What is Canadian Food?

When someone says let's go get some Italian Food you automatically think Pasta or something like that.   When they say let's get Japanese Food you think about Sushi.  When someone says Greek Food you think Souvlaki and Pita bread.    Has anyone ever said "Let's go get some Canadian Food?".

What is Canadian Food anyway?   How come we don't have Canadian Food Restaurants?  You see restaurants called Chinese Dynasty or the Friendly Greek or the Mad Italian.   Why hasn't someone opened a restaurant called the Great Canadian other than the Superstore grocery store?

Poutine from Smoke's Poutinerie

What do you think of when people say Canadian food?  Do you think of Poutine?

Do you think about Maple Syrup and Pancakes?  Or maybe with some fresh Ontario Strawberries.

Maple pancakes, strawberries and chocolate chips

What about Canadian Bacon? Why do they call it Canadian Bacon?  Don't they eat it anywhere else?

Canadian Bacon and Egg Muffin

How about some BC Salmon?

Salmon and roasted potatoes

I think Canadian food is all of these things and more.  Canadian Food is an amalgamation of food influences from around the world.  We have all these things and but we aren't locked into a particular style and taste of food.  This is where our diversity comes in.  From pancakes to Fish we have foods that 1st, 2nd and 3rd Generation Canadians love.  

My Canadian Food is food that is accessible and full of flavour with spice influences from around the Globe.   It is simple and complicated at the same time.   

Classic things are a Back Bacon sandwich at the St. Lawrence Market or Poutine in Quebec, Salmon in BC,  Fiddleheads, PEI potatoes, the list goes on and on.

We do have Canadian food but as in a lot of things that are Canadian we don't celebrate our own and promote a Canadian Food identity and take on other culture's identities as our own.

I would like to see Canadian Food become a food trend that influences other cultures around the world.  Make your Canadian Bacon and go forth and spread the Canadian Bacon love.

Start your own Canadian Food trend with your friends and family.

Happy Canada Day.   Enjoy some Canadian Food on Canada Day with your friends and family!

Pinknic Flash Mob for Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation

June 25, 2012  was the First Ever PINKNIC flash Mob event for Cook for the Cure and the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation and by Kitchen Aid Canada. It was held at David Pecaut Square.

There aren't many people these days that don't know someone that is affected by Breast Cancer or some other form of Cancer.  Everyone knows about Cancer and everyone needs to raise money to fund research and other cancer related initiatives.

This Event was a little different than most of the events I have been to because you didn't know where you were going until 2 hours before the event started and you had to bring your own food.   With a $20 donation for the registration fee you got to have a pinknic Urban Style with chic white place settings and Pink accents symbolizing the Breast Cancer Foundation.  They provided wine and lemonade and at the end of the dinner there were cupcakes and pink cake pops.   Other than your own containers there was no mess to clean up afterwards and you didn't have to eat your picnic meal on the grass which is a good thing since they told everyone to wear white.   White with grass stains or dirt isn't a pretty sight.   Unfortunately the people at our table didn't even bring any food so I think they missed out on the whole purpose of it and it made us feel a bit uncomfortable to be eating when they weren't.  We did offer them some food but they declined.

There were about 400 people in attendance.  An impressive number considering this was the first year.  It was a pretty well organized event.  I only had one thing that I would have like to see them do would have been to have one of the organizers do announcements once everyone had entered to welcome everyone and let them know what was happening.

There was a photo booth where they took some instant photos that they gave you a printout and had available on facebook.   This was our pic.

Chef Lynn Crawford who represents Kitchen Aid and has a food network show called "Pitchin In" and a local restaurant called "Ruby Watchco" was in attendance to inspire people to host their own cook for the cure events.  I have seen Lynn at a few events and she is always gracious in meeting people.

If you are interested in this event you can either attend next year or you can host your own event but if you want more information contact the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.

So what did we bring to this Pinknic?  Well we had a bit of a collaboration of things.    My friend who graduated from George Brown College Culinary program brought a mixed vegetable salad and I had made Quinoa and together we made a spinach, kale, asparagus and feta frittata, which turned out great.

Join celebrity chef Lynn Crawford at the first-ever flash mob PINKnic to support the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation

MEDIA ADVISORY: Photo/Interview Opportunity - Join celebrity chef Lynn Crawford at the first-ever flash mob PINKnic to support the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation

Now this is a Flash Mob I can get into...

