I really have to give credit where due and extend a huge "kudos" to Loblaw / Superstore, for pledging to get rid of all unsustainable seafood from their shelves by 2013! This is a huge, and welcomed announcement that will definitely have me shopping more at their establishment for seafood.

The world's fisheries are extremely stressed at the moment, and it is really going to require huge companies like this taking a leadership role exactly as they are doing. Well done folks!

Last week I was sitting around, minding my own business, when my wife sent me some information about a "Foodie Blogger" get together which was taking place just around the corner from our house at the posh Urban Element cooking school. While I have fully embraced the term "foodie", and am active on the popular Ottawa Foodies website, I have definitely not warmed up so much to the term "blogger". I dunno what it is about it, really, that irks me, but it just does. Maybe in part due to the fact that I've been "blogging" for some 14 years now, since long before that term was ever used. I guess maybe I'm old-school or something.

In any case, it was not until my wife sent this invitation to me that I actually realised that even if I did not agree with the terminology, I am in fact a "foodie blogger"! I write about food all the time - usually simple, wholesome, back-to-earth food. With simple, wholesome, back-to-earth methods. And since I'd only been to the Urban Element once before, and really enjoyed the atmosphere, I decided to head over. Especially since it was free!

Apparently pre-packaged toddler meals, sold by Gerber, Heinz and various other companies, aren't actually that great for kids.

Color me not surprised.

What I find most surprising about the sudden media coverage of the nutritional content in these meals is that everyone is suddenly appalled.

Seriously? Have people never read the labels? Have they never tasted jarred baby food? Has it never entered the realm of possibility for these folks that feeding their children actual fresh, healthy food isn't that hard? Or that it's actually a lot cheaper than the commercial alternatives?

Here is a (slightly modified to remove some personal details) email that I just sent out to parents of the 24th Ottawa Beavers and Scouts. If you happen to be involved with the Scouting movement in Ottawa but are not a member of one of the below groups, yet would still like to get involved in this fundraiser, please feel free to contact me as we'd love to include you!

Otherwise if you just live in the area, please drop by and enjoy some hot chocolate, and make a donation to a good cause!

Oh my, I cannot believe I forgot to post this excellent recipe! At Christmas time just passed I picked up 2 turkeys because they had been mis-priced and I just could not refuse less than half price! My wife does not like putting the organs into the stuffing, and I do not like wasting food, so I put a call out to my friends on facebook for recommendations on what to do with the organs. The first suggestion that came back was "gravy", and I did not even have to ask for a recipe because ideas just started jumping into my head!

Here is what I came up with. It worked really well and I canned some up. I was just reminded of this now when my son wanted some gravy for the pork we had for supper, so I got a 250ml jar of it from the basement.

Last week I was sitting around doing nothing, as I often do, when I got to thinking about whether or not Haiti grows coffee, and if so, would I be helping out the situation there if I switched all of my coffee consumption over to it. So I did a quick search on my favorite coffee supply website, the Green Beanery, and found that Haiti does indeed grow coffee. And from the description provided, it even sounded like a pretty good bean, too!

Before I go any further I do want to say that I am not suggesting that Haiti needs trade instead of aid, because nothing could be further from the truth. Right now Haiti needs a massive amount of aid to rebuild after this disaster. But in order to be self-sustaining, it will also need to engage in some amount of international trade, and it seemed to me that switching my coffee consumption to Haitian coffee would be a pretty easy way for me to help out in that area.

About a year ago now the dripping of the kitchen faucet had gotten bad enough that I finally took the cartridges out to examine them to see what needed to be done. As it turned out these cartridges had a lot of plastic parts that were worn and could not be replaced, so I'd have to replace the whole cartridge. In many cases there are simple washers on the cartridges which are really inexpensive to replace. So off I went to Home Depot where I'd bought the faucet, only to discover they did not have replacements for it. Wow, did that upset me!

My next stop was Preston Hardware in Little Italy. I knew they had a whole plumbing and bath store adjacent to the hardware store, and figured if anyone had a replacement, it would be them. Unfortunately, this proved not to be the case, so I had to buy a whole new faucet. I was going through all the options at Preston, and removing the cartridges from the faucets to ensure I was buying something with simple, replaceable parts. I honed in on one model for 60 bucks when (a guy who I am pretty sure is) one of the owners came over to see if I needed help

Now this is the kind of "Common Sense Revolution" I like to see in Ontario! "Walking School Bus" programs. "P.L. Robertson elementary in Milton, which opened this week, has been designated a "walking-only school". This goes right back to this article I wrote some time ago.

With the devastating earthquake in Haiti, and all the talk of making donations there, I thought I would write a bit on why I will not be donating money to Haiti. In the process I'll tell a bit about where I do like to donate money. While some of what I'm about to write may seem cold, I hope you will not judge me for it just as I will not judge you for the donations you make to the charitable organisations of your choosing. I don't really think there is a wrong way to donate to charity, as long as you are doing it regularly, and ideally putting some thought into it. The latter is why I will not be donating to Haiti - I've put a lot of thought into my donations, and this simply does not fit into the "donation profile" that I have chosen for me. What you choose as right for you, is up to you of course.

Shortly after moving to Ottawa about a dozen years ago is when I first started making charitable donations of any meaningful amount, and at the time it was in the form of the Ottawa Food Bank. Every time we went grocery shopping, we'd pick up a generous amount of extras and drop them into the box they had at the grocery store. It was easy to do, and easy to remember, and it was also the earliest of my inklings of what would become my "donation profile". But more on that in a bit. It was after a few years of doing this, that a co-worker pointed out to me that with the amount of groceries I donate every week, it added up to quite a bit of money, and I'd actually be better off donating a cheque to the food bank and getting a tax receipt back. "Hey", I thought, "not a bad idea!". So that's what I did for the next while.

Christmas can be a pretty stressful day if you have young kids, and like to have a big, traditional feast of a meal. Which is why we've started to split it up and make Christmas Day all about the kids, and the next day - Boxing Day - all about the food.