This past Friday, Communications Officer Elylse Ferland posted an interview of foodiePrints' team on Chicken Feeds, "the blog for the Chicken Farmers of Canada."

Food Blogger Profile: foodiePrints
We last met the Chicken Farmers and Ryan Anderson (who invited us to do the interview) at an Ottawa food blogger event at the Urban Element (424 Parkdale Avenue). It featured Ottawa Citizen food editor, Ron Eade.

Ours is Chicken Feeds' third food blogger profile, a seemingly monthly occurrence. The first, blogger (unsweetened.ca and CEOT blog) and author of Cheap Eats Ottawa/Toronto, Alexa Clark (@alexaclark), in January. The second, fellow Ottawa food blogger, Wing King (@lordofthewings) of the Lord of the Wings blog in February.

That said, we are very honoured to be profiled with such great food bloggers. We frequent the Lord of the Wings blog and I carry the most recent edition of Cheap Eats Ottawa with me in my knapsack.

Thanks to Anderson and Ferland for choosing to include us.

Our transcript of the interview follows after the jump.

Particulars:
Urban Element
424 Parkdale Avenue
(613 722-0885

More after the jump...

Imagine my surprise when I came across a tweet by fellow Ottawa food blogger Jodi (@simplyfresh) of the Simply Fresh blog that read something like this:

@SimplyFresh (Mar 17, 03:19 PM)
@FoodiePrints @RonEade - great article on @apartment613 about you!

Honestly, my response was to retype the Twitter url. I thought the web UI had somehow corrupted itself, adding foodiePrints' handle to the tweet.

@apartment613 is the twitter handle for Apartment 613, a popular multi-faceted community blog that aims to showcase the more creative side of Canada's capital, Ottawa. It gives some much needed attention to our thriving music, art, theater, and food scenes. I follow the blog via their RSS-feed and Google reader, enjoying their coverage of local events, especially their photos of live indie bands. Many photos are taken by in-house photographer Ming Wu (@ming_wu).

Sometime this afternoon, Apartment 613 blogger/editor Ryan Saxby Hill (@saxby) posted an entry, listing a handful of local food bloggers. After all, somewhat restaurant-rich and with multiple culinary schools nearby, Ottawa should be a food obsessed city.

foodiePrints on the Apartment613 blog
Source: Apartment 613 Blog

Besides us, Saxby's piece includes Ron Eade (@roneade and Ottawa Citizen Food Editor), Shari Goodman (@whisk_food_blog) (one of my favourite food bloggers), and Dominic Maggiolo (a freelancer who writes for Apartment 613). Also mentioned is the Ottawa Foodies forum, which is operated by Mark Warburton (@warby).

Suffice it to say, the post made my St. Patrick's Day. We are honoured to be listed with the likes of Eade's Omnivore's Ottawa and Goodman's Whisk: A Food Blog.

And yes, my team (Jenn) and I are pho obsessed. Another pho piece will be forthcoming shortly. This one is a recipe.

As a foodie, one of my frustrations is following the many blogs in the growing food blog community, local or otherwise, and reading about food or food-related events I could have attended had I known beforehand.

As a local food blogger whose goal is to make Ottawa a foodie destination, I blog to highlight our growing restaurant scene and encourage people to visit our eateries and attend events. To date, I have been mildly successful via Twitter, a calendar application, and Post-It notes.

Yesterday, I discovered BeTidings. According to the Webster's dictionary the verb "betide" means "to happen (to); befall." Aptly named, BeTidings (@betidings) is a free online social calendar, built by local entrepreneur Treena (@TGrevatt), to make events accessible. It allows registered users to setup calendars, add events, share events, "collect" events, and "follow" other users' calendars. Best of all, individual calendars are publicly accessible and the web application is really easy to use. Though, I have not tested the GCal integration yet...

Here is a screen capture of the calendar I setup for Ottawa food/food-related events.

foodiePrints on BeTidings
Click here for the live calendar.

To date, I have added the events I know about. And, I have tweeted several local event organizers, caterers, and restaurateurs to send me lists of upcoming events, which I will add as I receive them.

As time permits, I will also add a widget to foodiePrints’ layout to list the 5 upcoming events.

In the meantime, if you know of a food or food-related event, feel free to drop me a comment. If you see us on twitter, drop us a tweet too.

This past Friday, Jenn and I had the pleasure of meeting Vicky (@momwhoruns), blogger for the Urban Mom's blog and foodie. The "Not So Supermom" (but could have fooled us!) was visiting Ottawa for meetings, one with Costco and another with Farm Boy. She, an Ottawa ex-pat who makes her home in Toronto, we tweet quite the bit about the many foodie splendours her city has to offer. Before she arrived, we arranged a tweet-up for breakfast at Jak's Kitchen (479 Bronson Avenue), one of Ottawa's locally-owned restaurants, known for it weekend brunches.

