Dinner Lately…

So, we’ve been gone all weekend to visit my sister in Fargo, ND in lieu of her graduation. It was a 16 hours drive one-way from here (Detroit, MI) with a few stops and traffic congestions. Needless to say, Andy and I are exhausted and still in daze after driving for over 900 miles each way.

My parents are also visiting from Malaysia, so I have not been able to blog or create any new dishes. My folks are selecting their menu from the entries on this blog, LOL! Anyway, I sure hope that you folks stay tuned although I’m not sure if I’ll be able to write much this week because we are getting ready to go to Mexico next week. I’ll be happy to answer any questions regarding any of my posts here.

Thanks for coming again!

Andy and I would like to buy more organic produce and enviromentally-friendly products but we have to admit that we feel the pinch everytime we check out at the cash register. At the moment, we are at about 70% organic consumers, but sometimes the pricetags are just horrendous for these organic stuff. 

One would think that if it’s a general consensus that organic is better for ALL OF US, then why aren’t the people who make these stuff helping us out by not causing sticker shock everytime we go grocery shopping? These decisions really gnaw at our conscience, because if we spend the extra money to buy organic, then our wallet feels the pinch. Meanwhile if we don’t buy organic, then subconsciously we think that we are poisoning ourselves. Nonetheless, to make it easy on ourselves these days we subscribe to the THINK GLOBAL, BUY LOCAL motto to support another important cause, i.e. to reduce our carbon footprints

To illustrate our point, here are two articles that I’d like to share. Much has been written about this on the WWW also.

Sticker Shock in the Organic Aisles

Eating Better than Organic (thanks to Danielle of MapleSyrupandPoutine for sharing this with me)

What about you? How do you deal with this issue (if it is an issue for you)?

With this being a vegetarian food blog, I ought to share this with my readers.

“Your beef patty is actually worse on the environment then your neighbours SUV. According to a 2006 United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization report, almost 18% of the earth’s greenhouse gas emissions comes from the international meat industry.

The main reason? Poop. Dirty, nasty poop. And farts. Cow farts, that is. Nitrous Oxide is released from a cow’s poop while methane is released with its flatulence. Methane has 23 times the effect on the environment that carbon has, while nitrous oxide is 296 times greater. Yikes!

As of 2001 (yes i know thats 7 years ago) the cattle, sheep and goat population was 3.3 billion and the numbers were rising fast.

According to researchers at the University of Chicago, by simply becoming a vegetarian or vegan, you could dramatically reduce your carbon footprint by almost one and a half tonnes.

According to Canwest News Service “a meat-based diet requires seven times more land than a plant-based diet. Livestock production is responsible for more climate change gasses than all the motor vehicles in the world.”

Source

I’m writing this real quick to announce that the local cooking club that I’m a part of has been featured here. Enlarge the pictures on the left of the article to see a small picture of me I’ve included the picture here on this post as well. I’ll pick up a copy of the local paper tomorrow so that I have a hard copy for remembrance.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting for my Hummingbird Cake for my last cake deco class to be done in the oven…

Andy and I used to have a set circuit established to get our week’s worth of food on every Saturday morning when we lived on the State side. Since moving to Windsor, we have yet to find the replacement for that Saturday morning ritual… that is until yesterday. We do not really fancy the big grocery chain stores, so we had decided to check out a farmer’s market near us. After all, we always see a full parking lot whenever we drive by.

As soon as we entered the Joseph’s Farm Market located on Tecumseh Rd. West and California Ave., I was esctatic. Mountains of fresh produce and fresh bread from local bakeries greeted us. I checked the price signs and I was nodding my head incessantly. Believe it or not, it had been a challenge to find good looking fresh okra in this town without paying over $2 a pound. Okras here were fresh, firm and cheap at 99 cents a pound. White mushrooms were abundant and they were the same HUGE ones that we used to get from Joe Randazzo’s Farm Market in Warren/Dearborn. There were also plenty of fresh ginger root to pick from.

Parking at Joseph’s was a bit challenging. There weren’t many spots available for the amount of cars that were trying to get in. Now we know why people flock here. As we delight on the fact that we have found a close replacement for Joe Randazzo’s, we gingerly squeezed our way through determined patrons who obviously knew what they wanted to get from this place. We looked like indecisive, lost Chinese kids who are separated from their parents.

After about 30 minutes of shopping in merry-go-round fashion, we left this place with 2 stuffed bags of groceries for only $24 plus. They do not have paper bags, so we were glad that we had brought our own shopping bags. Meanwhile, the line of cars to get into this place was overflowing to the main street.

As spring is around the corner, I had wanted to start planting some flowers and herbs. Josephs’s did not sell any so I had Andy bring me to a place that was supposed to be near Windsor Crossings Outlet Mall. That place does not seem to exist and an attempt to find out from a nearby convenience store was unfruitful.

We stopped at Fred’s Farm Fresh Fruits and Vegetables on Huron Church Line on the way home. I was delighted to see that they sell fresh flowers and potted plants. The fruits, vegetables and flowers were neatly arranged in the store. This place reminded me of Westborn Market in Michigan. While the items were fresh and clean, they were a tad pricier than Joseph’s. They do have more variety than in comparison, but I will keep this place in mind if I needed something that Joseph’s didn’t have.

We strolled into their greenhouse annex and didn’t find many plants for sale. But they did have potted herbs for sale, along with mini pots of basil. This is too easy, I thought. I was going to plant several types of herbs from scratch but since the work has been done for me, I thought “why not”. For $9.99 the herb plants are grown in a ready for use. I think the basil plant was $1.99, not sure though. I also bought some cut alstromeria flowers for my praying altar. They are so showy, I love it!

Although we have been to Windsor’s Market Square, we found it to be quite far from where we live. We still miss going to Detroit’s Eastern Market. We have yet to find anywhere in Windsor that come close to what Eastern Market has to offer. Perhaps when summer rolls around, we will check out downtown Windsor’s farmer’s market. Apparently it is right downtown and it is in the parking garage. It could be as much fun as going to Eastern Market with it’s open-air concept and local delis within it’s vicinity. We shall see

 I learned about this sweet giveaway from Daphne’s blog. As a novice baker and cake decorator, I would love to stock up with items from William-Sonoma. I love going to that store but had to walk out empty handed most of the time. Andy loves that store for all the yummy samples that they cook for the patrons.

With that said, all I have to do is mention the giveaway on my blog and post a comment about my posting on that blog. Me hopes to win