Food for Thought with Alex Bielak Local Thanksgiving Sips and Bites

FlourPower owner, Veronica Bridge

Local Thanksgiving Sips and Bites 

Sometimes timing is everything. Having tried to phone several times, I should have known better than to just drop in to one of my favorite farm markets and ask for an interview for a profile, just a couple of days before Thanksgiving weekend!

Dyments Market and Bakery is located on the escarpment on the corner of Sydenham & Fallsview roads above Dundas. It has been family owned since 1887, and I usually pick up one of their wonderful pies when I’m getting corn during the summer.

The smell in the parking lot was delicious as I approached the attractive store which is open year around. It

Food for Thought with Alex Bielak- Top 10 Do's and Don'ts for your Kitchen Renos

The Top Ten Do’s and Don’ts for Your Kitchen Reno

Thinking of re-doing your kitchen? Then here are the top ten things you should consider to save your sanity as well as some dollars. Rest assured you’re not just getting my views; I solicited input from some of the kitchen designers, countertop specialists and cabinet builders at the Fall Home Show and Sale in Hamilton last weekend. I also checked in with the designer of our own kitchen, and asked our long-time handyman and house reno consigliere, Mark Gilroy of Marx Group, for his top do or don’t do item when he dropped over to do some work at our place.

We re-did our kitchen a few years back. It’s awesome, and as soon as we had the butcher-block island countertop installed, it shifted the centre of the house. The kids immediately started to hang out and do homework in the warm, renovated bright space while we made supper. It was money well spent, but we learned some hard lessons along the way, not least when the company we hired to do the work began to go bankrupt. (They’re back in business in the same location but under a different name, so, as always, buyer beware. And yes we had checked references before we signed the contract. And yes contact me directly and I’ll tell you the whole story.)

So here’s the top ten:

1. Unless you have money to burn, you want to do the reno once and forever. Elysha Cesar, the designer for

Food for Thought with Alex Bielak- Going for (culinary) Gold

Going for (culinary) Gold

One of the joys of writing (and I hope reading) this column is the unexpected tangents it takes.

There I was thinking about a column about a local food outlet, when I was “cordially invited to the Canadian Food and Wine Institute ~ Benchmark Restaurant” as their guest.

It turned out that the Canadian Food and Wine Institute (CFWI - nowadays one of the top culinary training institutes in the country), needed sixty knowledgeable and critical eaters to provide feedback on a trial menu. Not just any menu that is, but a potentially golden one.

Before the dinner began, the Acting Dean of the college, Craig Youdale told us that the Canadian Culinary Federation hosts a Junior Competition every three years to allow young and aspiring Chefs to compete to

Food for Thought with Alex Bielak- Sips and Bites – Bumper Summer Crop Edition

Sips and Bites – Bumper summer crop edition

As I head off for a family holiday I thought I’d leave readers with a bumper, omnibus edition of Food for Thought, sharing some summer food and wine finds, and offering thanks to some friends and readers along the way.

I recently tried the recently-opened Amaya Express at 489 Brant St in Burlington. While it wasn’t very express when I visited (they were still working things out in the open kitchen), the service and the food were very good and dishes fairly priced. Their décor (unadorned pastel walls and barnboard) and menu are not what I’d call the traditional Indian we are all familiar with. “It is more a take on Indian street food, Indian with a twist!” said the friendly manager, Sachin, a member of the family that runs the Toronto-based Amaya food group.

My daughter – a butter chicken specialist – declared their version top notch: I loved the small pot of smoked

Food for Thought with Alex Bielak- Marie’s Menus – Going Social

Marie Pavone

Marie’s Menus – Going Social

I’m pleased to offer up the second serving stemming from my serendipitous discovery of food-related contestants participating in the Innovation Factory’s recent pitch contest. 

As she sits at my kitchen counter, Marie Pavone, runner-up in the hotly-contested event, is the epitome of poised charm. Trained as an engineer, the Ancaster mother of two, is cool, calm and in control. In fact, at times I feel like the one being quizzed: as she jots her own notes, she wants to know what my favourite restaurants are, and whether, as a food writer, I’d be interested in contributing to her potentially soon-to-be-revamped MenusOnly website which already has an average of 7000 unique visitors and 20,000 page views monthly.

I ask her to tell me about her pitch at Innovation Factory as I had had to leave before she got up on stage. She wants to give me some background first. She started the site about 7 years ago after a brainwave: about to go out to dinner after work with some friends, she Googled for a new place to go.

Finding navigating multiple websites and locating different menus time-consuming, she said to herself, “Wouldn’t it be great to have a website where all the menus were there for that city? That was when the idea was born.”

Pavone’s LinkedIN profile articulates her original intent succinctly. “My goal with MenusOnly.com is to

Food for Thought with Alex Bielak - How Green Does Your Garden Grow?

Dean Hall of Growing Green Hamilton

How Green does your Garden Grow?

Space in my last round-up column precluded going into detail about a serendipitous meeting with two food-related entrepreneurs at the Innovation Factory’s recent pitch contest. Since then I’ve interviewed each of these go-getting Hamiltonians, and this week am pleased to tell you about Growing Green Hamilton’s Dean Hale. (Look for my piece on Menusonly.com’s Marie Pavone in the next column).

Dean is a passionate believer in the square foot garden. As the name suggests, this concept, developed by Mel Bartholemew, is an intensive, compact grid-based system that can produce 5 times the yield of a conventional row garden. “A 4 x 4 square foot garden