Here are the details:

Date: January 24, 2010

Time: 2pm

Location: Hôtel Le Germain, 30 Mercer Street

Price: $35 Slow Food members/$45 nonmembers

You can buy tickets from  U of T tix website.

Here’s the post from last year that lists the Toronto area markets by days of the week.  

For those looking for markets in other parts of Canada, you can simply use our Find Local Food tool.  Just type in your postal code, the distance you’re willing to travel, check off “Market”, click “Search!” and Voila! It’ll show all the markets in your area on a map.

We’ve been enjoying the local organic strawberries from our CSA.  Unfortunately, the wildlife in our backyard got to the one(!) strawberry in our garden before we did.  We got our first garlic scapes in our CSA share this week, I think I’ll make spinach and garlic scape pesto with it tomorrow.

Some interesting facts from the article:

• there are over 200 genetically unique seeds on each strawberry
• the growing season for Ontario strawberries is 5 weeks; in California, 9 months
• each strawberry plant is engineered from a seed, put through heat treatment, humidity chamber, and travelled to mountains in Northern California for cooling
• California strawberry fields are first fumigated with methyl bromide to kill all weeds, bugs and fungus to a depth of 2.4 metres (is this practice common in all commercial farming, or unique to strawberries?)
• once picked, strawberries are cooled to 2 degree Celcius to prolong the shelf life to 10 days
• the farthest city the California strawberries travel to is Toronto

Here’s a list of strawberry farms on our site:

Toronto area:

• Andrew’s Scenic Acres 
• Organics Family Farm (Organic)
• Whittamore’s Farm 

London area:

• Jennen Market

Hamilton area:

• Bramble Lane Farms 
• Bomberry’s Strawberries(Organic)
• Brantwood Farm 
• Butwick Farms 
• Dalton White Farms 
• Elberta Farms 
• Hamilton’s U-Pick
• Josmar Acres 
• Moore Strawberries  
• Van Laecke Farms

Niagara area:

• Foley Farms & Carolinian Winery (Organic)
• Richardson’s Farm 

 Barrie area:

• Barbetta Orchards
• Barrie Hill Farms 
• Coopers Goat and Veggy Farm 
• Valley Farms / Rounds Ranch 

Kingston area:

• Avonmore Berry Farm 
• Baker’s Farm 
• Brambleberry Farm 
• Charlen Organic Farm (Organic)
• Dentz Orchards and Berry Farm 
• Kaiser Lake Farms
• Lakeshore Farms 
• Tincap Berry Farm 

This Globe and Mail article is an interesting look at how the “economic downturn” is making it harder for chefs to continue to use local ingredients. Based on the article it looks like we need to de-list Il Fornello since they have dropped their local menu.

Personally we’ve found that the cost of local food is not that noticeable an increase in our grocery bill. Certainly the CSA plan makes it less apparent since we’ve prepaid for all our vegetables in installments. Our meat is still purchased on a biweekly basis but Fresh From The Farm’s prices are quite reasonable. Their meat does not go on sale, but it’s not nearly as pricey as other local butchers we’ve been to.

Probably the most cost effective local eating strategy is to grow it all yourself. Our garden is much bigger this year but it’s certainly not enough to sustain us for the summer, let alone provide for our needs over the winter via canning. Still, it’s a good place to start. We recently saw a story on Global TV that interviewed some chefs who have roof-top gardens to supply herbs, etc to their restaurants. 

Another side-note on the effect of the downturn on the local food movement: do you think the “buy American” push is an ugly sister to buying local food, the same thing, or not at all related?

Hopefully they will recover - we’ve been dreaming of a tomato bounty for weeks.

Josh and I have just spent a lovely and productive Victoria Day weekend planting our newly expanded vegetable garden.  We’ve converted two of our flower beds to accommodate our 25 strawberry plants and 7 tomato plants, amongst other newcomers.  I’m very excited for our edible garden this year.  We actually started our seeds early enough this year and our tomato plants are over a foot tall already!  We also have a variety of herbs this year and our watermelon seedling is still alive!

Here’s a list of what’s in our garden this year:

• tomatoes: black cherry, blanche beaute, new: yellow cherry, beefsteak and ruffled red
• herbs: sweet basil, thyme, chives, cilantro and parsley
• potatoes
• garlic: five different varieties (one did not survive the fridge)
• sweet red pepper
• wax beans
• sugar snap peas
• carrots: scarlet nantes and Chanteny
• veestar strawberries
• blueberries: northland and northcountry
• raspberries

not planted yet: golden midget watermelon

Our local CSA share starts up again in 3 weeks.  Soon, we’ll be back to eating all local, all the time.