Money and Food

Most of you know that I earn a living as a financial advisor, here in Toronto. I can't and I won't give you any stock tips but I can tell you some fundamentals:

• Save your money. Even the best advisor can't make nothing out nothing.
• Diversify your portfolio. When I mean diversify, spread your assets equally among your real estate, retirement portfolio and investments. I see too many people without balance or diversification in this manner.
• Save 10% of your wages for emergencies etc. Everyone should have about 3 months salary saved, in case they need it. Sadly, the majority are 3 months away from bankruptcy.
• Don't have an advisor? Ask friends or relatives who they deal with, ask for a referral...you trust their judgement.
• Cut and pay off all your credit cards, just keep one and use it as a convenience...to rent a hotel, a car or book a holiday to earn points. If you don't have the money, don't buy it!
  
• Do not try and guess or time the market. It's a fools game...only the big guys can play this game and if you insist on playing with them, you're a fool.

Also, one of the good speakers at my recent conference was a Martin Feldstein, a professor of economics at Harvard University and the CEO of the National Bureau of Economics.

The bottom line:

Things in the US will get worse before they get better and there's a real danger of inflation or perhaps even stagflation. Canada, being so closely reliant on the US economy will no doubt feel a downside too.

As for the rest of the world, it will be affected by the US' recession but not to the same extent. Europe is self-contained and it currently is doing well and the Far East keeps on feeding off the locomotive economy of China.

Now how do I segue from money to food? It's quite simple...as a financial advisor, alot of my meetings are conducted at family's homes, after dinner, in their kitchen.

I smell what they ate for dinner, I discuss food, I review their spending habits as a family (and that includes groceries). Seeing how I have this info at my disposal and I conduct meetings in the kitchen, I have a good pulse of what people are buying and where they are buying their groceries.

Rising oil prices are causing food prices to rise everywhere, creating a pinch on family's budgets. From my experience here in Toronto, most family's are buying their groceries from discount supermarkets and the larger, costlier parent grocers.

Families are including more organic and "green" goods in their shopping list. Most families are also buying their meat and seafood from the same grocery store...one stop shopping.

Few families are buying fruits and vegetables from green grocers, organic farmers or farmer's markets.

Canada has one growing season. Planting occurs in May and early crops of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers are ready by August and all the otherfruits & vegetables are harvested up to October. Otherwise, anything listed as being from Ontario or Canadian comes from technology's gift to Canada, the greenhouse.

To live in Canada means we must exercise the necessary evil of imported produce from the US, Mexico and central and South America. The produce section in the winter time is filled with Chilean fruits & vegetables.

We can all try and do our best to buy organic, feed our families well and do our part to preserve our planet but isn't also paramount to put food on the table? I find some hypocrisy in someone who doesn't exercise the same diligence in shopping for fish or meats. Where did your chicken come from? That gorgeous piece of beef...is it USDA or Canada AAA? Is that Ontario Spring lamb or gamey New Zealand lamb? Is that fish from local waters or has it been frozen on a tanker all the way from Vietnam? Was the fish caught without endangering other species? The larger question...were these animals farmed organically, fed a good diet, slaughtered humanely?

I guess I got pretty heavy, eh? No need to worry. My serious moment has abruptly ended...it's time to put the chef's hat back on and later tonight...I'll be at a party and look for me wearing the lampshade on my head!

Look at what's on my table...baked halibut! Canada boasts of having alot of fish and despite Toronto being a 3 hour flight from the Pacific and a 9o minute flight from the Atlantic, we get some decent Canadian seafood flown into town and some weekly shipments of Mediterranean fish from Europe.

Everyone (except my brother who doesn't eat seafood) loved this baked halibut. Most people love halibut because we all ate it in fish & chips. Halibut, like most seafood use to be dirt cheap. Those days are long gone.

I lucked out with these halibut fillets during a recent visit to Toronto's famed St. Lawrence Market. It's open from Tuesday to Saturday and a friend of mine told how I could go down to the market on a Saturday afternoon and buy a pot-pouri of seafood for cheap.

What I got was a couple of halibut fillets, some squid, smoked mackerel fillets and a fillet of Mahi Mahi...all for $10! I'm not going to tell you which shop offers this...you're going to have to head down to the market and find out yourself!

Pistachio Crusted Halibut

4 halibut fillets
1/2 cup shelled pistachios
zest of 1/2 lemon
zest of 1/2 lime
zest of 1/2 orange
4 tsp. chopped fresh parsley
1 cup Panko bread crumbs
Dijon mustard
salt & pepper
olive oil

Pre-heated 400F oven

1. Roughly chop your pistachios and place in a bowl. Mix in your 3 types of zest, parsley and bread crumbs. While stirring with a spoon, slowly add some olive oil until the mixture sticks together.
2. Season your fillets with salt and pepper and brush each top part of the fillet with Dijon mustard.
3. Pack the breading on top of each fillet and place on a baking sheet that's been treated with oil.
4. Place in the upper middle rack of your oven bake for 20 minutes or until the tops have turned golden brown.
5. Serve with some rice and some sauteed and greens
   

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