Launch of The Edible City, A Book About Food Issues in Toronto

As the Royal Winter Fair wound down for another year and Santa arrived on Yonge Street, the ballroom of the Gladstone Hotel filled up with people who work with, think about and appreciate good food as Coach House Books launched The Edible City, the fifth in its ongoing uTOpia series about all that Toronto is, has been and could be.

There was quite a lot of fairly impassioned discussion about local food issues, and the urgency of supplying everyone in this city with good nutritious food, and about great local restaurants, food shops and organizations working for education and change in food-related areas. People also talked about Toronto as a centre for food production, and most seemed to agree that our local cuisine is the food of the world, created here by people from everywhere. (A transcription will be made available on the Coach House site.)

With native plant expert and author Lorraine Johnson, I had the pleasure of judging a Toronto-theme cookie decorating contest (top prize: a lovely food assortment from Culinarium). To my great sorrow, I missed getting a picture of the top prize winner, which was a gorgeous sparkling rendition of the lit-up CN Tower, or Ron Nurwisah's second-place cookie, a representation of the TTC subway map in sugar stars, titled "The Sweeter Way". But here are some of the other noble creations, rendered with icing, jelly beans, Smarties and sprinkles on oversized sugar cookies from Wanda's Pie in the Sky.