Celebrate Asian Heritage Month 7 Different ways!

It's mid-May and I am mid-way into celebrating Asian Heritage Month in Toronto.  There are plenty of exciting city-wide Asian Heritage Month events to check out.  Friends and colleagues kept asking me which events I'll attend for the remainder of May.  Well, here are my top 7 picks of the Asian Culture celebrations in Greater Toronto Area. See how many Asian cultures you get to experience and how much ground you cover until the end of May!  Don't forget to slap on sun block as you head out for your own cultural adventure ...

Broadview Gateway: 4 Cultures Foodies Walking Tour

A Taste of the World Walks presents  culinary historian, Shirley Lum , who leads this fun and informative Foodies walking tour! Yes, I couldn't help but slip in one of our quirky events ;-) as it will be fun since I'll be leading it. It'll be a blast!  There will be equal portions of food for the palate and thoughts, while we peel back the layer of immigrant food history in lost Chester Village, Riverdale and Chinatown East,  Toronto's third Chinatown. Celebrate Asian Heritage Month with us as we check out the ingredients needed to make  Zong Zi connected with the Dragon Boat Festival preparations while peeling back layers of Chinese history in Toronto! 

Sunday May 22, 10:00 AM - 1:30 PM

Broadview Subway Station, entrance 

RSVP Required: info@TorontoWalksBikes.com or (416) 923-6813

FREE Japanese Mechanical Doll Demo Tamaya Shobei, Karakuri Ningyo Master

The Japan Foundation, Toronto welcomes Master Craftsman Tamaya Shobei IX for a special demonstration of Karakuri Ningyo, elaborate mechanical dolls that first became popular in Japan in the 17th century. Mr. Shobei represents the ninth generation of a line of esteemed artisans sharing his name who specialize in Karakuri Ningyo. Technologically advanced and aesthetically beautiful, Karakuri Ningyo are considered the forebears of modern-era Japanese robotics.

Mr. Shobei will be demonstrating two types of Karakuri Ningyo. Perhaps the best known form of these dolls, the Cha-Hakobi-Ningyo (tea-carrying doll) holds a tray, delivers a cup of tea to a guest, and then returns to its original position. The Yumi-Hiki Douji (arrow-shooting child), considered the pinnacle of Karakuri Ningyo craftsmanship for its detailed movements and facial expression, can pick up an arrow and shoot it at a target.

Tuesday, May 24, 6:30 PM (Doors open at 6:00 PM) FULL!
   ** Additional Timeslot Tuesday May 24, 2:30 PM **

The Japan Foundation, 131 Bloor St. W., 2^nd Floor of the Colonnade Building
RSVP Required: http://www.jftor.org/whatson/rsvp.php or (416) 966-1600 x103

   

Haunted Kensington, Chinatown & The Grange Walk

A Taste of the World Walks presents this eerie ghost walking tour during Asian Heritage Month! Try snacks associated with Chinese  a little-known ghost festival called Qing Ming, all the while listening this and many other ghost stories with multicultural twists as these thee areas are so culturally diverse! Find out which shops and/or favourite eateries are haunted!

Friday, May 27, 6:30 - 9:00 PM Red Pole w Black Cat, 350 Spadina Ave.

RSVP Required: info@TorontoWalksBikes.com or (416) 923-6813 

FREE  East Asian Homeland Festival 
Toronto Public Library presents eight Asian Homeland Festival on Saturdays throughout May. This is one festival which celebrates the breath of Asia. Only Marco Polo covered more Asian ground than their 2011 Asian Homelands Festivals! 


12 PM  Stories from Japan and beyond with Yusuke Tanaka and Nathalie Vachon.
1 PM    Food demo & tasting with amazing chef, Winlai Wong of the hot King Street West eatery called Silk Route Asian Bistro & Bar. 
2 PM    Balinese dance and music with Sekar Rasa Duo 


Saturday, May 28 Lilian H. Smith Branch 






FREE Asian Film Festival screening: Bodyguards & Assassins [十月圍城]

Reel Asian is presenting martial arts action-packed and star-studded film. It is 1905 Hong Kong and news has reached Chen Xiaobai that revolutionary leader Sun Yat-Sen will be arriving in the city for a secret meeting. Prior to his arrival, an elite army of deadly Qing assassins with lethal weapons has been posted all over the British colony. To save the fate of a nation, Chen recruits a gang of extraordinary citizens – amongst them a beggar, a rickshaw driver and stinky tofu vendor – to protect the great Sun Yat-Sen. Hang on to your seats! This epic blockbuster is non-stop combat. Winner of 8 Hong Kong Film Awards in 2010 including Best Film, Best Director and Best Action Choreography.


