Gather ‘Round the Table

I haven’t met anyone who isn’t just a little bit sceptical of the communal dining trend, except perhaps restaurateurs who have added a communal table in the hopes of using it for either large groups or stragglers. For most of us, our inclination when going out to eat is to dine and talk with the people we came with. Strangers can be, well… strange, and dining with people we don’t know – people who might have odd table manners, or smell funny, or natter on and on about some topic we have no interest in – can make an otherwise lovely evening turn out to be a bust.

Communal dining isn’t a new idea, though, it’s as old as the discovery of fire when prehistoric man gathered round a single heat source to cook  food. Even without the restaurant trend, it exists today in the form of dinner parties, bed and breakfasts,wedding banquets and office lunches. We eat together to celebrate an occasion, to get to know one another, to strengthen bonds. And often we find ourselves eating with people who start out as strangers but who are friends, or at least acquaintances, by the time dessert is cleared.

Despite being a curmudgeon and a bit of a misanthrope, I find myself at a communal table at least once a month, often more. Most of the time, the dinners I attend are comprised of other food writers; colleagues who have been invited to cover the event or a specific product. But I’ve also been to plenty of dinners that are purely social, because I am interested in the food, or the experience.

 

Innoculation – or, How Food Bloggers Can and Should Arm Themselves Against Viral Marketers

If you’ve never received one, then consider yourself lucky. If you’re a recipe blogger, you might never know the greasy, depressing feeling of opening up your email inbox to be assaulted with fake flattery and a patronizing cut and paste formula-based invitation. But eventually, because that’s their whole premise, the viral marketing companies will get to most of us, luring innocent food bloggers with flattery and booze, hoping you’ll sell your soul for a party and a gift bag, or some free samples.

While not a new phenomenon, in the age of the internet, viral marketing has become more and more pervasive. The original viral marketers used kids to inadvertently sell their products – put a pair of (free) fancy sneakers on the feet of the most popular kid in the school and watch as his classmates flocked to the store to buy the same gear. It works for clothes, technology (”hey, cool phone!”) and even vehicles – Torontonians should wonder any time they see a shiny new scooter parked on a sidewalk in front of a hip club or restaurant.

At its heart, viral marketing is about manipulation. This website outlines the six simple principles of viral marketing…

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others’ resources

From the standpoint of the food blogger, it is important to be aware of these principles if you regularly receive offers of free products or invitations to promotional events.

 

Mango Season

In our supermarket society, we sort of take for granted that all produce will be accessible at all times. And while the idea of seasonality is becoming more prevalent for locally-grown foods, we tend to not think of things like oranges, pineapples or mangoes as having a season, when in fact, they do.

For a brief period of about 6 weeks from the beginning of April to mid-May, Alphonso (aka. Alphanso) mangoes are in season in India. I’ve written about these mangoes here before.

The only place in Toronto to get them is Little India, where a number of the small grocery stores carry them. Available in boxes of either 6 or a dozen, Alphonso mangoes are not cheap. We paid $23.99 for a box of 12. They’re also smaller than the average mango, but what they lack in size, they make up for in flavour.

Even unpeeled, the bowl of mangoes fills my kitchen with their scent. Cut open they smell both floral and spicy at the same time. It is said that once you eat an Alphonso mango, you’ll never go back to those hard stringy yellow ones. Sometimes an Atulfo (the Mexican variety) will suffice – again if they’re in season, which is only a few weeks before the Alphonsos come to town – but nothing compares to the flavour of these luscious mangos flown in from India.

Yes, I know, they’ve got a scary food miles number. I don’t care – I eat them once a year, and forsake mangoes for the rest of the year. (Actually, I just found canned Alphonso mangos at my supermarket. Once the fresh ones are done we’ll crack open the can and see if they compare.)

The only problem with Alphonso mangoes is that they don’t have a very long shelf life. Which means we’ve been eating the things at every meal to use them up before they go bad. For breakfast yesterday, I sliced them and served them on top of coconut rice pudding. Today we ate them with oatmeal.

There’s only a few left. Fingers crossed the canned ones are just as good as fresh so I can have Alphonsos year-round.

