If you have a rice cooker, barley works very well in it. It is then ready to put in soups, stews, orzotto, salads, etc. It can also be frozen once cooked, if you don't want to eat it all at once. I'd likely not put it in salads, but anything cooked would be fine.

I also do a "Barley and Cheese" dish I really like.

I'm flexible about the cracker, but the cheese should be old cheddar and I love a generous dollop of my homemade cayenne pepper jelly on it. Yum!

Have you tried googling "Pig Roast Ontario" or "Pig Roast Toronto"? You should get quite a list of people who so some variation on BBQ catering.

Doesn't Astro do one? I think it was 6%. (I admit I don't eat a lot of yogurt, so not completely sure.)

Not a lot of places out there, I don't think, but I've picked at Dykstra's.

http://www.foodlinkgreybruce.com/inde...

Like just about everywhere these days they have fewer of the good varieties and more of the ones that are big and red and shiny, but if you get there early enough in the season there should be some worth picking.

Radish fried rice. Use a chopped onion and other vegetables if you like, but the main vegetable to go into it - grated radishes. They become sweet and mild when cooked.

I went to visit my father over the holidays, and we ate at the Wainfleet Motel as usual. I have to say, it really is very good. I ordered a seafood linguine that was very pleasant. (Could have used some veggies.) I won't order pasta in very many restaurants because so many of them do it badly, but this was cooked perfectly.

This really is a great local restaurant. They are doing some much-needed renovations outside at the moment and it doesn't look great. (They could stand to do some inside too. Hope that's in the plan.) But that said, you will not get better food at pretty much any price anywhere else for miles and miles around. Dad was complaining that he got a braised lamb shank for over $30 at some fancy do at one of the wineries in the Niagara area, that wasn't half as good (or as large) as the one they serve at the Wainfleet Motel for half that price.

Yes! Forgot to mention that part. Thanks!

I have used sunflower seeds, and been quite happy with the results.

There is actually buffalo mozzerella made in Ontario! It's bound to be both fresher and cheaper than imported Italian buffalo mozzerella. Worth checking it out. Probably the best thing to do is to go directly to the factory outlet to get it - fresh mozerella has a 3 day shelf-life, so that way it will be as fresh as possible.

The maker is Quality Cheese, the brand is Bella Casera. They're in Vaughn, just off the 400. (111 Jevlan Drive)

http://www.qualitycheese.com/

I successfully made clotted cream this summer, but I'm in Ontario so I don't know how different the cream I can get is.

I did use organic goat cream from a small local dairy, so it wasn't homogenized. I do think that's important. I am also told that it needs to be pasteurized at a low temperature, not a high temperature. You might want to call a few local dairies to check how they do it. Again, smaller and organic ones are the ones that are likely to use the lower temperature pasteurization. That and the cream needs to be 35% butterfat or more.

I wrote about making it here:

http://seasonalontariofood.blogspot.c...

What flour are you using? It sounds like there isn't enough gluten (protein) to hold those yeast bubbles in. Try subbing out a little of the flour with gluten flour, or at least make sure you have a good hard bread flour.

Sounds to me like the bird was still in rigor mortis.

Had one once like that once and I swear if I had dropped it it would have bounced back up to my hands. Boioioinnnnggg.

Usually they aren't sold so fresh that they are still in rigor mortis but it is sometimes a problem with very freshly frozen chickens.

I went to the Savour Stratford event last year and took their farm tour. I would really recommend it. It was, if I recall correctly, $25 per person for an entire-day event with a simple sandwich lunch. I would say it was a screaming bargain when you consider how much planning goes into it and on a per-hour basis that's hard to beat entertainment and edification.

I have to say I LOVE oregano - and HATE marjoram even though they are somewhat similar. I do find that marjoram has a "musty" flavour that I find thoroughly unpleasant. I am using them dried, not fresh so that may be a factor. But I am definitely not about to run out and try fresh marjoram, based on how I feel about the dry stuff. Blech.

Agree on the pickling. I've tried using fancier vinegars, and the results just never taste subtle or rich - just muddy.

I love peanut butter and honey on whole wheat too, but I like to add grated carrot. It adds a little moisture and crunch, and keeps it from being too sweet.

I havn't had that happen with honey, but I have had that happen with maple syrup. I do think it's best to buy both in glass containers.

If you buy some honey or maple syrup that comes in plastic, it might be best to repackage it in sterilized canning jars. That's what I do with my maple syrup. I buy it buy the gallon, which means plastic. I warm it up a bit, pour it into 500ml sterilized glass canning jars, and pop them into a boiling water bath for 5 minutes to seal. I have some from 2 years ago now which is still fresh as a daisy when opened. No reason not to do the same with honey.

You can also use your rice cooker to cook oatmeal, lentils, barley, quinoa, and other grains. There are whole cookbooks out there devoted to cooking in a rice cooker. They are very cheap to run and will turn themselves off rather than burn food... great for the not totally attentive cook. Cay you tell I really love mine?

