100 Mile Challenge

I was happy to find that foodtv has the 100 Mile Challenge reality show available online (in Canada at least..). This is especially exciting as we don't pay for cable... Yes it is oversimplified etc. for television, but it still makes for good free tv :)

Episode 1

There are some good recipes and other resources on the show website:
http://100mile.foodtv.ca

The Big Day

I don't have my hands on many of the pics from the big day yet.. but thought I'd share the one I do have. Here is Evan thanking everyone for a terrific day. We had tons of support from friends and especially from family. Everyone was accommodating of our wishes for a relatively waste-free wedding, even if it meant lugging crates of rented dishes and glasses around. Impressive. We had a beautiful wedding cake with red currants from the bushes in the garden behind us (the reception was in Evan's parents' back yard). We ate quiche made from local free range eggs and spinach from the garden, wine from the Okanagan (that's as close as we can get, ah well..), and even some Ethiopian-style home brew mead. A good time was had by all.

Convenient

Just saw this article at Grist on how convenience foods take about the same amount of time to make as unrefined food, contrary to what you might expect. I had just had a conversation along these lines at the dinner table. I wondered aloud.. 'Why would anyone buy prepackaged food when you can make this is 20 mins?' We were having my go-to comfort food, a riff on al olio and arrabiatta pasta. Evan pointed out that the individual ingredients did take time to get our hands on; cheese from the italian store, tomatoes from the organic store, olive oil from The Light Cellar. But once you have the staples, it takes no time at all.
When you are hungry and need dinner now, try..

olive oil medium low
4 cloves of garlic minced
a shake of hot pepper flakes

optional:
cherry tomatoes sliced in half
bread crumbs
grated parmesan or cubed feta
artichoke hearts

Boil up some fettucine, toss it in with the garlic, bada bing bada boom.

Rhubarb

Can you believe some people don't like rhubarb? It's a mystery. It's high season for rhubarb at the moment, and the scramble is on to make good use of it before it gets too woody and overgrown. Cheryl at Backseat Gourmet's post brought back memories of eating it straight up as a kid. These days, I prefer it cooked. Evan made a giant batch of stewed rhubarb last week.

We have it with yoghurt in the mornings, or in smoothies that made us both very happy. On Sunday, I put a pan half full of stewed rhubarb in the freezer and stirred it every 30 mins until it was frozen. Voila, sorbet. It was easy and a hit at dinner. Next I'm going to have to try Rhubarb Curry. Sounds wacky but potentially good. I imagine that it might work really well to replace the tang that tamarind brings to many curry dishes.

The preserving begins..

Time to get started preserving. I already have offers of spinach from friends and neighbors. I am going with my so far successful method of blanching and packing in half litre milk cartons for freezing. It works well for soup and veggies -- if I am organized I can let them thaw on the counter, if not I just tear the cardboard off and throw it in a pot with an inch of water. While searching for graphics for wedding stuff, I have stumbled upon the wide world of DIY graphics and paper crafts (who knew?) and found this Martha Stewart template for freezer labels that will make things easier.

At the moment I have a relatively empty freezer after eating all the food in it over the winter season. I read somewhere along the way (including at Lifehacker) that empty fridges and freezers are really inefficient. I read that you can use boxes full of insulation to fill the empty space, but it just ocurred to me the other day to put the pile of styrofoam packaging I have (which is not recyclable in Calgary and I cringe to toss in the garbage..) in the freezer. I guess I can add that to my list of green micromovements (as SARK would call them).

Post Script: My friend Jodi passed along this gem -- Food in Jars