Saving Graze magazine

The season of stone fruit

Locavore’s Toronto

Regenerative agriculture

The mighty microbiome

SAVING GRAZE

ISSUE #1

JEANINE DELAY Editor in Chief / Creative Director

DAVID

LAWRENCE Writer / Copy editor

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FROM THE EDITOR

Welcome to this first edition of Saving Graze, a magazine dedicated to those who care deeply about the food the eat, where it comes from, how it is produced, animal welfare, and environmental sustainability.

Like me, most if not all of you are following one of the new—and at the same time ancestral—diets, be it in the Weston Price tradition, or following our paleolithic ancestors, or a version thereof. Or perhaps your beliefs led you to eat a strictly vegetarian or vegan diet. Despite differences between these ways of eating, there is a central theme to all of them: our wish to respect our bodies and our planet instead of following the dictates of the corporate world of food.

In this edition, our first of hopefully many, we spend time checking out the latest veggies and give you ideas of what to do with them. We hope these will inspire you to fully enjoy summer’s bounty.

We also dig deeper (or not dig, as is the case) into regenerative agriculture. Many farmers have been following its practices simply in an effort to protect and nourish the soil, only to discover more recently that their pursuit is crucial to our fight against climate change. And, in the process, we also debate whether meat is sustainable and if a vegan diet is better for the environment as many contend.

Finally, we go for an exploratory trip to Toronto. If your diet is strict, as mine is, you know how hard it is to find where to go when visiting a new location. We don’t want you to go hungry! So, each issue will feature a new place to explore and where you can dine, stay or spend your time.

We hope you enjoy this first issue. Please send us comments or suggestions. We look forward to hearing your thoughts.

To health!

food

The season of stone fruit

Words: Emily Connor is a writer and journalist with Edible DC Photography: Jennifer Chase is a freelance photographer

My mind races at the first sight of stone fruit at my farmers market. Apricots, nectarines, peaches, plums— they represent the peak of summer and, for a recipe developer, endless possibilities. Each weekend, I leave the market laden with as much fruit as I can carry, and then hurry back the next weekend to stock up anew.

There are so many delicious, unexpected ways to enjoy stone fruit all season long—from peaches piled high in big, wooden crates week after week to the ephemeral season for apricots and plums. And what’s better than eating a fresh peach or plum out of hand, letting the sticky-sweet juices drip down your chin? Well, obviously nothing. However, I’m here to tell you that stone

fruits are most exciting when brought to the plate. Each summer is an adventure for me; I can’t wait to explore market-fresh stone fruit’s potential in simple dishes that emphasize both its range and depth.

In the following pages are several of my favorite recipes for showcasing stone fruit and other summer bounty. As these recipes show, the orchard’s juicy orbs are equally suited for getting charred and deeply caramelized over an open flame as they are for slicing and piling atop a rich, creamy pannacotta. They’re equally at home in a spunky, no-cook, Thai-inspired salad as they are when baked inside a flaky, almond galette served warm at your next backyard barbecue.

Nectarines, cherries, apricots, peaches, plums, otherwise known as “stone fruits” because of their large hard seeds (relative to overall size). But whatever you want to call them, they are delicious, nutritious and beautifully versatile!

Apricot-cucumber Thai salad

This savory, spicy, sweet Thai-inspired salad checks all of the flavor and texture boxes. It’s great on its own or as a side to grilled meat or fish. For a different but no less delicious take, chop all of the ingredients and serve salsa-style.

Serves 2 to 4

• 3 apricots, thinly sliced

• 4 cucumbers, sliced

• 1 red chili, diced

• 3 tbsp chopped peanuts

• Handful of fresh mint and cilantro, roughly chopped

Fish sauce vinaigrette

• 2 tbsp fish sauce

• 1 tbsp light brown sugar

• Finely grated lime zest

• 1 tbsp lime juice

To make the fish sauce vinaigrette, combine all ingredients in a jar with a tight-fitting lid. Shake until the sugar is dissolved. Adjust acidity to taste.

In a bowl, combine apricots, cucumbers, chili and fish-sauce vinaigrette. Marinate for 10 to 20 minutes. When ready to serve, add the peanuts and herbs.

Serve the salad on a large platter or individual plates, using a slotted spoon to drain off the vinaigrette.

A pinch of salt

Words: Rachel Hart is a writer with Nourish magazine in New Zealand

Photography: Quang Vinh Vietnam native with a passion for photography

Food varies the world over but one constant is salt, an ingredient cherished for its extraordinary ability to add flavor to a dish. One of the five basic tastes, salt’s use as a preservative was historically so important that it was a form of currency. But it is its ability to bring out the best in other ingredients that makes it a star in all cuisines.

