Fall Love Affairs

Welcome to issue #2.

(Well, this one's gonna be sorta short.  I've got laundry to do and a beautiful autumn day to get out and enjoy!)

Today is my only day off all week, so I've spent since last night just cooking and eating.  Whether I stay in Toronto or St. Catharines, I usually tend to do this: just taste things that I find in the markets.  It's a tour of flavour.

Last week, a significant other and I went to Kensington market (in the area of College & Augusta sts), and bought cheese--so much cheese--some produce, and a gorgeous lamb leg roast.  We just nestled it in a glass baking dish with diced peppers, Gala apples, and shallots, covered in various spices, and it was gooooood.  The greatest thing about the roast?  The perfume that filled the apartment.  Who needs flowers or air freshener?  Give me the smell of roasted meat and veggies any day.

That same afternoon, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Riverdale Farmer's market in Cabbagetown, where I tasted hot pickled beets, pumpkin spice cupcakes, wildflower and ginger honey, all under a bright blue autumn sky.  See, if I'm doing these tasting tours, I'd love for them to be on days like this all the time: temperate, sunny, surrounded by colour.  Things never quite have the same intensity of flavour once you bring them into a sterile environment: look at how you feel under fluorescent supermarket lights or in tasting rooms, vs. an open air market or someone's cozy living room.

One wine can be brought and tasted in ten different locations, and each time it will be a new creature.  This can sometimes be really negative.  The wine you tried and loved at a friend's place is suddenly a quiet, dull character or a big tannic monster.  Why does this happen?  It's something I'd like to explore; the way different processes in the brain can affect flavour and aroma stimuli--but that's another topic for another day.

Food can be transportative.  I roasted up some gorgeous butternut squash (and couldn't stop eating it as I worked with it for soup, ah ha ha ha, save me from myself), some garlic cloves, red and orange peppers, and a sweet potato.  I blended each in the food processor, made chicken stock, combined everything and added some 18% cream and a blend of warm and fragrant spices (cinnamon, white pepper, paprika, coriander, smoked salt, just to name a few).  I'm going to freeze a bit of it.  Whenever I eat it in the next few months, I'll be brought back instantly to this time of year: early fall in a warm soup bowl.

I love how the power of association works, and especially with tasting.  I've been keeping some bottles in my parent's basement cellar for a few years now, and as I open these things, I know that the association will certainly be there.  I also know that as the wine will have evolved in the bottle, so will I have evolved out here in the world.

Cheers.

Melissa