DIY GNOCCHI

I usually buy this frozen Gnocchi to keep in the freezer to make a quick dinner when I don't feel like spending a lot of time in the kitchen and don't feel like take out.   But after I participated in the Luminato installation that had people making and serving fresh gnocchi prepared on site from mobile shopping carts I was inspired to make a batch at home and freeze some for later.    I still had a bag of gnocchi in the freezer and while I never looked at the ingredients I was curious to see what was added in the processing of this bag of gnocchi.  While it says whole eggs, salt, water it also contains potato flakes... and a bunch of other things I can't even pronounce that are stabilizers.

My DIY Gnocchi contains the following:

2 Eggs

3 Large steamed Russet potatoes

2 tsps of salt

3 cups of flour

The Directions:

These are rough quantities that I used.  I am not very precise on measurements and opted for texture but you can work with this amount of eggs and potatoes and just adjust the salt and flour depending on the size and texture of the potatoes.

Steam the potatoes until soft in the middle.    Steaming prevents it getting too wet and also retains all the nutrients.  Peel the potatoes and use a Ricer or Food Mill (this is what I used) or if you don't have these use a fork or just mash the potatoes.  Don't use a food processor or it might make it too heavy.  You want to keep the potatoes light and fluffy.  

Add the eggs, you can beat them lightly before you add them if you like.

Add a couple of tsps of salt depending on how big the potatoes are and how salty you like it.  I ease up on the salt and prefer to add seasoned sauces.

Add the flour a little at a time and mix with a wooden spoon until the mix combines and comes together and away from the sides of the bowl.  You want a soft but solid consistency.

Flour your cutting board and grab a handful of dough and roll out into rope shapes.  roll from the middle to the end for a nice even shape.   Cut into little pillow like shapes about a half an inch apart.   You can add ridges if you like by rolling a fork over it but i skipped this step.

Put the cut gnocchi on a floured cookie sheet and make sure flour coats them all over so they don't stick together in the pot when you boil them.  You can let them dry for a bit or you can boil them right away.

The other option is to freeze them on the cookie sheet and then when they are frozen you can put them in a ziplock bag and put them back in the freezer to cook anytime.   I cooked some fresh and froze the rest.  

Cooking the Gnocchi:

Boil the gnocchi in boiling salted water until they float to the top.  You can't screw up the time on these.  When they float they are done.  If you can boil water you can make gnocchi.   It's my favourite thing to make and to eat of all time.  This is when simplicity is at it's best.

I tried a new way of cooking the gnocchi after they are boiled and strained and added them to a saute pan with olive oil and sauteed them until they got a bit of a  golden color.   Once they have crispy golden edges you can add your sauce to the saute pan.

You can add different kinds of sauces but my preference is to keep it simple and traditional.

The sauce I used was some sauce I had made previously using some great farmer's market tomatoes and crushed garlic and a touch of basil oil. 

Once the gnocchi and sauce are heated and combined serve it with grated fresh parmesan.

These things are like fresh light pillows of goodness in your mouth when you eat them.   The frozen ones can be like heavy lumps of pasta.   It took me a couple of hours to make the fresh gnocchi but it was so worth it.  I am going to do what the Italians do and make big batches of gnocchi and sauce on a sunday and have it ready to go any day during the week.

DEEEELISHHHH!!

Enjoy!

Shopping Cart pop up kitchen - Luminato

The Luminato Festival is currently going on in Toronto and it has all kinds of free and ticketed arts related events.   I decide to participate in a really great concept that provides free food to people at Luminato.   http://www.luminato.com/events/carretilla/   It's called a Carretilla.  It is basically a bunch of grocery shopping carts that are painted orange and planks and cutting boards and washing and cooking stations are attached to them.  You have heard about Food Trucks well this is more like food carts literally.  I think it is a great idea and would love to see this kind of thing pop up at events in the future.   So I decided to participate in it to check out the whole experience of it.   I wish I had done this before I did the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution because I would have tried to do something like this instead of the dinner party I had.  Well maybe next year.

                                                              

Not a great look for me but we were decked out "Pirate" style.

On the menu today was GNOCCHI  one of my favourites.  I attempted to make it years ago but have since learned a few tricks on what to do but haven't had the occasion to do it.   They did a sweet and a savoury gnocchi.    

This is how the process worked:

There was about 10 or so participants along with a few chefs and organizers.

They had a big container filled with potatoes that were already cooked, probably to save time and have them cook down a bit before starting.

