Thanksgiving weekend at St. Lawrence Market

Thanksgiving is the perfect time to thank local farmers for providing the Fall Harvest for Your Thanksgiving Meals. There is no better day to do that then a sunny summer like saturday afternoon at St. Lawrence Market in Toronto.

I very rarely have time to head down to the Saturday St. Lawrence Farmer's Market but today I had to meet up with a friend for her Birthday and I headed over to the market first to get some great local fresh food. The North Building Farmers Market is akin to going back in time when you knew who grew your food. It's like going back to your roots...or in the farmers case the soil of the land. They say that Organic Food now is what regular food was over 20-30 years ago. All I know is that I never heard anyone talk about organic food when I was a kid. A tomato tasted sweet and juicy when you went to the store to get it in the summer. Fruit didn't come from half way around the world and you knew what the fruits in the store were because most of them came from somewhere familiar. Now you can get foods that won't grow in North America delivered to your grocery store any time of the year. Is that a good thing? Well sometimes I just feel like having some exotic food and maybe that happens in the dead of winter. But are we losing something in the process? Yes we are unfortunately. We are losing our eco system and good and healthy food. Food free of pesticides, hormones and genetically modified concoctions made to sit on the shelf for a while. Organic food is expensive now but i think the only way to make it less expensive is to shop from local farmers if you can and buy Organic when necessary and show the buyers that you prefer these foods. Loblaws has started putting local foods front and centre in their grocery stores now. That doesn't happen by chance, it happens because we choose it.

Because we live in Canada, although you wouldn't know that it gets cold here from the past 6 months of fabulous and hot weather, but we can't always go to the farms and farmers markets because they don't operate year round but St. Lawrence Market does. Try and go to a farmer's market year round if you have one near you. It can be a planned outing and it will also connect you to the regular folks that sell their products at the markets. I hope to be able to frequent the markets more often this winter depending on the weather. If you can try and go as much as you can to markets that try and have the most Organic produce they can stock. It's a win win situation for everyone. It doesn't take massive trucks to drive the produce from different countries and it also saves energy on huge big box stores that need refrigeration and shipping and receiving and stock rooms. I love my big stores but sometimes I just love to have a tomato that tastes like a tomato the way it was intended to taste.

I am excited that they are building a Whole Foods close to where I live because they do try and sell the best foods possible.

My parents never had a lot of money but our fridge was always stocked to the max with fresh fruits and vegetables. Buying cheap crap saves you money in the short term but costs you Big money in health costs in the long run. Don't sacrifice your health for a Big Screen TV. When you get Cancer because you have eaten toxic bad food all your life you won't care how big your tv screen is. Make food a bigger priority and you will reap the rewards later.

Don't get me wrong. I just got a big tv but I have spent my past few weekends shopping at farmer's markets and in the kitchen whipping up food that tastes delicious and is good for all things in a good life.

Shop local and stay healthy.