LCBO Food & Drink Early Summer 2021 TRADE

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TRENDSPOTTING Join the club

With the boom in food subscriptions, you can now get everything from artisanal spices to heat-and-serve pizza delivered right to your front door every month, just like your favourite magazines. Here are four local outfits worth checking out.

The Cheese Bar thecheesebar.ca The popular Cheese Club from this Windsor, Ont., shop offers a few options, ranging from just cheese to a more substantial box of charcuterie and accou- trements. Every subscriber gets three cheeses per month, all from Canada, with a minimum of one pound of each. The Gorgeous Spice Company thegorgeousspiceco.com Offering 3-, 6- and 12-month memberships, this company de- livers a unique small-batch spice blend plus one of the blend’s key spices every month. To teach and inspire, they also email you a recipe-packed ’zine, a chef’s podcast and a playlist, all geared to each month’s theme.

General Assembly Pizza gapizza.com Born out of the pandemic, the world’s first pizza subscription delivers frozen, vacuum-packed 10-inch pizzas all over central and southwestern Ontario. The pies are naturally leavened, come in 10 gourmet flavours and go from freezer to table in under seven minutes. Butcher Box butcherbox.ca This Mississauga, Ont., com­ pany offers quality frozen meats raised in Ontario, including free- range chicken, grass-fed beef and centre-cut bacon. There is a lot of choice and flexibility, and boxes cater to everyone from a single condo dweller to a hungry family of five.

ASK AN EXPERT Twist and sprout

Sprouts and microgreens are healthy, tasty and grown right here in Ontario. To learn more about the verdant shoots, we talked to Steve Bacon, who runs Four Season Greens (fourseasongreens.com) with his wife, Sharon, in Muskoka.

What are some of the advantages of growing sprouts inOntario? If you want to grow food 12 months of the year, sprouts are the easiest to do. In one to two weeks, you get fresh, nutrient-dense food. You can get everything you need from sprouts. It’s why many herbivores can live off just grass. What is the difference between sprouts andmicrogreens? They’re basically the same—seeds grown to the first set of leaves, called cotyledons. Sprouts are grown in water, and you get the whole plant. With microgreens, the seeds are in soil, and you let them grow a little bit longer and then cut them above the soil.

Is it easy to grow sprouts at home? We have short video courses on our website showing a step-by-step for both sprouts and microgreens. It just takes a minute to water three times a day, and you’re in business. It’s very economical: 30 to 40 cents’ worth of seeds will give you one pound of sprouts. Any tips for the home grower? Alfalfa and clover are two of the easiest to grow. The key is to switch them from a jar to an open mesh basket after four days, which allows them to breathe and eliminates mushiness. Expose them to light in the kitchen or a north-facing window. And use cold water: Sprouts give off heat when they grow, and it cools them down.

Beyond sandwiches and salads, what are some interestingways to use sprouts? A lot of people say, “I can’t eat those hairy little things!” So throw them in smoothies. Moms are always hiding things that way.

PORTRAITS BY COLIN WILKINSON; SPROUTS BY ©ISTOCK.COM/ANTIMARTINA

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EARLY SUMMER 2021 FOOD & DRINK