 

Park It at the Market

We saw this shopping buggy locked up on Jarvis Street outside the St. Lawrence Farmers’ Market one Saturday morning a few weeks ago. Given how packed the market can get on a Saturday morning, and taking into account all of the obnoxious people with buggies and strollers who hog the aisles, I’d like to extend a hearty “Right On!” and an appreciative “Thank You!” to its owner. We need more shoppers like you. May it always be filled with the bounty of the season (when it’s not locked to a post).

 

Happy McAnniversary to Me!

It’s my 20 year McAnniversary this month. April of 1989 was the last time I ate anything from McDonald’s. I don’t remember the exact date because it wasn’t really a marker at the time. My boyfriend and I had been to the Toronto Zoo where we visited the Americans pavilion. There were huge info walls explaining that the Amazon rain forest was disappearing as more and more land was cleared to make space for cattle farms – to raise beef for US and Canadian burger chains. At the time, McDonald’s was the only food available to purchase at the Toronto Zoo (how’s that for irony?) and I made the decision then and there to never eat at McD’s again.

The task has been a surprisingly easy one. Living in downtown Toronto, I have plenty of other options and am still boggled at how people can choose McD’s over a block full of great ethnic restaurants. There has been some pressure over the years, with many people not understanding or respecting my decision, but I’ve managed to stick to my promise to myself.

In those 20 years, I’ve been inside a McDonald’s exactly four times. Twice on road trips in the early 90s along highway 401 when I needed to use the washroom, back when the rest stops consisted of a service station and a fast food restaurant. I won’t eat their food, but I will pee in their toilets, thank you very much. Rest stops are now more like tiny malls with a donut shop and a magazine/variety store as well as the restaurant and gas station, so I no longer have to go inside the McDonald’s to pee, and can usually find a candy bar or something to eat if I’ve not bothered to pack a snack. The other times were to drop off toys for a holiday toy drive and once when I was meeting someone at Dundas subway station, which has its own McD’s outlet.

Oddly, I have touched a lot of McDonald’s food in the past few years. I live a block or so away from one (thankfully upwind) and we often find fries, or partially eaten burgers on the sidewalk in front of our building. With two dogs, this stuff doesn’t stay on the ground for long. After a few attempts to wrestle cold soggy burgers out of the dogs’ mouths when they find sidewalk snacks, I now usually just let them finish the stuff. The stank of special sauce seems to linger on skin, no matter how much you scrub at it. Which begs the question of why anyone would eat something that smelled like that.

I feel as if I need to do something to mark this anniversary. Something more than going out to a local restaurant and having a grass-fed beef burger on a red fife wheat bun with locally grown tomatoes and Ontario russet potato frites. I’d like to do something that makes a statement of some kind, but I’m still not sure what. I thought of hiring a local chef to set up a BBQ in front of my nearest McD’s and serve up the aforementioned grass-fed beef burgers, but I’d also prefer not to get a lot of people arrested in the process of marking this milestone. If I lived in France, I’d call José Bové and we could disassemble a McDonald’s as a political statement, but unfortunately there aren’t a lot of Canadians famous for taking on big food companies.

Still thinking… I’ve got a few more weeks to come up with an idea. Suggestions welcome. In the meantime, keep your eyes on your fries.

 

You Can’t Fool the Children of the Revolution

Back in January, I posted a rant on TasteTO, asking where were the Canadian chefs, activists, TV shows and documentaries that would advocate for better food in our country, as is the case with chefs in the UK such as Jamie Oliver. I specifically called out CBC, suggesting that they should start running food-related documentaries, especially related to various political issues.

A couple of weeks ago I received an email advising me that CBC would be running a 4-part documentary series called The Great Food Revolution. The first two episodes ran last night, and the final two will run next week.

Now I know these docs had to have been in the works well before I posted my rant (part of the second episode was filmed at an event I attended in November – my chest makes a cameo appearance), so I really can’t bitch too much about the fact that they don’t exactly address the issues I mentioned. But part of the problem is, they don’t exactly address much of anything – and what they do address is kind of scattered and incomplete.

Episode 1 looked at the growth of the celebrity chef, specifically Ricardo Larrive. It also looked at the rising popularity of ethnic foods such as sushi, and took us through some of the process in evaluating restaurants for Michelin stars. Finally, it followed a student chef at George Brown College during her rotation in the kitchen at The Chef’s House. All of these are interesting topics, and all could each be stretched into a full hour-long episode, but instead the director cuts the stories together, jumping back and forth, making the film seem really chaotic and without any real focus. One bit about tropical fruit showed a number of different varieties, but didn’t bother to cut them open to show the inside, or explain the taste.

