Some Toronto Chefs, Two Farmers, a Whack of Kids and Whole Bunch of Birds to Butcher.

From the City..

I spent a week at the farm while Simon was on tour out east and I lucked out that this little butcher-fest was going down while I was there.  I think roughly 20 birds were killed, plucked and hung, oh and of course, a couple were cooked over a fire pit and eaten.

Quail, chicken, roasted eggplant, fresh tomatoes and bitter greens and little hands coming in for some melon.

Theo and I are tagging along with Sime this weekend for the last festival of the summer.  We'll be camping and eating festival food and listening to live music and dancing and staying up late and laughing with our band family.  All good ways to send off the summer and welcome the fall.

Hope your long weekend does the same.
amelia

Grapes, Mud Badminton, Cucumbers and Late Summer Harvesting

From the country...

First harvest off our grape vines - SUPER excited about it!!

Millie playing some mud badminton...

It has sure been a great year for cucumbers!

As you can probably tell this growing season has been busy (hence my lack of online activity). It has been a super exciting season though and we are pulling in a ton of produce. I could go on and on about the onions (I won't though for fear of boring you to tears) but the beans have been prolifically amazing as well, the cucumber harvest was great, the eggplant keep on trucking and the tomatoes (despite some blight) are making a comeback! Not so much for the melons... There is so much to report on but not enough day light hours!

I look forward to the fall. I have been swooning over this year's curry squash, we are working on the fall head lettuces, the radicchio planting is in and the sweet potatoes plants look great.

Sweet potatoes vines

Gorgeous curry squash.

 Ahh.. Late summer harvest...

Hillside and some things in between...

From the City...

Here's a little recap of our August so far; we survived a weekend long camping adventure at Hillside with a one year old, went on our first canoe ride and made an eggplant parmesan with a fresh picked eggplant from a school garden project right here in Toronto.

          A sold out festival, one of my favourite Toronto bands, Simon's band playing with The Bahamas 

         The Strumbellas playing to a packed crowd, a tuckered out baby, Elliot Brood on the big stage

Here's a better picture of the crowd that Simon was playing for at Hillside, I'm just so damn proud of that guy and I wanted to show him off.  

I think he stood in the canoe the entire time, we'll get to boat etiquette later...

..And a good and cheesy Eggplant Parmesan

Here's what I did:

Sliced an eggplant nice and thin.  In a bowl, crack an egg and scramble with a little milk.  In another bowl, add a good scoop of flour.  Dip eggplant in egg and then in flour and then back into the egg and then back into the flour.  Then pan fry the little suckers in mixture of butter and vegetable oil until they're nice and crispy.  In a shallow baking dish, add a scoop of tomato sauce and then layer eggplant with sauce, cheese, sauce, eggplant...you get the picture.

Bake in a hot oven for 45 minutes until its good and bubbly and browned on the top.

-amelia

Onions, onions and more onions

From the country...

onion seed

Fresh harvested Red Tropeana Lunga onions

I have professed my undying love for growing/eating/cooking/preserving onions for a long time now. This year I have upped that love and have gone large with growing onions in a big way. Half of my crops this year are onions. I have red onions, torpedo onions, chipolini onions (both red and white), various varieties of green onions, yellow multiplier onions, Stuttgarter onion sets (a German cooking onion) and shallots.

The fancy onions I have grown from seed. The seed was started in March and are just now becoming ready to harvest. It is a bit of a commitment but well worth the wait- not to mention I think I may have figured how to grow onions well. I have this picture in my head of baskets upon baskets of onions in all of their oniony glory at our market table.  I may even have an onion out their that could be a red ribbon winner for largest onion at the local agricultural fair this year. Just saying...