It’s Food Day Canada!!! Yeaaaaa…. uh wait. Is this a new holiday? I’ve never even heard of Food Day Canada until this year. Turns out that Aug 2nd is the 13th year this great country of ours is celebrating our farmers, fishers, chefs, researchers and all of you home cooks out there! Canada Food Day is your day to use ONLY Canadian ingredients to create a feast, dinner, dessert, snack or anything healthy to honour our culinary history. (see www.fooddaycanada.ca for more info)
What food is quintessentially Canadian?
Right off the bat maple syrup, poutine and pemeal bacon came to my mind. (How cliché I know, but I really was racking my brain for other ideas.) I took a poll with friends and family and we came up with some other Canadian foods: venison, bison, bannock, pemmican, poutine, butter tarts, beaver tails, Nanaimo bars, Oka cheese, Montreal bagels, and Montreal smoked meat.
I started thinking back to my childhood in South Western Ontario, and the summers I enjoyed in the warm evenings picking fresh fruit from local orchards; strawberries, blueberries, green beans, peaches, cherries, pears, nectarines, and the list goes on. I remember those hot sticky humid days we didn’t need to worry about the hassle of driving to town to the grocery store to pick up food for dinner, because we could always find a road-side fruit and vege stand within a few kilometers of our home where we could pick up zucchini, cucumbers, broccoli, tomatoes, sweet corn, bell peppers, parsley, onions, garlic, spinach, lettuce, apples and other produce for dinner. Sometimes the stands were manned by someone, but many times it was by the honour system where you deposited your money in a lock box. Oh those were the days!!!
Right here is where I would insert a photo of me as a child picking strawberries. Unfortunately my mom couldn’t find the photo in time, soooooooo I guess you just have to use your imagination!
So in keeping with my fond childhood memories of berry picking, I’ve prepared a quick and easy strawberry maple sorbet, made with only 2 Canadian ingredients!
Strawberry Maple Sorbet Recipe
Ingredients:
1 clamshell (454g/16oz) Canadian strawberries
25ml/1oz +1 tbsp Canadian maple syrup
Method:
Hull and rinse strawberries.
Freeze in a bag, be sure to shake bag so they don’t clump together.
Once strawberries are frozen through, set out on counter 5-15 minutes to thaw just a bit. (depending on how large strawberries are)
Put strawberries and Canadian maple syrup in a high powered blender (I use my Vitamix) blend until smooth. Scoop and serve with a drizzle of pure Canadian maple syrup over sorbet.
Serve and Enjoy
So what will you be cooking or baking for Food Day Canada this year? #FDC2014