There were a bunch of different stations set up.   One for peeling the potatoes, one for ricing the potatoes, one for mixing the riced potatoes with flour and salt and another one for rolling out the gnocchi into little pillows.   The chefs would then take the gnocchi and boil them and add the sweet seasoning of poppy seed and icing sugar and the savoury was a mix of beets, garlic and I think they had some parmesan for people that wanted that.

The chefs would mix up the gnocchi and then the participants would serve it to a long waiting lineup of hungry people.   The lucky people in line got to try the gnocchi for free.

I suppose the point of this event was to inspire people to cook meals like that by showing how little ingredients and skills are needed to do it.   Just a little time and effort.    

Since it was held at David Pecaut Square it had a mix of people on their lunch break and people just wandering through for Luminato events and the odd random people just curious about what was going on.

I think this would be a really cool thing to set up to feed homeless people.   Gather a bunch of people that want to learn a new recipe and have them do a fast prep assembly line style and have it ready for people to eat quickly.    I am not sure how to make it work for the people that need it , but I see this as an option to grow into something bigger.

I love to see things like this happen in the city    It shows how much the people in Toronto are longing for street foods and other options than Hot Dogs which is why the artist created this installation in the first place.  Street food is a way for people visiting a city to get to know the culture of the city instead of trying to figure out what restaurant to go to.   You can walk down the street and instantly see what you might want to try.    Opening a restaurant is risky unless you have a whole lot of money.   We need to have other options for people with great creativity and passion but don't have the means to open a restaurant.

It was a beautiful sunny day to do it and I hope that they get a great turnout for the rest of the festival.

It's a fantastic idea that I would like to see continue anywhere, anytime.

Panic in the Heartland

Panic in the Heartland

Bill O'Reilly supports Wheat Ban

Healthy foods need a Sexy Marketing Campaign

This Pulled Pork

Versus

This Organic Strawberries

I have been pondering the Obesity epidemic and my own weight struggles for some time now and I have come to the conclusion that maybe we need to look at the whole Diet industry as a failure because you basically learn to give up foods you like and restrict calories and intake.   Diet is DIE with a T.  in other words you feel like you are gonna die if you keep on this perpetual felling of deprivation.

Do you ever wonder why all the commercials on tv are for Fast Foods and Junk Foods?  Don't they make you salivate when you see the commercials?  One of the reasons they work is because they look enticing and sexy to you and make you feel like you will feel great when you have them.  It becomes subliminal messaging and you can't get the thought of a triple bypass burger out of your head.   When I watched Super Size Me by Morgan Spurlock I was both repulsed at what was being done with the food and at the same time I could almost

taste the Big Mac while watching the film.

What if we just flipped the switch and stopped all marketing of unhealthy foods which are marketed to get you addicted to the food and a lot of the companies that provide a lot of the food that goes into all that junk is also subsidized.    So here's a thought.   What if the Junk ads were taken off the air or aired with the same warnings as cigarette ads or pharmaceutical ads where they list all the side effects and diseases that you may be at risk for.   And what if ORGANIC FARMS were given subsidies and governments were giving money away to market Real Organic Foods.   What if the commercials for Spinach and Broccoli were sexy?   What if you saw a commercial for Organic freshly picked strawberries and they were prepared with fresh Organic Cream.   Would you want to run out and get that?   Why don't we have drive thru's for that?   I'd like to roll into a Fast Food drive through and order a bowl of fresh strawberries to go!   What if French Fries were made with other root vegetables and were baked and served to look like fries.  Would you order a bag of French baked Parsnips?  How about some Roasted Beet salad?  HMMM... with all the crap that is out in the world I wonder why nobody is doing this already?   What if you picked up a bunch of carrot sticks instead of fries with a veggie burger that tasted better than a real hamburger?   I went to New York years ago and a friend ordered a Veggie Burger from an upscale restaurant that we went to.  He said it tasted just like beef.  I didn't believe him so he made me try some and he was totally right.  I was really surprised.   What if we spent more time/money/energy on figuring out how to prepare Real fruits and vegetables so that they still had integrity and maximum taste and nutrition.   Why NOT?  With all the chefs that are being pumped out of cooking schools and all the cooking competition shows on TV right now how come nobody has done this yet?

Fifty years ago people would mostly eat real food prepared in their homes and to to out to a restaurant was usually for a special occasion or if you couldn't cook at home for whatever reason.

I don't see things going back to that in the future with both parents working full time jobs and having so many extra curricular activities to keep up with and Social media and other time wasting things to spend any free time on.