In small amounts, salt reduces bitterness and enhances sweetness, which is why a pinch goes a long way in a batch of cookies. In larger doses, salt heightens umami—the “meaty” flavor, giving savory dishes a serious boost. The fact that well-salted food is delicious is no coincidence—our brains are hard-wired to crave salt for our species’ survival.

Salt is a mineral comprised mainly of sodium chloride, and this presence of sodium is what makes it so valuable; it is essential to our body’s fluid and electrolyte balance and nerve impulses.

There are two main types of salt: rock salt and sea salt. Rock salt is mined from the earth, often in dried up ancient sea beds, while sea salt is harvested directly from various oceans and seas around the world. We are probably most familiar with table salt, a traditional staple in many kitchens. Table salt is a form of rock salt that has been processed to remove impurities and trace minerals. It is cheap and accessible, and often fortified with iodine to safeguard against an iodine deficiency.

The whole foods movement of recent years is directing people away from table salt and towards more natural alternatives like Himalayan rock salt and various sea salts. Coming in brilliant pink hues and mined in the foothills of Pakistan’s Salt Range, unprocessed and

hand-extracted Himalayan rock salt is coveted for its high mineral content and delicate flavor. Rivaling its popularity are a variety of sea salts found around the globe including Maldon sea salt in the UK, French gray seasalt and Persian blue diamond salt.

Like Himalayan salt, sea salts provide the naturally-occurring trace minerals found at each location, offering nutritional benefits, different flavor profiles and the element of beauty with their vibrant colors and textures.

Like most things, we can have too much of a good thing and salt is no exception. Excessive dietary intake of sodium contributes to a host of health conditions like high blood pressure, heart disease and kidney stones. But before you lock up the pantry, know that the bigger culprit to over-indulging is processed foods.

An unholy amount of salt is necessary to both flavor and extend the shelf life of packaged foods. You’d be hardpressed to add a fraction of these amounts to homemade food, no matter how heavy-handed you are with the shaker. For those trying to limit their salt consumption, cutting down processed foods is absolutely essential.

Whether you opt for rock or sea salt, it’s best to enjoy salt in moderation, letting it do what it does best: reveal the flavor potential of other ingredients in a dish.

travel

Locavore’s Toronto

As of late the term locavore has gone from revolutionary to a lark of the privileged, yet the movement—eating from harvests no more than 100 miles away—is still gaining converts. Toronto has embraced the trend with particular fervor. In a city where winters begin early and end late, every day a new, or nearly new, local organic farmers’ market can be found in neighborhood parks.

“Up until a few years ago we had hardly any markets in the city, but it has really exploded,” said John RichLeMonde, the director of Sorauren Park Farmers’ Market (westendfood.coop), a year-round operation that opened four years ago. During a visit this spring,

Words: Sarah Wildman is a freelance travel writer

dozens of children toddled about the market, dancing to the tunes of Jan Kudelka, a folk singer. Janet Dimond, owner of the stand Augie’s Gourmet Ice Pops (augiesicepops.com) briskly sold fresh icy confections (watermelon infused with cucumber and ginger, strawberry mingled with rhubarb) for $2.75 and bowls of asparagus, lemon and chickpea soup for $3. “On a day like this,” Ms. Dimond said, indicating the brilliant sunshine, “this is where everyone comes.” Alli Millar, who lives down the block, sold loaves of spring onion and wild wheat bread, and sticky buns for $3. Two women sold vegetarian spring rolls, freshly rolled, under a banner labeled Earth and City (earthandcity.ca), and Bizjak

Photography: Courtesy of the City of Toronto

Farms sold its cider and apples, picked just a few miles away in Niagara, Ontario (bizjakfarms.com).

RichLeMonde credits one market with inspiring others to open in Toronto: Dufferin Grove Market (dufferinpark. ca). In a park that was once a postage stamp of green in a rough neighborhood, some say the market’s success has greatly improved the area since its arrival a decade ago. Dufferin Grove is a tremendous draw: on Friday nights, large communal dinners are cooked on site. The park

has two giant outdoor wood-fired ovens where bread is baked and sold. It is also the site of a free ice skating rink.

