Save Your Fork… There’s Pie

I grew up reading and re-reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder “Little House” series, but it wasn’t until years later that I realized that the pie plant she uses to make a pie for the field workers was actually rhubarb. (I think I imagined it to be eggplant, which we never ate as a kid.)

While we always had rhubarb in our house growing up, it usually got made into squares or stewed with sweet dumplings and after acquiring a pretty huge bunch a couple of weeks ago, I considered a pie. Turns out most of the rhubarb pie recipes I have are sour cream-based, which is odd to me. They’re probably good, but I dunno, something just doesn’t sound right. Greg always likes the strawberry rhubarb pie, although I am not a fan - I find it too mushy and wet.

Fate decided for me, as I was at the grocery store bagging apples and dropped a bag of half a dozen Empires. I felt too guilty putting them back and taking unbruised ones, so apple-rhubarb pie it was.

And it turned out great. I used about 2 cups of sliced apples and 2 cups diced rhubarb with a good amount of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger plus about a cup of sugar and some flour. We ate a couple of slices and put the rest in the freezer, along with a 4-cup container of diced rhubarb for a similar treat next winter.

Did you know that Canada grows some fine pineapples? Or that we have many thriving chocolate plantations? If you’re a grocery label reader, it might be easy to assume that all of those prepared products labelled “product of Canada” were grown here. But the current law is a little bit slippery.

A recent Reuters piece about changes to labelling laws indicates:

Current rules state that a label can say “Made in Canada” or “Product of Canada” if 51 percent of the production costs are Canadian and the last substantial transformation of the product took place in Canada.

So cocoa beans shipped to Canada to be made into chocolate bars here go to the stores with a “product of Canada” label, even though they came from somewhere else.

The Calgary Herald explains the changes:

The new standards require that any label claiming a food product is a “Product of Canada” necessarily needs to have all or virtually all of its contents be Canadian. That includes ingredients, the processing and the labour used to make the product; an exception has been made for some foreign content to be included in a Canadian product and labelled as such if minor additives or spices are not available in Canada.

This will make a huge difference for consumers, who have been mislead for years into believing that they were buying products that were grown and created in Canada, but will also be a boon for Canadian farmers and producers, who are forced to compete with imported items incorrectly labelled as being a product of this country. For example, apples grown in China that are shipped to Canada as concentrate can, under the current laws, be listed as a product of Canada, putting Canadian apple growers at a gross disadvantage.

As consumers become more aware of movements to eat locally-grown food, we put our trust in those “product of Canada” labels. We want local first, and then Canadian second. But much of what we were buying was made from imported items that were simply processed here, and we had no way of knowing if these products were grown according to Canadian health and safety guidelines. The new laws will make it clear to consumers just where their food is coming from.

To see just how confusing the current labelling system can be, CBC’s Marketplace ran a piece on “product of Canada” labelling last fall.

No word on exactly when the labelling changes will take place, but expect plenty of whining from the processed foods sector, both because of the disadvantage it will create for them on store shelves and also because of the cost of redesigning labels, which have to be done in both English and French.

My Mom and Dad have a massive rhubarb patch in their back yard. I think it might actually be one gigantic plant, in fact, but it keeps them well-stocked in rhubarb all summer long. This recipe gets made a lot in their house, to use up the rhubarb, but also because it’s really good. My Mom cuts these smaller, into squares (16 from an 8-inch pan), but I tend to think of this as more of a coffee cake, and given the small amount of fat in the recipe, don’t feel terribly guilty serving up larger pieces and thinking of it as cake.

I cook this at a slightly higher heat than the original recipe calls for, and I also tend to find the original a bit too sweet for me, so I’ve switched the topping to brown sugar from white, and cut the amount slightly.

Rhubarb Coffee Cake

Cake:
1/4 cup margarine
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup rhubarb, chopped
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla

Topping:
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup coconut

Cream together margarine and sugar, adding egg and vanilla and blending well. Combine dry ingredients and add to wet mixture interspersed with milk, blending well after each amount. Add rhubarb last and spread into an 8-inch square pan. Combine topping ingredients and sprinkle on top. Bake at 325’F for 45 - 50 minutes.

For some, it’s a dream come true, for others, it’s something they fall into and love, but lots of people end up running food-prep businesses that they start from home. Some of these are catering businesses, many more are baking businesses where folks use their love of pastry and mad skills to bake, decorate and sell cakes and pastries, doing what they love and making a little cash on the side.

I have family members, friends and know of a number of online (blogger) acquaintances who are all either running or starting a home-based food business.

Unfortunately, they’re all really, really illegal.

Home Business Advocate Beverly Williams explains about food-prep businesses on her site:

You must call the Department of Health in your area FIRST to find out if you are allowed to prepare food for sale in your home kitchen. The answer will be NO! I have never found a jurisdiction that allowed food for sale to be prepared in a home kitchen. Some areas do allow you to have a separate commercial kitchen for this purpose but the cost may be prohibitive. In some areas, you may be able to find a commercial kitchen that is not being used all day that might be willing to rent their kitchen to you. Most jurisdictions will require you to have your own business license as well.

