An online friend tells me I have been negligent in
not giving any glimpses or news from the Oxford Symposium on Food of early
July. There’s a reason I
haven’t written about it I think. It’s a place where people come and meet and
give talks and discuss food issues both large and small, famous and obscure.
The being-there is the point. And I am not a reporter. So I end up stumped and
stopped, unable to find the ease and juice to write interestingly about it.
But that online prompting
in turn is making me think about the nature of the communicating that goes on
on FB and Twitter. I post a link to an interesting story, thinking others might
also find it interesting. That’s a kind of curating or giving access to others.
And I also post notes about things I’m thinking about or situations I’ve just
been in or even something interesting that I made myself for breakfast. Why do
that? It’s hard to say. Is this taking the place of quick phone chats with
friends? Is it an unloading of thoughts that would otherwise just run through
my head? What purpose is served?
On the other hand, this
networking can be so useful for linking people and their needs. The other day I
was at the Farmers’ Market that takes place every Tuesday (8 am to 2 pm) in
front of Sick Children’s Hospital a few blocks from my house. The dazed parents
and others who find themselves visting a sick child in the hospital can at
least get refreshed by stopping by. It’s a reminder of a better happier world
than the hospital. And a reminder that there is good food in the world;
hospital food is still so disgracefully bad around here.
But the farmers who come in
to the various farmers’ markets in Toronto pay a real price. They have the cost
of gas and the time it all takes to drive in, or else the cost of paying
someone else to drive in and to sell for them. I was talking to the woman who
manages the market about whether farmers could share transport chores, take
turns doing the drive in, whatever. But they come in from all directions, not
from a single community or area. Still, if there were a good on-line bulletin
board, so growers/producers could communicate their where and when and what
kind of transport they needed, perhaps it could lighten their market burden. So,
said the manager, find me someone to design the app who can give us a good
price…
We clamour for local food,
but many aren’t willing to pay the cost of it, and the farmers are caught in a
squeeze. Perhaps modern methods can give this “old-fashioned” market idea new
life and increased resilience.
With the peaches and
blueberries I bought on Tuesday I made a couple of cakes: my skillet cake standard. I
say "standard" but of course each time the cake is different, as I use a variety
of flours (this time all Red Fife) and flavourings and toppings. I included a
few wild blueberries in the cake batter, and I also cooked peaches briefly in
white wine with more blueberries, then spooned them onto the cakes when they
were half-cooked. Delicious. I like the unpredictability, the fresh discovery
each time I make the skillet cakes, as I vary ingredients and proportions. It’s
such a forgiving recipe, the best kind. I leave fine patisserie and
over-precision to those who love it. Give me Home baking and a casual approach
any day.
And on the subject of
fruit, I had a large basket of blueberries to work with, not wild ones, this
week. We’ve been eating handfuls of them as a snack at all times of day.
But even so there were still a lot left yesterday and I was worried that they
would start going off. So I tossed them into a pot with a very little bit of
water and some sugar and cooked them a little. The intensification of flavour
was fabulous. There definitely is a good argument for cooking some fruit – not
raspberries or sweet cherries, but rhubarb, blueberries, sometimes peaches…
And more fruit talk: I have some sour cherries
frozen, from a few weeks ago. I want to figure out a moraba (preserved fruit)
recipe for them, to try to come close to the fabulous carnelian cherry moraba I
tasted in Georgia.
Of course I am kind of
rolling a rock uphill here. First, sour cherries and not the same as carnelian
cherries, which, in fact, are not “cherries” at all, though they look like
brighter red, slightly elongated cherries. (Their Latin name is Cornus mas and they are in the dogwood
family; here’s a link http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com/Plants.Folder/CarnelianCherry.html)
I’ve seen them growing at
the agricultural research station in Mount Vernon, in Washington State (where
the Kneading Conference West is held each year – this year it’s September 12 to
14, and will be great), and wonder if any of you have worked with them.
Despite the rock-uphill
aspect, I think it’s worth a try, this recipe testing/development with sour
cherries, for morabas can be eaten as preserved fruits, but also, my favorite
thing, their sweetened intensely fruit-tasting syrup can be used as a
concentrate to make a delicious drink, essence of summer in the winter. Or you
can drizzle the syrup over ice cream or use it to glaze a cake or…!