Not all the markets are based in parks. “There are about 12 neighborhood markets in the Toronto Farmers’ Market Network but over 30 markets in the city, some in civic centers, some in parking lots,” said Anne Freeman, coordinator for the 90 markets in parks around Toronto. One of them is the Stop’s Farmers’ Market (thestop. org), which is held on Saturday mornings in a former

streetcar barn. Now the barns are used for artists’ studios and the market.

The oldest market in the city, the St. Lawrence Farmers’ Market (see next page), is also held on Saturdays across a small plaza from the storied food stalls of the same name (the main hall is filled with permanent food vendors and restaurants). There, farmers line one side, peddling piles of asparagus for $1, and bakers sell pretzels, pies and

breads. Andy Rattray’s “Sabores Latinos” offers antibiotic- and hormone-free beef empanadas and black bean spicy quesadillas. At the next stall, Moyer Rowe Family farms (rowefarms.ca) lets visitors taste freshly milled red fife wheat pasta and sauce, harvested and milled just outside of Toronto.“People are interested in buying more locally, and that’s starting to become mainstream,” said Mr. RichLeMonde of the Sorauren Park market. “There’s a sense that we are building the future.”

KUMPFERT & KIM, THE SIMPLE KITCHEN, FRESH (SMOOTHIE BOWL)

Paleo, vegan & gluten-free in Toronto

Words: Stefanie Forster and Lindsay Hartzman, writers for Fitt.co

Despite its popularity, properly prepared gluten-free food is still sometimes hard to come by. But whether you’re celiac, sensitive or just health-conscious, there’s more than a few special places that are conjuring up quality gluten-free options without compromising flavor or quality.

FRESH

This popular casual vegan chain has been serving plantbased dishes, smoothies and cocktails since 1999. Fresh offers a full line of raw, organic cold pressed juices, and craft cocktails made with local artisanal ingredients. All their food is prepared daily, in-house, and from scratch with 100% plant-based ingredients. At Fresh, there is something on the menu to satisfy every palate whether eating in or out.

KUPFERT & KIM

Kupfert & Kim prides itself on being “Wheatless and Meatless” with a huge menu of plant-based, minimally-processed food that’s consistently delicious. All their items are gluten-free and vegan, and you can find a variety of healthy food options as well as cafe fare. With many locations around Toronto, grabbing a Cauliflower Tahini Bowl, a Vanilla Cacao smoothie, or a cashew-milk capuccino on the go is super easy.

THE BEET

The Beet is one of the most eco-friendly and health-conscious venues in the city. They support local and certified fair-trade food, use eco-friendly packaging and have furnished their restaurants with reclaimed materials. Food is primarily gluten-free, and caters both to herbivores and carnivores. Options? You bet. Try the rice and quinoa noodles mac & cheese smothered in real Quebec cheddar or delicious 100% vegan cheese.

REVITASIZE

With locations popping up everywhere from Thornhill to Woodbridge to Yorkville to Parkdale, Revitasize’s seemingly endless selection of health-conscious goodies is all gluten-free, vegan, organic, and seriously scrumptious. Their main passion is to bring you coldpressed, fresh, raw organic juices daily, but they also have a full menu of on the go healthy organic meals to satisfy any palate.

www. thebeet.ca

www. revitasize.ca

More than just “greens”

This summer we are serving a new type of healthier green for both you and the planet.

Words: Alan Beckerman is CEO of iQ Food Inc.

Photography: The New Farm

It started with a panicked phone call: “Alan, I don’t care how much they cost, we have to serve these greens.” That was the call I received from Christine, Partner and Executive Chef at iQ. As we do each season, Christine and I debate for hours about what we will feature. We’ve literally spent hours arguing the merits of a cutting radishes in quarters versus slices, amongst dozens of seemingly inconsequential things. What most people see as minutia, we see as critical. It’s the reason our seasonals are great; every detail is considered.

For the last three summers, we’ve featured lettuce from our friends at The New Farm. Their greens are incredible, arguably the highest quality in Canada. Yes they’re organic. Yes they’re handpicked. But that’s not what makes these greens so special. This year, The New Farm moved to a fully regenerative model. That effectively means that all of the produce grown on their farm is carbon positive and actually pulls carbon from the atmosphere and locks it in the ground.

Prior to this year, I personally had no clue that vegetable farming could have a negative impact on emissions. Yes, I know that cow flatulence is a thing.… but growing lettuce? Apparently so. Every time soil is tilled (you know, when those large tractors flip a bunch of soil so it’s ready to help things grow again), lots of carbon that’s trapped in the ground is released into the atmosphere. This isn’t good.

