Monday, April 02, 2012

North of Steeles

HellooOOooOO.......I write to you from North of Steeles. Can you hear me? (non Torontonians, look at handily included map for clarification).


So as you may be able to gather from the artistic rendering above, Chris and I have moved....North of Steeles. We now officially live in Markham. So you may be thinking: "What does this have to do with local food?", "You realize Toronto is a cold, hard, soulless place, right?" and "Why are you trying to be cool like Allie Brosh??". Well I will tell you. A) Allie Brosh is hilarious and has a Wikipedia entry, why wouldn't I want to be like her? B) You may think Toronto is a cold, hard, and soulless place, until you live there and then are torn from her eclectic concrete bosom. My pain, she is both self-inflicted and real! And, C) most relevant to you, moving means we had to find all new places from which to retrieve sustenance.
So, more on that?

Actually first a confession. Immediately before and after moving we did not have access to our dishes and cooking utensils so we had to buy our food premade and finding local premade food is pretty much impossible. The night we moved in we ordered in chicken fingers and poutine. And ate them. In bed.
Judge all you like, it was HEAVEN. *cough* We also ate chinese and thai food.*cough* Confession done.

And back on track - Here are some great places we have discovered since leaving my lover, Toronto.

Ambrosia Natural Foods - This place is particularly exceptional as we can walk there in under ten minutes. If you have ever lived in the suburbs you will understand how awesome this is. In terms of actual produce and foods, I wouldn't say they have fantastic selection, but you can definitely find enough to put some meals together. We particularly enjoyed their local tofu.

Highland Farms - Apparently I had not lived in Toronto long enough to become familiar with this local chain of grocery stores. I was very impressed. They are HUGE and stock an amazingly varied amount of local products. Their meat counter is larger than some grocery stores in Toronto (point 1 Markham) and the majority of their meat is from Ontario! You can buy a bazillion different cuts of meat and there is a good pre-packaged section as well. I bought Ontario Lamb bones last week and made a ridiculously good broth. They also had the best selection of local veggies I have seen, but I don't know how related that is to the time of year that I discovered this mecca of food awesomeness.

Nature's Emporium - This place is just seven minutes up the road from where I work and is an organic haven. I've only been once so far and they didn't have a great variety of local produce, but that was also in the middle of the winter. I think this is an excellent grocery store, much like the Big Carrot in Toronto (sniff), but much larger and with way more organic options. However, they don't carry a great deal of local products in general and their meat is very expensive. I should say that their meat is all organic, small farm, and ethically raised, so you know you are getting quality animals that were treated well, but I'm not convinced it's the best price for such products out there.

We have also officially set up our weekly veggie box with Fresh City Farms. We have been getting it for three weeks now and the produce is primarily local, with supplements here and there. Given that we are supporting a local business who supports local and/or small farms businesses, we are fine with that. Soon we will switch over to eating produce from Chris' farm which is currently in planting mode!

Blog done.

Oh yeah, last time I said Chris would be writing a blog about beef. He says he will still do that. If you see him, bug him to do that. Thanks.