Holiday Traditions

 I was thinking recently even though Covid 19 has killed so many Holiday Plans I was lucky enough to have a few tradition events and even started a new one this year.

For the past 5 years or so I have been hosting an Ugly Christmas Sweater Cookie Decorating Party.  It started at my place with my friend Adam for his daughter Kenzie and we invited his friend and his husband came too.   The following year we expanded and moved it to his place so that we could invite his 2 other friends and my friend, her husband and son.

Then Covid hit and we just did a fast cookie decorating at his place.  I decided to bring back the original idea this year and have it at my place again.  I invited Adam's friend Lewis again and he brought his adult neice with him.

I baked so many cookies and I think we each decorated 2 or 3.  I had shortbread ugly christmas sweaters and gingerbread men and trees, mittens and snowflakes and an excessive amount of sprinkles.

I served a roasted pepper and tomato soup with cheese stuffed pizza buns in the shape of a christmas tree. I also made a christmas tree cheese ball thing.

I had all kinds of drinks that I left on the balcony to chill and made my new signature non alcoholic sparkly punch drink.  Cranberry, orange, soda and some pomegranate seeds.

We played the game Clue but I gave up after 2 rounds.  My brain doesn't work that way.

It was lots of fun.

   

The other tradition involved my Foodie Pals.  For about 5 years we have been meeting up at different restaurants to do a secret Santa gift exchange while having a great meal.  We had to do it virtually last year and use Amazon to send gifts.  We all agreed it just wasn't the same as in person.   This year we went to Pai Uptown at Yonge and Eglinton.  It's my friend Mary's favourite and I think most of us have had their food before.  We have seen them at lots of events.  We ordered so much great food.  My new fav thing was the squash fritters.   We get gifts for under $20 and trade around using notes we pull from a bag.  this year it was a cute Santa bag.  So you never know what you will end up with.   The owner Jeff Regular came by to chat with us for a bit.  He told us about the band that was playing and how they saw them in Thailand where the restaurant is named from.  

It was a great night.  We had a great table tucked in a corner so we were distanced and could chat without being too close to other people.

The Newest Tradition was inspired by all my Hallmark Movie watching.  My friend sort of came up with the same idea and also wanted to host at her place but I convinced her that I have more food already and also my oven works and hers doesn't.  I did make a lot of food.  I had enough for 2 parties.

When my friends arrived I had some fun warm socks to give them and they grabbed a drink.  I had the new fruity punch and also lots of other drinks.  I made Hot Apple Cider and had a Hot chocolate bar ready to go but they weren't in the mood for it but they loved the Apple Cider.  It was fairly local near where one of my friends parents live even.

We played Hallmark Bingo.  I printed out cards I found online but the first movie we watched didn't match any of the usual things.   My friend Martina stayed and ended up watching like 5 movies with me.  The last one ticked the most boxes.

I also had little gifts to take home with a gnome ornament and nail polish and chocolates.   We all had cookies to do a gift exchange.  I just wanted them to bring one thing to share.

It was one of my friends birthdays a few days later so I got a cake for her and everyone was so full by that time so she took home most of the cake.

Besides having an insane amount of cookies and all kinds of snacks I also made cranberry, red pepper jelly glazed turkey meatballs, Spinach and artichoke hot dip and a charcuterie platter.

We literally just sat around and ate and watched movies and just did the cookie exchange but it was great and I will do it again next year.  Maybe less snacks but I already had so much thanks to Adam.  I decked out the place to make it cozy and festive.

Don't forget the lighting because it really helps with the mood and vibe.  I had led lights spread around. 

I also try and set up a lot of serve yourself kinds of things.  I set up a cart with plates, utensils and drinks they could grab themselves.  Had snacks everywhere so they could grab them as they liked so they could control what they wanted and leave me free to enjoy the party.

I kept all the gatherings fairly small this time and my other friend has been bugging me to do a big party again but that won't happen for a long time.

