jayt90

High and consisitent levels of service? You have to find a clerk with a gold pin, or a Vintages consultant, to get any level of service and knowledge, otherwise they will dust and tidy bottles right in front of you. Pricing? Check the wine ads in the N.Y. Times, or Wine Spectator, and you'll see that LCBO sometimes reaches the mark, but is usually more expensive. And not a lot of knowledgeable selection compared to Morrell, Astor Place, or Sherry Lehmann. Community involvement? Some very expensive auctions and wine parties, As far as I can see. Yes, they do monitor the drunks among us, and post their ousting statistics proudly. These are easy marks to refuse service to, and many are without any other pleasure in life, other than the same tranquility you and I might look for under a screw cap. I can do without the superior, strong-arming I have seen in some LCBO's when some customers are treated less equally. And then there is 'Food and Drink'. It has kept legitimate food and wine magazines far in the background. 'Wine Access' is struggling, and has to compete with a free handout with dozens of ads from alcohol distributors and agents who know they are servicing their LCBO accounts by buying full page ads. Remember the proposed wine and food mag. from Steve Paige, about 1.5 years ago? Never got off the ground! The decision is not over yet and some good may come from the panel. But I am glad to see your complacency with Sorbara and the government; this is definitely what they are looking for.

Using vinegar, lemon juice, or lime juice in the poaching liquid might be too harsh if you make a sauce for Mom. I would stick with a half bottle of low acid wine, perhaps chardonnay. Your poaching technique is excellent, but I would finish with a bechamel sauce, using poach-stock, and milk or light cream. Light enough for a bland diet.

Yes, your time frame is about right. The early hybrids were from the 60's, but the seed was monopolized by the canners, Green Giant, Birds Eye, Del Monte etc. Even the farmers couldn't save the seeds, because the next-year generation would not grow the same-taste kernels, and because the canner would not deal with them if they stole seed (Monsanto is still playing this game!). At that time Golden Bantam was still the best seed for home growers, and it would grow true to form from year to year because it was not a hybrid. I think the silver or white varieties came from the southern U.S. in the 70's. By 1980, seed companies such as Stokes had a variety of sweet, early hybrids, the precursors to Peaches and Cream. These became ever sweeter over the recent years, with a much longer shelf life off the stalk. I still wish the old varieties were around, to have a gold standard for comparison.

My favorite canned tomato soup is Heinz, now that Campbell's is so gelatinous. I heat it up 1:1 with water, and add a dollop of cream to each bowl, along with a sprinkling of basil or dill.

i miss good old silver queen, which it seems hardly anyone is growing anymore, growing that super sweet variety they came out with about five years ago. and more than that i miss gold old yellow corn. that butter/sugar stuff they have early in the season each year is about as close as i can find for the most part. ← I remember being served large white ears at Stonehenge, Albert Stockli's restaurant in Conn. It was superb. They had multiple deliveries every day, to ensure the best flavour. I never saw these ears again. There is a variety of yellow corn that was popular for almost 100 years, Golden Bantam. It was not able to be hybridized or 'improved', but it was a real treat if you could get it from back yard to table in 20 minutes!. It tended to get over-ripe, and starchy if left too long, and was soon replaced by the sweeter hybrids. When I retire I'll defintely grow a patch...

Has anyone come across heirloom corn for sale? It would have to be very fresh, but should have a good balance of flavour, starch, and sweetness. A lot of the current hybrids sold are too sweet for my taste.

While canned clams have been mentioned, I have not had a good chowder made with the watery, stringy clams canned in Thailand. Instead, I use a fairly pricey Arctic clam canned in Nova Scotia. The broth is wonderful, and the clambits are meaty, red tipped chunks. Tons of flavour. I found a similar clam meat, frozen, in my Korean store, but the red tips were very tough, so I'm staying with the canned product.

Pho is very big on the menu in the central-west Toronto Vietnamese restaurants (Spadina, west to Dufferin streets). While I haven't had lengthy conversations with the staffmembers, or locals, because of language barriers, I gather that many of them, perhaps a majority, came from Saigon as boat people. Many have fascinating stories to tell, but the most remarkable of all is that of Kim Phu Ti, the little girl who ran naked from a burning village, and now lives east of Toronto.

Don't know about GTA, Malcom, but small pickling cukes should be available in Mennonite markets, all over SW Ont., and the next few weeks will be prime harvest time. My sister in law, from a family of 16, growing up in St. Jacobs, makes a few dozen jars every year, and sells from the London market. Like her parents, she gets the kids to do the picking, as it is tedious and has to be done every day to keep the little cukes from growing bigger. The Mennonites also grow miniature corn for preserving, and if you can find it, it is a fresher, sweeter product than the jars from the far east.

I love these phatuous snides, totally out of nowhere!

I have been able to get high alcoholic content beers, usually in cans, in Ontario, ever since Crest (10%) arrived two or three years ago from the U.K. It was joined by Faxe (8.4 to 10%) and others from the Netherlands , Alsace, and Ontario. A couple actually taste quite good: Faxe 8.4 and Bavaria 8.6. Does anyone have experience with these? Like them? How are they made? How can a content of 10% be achieved? Just wondering...

