Ontario-grown baby eggplant
It was early July when I fell in love with … oh, baby. Baby eggplant, that is.
These little beauties, piled under a hand-lettered sign advertising their Ontario roots, have been a faithful presence this summer at one of the local markets I frequent. In my kitchen they’ve found their way into side dishes with red onions, zucchini, and ...
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Haymaker’s ginger switchel
It’s hot, people. As it should be in the throes of summer. Think back to late February and how loudly you grumbled as you had to pull on boots, a coat, hat, and mittens before heading out into the driving wind to shovel the umpteenth dump of snow from the stoop, front path, and sidewalk. Afterwards, cupping a ...
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The fruits do not yield their true flavor to the purchaser of them, nor to him who raises them for the market. There is but one way to obtain it, yet few take that way. If you would know the flavor of huckleberries, ask the cow-boy or the partridge. It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them.
—Henry David Thoreau, in Walden
In other words, you must become one with the fruit.
“Lazarus” trees at the Salvation Army Village on Broadview Avenue
The sight of the newly lopped trees was so shocking, and upsetting — they looked like mannequins stripped of their clothes and jammed feet-first into the earth, naked torsos exposed and outstretched severed limbs frozen in a gesture pleading for mercy — that my eyes received dualling messages from my brain, ...
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Leaked car oil on Broadview Avenue
“We’re running out. And we don’t have a plan.”
It’s not the first half of the subtitle for A Crude Awakening, the Swiss documentary about the Peak Oil crisis we watched last night, that worries me — I’ve been living with the grim reality of hydrocarbon energy depletion in ...
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Squash gargantua in Michael’s parents’ backyard garden
Last night’s salad was magnificent: a downy, tender pile of baby lettuces in green, burgundy, and purple mixed with young French tarragon shoots and sunrise-orange day-lily flowers. Optional toppings included roasted and crushed mixed nuts, fat sultanas, and crunchy day-lily buds. Once each of us had assembled our salads, we dressed them with raspberry-infused ...
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Trailing branch, High Park
“It is horrifying that we have to fight our government to save our environment.” —Ansel Adams, American photographer and conservationist
Listening to the news today of the federal government’s slashes in spending, I became incensed all over again about a previous program cut: the almost instantaneous elimination of the One Tonne Challenge when the Conservatives ...
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