The Canadian Food Experience Project: The Canadian Harvest in Ontario

We’ve put our gardens to bed both here in the city and at the farm. We closed the farm up for the winter last weekend and it was a good time for reflection and thanksgiving. When we arrive back in the spring things will be a little different.

We’ve been working really hard. There’s the growing part, harvesting, saving seeds, and then the whole seed selling business. On top of it all, raising the funds to finalize the purchase of the farm has been a daunting shadow over us the whole time.  We’ve been lucky enough to grow on this land for the last few years and the deadline to finalize the purchase is quickly approaching. While we attempt to pull this off, “balance” has been quite illusive but can be found in little pieces here and there.

This season we harvested 100s and 100s of pounds of fruits and vegetables to eat and share, and saved piles and piles of seed. Today’s count saw 50+ seed varieties still drying in our front porch.

So although part of me just wants to focus on all those lovely seeds, a few big things are in the works as we enter this final stretch towards owning the farm.

Late last week I opened a deceptively thin envelope with a return address from The Big Carrot. The Big Carrot for those of you not in Toronto is hands down the best health food store I’ve ever been in. I grew up in the Riverdale neighbourhood of Toronto and remember shopping there when I was quite small, snacking on black liquorish in it’s first, much smaller location across the street.  The Carrot grew from a small co-operative, into a world class shop and built the carrot common.  One of the things they have done with it’s success is form The Carrot Cache, a separate organization who’s mandate is to support Ontario food production. So back to that envelope, I opened it up and a big chunk of our funding floated out and landed on my feet. Hurray!

 

Now, that got us a lot closer but we’re still a little short on the funds needed to make our farm dreams a reality and we’re running out of time. We’re putting our efforts in a Kickstarter campaign that will launch next week.  Look for limited edition seed packs designed by Toronto Artists and Reclaimed Barn Board serving and cutting boards made with wood from the farm.  We’re really excited to share these with you.

Among the intensity of all this, we stopped for Thanksgiving. It fell right in the midst of harvesting and grant writing but we found time to sneak in a turkey from Fiddlehead Farms and managed to make gluten free pumpkin pie, twice. Seems if you leave pumpkin pies in the BBQ over night because you’ve run out of fridge space, the racoons will open it up and eat all your pie and you’ll have to do it again in the morning.  Good thing pumpkins are plentiful.

So I hope you’ll join us in support as we enter this chapter of harvesting the seeds we started sowing a few years ago and join us for a little break in all the hard work for a slice of pie.

Pumpkin Pie

For the crust we tried two methods that we liked. Bob’s Red Mills has a brand new Gluten Free Pie Crust Mix and it’s wonderful. It will be available in Canadian stores in early 2014. Ryan is our resident pastry maker and he really liked using Bob’s Almond Flour and Elana’s Pantry’s Gluten free pie crust recipe: www.elanaspantry.com/gluten-free-tart-crust/

Preheat oven to 450

{ ingredients }

2 large eggs

3/4 cup milk

2 Tbsp real maple syrup

2/3 cup sugar

1 tsp  vanilla extract

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp fresh ground ginger

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tablespoon corn starch

2 cups pureed pumpkin

To make the filling start by cutting a small sugar pumpkin into quarters, take the seeds out to enjoy (or plant) later, and peel the pumpkin quarters with a vegetable peeler. Now chop it up into one inch pieces, cover with water and boil on the stove until tender. Strain your pumpkin pieces and whizz then up in the food processor of blender. See? That wasn’t so hard.

Next you simply need to mix all the ingredients. Start with the eggs and keep going. A spatula works fine.

Then pour it into the shell and pop it into the over that has been preheated to 450. Turn down the heat to 350 immediately and bake for 45-50 minutes.

When it’s done you can top with whipped cream and say a little thanks for the harvest. It’s always nice to watch something grow.

This post is a part of the Great Canadian Food Experience. Take a peek at the other posts in this series as we work towards making a record of authentic Canadian food.

[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:8]