Four
187 Bay Street, Commerce Court South, concourse level
416-368-1444

Fine dining and healthy eating have never exactly gone together. Luxurious sauces, marbled steaks and decadent desserts are a far cry from the salads without dressing and those awful “diet plates” of cottage cheese and melba toast that we tend to think of as low calorie meals. And pious health food restaurants serve up hefty portions of morality but the food at those places has never been known for being especially tasty.

Four aims to change that.

Continue reading Four Scores With Delicious, Healthy Dishes »

David Farnell and Lulu Cohen-Farnell have outgrown their 9,000 square-foot kitchen. They need to double it. The reason is that, despite having just two children of their own, they cook for nearly 3,500 kids. Each day. From scratch.

Their business, catching the interest of many schools and even Queen’s Park, is called Real Food for Real Kids (RFRK). In 75 daycares across the GTA, the couple is instilling nutrition in the bodies and minds of youngsters. The target is to eliminate processed, nutrient-poor foods that typically populate kid’s menus and cafeterias.

Continue reading Watching Chicken Nuggets Disappear »

In our fast-paced urban lifestyle, sometimes the comfort of a home-cooked meal seems like a luxury of the past. Much of what we’re putting in our mouths, as we rush from work to gym to home, fails to match the quality, both in terms of taste and of health, of a home-cooked meal.

Enter the personal chef.

For the young urban professional, the new mom, the busy family - for you, and me - they are the perfect solution. Every personal chef runs his or her business differently, but the principle remains the same: they cook, their clients eat. With a focus on healthy and tasty meals for clients with diet restrictions, Monique Taylor of LemonTree Chef Services is one such personal chef, offering a one-on-one, custom-made, homemade food solution for busy singles, families and couples in Toronto.

Continue reading A Labour of Love »

Although I try to eat a mostly seasonal diet, I’ve got to admit that in the dark months of January and February, I start craving fruit. Not just apples and pears, but bright juicy summer fruits like berries. At least once every winter I break down and come home from the grocery store with a bag of cherries, just because I really, really need them, even if they’re nowhere as good as the local cherries we get in the summertime.

Given that this week is the first National Eat Red Week (February 4th - February 10th), I don’t feel so bad about indulging in some cherries. Particularly since local tart cherries are available both dried and in juice concentrate form year round – Ontario is the sole producing province of commercially-grown tart cherries, most of which are the Montmorency variety, and over the past five years, the average annual crop has been an average of 10 million pounds.

Continue reading Life’s a Bowl of Cherries »

Specialty Food Shop
Main Floor, The Hospital for Sick Children
555 University Avenue

The main foyer of The Hospital for Sick Children is awash in colour and breathes open air. Staring up and around at its tall structure, visible elevators, and larger-than-life toys, it seems meant to inspire a little awe and a little hope. The room looks anything but a hospital, but instead a place of magic from the viewpoint of a sick child.

Down the hall sits the Specialty Food Shop, whose decoration is not so inspired as the foyer’s. But it isn’t the paint job or lighting that draws customers; instead the items on the shelves. This year marks the 25th birthday for the Specialty Food Shop (SFS), providing specialized foods and health advice for children and adults who are forced to watch what they eat.

For many people, eating is less a pleasure and more a challenge.

Continue reading Where You Watch What You Eat »

Toronto’s Julie Daniluk wants to be “the Oprah Winfrey of nutrition.” While she does not necessarily aspire to become of the world’s wealthiest women, she does want to be able to access the masses as effectively to inject her wealth of nutritional knowledge. If anybody can achieve this ambitious feat, it is Daniluk.

This Registered Holistic Nutritionist, Cooking Instructor, Author, Photographer, and PR Rep and Co-Operative Co-Owner of The Big Carrot Natural Food Market believes that “to eat well is to have emotional balance, greater self-esteem, and feel connected to the universe.”

In a world where it seems as if there is a distinct separation between what the general populous perceives as delicious food versus nutritious food, Daniluk wants to show the skeptics that this lifestyle shift can be joyful. Continue reading Healing Talk with Julie Daniluk »

We arrived at the Canadian Health Food Association’s Expo East shortly after 9am with the assumption that we’d breeze through the trade show in a couple of hours. Even when we hit the floor and realized just how many exhibitors there were, we were still optimistic. Four hours later, we stumbled from the Toronto Convention Centre, laden down with bags of brochures, samples and assorted giveaway items. We had wondered why so many people were showing up with empty rolling suitcases - it was to carry home their swag. And we only looked at the food – fully a third of the exhibitors were there promoting either various forms of protein powders and energy bars or other health food items such as cosmetics.

Continue reading Here’s To Your Health »

It’s no secret that a glass or two of red wine delivers health benefits. But, as a study late last year reported, not all are equal. Some reduce your risk of heart disease to a far greater degree than do others. According to the researchers, it comes down to a powerful natural chemical and they now know which wines have the most.

As it turns out, specific Old World varietals in southwest France and in Sardinia may be the most heart-healthy red wines on Earth. A quick search of the LCBO product list shows that you don’t have to fly across the ocean to get them. Anyone interested in drinking wine for its cardiovascular benefits may be interested in the exceptional details of this study.

Continue reading Finding the Right Red Wines For Your Heart »

FoodShare’s Good Food Box is a box of produce available by special order to the general public. The boxes come in a variety of sizes with options ranging from a small box for $12 to a large box of organically grown produce for $32. These are very affordable prices for delicious fruits and vegetables, which may include a box of Clementines or a bag of freshly harvested tomatoes.

According to Zahra Parvinian, Good Food Box and Produce Manager, prices are low because of the relationship the organization has with produce distributors and the free labour involved in the warehouse through volunteers. However, though price may be a major concern from a consumer standpoint, Zahra is quick to point out that the price is not the point; nutrition, knowledge and quality are. “Education and empowerment is in everything we do,” says Lori Nikkel, communications manager for Food Share.

