Tag: food

Bake Cookies in the Heat of Your Car

If you have an automobile that sits around in a parking lot for a long time then you should start baking! Here’s a simple way to bake cookies in your car. Turn that empty car interior into something useful and delicious 🙂

It is scorching hot here and to put that heat to good use (i.e. to give me a reason to go outside and leave the air conditioning), I decided to bake up another batch of cookies, using my car as a oven. Baking cookies in a car is very easy and has the added benefit that you don’t heat up your house at all, but still get to eat freshly-baked cookies. I’ve posted some tips on how to bake cookies in the car before, but the most important things you need to know are:

It should be about 100F outside and the car must be in direct sunlight
Put a potholder or something under the baking sheet so you don’t damage your dash
Cut cookies into an even thickness so they cook at the same time
And, ideally, use an oven thermometer to make sure that your car gets up to about 180F (which it will as long as the windows are up and it’s 100F or more outside)
I like to use slice-and-bake cookies to ensure I get an even thickness, and this batch was Oatmeal Chocolate Chip, instead of the regular chocolate chip I’ve used in the past. The cookies baked up very well in the 180F+ car “oven” and even retained a hint of chewiness. If you don’t use a car, these can be baked in an oven, too. Mini chocolate chips make slicing the log of dough easier, but I actually used a mixture of regular-sized white and semisweet chocolate chips for these. They took a while to bake through, but since my car smelled like cinnamon when they were done, it was well worth it.

Independent Grocers go Local

In Ontario a handful of grocery stores stopped being part of a franchise so they can support local grown food from farmers in their communities. It’s great to see the grocers taking such a bold move and that their customers support them in the decision.

For his part, Peter Knipfel says he’s discovering more about what’s growing locally. At his store, he says grape tomato sales have tripled since the switch to a local producer.
“We are now a group of nine stores that probably have a little bit of buying power to buy larger quantities of local tomatoes, larger quantities of cucumbers from, say, some of the Mennonite farmers that are producing it at Elmira market, for example,” he says.

Mary Copp has shopped at Kropf’s store in Elora for 30 years. She says she noticed the changes immediately. “I think it’s great because we look for local, and you can get it here. You can’t get it at [chain-store rival] Zehrs … well, sometimes you can, but not as much.”

Shopper Linda Tompkins of Chesley agrees, “I don’t want food from some place else when we’ve got food right here. Support our farmers.”

Still, Warriner predicts that while that more consumers are asking for local produce, they will always be the minority. The University of Guelph professor says like organic produce, local will always be a niche market because mass production generally leads to cheaper prices.

Co-op members concede some of their wares are more expensive than those of the competition, but add that on average they are competitive. “We’re not saying we’re the cheapest but we’re certainly not the most expensive either,” says Knipfel.

Kropf adds that the ability to offer locally produced food is ultimately about quality first, price second.

Thanks go to Dan Harrison for the scoop!

Urban Farming for Fun and Profit

In the urban centre of Toronto, Sarah Nixon makes a living by growing flowers in other people’s yards and then selling the plants. She is part of a growing trend among sustainable urbanities who are farming in the city.

Nixon’s farm isn’t out near Milton or Orillia. It’s on Indian Rd. and Marion St. – just a few blocks from Roncesvalles in the city’s west end. She grows flowers in back and front yards around Parkdale and then sells them for weddings, office receptions and, perhaps this season, to one Ossington Ave. florist.

What do the landowners get in return?

“They get a free flower garden without lifting a finger,” says Nixon with a smile.

Nixon is part of the new wave of farming, called SPIN – small plot intensive farming – which is growing in cities across North America. Riding on the crest of the local food wave, SPIN is cashing in on a new eager market.

There are some surprising benefits to growing crops in the city, says the movement’s leader, Wally Satzewich.

You can’t turn a tractor in a tiny backyard, so there are fewer expensive start-up investments, for one. Then, there’s the city’s asphalt, which absorbs the sun’s heat and makes us all sweat more on hot summer nights. But, for farmers, it means a longer growing season in the spring and fall. And there is the garden hose.

“All I have to do is turn on the water faucet in the house and there is irrigation,” says Satzewich, who moved from his 20-acre farm outside Saskatoon into the city 10 years ago. “If I had to go back to getting my tractor to a river bank and getting the pump going … When you’ve learned the hard way out in the country you really appreciate the benefits of the city.”

Mediterranean Diet Good for Your Heart

The Mediterranean diet is delicious and good for your heart! The researchers wanted to look at what kind of foods that we should be eating a lot of. Hint: it’s not hot dogs.

The review, which appears in Monday’s Archives of Internal Medicine, analyzed nearly 200 studies involving millions of people published between 1950 and June 2007.

The Mediterranean diet involves high consumption of:

Vegetables.
Legumes.
Fruits.
Nuts that are not roasted or salted.
Cheese or yogurt.
Whole grains.
Fish.
Monounsaturated fats such as olive oil and avocados.
The research also confirmed that trans-fatty acids are associated with an increased risk of heart disease.

Starchy carbs such as white bread, white rice and white potatoes that are high on the glycemic index were also linked to an increased risk of heart disease.

Urban Gardening: A Starting Guide

Following up on yesterdays post about greening your garden I bring you today’s post about urban gardening. If you’ve ever wanted to garden in or on your urban dwelling Inhabitat has a starter guide to urban gardening.

When choosing seeds, consider growing a bunch of herbs in a pot together. As for vegetables, almost everything will grow in a container. Leafy greens (chard, kale, collards) are one of the healthiest options with the most nutrients for your buck, but you can also try out tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, carrots and onions. For a little color, calendula and johnny jump-ups (violas) can be planted next to the vegetables and their petals are delicious sprinkled over a salad.