Well Preserved

Dana and I have made a part-time job when it comes to disliking Valentines Day.  We’ve had an entires series of Anti-Valentine Parties and even had an awesome anti-Valentines date (I took her to dinner in a nearly-condemmed restaurant and she brought me to “Bat Boy – The Musical“).  It’s not that we hate Valentines – we just really enjoy disliking it.

When we were in High School together (we were just friends back then), our Student council did small fundraisers by selling CandyGrams.  For a few dollars each, the student council would deliver a candy with a note to the object of your affection or appreciation (they weren’t valentines specific).  Sometimes there was candy, sometimes there wasn’t.  It was generally a sweet idea.

Recently we found ourselves laughing about the idea of a Valentines Card for Foodies.  Dana’s learning how to screen print so a joke became a though which then became a project; screen printed postcards (we’ll hand-write your message for you or make one up if you’d rather; we won’t be insulting of course but I can’t promise we’ll be romantic…).  Canada Post won’t allow us to attach candy to a postcard so the ‘treat’ is the print this time.

Dana drew the four designs, hand painted them onto the screen and then printed the cards with the most jarring shade of pink she could muster.

There are 4 postcards in the series:

• You put the Cute in Charcuterie
• I love you more than kale
• Let’s make bacon
• You’re the jam to my toast

You can see the entire series in our store – just click here!

We’ve figured out how to create; the event on Facebook – if you’re coming, we’d love to know about it by accepting our invite here (you don’t need to follow WellPreserved to accept the meeting).  It’s not required but will help us plan. 

We’re less than a week from our first food event of 2012 – #HomeEc at the Avro.

We’re using today to answer a few questions (we’re learning on the fly!)

Here’s some updates:

1. The Avro is small so don’t worry about brining a lot.  Simple is great and enough samples for 15-20 is probably a very high amount.
2. Bring  a container in case there’s left overs.
3. I’m buying a vest at value village for my #HomeEc badge, Dana’s looking for a sash.  I hope we won’t be the only keeners and if you bring a homemade snack you’ll get a one-time-only badge too!
4. There will be lots of interesting people – many who are on Twitter, blogs and other social media.  Bring a pen (or a smart phone) to stay in touch!

The Avro is a small space; we will do our best to accommodate everyone but be early to guarantee space.

The full details on B.Y.O.B.S. can be found in last weeks post here.

Hope to see you there!

I was going to publish this earlier this morning but somehow the idea of sharing a review of an application which is based solely around the consumption of beer seemed like a difficult thing to digest for breakfast (well, at least it did this morning!).

Before we share what “UNTAPPD” is, let’s start by sharing what it’s not – namely, it is not a contest, competition or any sort of tool to glorify the mass consumption of beer.  I’m sure that some could see it that way – just as others could see a bar as providing a similar opportunity. 

What UNTAPPD is, in my estimation and use, is a tool where friends can use their mobile phone to log and share what beer they are drinking.  Beyond simply sharing WHAT one is drinking, the application allows each to form their independent ranking, add a photo and share the location of where they’ve found it.  The location is of particular use to me since our City (and Province) can be very limited in its selection of beer and seeing what’s around town is a great resource to help learn where to find interesting beer.

UNTAPPD works similar to Twitter (or a very, very light version of Facebook).  You add people, they add you and you see each others activities.  The two screenshots below share the welcome screen (on the left) and the list of recent beers I’ve consumed.  My friends can see my list which allows them to compare their rating, see where I drank it or ask me what I thought of it (typically over a beer at a different time – it’s always nice to leave something to talk about!)

You can also save a wish list of beer you’ve seen that you want to try – there’s nothing worse than hearing about something that sounds fantastic and then forgetting what it was and who told you!

The screen on the left shows suggested beers based on my recent picks and the one on the right shows me local beers that strangers are drinking near me (note the two locations below are both in Toronto but one is about 10-15 minutes from here and the other is about 30 minutes but it’s easy to flip through the entire city like this).  It gives me a chance to see what all of my friends may be missing across the city and is a neat way to find out-of-the-way-places that we wouldn’t have found otherwise.