As virtuous as these greens are, they cost a considerable amount more than conventional lettuce. And while iQ’s always looking to support incredible people doing great things, we also have to be mindful of our own business. Running restaurants is hard. Running profitable ones even harder. And in the wake of rising costs at every pretty much every turn (rising rents, more expensive labor, costly but critical software to help run our company, etc.), it’s becoming more difficult for us to say yes to things that cost more. Why is it that doing the right thing always comes at the expense of profit?

To be honest, I was ready to just say no. But the team persisted. Christine and our purchasing manager Randy insisted that working with The New Farm’s greens is something important that they look forward to all year. And Gil, from The New Farm, contended that they had already bought $10,000 of arugula seeds just for us!

© The New Farm

As an entrepreneur, you learn early that you can’t say yes all the time. But this time was different. We had no idea how we were going to pull it off, but we all looked at each other and collectively decided to make it work.

THE NEW FARM

Located in Creemore, Ontario, The New Farm produces some of the best quality greens in the world. The farm was founded by Gil and Brent, an inspirational couple who literally packed their bags, left the world of big business and bought a farm in an effort to show the world that fruits and vegetables could be grown the right way. Brent wrote a best-selling book about their journey and Gil has given TED talks about the virtues of what they’re doing. A power couple for real.

WHAT’S REGENERATIVE FARMING?

If you’re looking for a full rundown of what regenerative farming is, you can read about that in the following section. For those of you more interested in a brief summary, regenerative farming is a technique that sucks carbon out of the atmosphere, sequesters carbon in the

soil—carbon is really useful when it’s in the ground as it’s critical for healthy plant growth—enriches the biodiversity and health of soil, and is actually fairly low-tech.

Instead of tilling the soil after a harvest, regenerative farming calls for covering your crops with a black tarp. The benefits of laying a massive tarp atop of whatever is left over after you pick a fresh batch of lettuce? The remnants heat up and then compost. Whatever carbon would have been released into the atmosphere is kept in the ground, enriching the soil and readying it for that next harvest. If every farm on the planet adopted these techniques, we would remove enough carbon from the atmosphere to fix the climate problem practically overnight.

SOLUTION: SUGGESTED PRICING

After a few salad-filled brainstorming sessions and several conversations with a behavioral economist (yes, we did indeed consult with a behavioral economist), we recognized that rather than simply forcing a price increase onto our guests like a traditional restaurant might, we wanted to include them in the decision-making process. So all summer long, we’re marketing two

prices for our bowls featuring New Farm’s greens: a regular list price and a suggested price of 50 cents more, leaving it up to customers to choose.

A suggested price is a no obligation way for us to raise awareness about what we’re doing, allowing us to include our customers in the process and giving them the option but by no means the obligation to contribute.

And how are we doing so far? Since the campaign’s launch, 80 percent of iQ’s guests have opted in for the suggested price.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE

I’m a huge believer that good commerce leads to change. With 10 restaurants, and 20,000 clients a week, we do have some influence. And for every bowl sold, a tiny bit of carbon is being sequestered in the ground, enriching the soil and curbing climate instability. It feels really great doing our part.

But we also recognize that, on its own, a restaurant brand with 10 locations can’t have a meaningful impact. Our goal is industry-wide adoption. By selling a product like regeneratively grown greens at scale, we want to demonstrate to both farmers and restaurants that there’s a market for this kind of product. With more interest comes greater volumes. And with greater volumes, virtuous product like regeneratively grown greens become more accessible to all.

The decision to partner with The New Farm on this year’s initiative is quite honestly one of the more interesting and important ones we have ever rolled out. We are just getting started, but we’re excited for this to serve as a case study that sometimes it is possible to do the right thing financially, environmentally and ethically. We hope we can inspire others to follow suit and help create a market for a new type of product that—if consumed on mass—has the potential to reduce the amount of carbon in the earth’s atmosphere and make our planet livable for a long, long time.

planet

Regenerative agriculture

We know that to solve the climate crisis, business as usual will not cut it. Not in electricity production. Not in industry. Not in transportation. And certainly not in agriculture. To solve the problem we need to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and into the ground.

The agriculture sector is one of the biggest emitters of CO2, the greenhouse gas most responsible for the changes we are seeing in our climate today. Together with forestry and other land use, agriculture is responsible for just under 25 percent of all human-created carbon emissions. But it also has a vital role to play in helping us end this crisis, and create a safe, sustainable future without carbon pollution. One where we can provide our booming world population with fresh, healthy food grown in a sustainable soil ecosystem. Sure, it may seem like a contradiction. So don’t take it from us—take it from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “Leveraging the mitigation potential in the [Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use] sector is extremely important in meeting emission reduction targets.” But how? Regenerative agriculture.