Episode 2 looked at supermarkets and how products are created and placed. First, a huge store called Jungle Jim’s in Ohio that is part supermarket and part amusement park. It also showed a small regional potato chip producer and his plans for expansion, as well as a very successful NYC caterer who specialized in local food, growing most of the ingredients she uses on her own farm. But the bulk of the episode was about how new products are created, and for this segment the filmmaker followed two different product developers from Loblaw’s as they did research and development to create a sauce and a frozen lasagna. Except that the documentary really came off looking like a giant ad for Loblaw’s. Other grocery chains have house brands and do product development as well – Sobey’s works with students at George Brown; there’s even a tricked out test kitchen at the school. Like the first episode, this one tried to jam too much information into an hour, and jumped from segment to segment erratically. Also, the narration in both episodes used certain buzzwords as a crutch; foodie, locavore… to the point where it became trite and annoying.

Next week’s episodes look to maybe be a bit more focused – episode 3 will be about a day in the life of food in NYC (interesting, but this would be just as interesting and more topical if it were a Canadian city), while episode 4 is slated to be about the future of food, so I’m guessing we can expect lots of references to molecular gastronomy.

I guess I shouldn’t complain too much – it’s better than nothing, and maybe it’s the step needed to get Canadian filmmakers thinking about and working on more food-related films. But a good documentary should leave the viewer feeling like they learned something, or even better, feeling like they should do something. The Great Food Revolution left me feeling a bit let down; there was so much left unsaid, so much useful information not communicated, and the method of delivery was too erratic.

 

Thin May Be In, But Fat’s Where It’s At

Despite the fact that I am festively plump, I do my best to keep Save Your Fork from becoming a fat acceptance blog. While I tend to write about food issues and politics, the things that interest me when it comes to these topics are not niche specific. However, every now and again, something comes up that gets my panties in a knot and because it’s marginally food-related, it just seems to fit here better than at Leaves and Petals.

In recent days, two different news stories have hit the papers. The first and more popular article indicates that people who are obese to morbidly obese could lose 3 – 10 years off their life because of their weight. The second article, which I’ve only seen appear in the National Post, indicates that the measurement for body mass index (BMI) is not the only indicator of risk (in reality, BMI is complete and utter bullshit and was never designed to be used as the indicator of health or fitness that it currently is), that fat and obese people can be completely healthy with no health risks whatsoever, and that being “overweight” is probably healthier than being normal to underweight, especially if you become ill.

At points, the two articles directly contradict each other.

However, it’s important to note that the “fatties are gonna die” article comes from a UK medical journal called The Lancet. The British government is currently in the midst of a very high-profile fight against obesity, one that looks increasingly paranoid and that could potentially jeopardize the health of its citizens. Especially frightening is the witchhunt against childhood obesity which targets normal weight children as young as toddlers.

The other article is based on studies done by the Canadian Obesity Network – a group that would appear to have a vested interest in encouraging the overweight and obese to be less so. Yet they’re ready to admit the existence of “benign obesity” and acknowledge the fact that someone considered overweight or obese can still be physically active, fit and healthy.

“Obesity was far less common when [benign obesity] was identified, and then obesity became this gigantic epidemic, with just the assumed outcome that everyone is going to be at risk for vascular disease and a whole bunch of other things,” says Rachel Wildman, an assistant professor of epidemiology and population health at Albert Einstein College.

“As it turns out, it seems not to be the case. There is at least a proportion of obese individuals who at this point don’t seem to be at elevated cardiovascular risk.” Not only is their risk fairly minimal, “in some instances it’s better than individuals who are normal weight.”

Yet according to the other piece, “obesity is the new dark horse for public health officials.”

So… which one is right? And more importantly, why is only one of these articles getting picked up by the majority of media outlets?

 

The Book Nook

As usual, I’ve got a stack of food-related books piling up here by the desk and I just can’t get around to reviewing them. To the point where it’s been so long I forget a lot of what is in them. So instead of full post reviews, I’m just going to do some brief recaps so I can clear off my desk and further clutter up my bookshelf instead.