Untappd also logs all of the beer I’ve had (I can easily access my own review of them) and lets me easily see what my friends are up to along the way.  The picture on the right shows the ‘badges’ (similar to Four Square) which are awarded for specific achievements (like consuming a certain number of beer from different countries or trying X number of different styles of beer over time). 

I use it on my iPhone (not sure if it’s available on other platforms).  It’s a great way to share my beer experiences with the beer fanatics in my life as well as learn about the things that are happening around me to learn where to find things I haven’t tried.

I’m also very excited about travelling with UNTAPPD.  I am certain it will help me find places I would never find on my own and open a world of tastes that just wouldn’t be possible without it.

Anyone else out here using it?  What do you think of it?

On February 5th, 2012 (from 10-3) our Farmer’s Market is making 2,000 liters (around 2,000 quarts of Onion Soup):

It’s a pay-what-you can event that helps raise funds for our local market; bring your own bowls, spoons and a donation and you’ll get your fill of soup!

People often wonder why a Farmer’s Market, especially one that is supported by so many volunteers would need to raise money.  Although I don’t profess to know all of the expenses I was surprised to find out that:

1. They have to rent the public park in order to run the market.
2. In order to rent, they need to be a registered non-profit.

And, of course, incorporating as a non-profit has business expenses including annual taxes, audits and I’m sure there’s insurance.  I really wish we had far fewer rules – instead we seem to be adding more and more…

The Market has also promised to make this a no-waste event.  All of the soup will be consumed and any remains will be used and/or shared (a few posters welcome people to bring ‘buckets’ so you can bring some back home to watch the big Football game later that day.

This was the first year of this Sunday market and it’s been an absolute awesome place to grab food, meet others in the community or sit and be entertained by many of the great musicians they bring to the park.

To learn more about the market, check them out on Twitter, Facebook or on their website!

I used to think I had a man-crush on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.  It’s pretty easy to romantasize the idea of a Chef turned farmer turned activist turned restaurateur turned tv host turned hunter turned fisherman author turned beer maker.  That kind of profile has dream bro-mance written all over it.

I’ve recently discovered that I fortunately don’t have said man-crush.   Oh no, it’s deeper than that.  I think I’m in love with the Entire Vision of the River Cottage (the brand he champions all of the above missions under).

If you haven’t seen their series of handbooks, they are a little piece of magic.  Each is the same size and of similar format.  They remind of the magic of the National Audubon Books – they’re amazing as individual entities but something special happens when several of them are lined up on a shelf. 

These are MANUALS, not BOOKS.  They scream of usefulness, of doing things and of being simple resources.  The bread book is no exception.  The pictures are beautiful and the explanations are brief, simple and void of mystery.

The bread book starts with the fundamentals of making bread.  It’s very thorough even though most sections are covered in 3 paragraphs or less.  I especially like that each one is labelled at its start which makes for easy skimming/ deciding what to read – and finding it again later.  There’s great coverage on everything from why you would want to make bread to the different types of flour, ingredients and terms that you’re likely to run into.

The second section is a detailed case study of the steps to make bread.  This saves a tonne of redundant steps in later chapters and will take any intimidation out of the bread making process that you might feel.  There are great pictures which help you visualize the desired results as well as the ones to avoid.

From there the book walks you through the basic bread recipe and progresses to the many variations, including flat breads, sourdoughs, buns, English muffins and more.  There’s a whack-load of recipes and great content that will have you rising (pun delightfully intended) to the challenge of making bread.  Although I’ve been making bread for a few years (with the biggest learning being that it’s nowhere near as difficult as I feared), I’m really looking forward to learning far more from this awesome guide.

The final pages walk you through some useful resources – and include a simple step-by-step process to make your own clay oven.  This has been on my ‘dream’ list for the last few years to build at our cabin – perhaps this is the year that we’ll knock it off!

