Aviva Friedman's blog

There’s nothing quite like picking your own farm-fresh food, skimming the rows of growing produce as if you were in a grocery store, looking for the juiciest fruits on the plant. One of the best Greenbelt summer-time activities is a pick-your-own adventure.

I have the sweetest tooth in the world. I'd be okay eating chocolate covered strawberries for the rest of my life.  Fill my plate with jelly beans and I'm in heaven. Load a cupcake with icing and watch me drool. Topping the list of my favourite desserts is cheesecake! It's one of those desserts that seems to separate audiences - more people in my household are opposed to it than are in favour. But my friends and I made cheesecake last week, and this cheesecake was different; this one brought my family together in agreement and brought people back for days on end raving about it. Seriously. It’s life altering, sure to bring you buckets of praise, and it's made with the Greenbelt berries of your choice!

When I was a child, I was unjustifiably jealous of my best friend. When she had a real tamagotchi, I had a “pet”agochi fake. When she had a black lab to play with, I had my older sister. But what made me most jealous was the fruit tree growing in her backyard; she had a cherry tree, and I had a half-rotten apple tree. Her tree stretched up into the sky, lending fruit daily. Mine, bent over towards the ground, had misshapen arms and insect-ridden apples. Summer and cherries go hand in hand – wouldn’t you agree? And though they don’t grow from a tree in my backyard, they grow close enough for me to dig in and stain my lips red this season!

I had a really good childhood pal, who told me I’d travel far one day. He said, “Congratulations, today is your day” when I graduated university last May, promising, ”You’re off to great places! You’re off and away!”  (Yes, my friend is Dr. Seuss). A year later, I’m still in Toronto, and I’m hungrier than ever to check destinations off my travel list. But I’ve found other ways to see the globe - you can travel the world with your taste buds, you know. If you’re lucky enough to live in Southern Ontario, multicultural epicenter of Canada, you’ve tasted the flavors of the world and traveled its oceans and skies in mouthfuls and bites. In fact, you might not know that many varieties of ethno-cultural food crops are growing in our Greenbelt! So whether it’s Callaloo, Okra, or Bok Choy you seek, the world is at the tip of your tongue, right here in Ontario.

Is it a fruit or is it a vegetable? Almost as fiercely debated as the tomato plant, rhubarb has left many people questioning its status as a fruit or veggie, wondering how it can claim a spot in so many sweet desserts if it is in fact a member of the leafy veggie family (fyi: it is!). But politics aside, absolutely nothing goes better with strawberries than rhubarb. When I heard utterances of an early strawberry harvest, I chuckled to myself “Strawberries? In May!? My foot!” But lo and behold, there they were, staring back at me from their little green baskets, begging to be combined with neighbouring stalks of pink rhubarb for a sweet and tart slice of pie heaven. But strawberry rhubarb pie all of a sudden seemed so cliché. The entire twitter-verse made strawberry rhubarb pie last week – it’s the classic rhubarb fallback plan. I once spent a summer with my cousins near Collingwood, picking quarts and quarts of the sweet red berries, which led to a frenzy of baking and resulted in about 10 strawberry rhubarb pies. Now don’t get me wrong – set a strawberry rhubarb pie in front of me and watch it disappear – it’s the perfect combination of sweet and tart, but feeling the heat from the unusual May sun, I opted for a cool, creative, and simple strawberry rhubarb sorbet instead!

I think Pooh was on to something. If I didn’t live in the city, you might find me, too, wandering the forest with my hand dunked into a jar of honey. But since that decadent fantasy reeks of impracticality, I look to other cultures for ideas on how to indulge in the sticky yellow cement. From simply drizzling it into a warm cup of tea, to baking it into traditional treats, this natural sugar alternative and pantry staple is, quite simply put, the bees’ knees. Pooh would have been in heaven in Southern Ontario, where honey paints the Greenbelt gold – using the Greenbeltfresh Fresh Food Finder, I found nearly 35 sources of honey close to home! Is there anything sweeter than that?