I really wanted to squeeze in some fun get togethers before we retreat to our homes again because of Omicron and I think I got them all in just in time.

My one other tradition was not my own making.   Adam invited me over for the first night of Hanukkah and we had potato latkes and made cookies and lit the Menorah.  I don't do that with him every year but have the past couple.  He usually spends it with his family but Covid 19 has changed everything.

So my point in all these traditions and gatherings or whatever else you consider a tradition is to have something to look forward to and create memories and spend time with people that matter to you.

Make it fun.  The one thing we have all learned is to not take it for granted how important human connection is.  I have always known that and enjoy time alone but make the most of time I spend with friends because I don't have the option of spending it with my family.

If you don't have a family to do traditions with create your own kid of family and do whatever you like to share together and try and do it every year and it will become a tradition.

Enjoy the Holiday Season and spend it with whoever you are able to and if you are alone create your own tradition like a Hallmark Movie marathon with a Hot cocoa bar or whatever you fancy.

 

The Vaccine Passport and Restaurants, events etc.

 

I haven’t written many blog posts over the span of this whole never-ending Covid 19 pandemic because my busy life has changed to s solitary life at home mostly.

Before the pandemic started I used to go to Restaurants, all kinds of festivals and events and movie theatres.  That all stopped in March 2020.   That’s what I used to write about mostly on my blog so without the experiences and inspiration and switching to working at home and doing everything on a screen all day and then at night.  I didn’t have the desire, urge or motivation to write about anything because there wasn’t anything that gave me the desire to write until this.

On September 22nd in Ontario a vaccine passport will be introduced.  This is after Premier Ford said he didn’t want to do it.   You know why he changed his mind?  Because of the people protesting about their rights and the distrust that people like Donald Trump has influenced over the 4 years of his lying presidency.   People are hesitant and don’t trust the government, vaccines, and generally think they are losing their freedoms.

I can tell you right now that you lost your privacy and freedoms a long time ago.  If you have a smart phone and credit cards and live in a big city you are already being tracked with every step you make.  Look at your phone.  It is literally tracking your steps and Geo tagging where you have been.  Walking down the street there are now hundreds of camera filming your every move.

What I can also tell you from working in a Trauma Hospital during Sars is that Healthcare workers are all stressed, exhausted, scared and they don’t know how to deal with this pandemic.   Cut them some slack.  I highly doubt you could do their jobs at this time and not be stressed out.

I can also tell you from working in Government and also many years in Healthcare is that the priority after trying to maintain their budgets is to keep you alive and healthy.

Think about the vaccines logically for a minute.   They weren’t really created overnight.  There have been pandemics before.  They were just adapted for this pandemic.   While there is no pill or vaccine in the world that can be provided to people without some sort of risk or side effect the alternative of doing nothing will just cause populations to be wiped out.

The pharmaceutical companies make money, and the government loses money paying for the Free vaccines that you are able to get.  The healthcare system loses money if they get overwhelmed with patients and can’t maintain their budgets so people with other diseases don’t get the treatments they need.

Getting a vaccine shouldn’t be political but it has become political because of conspiracy theories.  

I get that it’s hard to believe in anything these days and you know that some things go through a marketing spin but talk to a doctor or nurse working in an ICU and they will tell you what they see.

Why I am writing about this on my blog.   When the vaccine passports were announced there were protesters attacking restaurants that supported the passports.

I reached out to a few restaurant owners and only one got back to me and said he couldn’t comment because of the repercussions and didn’t want to hurt his business.

Let’s take a look at vaccine passports and the reason we got to this point.

Yes they thought if everyone got vaccinated that we would just open everything again.  But the virus changed and people refused to get the vaccine so it kept spreading.   Remember that this is a new virus so they don’t have a roadmap of what it will do until after they do studies.

People protesting mask wearing, getting the vaccine and the vaccine passports are just further delaying our return to life without these things.

