A guest post by Frances Millerd

~ Like many Vancouverites in the summer, we often pack up our dinner and walk down to the grassy knoll that looks over the ocean a couple of blocks from our apartment. Dinner is simple and often features a crusty baguette, cheese and fresh summer fruit.

A couple of days ago, a jar of Sea Change Savouries Canada’s new Ice Wine Jelly with Mint arrived at my door like a gift from the picnic gods, a little classy pizzazz for our summer spread.  The jelly had a beautiful consistency – liquidy and glimmering with delicate flavours, but thick enough to smooth over a cracker. This was the debut of wine-soaked condiments at my dinner table (or picnic blanket.) Why hadn’t I thought of this before?

Having recently visited to the farmers’ market,  I had a small wheel of camembert that was begging to be dressed up in ice wine. Like honey drizzled over brie (a personal favourite) I had a feeling the Ice Wine Jelly would be great friends with camembert. I was right.

The recipe which follows involves spreading the Ice Wine Jelly lavishly over the top of the cheese wheel, topping with sliced almonds, and baking it until the cheese soft and the Ice Wine Jelly trickles over the edges.

A warmed Camembert adds elegance to an outdoor meal. However I suggest you bring friends, or you are in very real danger of eating the whole thing, which is not elegant at all.

Warmed Camembert with Almonds and SeaChange Ice Wine Jelly

1 250g wheel of Camembert

2 tbsp Ice Wine Jelly with Mint

3 tbsp sliced, lightly toasted, sliced almonds

Crostini, crackers, or a baguette to serve

Preheat the oven to 400°. If you will be packing the cheese to go, you may want to place a small square of foil on the baking sheet. Place the cheese on the foil, spread the Ice Wine Jelly over the camembert and top with toasted almonds. Bake for 8 minutes, or until the cheese is warm and soft. Wrap the whole thing loosely in paper or foil before placing in a container. Hurry to your grassy knoll (or patio) before allowing enthusiastic crostini to dive in.

SeaChange was faced with this problem for many years. We got requests for multiple causes from Cancer to Multiple Sclerosis, from Girl Guides to Easter Seal.  Sometimes we said yes, but then endured endless solicitations for subsequent donations (which by then we had given to someone else.)

We finally came up with a strategy. We decided to “just say yes” to friends and neighbours in our home community of Salt Spring Island, who represent local non-profit organizations. We give that support in the form of SeaChange product donations which can be used as raffle prizes, door prizes, speaker gifts, etc.

In addition, we decided to to make a fixed financial commitment to one main charitable cause. In selecting our “big” cause we considered many worthy and compelling alternatives, trying to find a match between who SeaChange is, and what was central to each cause.  In the end we decided that because the desire to share food is at the core of what SeaChange does, we would like to support Food Banks. We commit 5% of our net profits to this cause.

Making these decisions has helped us in two ways. First, we don’t waste time pondering – we can get on with running our business. If we can help you and stay within our mandate, we will. Secondly, we feel good because we are meeting our own goals for contributing to community. Phew! What a relief!

This strategy has worked for me in my personal life as well. I have given myself permission to support friends, family and co-workers with modest donations toward causes for which they fund-raise, when they ask for my support. I have also chosen one specific charity to which I make my main, annual contribution – a cause that resonates for me. Once again, relief!

So last week SeaChange took $2400 worth of SeaChange goods at wholesale value to the Food Bank, one of at least two donations we make annually. (We also donate to the Christmas Hamper program, and we occasionally make special donations to food banks and soup kitchens in both Vancouver and Victoria.) For all of us at SeaChange, it feels great to be part of our local community, and it also feels good to be doing something about hunger by sharing food with others.

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Person to person.  SeaChange products can be taken in your personal luggage or mailed in a personal package pretty much anywhere in the world.

Business to business.  To mail a SeaChange product from your business to a business in another country (especially the US) we recommend that you phone SeaChange first, because some paperwork may be required. We have a toll free number for this purpose: 1-888-747-5641. Or you can email us, telling us what you want to send and where you want to send it. If documentation is required, the CFIA requires that the paperwork for your shipment is prepared BEFORE the product leaves SeaChange. So check in with us before you actually purchase. We are experts at facilitating this process – we have done it hundreds of times.

Tip.  If you are sending any SeaChange salmon in a gold foil pouch (this includes Smoked Sockeye Salmon in a cedar box) call it “canned salmon” on the Customs declaration. The gold foil pouch, also called a retort pouch, is a high tech can. Canned products are almost always allowed across borders, where fresh fish is not.

Oh, except for Australia.  Australia does not allow any food product containing eggs into the country, even in canned products. SeaChange Pâtés do contain egg yolk. So take SeaChange Smoked Salmon, rather than SeaChange Pâtés, to Australia.

More info. For information about Customs regulations in a specific country, contact the importing country’s department of agriculture or its embassy/consulate/trade commission in Canada.