I think the answer is to rethink the whole food system.   Have a drive thru/ pick up healthy food restaurant on every corner that parents could pick up a cooked Organic Chicken,  and a couple of organic side vegetables and salads and even beans or legumes and some fruit desserts.     Not Swiss Chalet which still has high fat, high sodium, low nutrient foods with their dinners.... and what's in that Swiss Chalet sauce anyway?

Give people options to make it easy to do the right thing.   If you love Mac and Cheese and who doesn't?   What if it was made with cauliflower and low fat cheese and the fat content reduced and the sodium content reduced but somehow the flavour was increased using spices and vegetables like celery root or cauliflower.   if it tasted great and you had a choice between that and some greasy, soggy french fries what would you choose?

We need to start a SEXY REAL Food Campaign.    Make people salivate over a plate of brussel sprouts and fiddleheads and see what happens.

If I had a choice between Pulled Pork and a plain iceberg lettuce salad with some tastless tomatoes in it... No contest which one I would choose.    But if the salad had the sweetest organic tomatoes and it had organic chicken slices and a really flavourful salad dressing and lots of tasty nuts or other things in it then maybe I would have a hard time choosing.

Teach people how to crave healthy food.   Teach people how to prepare foods to make them taste better than any junk food you can get.  Make healthy foods as fast, cheap and available as Junk Foods.

Maybe then we will see a change.

Saurauren Farmer's Market

Now that it's Summer Farmer's Market Season I am trying to check out some markets I have never been to.  I want to see if there are unique vendors and different things at different markets.  I recently checked out this Farmer's Market on Saurauren.  It was a very small market in a local park.  About a dozen vendors.  By the time I got there it was late in the day and it was the first one of the season so I don't think all the vendors were there.   The first think I hit was the Hooked vendor.  A friend of mine had mentioned Hooked so I wanted to try it.  I had the fish tacos.  It was delicious and had a really fresh taste.  Only thing was that I literally had to stand on the grass and squeeze out the liquid so that it wouldn't fall apart.   Liquid kills tacos.

I also picked up the last bunch of mint from a vendor for $2.  I think I made her day... she was able to go home early.   The other thing I picked up was some Brick Bakery Bread.  I have to say that when I got it home and tried it I loved it.  No comparison to the supermarket breads.   One of my new bread obsession's is Fred's Bread, especially the cheese bread.  It has great flavour and has the crunchy exterior and soft interior.  That's the way I like it.    The only other thing I tried at the market was the maple donuts from LPK.    I have had them before.

This market is a bit out of the way for me but I may try and go there one more time before the season is over to see if there are any other vendors that I may have missed.

The one thing about Farmer's Markets is that they are unpredictable.   So if you like to explore it's a good thing.

Food event locations

When I took my Special Event Management Course one of the first rules to Event planning is Location.  Just like Real Estate, in Events is all about Location, Location, Location.   When is it time to re evaluate your venue location... umm maybe when people that have paid to get in can't get in because there are too many people.  That might be a good time to rethink it unless you like to see people walk away dissappointed like I did at the Toronto Underground Market which was held at the Evergreen Brickworks.   I finally had a chance to go and check it out but I was going there from another event at the Distillery District so I was driving there.  I got there before 7 pm and drove all through the parking lot and couldn't find a parking spot.   I stopped in the zip car spot while my friend attempted to see what she could do.   She spoke to one of the event staff who told her that we should drive away and back to where the shuttle departed from and then take the shuttle to the event and then have to return by shuttle.  That process would probably waste at least another half an hour if the shuttle departed right away.  By the time we drove around there were already about 50 plus people in line trying to get into the event and the actual enclosed event was jam packed.    Keep in mind that this is a ticketed entrance fee event that you have to pre purchase tickets for at a cost of $10 and that doesn't include parking or the cost of food.   It hardly seems worth it to pay a fee to stand in line for an hour to get into an event that you had to also drive around and find and pay for parking only to then stand in lineups to get and pay for your food.   You could probably just go to some of the vendors restaurants where you can park and order stuff that will be served to you at a table.   I couldn't even gather if there was any seating at this event even.     This is an extremely popular event where the entrance tickets get sold out within days.  It's like an exclusive club you want to get in to but have to stand in a lineup on a cold day and hope the bouncer lets you in.   Maybe I am getting too old to waste my time at an event like that and decided that my time was a lot more valuable than the $10 I wasted buying the entrance ticket.   I won't be going back and think it may be time for other people to make some changes in food events if this is the way of the future.