Continue reading FoodShare’s Good Food Box »

When we started this site some six months ago, we determined that our mandate was to cover anything and everything to do with food in Toronto. It’s easy to fall into the foodie trap of focussing on either cutting-edge and high end places, or hole-in-the-wall spots serving “authentic” cuisine from various cultures and completely ignoring a whole cross-section of stuff in the middle - which just happens to be where most people eat.

I was reminded of this recently when I received a press release inviting me to a tasting at The Pickle Barrel. The restaurant, which opened its first location in 1971 serving corn beef sandwiches and coleslaw, had recently undergone a make-over. The décor in most of the locations has been updated to a sleek and modern new look with cosy booths and tiled pillars. More importantly, the menu has been updated from its humble beginnings of deli meat sandwiches to a more cosmopolitan selection. The old favourites are now complimented by a variety of healthy options created by cookbook author and healthy living expert Rose Reisman. There is even a newly added menu of options that all come in at under 500 calories.

Go ahead and scoff, all you food snobs – the stuff is fantastic.

Continue reading The Pickel Barrel Gets Healthy »

Honey for My Honey
100 Steeles Avenue West
905-881-8298 (store), 705-435-1261 (farm)

“Busy as a bee” is no turn of phrase for a honey maker. It is the fascinating truth.

Alexandre Obnovlennyi, proprietor of Honey for My Honey on the northern edge of Toronto, has 15 million hard-working employees on his farm near Alliston, Ontario.

Each of his worker bees lives just 35 to 40 days, and its work is never done. They take pollen from nearby wildflowers such as linden, buckwheat, and clover. Then they return to the apiaries and produce what is Obnovlennyi’s shining refrain: Real honey.

Continue reading Guiltless Pleasure in a Jar of Honey »

Fresh By Juice For Life

326 Bloor Street West
416-531-2635

894 Queen Street West
416-913-2720

147 Spadina Avenue
416-599-4442

Cost of regular juice: $5 to $7

It can take a while to comb through the menu at Fresh By Juice For Life. It’s easy to lose yourself in the flurry of ingredients assembled before your eyes.

Fresh is an extremely popular vegetarian restaurant with three locations. One reason for that demand is the selection of juices. Many stray into atypical territory. The menu details 41 juices, shakes, smoothies, and “elixirs.” Anyone feeling creative can head off-menu and throw together whatever mix they want, leaving hundreds of possibilities.

Continue reading A Peek at Fresh’s Supplemental Ingredients »

So my blood pressure is a little higher than I would like it. It’s “high normal” when I want it to be “normal normal.” You probably know the drill: cut the salt, check! join a gym, check! actually go to gym and sweat several times a week, check! From the exercise I seem to be losing inches and getting firmer —good things to be sure, but my blood pressure has not budged. Maybe I am just carrying around too much weight, even if it’s more muscle and less fat than it used to be. I decided to try a nutritionist.

Now, I like my doctor, an old guy who listens and has a sense of humour. I respect my doctor, because he seems to know what he is doing. So, at my annual checkup, I get him to refer me to a nutritionist, one who had just started practicing in the medical group he belongs to. It seemed like an auspicious beginning.

What I wanted from a nutritionist was someone who would look at my activity, and say, “Calorie / protein / nutritionally, etcetera, here is what you should be eating on days you work out. On days you don’t work out, eat like this.” I was hoping for someone who would spend some time figuring out about my workouts and what my nutritional needs were on those days, as opposed to the days I was less active. Perhaps there would be some tests that they would run; something medical or physiological or clinical or needful of instruments. I had general expectations, ballpark ideas of how it was going to go down. These expectations were dashed pretty quick upon arrival. After some prelim chit-chat in the hall on the way to her office, she cut to the chase.

Continue reading My Trip to the Nutritionist – Sponsored by the Dairy Industry »

Banjara Indian Cuisine
796 Bloor Street West
416-963-9360
Dinner for two with tax - $25

Just west of Christie Pits Park is a strange building that sort of looks like a strip mall. It has been home to many a sad coffee chain, at one time it looked a lot like a Coffee Time but was cleverly named “Coffee Tip”. So when I heard from a friend that a “really good Indian place opened up there”, I was a bit surprised. I would not say it was the ideal location for any restaurant, let alone the spot for really freakin’ good Indian food!

Banjara Indian Cuisine set up shop at this location a few months ago. It used to be at Yonge and Bloor under the name Mr. Maharajah, which was frequently packed. A Yonge Street Banjara was added to accommodate overflow and after closing for a short while, it moved to Bloor and Christie. The owner is Chef Raj Veerell, who has an extensive list of credentials, from chef at Sassafraz to working with Jamie Kennedy. I trust that Chef Raj knows what he’s doing.

Continue reading Hurrah Banjara! »

Ah, the days are getting longer (yay), the weather is blissfully warmer (yay), and the birds are chirping away (would be nice if they didn’t start at 6am…but still, yay). Spring finally seems to be here.This season is all about the good times: weddings, school break, long walks, and the asparagus harvest. Okay, well, maybe asparagus is not the first thing that comes to mind. For me though, nothing says “end of Winter” like crisp, fresh asparagus.

Come May in Ontario, fruit and veggie purveyors around the province start stocking up on several delicious varieties of local asparagus. For the most part, we find the young and mature green variety and the white variety. There is also an elusive purple variety (which, if you happen to find some, feel free to send my way). Asparagus is a member of the Lily family, one the most tasty I might add, and is a nutritionally dense food, containing folacin, potassium, rutin, and fibre among other things.

Continue reading Stalking Spring »