China 2009 | 139min | Cantonese & Mandarin with English subtitles | Rated 14A
Director Teddy Chan Tak Sun | Producers Peter Chan Ho-sun, Huang Jianxin
Actors Donnie Yen, Leon Lai, Wang Xueqi, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Nicholas Tse, Hu Jun, Li Yuchun, Eric Tsang, Simon Yam, Fan Bing-bing, Zhou Yun, Wang Po-Chieh, Mengke Bateer, Cung Le
  
Saturday, May 28, 8:00 PM
Toronto Underground Cinema, 186 Spadina Avenue




Second Chinatown Foodies Walk: Dragon Boat Festival prep

A Taste of the Worlds Walks celebrates Asian Heritage Month by presenting a special culinary walking tour of Toronto's Second Chinatown. Savour and sample Zong Zi or Sticky rice dumplings at the hosted dim sum and tea stop at one of the oldest Chinese bakery. Culinary Historian and raconteur, Shirley Lum will have you chuckling over the lore and legend connecting the exhilarating boat race and the decadent dumplings! A tour of an Asian grocery store will get guests into the grove of picking up the necessary ingredients, and feel ready to prepare for the festivities!  
   
Sunday, May 29 10:00 AM - 1:30 PM
Lucky Moose Statue, 393 Dundas St W/Beverley Sts.

FREE Dragon Boat Festival & Sticky Rice Dumplings: Hands-on Workshop & Demo  


Toronto Public Library presents this unique event. On the fifth day of the fifth moon, the dragon boat festival takes places. This year, this exciting lunar food festival takes place on Monday June 6th, 2011. How does one prepare for this fascinating event? What are the lore and legend connecting the Zong Zi or sticky rice dumplings  to the Dragon Boat Festival? Find out by registering for your spots! Culinary historian, Shirley Lum will demonstrate how to make the savoury and sweet Zong Zi or dumplings, and then you get a chance to try it yourself! 
          
Monday, May 30, 6:00 - 8:15 PM
Palmerston branch  
Pre-register spots (416) 393-7680

Have a fabulous time!
Explore Toronto's various neighbourhoods

while celebrating Asian Heritage Month! 

Best Mother's Day Gift is YOU: Spend Precious Time Together

Time.  It's so precious.  Mother's Day is fast approaching as the clock keeps ticking away, and the days slip by, and next thing you know, it's Saturday and you still do NOT have a Mother's Day gift!  I don't know about you, I don't need a countdown, as there have been daily ads/commercials with reminders that time is running out, and that you'd better treat mom to chocolate, flower, jewellery and spa treatments. Oddly enough, none of the before mentioned gift items appeal to my mom (okay, maybe a small pair of earrings, but then my mom will note that she has no events to attend, so no excuse to wear them).  How does one say "Thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I love you, Mom" so it's meaningful, memorable and intimate? Remember the last time you made that hokey homemade card for mom? Bet your mom might still might have it tucked away with some of the other crafts you've made but forgot about along the way, since you grew up... Funny thing, it's not any of the tangible items you can conveniently purchase at a store or online, but merely by giving yourself namely, spending some quality and quantity time with your own mom or grandma.

I've had the pleasure of hosting the Second Chinatown Foodies Walk for intimate, small group ( 8-9 of us) scheduled on Mother's Day.  Several women treated their own mothers to a foodies walking tour experience with me. Along the Second Chinatown Foodies Walk, I start off with the hosted dim sum and it's always a fascinating communal experience as we bond over flying chopsticks, tea pouring etiquettes, while trying new and familiar flavours, textures and aromas.  Often, the food/drinks, the old pictures and stories I share along my culinary historical walking tours would trigger awesome personal stories and memories and render many heartfelt chuckles. When we end at one of the oldest Chinese bakery sipping hot Hong Kong tea with bites of a medley of pastries,  folks are always amazed by how quickly the day flew by while they were having so much fun. Remember that old saying, "Time flies by when you're having fun! " So true! Sigh!

This year, I'm spreading the Mother's Day love over the whole weekend, just so I can keep it intimate numbers per tour. As a culinary historian, it's sheer fun peeling back the layers of multicultural food history within the marketplace and residential quarters of Kensington Market along the Kensington Foodies Roots Walk with folks who have wicked stories of their own to share.  I look forward to reciting my Grilled Cheese Haiku (written for first time after several decades hiatus) after we taste a variety of Canadian artisanal cheese, as I'm sure all will appreciate Canadian humour! Longtime residents, newcomers and visitors alike, love the beginning of the tour, as I challenge them to imagine only one family and one house occupying the area, and then we end with pictures and maps showing that very first family's home and long driveway. Heady experience I must say.

By the way, to make Mother's Day more memorable, I will be handing out a single flower for each Mom treated to the tour by their accompanying offspring! Book your spots by Thursday May 5th, 2011 to make sure your Mom gets her flower! Call the office (416) 923-6813 or e-mail info@TorontoWalksBikes.com

Remember your Mom, Grandma or your favourite Auntie. 

