hand, Christmas seems to be a much larger deal here than in the US. I guess it’s all perspective.

Anyway, welcome to December! It’s time to start planning Christmas cookies, hams and pot-luck contributions. Whee!

So, we’re on our way to visit family in Ohio. As a result, I’ll be “afk” until we get back. Winnipeg Eats will return when I do! See you then!