Yes I got a vaccine and yes I wear a mask in public and will use a vaccine passport if needed.

I totally get that it’s a hassle.   I had to go downtown twice to get my vaccine and it’s been an added expense to wear masks and they make my face sweat so bad and it’s hard to breathe but I don’t want to get sick and I don’t want to make anyone else sick.

Some guy online attacked me for a comment when I saw the people protesting the vaccine passport downtown.   He said it’s his body.   Yes I agree he can do what he wants with his body but then he must stay home and not take the chance of possibly infecting others.

I went downtown yesterday to get something.  I haven’t really been able to go downtown on a Saturday for a long time because of the subway maintenance and the lockdowns.   I noticed that the subways are getting much more busier and there are I would say about 10% of the people on the subways who do not wear a mask correctly.  Wearing it on your chin is not going to prevent anything.

I picked up what I needed and walked up Yonge street and it was a lot busier than it was a few months ago and most people weren’t wearing masks.

I went into the building that I used to work at and went to Winners and that was ok, people were distancing.   I got hungry because I only had breakfast so I went up to the food court to see if I could get something.  Only about a third of the restaurants were open.  I was so hungry and have been craving Chinese Food so I got some Sweet and sour chicken and couldn’t wait to eat it at home so I found a table and started eating.  Other than the food court in the mall where I live I haven’t been to one in a very long time.   There was a family about 10 plus feet away.  They didn’t appear to be eating and I don’t know if they had before but there were 2 kids and one of the kids was coughing and then a woman coughed a couple of times.  

Even though I was over the recommended distance it still gave me anxiety.  I ate all the chicken then packed up the rest and left.

Now lets get back to the vaccine passports.  Restaurants and businesses do not want the hassle of policing them.  They have to add staff just to do that but at the same time it takes away their anxiety about their customers and keeps their staff a bit safer.  There are no guarantees but the fact that if you have been vaccinated it lessens the risk of getting severely ill.  That eases a restaurant owners mind because they are responsible for their employees and they can’t afford to lose them.  Many restaurant workers left the industry because the stress and low pay and the addition of so many getting sick from Covid and not having sick days or just losing work because of the closures.  They have had to move on to other more stable jobs or I am sure out of fear have chosen to change jobs because restaurants are high risk.

I read one former service worker who bluntly put it that there is a reduction of restaurant workers because of lot of them have died because of Covid.

For myself I don’t want to deal with the vaccine passport but I haven’t really gone to restaurants in over a year.  I went to a patio outside on the lake around my birthday and the food court yesterday but I have mostly just been getting takeout.   

That isn’t really supporting the restaurant industry much.   Patio season is about to end and that has been a small amount of cash flow but with the extreme heat and storms they haven’t had that many great days and when its’ over and if people don’t eat inside again they are all going to start disappearing.

What I noticed on my walk around Yonge and Queen to Dundas was that mostly only the Big chains still exist and you had a choice between a large restaurant patio or fast food take out.   A lot of the other little places have just closed up.   There are many businesses that were around 2 years ago and are gone now.  

Take a long walk downtown if you know the area and see how much it has changed.

I am a person who at one time went to restaurants a few times a week and all kinds of festivals and charity events.   I miss that but I do not want to take the risk of doing that now and not because I don’t trust the businesses but because I don’t trust the people attending them.

A vaccine passport won’t take away all the risk but it will add a certain degree of certainty that the risk has been mitigated.

Please do one of the following things:

• Wear a mask

• Get the vaccine

• Don’t protest restaurants

• Don’t protest the vaccine passport.  

• If you don’t want it don’t go to the places that need it.

I would like to return to having the choice to go to a restaurant, movie theatre, food festival without having the fear of other people and the sooner we do all the recommended protocols the sooner we might be able to fight this thing and get it under control.

