Tilapia and Market Fare

I visited the new area farmer's market. It's only been open for 3 weeks and totally a pleasure to shop at. The word hasn't spread too much yet and getting around and talking to the farmers is a pleasure while they still have the time to chat for a minute or so. I'm sure this market won't be a secret for long but for the time being it's not a crazy place to go to.

I found some beautiful heirloom tomatoes and the fragrance was fantastic. I decided to make a small salad of them combined with cucumbers completely without dressing. As you cut into them, they're so juicy that they actually dress the salad themselves. Absolutely mouth watering. Here are some of the other scenes from the market.










So shopping done, decision made about the tomatoes - now what for the main course. In the category of easy and good for you, I decided to combine the tomato salad with some mild tasting Tilapia. The prep on this fish dish was literally minutes and the result was terrific.



Ingredients

4 Tilapia fillets
1 tsp minced garlic
Juice of 1/2 large lemon
2 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
Pepper (to taste)

Preparation

1. Spray non stick spray in an oven proof dish that holds 4 fillets. Set oven temperature to 400 F.
2. Wash filets and dry well with a paper towel.
3. In a small dish mix together the remaining ingredients.
4. Place filets in prepared dish and pour prepared dressing over top.
5. Bake filets in oven for approximately 20 minutes uncovered.

Wedding Story: Part IV

I'm very impressed that I was not targetted in R's post about food addiction. Then again, he's stuck living with me and not Giz. So, it's probably a wise move.

R has now progressed to planning a mass intervention for Giz and everyone who commented in Giz's favour on the last post.

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This post is the post you've been waiting for. The wedding day post and pictures. I'm skipping over the Sunday events, another graduation ceremony and a brunch with all of the out of town guests. Sunday night was consumed with last minute preparations: cake and cupcake baking, flower arrangment and last minute knitting.

Despite Kat's warning, I was up half the night finishing my shawl. I had worked too hard and too long to not finish it. Sorry for the cut-off head, but I think this pictures shows the shawl well.

What a relief to finish it! But, the 6:00am hair appointment came way too quickly. With only 2.5 hours of sleep the night before, I was half asleep while getting my hair done.

I gave the hairdresser this picture as inspiration:


I was honest with the stylist and told him that I wasn't sure I liked it. Maybe I had an idea that it would look more like the picture. But, our hair colour and length is different and my face is not as long as hers.

Giz's hair is usually very curly. I'm not sure the stylist liked my "you look like Roy Orbison" comment part-way through the styling. In the end, it was quite nice.


We got married at City Hall. I can't say that I enjoyed the experience. R and I wanted a completely private ceremony, maybe on a beach somewhere. But I guess it's a compromise, somewhere in between a ceremony with all guests and an entirely private one, somewhere romantic.

After the ceremony, we rested for a bit and then finished up preparations for the ceremony. We had arranged for a professional photographer and had to go meet her a couple of hours before the wedding. Since the weather here had been so unpredictable and rainy (still is a month later), we started to panic about getting rained on. By some miracle, the sky cleared up -- maybe even too much (I really shouldn't complain though).

From the beginning of wedding planning, we knew that having professional photography was a must. If having quality photos of your wedding is important to you, get a professional photographer that takes the type of pictures you like. Meet with him/her/them ahead of time to talk about packages and the style of pictures you would like (we wanted more candid/natural shots). We went with Fleischer Photography and are quite happy with the final product. Kathy took our pictures. We went with the package to keep the digital images.

Here are some of the professional shots (we have over 500 of them to choose from):




The reception was held in the Courtyard Restaurant, a stone-brick heritage building that is a common wedding location in Ottawa. They set up the room to your specifications and are clearly very comfortable with overseeing the evening.






One of their features is a personalized menu that is given to each guest at the beginning of the night. Guests can order for a selection of dishes (here's the post about our tasting).