I'm not sure if this is still in Haldimand, or if it is Pelham, but the Wainfleet Motel just north of the village of Wainfleet, on #3 (before the intersection with Hwy 3 heading north) is pretty good.

It's run by a Sri-Lankan fellow who trained as a chef in Paris (France) and although it shows the realities of cooking for small-town Ontarians, the food is definitely several cuts above what you would expect to find in a motel restaurant. Prices are very reasonable for the quality.

The Dunnville Diner (I think that's what it's called) on Broad Street East in Dunnville is kind of fun. The food is not really anything special but it is prepared with attention. It's got that old-time greasy spoon ambiance and the prices are stupendously cheap.

Thirded on the Panda. Don't love any of the Australian licorice I've had, but I could eat Panda by the pound.

Well, we were desperate. The Spanish are not great at serving green vegetables in restaurants, and so we thought, "Chinese food? The Chinese do green vegetables. We could get some!" But just as you found that the Liverpool restaurant had adapted their vegetable cookery to the local taste, so had the Pamplona restaurant adapted their cookery to the local taste. For example, they served zucchini but it had all been carefully peeled to be devoid of the slightest hint of green. Most of the buffet consisted of big heaps of nicely grilled pork products.

Later on in our trip we found a health food store and it had BROCCOLI! We took it back to the kitchen in our hostel, and when I pulled it out of the bag everyonr in the room inhaled... I thought for a moment I was going to be mugged for my broccoli, but then people remembered they were supposed to be pilgrims and decorum prevailed.

This may sound strange, but the best fried rice I have ever eaten was at a Chinese buffet on the outskirts of Pamplona in Spain.

It was made with Spanish rice, Spanish ham, peas, carrots & onions all fried in good Spanish olive oil. It was so, so, so good. The best of 2 worlds. Once I discovered it I totally ignored the rest of the buffet and regretted all the other things I had already eaten because they left less room for the fried rice. I want to go back to Spain just to eat this again.

The best condiment is the one best suited to whatever dish you are eating... and it will therefore be different all the time.

That said, I love all kinds of hot sauces. I also make my own chutneys, relishes and pickles, usually dill but I made some spicy bread & butter pickles that were sooo good. It's time to make chow-chow, and also beet, cabbage & horseradish relish. Yum!

Sriracha of course, is not so much a condiment as a vegetable.

Don't tend to order any kind of noodles or starch, but I do like to order a plate of some kind of green vegetable; dau miu or choy sum being favourites. Dim sum is usually pretty starchy and the greens are what I otherwise miss.

Gilintx, you ask why cook the tomatoes?

You don't have to as noted; that technique is known as raw pack. However, it does have some problems.

Firstly as you suggested, it's best to have the tomatoes hot as they go into the canner. The bigger the difference in temperatures inside and outside the jars, the greater the chance of breakage. Glass expands and contracts quite a bit according to temperature. If the insides and outsides of the jars are trying to do different things, well...

Secondly, the other problem I find with raw pack is that the tomatoes (or other fruits) tend to separate. You get the apparently dense stuff floating on top, and a bunch of liquid at the bottom of the jar. I *think* that this is because if you don't heat the fruit (tomatoes) sufficiently to break down the cell walls, they actually contain quite a lot of air. Because of this you also get more expansion and contraction of the produce being canned and thus more chance of leakage.

I used to think the less cooking of the canned produce, the better; but the more I can the less I think so.

And also, vinegar that hasn't been stored all that carefully can lose a fair bit of flavour over time.

But there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a mother. Mothers are a good thing!

Whether a flour is described as "bread", "all purpose" or "Pastry(cake/soft)" flour depends on the protein content of the wheat. Spelt is a particular form of wheat, and so the the protein content is what it is, unlike with other wheats where if it is not exactly spot on for the particular application, it will be blended with other wheats until the exact protein level is reached.

Spelt in my experience is more of an "all purpose" level of protein and it should be fine for most cakes. If you want a more traditional cake and not one that's "health food-y" do use a finer grind and at least partly sifted ("white") spelt flour.

As noted by others here, it does have more protein than regular pastry flours, and so should be handled somewhat delicately - don't over beat it. You may need to adjust the liquid slightly as well, as it does absorb it slightly differently than other wheat flours. Unfortunately, I can't tell you how much or whether up or down. I wouldn't make a really finicky recipe, but something more homey that can roll with the punches because of this. Carrot cake or banana cake, that kind of thing would work well.

RShea78 has a point too. I've known a number of people with problems with wheat who could eat spelt... for a while. But it does tend to catch up and start causing problems too. It's just not that different from regular wheat. There's lots of good gluten-fre recipes out there; in some ways they might be easier than trying to sub spelt flour for pastry flour.

Thanks for mentioning this restaurant. I'll be checking it out next time I'm in Guelph.

Since I'm not in Toronto I can't give you a location, but I've found it, frozen, in latin-american groceries. In Spanish it is "maracuya", and as such it will be labelled.