Remember that there are a lot of kids under 12 who do not have a choice to get vaccinated and they can still get sick.  You feel you have a right to do what you want with your body and don’t feel like you have to wear a mask or get vaccinated or use a vaccine passport.   They don’t have a choice of who they are exposed to and other than wearing a mask they have no other protection.   Would you like to be the person that makes a little kid go to an ICU or even put a restaurant owner with a family out of business?

Misconceptions about Farming from a Farmers perspective

 Misconceptions about Farming from a Farmers perspective.

Canola Farm in Alberta

This week I joined a Zoom event organized by people from Canola Eat Well who have done a series of 3 events online pertaining to Plant, Grow, Eat.  With a large group of Canola community food industry people and various food writers and farm advocates.

We listened to scientists studying farming, there was a cooking demo from a popular Toronto Chef Trevor Lui, and Jeannette Andrashewski, a Farmer in Alberta speaking directly from her Canola Fields.   

I met Jeannette Andrashewski, at a Canola Eat Well cooking event in 2016. 

Jeannette Andrashewski and Joey Salmingo
at Canola Eat Well Event 2016. 

I have heard bits of her story at a few events over the years. 

This past week she talked about how hard it was when her and her husband started their farm and it was very emotional for everyone to hear her story.

The next day I decided to watch a movie called Percy streaming on demand and I did a quick post on Instagram and tagged her.   She quickly messaged me that the film was filled with many misconceptions and wanted me to be aware that she didn’t want to be connected to those misconceptions.

I messaged her back and we have had an online conversation about the challenges and I would like to present to you the farmer's view of farming and the misconceptions in the media about what farmers do.

The first misconception shown in the film is what Jeannette first addressed on how you can’t get a field of canola planted from a truck that passes by and drops some seeds.  She says Canola requires much care during planting.

She worries about pesticides spreading just as much as we all do and how they are used but she insists the sprayers that are used today are so exact and precise and it goes on as a fine mist.

One of the facts she told me was that approximately 4,200 litres of water is mixed with 30 litres of herbicide.  She says that farmers respect the water and nature and know where the water is so they try to stay away from it.  They want natural habitats to stay undisturbed and to keep in its natural state

Unsafe practices can be reported by anyone, a person driving down the road, a landowner or anyone else.  Farmers don’t want to be on the wrong side of protection groups and they want to do the right thing in their farming practices. This keeps the land healthy, sustainable and available for the next generation of farmers like her son.

And the obvious of a big machine trying to drive close to water will get stuck in it, let that visual sink in.  That’s not exactly helpful or productive to drag equipment out of the mud.

I asked Jeannette what keeps farmers up at night. She said it was consumers having misinformation about the tools like pesticides farmers need to grow healthy crops as well as Environmental groups spreading misinformation and trying to take away all pesticides and herbicides because that would take away their ability to grow their crops.

Jeannette tells me that they plant other crops other than Canola because they practice the sustainable practice of crop rotation so after each harvest they rotate to a different crop to keep the soil regenerating and protecting their land.

A bit more about Jeannette’s farm.  Her family began to take over the family farm full time in 2002 but they began part time in 1990 while keeping their full time jobs to make sure they were doing the right thing.  Their farm is located at Two Hill, Alberta.  North East of Edmonton. They are third generation farmers.

When I asked her about corporate farms she stated that 92% of farmland is owned by farming families and not big farm corporations and she felt that this was another media misconception.

Their biggest concern is always the weather.  It’s a constant struggle to be a step ahead of the constantly changing Canadian weather but she says they have a lot of technology that helps them handle the constant weather changing events. Without the innovation of seed and technologies farming would be much more costly and difficult.

It is in their best interest to practice safe sustainable practices to grow food.  She is growing it for her own family.  She says “if you take care of the land the land will take care of you”.

She wants you to look into the facts after you watch a Hollywood production of what farming life is like.  Hollywood movies have to embellish to create drama because the reality would be too boring to watch.

I have met a lot of farmers on the farm tours over the past few years and she says we should ask a farmer for the truth on how the food is grown.  They do the work and know what the risks are and how it affects their livelihoods.

