Bread Shoes

Style: Mini

That’s right, boys and girls! 
Put some romance in your “loaf” life!
eatable…dries itself… made from bread…first in fashion…
needs no pressing…feels good in dry climate …won’t sag

Every pair is unique and comes with a best suitable
hand-picked cardboard box.

Please note
This item is my friends twin brothers R&E Praspaliauskas product.
Please contact them regarding style, shipping details etc.

There is a €5 euros shipping cost to all destinations.
€12 product + €8 shipping and handling = €20 total.

Contact:
Remigijus Praspaliauskas > e-mail
Egidijus Praspaliauskas > e-mail

More propaganda against eating processed food…the mediterranean diet will cheer you up!  fEat it and depression will evaporate.

Funny thing, the Mediterraneans are now eating fast food to cheer up.

Can good food be both mass and class?

The other day I saw Mark McEwan on his TV show The Heat. He was cooking for l000 people. The plates looked as spiffy as they do at his glossy restaurants, North 44, Bymark, One, and the entrée was exotic –  slightly rosy tenderloin of bison. McEwan conducted this massive banquet with the precision of a great general, timing the assault on the diners with élan.

No more rubber chicken, the former banquet staple. This is mass food with class.  Now McEwan is broadening the concept. He’s stamping his brand over take-away, riding the inexorable wave to the future, hoping to nibble into the huge processed frozen food market and upstage fresh takeaway at Pusateri and Whole Foods.

This is a considerable challenge. A chef is cooking personally in a restaurant for diners lulled by atmosphere. But EQ means nothing on the assembly line of takeaway where convenience and consistency rule.

First stop: the chef’s commissary in the Shops at Don Mills, the posh Florida-inspired mall, boasting the crème de la crème of retail – a reminder that more people now live North of the 401 than downtown.

McEwan is a smart big box with ample space for swarms of shoppers. I arrive around 9.30 on a Sunday and find a few people drinking excellent coffee in an informal café upfront. Alongside,an array of appetizers makes my mouth water. I choose the most unfamiliar  – nine cold curry rolls, $10.95 and water chestnut potstickers with tamarind sauce $7.95.

Across the wide aisle are the meal replacement  dishes, all fresh: I dither over the fish before picking Salmon Wellington $12.95, and North 44 halibut wrap $18.95. Can’t resist scalloped potatoes speckled with black truffle $9.95. Then add Mediterranean chicken $12.95, mushroom streudel $11.95,  mushroom and goat cheese quiche $12.95 and fusilli al telefono $10.95.

Building a home feast requires salad. The leaves are all familiar but I must buy the Asian black garlic, two for $ 7.95. McEwan is the only place selling it, and I choose a box of orange Mandarin tomatoes $4.99 from Canada’s hydroponic capital, Leamington.

Back home, logistic problems loom. I have to time things carefully. Cooking times range from 6 mins to 20 mins. Then there are my guests who have to be prepped. I’m not aiming at ONE – just an informal country picnic. Maybe if they drink enough of Simca’s champagne cocktail they will tolerate the flowery paper plates.

The halibut, 20 mins, goes into the 400 degree oven first and the other dishes join it according to timing. Now the problem of making the tasting plate look pretty. Note: the dishes contain different amounts of food suitable for one to three people.

Finally, we’re all served and the ratings come in.

Top marks to the halibut wrapped in a banana leaf: fragrant shales of meat. Quiche has the delicate consistency of flan – but tends to blandness. The curry rolls are ok, the water chestnuts don’t heat crisply. The Mediterranan chicken-on-the bone is dry and the watery tomato/olive sauce is ineffective. The mushroom streudel is a nice idea gone soggy.  The taste of Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella, parmesan, garlic are gone missing in fusilli al telefono.  I’ve never made anything Wellington fearing to fail to coordinate the cooking of meat and pastry.  Hmm. McEwan has a problem too: his Wellington is dry throughout (no cooking instructions).

“I love any potato” declares Bon Vivant as he digs into  the truffled potato gratin. He is its only booster. The potatoes are undercooked and the truffle flavour fugitive. This underlines the besetting sin of all takeway – timid seasoning. The food can look so tempting and taste so vacuous. McEwan does better than most in this regard but he’s overtaken by mass psychology– play it safe. Let ‘em salt and pepper away at home.

The fermented black garlic, tasting faintly mushroomy, is great in the salad along with the sweet orange tomatoes.

Overall, we feel underwhelmed. We expected more dishes inspired by McEwan’s restaurants. Who isn’t offering chicken pie and pasta? McEwan’s fresh dishes ,with some exceptions, are not better than processed frozen food takeaways, they’re fancier and atleast 25% more expensive.  McEwan should study Loblaw’s increasingly sophisticated frozen food choices, and remember that Pierre Franey, a famous chef joined Howard Johnson to upgrade mass taste only to find it was he who was changed.