In short, regenerative agriculture is a system of farming principles and practices that seeks to rehabilitate and enhance the entire ecosystem of the farm by placing a heavy premium on soil health with attention also paid to water management, fertilizer use, and more. It is a method of farming that improves the resources it uses, rather than destroying or depleting them. A great deal

of emphasis is placed on looking holistically at the whole agro-ecosystem.

KEY TECHNIQUES

Conservation tillage

Plowing and tillage dramatically erode soil and release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They also can result in the kind of bare or compacted soil that creates a hostile environment for important soil microbes. By adopting low- or no-till practices, farmers minimize physical disturbance of the soil, and over time increase levels of soil organic matter, creating healthier, more resilient environments for plants to thrive, as well as keeping more and more carbon where it belongs.

Diversity

Different plants release different carbohydrates (sugars) through their roots, and various microbes feed on these carbohydrates and return all sorts of different nutrients back to the plant and the soil. By increasing the range of plant diversity in their fields, farmers help create the rich, varied, and nutrient-dense soils that lead to more productive yields.

Words and photography: The Climate Reality Project

Rotation and cover crops

Left exposed to the elements, soil will erode and the nutrients necessary for successful plant growth will either dry out or wash away. At the same time, planting the same plants in the same location can lead to a buildup of some nutrients and depletion of others. But by rotating crops and deploying cover crops strategically, farms and gardens can infuse soils with more and more diverse soil organic matter, often while avoiding disease and pest problems naturally.

Mess with it less

In addition to minimizing physical disturbance, regenerative agriculture practitioners also often seek to be cautious about chemical or biological activities that also can damage long-term soil health. Misapplication of fertilizers and other soil amendments can disrupt the natural relationship between microorganisms and plant roots. In other words, if you take care of your soil, it will take care of you. The benefits of doing so are numerous: Regenerative agriculture practices increase soil biodiversity and organic matter, leading to more resilient soils that can better withstand climate change impacts like flooding and drought.

More importantly, regenerative agriculture practices helps fight the climate crisis by pulling carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it in the ground.

THE CLIMATE CONNECTION

The health and vitality of soil everywhere, from the smallest backyard garden to the largest farm, plays an integral role in food production—and it’s threatened by the climate crisis. In addition to rising temperatures that are themselves changing where and how things can be grown, the climate crisis has fundamentally altered the water cycle around the world. The result is shifting precipitation patterns and increased evaporation. In many areas, rainfall has become either increasingly abundant or in desperately short supply, relative to longtime averages. It’s a classic case of feast or famine.

Extreme downpours can lead to polluted runoff and erosion because the ground simply isn’t able to absorb the precipitation at the rate it’s falling. And at a certain point of inundation, plants will drown. On the other end of the spectrum, less stable precipitation together with increased heat is causing more and more drought, and in

extreme circumstances near-desertification, leading to a complete loss of farm production in some areas.

So, when it comes to agriculture, climate change is our worst nightmare, exacerbating existing problems to the breaking point.

FARMS ARE SWITCHING

By using regenerative methods and not disturbing the soil, farmers can instead mitigate these effects and build organic matter which improves the more water-holding capacity of the soil. And not only does adopting regenerative agriculture practices helps farms deal with current climate change impacts by increasing resiliency; but it also allows them to fight an existential threat and be part of a much bigger solution to the problem.

This works because when plants photosynthesize, they take carbon dioxide from the air and—using the sun’s energy, water, and nutrients from the soil—transform it into carbon to grow leaves, stems, and roots. The excess carbon created through this process is transported from the plant into the surrounding soil where it is

stored. This carbon, in turn, feeds microbes and fungi, which provide nutrients for crops and makes them richer and stronger, capable of withstanding the ravages of climate change.

This stored soil carbon can remain in the ground for thousands of years or it can be quickly released back into the atmosphere through farm practices like plowing and tillage— where soil is prepared for planting by mechanical agitation methods such as digging, stirring, and overturning. Regenerative agriculture prevents just that, thus allowing soils to retain their carbon riches.

Thus, regenerative agriculture is a win-win—for farmers, it’s an approach that leads to better, more resilient crops grown using sustainable methods, that at the same time provides the rest of us with larger yields, more sustainable and nutrient rich food, and that helps fight an existential crisis that threatens not just farms but all life on Earth.