The Ontario Food Terminal: Where Dinner Begins!

Recently I was fortunate enough to be able to tag along on an unusual adventure. One of my favourite food journalists is Katrina Simmons, who writes about food and food security issues. She is a regulary featured columnist for The Hamilton Spectator who provides excellent coverage of the Eat Local movement in our region.

Katrina's purpose was to accompany The Ancaster Old Mill's genial Head Chef Bryan Gibson, as he purchased ingredients for a local food cooking class he would be teaching that night in West Hamilton. We met at the Tim Horton's at Main and Dundurn at 4am. It was still pretty dark when we arrived at the terminal, just outside Toronto.

There was considerable hustle and bustle everywhere. A surprisingly large area of the terminal was being used by local farmers who were selling their produce by the case and in bulk to restauranteurs and other food industry purchasers.
This market is special in that it is not open to the general public: not even Katrina could visit unless she was in the company of a chef, restauranteur, buyer or manager. Bryan was clearly in very familiar territory, and seemed to be among old friends with so many of the guys there saying "hello", so Bryan would sometimes pause to pick up on this or that bit of family or business news.
The fact that there were almost no women in the facility was pretty noticeable.
Here's some of the gorgeous Ontario produce that we saw...

Fresh and juicy fruit from the Niagara Region was everywhere, such as these succulent blueberries. I purchased a whole case of assorted farm fresh Ontario raspberries from a different vendor: red, golden and black ones, too! These re-useable wooden crates are a great way of keeping packaging use and costs down for farmers. They seem to be a better idea than the cardboard boxes that usually show up at restaurants and grocery stores. Based on what I've seen they mostly end up in landfill... sadly, recyling them takes more time and effort than many cost-focused establishments are willing or able to invest. Preserves, poaching, platters, pies, pancakes, parfaits -- all perfect for Ontario's pretty and plentiful peaches!

Personal Chef at Work! A Pre-Renovation Party at The Piggott Building

A good friend of mine decided to renovate her fabulously located apartment in the historic Piggott Building, on James Street South in downtown Hamilton. Lacking in period features and looking like a very plain space in need of updating, the amazing Ruth Chen (an assistant professor at McMaster University and Locavore extraordinaire) undertook renovations that began this month.

Her plan is pretty cool. The invitation that she sent out to her guests sets the scene:

It’s exciting because I’ve realized how this project is shaping up to
reflect several of the things that are really important to me: environmental
sustainability, recycled products, local artisans, aesthetics and design... what
I value even more than those things are community engagement and good food! and soooo, I’ve decided to hold a two-part party. Part I will be *pre-reno.* It will
be a catered affair ...and will showcase the skills of a wonderful personal
chef/foodie/founder of Slow Food Hamilton, Karen Burson, who was recently (just yesterday!) featured in the Hamilton Spectator http://www.thespec.com/article/392895 . She will be incorporating local and/or organic products, producers and food from community gardens into her offerings for the evening.

Our very busy day started with a trip to Simpler Thyme Organic Farm (documented in photos shown a few entries below this one). The hostess arranged for a friend to be both DJ and photographer that night, so that Ruth could concentrate on entertaining her guests, which proved fortunate for me: all photos taken while the party was in progress are by Tala Strauss. Thank you, Tala! And I really like your photographic style!

Thanks most of all to an Ruth for inviting me to cook for her friends -- Ruth, you are an incredibly attentive, kind and caring hostess. I always appreciate your support and encouragement as I do my best to demonstrate how tasty and exciting local cuisine can be.

L-R: Margaret's book, event host Ian Graham, participants in the book signing area provided by Brian Prince Bookseller, and a partial view of the farm; two photos each by Katrina Simmons and Ian Graham, respectively.

Meet Margaret Webb, Author of

Apples to Oysters: A Food Lover’s Tour of Canadian Farms

“Apples to Oysters: A Food Lover’s Tour of Canadian Farms” signals the arrival of a rising star in food literature circles. Margaret Webb skilfully regales us with her tasty tales of travel, her hunger for the ultimate in Canadian foods, and most importantly here, a loving respect for those who produce it.

…Webb enjoys a certain, almost comical notoriety for documenting the life-altering experience: the act of eating a spectacularly good carrot, freshly pulled from the ground and offered by its grower; this direct experience of a farmer’s work and the remarkable taste of that carrot resonated with her… even though (and perhaps because?) the soil that it had been grown in still clung stubbornly to its length! Her book makes for surprisingly sensual reading. The chapter called “Johnny Flynn’s Oysters”, available for reading on her website practically made me blush.
This book also has heart. This may stem from the fact that of all of the thousands of dedicated food producers in the country, Margaret chose one type of food to represent each province, and conducted research. In the end she relied on word-of-mouth and reputations among peers to choose the producers that she would come to refer to as “her farmers”. She spent one intense, experience-filled week working alongside each and every one of them. Through her book we appreciate the wealth of knowledge and dedication that it takes for these individuals to produce and protect the bounty of this land. She encourages us to lend a hand. We are further rewarded by the fruits of her labour: savouring them as individual book chapters, with each concluded with recipes to help us recreate her gustatory discoveries in the comfort of our own kitchens.

An Interview with Margaret Webb:

*karen b: First of all, what made you think it would be okay to bite into a raw carrot, straight from the ground, that still had dirt on it?

Margaret Webb: Good question! But how could I not eat the carrot! David Greenberg ate one first. And he spoke pretty lovingly of the compost it grew in. I trusted the farmer.

*kb: How old were you when you first discovered your inner foodie?

MW: When I remember work on my family's farm, I remember saddling up my horse and riding beef stews and tomato sandwiches out to my dad in the field, the corn roasts we had after a day of haying, the maple fudge I made at Christmas from my great grandmother's 100-year-old cookbook – using the maple syrup my father made from the maple trees on our farm. I remember my uncle, a high school teacher in Toronto, commenting that everything we were eating for one Saturday night roast beef dinner came from our farm and I was very proud of that. That was all before I was 12. When I was in university, I would walk to Kensington Market Saturday mornings just to stare at the sides of beef in the butcher's shop and the mounds of vegetables in the market stands. But that word "foodie", I never applied that term to myself until I started writing this book about farming.

*kb: Has the experience of researching, writing and talking to people about "Apples to Oysters" changed you in any way, or revealed to you any surprising truths?

MW: Yes. I've developed an eating disorder. Who's the farmer who grew my food? I want to know that before I eat it. Also, I realize how much I miss the farmI grew up on and the food that came from that farm. I wish my dad were alive so that I could talk to him about that. I wish we could reconsider the last 50 years of Big Agriculture "advancements."

*kb: Are you planning a return visit to any of the locales that you wrote about so lovingly? Which one first? Do you feel now that you might have "missed a spot" -- could there be a sequel?

MW: Launching the book across the country allowed me to visit with many of "my farmers" and that was amazing. We traded stories, we drank some wine. Wanted to know how they were all doing. This summer, I am spending time in my own backyard of southern Ontario launching the book and meeting farmers and foodies here. There is some interest in the book as a TV series. I have a farm novel in my filing cabinet. And I have another food book idea, in a pumpkin patch somewhere! Deciding which crop to plant or animal to raise might be a farmer's hardest decision. Why should mine be easy?!

*Originally published in Mayday Magazine, June 2008. Margaret was kind enough to appear as a guest speaker at Slow Food Hamilton event that I co-hosted with the local chapter of The Canadian Organic Growers (COG). For pictures and more visit http://www.slowfoodhamilton.com/