Enterprise Toronto offers some details on what is required to operate a food-making business from home - essentially a completely separate kitchen from the one in which family meals are prepared. But these generally also have specific requirements regarding prep surfaces, storage areas and sinks. In the City of Toronto, we have a number of food-based business incubators and start-up organizations such as FoodShare that rent out industrial kitchen space for people looking to start food-based businesses but with no capital to rent a permanent space.

Also, as of 2006, all food service operations in Toronto must have one person on site with a Food Handler’s Certificate, based on a course focusing on safety and sanitation in the food prep workplace.

People looking to do more work than just the occasional cake for friends will also need to acquire a provincial business registration and should be charging and remitting the appropriate PST. Believe me, if you’re selling something that should have retail sales tax applied to it (ie. prepared foods such as cake) the provincial government will want their slice (pun intended). PST registration will also benefit small businesses by allowing you to buy supplies, both wholesale and retail, exempt from paying provincial sales tax. Registering for GST, even if your business doesn’t make the minimum $30,000 a year can also be useful as it allows small businesses to recoup GST paid out on equipment and supplies.

If you’re operating your food prep business from a separate kitchen at home, you also have to register the business with the city so it can be inspected on a regular basis for health and safety issues.

Now I know that lots of people do a little cooking and baking for friends and acquaintances in exchange for money, and generally the powers that be turn a blind eye to that kind of stuff, but for anyone looking to start a full-fledged business, where they’ll be creating food on a larger scale and especially where - through a web site, business cards, flyers or word of mouth promotion - knowledge of their business eventually reaches strangers, I would strongly advise all the friends, family and online acquaintances to cover their asses by making sure they’re doing everything legally.

Turning a hobby into a small business can be a delightfully fun thing, but not if you find yourself in court because you didn’t follow the letter of the law or someone got sick from your products.

Ladies and gentlemen, please take a moment to fashion yourself a lovely piece of millinery out of some kitchen foil. You’ll need it to ward off the gamma rays, because the guberment is out to get us all!!

The issue of Bill C-51 puts me in the unfortunate position of finding myself agreeing with the Conservative Federal government. But more than I despise conservatives, I detest people who get rich selling green powder and snake oil to unwitting chumps searching for a way to cure what ails them.

In most cases, big pharma has let them down, and yes, yes, yes, no doubt big pharma is in no small part responsible for pushing the government to pass this bill and force “natural health products” to the same standards used for pharmaceuticals. Undoubtedly, the bill will force some small companies out of business - but a lot of those companies will be shysters selling magic powder and a basket of hope to people who have already gone through enough.

The bill would change the wording of the “Food and Drug” act to “food and natural therapeutic products”, and would thus encompass all products that purported to offer health benefits of any kind. Any products claiming health benefits from consumption would be subject to the same level of testing that mainstream drugs undergo.

The natural products industry claims this isn’t fair, as their products are neither food nor drugs, but are “therapeutic products”. But it’s got to be one or the other, no? We eat food for its nutritional benefit, and we take medicine for its medicinal benefit. These products fall somewhere in between, and the government wants the same testing standards to apply.

What I personally don’t understand is - why is this a bad thing???

If your product actually does what you say it does, wouldn’t you want to be able to prove that it’s just as good, if not better, than regular pharmaceuticals? Do you really expect people to believe all those damned testimonials?

But it’s not about the products, see… it’s about the money that can be made from those products.

I knew a couple once, a decade or so ago, who turned to a holistic nutritionist when they were feeling unwell. The nutritionist diagnosed them with a plethora of allergies and was selling them over $300 worth of vitamins, supplement and herbs each month. When the wife of the couple discovered she was pregnant, the holistic nutritionist advised her against seeing an ob/gyn. Instead she sold her more pills and supplements and encouraged her to look at natural birthing solutions. The wife had had a couple of miscarriages before and was distrustful of mainstream medicine, but at the insistence of her family, she finally, with much protest, went for an ultrasound. There was no baby. She had undergone a false pregnancy.

When the couple contacted the nutritionist, they were shocked to discover she had left town - in a huge rush. A visit for both of them to a regular doctor revealed that they didn’t have any of the allergies the nutritionist had diagnosed in them. They had paid her thousands of dollars for nothing, and had allowed her to instill considerable false hope in them with regards to them finally being able to conceive. They were heartbroken.

Now obviously, not everyone in the natural health products industry is like this nutritionist. Many of them manufacture products that work, and genuinely have their patients/customers’ best interests at heart. But it seems only logical that the folks who really do believe in their products, and aren’t just in the industry to scam people, would be happy about having their products on a level playing field with mainstream medicine.

But those who manufacture snake oil, or nutritionists who foresee finding themselves out of work when they’re no longer making a commission off the pills and powders because those products are now available at the regular pharmacy are mighty scared. Once these products are tested and doctors become more knowledgeable in their use, there’s a whole segment of the natural health products industry who will find themselves in the unemployment line.