*McEwan, Shops at Don Mills, (416) 444-6262

Joe Pantalone may have been defeated in his fight to stop ICI Bistro from getting a license but his  spirit is still alive and whinging.

look at this glum little corner of Yorkville and Yonge…the owners of Crepes a GoGo and Pain Quotidian put out chairs and tables and for a while the corner had something of the dolce vita of European street life. Not for long. The board of the condo in which the restaurants are housed ordered the chairs and tables removed — reportedly they’re from Don Mills and hate downtown and its possibility of actually being fun.

After the debacle at The Beaver and Queen where NO GRAVY was served with the Roast Beef, I asked friends for their gravy recipes. My sister Lynn makes rich, satisfying, spirit fortifying gravy and she writes, ” I just make gravy by removing roast from tin, and throwing some flour in..  If not enough fat, I add  bit of oil or goosefat if available.    Then cook it up for a few minutes to cook flour. Make sure to scrape up ALL the juices you can from the pan.  Then I add water from the veg – sprouts are really the best!!! stirring & scraping madly until right consistency.  To make enough gravy (never seems to be enough!) you have to remember that you can’t suddenly change your mind, you have to have enough fat/fllour mixture before carrying on.  When gravy looks okay ADD A BIT OF MARMITE!  Keep tasting and correct seasoning.  You can, of course, add a bit of garlic or suitable herbs.  If you have put onions round the roast (sometimes I do) this is all the better.  Onions may become a bit charred, but that doesn’t matter, but it means you MUST strain gravy at the end.

NaturalMilk.org is campaigning for Ontario to legalize raw milk.  Ontarians, please join  lawyer James McLaren’s long fight to have raw milk legalized,  and sign the following petition…. 

View Current Signatures –   Sign the Petition

To:  The Government of OntarioAnd to: The Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs
And to: The Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission
And to: The Dairy Farmers of Ontario

WHEREAS it is illegal in Ontario to sell unpasteurized milk pursuant to the Milk Act and the Health Protection and Promotion Act;

AND WHEREAS there are many places around the world (including England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Holland, Denmark and numerous states of the United States) where unpasteurized milk is sold legally, pursuant to government regulatory regimes that assure the safety of the milk for the benefit of consumers;

AND WHEREAS the undersigned petitioners all desire to have the option to purchase and consume safe, regulated unpasteurized milk;

AND WHEREAS under the Milk Act it is the duty and responsibility of the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission, and its designated agent Dairy Farmers of Ontario, to develop policies that will stimulate the marketing of milk, and to maintain research programs for such policy development;

NOW THEREFORE the undersigned hereby request that the recipients of this petition establish the necessary programs to conduct research into establishing regulatory procedures and policies leading to the safe and legal sale of unpasteurized milk in Ontario.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

View Current Signatures

The Legalize Raw Milk in Ontario Petition to The Government of Ontario was created by NaturalMilk.org and written by James McLaren (info@naturalmilk.org).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.

tags: milk natural milk raw raw food raw milk unpasteurized unpasteurized milk

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Give me a half and a Taliban

This is a tale of two traditions – the American diner and the British pub, greasy spoons that preceded McDonalds. How, I wonder, are they doing in Toronto today?

First up, the Senator, Toronto’s oldest restaurant (1860), on Victoria St. I have to avert my eyes as I pass through the joyless Dundas Square which looks like Montenegro’s Podgorica with giant plasma screens. How soothing to slip back into old Toronto and wallow in nostalgia.

Pre the Big Mac assembly line, fast food had a human face and its own lingo. As I stand in line for lunch at the Senator I swear I hear one of those wiseguy waiters shouting for “hemorrhage” (ketchup) for a “Jack” a grilled cheese sandwich.

I sigh with pleasure at the cherished antiques on the plastic menu. Hey, wait a minute, what’s slow roasted pork loin, avocado tomato, chipotle mayo on sourdough doing here? I don’t believe chipotle has ever appeared on a diner menu before.  Ditto Tuna Nicoise. The answer:  The Senator is now undergoing a nuanced upgrade  under the supervision of Bob Bermann, late of Boba, a fresh’n’local chef of impeccable Ital-Cal credentials.

We’re glad to be in a small booth. The alternative would be jigsaw seating where diners sit cheek by jowl. Our peppy waiter is a far cry  from the worldweary waitress personified by Thelma Ritter “So what d’you want for twenty five cents?”  When we settle on the  club sandwich, our waiter nods  appreciatively. 1,000 of Senator’s Club House are sold a week. No wonder. It is a hunger-buster, built like a double decker bus with roast chicken breast, tomato, bacon, lettuce on challah bread and all for a mere $9.95. Moreover, this chicken is sourced from hen hugging  Cumbrae Butchers:  you can tell because the flesh is both moist and sweet an indication that the hen died happy.

