I made my first soup ever a few weeks ago.
I’ve never really loved soup for a variety of reasons (mainly because I’m messy when I eat it) but Dani loves it. I’ve taken over the majority of meal duties since our youngest son arrived a month ago and I thought I’d mix things up and dive into the world of soup. I made a butternut squash/apple soup that actually turned out pretty good and was easy to make (except for dicing up the squash). Quality-wise, it was way better than what I’ve had in the convenience of canned or boxed soups. I made a bunch of soup but not enough that I needed to freeze or can. We ate it all within a few days.
There are weekly features in various media outlets about the increase of home-based food processors and the changing/updating of rules to support the local food economy businesses – many of these businesses are an expansion or new direction of a family-run farm.
Doug and I (and lots of others) gained experience with this sector 10 years ago while working with Jeff Wilson and co. at Birkbank Farm in Hillsborough ON (that’s in Canada). Jeff, moving away from just producing commodities and towards being a ready-to-eat food producer, had a market store on his 200 acre fruit and veg farm and expanded his business.
The extension agents I work with in North Carolina are receiving an increased number of calls looking for advice about moving from a strictly agriculture business to other ventures like making apple cider; baking pies and canning jams; shredding and bagging leafy greens to be sold with homemade salad dressing; and making soup.
Relatives of Doug’s run Barrie Brothers Local Food Company, who expanded into the home food business as a way to supplement their existing fresh asparagus sales.
From their website:
The initiative to launch Barrie Bros. Local Food Company was inspired by our Grandfather, Homer McMann. A life-long farmer from Alliston, Ontario, Homer provided Campbell’s Soup Company with exceptional quality asparagus for use in their soups. We still use Grandpa’s soup crates in our operation and have modelled our own Barrie Brother’s crates in their image as a way of paying homage to the years Homer spent making good soup.
Earlier this week, the
Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced a recall and issued a warning the public not to consume one of Barrie Brothers products, Fresh Broccoli Soup.
The problem surfaced Monday after the Ontario Ministry of Food and Agriculture tested several jars of the company’s fresh broccoli soup as part of the ministry’s one-year pilot project to routinely monitor locally-produced products, Barrie said.
“This one jar did come back with a potential concern of the presence of bacteria,” he said. While the exact type of bacteria was not identified, “the concern is for botulism,” he said.
The soup was made in a Guelph-area kitchen in July 2009 and it has a shelf life of 18 months. The ministry inspected the certified kitchen where the soup was made and no problems were identified, he said, adding that ministry officials believe the process time for this one batch of the soup was not long enough to kill all bacteria.
Late last night Barrie Brothers expanded the recall to include all of their soups that were processed in that kitchen (
see here, already up on their website). They did the right thing by going public and getting the other products back. By only focusing on one lot, or one product producers make the assumption that an issue is isolated and not systemic – when it comes to processing times and equipment and messing around with botulism risks, recalling everything that was processed using the same techniques is a good way to go. Even with the small margins and the financial hit Barrie Brothers will take through this event, it’s better than being linked to illnesses and saying “we didn’t know it was a problem.”
