Here's what's cooking around town today...
It's tempting to try to make a few extra bucks selling homemade food, especially if you've got mad skillz, but there are sanitation laws in place for a reason. Even if they're unenforceable, no one wants to eat food made on a counter where a baby's diapers have been changed or where your cat might spend the afternoon. Ick! While it can be tempting to think about starting such a business, please don't. Or at least, if you do, please don't contact us here at TasteTO asking for coverage unless you're legal and above board. [Globe and Mail]
Ah, the Christmas pud... I never got the allure of eating a doorstop after all that other grub, but Elizabeth Baird offers a few traditional recipes that you might be able to find room for. You know... just a little piece. [Toronto Sun]
The edible centrepiece... beats the typical poinsettia or the "I wanna be artsy" vase of Christmas balls on the holiday table. [Toronto Star]
Farmers are fleeing the greenbelt (especially animal farmers) as suburban sprawl moves in. But is large-scale industrial production even a viable option anymore? [Globe and Mail]
Maybe it's like the movie Ratatouille and the rats actually work there? No? Cora's Pizza gets shuttered for a rodent infestation. [Toronto Star]
I'm breaking my "no recipe" rule a lot these days, but this toffee recipe looks pretty interesting and vaguely foolproof. [Mmm-Minji]
Looking back over the past 18 months, Zane contemplates and is thankful for everyone who has supported him. [Caplansky's Delicatessen]
And in Food For Thought - Jamie Oliver: icon of the decade, more 2010 food predictions, and a Santa bento. [Save Your Fork]
I understand your concerns regarding sanitation, but the above rant sounds really crass and paternalistic. If one person wants to buy home-cooked food from another person, so be it. It enriches the entrepreneur and while providing people with wholesome alternatives to conventional fast foods (as if those are any safer to consume). How do you think many small businesses begin? From meagre little start-up ventures like these. I find it puzzling that you'd discourage enthusiasm in deference to laws that actually help corporate giants by making it more difficult for independents to compete against them.
Are you saying we should just get a party tray from Metro and "play it safe"?
Small businesses and meagre little start-ups begin by following the laws and using an industrial rental kitchen if they can't afford their own permanent space. Plenty of local food artisans have started out that way.
As for the "wholesome alternative to conventional fast foods" - since when were we were talking about fast foods? And since when is something made in someone's home necessarily more wholesome? These food sellers do not normally list ingredients or their sources of ingredients for food they're selling to the public - how do you KNOW it's wholesome? Or that they're being truthful in terms of telling the purchaser what's in the item? How do you know they're not cheaping out and using crap margarine in a cake instead of butter? If they're not operating legally in any other way, why would you assume they're being above board in disclosing their ingredients?
Also, please don't take my opposition to this issue as an endorsement of corporate giants. I buy the majority of my food from local farmers and food artisans, but I want to know that it's as safe as possible. Buying from someone who cooks and sells food out of a home kitchen offers absolutely no guarantee of safety, particularly because there is no one there to check on these cooks and hold them to any kind of sanitation standards.
Please stop romanticizing "food cooked in someone's home" as "wholesome and healthy and clean". It might not be.
Cooking from home allows them to use paid-for, familiar facilities to try their hand at catering without taking on excessive debt or renting something expensive. Those laws, while well-intentioned, are excessively meddlesome and overbroad, needlessly burdening eager entrepreneurs and criminalizing honest commerce. You're right, some people may lie about ingredients or neglect to list them. But consumers should be free to figure it out: to support who they trust and dismiss who they don't. This is what I meant by paternalism: the demand for intervening action in an otherwise mutual exchange. I can tell you right now that I probably wouldn't trust half of these home-cooked establishments. But I wouldn't discourage them from avoiding the experiment altogether, as many others might think I'm being too cautious and find no issue with what they're selling. I'm only arguing for their right to exist: a market of vendors trying to make a living. Some people would buy fish sold from the back of a guy’s truck -- I probably wouldn’t, but others would. So let these buyers and sellers find each other.
Small projects like these have the potential to ease poverty and get otherwise creative, resourceful people working for themselves. It promotes initiative and self-reliance. Ultimately, this is what’s offensive about your argument: it can be seen as patronizing the poor. Or worse, keeping them that way. I don’t think this was your intention, but this same perspective, that people can’t be trusted to do business with themselves, can easily translate into frustration and unrealized opportunity for the underprivileged. The inventiveness described in the article is especially necessary when the world economy is fragile and folks are desperate to find new ways of earning money. If my neighbour lost her job and wanted to sell buttertarts in the meantime, I’d be loath to stop her.
I don’t doubt some conditions would be unsanitary and you’re right to caution against that. I think it would be a much better approach to encourage entrepreneurship alongside home sanitation guidelines, instead of denouncing the entire enterprise as scheming or incompetent. In most cases, these are regular people trying to hock a product very similar to something they’d feed their own families. Let consumers scout the risk and make their own decisions. If they have questions, they should ask, and if the answers aren’t satisfactory, they should leave. The whole undertaking is unavoidably personal (a small home instead of a huge factory), so transparency should be that much easier to achieve.
But maybe I’m just being idealistic, I don’t know. I see skillful people trying to serve a need, you see potential for harm and deception. Your perspective is certainly more popular than mine.
Wait... let me get this straight... you're advocating a more lenient health and safety policy on food sold to the public by "the poor" than would be applied across the board to established businesses or small businesses that could afford to rent industrial kitchen space? Just because they can't afford the legal route to starting a food business? So then, it's okay if someone buys food made in a private home and there's dog hair in it, or they get sick because cooking surfaces were not cleaned properly, because at least we're supporting that entrepreneurial spirit, yes?
And you're accusing ME of patronizing the poor? Eesh!
Follow the link I include in the original piece - it includes links and info about small business incubators and places to rent industrial kitchen space at reasonable prices. I'm sorry, but if you can't afford to start a business legally, especially one that could kill someone if you do it incorrectly, then you shouldn't be in business.
I am a real estate agent. A number of years ago I was showing a house in Toronto. The house was an absolute pig-pen. Messy, dirty, cluttered. There were three cats roaming around and cat hair everywhere. It turned out the owner made a living selling chocolates she made in that mess. I told the listing agent I felt sorry for anybody who bought her chocolates from that filthy mess. I will never forget it. Double yuck.i Buyer beware!