If there’s a disadvantage to this book for some, it’s that it measures things in metric.  I see this as an advantage as it’s far more precise to measuring in volume.  You don’t need to know metric to use it – a simple kitchen scale (ours was around $20) will be all you need to weigh your ingredients.

What’s your favourite bread book?

NOTE: After publishing the following article, a few awesome users found a link to a recall on this pot.  Read this article and others before deciding to use this or not (the reccomendations of others are not to).  There is an alternate model described in the article that we are now on the hunt for.

The title is a pretty bold proclamation.  I think our coffee maker is the best for many reasons including:

• It makes great coffee
• It will last for generations
• It doesn’t have any waste (i.e. a coffee filter)
• It’s practically bulletproof
• It takes limited storage space (compared to a machine)
• It’s pretty
• It reminds me of my childhood
• It makes delightful sounds as it turns water and grounds into coffee
• We bought it for $15

Making percolated coffee is easy:

1. Fill the hopper (that’s what I call it) with some coffee.  You don’t need to actually “FILL” it – I use about a tablespoon of coffee for every 1.5-2 cups.
2. Pour the amount of water you want into the pot (ours has measurements inside).
3. Put the hopper cover (not pictured above – it’s a small filter with holes you can see below) on the hopper.
4. Place the hopper in the pot.
5. Place the lid (it has a glass dome) on the top and bring to a boil over high heat.  Once the water is boiling you can reduce the heat but want to see the water continue to percolate (‘erupt’ in the glass dome that’s part of the cover).

Percolation is simple – the water boils, is forced up the ‘straw’ in the middle of the hopper, hits the glass lid and falls over coffee grounds to infuse the water with coffee.

Do you have a coffee ‘machine’ you prefer?

The Internet can be a magical place.  It’s a place where you can travel through time and space, connect with others, learn from them and share.  It’s a place where you can find other pirates that you’d sail the seas with as well as arm yourself with enough knowledge for any mission.  It can be a magical place.

Sometimes the Internet brings you something exceptional.  Something that’s just purely inspirational, beautiful, eloquent and engaging.  Sometimes it brings you an amazing project like the one that Kevin Kossowan publishes from Edmonton, Alberta. It IS a magical place.

Before sharing the link, a bit of background on his amazing project.  Kevin is from Western Canada – although those unfamiliar should note it’s not near the coast of our country.  Alberta is an amazing province that alternates between the majestic Rocky Mountains (that practically rise from the earth like a wall with few foothills) to roaming prairies and the indescribable beauty of the far North.  I was fortunate to spend a year traveling Canada (on the Greyhound Bus) in the early 1990s and spent a lot of time crossing Alberta and just enjoying it’s awesomeness.

It’s important to know where Kevin is from in order to understand his cooking.  Like us, he’s madly focused on experiencing the ‘terroir’ (food has borrowed this term from wine where it’s used to express the taste of the region that produced it).  Kevin’s cooking is simultaneously familiar and foreign to me. The familiarity comes from topics such as hunting, foraging, fermenting and curing.  Foreign to me because the regions of this country we both live in are very different from each other.

Alberta has a lot of game (not just in quantity but in variety).  It’s a meat-heavy province (relative to the amount of fruit and vegetables grown in Ontario).  Meat is not in a short supply – Kevin’s site is not ideal for vegetarians though if you can look past the honesty in his beautiful photography and awesome videos, you will find posts that are very relative to vegetarians.  He’s not a carnivore but he is a proponent of ensuring that if an animal is going to be harvested for food, that every part is used to the utmost so expect to see plenty of curing and nose-to-tail treatments of an animal.  In short, Kevin’s not shy about supporting small-farmed meat and game; if you’re a vegetarian you may want to skip this one.