We pick another classic – chili. $10.95, handcut beef simmered in five alarm chilis enriched with cheddar, sour cream and crumbly fresh homemade corn bread. Crab cakes not so good, exquisitely deep fried in a nest of emerald greens, but while there’s plenty of crab, it has that fridge bound taste. “Not enough demand” opines the smug club sandwich eater. We drink chastely, a diner isn’t about booze, balloon juice (seltzer.

Now a British pub is all about booze. Beer is its root and branch. I don’t recall people eating much in pubs beyond blotting paper, bangers on sticks, stolid pork pie, delectable twiglets, ryvita spears smeared with marmite. But the recent rise of the “gastropub” is reported to have changed that. So I trek along to The Queen and Beaver recently opened by Jamieson Kerr of Crush Wine Bar.

There’s no one at the bar! The room is decorated like a tea room! If I ordered a half and Taliban (curry) nobody would understand me! Chef Andrew Carter who was last at the bistro Le Paradis is British but he doesn’t seem to know how to cook/present good british food.?

We order the Sunday roast $26. A shallow soup plate arrives containing squashed up slices of  medium rare beef, not the English taste of iron filings’ sirloin but soggy tasteless prime rib that is the NA gout.  The Yorkshire pudding is warmed over. There is no GRAVY. Any Brit knows how important gravy is to a Sunday dinner.

Worse follows. I love steak and kidney pudding, fluffy suet pastry incubating the rich mixed flavours of meat and organ. $16. I order a couple of oysters to be inserted $4. I get a microwaved warmed over version with a skimpy pastry skin, leaden pastry below, meat overcooked, cold oysters popped in at the last minute.

The appetizer of smoked salmon is too smokey. I’d be better off buying toffee pudding from Loblaws. The only sign of gastronomic skill is an excellent potted duck and cherries.

Do I sound mad? You bet. I’m insulted by yet another example of how English food is travestied here by those who exploit the pub brand  but don’t care a sausage for the integrity of British cooking.  How could you, Andrew, confirm people’s worst opinions of British food?

1 & 1/2 stars.The Senator Restaurant, 249 Victoria St 416-364-7517. No wheelchair access. Noisy. Lunch: food( 3 courses)plus tax for two: $46.

No star. The Beaver & Queen , 35 Elm St 647 347 2712. No wheelchair access. Dinner: food for two plus tax: $80

But in puritanical Maine, a whiff of devil alc and you’re a gonner. Following the incident, the school Principal of Houlton High School contacted the police, leading to a series of complaints from substance abuse programmes in the state, who argued the lemonade should be classed as “imitation liquor” and not sold to anybody under 21, the legal drinking age in the United States.

The Daily Telegraph reports “Eldon Robson, Fentimans managing director, master brewer, and great-grandson of founder Thomas Fentiman, said he found the furore “quite amusing”.”Maine is of course where our Puritanical forefathers went because Britain was not strict enough and it has been said that Puritans are people who are always worried that someone, somewhere might be having fun.”

I don’t suppose they’ll ban mouthwash, which also contains alcohol because drinking mouthwash is no fun.

Never mind — Fentimens is hot, inquiries from across the US have increased tenfold.

Before World War II sheep grazed in London’s Hyde Park to keep the grass down. Now Brighton and Hove council faced with grass cutting costs of 2,500 pounds a year,  is recruiting volunteer urban shepherds to tend flocks of sheep.Residents with an hour a week to spare are being trained to keep an eye on sheep that are loaned from local farms in East Sussex to graze on land adjacent to housing estates and schools. The cost: around 1,800 a year.

There’s a waiting list!  The guardian reports this as a triumph for green.

“Brenda and Robert Vale are professors of architecture at Victoria University, New Zealand, who specialise in sustainability and they claim the carbon pawprint of a pet dog (roughly the size of an alsatian), is twice that of a 4.6-litre Toyota Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometres a year. Writing in Time to Eat the Dog, the pair use all sorts of calculations to compare the ecological impact of pets with common vehicles or household appliances. Instead of looking at the volume of carbon dioxide produced – the normal method of measuring carbon footprints – the Vales have used the amount of land necessary to grow enough food to “power” your dog, cat or your car. So, according to the couple, 0.84 hectares of land creates enough food to feed a German Shepherd for a year, but only half this space would be enough – if all the food was converted to energy it could use – to keep a Land Cruiser going for the same length of time.” The Independent.