Green Cuisine, Lotus Pond, Haliburton Community Organic Garden, Beekeeping, Local Food Guide

March 15, 2011
Okay, so I haven't written for awhile, but I learned more about my relationship to food this last week. I have honestly been eating very poorly, as I have a habit of having healthy food on-hand that is easy to prepare until I get too famished to care what I eat. Then I go in for cheap junk food.

But when I do plan what I eat, I can find some real gems. I did go to the Green Cuisine vegetarian restaurant downtown in Market Square ( http://www.greencuisine.com/contact ). Green Cuisine has a $15 cookbook for sale, which I am considering buying because it would be nice to get back into cooking for myself. They have awesome vegetarian, buffet style food that is pay by weight. The Lotus Pond restaurant also has vegetarian buffet lunches that are pay by weight ( http://lotuspond.webs.com/Index.htm ).
 
I went to what I thought was a Saturday (usually on Wednesdays) work party at Haliburton Community Organic Farm, but ended up instead in a beekeeping workshop ( http://haliburtonfarm.org/wp/ ). We as volunteers worked with one of the farmers and Gordon Hutchings (beekeeper) to set up a bee box (http://sites.google.com/site/hutchingsbeeservice/ ). We then were given a slide-show presentation about the hundreds of native bee species, how they are co-evolved to be the best pollinators for our area, and how we need shift focus away from the declining monoculture of invasive bees for pollinators and towards native bees are provided with food plants and suitable habitat. The bee workshop reminded us that most weeds are a stable and long-term source of food which helps the pollinators to survive in-between when our various crops are in flower, and so weeds should be left alone in fallow areas of your garden.

Bliss Cafe, EAT Magazine, Food Not Bombs Volunteering

March 6, 2011

For breakfast I ate some of the house's leftover rice with vegetable stir-fry. For lunch I went down to Bliss Cafe ( http://www.cafebliss.ca/ ) and ordered a Chia Seed Pudding, which was $11.20 for a small bowl (complimentary chai tea). It's expensive, but raw, vegan food tends to be. But one can bring food home from a restaurant and make other meals out of the leftovers to stretch the food, like putting this sweet, cinnamon, batter-like pudding over porridge (okay, I put it over rice again because that was what I had). Also at Bliss, I came across a copy of EATmagazine ( http://www.eatmagazine.ca/news/bc/vanisland ) which is a magazine about food on Vancouver Island; it's full of great info about local food. For a one dollar deposit, Bliss also gave me a glass jar for my tea to go in, and I had brought my own tupper-ware to take out the rest of my meal in. I passed by Victoria City Hall, and noticed that they have a small demonstration food garden on the Pandora side of the building.

Local Cooking, Breakfast Edition

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. However, when you're a student it can be awfully hard to a) remember to eat it (or anything for that matter) b) be conscious about what you choose to eat in the morning. As great as they may be, Lucky Charms and Captain Crunch are simply not going to cut it. Here is a recipe for a tasty, easy,organic, local breakfast fave that will get you up in the mornings faster than any leprechaun could.

French Toast

Makes 3 servings (2 slices each)

Prep time: 5 minutes

Cook time: 15 minutes

Cooking utensils you'll need:

• A frying pan (cast-iron works best)
• A larger size bowl (to dip the bread into)
• A whisk (or fork if you don't have one)  
• Measuring cups