If you consume meat, I believe you owe it to yourself to check out what Kevin does.  Most of us will find articles that are within our comfort zone, others that tickle our curiosity and some that will challenge our entire relationship with meat.  He shoots an amazing video series and recently shared a very powerful docu-style video about what happens in a small abbtioir.  It is graphic but a really thought-provoking piece about a very difficult subject.  Other episodes share profiles of farmers, demonstrations of ice fishing and charcuterie, butchering at home and his ‘sub-optimal’ pizza oven.

Here’s Kevin about Kevin, pilfered from his site:

The only way I figured I could change the food culture I spent my life in was to simply do it, at home, one small step at a time. So I started doing stuff, and documenting on this website. I started gardening. Took up hunting big game. Built a root cellar. Started butchering pigs, beef, moose, elk, deer, antelope. Started foraging. I built a wood oven. Started smoking meats. Built a fruit crusher & press. Fermented some cider. Okay, lots of cider. Introduced myself to some farmers. Stepped into the world of charcuterie. Got involved in the food community. I kept stepping forward in all of these areas, slowly changing how we ate, and how we lived. If I didn’t know how to take a step, the internet and library were always there to show me the way.

I’ve had the pleasure of trading a few messages back and forth with Kevin over the last few years.  He’s approachable, funny and absolutely driven in his pursuit. I hope you’ll take the time and see for yourself!

What websites/ blogs are your magical places on the Internet?

One of the benefits of cooking with fresh ingredients is that you can preserve unused leftovers for a future date.  We had ‘extra’ cranberries that were leftover from the holidays and decided to preserve them; had we bought sauce (or ‘jelly’), there would have been few options to preserve it as it is, essentially, an end product.

I decided against making sauce; we just don’t have enough occasions to eat it and I really enjoy making it the day we use it.  We had a fair number of cranberries left and wanted to take them in a different direction – so we decided on fermenting them (this ‘recipe’ takes about 10 minutes of active time).

We had 2 pounds of cranberries.  Enough to easily fit in a large (2 quart) mason jar.  I love the 2-quarts (which may be tough to find in the US) as they are large – and wide-mouthed.  This makes using another jar as a ‘weight’ easy.  The key to fermenting is ensuring the product is completely submerged by the brine so we place a jar filled with brine on top of the cranberries as a weight and pack the jar just enough that the smaller jar can sit inside the larger while ensuring the tops of both jars are more-or-less level to assist in removing the smaller jar when needed.

If you can’t find a large mason jar, using a crock r a 1-quart jar is fine (just use a 1-cup or half-cup jar as your weight) and cut the recipe in half (or use two jars).

Before sharing how to make this easy recipe, let’s share some ideas on what to do with the finished product.  I should mention that I’m jumping the shark a little bit here as we are about 6 days into the fermentation and, while it’s not complete, we had our first tastes last night and think we know where it’s going and what we’ll do with it:

• They can be eaten as-is.  They are less bitter than you imagine a cranberry to be and have become sour like you would expect with fermentation (i.e. a kosher pickle).  Treated as a relish (you could also add some lemon confit) this could be ideal with a strong fish.
• They can be rinsed (removing some of the salt profile) and added to salads or even a stir-fry.
• They could easily be added to stuffing (rinsed or not).
• I added maple syrup to a small dish of the berries and maple syrup and it was delightful as-is or could be added to yogurt.
• I keep thinking of placing a few of these in a bottom of a shot glass, covering it with vodka, waiting a few minutes and…  Well, you get the picture.

Ingredients

• 2 pounds of cranberries (or as much as you want).  Inspect and pick out any ‘bad’ ones
• 7 cups of room temperature water plus 1 cup of room temperature water
• 5 tablespoons salt
• Ginger – we used a solid hunk, about an inch wide.  I leave the skin on but you can peel if you prefer.