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We had two customers in our store this morning looking for tasty items to send to their son-in-law serving in Afghanistan.  Apparently the food that the Canadian troops eat is pretty bland so we were helping them pick out spicy seasonings in travel-friendly packaging.  Then we recalled that several of your products made it onto the Space Station so we thought they ought to make it over to Afghanistan just fine.  We threw in a package of Smoked Salmon Jerky along with your card mentioning the astronauts’ choice, something the troops could probably appreciate.

It feels good to know that SeaChange can be a gift from home to some young Canadian soldier working hard in Afghanistan. Thanks so much to Firehouse Gourmet for sharing this story!

This is the "card mentioning the astronauts' choice" – included free with orders upon request.

To leave a comment, click on the green number to the right of the title of this blog post.

Almost every kind of smoked salmon in the SeaChange line-up keeps without refrigeration, summer and winter, for many years, and can be opened with your bare hands while crouched under a tarp in the rain. (Although you may not care at the point of being under the tarp, this remarkable shelf life is not achieved with nitrates, but through the retort pouch technology. The retort pouch – or gold foil pouch – creates a sterile environment in which the smoked salmon remains good to eat indefinitely.) The only problem with including SeaChange Smoked Salmon in a Survival Kit is the temptation to raid the Kit in situations that can’t truly be regarded as emergencies.

The truth is that despite Profit Magazine’s photo endorsement, SeaChange Smoked Salmon Jerky is not SeaChange’s best offering for a Survival Kit, because it is preserved with drying and smoking (no nitrates) and is vacuumed packed in a clear pouch rather than a retort pouch. SeaChange Salmon Jerky  has a relatively short shelf life of six months, which is a bit short for most Survival Kits. (It’s great for camping, though.)

To leave a comment, click on the green number to the right of the title of this blog post.

cooler bag, ice pack, sharp knife ( have you ever tried to cut anything other than soft butter with a hotel knife?), box of biodegradable baggies, one or two reusable plastic containers, small bottles of soy sauce, olive oil, mayonaise and salad dressing, pepper mill, an onion, garlic, loaf of whole grain bread, almond butter, jam, butter (in a plastic tub), a small amount of brown rice, tea (both black and herb), tetrapack of milk, a nice bottle of wine, a large bag of mixed nuts and raisins, water bottle, a large container of drinking water for refills, and a selection of SeaChange treats…

I almost always eat breakfast in. My theory is that if I start the day with a meal that my body is used to, I am set up to have a great day. Breakfast is tea and toast. I sometimes pick up a piece of fruit and cut it up to enjoy with my toast.

My nut mixture gets me past many a low energy moment during the day and goes well with a good cup of coffee, should I be able to find one on my travels. (I admit to being a coffee snob.) I drink water all day when I am on the road.

I may eat lunch out, but if I am saving my money for dinner out, I buy rycrisp, cheese, cucumber, and sweet peppers in a local grocery store. (Unfortunately you have to think of this the night before.) Before I leave the hotel in the morning, I wash and cut the veggies and slice the cheese, putting it all in baggies to pack in my cooler bag. When I am ready for lunch, this simple fare tastes pretty good. Olives, pickles or a tin of SeaChange Pâté are optional extras. Tinned fish mixed up with mayo and packed in a plastic tub can taste pretty good too. I drink more water.

Making dinner in a hotel room is a challenge at the end of a full day on the road, but here are a couple of meals that work for me:

I stop at a grocery store for washed organic lettuce and perhaps some other veggie that looks good and can be eaten raw. I make a salad with the dressing in my kit. A package of SeaChange Smoked Salmon broken over the salad tastes wonderful, but toasted nuts work too. If the hotel has a decent pot, I will cook some brown rice, but if not, I make a piece of toast to go with my salad.

Pasta can be an easy meal if the hotel has both a pot and a frying pan: Pick up some broccoli, a few mushrooms and a package of pasta at the local grocery store. Chop the broccoli and mushrooms quite small, along with onion and garlic from your kit. Get the pasta cooking. Stir-fry the onion, garlic, broccoli and mushrooms. Toss the veggies with the cooked, drained hot pasta and some olive oil. Sprinkle a grating of fresh pepper and some SeaChange Maple Smoked Salt on top. (SeaChange Smoked Salmon can also be added to this recipe for a yummy and more protein rich dinner.) Pour yourself a glass of wine, and enjoy! I like a bite of dark chocolate and  a cup of herb tea after dinner. (Even if you eat dinner out, it’s nice to come back to a steaming cup of lemon ginger tea and a little bit of chocolate!)

Of course, it is a real pleasure to eat any meal in a great restaurant. I ask the locals for recommendations!

Do you have a recipe or food idea that works for you on the road? We would love to hear about it! To leave a comment, click on the green number to the right of the title of this blog post.

Happy travels!

I was excited last year when SeaChange found a local artisan salt producer to supply us with Canadian Sea Salt and Maple Smoked Salt. As far as we know, there is no other Canadian Sea Salt available at retail across Canada, and I was hopeful that our customers would be interested to start exploring the world of salts with us. Suddenly salt rocketed up to the top of my list of interests!

