Food on the table #3 - Argh Billy - you ever taste High Liner Fish · Sunday June 8, 2008 by colin newell
With the price of fuel spiraling like lead-shot at a Dick Cheney hunting party, only the most oblivious among us have not figured out the impact this is having on food distribution.
Food riots.
It is amazing what people will do when they or their children are hungry.
Get used to hearing about it.
I heard something in passing about Canadian food legend, Captain High Liner.
They sell fish sticks… but that is not all.
Quite a few of their products are processed in China… flown all the way to China for filleting and then back to you… to feed you better.
Let’s here it from them directly: Link
WHY DO SO MANY HIGH LINER PRODUCTS SAY “PRODUCT OF CHINA” – WHY DOES SO MUCH HIGH LINER FISH COME FROM CHINA?
Very few of our products actually come from China. In fact, only 2 (Tilapia and Shrimp) out of 13 major seafood products sold by High Liner are from that country. All High Liner wild fish are caught in international waters where they are frozen within hours of being caught. The fish is shipped to China, where it is filleted (cut) and packaged. For filleting, the frozen fish are slightly “tempered” to allow the fish to be cut.
WHY ARE THE FISH NOT CAUGHT AND FILLETED IN CANADA?
- Chinese processors have built state-of-the-art processing facilities to meet the growing demand of the global market. This has given them a greater buying power that allows for better-priced seafood.
- High Liner uses China to cut some of our fish as it helps to keep our costs in line. This allows High Liner to provide competitively priced products to our consumers. Research has shown that we all want the highest quality products, yet at the best price possible.
- The majority of Canadian fish and seafood companies use China to process and/or fillet their fish.
Wow. Right. We want cheap fish! Yea.
As aviation fuel becomes liquid gold I am imagining that local fish processors might be getting more work… very soon.
Comment [10]
Food on the table #2 · Tuesday May 20, 2008 by colin newell
Our Monday to Friday morning coffee circle is an enigma.
Imagine one or two tables pushed together at the Finnerty Express (our UVic hang-out) at 10:00AM.
Ironically, I show up with coffee brewed in my lab and healthful treats that I baked in my kitchen. The only redeeming thing is that my posse (entourage and extended coffee family) are a combination of retired and semi-retired faculty and working professional stiffs – that buy stuff in this hallowed campus canteen.
It is a pretty modest affair; mugs of whisker scalding black coffee and Texas sized multi-grain bran muffins share the formica with dentine Necrotizing rice-crispy squares, carrot cake, green tea, lattes and cappuccinos. Each personality at the coffee table is pretty much matched to his beverage (and snack) of choice.
Topics of conversation run the circuit from World conflict, pestilence, plagues, pleasures, local politics and politics abroad.
Todays topic (one of several actually considering the number of times we change direction per minute!) was food portions in Canadian restaurants versus the ones in American restaurants.
Before I transcribe our findings today, let me start with this snippet I picked up this evening via BoingBoing.Nets link to lileks.com as James riffs on Disney World…
Dinner was large. The portions are huge. They might as well put the plate down and say “here’s more than you can possibly eat, and here’s nine potatoes on the side. Would you like another gallon of high fructose corn syrup? Okay, well, don’t forget to leave room for six pies.” There’s something a bit sad about seeing childless adult Disney fans, lanyards spattered with pins, eating slabs of prime rib thick as a Tolstoi novel, the chairs about to splinter from their enormous fundaments. On the other hand, what gives them happiness? Food and Disney. This is the happiest place on earth after all – even though there seems to be a subset of Disney nerds who appear immune to the very thing they’ve come to experience.
Wow. Yea. Wish I could think and write like that.
One of our cafe crewmen recently returned from a motorcycle trip to Washington state – the interior of which (Yakima, Walla Walla, Ellensburg, Wenatchee) appeared to have been sucked into a surreal black hole and spat out by a David Lynch novella — dusty roadhouses where middle aged dance girls sport feather boas, drink tequila fizz, disappearing into back rooms with muscle shirted men – smokes rolled in sleeves James Dean style while men with alarming big white teeth tend bar…
My kind of place.
And the adjacent eatery might as well have been named The Terminal Diner for its artery clogging, indigestion inducing and gastric lavage promoting coterie of all things Too Much Food!
Order the Pork chops? You get 4 6 ounce chops with 2 baked potatoes and enough rice pilaf to feed a family of five.
Dessert? Their 7-layer cake is $4.95 and is a whopping 10 gravity-defying inches high and 3 inches wide.
I would go on… but I have lost my appetite for words.
Point being – Our brothers and sisters to the South eat way too much stuff… and we are quickly falling into their size grande shoes.
Thankfully, there are still a few eateries (fancy and not so…) in Victoria where you can come away feeling somewhat peckish. Oh yea… and if there is anyone out there that can explain the disparity between Canadian and American portions… please dish me up some opinions!
Comment [1]
Red Fish Blue Fish Seafood in Victoria B.C. Canada · Sunday May 18, 2008 by colin newell
Victoria B.C. Canada is ground zero for Fish and Chip shops.
And let me clarify that…
Fish and Chip shops that serve Halibut or Salmon or Cod.
We can dismiss pretty much any place in England because the fish they serve is awful .
Red Fish Blue Fish has an interesting concept: They are Ocean Wise
What is Ocean Wise?
Ocean Wise is a Vancouver Aquarium conservation program, created to help restaurants and their customers make environmentally friendly seafood choices.
