A Weekend Escape to Niagara Falls, The Good Earth and a Really Nice Hat

Just catching up after a nice weekend away in Niagara Falls. 

Living in Toronto, we've been many times and each season has it's perks. The mist is cool in the summer, the icicles are stunning in the winter, Niagara Parks plants amazing gardens in the Spring.

In Autumn it's the gorgeous colours in the changing trees and bright bright sunny days. Take that sun combine it with ample mist and you get perfect double rainbows!

Our friend Sarah made Rebecca her hat from a pattern I wore as a child.  The wool is from a wool share (like a wool CSA) from  Stoddart Farms.   It's the neatest program where you get eco friendly dyed wool from endangered and rare sheep and goats delivered to you every month.  We discovered them at last year's Royal Winter Fair and it makes an awesome christmas present for the knitters and crocheters in your life. 

I love the localness of her little hat and that she looks like a unicorn with the double rainbow.

It was all a little much for little Ms Fancy Hat and her epic nap strike ended in a cloud of mist with a bang. 3 hours! We went for a coffee.

So Niagara Falls is fun but it can be a little over the top.  The gorgeous falls and park are almost lost to the Capital Letters TOURISM!  The separation of the city of Niagara Falls and the surrounding "fruit basket of Ontario" has always been so strange to me. The subdivisions all have names like "Orchard Grove" yet finding a fruit or vegetable on your plate, let alone a local one is next to impossible.  So after a few helpful tweets we escaped to the surrounding wine and orchard country and had a blast. And a proper serving of vegetables.





The Good Earth Food and Wine Company in Beamsville, Ontario was recommended by Eating Niagara as a good place to run around and grab some lunch.  What a perfect suggestion.

We started with some peach orchard cuddles.

Then we had a good run.  She really wanted to pick fruit and couldn't figure out where it had gone. I guess all that apple picking left an impression.

So she inspected ALL the leaves.

And then did a little dance.

We moved inside for lunch but didn't get a single photo of our food. It was beautiful but clearly too delicious to photograph.  Ryan and Rebecca shared some duck, I had the best cauliflower soup I've ever tasted.  The salad had carrot spirals that went on for miles.  The wine was delicious.  The atmosphere was friendly and charming.  The two year was welcomed with a taste of local honey from neighbours Rosewood Estates and peach preserves.  We couldn't have asked for anything more lovely.

After lunch we poked around.

There was lots of fun food and fork related art.

Ryan is inspired and determined that some day we'll have a whole building to cook in.  This has got to be the most perfect set up for group canning projects or pressing cider.

  
Their kitchen side herb gardens are still going strong and Rebecca got into the grapes.

Rebecca spent about an hour looking cute in her new barrette from paperdollaccessories while admiring and eating grapes off the vine before moving on to the pumpkins.

We picked out some wine, honey and jam to bring home and enjoyed the drive back on the back roads stopping for our groceries from road side farms stands.

Amazing. Rebecca even had another nap.

How to Can a Bushel of Peaches in 7 hours with Some Swearing, a New Pot and 29 Jars

As mentioned in last week's peach lemonade post and in our #canning play by play on twitter, we spent most of last Tuesday turning 1 bushel of gorgeous, perfect, marvellous Red Haven Ontario peaches from Bizjak Farms into 29 jars of assorted canning goodness.  

I feel like this post is a little late as once I actually got a bushel of peaches into jars I was sort of done with the whole thing for a few days. There was some swearing and lessons learned but I think I'm ready to share now.

First things First, we went to the Leslieville Farmer's Market to eat croissants and the last of our Monteforte CSA cheese curds.  I then moved on to driving the poor peach guys crazy with distracting chit chat and placed an order for a bushel of freestones (lessons from Well Preserved on this one) to be picked up the following week. I think half of twitter was at the market that day.

The next week rolled around. We went back, obtained a ridiculous amount of peaches, fed some to the babies, let everybody take some photos and then got  Ryan and Andrew to carry them to the car while I went & got more cheese curds.

So after eating a dozen and taking about 2000 photos it was time to get cracking. Or smashing as its now known. 


Growing up, canning peaches was one of the few "old fashioned" canning activities my mother did. In fact she has 4 pages of scribbly notes about it which is the 1980's equivalent to blogging.  I bet there are photos too. I have fond memories of eating these and admiring them in their jars.

