September 9-12th, Thursday to Sunday from 10am-7pm
Spartan Rolling Hills distributes only 100% First Cold Pressed Extra Virgin Regular and Organic Olive Oil and Olives from family owned and operated olive groves located in the Peloponeese near the city of Sparti, Laconia in Greece.
There have been alot of double rainbow sightings lately. This particular full-on double rainbow sighting happened in the produce aisle at Fiesta Farms where Grow for the Stop vegetables have finally arrived.
Grow for the Stop veggies aren’t just special because of their incredible (so intense!) hues and (so bright, so vivid) flavours. When you buy them, ten percent of what you pay goes to The Stop to help ensure quality produce is available to those in need in Toronto.
That’s a full-on, all the way, win-win for everyone.
Rainbow carrots, rainbow beets, as well as Japanese cucumbers and Salad turnips from The New Farm’s organic farm, are in the store and ripe for the taking.
If you haven’t seen the original, wildly viral, Double Rainbow video that inspired our own version, check out the full on video below.
The more the merrier when it comes to tulips, large clumps work best.
1. If planting daffodils, get them planted early. The sooner you get your bulbs in the ground the sooner they will start to make roots and get growing for next spring. Daffodils need more time to make roots than tulips, in fact you can still plant tulips until the ground freezes
2. Squirrels love to eat freshly planted bulbs and especially love tulips and crocuses. Remedies against squirrels include using cayenne pepper and chicken wire over where you’ve planted. But cayenne washes off in the rain, and some squirrels are not deterred anyway. Chicken wire can be annoying to use. I find the simplest way to foil the critters is to use a physical barrier. I collect flat rocks and cover the areas where you have planted to stop the squirrels from digging them up. It also helps you remember where you planted them. You can always move them slightly out of the way in the spring when they start to come up.
3. Cover freshly dug soil. You never want to have a spot in your garden that looks smooth and freshly bare. It’s a like putting out a neon sign for squirrels saying: “Bulbs Here, Come & Get It”. Disguise your work as much as possible with mulch, leaves, rocks.
4. Add bulb food and/or bone meal with soil underneath bulb when you plant to give bulbs some extra nutrients to keep them going.
5. Water your bulbs, make sure they are well watered before frost. If winter is dry, and above zero for a prolonged period during winter, water again.
6. Plant in large groups, rather than singly. Dig large hole and put tulips of same type close together, in uneven amounts, like 7, 9, 11. They make a much better show this way.
7. Plant very early and very late varieties to have your bulb show last a long time. Especially nice are very early bloomers like species crocus and snowdrops. Great thing about these is that they multiply over time, and snowdrops might even bloom in February. Try growing some blue scillas in your lawn, eventually you’ll have a whole swath of bright blue—a feast for the eyes. I know I really appreciate having something bloom in March, makes me believe winter is ending soon. Plant alliums which bloom later and really extend your season.
Fiesta has many varieties of bulbs in stock right now, so check them out next time you are at the garden centre.
This cake is all about different coloured plums. You can of course make it with all purple or all yellow if you want to be boring as hell. But honestly, if you care at all about beauty and colour and magic you will use a big jumble of different colours.
I did just that and then went and ruined the damn thing by tossing some blueberries and raspberries in with the plums and they stained the whole cake red. It still tasted incredible though, the pink flamingo asked for seconds.
Learn from my stupidity, never be nonchalant with a Stained Glass Cake. Follow the recipe and you will be rewarded. Continue »
Herb gardens are going crazy all over town and we want you to make use of that bounty in every meal. Here we present a series of recipes and ideas for putting all those delicious plants to good use.
With an aroma that fills the yard when you brush against it, lemon thyme, is the most deliciously fragrant herb in the garden. It’s lemony grassy scent is so refreshing and subtle one is tempted to turn it into a perfume.
This herb grows up nice and bushy, it suits hanging planters perfectly but can spill out of a terra cotta pot on the ground just as easily too. Thymol, an essential oil found in thyme, is the main active ingredient in Listerine mouthwash.
The leaves just need to be stripped from the stem, no chopping required, before adding to salads, soups, egg dishes and especially pastas.
Lemon thyme is the perfect finishing touch to a simple macaroni & cheese or spaghetti and meatballs but my favourite pasta dish of all time would not be complete without this herb.
This dish, made famous at Kingston’s popular Chez Piggy restaurant, has only six ingredients and is moronically simple to throw together. Continue »
A large container with verbena, pelargonium and as a dramatic touch, a fuzzy foliage specimen.
1. Soil & Mulch. It’s best to use a professional potting mix rather than actual soil—never use soil right out of the garden. The lighter professional potting mixes give excellent root stability and allow for lots of air around growing roots. Promix is a good variety, but there are other mixes that contain perlite for drainage and some peat. Once planted, mulch the soil on top of the pots to conserve moisture, about an inch will do. If soil becomes bone dry it stresses plants out—especially on a very hot, sunny day. Stick your finger through the mulch to see how wet the soil is to know when to water.