The soup was a carrot squash soup (no pictures because mine are blurry). I warned the restaurant about 5 times that it HAD to be hot. They probably thought we were crazy. In the end, it worked though because it was hot. I would have to say that the soup was good. It seems a bit strange to me to have a butternut squash soup at a June wedding.

The next course was the salad.

I was warned that the salad wasn't great. It tasted like they had dressed it about 15 minutes prior to serving. The dressing was practically non-existent with the exception of the softening effect it had on the lettuce. We requested more dressing.

Apparently the highlight of the evening was the steak:


I had the chicken, which wasn't bad. Not mind-blowing either.

For dessert, I had some maple pie. It was quite sweet, but good.

Toward the end of the evening, we had cake and cupcakes (Giz did a super job on these -- everyone was very complimentary and I did not miss have a professionally done cake).


We were also very happy with the maple syrup giveaways.

So - that's the wedding day. It was small (35 guests), pretty low-key. I felt that it was a good number in terms of the room size and in being able to actually talk to all of my guests but sit down and eat dinner too. I certainly would not have been able to get it all done without Giz's help. Next week we have another reception in my hometown for friends and family.

I must say, I'm relieved that it's done. I enjoyed most of the process, but am quite content to not be planning my wedding anymore.

On to the next...HOUSE SHOPPING! R and I almost put an offer in on a REALLY NICE place today. We decided to bail though. I'm sad about it, but know it was the right decision. The upstairs only had two bedrooms (another bedroom on the main floor and one in the basement). We hope to have a couple of kids -- so we felt that it was important to hold out for a place that had more than 2 bedrooms on one level. I'll get over it. But I really loved the kitchen. :(

I Love My Mother-in-Law

As you might have guessed by the title of this post, here's R's guest post about his experience preparing for the wedding. I warned R that he may not be "preaching to the choir" here. But, I'll let you come to your own conclusions.

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Psychgrad and Giz seem to thrive when the kitchen is overflowing with open cookbooks, dirty dishes, and ridiculous amounts of food. I, on the hand, find it draining. In fact, I am still recovering from the wedding preparations. This posting will expose the dark side of the Equal Opportunity Kitchen and shine a light on the signs of an addiction to cooking.

Most of my family members and friends were scheduled to arrive in town a few days before the wedding. Luckily, I had booked off a couple days in advance of their arrivals in order to run a few errands and do a bit of cleaning so that I could spend time with them once they arrived. Much to my dismay, the place was a disaster. There were cookies everywhere. There was flour on the floor. There were stacks of dirty dishes filling the sink. At times, I couldn’t even see the kitchen counter surface because there was so much stuff on top of it. The mess overflowed into the kitchen and even into the office as we needed more storage space. I tried to clean the place, but it was a losing battle. It just kept getting worse and worse. How on earth could I explain to my family and friends that they couldn’t come over, because the place was too dirty? Below are a couple of photos that show what the place looked like.





One day I came home and Psychgrad and Giz seemed really overwhelmed. A bunch of people were coming over for supper the next day and we had a lot of food left to prepare. I jumped into the role of Project Manager and tried to motivate Giz by telling her to work faster, but to no avail. An important part of Project Management is understanding the “Scope Triangle” and that time, cost and quality are the trade-offs inherent in every project.


I couldn’t get Giz to work faster and we couldn’t postpone the event, so I couldn’t change the time aspect. Giz wasn’t open to ordering a pizza or anything else and I couldn’t pay anyone enough to squeeze into the disaster of a kitchen to help out, so I couldn’t change the cost aspect. The quality aspect was going to suffer. It was clear that we needed to change the scope. We needed to eliminate a few options from the menu. However, when I suggested to Giz that we don’t make everything as planned, she replied, “what are you getting at?” She couldn’t fathom the idea of hosting an event and not having an insane amount of food. This was a moment of clarity for me. I realized that Giz has an addiction to cooking and she needs help. Here’s the proof:
• Instead of reading regular books, she reads cookbooks.
• Instead of watching real television shows, she watches cooking shows.
• Instead of checking normal web sites, she checks out food blogs.
• She asked me to go to the grocery store at least twice each day.
• She is so out of touch with the real world, she hasn’t even heard of Usain Bolt. He was only named Sportsman of the Year!!!