Instructions

1. If your water source is chlorinated you want to measure it out as soon as possible – let it sit in the widest vessel you have for 30 minutes or so to let the chlorine evaporate (I’ve always believed this to be important but don’t have the scientific proof this works, would love to know if anyone does).
2. Combine the salt and 1-cup of water and heat until dissolved (stirring will help).  Once it’s diluted, add to the 7 cups of water (this will help cool it which is important to the process).
3. Finely chop the ginger (I put it in the food processor and chop it well).
4. Chop the cranberries.  I use a food processor (if you do the same, only add a bit at a time – you still want large chunks and if you fill the processor more than 40 or 50% you’ll have a lot of very fine pieces).
5. Pour the cranberries into a large wide-mouthed mason jar. Once the water is at room temperature, cover the cranberries with it – remembering to leave room for the ‘weight jar’ that will sit on top.
6. Jiggle the jar to allow the liquid to settle through the fruit.
7. Add the weight jar, fill it with brine.  The extra brine will be useful if you have any spilling during fermenting.
8. Store in a warm place, covered with cheesecloth.  Know that fermenting like this can cause the liquid to overflow (which is why we don’t use a lid as this would cause excessive pressure) so place it somewhere that is 70 degrees plus and won’t be ruined if it overflows (I keep it on a plate on the counter).
9. Check every day – if there’s mould (there likely won’t be) on the surface, it’s ok to skim it and set it aside.
10. Check after 3-5 days (sooner if it’s hot).  Check by removing the weight jar and tasting.  If it’s too salty, rinse.
11. When the pickles reach the flavour and texture you want, remove the weight jar (this will leave room for expansion; don’t worry about adding all the extra brine if things are covered) and store in fridge (this will slow fermentation).
12. Let us know what you think!

How do you like to preserve cranberries – or how would you like to?

For newer friends to WellPreserved, the mention of hunting may be disarming.  To learn more about why I’ve decided to hunt (and the struggles I have with it), this post is a proper introduction.  For those looking to see what the hunt is actually like (without graphic pictures), you can read my (very long) diaries for 2011 - 2009 and 2010 are bundled here; just read from the bottom up. If you plan to read about the 2011 hunt, you may not want to read the following as it contains spoilers from that series.

It’s difficult to imagine that our Moose Hunt was 3 months ago.  It’s even more difficult to imagine that our cabin will be empty and abandoned for another 3 months and that preparations for 2012 will loosely start just that soon.  The hunting season has a prolonged build-up before it suddenly arrives and then disappears almost as quick as it started (many don’t realize that rifle season for moose is 6 days long in much of Ontario).

There are many fond memories of this years hunt, as well as some great lessons.  I’m very excited at some of the improvements we’ve made – specifically in marking some of the watches so that our lines are set optimally as well as some of the new maps we were able to produce merging data from our GPS and Google Maps.

On the flip side of things, the lack of success in this years hunt has significantly changed our diet.  Over the last 3 years we’ve significantly changed our habits around meat; the biggest changes have come from the amount we eat and where we buy it. 

Our overall consumption of meat has decreased tremendously over the last 5 years.  Back then I remember buying steaks as big as our head (almost) and joyfully eating the entire thing.  When my parents would share that they used to do the same and that they just couldn’t consume that amount of meat anymore, I couldn’t imagine otherwise (even though I spent more than 5 years of my life where I ate no red meat, pork or game and only rare doses of fish and chicken).  It wasn’t that I was dependant on meat, it’s just that I enjoyed it when we had it.

The biggest change has come from how we buy meat;  I can’t remember the last time we bought it at a grocery store.  Almost 100% of the red meat, fish and chicken that enters our house is direct from farmer or traceable through a butcher to a farmer. 

The only exception is the odd ‘takeout’ meal or meal with friends at a restaurant (and even then we’re fortunate to enjoy some of Toronto’s expanding number of restaurants which focus on local and sustainable food).  And, even then, the choices of what I will order out is diminishing –   I’m not entirely comfortable with all of the choices I make when eating out but I have made significant eliminations on what I simply won’t order and make different decisions than I did even a year ago.

Our meat now primarily comes from small butchers and in far less quantity.  The quantity has decreased only in small part due to price – much of the change comes from a fridge full of food from our CSA ($30 a week) and we struggle to go through what we get with it.