Life is short & sweet. 
Life is sweeter, when precious time is spent together with loved ones.
Cherish those memorable moments as we sip & nosh together.

April: Grilled Cheese & National Poetry Month!

Gastronomic experiment: Grilled Cheese Sandwich
 Woodlot's Red Fife bread, Stirling Butter from Cambridge, ON &
Upper Canada Cheese's Guernsey Girl Cheese

Canadian Grilled Cheese
 as Royal Wedding Gift Haiku

Woodlot's Red Fife Bread ...

Upper Canada Cheese dream ...

Oh Canada oh!

- Shirley Lum April 29th, 2011

I just love the month of April!   
 *  The month of April has been declared as National Poetry Month! Sharpen those quills folks and put on your Maple Leaf toques! Folks attending the popular Kensington Foodie Roots walks throughout 2011, will have "food for the soul" experiences, as I introduce one of my Grilled Cheese Haiku each time. It will be fun paying tribute to Canadian fromage with the seasonal/festive cheese tastings! 
* April showers bring May flowers for those who appreciate Mother Nature's spring blooms! After a bit of hard work in my garden, I'm ready for a Grilled Cheese Sandwich! 
* The month of April has also been declared as Grilled Cheese Month!   

Guinness Cheddar:
Makes an awesome boozy Grilled Cheese Sandwich!

The grilled cheese sandwich is such a heavenly combination of three basic ingredients: bread, butter and cheese.  Changing any one of these three key ingredients creates pure comfort food alchemy, figuratively and literally, so I'm discovering this past month.  

I can't help myself, but this blog will be peppered with my own Haiku creations inspired by some of the different grilled cheese sandwich combinations I've made over this month ...  and sprinkled with a bit of of trivia ...


What's amazes me, is how the combination of these three basic ingredients generated "cheesey tweets" in Twitter.   Joining the conversation in Twitter, and I found "chat rooms" in the guise of Hashtags like #GrilledCheese,  #CH (FYI: Cheese Haiku) and #Cheese!  Marcella Wright aka Twitter@cheesemonger in Twitter, has postings every day of the month, and this one caught my eyes/palate:  "April is Grilled Cheese Month" #21 Woman of LaMancha & Flame-Crafted Ham: http://wp.me/pvQzS-92 Bravo, Marcella! 


Heading south of the border, the  8th Annual National Grilled Cheese Invitational http://grilledcheeseinvitational.com took on April 23rd, 2011 in Los Angeles, CA! Aside four different categories of grilled cheese sandwich, they also had Haiku and limerick poetry contests! The last time I wrote a Haiku was too long ago back in grade school. Anyway,  I was unable to attend this cool event,  but perhaps next time and I'll be armed with a variety of Haiku, bread, butter and cheese.  Meanwhile, here's a wonderful report in LA Times "Grilled cheese as far as the eye could see" to whet your appetite and entice you to enter their 2012 cooking and/or literary contests:   http://lat.ms/gc5rHj 
Thanks to my love for this fabulous sandwich, poems written up by fellow Twitter fans for Haiku and limerick poetry contests  inspired me to haul out my old fountain pen and ink well, to scratch off a few "cheesey" Haiku of my own while exploring new cheese or bread to use as I make my grilled cheese sandwich. 

Toronto, The Meeting Place's 

Grilled Cheese Haiku

Nakamura's Bread ...

Monteforte's awesome Sheep Milk Cheese ...

TO's Hot Grilled Cheese!

- Shirley Lum April 26, 2011

From early childhood and right through my university years, the grilled cheese sandwich was  an old reliable friend whenever I'm in the pinch for time.  In the past, my grilled cheese sandwich would have been a slice of processed cheese slipped between white bread by Wonder Bread. Then, I switched to whole wheat bread from a national grocery store. Since starting my Kensington Foodie Roots walking tours, my bread slowly morphed as I started shopping in the culturally diverse Kensington Market's bakeries and grocery stores. A new repertoire of heavenly slices for my grilled cheese sandwich: Rye bread, Jamaican corn bread, Portuguese white corn bread, Persian Sesame Flatbread, and the list goes on. 

Early April, I found myself with a grilled cheese sandwich consisting of decadent Guernsey Girl Cheese by Upper Canada Cheese between hearty slices of Red Fife Bread from Woodlot Restaurant and Bakery  accompanied by  soup and salad. As I nibbled into my sandwich, I read What's to Eat? Entrees in Canadian Food History. The chapter, Grain Elevated: The Fall and Rise of Red Fife Wheat by food columnist Sarah Musgrave caught my attention. In Grade 8, I wrote a report on the status of wheat in Canada, and I vaguely recalled coming across something called Red Fife Wheat. 

