Spring has officially sprung. Most of us feel a new surge of energy at this time of year. Why not ride that wave to try some seasonal foods that rarely appear in your kitchen?
Now is the time when rhubarb, asparagus, and early spring greens make their annual debut at farmers' markets. Need a main course? Your local butcher will probably have some spring lamb in supply. If you want to try your hand at foraging, look for morels and fiddleheads in wooded areas, and dandelion greens pretty much everywhere else.
Keep reading for a detailed list of what's available in many parts of the country right now.
Sure, liquors and distilled spirits may be out for 100-mile purists, but if you live near the Lunenburg County Winery on the south shore of Nova Scotia, you'll never need to complain about lack of variety in your choice of wines.
With wines made of every local fruit imaginable - including blueberries, raspberries, peaches, apples, pears, and even rhubarb - combined with unexpected ingredients such as elderflower, maple and honey, you could take home a bottle of each and uncork a new one every evening for weeks.
Lunenburg County Winery follows traditional winemaking methods using only the finest-quality fresh fruit in season, grown at Hackmatack Farm, the winery's own 100-acre blueberry farm in Newburne. What the winery doesn't grow itself, it sources from neighbouring growers in Lunenburg County, the Annapolis Valley, and Nova Scotia.
Get more information about the Lunenburg County Winery from their listing in our Local Food Producers directory. While you're there, browse the other 1,100+ Canadian food producers you'll find. You can even customize your search to find producers within 100 miles of your postal code!
Do you know a food producer or vendor that you think belongs in our database? Search to see if it's already there. If it's not, add it!
Native to Northern Asia, rhubarb was used for centuries for medicinal purposes as a gentle purgative and to reduce fevers. Though rhubarb has been around for about 4,000 years, it has only been used as a food for the last few hundred. It was the English who first saw rhubarb's potential as a food. They made it into pies or stewed it to serve with custard.
Rhubarb wasn't really known in North America much before the early 1800s when pioneers brought rhubarb cuttings to plant in their gardens. Botanically, rhubarb is a vegetable, a member of the buckwheat family and a close relative of garden sorrel. But because of its use in pies and jams, rhubarb, we think of it as a fruit.
Rhubarb leaves contain a high concentration of oxalic acid salts that can be very toxic, so rhubarb leaves should never be consumed by humans or fed to animals. The edible portion of the plant is the leaf stalk which contains very low concentrations of oxalates.
Rhubarb is a good source of vitamin C and iron.
Keep reading for tips on buying, storing, and cooking rhubarb.
We've been touting onions, beets, and cabbage as great local fare for this time of year, but did you know that these same foods can be used to produce gorgeous results when dyeing Easter eggs? Keep reading for details...
Things got competitive this week as the 100-milers challenged themselves and each other to reach new culinary heights. Reluctant cooks Alma and Alisa spent five hours in the kitchen preparing a sumptuous feast for Randy and James.
Later, Steve Peters challenged James to a pizza throwdown. There may only have been one winner, but with so much fabulous local fare on the menu, there were definitely no losers.
The recipes are all here:
Browse our Community Recipes for more great recipes featuring local ingredients. Got a recipe you'd like to contribute? Send it in!
It's almost here! Tune in to Food Network Canada on Sunday, April 5th (1 pm and 8 pm ET / 10 am and 5 pm PT) to catch the series premiere of The 100 Mile Challenge.
Watch as James MacKinnon and Alisa Smith, internationally renowned authors of The 100-Mile Diet hit the streets to recruit the residents of Mission, BC, to consume only food and drink produced within a 100-mile radius for 100 days.
But is Mission up to the challenge?
Six brave families sign on, but when their cupboards are emptied -- purged of all non-local foods -- and reality sets in on Day 1, will this gastronomic adventure end before it even begins?
To tempt the citizens of Mission into signing up for the Challenge, acclaimed Chef Ben Niemann whipped up a five-star menu of local appetizers for James and Alisa's town hall meeting. From BC spot prawns to ash-ripened camembert from Moonstruck Cheese, the menu was a celebration of local ingredients.
Chef Niemann's canapes were a resounding success, but even he admits that coming up with this menu presented some unexpected challenges. Keep reading to get his recipes, and to find out how he turned challenges into opportunities.
"Back to Basics." That was the title of the second episode of The 100 Mile Challenge, and our 100-milers did just that. From baking bread to making salt, they bravely charged into unknown territory and learned a new appreciation for these everyday staples.
Recipes from this episode:
While the basics are magnificent, over-the-top decadence can be pretty life-affirming, too:
Browse our Community Recipes for more great recipes featuring local ingredients. Got a recipe you'd like to contribute? Send it in!
Now that spring is springing all over the place, the local food movement is spreading its roots. Here are some of our favourite articles and blog posts from the past week:
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The fiddlehead, a deep green, edible, wild fern found in woodlands throughout North America, is one of spring’s earliest treats. Native people introduced fiddleheads to early settlers and they remain a popular delicacy, especially in the Maritime Provinces.
The edible part of the fern resembles the spiral end of a fiddle, (hence its name). Common bracken and other ferns also produce tightly-coiled new growth in the spring, but only the Ostrich fern (matteuccia struthiopteris) are suitable for eating. The taste of fiddleheads is described as a cross between asparagus, green bean and okra. Fiddleheads are rich in iron, potassium, niacin, riboflavin, magnesium, phosphorus and vitamins A and C.
Read on for buying, storing and cooking instructions...
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