Local Delicious

Interested in exploring local food producers at their own locations? Yes, but where to begin, you might be thinking.

Why not start with a Circle Farm Tour? What is that? A Circle Farm Tour is basically a road map that directs you to a variety of specialty farm-gate vendors, open air markets, charming eateries, heritage sites, fairs, and other special events. In the Greater Vancouver area, there’s a brochure and map for each participating community – six in total.

Simply go to the Circle Farm Tour website, download the tour, choose your destinations and go! Abbotsford, Agassiz-Harrison Mills, Chilliwack, Langley, Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows, Mission all participate and all offer unique destinations for every member of the family.

Abbotsford offers such destinations as:

• Birchwood Dairy offering gourmet ice cream, gelato, frozen yogurt, milk products & Feta cheese
• Fraser Valley Trout Hatchery offers self-guided and guided tours, educational programming, birthday parties, fishing instruction & summer camps
• Campbell’s Gold Honey Farm & Meadery offers a variety of flavoured & natural honeys, as well as beeswax candles, tasty honey comb, soothing ointments & salves, honey soaps, and hand creams

A little closer to Vancouver, Langley offers great locations such as:

• Vista D-Oro, a culinary agri-tourism operation featuring culinary herbs, heirloom tomatoes & orchard fruits grown on the farm, as well as fresh pastries, preserves, local cheeses, hard to source ingredients, kitchen tools & more
• The Fort Wine Co. offers an old fashioned saloon bar to sample a delicious selection of multi award-winning table & dessert fruit wines. Tours are also offered of the state-of-the-art winemaking facilities
• JD Farms features specialty turkeys that are certified free of antibiotics & animal by-products. Visit the farmgate store to sample fresh & smoked sausages & ready-to-eat meals or order a turkey for your next special event.

So, what are you waiting for? Download your adventure today, pack up friends or the family, and enjoy!

I wrote last week about the Food Network Canada’s new series “The 100-Mile Challenge“, based on the local book and food blog “100-Mile Diet”. In a nutshell, participants from Mission, BC take on the sometimes overwhelming challenge of consuming only foods and beverages grown and produced within 100-miles.

In the first week, which takes a look at the lead up time and the first three days of the challenge, participants must go through their pantry and purge everything that does not meet the 100-mile requirement. How much do you think they had left in their fridges/pantries? Not much. One family had yogurt and another had only dairy and some honey. Things they thought would be a shoe-in, like cans of salmon, were more often than not produced in Toronto — far exceeding the 100-mile limit.

The show’s hosts, James MacKinnon and Alisa Smith, the authors of “The 100-Mile Diet”, later took the TV participants to a local farmers’ market to investigate what would and would not be acceptable during the challenge. Many of the participants could not identify some of the food — leeks were a mystery to some.

My biggest surprise while watching the first episode? How little the families prepared for their first day of the challenge. Many had not done any research into what they could eat. One family only ate yogurt and berries for breakfast when they were used to bacon and eggs. Let’s face it, bacon and eggs are local and they absolutely could have indulged had they thought ahead a little.

Missed the episode but want to catch up? Episode one is available for viewing on the web.

Are you interested in trying the 100-Mile Diet but could never give up olive oil (confession: my big two are olive oil and chocolate)? I came across this article in “edible Vancouver” a while back about a 10-mile diet: A 10-Mile Diet Becomes a 10-Mile Banquet. I thought it was a good approach to eating local food while still holding onto a very few “necessities”.

Did anyone else see the show this week? Thoughts?

While at dinner with a friend a few years ago, I was amused when the waiter offered me a choice of either “bottled water” or “Vancouver Tap”. It was a higher end restaurant and I thought this was a great way to describe the less exciting option. It wasn’t just tap water – it was a much sexier, well-branded “Vancouver Tap”.

Perhaps the ultimate in consuming local food and beverages, tap water is beginning a return to vogue. With the realization that bottled water leaves behind, well, bottles (3 million in Vancouver area landfills last year alone), many environmental groups and, indeed, Metro Vancouver itself, are lobbying residents to take another look at “Vancouver Tap”. In fact, Metro Vancouver has a current goal to reduce bottled water use by 20% by 2010 by encouraging residents to refill reusable water bottles with tap water.

Further to the environmental affects, the cost of bottles vs. tap is staggering. Bottled water costs $1-2 per litre while tap water in Metro Vancouver costs a mere $0.80 per 1,000 litres. If you’re concerned about the chlorine taste in the water (used to disinfect the water from both the Capilano and Seymour reservoirs), water filtration systems such as Brita can help.

So, next time you need to quench that thirst, reach for “Vancouver Tap”: it’s cheap, safe, and leaves no bottle behind.

Have you ever heard of the 100-Mile Diet? That’s where participants commit to only eating  foods, including beverages, grown up to 100-miles away from home. Sounds easy, right?

Well, it is until you realize that the staples of most households, such as beer and coffee, are grown nowhere near your house (unless you have a nice little cottage in the Peruvian rain forest).

Food TV Canada is launching a new series this Sunday, “The 100-Mile Challenge“, which follows six families as they challenge themselves to only eat and drink from within the 100-mile limit for 100 days. Yep, 100 days. Where did they find families brave enough to take on the challenge in front of the cameras? Mission, BC, of course!

The show’s site is much more than just an ad for the show. Check it out for recipes, tips, and help finding appropriate foods in your area.

You can be forgiven for thinking the word “vegan” means the opposite of “tasty” as I did until my recent run-in with New World Natural Foods chocolate Bliss Balls. I’d seen them around before, but always steered clear since the regular ones look a little too wholesome and fibrous to actually taste good.

I expected them to be full of chewy ground nuts, grains and fruit, but these chocolatey treats are more like large, quality chocolate truffles than a (slightly) more healthy alternative to same. What they don’t have is eggs, milk or wheat. What they do have is smooth, velvety, melt-in-your-mouth, great taste.

I guess what it boils down to is this: some people want to eat vegan and still have a few treats, and those of us who aren’t vegan like the idea of eating a more socially responsible form of chocolate decadence.

I’m good with that.

Note: Another thing I like is that the container was made of corn and fully biodegradable, even though it looks like standard issue, plastic.

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Listen, if I can make ceviche, anyone can make ceviche.

Once described to me as Mexican sushi, I first discovered my love of ceviche on a Mayan resort where I ate it almost daily for lunch. Between that and the fresh salsa and fresh guacamole, I was in heaven. No other food required. Especially not hamburgers and hotdogs. (Come on, people, are you kidding me?!)

I’ve never been one to cook a lot of seafood, mostly because (a) I grew up on the Prairies where the rare, fresh, rainbow trout got stuffed and cooked beyond recognition or digestibility, (b) fish is too easy to overcook and I’m never sure, and (c) I haven’t a clue how to season without overwhelming it. I make a mean Thai green curry chicken, but let’s be kind and say seafood is not my forte.

Then in rides Simply West Coast on a white horse. They have bottled gourmet flavour and combined it with easy, easy prep — so easy even I can’t mess it up. I stopped by the Dundarave Fish Market the other day, took the staff’s recommendations on a mix of fresh seafood, and bought a bottle of the Sun Soaked Ceviche Marinade. Back home a couple of hours later, I had a delicious, restaurant-worthy dinner ready to go.

Now that I’ve discovered how easy it can be, I intend to relive my Mexican vacation and demonstrate my love of ceviche on a very regular basis.

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