Thursday, February 17, 2011

Cracker Partners

Here is the newest list if locations throughout Toronto and a few places outside of town, where you can find Evelyn's Crackers:

1. About Cheese, Church St.
2. Healthy Butcher, Queen St West
3. Healthy Butcher, Eglinton Ave.
4. Big Carrot, Danforth Ave
5. Cheese Boutique, Ripley St.
6. Scheffler’s Deli and Cheese at St Lawrence Markek
7. McEwan’s, Don Mills Shopping Center
8. Pusateris, Avenue Rd, Yorkville & Bayview Village
9. Thin Blue Line, Roncesvalles Ave
10. Creemore 100 Mile Store, Creemore, Ontario
11. Urban Harvest on Sarauen St
12. Mabel’s Bakery Roncesvalles Ave
13. Ravine Vineyard & Estate Winery St. David, Ontario
14. Cheese Shoppe On Locke, Hamilton, On
15. Grain Bean and Curd, Dundas St.
16. Leslieville Cheese Market, Queen St East & Queen St West
17. Fiesta Farms on Christy St
18. Whole Foods, Yorkville
19. Village Cheese Monger, Liberty Vliiage
20. Noah’s on Bloor St & Yonge St
21. The Spice Trader on Queen St West
22. Organic Boutique Queen St West
23. Alex Farms Beaches Queen St East
24. Culinariun, Mt Pleasant Ave
25. Provenance Regional Cuisine on Palmerston, Ave
26. LPK’s Culinary Groove, Queen St. Easy
27. Fromagerie on College St.
28. Chabichou Fine Foods on Harbord St.
29. Junction Fromagerie on Dundas West
30. Dags and Willow Collingwood, Ontario
31. The Friendly Butcher Danforth Ave and Yonge Ave
32. Black Dog Village Pub Bayfield, Ontario
33. Art of Cheese on Kingston Rd.
34. Fifth Town Artisan Cheese Co. Picton, Ontario
35. Monforte Dairy Ltd. Stratford, Ontario
36. Ciboulette et Cie Midland, Ontario

A wonderful list of merchants! Thank you for your support and helping us build a local community, one cracker at a time.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Red Fife Graham Cracker, Sinful

As noted in Wikapedia:

"The graham cracker (pronounced /ˈɡræm/ or /ˈɡreɪm/ or /ˈɡreɪ.əm/) was developed in 1829 in Bound Brook, New Jersey, by Presbyterian minister Rev. Sylvester Graham. Though called a cracker, it is sweet rather than salty and so bears some resemblance to a cookie—digestive biscuits are the closest approximation. The true graham cracker is made with graham flour, a combination of fine-ground white flour and coarse-ground wheat bran and germ. Graham crackers are often used for making s'mores and pie crusts.

Graham crackers were originally marketed as "Dr. Graham's Honey Biskets" and were conceived of as a health food as part of the Graham Diet, a regimen to suppress what he considered unhealthy carnal urges, the source of many maladies according to Graham. Reverend Graham would often lecture about the adverse effects of masturbation or "self-abuse" as it was commonly called. One of his many theories was that one could curb one's sexual appetite by eating bland foods. Another man who held this belief was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of the corn flakes cereal.

Many modern "graham crackers" are made of the refined, bleached white flour to which the Rev. Graham was implacably opposed. Some modern commercial graham crackers are no longer considered health food, but have remained popular as a snack food and breakfast cereal with greater amounts of sugar and other sweeteners than in the original recipe, and far less graham flour, often with no whole-wheat flour whatsoever. Cinnamon or chocolate may be added to enhance the flavor of the crackers. Technically, crackers are not really graham crackers unless they are made with graham flour, which is a hard whole-wheat flour in which the constituent bran, germ, and endosperm have been ground separately, the first two coarsely and the third finely. Cinnamon, not considered a true ingredient of graham crackers, was added for those who did not enjoy the bland taste of graham crackers."

Red Fife whole wheat was a natural choice for us to use and we find it has the opposite effect to Graham's original intention. Especially when dipped into melted chocolate and added to toasted marshmallows.

Why Red Fife? Well, this heritage wheat represents traditional methods of farming that involve human elements in its growing and harvesting, almost in artisan ways. These heritage grains naturally go against all methods of modern farming by growing at uneven hights (virtually making large scale harvesting impossible), having the ability to plant seeds from this year's harvest for next year (no need to buy seeds) and because the entire grain is ground where natural proteins and vitamins are present, (which are often added to sifted grain). Not to mention whole milled grains are more perishable therefore ground in smaller batches and as a result are fresher. All great reasons to source heritage grains, even better to find local and organic ones.