The Food We Eat! Where does yours come from?

I'd like to believe that living on Prince Edward Island known as  "THE MILLION ACRE FARM" that we know the food we eat or at least know where it comes from, but do we?

In answer to that, read labels. A great deal of the food we eat is imported, why? We are smart enough and have the ability to grown food and be a self sustaining island. But are we? 

Not to bring the Atlantic Superstore to the topic of this conversation, but do you know a great deal of grower labels are from China? Take for instance snow peas! They are so easy to grow if you forget to trellis them they will faithfully produce with a plant toppled over even a plant that has wind damage (bent in half) will continue to yield. But the superstore Carries 2 varieties of snow peas, the ones grown in CHINA and the other packaged and grown in CHINA. 

Shrimp has the label so well hidden but when you search it out with an employee, the pre-packaged, packed, then re-packed label tells you the shrimp sale featured to attract sales- is shrimp from CHINA. PEI has access to Northern Shrimp resources.   I'm telling you this because the shrimp tanks in China, are designed directly under chicken wire cages. The feces from chickens are feeding the shrimp you are investing. Yuck. 

Buy local means the money spent on food (the subject today) well most of it will go to the farmers feed bill, his deseal bill, the straw for bedding animals and tools needed to complete the job of field to fork. After all the meat we live to eat has to be fed, beded, watered, butchered, packaged and labeled. All costly these days.

We as growers produce food from what we raise. The shop offers (too sellers)

Chicken Pot Pie 🥧 

Beef Pies

Heat'n Eat Meals

just to mention a few. So the next time you think local make sure you know where it is raised as well. Take care and happy eating

~00~ Grandma (aka Cindy) 

Winsloe Farm Market

The original makers of 

Heat'n eat meals

545 malpeque rd, pei

Authentic PEI Products

What does local mean? When you look on the package and the product says packaged in Canada, you have to ask yourself where it started out?

I know I wasn't able to digest beef for a number of years. Then my son started farming his own, chickens, eggs, beef and pork about 5 years ago. He started feeding animals the way the ole folks did years ago, he mixed his own feed made up his own combination of grains, minerals,  and hay in the winter months and they are pasture-raised with a higher protein diet in the summer months.  

The taste amazing, the quality and care that goes into feed g animals results in the texture, marbleling and tenderness for sure. I am able to eat his beef and enjoy the fact that getting older didnt mean every steak and roast was going to need to be boiled for hours to be able to eat.

These are a couple of small steaks he cuts up for me. So ya it is a big job but the end result is: we know where are food is grown, we enjoy the good taste, and now we raise the best tasting chicken on the island.

Matthew is my son and I, hi I'm cindy, have bee  cooking at events around Prince Edward Island for years. However due to Covid 19 this year all the events on Island have bee  cancelled. 

Well perhaps if we knew that a year ago we wouldnt have raised so many chicken's, pork and beef. Then what do you do whe  the feed Bill's are  coming in and 

Your not selling a sausage or anything at market. You build your own market.

This is the winsloe farm market run out of a dedicated spot in the front of our home where people can come in and buy local meats and foods we grow ourselves and produce into foods we sell such as chicke  pies, beef pies, bacon meat loaf, lasagna, oh and a bunch of other goodies. We grow a little each week. With rhubarb in season I'm making rhubarb chutney, a great tasting relish to add to meats.

 So here is the freezer stocked. 

my rhubarb chutney $6

we sell marinated bags of chicken as well.

yes we make our own sausages from the chicken Matthew raises. We have about 7 varieties of sausages, 5 different burgers and about 4 flavours of marinated chicken chunks onto skewers for kabobs. 

I like to bake so I get ti do the chi cken pies.

well that should be enough to let you know authentic food PEI should mean it is grown, raised, and food is produced from the food you grow, here local, on Prince Edward Island.

Know what you grow.