I may decide to finally put my Event Management Certificate to good use and construct a better event.   Who knows...

so if you have lots of time and money to waste you can try and go to the next TUM event and see if you get in.   Tip... don't take your car.   http://yumtum.ca/

World-renowned P.F. Chang's opens in Canada

World-renowned P.F. Chang's opens in Canada

why go to the US?  bring all the good stuff to Canada

Starbucks opens chain of raw vegan juice bars

Starbucks opens chain of raw vegan juice bars

This is a great option.  If Starbuck's is as successful with the juices as they are with coffee then people will have the option to get juices anywhere.   I like the idea of the custom blend and different flavours.  I hope this becomes a successful venture for Starbucks

Passing recipes on

My mom and me at 8 yrs old.

I had a bunch of organic apples that were too soft to eat but not spoiled yet and I didn't want to turn them into applesauce or chutney or compote or any of the mushy fruit type of saves, so I decided to just cut them up and toss them in a saute pan with brown sugar, butter and some brandy and caramelize them just to prevent them from all going bad.  Then I started thinking that there was too much to do the typical thing of having them with ice cream or making an apple crisp or something and I started thinking about the way my mother used to make apple pie.  She never made traditional pie dough but she would make her sugar cookie recipe which wasn't a typical sugar cookie recipe it was crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside.  The only thing was that she wouldn't cook the apples first so sometimes if the apples had a lot of water content it would get mushy the next day.   Once I got older I learned the trick of adding some flour to the apples to thicken up the juices.  She would add lemon juice and brandy to flavour and prevent from discolouring but it would add a lot more liquid to it.  Although the flavour was great.

Later on when I was more food savvy I would cook the apples to caramelize it and then my mother would add it to the pie.  I used to help her make it but I never paid much attention to the measurements and only to the ingredients that went into it.   Now I wish I had paid more attention because the recipe isn't written down anywhere as my mother wasn't the best note taker and because she didn't have much education she wasn't  and organized person.   So why don't I just ask her how to make it?  Well I can't anymore.   You see my mother was diagnosed with Dementia about 7 years ago. My mother wasn't one to have all of her recipes written up in a nice book or recipe box and she only had the odd recipe that she had written down from someone else's recipe.  It would be written on a scrap piece of paper in pencil and my mother's not so legible handwriting.  I only wrote down a couple of recipes that my mother made because most of the things weren't exact measurements every time and she would change things up once in a while.  There were a few recipes she baked and was known for making.  Sugar cookies, chiffon cake, chocolate mousse and after she started winding down on those recipes she became obsessed with frying wontons and adding icing sugar on top of them.  She would hand them out to everyone at her bank, drug store and doctor's office.  That was the only thing she remembered how to do.   I should have realized that she had lost most of her memory when she stopped doing that.  I thought it was because people were telling her to stop making them, but as I look back now I think she probably started to forget how to make everything.

She passed away last April after being in a long term care facility for a year and a half.  I never really had the chance to ask her things like recipes and info about relatives and now it's too late.  My mother's best friend is still alive and is younger than my mother so I try and ask her if she remembers any of the recipes but she only knows some of them so some of the recipes are lost in my family forever now.

Today it made me realize the value of PASSING ON RECIPES to family members and carrying them forward to future generations.  I remember a lot of the recipes but not all of them and since I don't have any kids they will be gone after I am gone unless I write them in a cookbook or pass them on to friends or in this blog.  I will do my best to try and document any such recipes as I carry on writing these blog posts.

So my advice to all of you cooks and bakers is to write down your precious recipes and pass them on.  Even if they are simple but someone loves them try to document them somehow.    I actually have the last batch of wontons my mother ever made in my first film "Potluck".  I used them in a funny scene because of the powdered sugar on top they made a mess when you would take a bite so I used that in a scene and used the actual wontons my mother made.   That was the last time she ever made any and I didn't even know it at the time.

People make fun of people that post photos of food and talk about food.  But once again my thought is that food is universal and is meant to be shared.

Pass on those recipes before it's too late.

Food Security Solutions -think vertical

I started thinking about the food sustainability problem lately and how we would be able to solve it.   Everyone seems to consume food like it will be around forever.   What if the farmers stopped farming because the older generation that have been carrying forward all the farming practices and family farms start dying off and nobody wants to carry it on because they can't make enough money to support the farms?  Then what?  Do you want to eat all Genetically modified foods in the future?  I don't.   We need to start thinking about solutions and figure out a way to support the farmers.  Without food there is no life.  It's that simple.