Our objective was to can peaches to eat all winter. It's my seasonal depression defence strategy. Let me tell you, when you bite into a Niagara Peach in the middle of February life is good.


Really it's simple and once we got going things moved smoothly. 
Start by preparing all your jars; we did this the night before. Dallas has a good run down of safe canning practices on her post about her easy-peasy co-opertive peaches.  We used 2 dozen 1 litre wide mouth Jars.

Next make up a light syrup of 1 part sugar to 2 parts water.  We used the organic stuff in a carton so it has a darker colour which really looks nice with peaches.  I think we used 4 cartons, something like 16 cups of sugar by the end of the day. We made a big pot on fairly low heat and kept adding to it as needed. Just keep to the ratio and you're fine. 



You want to wash your peaches really well.  These were low spray peaches as organic are really hard to find especially in bulk. You want to wash off the fuzz and the pesticides. Peaches are always up there on the dirty dozen.

Next 

Blanche

Peel (we'll get back to this)

Cut (we did some halves and some quarters)

As you cut the peaches, sprinkle lemon juice on them to prevent browning.

Then add slices of peach to suryp over low heat for 5 minutes. Prep your jars and start packing hot peaches into hot jars. Cover with syrup and leave a 1/4 inch head space.

We processed for 25 minutes but processing times will depend on where you live and the size of your jars.

Blanching and Peeling was a total disaster, greatly reducing the yield and quickly raising the panic level. These perfect lovely peaches were crumbling in my hands.

2 large baskets were reduced to 7 litres of ugly frustrating peaches.  We quickly moved on to not blanching or peeling, leaving some in halves, some in quarters and had great results.  I will never ever peel another peach and haven't a clue why all the instructions and recipes I looked at were all peeling peaches.  What a mess.

Our other near-disaster was not having a large enough pot. I have canned many things but never used the giant jars before; so there I was, with hot peaches in hot jars and Ryan running out to buy a bigger pot.  I love my new giant pot.

All in all, we have some lovely peaches and learnt some valuable lessons; always make sure you have a big enough pot (this is a lesson is optimism perhaps?) and never-ever-no-way-no-how bother with blanching or peeling your peaches; especially when there are approximately 120 of them.

PS these were the last 4 peach halves and we were out of jars so this is 1 peach in one jar.  I think they're for lunch.

project 365: week thirty: July 23rd, 2011 - July 29th, 2011

July 23rd, 2011 Collecting some chive seeds.

July 24th, 2011 Rebecca tries to catch some baby bass.

July 25th, 2011 Rebecca picks thimbleberries and raspberries for making jam in the rain.

July 26th, 2011 Watercolour painting with Christine in the porch.

July 27th, 2011 We made a quick trip to Furnace Falls for a little wading. Check out Ontario Waterfalls on facebook and twitter for details.

July 28th, 2011 Milk Monster Vs the Zucchini!

July 29th, 2011 Rain at the cottage brings a gazillion handsome frogs!

My name's Laura and I'm passionate about local food!

I am so excited to share this with everyone!

I have a minor twitter addiction and one day decided to tweet my beet recipe at Foodland Ontario.  Well, one thing led to another.  The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs tracked me down, and to make a long story short, they made this great little video featuring yours truly:

My garden is in October shambles but I love how well it demonstrates just how great and easy it is to grow your own food. Those are touchstone gold beets I’m pulling out of our very hilly front yard in Toronto’s Beach. 

I was working on my mac & cheese post when they were here and Rebecca was eating all the tomatoes from this Wordless Wednesday post.

This was shot the day of the last East Lynn Farmer’s market of the season, which is a great urban farmer’s market.  Rebecca and I met up with Catherine & Penny and Jen & Poppy and it was a lovely visit filled with baby wearing, Monforte Dairy, buffalo meat, and harassing the guys from Belanger Organic Farms about what can only be called the great beet/milk hypothesis of 2010. My fridge was seriously stocked as we had just picked up our good food box and as a personal highlight, I also had not one, but two varieties of blue potatoes from S Fetts Farm.

There’s a series of these videos on the Ontario Newsroom youtube channel so check them out, and if you’re on twitter you should follow me and everyone involved or featured in this project.  I’m thrilled to be in their company:


@cubits
@foodlandont
@swontariofoodie

@100milemel

@withoutayard 
@monfortedairy