What’s Your Comfort Food?

Soup’s on at our house this week, and I’m so glad I saved lots of ‘rough bits’ from my market vegetables to go in the stock pot. Leek tops, parsley stems, the carrot too ugly for anybody’s lunch, potato peelings, a leftover chunk of celery root, some onion skins…simply, magically turn into the base of delicious comfort food. Last Thursday, market friend Mary Wright told me that when she was raising her four children as a single Mom, learning how to make soup and bread was what saved her. A warm pot of soup waiting on the stove: that’s a welcome home that’s hard to beat.

If you don’t have someone like Mary cooking for you, and you can’t wait until you’ve made your own, stop by the snack bar for a bowl of park soup and a slice of bread, and then take home a jar of Ali Harris’s rich and spicy pumpkin-kale recipe for a satisfying ready-to-eat meal.

Or, if baking is what makes your day, have no fear, DeFloured is back, with both savoury and sweet gluten-free goodies, and if it’s chocolate you need, head for the garage, where you’ll find Byron with a tableful of the good stuff from ChocoSol.

Veggie-lovers, Everdale has spinach, arugula, tat soi, kale and all your roots this week! Marvellous Edibles and Ted Thorpe will round out the produce selection.

Forbes Wild Foods news: ‘For the next two months we have a Canadian mushroom harvester supplying us with fresh Black Trumpet Mushrooms, Hedgehog Mushrooms and Yellowfoot Winter Chanterelles from Oregon. There should be lots at the market. Unfortunately the prices are higher because of the US Dollar.’

Country Meadows (Angelos) will have a few fresh chickens this week.

A big announcement from Kind Organics:
Here we grow again!
Over the past 7 years you’ve watched us grow from a single hoop-house and a field, to where we are today with several hoop houses, 3 large greenhouses and over 6 acres of fields. We’ve also gone from selling through only a few farmers’ markets to supplying over 35 retail stores and up to 8 markets per week! Wow! That’s a lot of growing, eh?! We’ve done all this on rented land, and while we’ve been able to sustain our growth, its not been without its costs. Farming on rented land has brought us to where we are today – one of the largest certified-organic pre-washed salad and sprout suppliers in the GTA! The costs to continue expanding became prohibitive, so we scrimped and saved to have enough funds to put a down payment on a property of our very own.

So… (drum roll please!) this January we bought a 13.5 acre farm near Brantford, Ontario! We feel this farm will enable Kind Organics to expand sustainably for many years to come.And now the work/fun begins!We’re asking that anyone who appreciates organic, local, fresh and delicious greens and sprouts, contribute whatever they can afford to our Farm Raising Campaign! You can do this in three ways:

1. Donate through our Indigogo page
2. Subscribe to our Farm Raising (CSA) campaign by going to one of our many local farmers’ markets and picking up the sign-up form. Or download it and print from kindorganics.com, and mail it to us. (Feel free to call 416-992-1444 if you have any questions at all.)
3. Commit to buying an extra salad or other product we sell and give it to a friend who you think would like it, so they can try it and perhaps chose to buy it for themselves going forward. Oh, and if you tweeted about how much you like our stuff, that would be really cool, too!
Thanks SO much from your friends at Kind Organics!!

Unfortunately, the family is still under the weather at Spade & Spoon, so Blythe (and Eloise!) will have to wait until next week to return.

We’ve notified the bank of Canada, and in just a couple of weeks, a Brinks truck will be rolling up to deliver the big load of market bucks we need to reward Loyal Eaters Perfect Attendance Club members, that impressive group of Dufferin customers that just can’t stand to miss a single market! If you don’t have a card, this is the last week to get one.  Our winter rewards program runs for 10 more weeks; you can do it!

See you at the market!
Anne Freeman

P.S. Looking for something interesting to do this weekend? Head to the Guelph Organic Conference, and see what’s happening in organic food and farming!

Here are the vendors we expect this week.
(Rinkhouse = North end, Garage = South end)
Ali Harris RINKHOUSE
Bees Universe WEST SIDE, OUTDOORS
Chocosol GARAGE
Country Meadows RINKHOUSE
Culture City GARAGE
DeFloured OUTSIDE
Dufferin Park Bakers RINKHOUSE
Everdale Organic Farm GARAGE
Forbes Wild Foods RINKHOUSE
Kind Organics RINKHOUSE
Marvellous Edibles Farm RINKHOUSE
Ted Thorpe GARAGE
Ying Ying Soy Food RINKHOUSE

There are stops for north and southbound buses right at our corner, or the subway is one block north. If you plan to drive, please use the parking on the north end of the park, across from the high school (access from Havelock or the north end of Gladstone) to avoid jam-ups on the little street by the market.