Maybe, just maybe, that’s their real area of concern.

Note - comments are screened. Tinfoil hat-wearing, government-paranoid, patchouli-scented hippies who feel the need to comment, be forewarned that I will not publish any comments that are either personal attacks, or that attempt to promote or sell your magic beans.

Reputation is an odd thing. By making sweepingly asshatted pronouncements (SAP), Chef Gordon Ramsay has gotten himself a reputation for saying really stupidly elitist things that piss people off and show a real lack of common sense. Last week it was his SAP that restaurants should all be fined if they don’t serve seasonal food. As bloggers and mainstream media jumped to point out the hypocrisy (Ramsay owns a restaurant in Dubai - where absolutely nothing served is seasonal or local), Gordon Ramsay Holdings was forced to issue a statement.

Because of this reputation, any similar SAP attributed to Ramsay will be believed.

Today while reading the blog Cupcake Takes the Cake, I came across a post that indicated Ramsay had made a rather inflammatory SAP against everyone’s favourite treat, the cupcake.

The whole cupcake thing has been done to death. I thought we were through the woods, done hearing about how fucking cool and “retro” cupcakes were. I thought we were finished with interviews with the bakery proprietors telling mind-numbing stories about how they found their grandmother’s old recipe box in the attic and dusted one of the recipe cards off and lo! there was a glorious cupcake recipe and they just jazzed it up a bit to make it “cutting-edge” and it is the perfect marriage of great memories and contemporary cuisine.

The writer at Cupcake Takes the Cake was much chagrined, and attributed the quote to the Los Angeles city news and entertainment blog, LAist. The mention of Ramsay on LAist is actually part of a  regular daily news round-up that links out to other sites.

The linked site where Ramsay makes this SAP? A site called NewsGroper, a selection of FAKE blogs, supposedly (but NOT) written by various celebrities. When folks are done reading Ramsay’s rant about cupcakes, they can read the “blogs” of Amy Winehouse (”God. Me Bond song gets flushed down the pisser…marriage all to shit…cops looming every which way…and two of me baby turtles have some kind of skin disease.”); The Dalai Lama (”Richard Gere cheated on me.”); or Barack Obama (”Don’t tell anyone, but John’s endorsement has been privately in my pocket for months. I don’t know if it was that one time we gangbanged Hillary in that debate or the countless hours we’ve spent up all night talking on the phone, but John and I have made a real connection.”)

I’m not sure whether it was the blogger from LAist or Cupcake Takes the Cake - or both - who missed the huge disclaimer of “THESE BLOGS ARE NOT REAL” up in the lefthand corner on the Newsgroper site, but someone needs to pay more attention before they run around the intarwebs half-cocked and looking for offence where there is none.

As for Ramsay - it might be an idea to cut back on the sweepingly asshatted pronouncements for a while, so that people don’t start believing every inflammatory statement attributed to him without checking it out further.

I am a sucker for a pretty bottle. Marketing folks in the perfume industry know I am not alone, and the bottle design on a new fragrance can make or break the product. Think of Thierry Mugler’s Angel star, or Jean Paul Gaultier’s corset bottle. I am also a sucker for all things pink. So when I walked past an organic food store in my neighbourhood last month, I was instantly drawn to the display of bottles filled with pretty pink liquid.

Except this wasn’t perfume. This was a beverage.

Sence Nectar is made from “rare” Bulgarian roses. It’s essentially rose petal juice, sweetened slightly and available in a regular and “silver” version with 1/3 sugar. Think something of a cross between rose water and a thicker sweetened rose syrup.

Unfortunately, the guy at the health food store was better at selling it than the Sence website, which appears to be geared toward marketing it as a cocktail mix with a variety of drink recipes, and testimonials from bartenders, fashion designers and media. In fact, like rosehips which make great tea, Sence is high in Vitamin C, and is actually quite refreshing, if you’re into flowery flavours.

Greg didn’t like it at all, and I had the whole 1 litre tetrapak (about half the price of the swank bottle) to myself. Oddly though, despite my initial enthralment with the stuff, and despite the fact that I did really like it every time I had some, I ended up dumping about a third of the container when I realized it had passed the expiry date after sitting in my fridge for a month.

Maybe because I don’t drink a lot of cocktails (I kept meaning to use in it a martini with Hendrick’s gin, which also has some rose flavour), I didn’t get a chance to use the whole thing up, but it often seemed too sweet to drink more than a small glass at one time. It was refreshing when I was really parched, but the rest of the time it was a bit overpowering.

The company selling the stuff is based in Las Vegas, and the website claims there will be a rollout of related products such as truffles, preserves and even personal products like moist towelettes.

I think I probably succumbed to the same marketing machine that sells those pretty perfume bottles, without really caring about what was inside. I like rose-flavoured things, but it’s a flavour that is best in small doses. A whole litre of sweet rose juice is probably too much for one person, pretty bottle or not.