Halloween candy.. trick or treat?

It's that time of year when parents are out shopping for Halloween candies and kids are getting excited to eat all of those Halloween treats.

But I have heard a lot of talk lately about people skipping the Halloween treats for healthier options or for non food items.

I get that we have a childhood obesity problem but I don't think skipping Halloween treats is going to solve the problem.   I think it should be used as a teachable moment in how to eat in moderation and to understand that these candies are treats and only for special occasions.

When I was a kid there weren't a lot of overweight kids.  I was thin until I became a teenager and probably gained weight more from lack of exercise than what I ate.

What was different when I was a kid was that a lot of the Halloween treats didn't have as many chemical stabilizers and trans fats to keep these things on the store shelves for months.   Most of the candies were high sugar but probably less added chemicals.   We also didn't drink gallons of carbonated drinks and drive through meals.   Our parents would cook family dinners and would only have desserts on special occasions like Birthdays or other Holiday events.   Halloween was always a special day where kids let loose and got all kinds of treats from people in their neighbourhoods.   We generally knew most of the houses we went to and our parents would toss out the apples for fear of tampering and any other treats that looked suspicious.   We were taught to make our treats last because we weren't going to get any more for a long time.  Most of the kids I knew didn't eat the whole thing all in one shot.  We picked out the stuff we didn't like and traded with our siblings or friends or just tossed it out.  I would only be left with the treats I loved after it was picked through.   I would have a couple of treats a day and would make it last about a week or two.

I believe that a kid can have a little candy if they are getting healthy meals provided the rest of the time. It's all about balance and moderation.  I think it's more important to teach the kids what they are eating and what's good and what's bad for them and have them learn how to control eating the bad things and choosing the good things.   This is a skill that kids will need for life.  

I learned this because my parents only addiction was cigarettes and chocolate and since cigarettes weren't appealing to me the chocolate addiction was something I inherited.  My parents would hide chocolate in the house so that we wouldn't eat it all.   But I think that made us want it even more.  My brother was a blood hound for chocolate and he could practically sniff out it's hiding spot.   It might have been better for them to just leave it in the open and make it not a forbidden item.  Case in point.... my parents had a small cabinet filled with liquor bottles for the parties they would have about once a year.  They never dipped into the bottles unless my mother was cooking something that needed alcohol or someone came over that they might offer a drink to.  It wasn't hidden and it wasn't something that was a big deal.  I never touched the alcohol and to this day I am not much of a drinker and only have liquor around for cooking and for parties.   Chocolate on the other hand is always not far away and I crave it consistently.

Maybe that is the solution to drug and alcohol problems.   Leave it out in the open and make it no big deal and maybe people wouldn't want it as much.   You always want what you can't have.

So my thought is let the kids have their Halloween Candy... maybe you can find healthier versions like dark chocolate covered almonds or something but let them eat candy and teach them that it's ok to eat but not to abuse.

We shouldn't punish kids and deprive them of things that made life fun for us when we were kids.  Halloween and other holidays are the stuff that provide life long memories.  That's what life is.

Dim Sum - Uptown chinatown

Skip Chinatown and head to Chinatown North

Everyone thinks that you need to either go to Chinatown in Toronto or to Richmond Hill to get good Dim Sum in the City, but on this lazy sunday I proved that you can find some better than Chinatown Dim Sum in North York.

I live in a mostly Asian centric neighbourhood in the Willowdale, North York area of the city where you can get Indian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese and Thai food within blocks of each different ethnic restaurant venue.  About a 5 minute drive or a couple of subway stops away from where I live are a few places that you can get Dim Sum.  I love to have Dim Sum on lazy rainy sundays because it's the kind of food that is quick and slow at the same time.  You can get a whole bunch of quickly made dishes and take your time sampling a bunch of different things and even more if you go with a bunch of friends.

I was pretty hungry and knew that I couldn't wait to meet up with one of my friends to go for Dim Sum  so I checked out NOT JUST DIM SUM on Finch Ave. West.. just west of Yonge Street in North York.  I dropped in just after the normal lunch hour or when Dim Sum is normally consumed which is fairly early in the day.  There were only a few tables with people but they seemed to enjoy what they ordered.

It's not a fancy place but I have seen much worse places in Chinatown.   I was immediately served by one quiet but efficient waitress who provided just the right amount of service needed which I appreciate.  She had tables to clear but made sure the diners were tended to first.

I pretty much knew what I wanted to order but had a look through the checklist Dim Sum menu to decide what to order.

I ordered Chinese Broccoli, I figured some greens would balance out some of the heavy carb and fried Dim Sum dishes that i knew I was going to order.

I like to order the Pan fried Radish Cake because it's something I would never make at home and I like that it's a little different and most people don't order it.

I ordered my favourite Har Gow..
 steamed shrimp dumplings.


I also ordered a Green Onion pancake, also something that is a little different and not always available at some Dim Sum places.

And lastly I ordered Glutinous Pork Deep Fried Dumplings.

A good test for Dim Sum is if there is a puddle of grease left on the plate after you have eaten something fried like the fried dumplings or the Onion Pancake then they probably don't know how to do Dim Sum properly.

