Muskoka Chefs Meeting in Mississauga

On Monday night Trevor and I had the pleasure of being invited to The Muskoka Chefs Association meeting as guests. The meeting was held at Maple Leaf's Think Food in Mississauga and hosted by Norm Myshok from Canada Bread.  It was very well attended with approximately 80 people.

The evening started with a seminar from The Ice House, who had come in from Niagara on the Lake to introduce their Ice Wine. I had tasted Ice Wine before and really disliked it and Trevor is not a fan of sweet syrupy drinks either. To our surprise the drink they offered us was not sickeningly sweet or overly syrupy. We both really enjoyed it and began thinking of what foods we could incorporate this wine with. Jamie MacFarlane's Ice Wine has won 3 gold medals and is considered one of the best ice wines in the world.

After the seminar we had a lovely meal and then they had the Members meeting. It was a great evening for Trevor as he met up with some chefs and salesmen that he had not seen in a very long time. We had a wonderful time and are greatful to Norm for inviting us and the Muskoka Chefs Assoc. for welcoming us to their meeting.

Sew Hungry on Ottawa St. in Hamilton

Today from 11am-3pm there is a rally of food trucks.Trevor and I decided to take advantage of this outing and have a nice little walk down Ottawa St.  The trucks began pretty much on time and they were spread out far enough apart that it didn't create too much havoc.

Some of the trucks we noticed were off course The Gorilla Cheese Truck, with their fantastic sandwiches, The Toasted Tangerine, Hank Daddy's Barbecue, Cake and Loaf were there, The Blue Donkey, The Portobello Burger for vegetarians or anyone, The Cupcake Diner for that sweet tooth and Shriner's Kettle Creek Popcorn. I would say there had to be at least 15 trucks there.

Judging by the people munching on pizza, sandwiches, ravioli and sweets, the food must have been fantastic. Those pizza slices were tempting. I had to at the very least buy my green onion, cheese and beer bread from Cake and Loaf.

The line ups were not too bad and having had food from a food truck before I know they are able to get the orders out fairly quickly. Some of the local restaurants such as Poco Loco and Limoncello also had food items available. Laidlaw Church also got in on the action with a sit down meat pie dinner in their parking lot.

The one that struck me the most though was Bryce's Fish and Chips. While I did not have an order the ones I seen coming out smelled great and looked tempting. They were giving a perfect lunch size portion for a donation to the Mission Services.

How do we feel about food trucks? We both agree that its a great concept, especially for workers on their lunch hour or maybe on a busy shopping day. We do not think that they will take away from local businesses. Trevor and I both enjoy spending time together enjoying a lovely meal in a restaurant but we certainly would not mind just stopping at a food truck and grabbing a bite for lunch either. Hamilton would do well to relax the laws on these trucks and allow more into the city.

Hamilton & District Chefs Assoc Meeting

Tonight we attended the Hamilton & District Chefs Assoc monthly meeting at Avondale Restaurant Equipment.
The guest speaker tonight was Norm Myshok from Canada Bread. It was a very interesting demonstration.

The main focus of tonights meeting was about taste. He had brought little containers of different items for us to stick on our tongue to show us how we re-act to these different items. The first one we dried our tongue and then put some sugar on the dry spot, when your tongue is dry you don't really taste the sweetness but as soon as it becomes moist again you suddenly have this burst of sweetness. We also had little jelly beans, we plugged our noses and chewed on them with no flavour, as soon as we unplugged our noses we had a burst of the flavour of the bean.

He also talked in detail about umami, it is a bit involved to go into here but basically its one of the 5 different flavours. The 5 different flavours are sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami. Umami is a Japanese word meaning "pleasant savory taste". For more information about this there is an interesting read on Wikipedia, just type in umami.

Tim put out a nice little snack of cheeses, fresh fruits and crackers. The Chefs Association is a great place to meet people in the field and learn a lot of new things. We look forward to the next meeting, which now due to summer coming will not be until September. The meetings are once a month and there is a page on facebook if you want more information "Hamilton District Society of Chefs & Cooks"

Boar and Chick

Yesterday Trevor and I went to visit Boar and Chick, a farm in Troy Ontario owned by the Veenstra family.

It was a very nice visit, Mark took us to see the boars, the piglets were so cute. These pigs are Berkshire’s , a breed originally from England. There were two stalls with piglets and their mothers, about ten piglets in each stall. Outside in one area were some pregnant ones and just around a corner on the way to the small lake there was another outdoor stall without about 5 small to med pigs. These pigs are black rather than the usual pink we are used to seeing.

They also had some lovely horses but unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of them.
There were a lot of chickens and they run free range in a very large enclosed area.
I also seen a Dexter cow which is a breed from Ireland and seems to be about half the size full grown as the cows that are native to Canada.

We really enjoyed our visit and Mark was a very nice host. He was very friendly and spent the time answering our questions about the animals. We brought home some of the sausages made from the Berkshires and they were really nice. Full of flavour.

We have decided that this year we would like to take more little trips like this. We also spotted a little café on the way out of Troy and hopefully we will get back out that way in the near future and stop at the café for lunch

Chefs Meeting

The Hamilton Chefs Assoc. meeting will be on March 20th at 6:30 pm at Avondale Restaurant Equipment, 230 Avondale, Hamilton, On. Come and join us.

CRFA - Food Show

We won't be posting any recipes today as we are off to the Canadian and Restaurant Foodservices Association show in Toronto today. Looking forward to it.

District Society of Chefs & Cooks

Tim Humble is bringing the District Society of Chefs and Cooks back to life. We are pleased to be members as this provides local networking with others in the industry and educational opportunities. It also helps support those new to the industry. For more information on this check out the website at ccfhamilton.ca