There’s also a significant decrease due to the lack of moose in our freezer.  The truth is that in previous years this would not have hurt nearly as much as it does this year.  Game is becoming a more essential source of meat in our diet and the lack of it means a significant decrease in what we’ll consume this year.  Hunting, on a good year, supplies 30-45 pounds of meat to our family of two which is more than enough for us to easily supplement our diet with.

It’s not all darkness though.  We’re both very happy to eat vegetarian meals and my Father was fortunate during the deer hunt and I know we have a supply of deer waiting in his deep freeze.  It also means that we’re finding new ways to eat vegetables and that things that used to sit on the side of the plate now take the spotlight.  My soup making skills are increasing though my desire to eat something else is on the rise.

I think of the hunting season more than you would believe.  I wonder what I need to learn.  I think about the equipment I used and how it suffered in the rain.  I think about how cold and miserable it was and that I let the weather drive me indoors before dark and know I need a bigger resolve to stick it out if I’m going to continue to eat meat and want to make this part of my diet.

I will be a better hunter next year.  My family depends on that.

More than anything, I’m left with a bigger resolution than ever – that hunting is no longer a ‘hobby’ of 20 years but an essential part of my diet.  It’s a skill that I have to learn more about and I have to get better at.  I’ve always learned that the lack of success wouldn’t threaten my survival but I’m learning that it will threaten my ability to follow my ethics.

This is a journey for us – not an end destination.  I’m not suggesting you should make the same suggestions as us.  I see our (Dana and mine) relationship to food is drastically changing and am often surprised at just how quickly that’s happening.  We don’t have ‘the answers’ but are having fun finding ‘our answers.’ 

These posts help me understand just how much we’re changing - both in the present but also looking back at them in the future to see where we were at a certain time.  The 35 year-old Joel would have been shocked to know what the values the 38-year-old held.  I’m hoping the 41-year-old me will do the same for the 38-year-old that is typing today.

The Daily Meal announced it’s 2012 list of America’s 50 Most Powerful People in Food for 2012 today.  They admit such lists are highly subjective but appears to have been carefully thought and measured.  They describe their ultimate criteria as follows:

Our ultimate criterion was simply this: Is each person on our list capable, whether by dint of corporate station, media access, moral authority, or sheer personality, of substantially changing, improving, and/or degrading the quality and variety of the American diet or the way we think about it? If so, how absolute is the power he or she can bring to bear?

If you want to see the complete list, click the link above; it’s thought-provoking.  Here’s a few highlights that really hit home:

• 3 of the Top 6 work for major fast food or retail.
• Positions 9-12 are all mass agriculture companies.  While “Monsanto” is a name many will recognize I suspect the name “Archer Daniels Midland” may be less known – yet their CEO is named as Top 10 most powerful in food in America.
• The Government is represented twice (three times if you count the First Lady).  Compare that to 5 Television hosts and 7 Chefs.
• 5 are fast-food businesses.  6 are grocery store chains.
• 3 are authors
•  Despite the explosion of social media and technology start-ups, none appear to be under 30 – very few, if any under 40.
• Of 49 identified people (one of the Top 50 is the NY Times Food Critic as a job, not a person) – 34 of the 49 are male.
• Of 49 identified people (one of the Top 50 is the NY Times Food Critic as a job, not a person) – 45 of the 49 appear to be caucasian.
• The Food Network (represented by their CEO and multiple TV personalities) is in a position to change the whole dynamic of food… if they’re willing.  They would also alienate many of the people on the list.
• If you waved a magic wand overnight and outlawed junk food (I’m not calling for that), I subjectively propose that 11 of the Top 15 would be in significant peril or out of business.  If you believe that Government has significant funding from those industries, 14 would be in trouble.  The unnamed Critic from the New York Times would be the sole survivor.

The 2011 list featured “You” as the most powerful.  The fact that you’re missing this year wasn’t an accidental omission.  Ultimately it is up to “Us” if we want to change this list…

What do you make of the list?