How to survive the LCBO strike

What a summer it's shaping up to be! First there's the garbage strike (click here for tips on how to survive). Now LCBO workers are poised to go on strike. We could have, as Toronto writer Carl Wilson phrased it, "the stink without the drink."

For those of you unfamiliar with Ontario's arcane liquor distributions rules, the LCBO has a near monopoly. Because it has almost exclusive rights to sell booze to the province's 13 million residents (well, the ones over 19, at any rate), it's one of the world's biggest buyers.

Fret not, oh thirsty Ontarians, for the monopoly is not complete! Here are ways to slake your thirst during an LCBO strike. Oh, and as an added bonus, most of them work on a locavore diet!

1. Drink Beer
   The strike will not affect Beer Stores (we have such creative names in this province), so domestic beer will be almost as easy to get as it usually is. The fine imported beers that the LCBO carries, however, will not be available.
   
   
2. Visit a brewpub
   Many Beer Stores do stock very good Canadian (and some imported) beers. But if your tastes are, like mine, a bit on the snobbish side, then go to a local brewpub or microbrewery. Bartowel has some great suggestions, and they're not all in Toronto. In Toronto, my favourites (so far) are the Mill Street in the Distillery District, and C'est What? on Front Street. Please add your own suggestions in the comments. I'm always on the lookout for a good pint of ale!
   
   
3. Go grocery shopping
   Thanks to another part of Ontario's arcane liquor laws, some winemakers have their own stores, often set up in grocery stores. These stores, such as the Wine Rack stores, will not be affected by the strike. However, they have a limited selection from one company. You'll notice that Wine Rack also allows online ordering.
   
   
4. Visit a winery
   A generation ago, an LCBO strike would have been unbearable. Back then, local wine was awful! But today, the province isn't only producing drinkable wines, it's producing some very good ones. The best I've tasted have not been available at the LCBO stores, so it's always worth going to a winery. There are great wines to be found in batches too small for the province's liquor stores.
   I've toured quite a few on the Niagara Peninsula, and have always enjoyed the outing. There are excellent suggestions in Linda Bramble's guidebook, Touring Niagara's Wine Country (disclaimer: I worked on one edition of the book). There's also a directory of Ontario wineries to help you find one near you.
   
   
5. Seek out the hard stuff
   The biggest problem during the strike will be getting hard liquor. Most of the major distilleries do not have their own stores. However, there are small ones that do. Kittling Ridge is probably the main one. They have seven stores in Barrie, London, the Toronto area and at their main facility in Grimsby. While I'm not a big fan of their wines, I have found some of their harder products, such as vodka, rye and rum, suitable for my highball needs.
   
   
6. Order a Canatini
   Many apartment-dwellers, including me, are living the car-free lifestyle. While this is usually great, it does limit one's ability to traipse about from winery to winery. The solution is the home-grown martini, or Canatini as I'm calling it. Magnotta, which makes some very good wines, also produces beer, grappa, vodka, gin and vermouth. And they deliver using Canada Post.
   Yes, you read that correctly: You can get a martini delivered by mail. Well, some assembly required.
   
   
7. Go visit Uncle Jim
   If things get really bad, you might have to dip into the dandelion wine that some strange relative makes. Or, if you want to try something really different, Downey's Farm northwest of Toronto makes all sorts of berry wines. Not my taste, but it could be a fun change for some, and it's a nice place to visit in the countryside. As always, you can make your own beer and wine (let's hope the strike doesn't last that long!), but home distilling isn't legal here...yet.
   
   
8. Cross-shop
   There are bizarre laws in Canada about transporting booze across provincial boundaries. Folks in provincial border towns, such as Ottawa, can perhaps fill us in on how much policing there is during the strike. You can buy booze in the States (or elsewhere) and bring it back. You will have to pay duty on anything over the rather paltry limit, though.
   
   
9. Hit the border?
   There's a rumour afoot that some of the Duty Free stores may be open for business during the strike. However, we're not sure at this point whether they will be open to the general public or just border-hoppers, as usual. This item will be updated when more information becomes available. This could be good news for folks in areas around Windsor, Niagara Falls and Fort Erie, Cornwall and Thunder Bay or Rainy Lake (is there a duty-free store at the Rainy Lake crossing?)
   
   
10. Go on vacation
    This is especially true for folks in Toronto and Windsor, where garbage strikes continue. Go to Barcelona, pick up a case of cheap Cava, head down to a beach somewhere and ride out the strike season in style.
    

Green Tenant welcomes your additions to this list. Please share your ideas and updates in the comments section, especially ideas that will work for car-free people.

Today's lunch: from field to table in less than five minutes

Finally, summer weather has come to Toronto. With warmth also comes an abundance of salad greens. I've taken to stepping outside to pick my lunch most days. Really, there's nothing that can compare with a freshly picked salad.

Today's delight was mostly made up of butter crunch lettuce leaves and beet greens, with a few leaves of oak leaf lettuce, a bit of giant red mustard green, a few leaves of basil and parsley, and one nice red radish.

I grew more mustard greens than I need. A little bit goes a long way, and as they mature, the greens get very strong. The giant red have a nicer texture and are a touch milder, it seems. The green ones get spiny and are quite strong, almost like wasabi. I'm thinking that I might try rolling sushi with some large leaves. I'll also freeze some for use in soups this winter.

Soon enough, I'll be producing enough of certain produce that I'll have to start preserving some, either by freezing or by canning. There's an interesting article on how to handle vegetables to maximize nutrient retention on the Oregon State University website. Because vegetables lose certain nutrients quickly, a salad this fresh is incredibly healthy. My body seems to feel better after eating one.

Oh, and that salad? It's completely organic with zero food miles and cost next to nothing. More importantly, it tasted fantastic!

Garbage strike survival ideas from a six-year-old

Like most parents, I'm frequently surprised by my kid. He's six years old and, well, to be perfectly honest, he often has better ideas than I do.

When we got home from school tonight, there was a message from a radio station that had read my post, 10 ways to survive a garbage strike. This meant that I had to start by explaining what a strike is. Thankfully, he's a smart kid. Probably also helped that we read him Click, Clack, Moo when he was little.

I asked him if he had suggestions to add to the list. Of course he did.

"I would just not use a lot of things," he said. Sensible. What would he give up? "Milk."

"Okay," I replied. "That might help, but the strike might last for weeks. You probably need milk. Lets put that on a list of 'essentials' that we can't give up." I suggested buying milk in bags instead of cartons because of the smaller volume of waste (we'd have to freeze some bags, since we don't go through too much."

Naturally, he started talking about how we could re-use the bags as garbage bags. After the strike ends, that is. (If there is a garbage strike in Toronto, that is. We'll know all too soon.)

"What else could we use less of?" I asked. He pointed at the shampoo. I conceded that we could probably be more careful about the amount we use, and proceded to wash his hair.

Then I got up to let him play in the water for a bit.

"Wait!" he called. "I've got more ideas."

I got a pad and pen and sat down on the toilet to take dictation from a six-year-old pontificating from the bath.

"If you ever get a cardboard box, turn it into something else, like a little town with a train track in it."

Right. Creative, but not necessarily a way to deal with thousands of tons of trash. Still, it could make a fun weekend project, so I'm not going to argue.

That's when he really surprised me: "Eat less candy, because that means fewer candy wrappers."

Somehow I doubt his friends will be cheering for that one.

In the meantime, I'm going to use his bath water to help the tomatoes grow and tuck my creative thinker into bed. Then I'm going to sit down and cross my fingers that the outside workers and City Hall can find enough common ground to make everyone happy.