2. Use the biggest pots available. From a practical standpoint, the bigger the better when it comes to containers. Large pots dry out more slowly and keep roots cooler, so less stress on the plants. Bigger pots make watering less of an issue: No matter how cute a series of small terra cotta pots look on a windowsill, unless you are prepared to stand there with a hose on the hottest days, it’s often a death sentence for plants. (Unless they are succulents and cactus.) Make sure all pots have holes for water drainage, by the way.
Fiesta Farms has a new Mayor! Didn’t know that our little grocery store had an official head of state?
If this notion is confusing to you, you might not be using Foursquare. Foursquare is a free GPS based service you can access on your iphone, blackberry or smartphone. It’s under a year old in Toronto, so don’t feel like a newbie.
Once you sign up for a Foursquare account, you can use your mobile device to “check in” at various locations across the city and share your local travels + tips with your online network of friends.
If a person checks in more than anyone else over a period of 60 days, they are crowned the “Mayor” of that location. And that’s exactly what happened when Andrea Chiu last checked in at Fiesta Farms. Andrea runs a food blog and podcast at Tongue + Cheek and is a loyal Fiesta Farms customer.
Not only did her loyalty get her the Mayorship on Foursquare, but the staff of Fiesta Farms were proud to fete her as well.
Foursquare does more than make you look busy and well-travelled. So how can you use Foursquare at your favourite grocery store? Using Foursquare at Fiesta Farms will allow you to share tips with your network. Here are a few ideas how:
Foursquare curious? Here are a few resources to check out before you check in. Have a peek at Getting Started with Foursquare for Dummies and Mashable’s tips for getting the most out of Foursquare.
Succulent filled pots and concrete forms add interest to this window sill.
1. They make your garden bigger: Growing plants in containers is a great way to expand your garden space. Pots can go anywhere: on pavement, a window sill, a deck, up a flight of steps.
2. Allows you to control the soil your plants grow in. Your garden soil may not be the greatest but when you plant in a pot, you control the soil and can provide excellent growing conditions that the soil in your garden may not have. My garden is sandy and full of tree roots. My pots give me a dream garden of rich soil.
A large planter with a sculptural plant makes a statement in a side entranceway.
3. Adds to your garden design by creating structure: Get the biggest pots you can afford and make it a statement, they can really add to your garden design. Pot design has come a long way, and you don’t have to choose between plastic and terra cotta.There are so many interesting shapes and materials. New types look like cement or terra cotta but are winter hardy, a huge bonus, as terra cotta pots will crack in a winter freeze.
4. Adds vertical space to your garden. Use the wall to attach pots to the wall, increasing the space you have for gardening. Foliage cascading from pots always gives a lush feel.
5. Takes advantage of your sunny spots. You might have a shady front yard, but a sunny spot along the side of your house, a great place to put a large pot filled with flowers, foliage or even vegetables. There’s nothing like having a walk through your garden and being able to pluck a fresh tomato out of a pot.
Top chefs from around Canada converged on Toronto recently to duke it out for best grilled cheese. Chef Paul Olgarski from Rouge in Calgary, Melissa Craig from the Bearfoot Bistro in Whistler, Corbin Tomaszeski from Toronto’s Holt Renfrew Cafe and Michael Howell from Tempest in Nova Scotia.
This is a dish that doesn’t get the spotlight very often, an easy standby for lunch.
Two pieces of bread, some cheese, butter and a hot pan. Simple right? Think again.
You’ll never settle for that again after you try the award-winning recipe from Chef Michael Howell. Continue »
We hosted the kids’ booth at The Evergreen Brickworks Wild Blueberry Festival and had such success making blueberry died scarves that we couldn’t wait to share our ‘how to’s’ with you. This is a perfect, messy weekend project that is non-toxic and recalls the ancient roots of all the dyes we use today.
The final product, is truly useful. Who wouldn’t want a fabulous lavender muslin scarf to bridge summer to fall weather? Here’s a video from the Blueberry Festival showing kids and parents having a blast getting in on the act. The instructions are below.
1. Cut white cotton muslin into good sized strips (big enough for a scarf). We got ours at Designer Fabrics
2. Mash 1 cup of blueberries, preferably by hand. Squish them up really well. The more you squeeze them the more vibrant they dye will be.
3. Strain the mashed blueberries and juice into 4 cups boiling water using a fine strainer or cheesecloth. Press the blueberries through the strainer for best results.
4. Mix juice into boiling water.
5. Place elastic bands in random order all around the muslin scarf. Be sure to put them on really tight.
6. Submerse the scarf (with elastics) in the boiling water for 10–15 mins.
7. Transfer scarf into 4 cups cold water mixed with 1 cup salt (salt is a fixative)
8. Wring out and let dry in the sunshine before removing elastics
