Finally, after 3 months of blizzards, winter seems to be showing signs of weakness in Montreal. I’m sure this doesn’t mean that winter is over, even though spring officially began over two weeks ago, but still, today the sun was shining and the snow was melting, and people were out on the […]

Montreal enjoyed several days of warm weather last week, which melted almost all of the snow that had fallen over the last two weeks, and there was a lot of it. Just as I was beginning to enjoy walking to work in my hiking boots, mother nature dropped another big snowfall on us and I […]

Michael Pollan came to Canada — almost.
The promotional tour for his new book "In Defense of Food" landed him an interview on CBC Radio’s The Current (listen to the interview here) this past Wednesday, January 9th. He wasn’t actually in Canada — he broadcast his bit from the CBC studios in New York while […]

Spring is sprung — even though it is officially over in a few days — and our farmers markets are finally showing some local produce besides last years carrots.

Most importantly, asparagus is here. I have been buying and grilling it for almost a week now, and I don’t see Noshette and I getting bored of […]

Sometimes I get so pissed off by the world we live in, all I want to do is scream.
Instead, I garden.
I can’t believe what people are putting into my food, into your food, just to get rich. Is money that important?
I don’t make a lot of money, but I have an apartment, a television, a […]

By this time last year, I had already cleaned up my community garden plot and sowed my seeds, after laying down a few bags of organic manure bought from a farmer in the Eastern Townships.
Here is what my plot looked like the first week of May, 2006. You can see Noshette and my garden partner […]

My beloved chocolate, whose place in my heart (and stomach) is eclipsed only by the lovely Noshette of the North, is in grave danger.
I was alerted to very serious situation by The Center for Food Safety, from which I receive regular alerts via email. You can get yourself on their email list by joining their […]

Note: This is the second part of a 2-part series about my visit to Toronto, Ontario. Part One can be found here.
“Pass the peas!”
“Pass the chicken!”
“Pass the matzah!”
One thing about visiting family: You eat A LOT.
Trying to work off some of the unnecessary calories that we had ingested at the uncountable number of family meals […]

To celebrate Passover, a time when the Jews wandered 40 years in the desert searching for the land of milk & honey, Noshette and I wandered 4 hours westward in search of organic milk and wild honey (and some other sustainable foods). Noshette was born and raised in Toronto, so we were going there to […]

Josh’s Organic Market - Hollywood, Florida
After our 1-nighter in the Gulf Coast of Florida, where we saw a memorable Leon Redbone concert and enjoyed a good meal of local fish and seafood, Noshette of the North and I drove back to the Atlantic coast along the famous “Alligator Alley”, where we saw plenty of gators […]

A provincial election was called here last week, which would be the equivalent of state elections in the USA. It will be held on March 26, 2007, and the campaigns have obviously begun. There are 3 major political parties in Quebec: The Liberals, the “Parti Quebecois”, and the ADQ, which is an acronym for “Action […]

Canada launched a new and improved edition of its food guide yesterday, our neighbor to the north’s version of the U.S. “food pyramid.” Theirs looks a bit less influenced by the meat and dairy associations than ours does. As reported in the National Post, Canadians should:
• Eat at least one dark green and one orange […]

You know what I love about being ecologically conscious? It’s so frugal. I’m from Dutch people, so this appeals to me very much.
Take broth, for instance. Instead of dumping five bucks a box on organic free-range chicken or beef broth, I can make my own. Vegetable broth is even more satisfying. […]

My entire adult life — which I date loosely as beginning from my first credit card, at age 17, so half my life ago — I have been a compulsive grocery shopper. You would think I’d lived through a time of famine, or perhaps been raised in a Soviet Bloc country. I remember doing my […]

It sucks when it is 107 degrees in Austin, especially if you’re farming.
I thought I was going to die.  I got there around 7am, and in about an hour it was at that point where the sun was uncomfortably hot on my face and arms.  I fed and watered the chickens, removed fencing, and helped […]