They work, live and play on the land and respect it as their own life. 

Jeannette is a mother that wants safe, nutritious and abundant food to feed her family too.

My suggestion is to watch documentaries, get more facts.  Go on farm tours once more farms are open to the public and meet some actual farmers.  Go to Farmer’s markets where the farm family runs the stands so you can get to know them.  They work extremely hard for everyone and could use a little gratitude for all of their hard work and investment.

Jeannette presenting at the Taste Canada Awards

You can follow Jeannette on Instagram or Twitter @farminginpearls

You can also find lots of information and recipes on the Canola Eat Well Website:

https://canolaeatwell.com/

Mary's Happy Belly new Dumpling launch

 Mary will make your belly happy.

This is my first post for 2021.  I have not been inspired to sit down and spend time writing because of the lack of inspiration because all the events of 2020 were cancelled except for the Restaurant Canada show that I squeezed in just before the shut down and beginning of the cancellation of all public events.

That was the end of feb-beginning of March.   That was the last time I saw most of my blogger friends in person until today.  Mary dropped by for a quick food exchange today.  I gave her a couple of my freshly made empanadas and she gave me a sample of her new retail frozen food product.

That brings me to the reason for this blog post.  My Foodie BFF Mary Tang - her Blog is Maryshappybelly has launched a new line of frozen Chinese dumplings or potstickers as you might call them.  I am so thrilled for her to be able to see this come true.

I met Mary at one of my first Food Blogger-Influencer events at McEwen foods after it first opened in at the Shops at Don Mills.  I think that was 2014 or something like that.  We instantly clicked and at the time I had a car and we would go to many events together or ride the subway home together so we became fast friends.  

Mary just launched her new dumplings this past week and today she brought me a sample of her Pork and her Shrimp dumplings.  I still have the Shrimp ones in freezer but I was dying to try some so I cooked about half a dozen of the pork dumplings.  Another one of my friends ordered some from ResTOKitchen where they are delivered from.  My friend was raving about them so I knew they were going to be great.

Mary has been working in the food world for a while.  She was a sales rep for a cake company until the restaurants started closing and has been focused on her blog and her family since then.   She had a goal to find work that could still give her flexibility.  While at this point launching a new venture probably isn't going to give her much free time it's a great way to do work that is her passion and be an example to her 2 small girls on starting a business during difficult times.

Everyone in the food community in Toronto that know Mary love her because she is a go getter and very friendly so we are all so happy to see her do what she loves.

Now.. what you really want to know is what the dumplings are like.  Well I may be biased because she is my foodie pal but I am happy to honestly say that the dumplings are FANTASTIC.   If you know me I don't throw praise around lightly.  

I pan fried-steamed the dumplings as you would do for potstickers.   What I instantly loved was that they held up and didn't fall apart or explode.  The dough has a chewy give like decent al dente pasta.

The filling is fantastic.  What I loved was that it was full of flavour but not just full of sodium. 

Mary has a chili dipping sauce that I think comes with an order but she didn't bring me any to try but my friend told me it's really good too.  I just made my own dipping sauce when I tried them but everything was in the perfect balance.

I used to either buy dumplings from markets like T&T or if I really had lots of time to spare I might make my own.  Now I don't have to.  I can order some in my jammies and cook them up lightning fast and support my friend at the same time.   WIN WIN.

When they say support local I am happy to support my friend because I know it supports her whole family and friends and it's so good that it's a bonus to buy local.

Order some #MHBDumplings from ResTOKitchen @ResTOkitchen 

and check out Mary's blog at www.maryshappybelly.com 

Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/maryshappybelly

On Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/maryshappybelly/

On Facebeook at https://www.facebook.com/maryshappybelly

and her Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqOKf6bCMmq7cKxRtz3tQpw

Don't forget to tell her you read about her dumplings from me.  That will make her day. 

You will love them..  I can say that with a guarantee.