The U.S.D.A. announced yesterday that 29 offspring or relatives of the mad cow, in Texas, were slaughtered as a precaution, and the feed suppliers of these animals, plus the original cow, were being examined. The item, on CBC-1 radio, also noted that the mad cow was 12 years old. This is quite old for a beef cow, from Texas, so it may have been used as a breeder. In a related news item, the Globe and Mail reports toady that New Zealand is set to allow imports of Canadian beef, formerly banned because of BSE. It is the 15th nation to re-accept Canadian beef. I wonder who the other 14 are, and what countries are restricting U.S. beef (I have heard that Japan, Korea, Singapore and Malaysia are in that group.)

The list of Classified Wines of Bordeaux was drawn up in 1855, before phylloxera, and based on selling price. And we are still using it. The first great growth wines were the ones that fetched the best prices, and only recently have a few others, like Le Pin or Mouton, elbowed their way in because of merit. I have noticed a steady increase in prices of almost all wine, greater than inflation, but geared more to middle class buying power in the U.S., since the introduction of the Boeing 747. With easy travel, and shipping, from one continent to another, it was only a matter of time before good wines became pricier. Although there may be a lot of new vineyards coming along, as in Australia, or Eastern Europe and the mid-east, there is an established pecking order, and high prices will prevail unless there is a major world wide decline in demand.

I'll re-visit Penrose this weekend as I haven't been there in years. The best thing I remember was not the (frozen) halibut and chips wrapped in Toronto Star classifieds, but the plain white bread and butter served by the nice elderly English lady.

Thanks, Jake; it is easier for me to get to seafood places like City Fish, Diana's, or T&T (now that I know about it, L.C.,) or Toro's, or Glen Watford etc., than to contemplate downtown traffic, and parking in Chinatown or East Chinatown.

Brad, what is the effect of humidity in a cellar? I can understand the other factors, but I don't know how humid, moderate, or dry air would get through the cork differently. Also, as we enter a screw cap era, the amount of aeration permitted during vat, barrel, and bottling stages would seem to take on a greater role, not to mention air or gas allowed into the neck when the cap is fixed.

Mussels are essentially a commodity now, especially the farmed product from P.E.I. Is there something special about Bill's? Like possibly a reliable, fresh wild mussel?

And the gold standard is Penrose? All of the B.C. places metioned above have access to fresh halibut, while the vast majority of Toronto fish and chips shops including Penrose, resort to frozen halibut. Maybe we are talking about apples and oranges here.

1963 was a bad year all over Europe, except for vintage Port. At that time no Burgundian would use anything other than cork; even now they are very conservative about changing tradition. I would expect the '63 to be dead, but if the screw-capped version was alive and well, you would have to suspect the bottling and label. From your post, it appears that you didn't actually see the bottles, but depended on a report from a trade rep., who may have had a sales motive in mind.

The beef has not been smuggled, that is such a strong wording, so that Cargill et al can save a few dollars. It is blocked at the border, which is a free trade area (FTA) because a judge in Montana wanted to hear the U.S. ranchers' reasons for keeping Canadian beef out. The U.S. government wants Canadian beef to re-enter, so that packing plants can work productively, and also to demonstrate to offshore importers, such as Japan, that U.S. and Canadian beef undergo similar testing. The Montana case will continue, in mid July, but the ranchers who brought it can no longer say that U.S. beef is pure, and free from BSE, and the plants should be protected from the Canadian product. If the judge has heard the current news, he or she can raise the issue. The U.S. animal with BSE came from Texas, the heartland of American beef. The three earlier cases from Canada, or Canadian animals shipped to the U.S., were all traced back to feed supplied using animal parts from a single rendering plant, several years ago, in Alberta. There was a suppressed case of BSE in a dairy cow in New England a few months ago. The experience in the U.K. suggests that dairy herds are more likely to get BSE than beef herds. When the U.S. court cases to keep Can. beef out resume, I'll have more to report.

I have learned to like Australian Screw Cap wine, and some fom New Zealand, mostly white, and mostly Riesling. But will it age, and get that petrol scent? Are these caps any good for red wines worthy of aging? Is there anything in the neck other than compressed air? What can we expect, over time?

There are some excellent fish easily available in Canada and not in the U.S. (except possibly Alaska): Arctic Char, and Greyling. And there are superb small shrimp from Newfoundland, and great but larger shrimp from Vancouver Island (most go to Japan) without that musty farmed taste. Then theris Buckwheat Honey; is that still sold in the U.S.?

The whole thing smells. Badly. I think we have to thank Consumers' Union for pressing U.S.D.A. to complete their tests. Intially, U.S.D.A. said the testing was experimental, and not reportable. Finally, the U.S.D.A. secretary admitted that early reporting would have been beneficial.

I guess I'm not up on high tech knives. Sounds not much better than serrated!