A local Latin BBQ

Meet Paul Spence. You may have met him at the Masonville Farmer’s Market sometime last season. Lo Maximo Meats is the name of Paul and his wife Sara’s farm business. Paul and Sara can be found running a creative and small-scale farm near Kent Bridge in the Chatham-Kent area. Lo Maximo Meats offers up a real specialty product to our community – Latin style cuts of meat. It does not stop there for this creative duo as they are now embarking on a new adventure – The Latin BBQ experience, which they are calling Experience Casa Latina. Paul and Sara hope to create a wonderful evening of introducing people to a new style of eating… the Latin way. What they are doing is really neat – they will let you take a peak at their charming farm, so you can see the journey from farm to plate and at the same time, they want to offer up an inside look at the Latin way of life. Music, salsa dancing, socializing and just plain having fun are all on the Spence menu. After the farm tour concluded, we headed over to The Botany Community Centre, which is an adorable and old one room school house dating back to 1883. This little school house has been converted into a cozy community centre with a working kitchen. It is steeped in history and some of that history runs deep in Paul’s own family tree – his great, great grandfather helped bring the bricks to build it and his own grandfather attended the old school. Sara had been there before us working her magic, and it was set up wonderfully with a gorgeous tableware, folded napkins and even ribbons adorning each chair. It definitively set the mood and made all of the guests feel honored to be there.   We all had a chance to talk to Sara about her hometown which is in Equador and her previous way of life before she moved to the cooler Canadian climate. Sara loves to have people ask her about South America and she wants more Canadians to know about it and experience some of the culture. One of Paul’s Chatham farm area neighbors Don Giffin was there with a whole display of the most gorgeous bottles of maple syrup I have ever seen. He was there to let people know how syrup is tapped and produced. He gave us loads of information on the syrup grades and consistency. He was an amazing guy whose maple syrup has won some pretty prestigious awards in the past. One of the large bottles had a gorgeous trillium displayed and on another favourite of mine – some maple leaves adorning it, they were truly exceptional. While we were inside talking to Sara and Don, Paul was outside grilling the meat on the BBQ – I believe that in Spanish the BBQ would be called a parrilla or open-fired grill and this is a very traditional way to cook the meat. Speaking of meat, there was alot of it. This is where the Latin experience comes in and really shines. We were introduced to the names of many different styles or cuts of meat and offal (hoove, tendons, brains, tongue – nothing is off the table at a true Latin BBQ). I am happy to announce that they did go easy on us at this particular parrilla.   There were regular farmer style sausage, pork and beef cutlets and the two most adventurous items on the menu were heart and kidney. I managed to try them both and I will say that I liked the heart but I think that would be my last time with the kidney. Some others that were present loved the kidney and passed on the heart – so, to each his/her own! Every kind of meat was accompanied with a homemade green sauce called chimichurri = delicious. There were also three gorgeous salads to accompany the meal, which Sara told me was more of a Canadian touch, as at a traditional Latin BBQ there would just be the meat. To finish, there was a delicious dessert which was Sara’s mother’s recipe – I cannot recall the exact name, but I believe it was a dulche de leche-type flan with another Canadian touch – whipped cream. As part of the Latin experience, Sara includes a salsa lesson to anyone interested, which we ran out of time on this particular evening. I have taken loads of other photos of the farm and some of the really creative projects that they have going on there currently, or are in the works. It really needs to be in another post, so if you are intrigued check back in a few days! Amar la vida! Experience Casa Latina Paul and Sara Spence 11945 Selton Line R.R.#3 Kent Bridge, ON, N0P 1V0 experiencecasalatina@gmail.com 519-365-9791    Read More

Good Bye 2009 & Hello 2010, you pretty lady.

Happy New Year to you all! As I sit here, sloth like really – nursing a very mild hangover, the snow is falling out here north of London by the bucket full and I have many things on my mind. One can”t help to think of this thick white blanket of the fluffy stuff as a chance for pause and much needed renewal. Thoughts of resolutions, wishes and future predictions for 201o have been rifling through my over sugared and overfed brain and I will try to share those with you here. First off, I would like to thank you all for continued reading, your comments, questions and thoughts on this site – as you have been why I keep it going, so thank you all very much and please keep reading! Secondly, I feel so very fortunate for many things in my life of late. It is with a happy wave and a swift kick of a winter boot that I say goodbye to 2009, I am sure that many of you will agree that it was not the best year. Listing myself as one of the lucky ones, who 2009 did not beat into a pulp, I can count my blessings on both hands – that I was able to retain a job in Southwestern Ontario is a sure mark of victory. Also,I have met many new friends and have had the wonderful experience of travelling with Sean out to the Canadian west coast for a wonderful tour of Vancouver Island this past summer. I have enjoyed many get-togethers this past year with family and friends and have many happy memories. All this said,2009 did leave its small marks of sorrow in my life but they are nothing in comparison to what this tornado of a year left behind as it blazed through the past twelve months and left its ugly mark across the world. The Iran protests, the world economic collapse, the food shortage crisis, and climate change starting to show its real toil (just the beginning), are only some of the top stories. Good-bye 09. So here we are at 2010. I think we were supposed to have cars that fly by now and some of us were meant to be living on the moon surely, but if you look around, it is all pretty much the same. Social media is huge and things are changing by the second in that area, but for the most part the way we play out our daily lives is similar to what we have been doing for the last thirty years or so. There have been great shifts of people actually going back to old ways of doing things – take for instance the renewed interest in eating from local farms and canning fruits and vegetables. I predict many more home vegetable gardens for 2010 as well as a return to people eating from the earth and eating all of it – there is a resurgence of eating offal for instance. That”s right.. you know what I am talking about here… the eating of brains, livers, eyes and all kinds of other parts of the animal that many people shy away from (myself included!) but I think you are going to see more of it in a big way. One more prediction – I think 2010 will be the year of the honey bee. I expect to see gourmet honey products, and many more local apiaries this year. I am not one for resolutions so much as I always seem to break them. I do resolve to continue to make small changes that are heart felt and meaningful. I resolve to take better care of myself and am going to try a little yoga for a healthy mind, body and spirit. I am going to plan to grow even more tomatillos next year, and have also made a promise to give my tomato plants more room in the garden (this may require creating another vegetable bed – oh no !). My resolutions are small, but they are mighty to me and I wish for all of you a happy and healthy 2010 filled with all the tastiest morsels of local food that this province and surrounding areas can offer. Bon appetit and peace out. xoKelly  Read More