After some pleasant discussion about food, blogging, some of Ottawa's better purveyors of pho, coffee, sushi, and the state of Chinatown post T&T, we tested Jak's reputation for serving our fair city's "best Eggs Benny."

Well, Jak's has a list of Eggs Benedict dishes, one shorter than the Lieutenant's Pump on Elgin (361).

Jak's Kitchen Eggs Benny Menu
The two Eggs Bennies Vicky and I ordered were nonetheless impressive.

Mine, the Don Francisco ($10), comes on black bean cakes with corn sofrito and a red pepper coulis.

Don Franciso Eggs Benny
Accompanying sides included deep fried freshly cut potatoes and a fresh salad, lightly dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette.

Poached eggs on black bean cakes, corn sofrito, and red pepper coulis
The black bean cakes were crusted on a flat top and provided an earthy alternative to English muffins. The corn softrito was made with frozen corn and sweated celery and onion. It provided savoury flavours and some texture. The red pepper coulis provided sweetness and brightness.

Runny Poached Eggs
The eggs were well poached so the whites were set and and the yolks, still runny.

Vicky's, the Michelangelo ($10), comes on rosemary foccacia with capicolo ham and basil cream sauce.

Michelangelo Eggs Benny
Accompanying sides included the fried potatoes and a cup of fresh fruit.

Jenn ordered a Balderson omelette, sans cheese. It comes with sauteed sliced mushrooms, chopped shallots and chopped bacon.

Balderson Omelette
Accompanying sides included a buttery freshly made biscuit and a cup of fresh fruit.

What surprised me were the condiments. The jam tasted like it was made and jarred in-house, naturally fruity sweet, neither metallic nor artificially sweet. There was also a nice hot pepper sauce called "Shania", made by local Chamomile Desjardins.

Shania Hot Sauce

Total: $27.12 (before taxes, including tea and coffee).

Vicky, Jenn and I enjoyed our breakfasts very much. The food was great and so was the company.

Would Jenn and I return to Jak's Kitchen? For brunch, absolutely! Given the specials we saw that day, we want to try its lunch too.

Specials
However, with Jak's Kitchen only having less than 2 dozen seats available, we suggest visiting in small groups.

Business Card

Jak's Kitchen's Business Card

Update: Vicky blogged a quick mention of our encounter on Urban Mom's.

foodiePrints on Urban Moms

Particulars:
Jak's Kitchen
479 Bronson Avenue
(613) 230-2088

More after the jump...

On January 25, 2010 Ryan Anderson (@ryananderson), web strategist, public relations professional, and founder of Fat Canary Communications, contacted me with a url to an event at Ottawa's Urban Element. Sponsored by the Chicken Farmers of Canada, its guest speaker would be the Ottawa Citizen's (a local newspaper) Food Editor, Ron Eade.

Billed as an "Ottawa Food Blogger Meet-up", I was intrigued, so I signed up. According to its event details, Eade would deliver a keynote about sodium and food writing and there would be a chicken pate cooking demo. All good points.

In the proceeding week, I tweeted the event to local food bloggers on twitter, encouraging everyone to attend. As the date of the event approached, bloggers registered in greater numbers, some I have not come across before. Many I became very excited to finally get the opportunity to meet in person. Others, I had already met and wanted to catch up with. Two of my favourite Ottawa food bloggers confirmed: Rachelle of Rachelle Eats Food and Shari of Whisk Food Blog. Two local chefs who blog confirmed: Chef Tracey Black of Best Tools for Schools: Lunchtime Solutions and Chef Jason Laurin of Sticky Fingers.

To my astonishment, professional writer (sometimes food writer) and legendary parenting blogger, Andrea Tomkins signed up. Hers is the blog many Ottawa bloggers (food or otherwise) measure themselves against, myself included.

Why was this such a big deal? Ottawa's food blogging community, as Anderson and I discussed during the latter part of the event, is large for such a small city. I have enumerated 52 blogs alone. Many of us know of one another. We read each others' work. We comment on each others' blogs. We debate points of contention on the Ottawa Foodies forum. But, we have few get togethers. By contrast, Toronto's foodie community, with its much larger complement of food bloggers, is more organized and has almost weekly get togethers.

