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: