Guest Post: Garden Designer Jonas Spring

Ecoman Jonas Spring garden design

Leaf-shaped patio stonework, some of Ecoman Jonas Spring’s handiwork.

I am so pleased to have been invited to be this weeks guest blog­ger. I want to let you know about some pretty excit­ing new ser­vices being offered at Fiesta Gardens this year. Not every­one knows owner and pro­pri­etor Dino Virgona; but Margaret, Dino, Chris and John have been sup­ply­ing Ecoman with plants and stone for over 10 years. Over that span of time I have come to rely on Dino and his staff for qual­ity annu­als, peren­ni­als, spec­i­men trees and shrubs, not to men­tion nat­ural stone. This year Dino approached me to help kick­off Fiesta Gardens in house land­scap­ing and gar­den­ing ser­vice. He saw it as a nat­ural fit because we are located in the neigh­bor­hood, spe­cial­ize in small to medium size land­scape projects and pro­vide gar­den­ing ser­vices by the hour.

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Apple Pie A La Salt

Jennifer Renaud’s sub­mis­sion to our Apron Strings con­test is a tes­ta­ment to the impor­tance of read­ing labels. Poor Grandma.  The con­test con­tin­ues until Father’s Day (June 19th). Submit your story of the worst meal some­one in your fam­ily ever served for your chance to win a Fiesta Farms gift certificate.

My grandma’s apple pie is leg­end in our fam­ily. It is the only perennially-requested item at all fam­ily gath­er­ings and it is a closely-guarded recipe.

Last Thanksgiving Grandma joined us up north to cel­e­brate the end of the first sum­mer at our new cot­tage. That Saturday, while the fam­ily headed to town to pick up a few last minute items for the feast, Grandma stayed behind to make a cou­ple pies — and we came home to the mouth-watering aroma of bak­ing apples!

The next night after a lav­ish spread of turkey, stuff­ing and cran­ber­ries we all eagerly awaited our lit­tle slice of heaven

. I remem­ber look­ing across at my brother as he took his first bite and his face froze with a strange look. I glanced around the table where, in rapid suc­ces­sion, that same look flashed across the faces of every­one at the table. Oblivious to what was unfold­ing around her, dear old Grandma was tuck­ing in con­tent­edly to a lone piece of pump­kin pie: store-bought the day before.

As it turns out, my 80-year-old grand­mother had mis­taken the salt con­tainer for the sugar con­tainer. How many cups of sugar nor­mally go into an apple pie? That’s how many cups of SALT went into this apple pie. My fam­ily is a liv­ing tes­ta­ment to the fact that copi­ous amounts of salt burns taste buds. Granny will never live it down.

Months later we now try and keep the teas­ing to a min­i­mum: she still has one ace up her sleeve… she’s still the only one with the recipe!



Loser-Loser-Chicken-Dinner

Noelle entered this spine-tingling story to our Apron Strings con­test. You can enter yours too. Share your pain, we’ll pub­lish it here and give you a chance to buy good food and make prop­erly cooked food to serve your fam­ily. Thanks Noelle!

 

From a young age I dis­cov­ered a pro­found love for fried chicken. In fact, I was pretty sure some­one abducted me from the deep south­ern United States at birth, and unknow­ingly trans­planted me to an all-Italian fam­ily in Toronto. Instead of savour­ing clas­sic dishes like my beloved fried chicken, jalapeno-laced corn­bread and braised okra, I found myself seated at din­ner tables laden with pasta and veal Milanese.
So you can imag­ine my delight, when on a steamy August long week­end spent at a fam­ily friend’s Muskoka cot­tage, my mother proudly announced we would be hav­ing fried chicken for dinner.

What delight! What won­der! What crispy-skinned, salty-spicy, tender-juicy tid­bits awaited! I was only 12 years old at the time, and this meal was going to be epic.

My mother fol­lowed a 5-Star Food Network recipe to a tee. She care­fully soaked the chicken pieces overnight in flavoured but­ter­milk. She pat­ted them bone dry. She dou­ble breaded them in a home­made sea­soned flour mix­ture. She then took them out­side to a bub­bling deep fryer rest­ing pre­car­i­ously on a Coleman camp burner.

The chicken, and my mother, emerged from the fry­ing area unscathed. After tak­ing their sweet, golden bath, the pieces of meat emerged siz­zling in a per­fect shade — a heav­enly shade unmatched by any Italian food item. It just can’t be done.

I squealed with excite­ment as the chicken plat­ter hit the table. The potato salad and coleslaw, also home­made, were merely the mea­ger open­ing acts for the main show.

My dad and I eagerly reached — no clam­oured — for our pieces and bit in hard.

English nov­el­ist and play­wright Dorothy Gladys “Dodie” Smith once wrote: “When things mean a very great deal to you, excit­ing antic­i­pa­tion just isn’t safe.”