As for the event itself, with Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's Chicken Run on the Canadian Food Network and Food Inc. having had its run in theaters, I expected the Chicken Farmers of Canada event to outline the checks and balances employed by the 2800 farmers the organization represents to produce "quality" chicken, humanely and safely. If you visit either the Chicken Farmers of Canada website or blog, you will find the organization has dual mandates, being responsible to farmers and being responsible to consumers. On the one hand, Chicken Farmers of Canada produces policies its industry follows. On the other, the organization lobbies government to ensure the interests of farmers are represented in agricultural policy and trade decisions. The Chicken Farmers of Canada blog's tag-line is to explain how Canadian chicken goes from farm to plate. The event's tag-line was to get "more Canadians back into the kitchen and pass(ing) on healthy cooking skills to the next generation." Attach to that, Eade's intention to talk about salt in food and food writing and we should have had a pair of very passionate talks and some lively discussion.

Instead, we glimpsed at a chicken farmer, whom I wanted to hear much more from. Eade gave an informative talk about food blogging, raising some thoughtful points about the state of food. We watched Urban Element's resident chef, Candace Butler, make a chicken liver pate and fellow bloggers got to meet each other. It made for a somewhat confusing, but very enjoyable experience.

Resident Chef, Candice Butler

Sous Chef, Line Leblanc
Regarding the chicken liver pate, Chefs Butler and Leblanc prepared several batches beforehand for sampling after Eade's keynote.

Three Flavours of Pate
Sherry Chicken Liver Pate with Pic Bois Maple Vinegar, Bourbon and Rosemary Chicken Liver Pate with "a bit of duck", and Brandy Chicken Liver Pate with Hall's apple and Thyme.

When we arrived, trays of appetizers, made by Sous Chef Line Leblanc were served, only two of which included chicken.

Sundried tomato strata with C'est Bon Goat Cheese

Caramelized onion and pear tarts with Bleu Benedictine

Mini chicken pot pies

An individual mini chicken pot pie

In-house pork rillete with Rochon farm zucchini relish

Chicken dumpling with peanut sauce

Cod cake

Pulled pork with smoked tomato jam

Afterward, Anderson called the event to order, explaining the Chicken Farmers of Canada organized the event to essentially build familiarity with people. In our case, people who are passionate and openly write about food in Ottawa. Apparently, their entire web strategy is being revisited from rebuilding the website from scratch to using social media for richer outreach. Then Eade was introduced.

Food Editor Ron Eade

Here are takeaways from Eade's talk on food blogging:

• Time is the most valuable resource in our hectic lives.
• With distractions like the World Wide Web (referred to as the "Internet"), Specialty Channels like the Food Network, Newspapers, and Magazines, blog readership is precious and must be nurtured.
• Those who read our blogs are choosing our content over others.
• While newspapers try to be everything to everyone, blogs are more focused, a medium unlike traditional media.

Here are Eade's suggestions for cultivating a lasting audience:

• Keep your blog fresh by updating it regularly, preferably every second day
• Do not let your blog go silent
• Add a personal spin so your reader can identify with you, the blogger
• Keep your content entertaining
• Don't bury content, making it difficult to access (Eade dislikes "more" or "read more" links)
• Add value such as photos, videos, and links

Here are takeaways from Eade's talk on food, besides the fact that processed foods harbour an unnecessary amount of salt.

• Traditional print media is guilty of "dumbing down" recipes, simplifying them to a very granular state, effectively suppressing any ability to develop culinary skills (something we have taken issue with at foodiePrints)
• With people dependent on granular recipes, they have lost the ability to be flexible in the kitchen.
• We have become a "nation of non-cooks", making it a strange dichotomy that cook books and fancy kitchen equipment sell surprisingly well in a poor economy.
• It maybe a deliberate effort by food producers to disconnect people from food sources, encouraging waste and objectifying animals as cuts of meat

Eade concluded his talk by encouraging food bloggers to espouse how simple it is to make ready-made foods be they frozen or canned from scratch. One suggestion from another blogger is to start dinner parties earlier with guests in the kitchen, participating in finishing dishes.

So, good company from local food bloggers, good hors-d'oeuvres (complementary of the Chicken Farmers of Canada), and food for thought. I think it an evening well spent.

Links to blog entries on the event from fellow food bloggers:

• Rachelle Eats Food blog (always a pleasure Rachelle)
• Unique Culinary Experiences (Urban Element's in-house blog)
• Eaten Up and Humanyms (great to meet you Pearl)
• Eva's Food World (a blogger at the event I must have missed)
• Sheltered Girl Meets World (great to finally meet you Katy and Dima too)
• Lemon Kitchen (great to meet you Tracey)

Update: This entry has been cross posted on Ottawa Tonite.

foodiePrints and the Chicken Farmers on Ottawa Tonite

Particulars:
Urban Element
424 Parkdale Avenue
(613)722-0885