Finds of the Week: Food

Assorted Food Finds

Food seems to be the never ending constant in a mama's life. From that first bite of solid food for your wee ones, it becomes on ongoing train of thought about buying, transporting, storing, preparing, cooking, and serving, helping unsteady hands get the food into the mouth, making sure enough food is eaten, storing leftovers, and as soon as the food is done, you are thinking about the next food to prepare and serve. And then you have to start making the list of food to buy tomorrow to replace what you ate today!

We are always excited to discover new food ideas and snack options. Here is some of what we have found:

Oskri Organics snack bars are a fabulous choice for snacks and lunches. The ingredient list on the sesame bars, coconut bars and nut and fruit bars are a parent's dream. For example, the Mango Coconut Bar has coconut, rice syrup and mango in it. That's it. And all ingredients are organic (though not on some of the other bars). They list the percentage of each ingredient, so you know exactly what you are getting and exactly what is going into your and your little one's mouths. Their sesame bars are a healthier version of the common Sezme Sesame Snap, and they even have a Quinoa Bar that is like the sesame snap. A perusal of their website, www.oskri.com, brings a more extensive list of foods than what you can find locally in stores. They have chocolate covered fruits and nuts, dry fruits, spreads and syrups (including a fig spread that is only figs and rice syrup), spices and sweet treats (their version of jelly beans, liquorice babies and candied ginger). Website pricing beats what you can find in town, too.

 

The Fishery from Salt Spring Island sells canned tuna and salmon and salmon pate. Each fish comes plain or smoked in a 185 g/6.5 oz can at a cost of $3.75 (much more attractive than Finest At Sea's $5.00 cans of tuna). Pate is sold by weight. I don't eat meat myself, but Steve says that this is really good tuna and absolutely worth the cost. You can order through the website.

 

You probably never would have guessed it, but Shopper's Drug Mart is now selling organic food. Yes, this drug store does carry food, mostly of the chips and pop variety but also dry goods, and they now have their own brand of organics. Nativa is manufactured specifically for Shopper's, and is a Canadian company. You can now buy your organic apple sauce, crackers, mustard and honey, nuts and dried fruit, tea and coffee, pasta and sauce, chocolate, and other canned, bottled or boxed goods along with your shampoo and prescription drugs. Oh, the convenience! And the prices are very competitive. For more details, check the Shopper's website.

Speaking of organics, I was happy to find that O Organics line sells some Canadian-grown produce. Natasha loves edamame beans - she could eat them by the cup full. The brand we were able to find was organic, but was a "Product of China." Steve pointed out that "organic" and "China" do not belong in the same sentence, so I was glad to find not only a non-China source but also a Canadian one. (I heard on CBC that Southern Ontario is the only place that is hot enough to grow this beans that are the unripe soybean.) Oxford Foods in Cook Street Village is now carrying this Safeway brand.


For an easy snack at home, try to find Suzie's crackers and puffed cakes. We immediately became fans of the puffed spelt cakes. They are called Thin Cakes and are shaped like squares about 1/3 the thickness of a standard rice cake. I kept telling myself that I was buying them for Natasha, but more ended up in my mouth than hers! They also have puffed Kamut cakes that are sweetened with Agave nectar, and more options in kamut, spelt and multigrain as well as some standard wheat crackers.

There is a new organic cracker and cookie company on the market ready to feed snack foods to your kids. Eco-Planet offers four varieties of cookies, a non-dairy cheddar cracker and pretzel crackers. Each choice comes in shapes a good size for small hands to hold.

 

Inka Chips are one of the snack foods made by Inka Crops. I expected the plantain chips to taste similar to banana chips but was surprised to find the yellow round discs with red threads running through them to be more like potato chips. They are salty and savoury, not sweet like dry bananas. (A note on banana chips: organic banana chips have sugar on them. Dry whole bananas are sugarless and fantastic in their chewiness.)

The ingredients list on the Inka chips is impressively short (three ingredients) and the chips are baked, not fried but still have the satisfying and indulgent taste and feel of potato chips. They were too greasy for my taste, but Papa Steve gave them a big thumbs up.

 

My recent rediscovery of mochi is old news to my taste buds, but likely a new find for most mamas in town.

This cake of pounded cooked brown rice was initially made locally by Sooke Soy Foods. Green Cuisine Restaurant, the vegan buffet restaurant in Market Square, bought the soy foods company and continued production of tofu, tempeh, seitan, amasake (a sweet, thick rice drink that Natasha loves), and mochi.

The package calls mochi "The rice cake you bake", but it is not a puffed rice cake as we are accustomed to. Mochi is made and eaten year round, but it is traditionally served at Japanese New Year as a confectionary. You can find the soft, sweet filled mochi, called daifuku, at Sakura Japanese Grocery at Yates and Quadra Streets.

To eat the mochi from Green Cuisine, you cut it into squares and put it in the over. As it heats up it softens and when it is ready the outside gets crispy and the inside gets soft and chewy and spills out. The sesame flavour is to die for, the cinnamon raisin flavour is a lovely treat, and the plain is a bit boring after you have had the other two, but can be spiced up with any spread or topping you want to add.

Now that Green Cuisine has a Mobile Meals delivery service, buying and eating mochi has never been easier! Buying directly from them gives you the best price on all Green Cuisine products, though the convenience of buying them at Market on Yates, LifeStyles Markets or Seed of Life sometimes makes it easier to pay a bit more.

Not all cities in North America are fortunate enough to have this Japanese treat, so try some mochi and crack open a bottle of amasake to get your dose of brown rice in a new tasty way.

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