Stuck between my teeth and tongue was sop­ping mess of raw, slimy bird. And then, mer­ci­lessly, the coat­ing slid off the skin and landed with a wet slap on my dish.

Each piece was the same. Disappointment on a bone.

If we never ate fried chicken in my house before, we would cer­tainly never eat it again. To this day, remind­ing my mother of the great cottage-fried-chicken-debacle is not a good idea. It was the only thing she has ever made that turned out ined­i­ble, and the thought sparks a type of culi­nary rage in her like noth­ing else.

Now that I’m all grown up, and liv­ing on my own, my fried chicken crav­ings can be quenched any­time at The Stockyards Smokehouse and Larder on St. Clair West. A month ago, I invited my par­ents to join me there for dinner.

And funny enough, my mother did end up order­ing the fried chicken.



Bandaid Pie (Yum!)

Mary Luz Mijia, a Toronto writer, researchers and TV Director/Producer sub­mit­ted this great pie eat­ing tale to the com­pe­ti­tion to win a Fiesta Farms gift cer­tifi­cate. You can enter yours too. Share your pain, we’ll pub­lish it here and give you a chance to buy good food to make far bet­ter pie than the one Mary Luz describes below.…

I thought I had a legit­i­mate right to com­plain about my dad’s shoe leather meat offer­ings– always beyond well done, always tough and dry. But I had absolutely noth­ing on the culi­nary woes of my uni­ver­sity room­mate who swore his mom was the world’s worst cook. Continue »



Discovering Allemennsrett–“Every Man’s Right,”

 

This guest post was writ­ten by Laura Reinsborough. Laura is Founder and Director at Not Far From the Tree an orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to putting Toronto’s fruit to good use by pick­ing and shar­ing the bounty. Laurea’s post is part of the part of the Apron Strings series, help­ing shine a light on our foremother’s food tra­di­tions. Visit the Apron Strings page to see other posts and the videos.

 

A decade ago, I spent a year as a high school exchange stu­dent in Norway. I learned the lan­guage. I learned how to knit. And, though I had been a picky eater at home, my polite­ness took over and I learned to love Norwegian food.

In one of the fam­i­lies I lived with, my Norwegian host mother Kirsti had a gar­den that cas­caded from her house towards the fjord-like river below. Before I had ever heard of the word “per­ma­cul­ture,” I learned this gar­den­ing phi­los­o­phy sim­ply by wit­ness­ing her gar­den. It pro­duced plenty of food – aspara­gus, straw­ber­ries, cucum­bers, and so much more – though its great­est impact was that it was invit­ing. I wanted to be in that gar­den. There was even a peach tree grow­ing del­i­cately along the house wall, cling­ing to any extra warmth it could to sur­vive the cool Norwegian climate.

Kirsti intro­duced me to a cul­ture of food that extended well beyond the gar­den. Each day began with a feast of jams and jel­lies for break­fast, eaten on hand­made bread that Kirsti baked fresh. There were pic­nics almost every time we left the house. My first time fish­ing was out on their boat in the fjord and we even took a trip to the Arctic Circle where we plucked cod from the fjord under the mid­night sun. And every cross-country ski trip included a feast of cof­fee, oranges, and Norwegian choco­late in the out­door liv­ing room that my host father Haakon would carve from the snow, com­plete with a fire pit to cook the hot dogs.

Treks in the moun­tains meant for­ag­ing for berries, which in turn meant a new batch of saft. Foraging is tra­di­tion in Norway, cod­i­fied through the free­dom to roam law called Allemennsrett, or “every man’s right,” whereby every­body has access to uncul­ti­vated land that is 100m from a dwelling. With the free­dom to roam comes the free­dom to for­age and saft is the culi­nary result of this national pastime.

Saft is a juice con­cen­trate, made by cook­ing berries and strain­ing them, almost like syrup for a cor­dial. You can pre­serve the syrup and later dilute with water to serve. Most com­monly made with lin­gonber­ries in Norway, saft can be made with just about any berry and even some fruits.

My first attempt to make saft was when Not Far From The Tree once picked an elder­berry tree clean. Elderberries need to be cooked in order to be safe to eat, and so it was dif­fi­cult to donate the berries fresh. I remem­bered the lin­gonberry saft I used to drink in Norway and found this tuto­rial to take me through the process.

Once your saft is ready, be sure to make a few Gleaners, Not Far From The Tree’s sig­na­ture cock­tail, devel­oped specif­i­cally for our elder­berry saft.

 

The Gleaner

Created for Not Far From The Tree by Sharon Bergey of Jamie Kennedy Kitchens

  • 1 oz. Not Far From The Tree’s phe­nom­e­nal elder­berry syrup
  • 1 oz. vodka
  • 2 oz. Bottle Green Sparkling Elderflower