I have been reading a lot of articles and talking to a lot of people about the eco systems in working on my documentary Eco Losers and have been trying to think of solutions instead of just stating the problems.   Problems without solutions go nowhere.

One of the things I saw recently at the Petits Chefs Academy in Vaughan was this Vertical Garden Tower.
https://www.towergarden.com/online-store/tower-garden-growing-system  while I was there filming a little for the Documentary and also there as one of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Ambassadors to film the event for a video.   Denise the owner is also a food revolution ambassador and was hosting a kids cooking class for Food Revolution Day.  I noticed the vertical tower and she said that she just started distributing them.   I thought it was interesting but didn't connect much to it until I started thinking about growing plants on my balcony.   I live in an apartment and don't have enough light on my balcony to grown the herbs I would like to grow like Basil and Cilantro and in my travels around while working on the documentary I saw a community garden and started thinking about the community garden concept.    I  am certainly no gardener and don't have much of a green thumb and don't have the energy or time it would take to maintain a community garden and with living in a very dense apartment/condo neighbourhood I thought there probably isn't the proper space in the area to create a community garden anyway.   In thinking of a bunch of issues and gathering all the problems and solutions for a bunch of eco problems I thought the best solution would be to have mandatory rooftop gardens in every apartment or condo building.   What if we had government mandate that any new building permit for a new condo had to have a minimum area for a community garden or a green roof.    What if there were incentives for already existing buildings to convert spaces for condo/apartment community gardens?   What if the top floor of every building was converted to a CSA (community supported agriculture) garden where everyone in the building would receive an allotment of the harvest from that garden.   What if it was run like a coop and if you participated in maintaing the garden you would receive the allotment or if you were a senior or had a disability or just didn't want to participate in maintaining it you could contribute financially and pay a fee so that someone else could maintain it for you.

If drug dealers can turn houses into grow ops then why can't we convert apartments into Green Gardens that can feed the residents of the buildings?   You say it will never happen... but why not think about finding a way to make it work?  If we don't do anything we won't be around to make these decisions anyway.  

Can you imagine how much farm land it would take to feed all the condos in downtown Toronto?  What if every condo had a vertical garden tower in the building that could provide fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs to the residents instead?

Remember how life started, everyone had a house and a farm to grow their food or if they didn't have a farm they traded services to the farmer in their community to get their food.   But the point is that it was in their community.   People didn't get food from another country.   We need to start thinking about independent community gardens that are self sustaining and can be maintained under any circumstance.

Wouldn't you love to have a beautiful green rooftop garden in your condo or apartment to go to and breathe clean air and see nature.  Recent studies have shown that being in nature is extremely good for your health.  What I really noticed when I was working downtown was that I was really missing trees and nature.  The concrete jungle on a hot summer day isn't where you want to sit and have your lunch.   A nice tree shaded bench is more like it.

While I don't have the power to make these changes on my own, maybe you do.   What if city bylaws were changed to make these changes mandatory?   What if building owners received incentives to make changes to their buildings to include a green space?   What if balconies could be equipped with vertical garden towers?

I don't know if any of this can happen or how to make it all happen but I think it's worth thinking about and maybe working towards.  If someone like Donald Trump all of a sudden decided that all his properties would become Green imagine the power of that change.   What if Trump tower in Toronto had a green roof that provided all the food to all of the guests at Trump Tower?   Imagine how many trucks wouldn't have to drive to downtown Toronto to deliver food.  

If you think we don't have to think about reducing the amount of transport trucks driving our food across the world to provide food for us then think about the weather that is happening in the world these days.  In Toronto alone we hit record breaking temperatures in May.   My birthday is in May and I have never seen my birthday be as warm as it was this year.   While I like the warm weather I wonder what it is doing to the planet and whether it's going to get to the point where everywhere in the world is over 100 degrees or more everyday.  What will happen then?   You think I am exaggerating.. well have you seen An Inconvenient Truth? Al Gore's Documentary.  The planet is shifting and things are changing and at the current rate of population growth and the over abundance of destruction of the rainforests and oil dependence we are changing the way our planet functions.   There will come a point where it's irreversible.

If you have the power to do something to reverse the problem then I think you need to do what you can.  Right now I don't have a lot of financial power but I have the power to inform and think about ideas for change and hope that someone reading this can take my suggestions and push the changes forward.

I am not a political person at all but from all the people I have been speaking with in connection to my documentary I see the need to do something.   If everyone did something....anything... then together a difference can be made.