The Ocean Wise label on a menu item assures you that item is a good choice for our oceans. British Columbia is known for its fresh, high quality seafood and Red fish Blue Fish is proud to be 100% Ocean Wise when it comes to the seafood they serve.
I used to think that I was Ocean wise living next to an ocean and all…
Maybe now I will just settle on Ocean savvy. Yea. I think that will do.
Check the menu. And then look at the competition over at Barb`s Place Yea. 24$ for 2 Pieces of Halibut and a drink at Barb’s – $17.50 at Red Fish Blue Fish.
That is a car payment! Red Fish Blue Fish is not only affordable – it also offers a killer view of our working harbor (Seaplanes and all…)
Comment [2]
Variations on Alton Brown's Pressure cooker chili · Sunday March 30, 2008 by colin newell
Here is a subtle variation on Alton Brown’s classic which we cook up once every couple of months – it freezes well and makes a super hot hot lunch entree! Recipe easily doubles for a larger group!
Primary variation – Use a stock or stewing pot – Pressure cooker not needed.
1 pounds Sirloin tip or lesser grade of beef (or pork… or Tofu)
2 tablespoons Canola oil
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 bottle of beer, medium pale ale
1 (16-ounce) container hot salsa
30 tortilla chips (really! 30… not 29 or 31!)
1/2 cup chipotle peppers canned in adobo sauce, chopped
1 tablespoon adobo sauce (from the chipotle peppers in adobo)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 medium onions – chopped
1 Yellow pepper chopped
1 Red pepper chopped
1 small Zucchini
1 large Pablano pepper chopped
2 Anaheim peppers chopped
1 chopped Habanero or Scotch bonnet peppers (be VERY, VERY careful with these peppers! There is a real risk of burning or blistering if your skin comes in direct contact with the seeds or chopped pepper flesh.)
OPTION A: 2 medium carrots shredded (adds sweetness!)
OPTION B: Add 1 or 2 tinned drained high quality chick peas and reduce or eliminate the red meat.
Place the meat in a large mixing bowl and toss with the Canola oil and salt. Set aside.
Heat a 4-quart steel pot over high heat until hot. Add the meat in 3 or 4 batches and brown on all sides, approximately 2 minutes per batch. Once each batch is browned, place the meat in a clean large bowl.
Once all of the meat is browned, add the beer to the pot to deglaze the pot.
Scrape the browned bits from the bottom of the pot.
Put in onions, yellow and red peppers, zucchini and carrots (or option of chick peas) to brown for around 5 to 7 minutes.
Add Pablano and Anaheim chopped peppers – cooking an additional 5 minutes
Add the meat back to the pot along with the salsa, tortilla chips, chipotle peppers, adobo sauce, tomato paste, chili powder, and ground cumin and stir to combine. Bring to boil, cover and simmer for 1 hour. Serve immediately with cold beer and more corn chips on the side.
Depending upon how hot your salsa and chilis are will dictate how much of a sweat you will work up – add sour cream to serving for the more delicate among you!
Link to original Alton Brown recipe.
updated August 2014
Colin Newell is a Victoria resident and roaming food and drink freelance journalist – has been writing online since 1994
Comment [4]
Your daily bread #1 - · Tuesday February 26, 2008 by colin newell
I would hazard a guess that if you took a snap-shot of what the average person is thinking about over an average hour of an average day…
Some of those thoughts would include elements of sex, food, work and basic survival.
And although some of us probably do not think about sex or survival every hour of the waking day, I am almost positive that snippets of food pass through our cerebral cortex very, very frequently.
And not just about food in general, but meal planning and food economics.
Hey. Everyone can be a food economist. And if they are not, they should be.
So, it was with this thought that I took the mobile coffeecrew blog roadshow to an Estevan Village Cafe to discuss food economics with someone who knows it way better than the average Joe – Bubby Roses bakery’s own Mark Engels.
I have been thinking about food a lot lately, especially about the increasing cost of staple items, like flour… and no one knows flour like Mark Engels.
Check this out: I probably use 10 pounds of Whole-wheat and Unbleached white flour in my baking adventures every 6 weeks or so.
Mark’s crew at Bubby Roses Bakery use upwards of 80 kg every day or so.
Uhm – that is my weight… give or take a few kilo.
And despite the fact that flour is on a steady up-tick, the prices at Bubby’s remain pretty static – but do not expect that to last… at Bubby’s or anywhere else.
And although I have never really paid much attention to the cost of a loaf of bread, I have started to in the last few months.
For instance, we like a good cheese bread, and at Thrifty’s, in Victoria, the price has jumped from about $3.19 to $4.19 in about 1 year – all the while Safeway’s has stayed pretty steady at $3.69 – not bad considering that there is less than 25 cents worth of flour in any of those loaves.
Naturally, I wonder what has been raising my bread!
So I asked master baker, Mark Engels, “What’s up in the bakery?”
Mark says that there are a wide variety of things going on in food World that most of us are blithely ignorant of – and that’s just the issues surrounding the humble grain supply.
“We are clearing fields of wheat to plant corn for ethanol…” “There is a trend away from the food supply to the fuel supply… and this is a global trend.”
“Factor in global warming, emerging markets, the roller-coaster ride that is coffee, chocolate, oil and yes, wheat on the trading floors of the stock exchange… and you have the recipe for a global food crisis..”
Ah. Thanks Mark. Something more for me to worry about.
I think I will take this moment and think about sex for a while.
Ok, so food issues are a big deal. In this, the beginning of a continuing series of short blogs on the food supply, I will do my level best to dig deep into the minds of the food masters to bring you, the readers, the straight goods… on food economics.