The Har Gow had a delicious and lightly seasoned shrimp centre with melt in your mouth shrimp instead of what you sometimes find with rubbery shrimp and hard rice outer layer.  These Har Gow's were like little pillows of shrimp goodness.

The Green Onion Pancake had a nice green onion flavour in a light and flaky pastry dough with a nice crunch to it.

The Glutinous Pork Dumplings had a nice sweet and savoury taste and the outside was crispy while the inside was creamy and light with a hint of sweetness.  I have had these in other places and after you eat a few they can sometimes feel like oil bombs in your stomach,  these ones were cooked at the perfect temperature to make them light and not greasy but still retain the soft interior.

The Chinese Broccoli was cooked perfectly with the chlorophyl green bright and still retaining all the vitamins you want from a healthy greens dish.   There was a bowl of oyster sauce on the side and the waitress brought bowls of chili sauce and chinese mustard to go with the dishes.

The Radish cakes were nicely fried with a nice crust on the outside but still soft on the interior.  It was seasoned well and didn't leave the typical grease pool behind that I have seen on many radish cake plates after I cleared my plate.

Overall I have to say that it was a winning Dim Sum experience with all the dishes that I ordered being really tasty and a quick lunch of really satisfying but also light little dishes.

Think outside the Chinatown box and look for a great little hidden gem close to where you live.  You never know if you will find something worth not driving all over town for.

In the past few months I have had a lot of underwhelming meals but it was nice to go to an inexpensive little place and be pleased with everything I ordered from the menu.

Try a little neighbourhood exploring for yourself and who knows what you will find.

Chef Michael Smith chats about Fast Flavours

It was one of my friends birthdays this month so instead of buying each other gifts that just take up space we now give each other food related gifts like cooking demos or chef cookbook chats.  It was his birthday this month so I signed up to go see Chef Michael Smith chat about his new cookbook Fast Flavours at George Brown College.  My friend loves watching his tv show and so do I so we were really excited to go and see him.  

I saw him recently at the Word on the Street where I was surprised to hear him rant about how not feeding your kids proper food was like slow child abuse.  He got on a huge rant about feeding kids so much junk food that they are all developing allergies to everything these days.

So I had a feeling he would have really passion filled Q&A answers after he did his interview with Cookbook Store owner Alison Fryer.

It turned out that I asked him the last question of the night about what he thought about Mayors like New York's Bloomberg banning the 64oz soft drinks.   He agreed that kids shouldn't be sold that kind of excess and he thought it was good that he took a stand.   While I agree that kids shouldn't drink that much sugar in their drinks there isn't really anything to stop them from getting 2 - 32 oz drinks back to back either.   Is this enough to stop the obesity epidemic?  I don't think so.   He thought that junk food should be taxed like cigarettes.   My thought is that some of the toxic substances that are put into the foods at manufacturing should be banned instead, like high fructose corn syrup which is what is actually causing the obesity epidemic.    Here's a thought... what if they couldn't put it into products ...then people couldn't buy them...  hence... the people who can't afford to pay these taxes wouldn't have to pay for the burden of the healthcare system while the manufacturers reap profits.    

My thought is that if toxic substances or food additives that are known to contribute to obesity are changed to non toxic substances then maybe everyone wins....   people won't have to walk around supermarkets with magnifying glasses and dictionaries to figure out what's in the products they are consuming if they are actually indicated what it is.   Some ingredients are disguised as other things or modified to some other thing or are genetically modified without telling the consumer.

I don't think everyone in North America is going to give up convenience food in one day and switch to a 100% plant based diet so I think the answer is to make some of these toxic products disappear so that the only choice is to buy whole foods and start going back to eating real food and making things from scratch where you know what's in them.   You won't get 100% of the population to switch but we don't need a thousand toxic products tempting the exhausted media brainwashed parents into buying easy convenience food to get food on the table for their families.

As Chef Michael Smith said banning something like Foie Gras in Los Angeles because of cruelty to the  duck is ridiculous because other animals like cows and pigs are treated just as badly.  But that's real food.   What about banning toxic chemical filled products that can sit on supermarket shelves for a year without going bad.   Well because the big corporate manufactuers would protest and won't have subsidized jobs for people.

The whole thing is a political toxic soup and there is no simple answer but my thoughts are to start to rethink what is allowed to go into the products before it gets to the consumers to have to do detective work to figure out whether it's going to kill them to consume that product.

It seems I hit a nerve when I asked Chef Michael that question because he got really passionate about it and Alison thought he should run for Mayor of Toronto and everyone in the room seemed to agree.   i think he would make a great Mayor.   He knows right from wrong and has Integrity and passion.    I am not sure our current Mayor has those qualities but that's a whole other story.

One thing that was funny was standing next to him while taking a photo,  I am only about 5 feet tall while Michael Smith is somewhere around 7 feet tall.   Do I look short or what?

About his Cookbook. ....  it's a beautifully put together book filled with recipes that anyone with basic skills can make in their own kitchens which makes it a cookbook that will get used instead of sitting on a shelf.   The photos are large and beautiful and the recipes are written easy to read instead of fine print on colored paper it's clear black large enough print on white paper, making it easy to flip through the book and organize your kitchen accordingly.   I hope to make one of the recipes in the near future.