Good Food News Archive - November 19, 2002
Article
Small potatoes
As you may have heard, we’ve just been through a season
of drought in Ontario; in fact, in many parts of Canada,
farmers have been suffering from the lack of rainfall. One
result is that we’ve been getting calls from farmers
asking us to buy their small produce. So you may notice that
your onions and potatoes are sort of ‘mini’.
This is simply because of the lack of water, and you should
find that they should taste just as good, or perhaps better,
than larger models. It’s good to know that we can help
out farmers just by eating small things. By the way, we also
regularly sell little apples to schools (55,000) a month.
They’re too small for growers to sell through regular
channels, but just perfect for kids, who often can’t
eat an entire apple anyway.
Salad Bar Confab
The Field to Table Centre recently hosted a skills exchange
for group of representatives from the schools involved
in the school salad bar project. Two half-days were spent
with Kitchen Manager Akemi Kobayashi talking about how
the salad bars will work in their schools and developing
the skills necessary to run them. The group covered safety/hygiene,
seasonal eating, balancing meals, introducing new foods
and how to transform leftovers into soups, casseroles and
fruit crisps. The second day featured lots of hands-on
cooking, recipes and demonstrations, with participants
preparing nutritious, kid-friendly foods like hummus, pizza
on Iranian flatbread, spanakopita, black bean salad, dips
and Akemi’s special recipe for egg salad.* Akemi
stressed how important beautiful presentation is in getting
kids (or anyone) interested in the food you prepare. This
year 5 schools will be involved in the salad bar project.
Each will buy a salad bar unit, receive training and recipes
and wholesale food delivery from FoodShare. Another training
session is currently being planned - if you think your
school might be interested in getting a salad bar going,
contact Joanne Porter at 416-392-1658.
Recipe:
Akemi’ secret “No
blue egg yolk” egg
salad: Add 1 tbsp. salt or vinegar to water. Put eggs in
cold water and bring to boil, cooking exactly 10 minutes
from start to finish. No fuss egg peeling: let cool, tap
both ends end and roll to get shells off easily. When making
the egg salad, chop the eggs coarsely (a pastry cutter
works well), go easy on the mayo and slip in some veggies
(celery,
red/green pepper, a small amount of finely-chopped red
or green onions). A pinch of turmeric enhances that lovely
yellow
colour even more.
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