Your search is over - Welcome to: Greenbeltfresh Online Marketplace! Hey, all you Greenbelt farmers and producers! I’m Aviva, a 23 year-old food-lover and novice cook living in downtown Toronto, with a passion for heirloom tomatoes and purple carrots. I’m looking for that special someone who can provide me with endless bounties of asparagus and fiddleheads, someone who is not afraid to deliver organic fruits and veggies to my door, and whose Greenbelt-grown potatoes will sweep me off my feet. Got what I’m looking for? Sign up at www.greenbeltfresh.ca and show me what you’re selling!

I hadn’t hit a farmers market in weeks, and all the symptoms of withdrawal were present – a fridge full of limp vegetables, pasty skin, and a painful lack of recipe ideas. Last time I checked, the market was as gloomy as April’s grey skies – crowded still, but most vendors were serving pastries, coffee, and the odd winter vegetable. This past Saturday, I went to scour for asparagus at Toronto’s Green Barn Farmers’ Market. Oh, how the market had transformed! So much green, sprouting from every table, from baskets on the floor and in the aisles; more green than downtown Toronto on St. Patty’s Day. Asparagus I found, yes, but also wild garlic, leeks, lettuce – I could hardly contain my excitement over this bounty, when all of a sudden, something caught my eye. It was strangely familiar yet foreign, a spiral-shaped green object, peeking its head out of a basket on a farmer’s table. I’ve never tasted one, but I’ve seen enough cooking shows to know that these were legendary fiddleheads! A hybrid-like vegetable of broccoli and asparagus, these fern babies are a delicacy; some people love them, others can’t bare the earthy flavours they carry. If you haven't gotten them yet, you better move fast; their growing season is only two weeks long!  

Ontario Asparagus has finally arrived, and the twitter-verse is alive; my feed has been screaming at me all week: “about to enjoy asparagus wrapped in yellow blankets of sunshine”,  “Ontario rhubarb and asparagus are out in full force”; “I picked our first spears of asparagus from the garden yesterday--watch for, and ask for Ontario asparagus--it's ready!!!” Author Barbara Kingsolver writes, “the most difficult requirements of the [local food culture] are patience and a pinch of restraint.” I’d be lying if I told you I hadn’t scurried over to my local farmers’ market every Saturday for the last month, feigning interest in one farmer’s mushrooms and anothers’ beets, secretly hoping to find these crispy green spears. Apparently I’m not the only one; Kingsolver devotes an entire chapter to “waiting for asparagus” in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I mean, it is kind of a miracle, after all. Months of crisp winters and slippery sidewalks, and almost miraculously, green fingertips sprout from the earth, offering up nutritious sustenance to our bellies, a sure sign of spring, and a definitive announcement of summer’s bounty ahead.

I never thought I’d utter the words “environment”, “locally-sourced cupcakes”, and “Colin Firth” in the same sentence. But if you were at the Green Living Show last weekend, you’d know what I’m talking about. The Green Living Show, a celebration of all things “green”, a showcase for celebrity environmentalists, local foodies, and everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-being-eco-friendly products. Lucky for me, perks of the job include eating my fill of locally sourced grub, digging in to the Farm Fresh Fare stalls hosted by Evergreen and Slow Food Toronto to help fund food garden programs at schools across the Greater Toronto Area. The menus, loosely scribbled on chalk boards hung on the wall, had me scrambling with inspired thoughts – “Braised Beretta Short Ribs with Local Navy Beans and Heirloom Carrots” – Now why didn’t I think of making that? So obvious. “Savoury Panna Cotta with Preserved Lemon and Wild Leeks” – Easy-peasy, I could make Panna Cotta with my eyes closed. But I better have a taste...for the sake of the GBFresh blog, of course. “Apple and Almond Tart with Whipped Crème Fraiche” - ...Am I drooling?... I hope no one notices.