Local Delicious

On my daily walk-about last week I found myself at Home Grow-In, a corner store just 2 blocks west of Cambie that stocks only natural and/or organic BC grown produce and BC made products. The plentiful produce from around the province looked absolutely delicious.

For those days you just can’t make it to your farmers market, chances are Home Grow-In has what you need. And you might just decide to join their buyer’s co-op, similar to a community supported agriculture program (CSA) but with a wider selection of products.

196 West 18th Avenue, Vancouver
Open 7 days a week to 8:00 pm

At the opening of the Home Grown photography exhibit at Museum of Vancouver a couple of weeks ago I snagged a sample mini pack of Skeet & Ike’s trail mix from the many tasty samples of food available from local suppliers.

I don’t like many trail mix blends on the market because they are often too sweet for my taste. Over the years I’ve gradually cut down on white sugar and processed foods — most of which contain sugar of one kind or another — and find that many non-dessert foods are simply too sweet for my taste. (A decadent dessert, on the other hand, can be as sweet as it likes. That is after all its raison d’etre.)

I grabbed the Skeet & Ike’s Organic Fruit and Nut Mix to leave in the car. I sometimes forget to eat and find myself suddenly ravenous and unable to concentrate from lack of food. I’ve been caught often enough with nothing remotely healthy available that I now keep a package of mixed nuts in the trunk for just such moments.

I had occasion to crack open the package the other day and must say I was very pleasantly surprised. Delighted even. Not only was it not overly sweet, it was a delicious sweet and savoury mix, something I’ve not experienced in a trail mix before. I love it!

It’s also guilt-free. The ingredients are all organic and sugar is listed only as a sub-ingredient (in the cranberries and crystallized ginger). The bonus: no filler peanuts in the blend. Plus, best of all, it’s locally made.

Check out the fab garlic I harvest from my garden! I’m not sure why it’s such a novelty, but growing my own garlic feels like a really big deal.

Maybe it’s because you have to plant it almost a full year ahead and it sits in the ground over winter.

Maybe it’s because I had so much garlic rust fungus that getting a crop was in question.

Maybe it’s because we never grew garlic growing up on the Prairies, so it’s the novelty of it.

Whatever the reason, here is the fruit of my labour! I’m very excited.

Of the 9 bulbs that sprouted, 3 are 3″ in diameter with big, plump cloves. I’m saving those, I’ll eat the smaller ones first.

One clove was too small and dried out to use, 3 were average size, and the rest were a bit smaller than average.

The size of the stalks had my fellow gardeners wondering if I’d planted elephant garlic, which I hadn’t. I seeded from large, organic cloves I bought at the local Kitsilano Farmers Market. I don’t know what variety it is, but many of the clove skins have a purple striped colouring to them.

I’m using the garlic in the many stir fries I create using an every changing blend of kale, beet greens, Swiss chard, green beans, yellow beans and snow peas. I LOVE eating meals that are completely from my garden, it feels so rewarding and I know I’m eating very healthfully.

Now THAT is local and delicious!

Garlic rust fungus, close up

In further pest and pestilence news from the community garden, my garlic has developed a nasty rust fungus problem.  And mine is by  no means the only affected plot, thanks to a miserably cold and wet April and May. And June.

Thank heavens for our garden Education Committee of One who knew what it was and tenaciously spent time researching how to deal with it.

Notes-to-self if you are encountering this issue:

• The fungus can spread to leeks and onions also, but not other types of plants
• Caused by excess rain and lack of light and/or soil inadequacies
• Possible solutions: Create sprays with either baking soda, milk, neem oil (huh?) or chamomile tea (see recipes below)
• Cut off the leaves then dispose of them (NOT in your compost bin, people!) to ensure the fungus does not spread. Word on the street is, the stalk continues to photosynthesis even if you remove the leaves
• Disinfect your clippers, etc. also to ensure the fungus does not spread from plant to plant (this is serious, folks!)
• The good news is garlic rust does not appear to affect the garlic bulb — I pulled one to test and it looks just fine

Infected garlic, sans leaves

Organic, Rust Fungus Spray Recipes

1. 1 gallon water, 1Tbsp baking soda, 2.5 Tbsp vegetable oil
2. 1Tbsp milk per gallon water
3. 1 tsp neem oil, 1Litre water or chamomile tea

These teas may be more preventative than cures; spray on infected leaves in morning for several days in a row (especially if rain is washing off leaves – the oil helps spray stick to leaf).

I have cut off all the leaves and am trying the baking soda recipe. I have no great hope of eradicating the rust, but I do hope to minimize any further infestation on both mine and my neighbours’ plants.

More on Garlic

If you want additional general info about garlic such as how and when to harvest and cure it, check out the Garlic Farm website, which I found in my garlic research travels.

They are located in British Columbia (middle of the province at the US border in a town appropriately named Midway), and sell organic garlic seed in Canada and the US. They start taking orders July 2nd on a first come, first serve basis for delivery in September. Get your order in now!

Ever since I was a kid I’ve noticed that the impression a meal makes on me is directly proportionate to the lengths I went to in order to prepare it. Like when I go fishing whatever I catch tastes great, way better than any fancy local fishmonger bought equivalent. Having an inquisitive mind with a bit of analytical twist, being a foraging enthusiast and a lifelong foodie I decided to put that theory to the test.

Zeller's Bolete - photo by Ron Wolf

So last fall off I went with my mushroom guru Sequoia Lesosky to see what can be found in a local forest floor this time of year, and I came home with a variety of exotic mushrooms. I also bought some wild mushrooms of the same or similar kind on Granville Island Market to use in the same recipes for my “control group”. I patiently waited until tomorrow when I prepared a feast of three different dishes from the wild and bought mushrooms and shared them with my family. The verdict?

To my family there was no discernible difference. To me the wild stuff tasted stronger and quite different than any of the store bought stuff, which is what I sort of expected as for me it wasn’t a blind tasting – I knew which was which. And then I decided that it must be that the difference is owed to the residual “spirit of the hunt”. It took a lot of effort to get the whole thing together, and it was all in my plate. In theirs? It was just soup or risotto or whatever. I decided they missed out. I am taking my family with me the next time I take to the forest.

The US has the National Organic Program as its certification and labeling system. Items certified through this system carry the “USDA Organic” label.

Excerpt from Ecoholic

“This stamp reflects the fact that the US (namely the Department of Agriculture) finally implemented a national organic system in 2002. Trouble is, it created a ceiling, not a floor, and certifiers that might have been more stringent were forced to ‘harmonize’ or drop their standards to get in line with the national program. Some say the USDA system is weaker than the European system and, in some cases, the Canadian system in that it allows substances such as Chilean nitrites on organic crops (making California lettuce much prettier than ours), and farms can have pesticide-sprayed crops on one side and organics on the other. But Canada also allows a couple of substances that the US doesn’t. Several attempts to significantly water down USDA regs have been bucked.”

From the USDA website

“The National Organic Program (NOP) develops, implements, and administers national production, handling, and labeling standards for organic agricultural products. The NOP also accredits the certifying agents (foreign and domestic) who inspect organic production and handling operations to certify that they meet USDA standards.”

Also see:
Biologique Canada Organic
Organic
100% Certified Organic