Of course, in the process of releasing the SeaChange salts we tasted them, and I began to cook with them as well. This past Easter weekend I finally got myself organized to host a salt tasting.

We live in a world of specialty food tastings. I have been to wine tasting parties, and I have enjoyed a number of tours through Canadian wine country, gradually learning a little about wine. To my surprise ( I did not expect this) I found I could understand and use a few of the wine tasting terms that one reads about. Maybe this has happened to you as well. Who knew that wine could bring to mind dark chocolate, or grapefruit, or taste the way a certain kind of wood smells?  I am very much an entry level wine taster, but I can vouch for the process. If I can do it, you probably can too.

I know people also host scotch tastings, chocolate tastings and cheese tastings. And judging by the number of salts for sale in a good specialty food shop, I thought there must be salt tastings as well. I looked online and sure enough salt tastings are “a thing.” However I was not able to find much guidance on how to host a salt tasting, so I mostly made it up as I went along.

This is what I did:  In addition to our own SeaChange Canadian Sea Salt and SeaChange Maple Smoked Salt, I purchased three other specialty salts. I sliced apples and pears, and put them out on the table with the salts poured into small bowls. I also put out the salt packages, so we could see what we were tasting. (You could do a blind test as well.)  I searched through lists of foodie words to suggest as descriptors, and made up tasting cards, one for each salt. My guests were invited to smell first, then taste, and to check boxes on their tasting cards, adding comments if they chose. The purpose was to educate our palates, not to pick a winner. I wanted to know if we could even tell the difference between salts, and whether we would then get interested in any of these differences. None of my guests had been to a salt tasting, and none of them had much experience cooking with artisan salts, although they were all people who love to cook and love good food. My question: Could I and my guests become salty foodies?

To my delight (and I confess a little to my surprise) it was fun, interesting, and yes, we were able to tell marked differences between salts. In general, the comments followed a theme with each salt. We tasted a Himalayan Pink Sea Salt that we all agreed had a clean, sharp flavour, and we all described a more mellow, complex flavour in the SeaChange Canadian Sea Salt. Of the two smoked salts we tried, the SeaChange Maple Smoked Salt came out a clear winner – not in the aroma where the other salt also scored well, but in the flavour. There are some muddy tasting smoked salts out there!  I could see that one could indeed select different salts for different culinary purposes.

Our salt tasting was a fun opener to the evening, taking the place of hors d’oeuvres. If dinner will be late or you have a particularly hungry crowd,  you can serve sliced baguette with unsalted butter in addition to apples and pears. You could also try using other fruits. I provided water with limes for cleansing the palate, and wine to loosen the opinions of my guests!  Five salts were enough for one tasting, but my guests wished I had also provided regular table salt  for contrast.  I chose to offer two smoked salts and three sea salts, but you could explore any salt category in more depth if you chose. It was fun to have the tasting cards, to spur linguistic creativity in describing the salts. You can download a pdf of the card I made up here.

So go for it and host a salt tasting of your own!  It’s a fun and unusual way to start a social evening. Send us your comments about the SeaChange Salts. How do they measure up at your tasting event? We really want to know. To leave a comment, click on the green number to the right of the title of this blog post. (If it’s a zero, you are the first to comment!)

Have fun, and remember, take it all with a pinch of salt!

If you need more ideas, try calendars, postcards, and books with local scenery. For Japanese girls take Maybelline or MAC mascara, and for Eastern European or Russian host families – peanut butter and Canadian honey ! Make sure the honey is pasturized so you can get it through Customs. And don’t forget the maple syrup!  It’s not as portable as smoked salmon, but its just as Canadian!

If you have other suggestions, use the comment form. We would love to hear what you think!

When you look at the graphic on a SeaChange wood box, what do you see? I hope you can see two fish, curled around so that their noses and tails touch in the middle of the panel. What you might not have seen is that one of these fish (which are both salmon) is male and the other is female. You can tell by looking in the tail, where the female has a collection of eggs. Notice also the circle held between the tails of the male and female salmon. This is the fertilized egg. If you look closely you can see the tail fin and the eye of the baby fish.

This graphic was designed for SeaChange by Haida artist Don Yeomans, in the early 1990’s. He designed the basic graphic in three versions, to fit three differently dimenisioned rectangles, which correspond to the different dimensions of SeaChange cedar box lids. Mr. Yeomans has gone on to international acclaim since he designed this graphic for SeaChange. We at SeaChange feel both fortunate and proud to have Don Yeomans’ artwork on our cedar boxes.

“We are very excited to provide our retailers with Canadian themed products in the up and coming salt category,” said Anne Millerd, co-owner of SeaChange. “Retailers who visit SeaChange at the CGTA or Alberta Show can taste the salts, and drop off their business cards for a chance to win a free case of SeaChange Salts, retail value $144.00.”

SeaChange Canadian Sea Salt and Maple Smoked Salt will retail for $5.99.