Swindled: The Dark History of Food Fraud, From Poisoned Candy to Counterfeit Coffee
Bee Wilson

Food had been adulterated for centuries. Items like coffee, tea and candy were intentionally tainted to stretch out quantities and garner a bigger profit. Swindled deals with this intentional deceit starting in the mid 1700’s, touching on basics like bread, meat and milk. Wine and beer wereoften tainted or stretched as well, and the book looks at the effort to enforce standards and charge criminals in all areas of food sales and production. However, Wilson also moves into the 20th century and examines ersatz foods (fakes or imitations intended to replace the real thing during wartime), as well as products like margarine. Wilson also touches on current issues such as adulterated basmati rice in India and the fiasco of Nestle’s baby formula scam in Africa. The book was written before last year’s melamine scare in China or the Maple Leaf Foods listeria outbreak, but it’s wise to note that the habit of greedy food producers intentionally tainting foodstuffs – or not properly inspecting machinery or equipment – has never gone away. The historical stuff is surprising in what people would do to make a buck, but is not more frightening than what many producers are still doing today.

Dinner at Buckingham Palace
Charles Oliver, edited and compiled by Paul Fishman and Fiorella Busoni

Charles Oliver worked in the housekeeping department at Buckingham Palace from the reign of Queen Victoria to that of the current Queen Elizabeth II. During his time there, he made a point of collecting items such as menus and recipes for meals served to the Royal Family. This book is a compilation of some of his collection and includes daily menus for the Queen and Prince Phillip to details of multi-course state dinners. The predominantly French recipes are interspersed with casual photos of the Royal Family (plenty of shots of all generations of the Royals fishing), pieces on items that the family will cook for themselves and toward the end, pages upon pages of menus from Royal dinners dating back to 1841. This will mostly be of interest to food historians or anyone who is amused by old menus. Royal-watchers might enjoy it as well, but it’s probably a bit dry for the casual food reader, as even the recipe sections are somewhat stuffy.

The Year of Eating Dangerously  – A Global Adventure in Search of Culinary Extremes
Tom Parker-Bowles

Speaking of (almost) royals, Tom Parker-Bowles (son of Camilla) is a food writer and journalist in his own right. He recently spent a year touring the world in search of its most dangerous food. Not all of it is especially dangerous, to be honest, but Parker-Bowles has such a great writing style with much self-deprecating humour, that it’s a fun read nonetheless. He attends a hot sauce convention in New Mexico where he foolishly tries one of those hot sauce extracts where they make you sign a waiver first. He eats fugu in Japan, judges a BBQ festival in Nashville, eats stinky tofu in China and fried bugs in Laos, and samples posintang (dog meat) in Korea. Each chapter sees Parker-Bowles worry about his edible conquest (he managed to work himself into a quite a lather over both the dog and the fugu), but he’s at his funniest when he’s made a pig of himself and shares his gastrointestinal distress with his readers. In truth, he doesn’t do anything much more dangerous that what you’ll see on No Reservations each week, and the chapter on elvers (baby eel) just made me wonder if every UK food celebrity had to have a go at the things, but overall I loved his writing style and the fact that he articulated and shared his trepidation about the weird things he ate instead of being cool and blasé.

 

Images from CFRA Trade Show 2009

Although we knew we weren’t going to be writing about the show itself for TasteTO, we still headed off to the Canadian Food and Restaurant Trade Show this past weekend to check stuff out and look for story ideas.

This is the largest food and restaurant trade show in Canada, with exhibitors promoting pretty much anything you would need if you ran a restaurant or food service operation. All the things people never even think about when they dream about opening a restaurant; from cutlery to chairs to dishwashers, computer systems and take out containers. The food section is full of packaged and processed foods, from frozen French fry vendors to bakeries offering bread and cakes. and of course things like condiments, coffee, or ingredients like baking chocolate… It’s a cornucopia of delights, with most of the food vendors handing out plentiful samples. We ate bite-sized versions of pizza, chicken wings, ice cream, cheesecake on a stick, prosciutto, dried fruit, yogurt, single-origin chocolate, pate, vegetarian caviar, panko-fried pickles, fruit cups, and Campbell’s high-end line of soups. Plus beer, fancy water, kool-aid slushies, coffee, tea, fancy soda… Then we came home and downed half a bottle of Pepto Bismol.

 

Why I Still Don’t Care What You Had For Breakfast