In this chapter, she discussed a heritage grain that is currently regaining favour after a period of neglect. She beautifully traces the story of Red Fife wheat by ways of exploring issues of provenance. She asserts the value of heritage foodways and introduced me to a special Canadian who actively engaged in challenging assumptions about the innate benefits of novelty and progress,  The sandwich almost wouldn't have been possible, if not. for the perseverance of agronomist Sharon Rempel, under her guidance, seed specimens were transferred to a seed orphanage operated by he Canadian Heritage Wheat Project.  Red Fife would lie dormant until mid-1980s, when a bag of pure Red Fife seed, some of the last remaining stock, was discovered in a shed on a lonely stretch of prairie  road. 

Starting with half pound of seed, Rempel began bulking up on Red Fife and eventually had enough to begin distributing it to farmers by the late 1990s. Since then, it has cropped up from one coast to the other coast of Canada, in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, as well as Hastings, Ontario, and Cranbrook, British Columbia, with the tonnage harvested each year continuing to grow. Like many old wheats, its genetic variability makes it adaptable to different growing conditions and suitable for organic cultivation. 


The next exciting chapter in the Red Fife story unfolded on a rainy night in November 2004, when the grain finally made the leap from cultivator to consumer as the Loiselle family farm in Vonda, Saskatchewan delivered to Wild Fire Bread and Pastry, a tiny bakery in Victoria, British Columbia.  


Fast forward to late 2010 as David Haman, chef/owner opened Woodlot Restaurant & Bakery in downtown Toronto. My husband and I, love picking up this hearty bread as a treat once in a while, to make some of the most fabulous grilled cheese sandwiches. 

Let's celebrates Canada's culinary heritage!

 There are endless Grilled Cheese Sandwich possibilities ... 

Canadian Grilled Cheese Heaven Haiku

Woodlot's Rustic Red Fife Bread...

 Niagara Gold Heaven ...

Canadian, eh! 

- Shirley Lum, April 29th, 2011

Toronto Royal Wedding Fever

Royal Wedding window display at Midoco's in Toronto.
 The Queen atop Paper wedding cake doing the Royal Wave as
Kate Middleton's & Prince William's heads bobble! 

Tick tock, tick tock! Where did the time go? April just flew by so quickly! It's hard to believe, but it seems like yesterday when the engagement was announced... tomorrow we'll catch a glimpse of the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton ... Who has not caught the Royal Wedding fever as yet in Toronto?

Strolling along Bloor Street West, I bursted out laughing at the very sight of the Queen perched on top of a paper wedding cake, and one of her hands enclosed in a white glove, is doing the famous Royal wave! This is one of my favourite window displays of all time - Midoco's Stationary (see above). Don't you love how Prince William's head and Kate's head bobble? Caught you smiling! 

Last night while conducting the Phantoms, Players & Pundits Walk, my guests and I simply loved the beautiful tributes by Malabar (yes the dance and costume rental folks on McCaul Street jumped on the Royal Wedding party). Each window paid tribute to a British Royal couple - complete with an accompanying photograph/drawing of their actual wedding outfit, and then mannequins clothed in very similar ensembles: Queen Victoria & Prince Albert;  a young Queen Elizabeth II & Prince Phillip; a young Queen Mum & King George.  Tasteful. Sorry, no pictures as it was getting quite dark at that point during the ghost walk.

Strolling into Kensington Market, along Augusta Avenue on Tuesday, I just had to pause a few seconds and take a snap of The Good Egg's creative window display & tribute to the Royal Wedding ... another paper wedding cake... note the couple's names - Kate & Willy! 

Getting ready for your wedding can be a stressful time despite an army of assistants in the case of the Royal Couple, and having been through it in a much smaller scale in June 2009, it's still fresh in my mind. I'm sure there will be last minute details to be taken care of, but the young couple seems to have their heads firmly on their shoulders, and taking it all in stride and probably find that having sense of humour helps along the whole way, or perhaps dancing every so often ...

On the subject of dancing and having a good laugh, thank you T-Mobile Royal Wedding for this fun video! Dance away as you watch or re-watch it, for I sure did!

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kav0FEhtLug

Here's a toast to Prince William and Kate Middleton:

May their wedding day on Friday, April 29th, 2011 be the beginning of a 

harmonious, healthy and joyous life together 

that's filled with love and laughter!  

Cheers! 

May the flowers bloom as
gorgeously  in London as in Toronto!

The #grilledcheese project drawer. Note: *separate* from the ... on Twitpic

The #grilledcheese project drawer. Note: *separate* from the ... on Twitpic

This picture is amazing as it reminds me of the Cheesey Guys at St Catharine's Farmers' Market. Why? They take a medley of cheeses out of their cooler, and create awesome Grilled Cheese Sandwiches. On a rainy day like today, it simply rocks!
- Shirley