We need to have an intervention to save her. Who is willing to help? Please post messages of encouragement. Together, we can help her beat this addiction to cooking!

Chick Pea Salad

Don't you get tired of the same old standby salad? In keeping with the eating healthy theme and offering some new ideas for the everyday table I chose to throw together (and I'm not kidding - it's so quick and easy - a total throw together) a chick pea salad that's packed with great fiber and veggies and very lightly dressed. It so makes for a clean tasting yet yummy salad.


Ingredients

2 cups dried (or canned) chickpeas
1/2 large red onion, diced
1/2 large red pepper, diced
1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/3 cup carrots, diced or shredded
6 Tbsp olive oil
6 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp. cumin (or more if you like)
1 tsp. curry powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper


Method:

1. Soak dry chickpeas in water overnight
2. Drain and rinse well. Cook on medium for approximately 30 minutes. Set aside.
3. Dice vegetables, add to cooled chick peas
4. Mix in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, curry and cumin (to taste)

Wedding Story: Part 3

Warning: R's Equal Opportunity Kitchen Exposed post is in progress. He has been spending way too much time in the office writing this thing. Giz...be afraid. Be very afraid.

But first, I bring you the 3rd installment of The Wedding Story...

With the first full day of events impending, Giz and I headed to the Byward Market to stock up on supplies. We had about an hour to get a lot done. So, I was literally dragging Giz from place to place telling her to put the camera down and get a move on.

She did manage to sneak in a few shots.

Unlike the Farmer's Market, the stands at the Byward Market contain a lot of produce that is not local. This has led to quite a debate, locally. Including a petition. Last year, the addition of a colour-coding system was added to inform customers of the distance the produce has travelled to get to the market.
Red means Canadian.
Blue means imported.
Green means from within 100 kilometres of Ottawa.
Yellow means organic produce from anywhere.

There are still some problems with this system as the stickers are not always prominently displayed, produce from different regions are often sold in the same basket and there is the occasional mislabelling.

One of the main benefits of the market is that there are a bunch of small stores in the area that are there year round (even when the stands close for the winter).

There are two cheese stores very close to each other (I get the names confused). They're both good. I think the one we went to was The House of Cheese. Or, maybe it was International Cheese & Deli.




One of the best reasons to go to the market is to visit La Bottega, a store specializing in Italian food.


At this point, we were beyond late and I was stressing. So, Giz was very restricted in her picture taking. We picked up the remainder of what we needed and returned to the apartment to get the "day before" preparations under way.


Thankfully, I had a barrage of help Saturday morning to get everything done. Life is so much easier when other people do your work for you. I miss my entourage (sniff sniff).

Here are some shots from Saturday dinner (some are blurry -- there was just too much going on at once to take good shots).

Cheese Platter


Included a mix of cheddar, brie, smoked gouda, havarti and cranberry goat's cheese.

Orzo Caprese Salad (Melissa - you know I'm obsessed with this stuff)


I made the pesto without pine nuts because one of the guests is deathly allergic to nuts (slight challenge).

Lemon-Dill Salmon


Not the most beautiful dish in the world -- but it was a big hit and super easy to make. We marinaded the salmon for 30 minutes with olive oil, lemon juice, dill, salt and pepper. HUGE HIT.

Here you can also see a bit of the green salad we served along with the baguette (some fresh, some made into crostini). Guests had an option of bruschetta or portabello tapinade.


Also a favourite, here's the spanikopita (easy to make ahead of time, freeze and warm up). You can also see Giz's towel cake in the background.

Chicken Skewers (sorry, kind of blurry) -- the platter was a gift from R's mom.

Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake

Icing

1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup butter
1 tsp vanilla
4 cups icing sugar
4-6 tbsp water

Make sure shortening and butter are at room temp. Mix them together to smooth out, add vanilla, then icing sugar (a little bit at a time to avoid a counter disaster). Add water as needed (depending on desired consistency).

This 3-tier stand was a wedding gift (from Giz, of course). The top layer is some leftover banana loaf and the other layers are the famous Blueberry Crumble Bars that everyone was making last year. I used a mix of blueberries and a saskatoon berries to make them.

Loblaws on Pork

Some of you may have seen my BzzAgent post on pork where I expressed my disappointment at not seeing the Canadian Pork label on the cooler shelves at Loblaws.

Give credit where credit is due - Loblaws does their homework and makes it a point of knowing who's saying what about them. In my "inbox", I received the following email:

Hi there,

I wanted to reach out to you in response to your recent posting about Stuffed Salsa Pork Tenderloin and your experience at a Toronto Loblaw Superstore. First of all, I'd like to thank you for shopping at the Loblaw Superstore and for buying Canadian products. We take all customer concerns seriously and wanted to reach out to you about your experience.

We have recently revitalized the meat shopping experience in store, however, your experience indicates that our efforts to educate both our colleagues and customers about our products can be improved.

I'd like to reassure you that we do indeed source a great deal of Canadian Pork and are committed to increasing the amount of Canadian product we source. Sourcing with integrity – which includes sourcing as much local and domestic product as possible – is one of the key pillars of our CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) mandate. In fact, our new Free From line of meats includes pork produced here in Canada and even pictures one of our suppliers on pack. It is raised without the use of antibiotics or hormones, and sourced from dedicated Canadian suppliers (small family farms in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta). Like all Canadian pork and chicken, PC pork and chicken are proudly hormone free. We are also proud to carry other meats products, such as chicken and beef, sourced from Canada as well.

Now that we’ve clarified the information mentioned on your blog, we hope you’ll take the time to visit your local store and try out some of the great local pork that we do in fact offer.

Thanks very much, and happy barbecuing - your recipe did indeed look delicious!

Kind regards,

Sheri

Sheri Helman
Senior Manager, Public Relations
Loblaw Companies Limited
1 President's Choice Circle I Brampton, Ontario I L6Y 5S5
Tel: (905) 459-2500, ext. 6253 Fax: (905) 861-2325
sheri.helman@loblaw.ca

Clearly, Loblaws is listening to bloggers. How would you take this email?

In my opinion, it's good to be able to have this dialogue with a large grocery chain and it's equally as positive for them to hear your feedback.

To their credit, I did find veal at Loblaws that had a Canadian marking on it.


Does this mean that the meat product is raised in Canada or processed in Canada, or both. In fact, to put a Made in Canada sticker on a product only means that per cent of the production cost was incurred in Canada; the ingredients could come from anywhere. But this is another debate.

In other meat product news...

An E.Coli alert for a current recall of some varieties of President's Choice (branding name for Loblaws) is out. Watch the best-before dates between April 29 and June 16, inclusive, sold in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada. The alert originated in the U.S. Does this mean that the meat is from the U.S.?

Consumers should avoid eating certain President's Choice brand steaks, roasts and ground beef products that are being pulled from store shelves because of possible contamination with E. coli, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency says.

The agency issued the health hazard alert Tuesday as an expansion of a recall of beef products processed in the U.S. in April by JBS Swift Beef Company in Greeley, Colo., after 18 people fell ill.

To read the whole story, see CBC Online . What's most disturbing is that one of the stores listed is my local market.

Happy Canada Day!

Today is Canada's 142 birthday!

Here are some pictures from Canada Days past:

The Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, arriving at Parliament Hill to watch the celebrations:

Michaëlle Jean, the Governor General (the Queen's representative):

We're still debating whether to make our way to the hill for the festivities. R went briefly and said he couldn't see anything. There's about 45,000 people around there at the moment.

I'll leave you with this video of Sarah McLachlan. She is performing twice today and just finished singing this song: