Article by K.M. Wehrstein/Photography Tomasz Szumski

It’s been a long, hard, cold winter, but the days are lengthening at a gallop, the mountainous snowbanks are melting away and in no time, we’ll be throwing steaks, sliders, lettuce, watermelon, and more onto the barbecue. (Yes, lettuce and watermelon. CCC has been there!)

Because locavorism is all the rage these days for its climate and freshness benefits, not to mention supporting the local and national economies, we’re serving up a first course laid out by three local businesses, all with “Muskoka” in their name. We’ll start with the most venerable: Muskoka Springs, established in 1873.

Visiting Muskoka Springs’ 43,000 square-foot headquarters in Gravenhurst is a trip down the most pleasant of memory lanes. I have never been a fan of soft drinks, even as a child, so there is only one I ever drink, because, as a young Torontonian, I associated it with my happy place. I’d flee here to the trees and the lakes and the rocks, and a pop that was only subtly, not blatantly, sweet: Muskoka Dry Pale Ginger Ale. It was made in an old brick building in Gravenhurst labelled “Brown’s Beverages” that we’d pass on each trip to a friend’s cottage.

It was quite something to actually enter that building decades later and suddenly be surrounded by innumerable antiques, some of the more recent ones achingly familiar –and to actually see the company’s yellowed “black book” of recipes, including the original one for Muskoka Dry.

“We feel we’re one of the longest lasting businesses in the same location in Ontario,” says current president Christopher Kadonoff. “152 years – it didn’t stop for the wars, didn’t stop for the pandemic.”

Founder Dougald Brown began bottling the water from an artesian well onsite, Kadonoff explains, “to supply water to the locals as the lakes were becoming increasingly polluted by the logging and tanning industries.” Then, as soft drinks became popular in the early 20th century, Brown’s Beverages created several, including Muskoka Dry. Its current incarnation – Muskoka Springs Pale Ginger Ale – “tastes just like it did during World War I,” the company website affirms. The company partnered with Coca Cola to bottle its products, and in fact leveraged the popularity of Muskoka Dry to introduce Coke.

Five generations of Browns operated Brown’s Beverages but due to a proliferation of soft drinks in the 70s, Muskoka Dry sales began to languish. The company was bought out in 1993 by Muskoka Springs, then owned by business partners Michael Billinghurst and Terry Galbraith. Much to the delight of staunch fans like me, they revived the brand in 1995.

In 2015, Muskoka Springs was bought out by a partnership, The Rosseau Group, and when the general manager left in 2019, Kadonoff was offered the retitled job. Originally living in Oakville, his family moved to Muskoka when he was 10 and bought the IGA in Port Carling, introducing their son to the world of retail at an early age. After 28 years working for Sobeys, he wanted something different, and made the switch to Muskoka Springs.

“It took 100 years to perfect our product and now we’re taking it out to Ontario and Canada,” Kadanoff enthuses. Since 2019, sales of Pale Ginger Ale, Old Thyme Orange, Maple Cream Ale (“our take on Canada in a bottle”) and other products have doubled. They are now found in 400 locations in Canada and Muskoka Springs employs a regular staff of 11, adding another four or five in the summer months.

“We’re living history,” Kadonoff says. “We’re nostalgic; we bring back childhood experience. You’d go to Weber’s, then pick up a case of Muskoka Dry.”

Future plans include the launch of lemon and ginger-flavoured hop water this spring, and in the late 2020s, a general store on Muskoka Wharf. Kadonoff likes to think ahead. “We want to continue for another 150 years.”

Muskoka Brand Gourmet Foods in Huntsville is a much younger company – currently in the midst of a sales expansion that’s more like an explosion. Owner-operator Derek Gravelle started in the food field as part of his parents’ family business on Manitoulin Island at the age of 13. “I could work out of anywhere,” he says, “but my wife, Dr. Leslie Cuthbertson, wanted to find a teaching position in a small town. She got an offer from Huntsville High School, so we moved here and she’s still there.”

Gravelle’s food business at that time used trade shows and events as a sales staple, until that moment in you-know-what year (2020). “I went home and thought to myself, how am I going to feed my family and children?” he says.

A quick call to a friend – Darcy Bullock, co-owner with his wife Alycia Simmons of Bullock’s Your Independent Grocer in Huntsville – got him some shelf space in the store, if he could fill it. “He’s an amazing man, responsible for where I am,” Gravelle says.

Starting one frantic Friday night, he quickly designed a brand and set up a commercial-grade kitchen on the back of his house. He drew on his own family’s recipes and sales went well. In 2021, Muskoka Brand Gourmet was picked up by a distributor, which got them into a couple of Loblaws stores, then Sobeys. “I wasn’t in the home kitchen very long,” he recalls.

In 2022, the company’s first big growth spurt was triggered by the introduction of its Original Garlic Sauce, which will hit your tongue with a surprise – it has the boldness to include raw garlic.

“You can use it as a substitute for garlic purée, with veggies, burgers, mashed potatoes or mashed cauliflower,” says Muskoka Brand Gourmet’s sales and operations manager Andrew Allen, who is made in Muskoka himself, having grown up near the Huntsville Fairgrounds.

Several new products such as jalapeno and black olive garlic sauces and salad dressings were spun off the garlic sauce for addition to Muskoka Brand Gourmet’s existing line of dips, jams, jellies, garlic oils and more. The company expanded its range locally, adding Sobeys in Gravenhurst, the Nutty Chocolatier in Huntsville, the Farm Store in Bracebridge and many more. Following that, Gravelle was contacted by the massive food wholesaler/retailer Costco and began selling Original Garlic Sauce to the organization.

And then, he hit on Dill Pickle Aioli.

After about a year of working out the deal – Costco wanted the aioli a little thicker, for instance – it was released on February 13. “We got a phone call Tuesday (five days later) – do you have more?” Gravelle recalls. “They wanted it today. Now they want to send it out west and to the Maritimes.” The company’s regular staff of six plus two more at full production, some of them in Gravelle’s extended family, looks like it’s going to have to get bigger.

I think I understand the quick uptake, having now tried it myself, not only in the recipe but also on smoked ham and Montreal-style smoked meat sandwiches, maple breakfast sausages, Brussels sprouts and a few other things. This stuff is addictive.

My theorized secret success ingredient, you’ve perhaps noticed yourself: garlic. It’s such a well-loved flavour that it’s used in the cuisine of every culture on the planet that has access to it. But equally crucial to Muskoka Brand Gourmet’s success, I think, is the way it’s used: unapologetically, yet gently tamed by a process that truly is secret, so that even in its fiery raw state it’s tastebud friendly.

Andrew Allen is the source of Muskoka Brand Gourmet’s recipe, Easy Creamy Dill Pickle Slaw with Milford Bay Smoked Trout. It’s a simple, typical cabbage and carrot slaw mix with the aioli and another made-in-Muskoka ingredient with which you can’t go wrong.

“It was invention out of necessity,” says Allen. “I had the coleslaw mix and no dressing, so…”

Smoked trout with coleslaw? Absolutely. The aioli binds them together. Allen happened to mention he also makes deadly devilled eggs using Muskoka Brand Gourmet Jalapeno Garlic Sauce.

Since Heather Glumac studied film at Queen’s University, it was inevitable she would go on to spearhead a Bracebridge food business called Muskoka Granola.

Okay, the trajectory wasn’t quite that direct – graphic design was an intermediate step – but she loves where she landed.

“I’ve based all of my choices on joy,” she says. “From the design to designing employee hours. From the recipe – I couldn’t find any granola on the shelf that I wanted to eat, which is why I started making my own – I did everything that brought me joy and figured someone else would like it.”

Glumac was born and raised in Guelph. “I was very fortunate that my mother was a stay-at-home mom, able to cook,” she says. “She focused a lot on nutrition, so I grew up eating very well and have always been nutritionally conscious.”

After studying graphic design at George Brown and living 10 years in Toronto, she moved to Bracebridge in spring 2014 to do graphic design work for Camp Muskoka. In fact, she also did layout for this very magazine in its first year.

“Right before COVID, I was working at the Griffin Gastropub; so I had a lot of time over COVID because they were shut down and I decided to start overhauling my diet,” Glumac recounts. “I wanted to make everything from scratch because the amount of chemicals and preservatives in food was awful. I shouldn’t need a chemistry degree to read what’s in my food.”

The granola she created she shared with friends, one whose name you’ll know if you’re a regular reader: Chef David Friesen. That was in spring 2021. “I handed David the jar of granola I’d made as we were hanging out six feet apart and he wouldn’t give it back, ate the whole thing,” Glumac fondly reminisces. Friesen not only suggested she start selling it but let her borrow the kitchen of his Bracebridge restaurant The Pasta Tree to start up, since it was idle anyway.

Renting a spot at the Huntsville Farmer’s Market in August, Glumac realized she likely had a product that would sell itself, so prepared samples. She still does, as she learned from one event that without samples, she sells about 5 per cent of what she sells when she provides samples.

“It started snowballing,” Glumac shares. “That summer I expanded to the Bala and Bracebridge Farmer’s Markets. I was working 16 hours a day, would go to the markets in the morning at 6 a.m., then bake for five hours, package for two hours, then pack samples at home until midnight. People were coming back for more and I needed help quickly. It was profitable right off the hop.”

Glumac outgrew her home-based kitchen in October 2023 and leased the converted warehouse her business now occupies. Muskoka Granola now has five year-round employees and she has had to abandon the kitchen to do admin, sales and marketing (including package design, of course). For the summer’s markets and events, she’ll hire another three or four people. From her original granola flavour, now referred to as Cashew Almond, the selection has been expanded to four flavours, the most recent, Pistachio, having been released to great success at last year’s Bala Cranberry Festival.

Three times a year, Glumac pays for the whole staff to go on an outing like Cirque du Soleil, a Jays game or a spa day. “I want to be a great company to work for and not just for my own selfish ends – it comes out in the granola – energy is everywhere,” she says. “We’re good energy people. You get good energy from the trees, from the syrup, from the whole nuts.”

Her irreverent approach to marketing shines out on her website, where she furthers her righteous crusade against raisins (“we are a raisin-free company because I think they’re gross”) and displays testimonials like “I sprinkle it on my wife at night.” Be sure to check the bottom of a bag of Muskoka Granola, as it might say something like “Sharing is overrated” or “Eat my nuts.”

“One thing I really enjoy about business that I did not perceive earlier: there’s so much room for creativity in the choices you make,’’ says Glumac. “I am at heart a creative.”

The Muskoka Granola food philosophy: “Simplest is best. The ingredients of the granola are foods that you can recognize. Same for the recipe: put it in a bowl and eat it. This is what I’ll typically eat for breakfast. I would substitute anything from it depending on what you have available. It’s high in protein, avocado is really good for you – it’s a power bowl!”

Muskoka Granola is sweet, but not overwhelmingly so, having instead a light and subtle palate feel with a certain depth – no doubt from the use of maple syrup rather than refined sugar. Each nut coated in oatmeal is an elegant little package melting inward in the mouth to reveal the flavour of the nut.

The power bowl is a harmonious riot of flavours, which combine to form entirely new flavours and textures, though no other flavour overrides the granola, which thus holds the whole work together. Not in an imposing “you’ll be our 51st state” sort of way, more like a spontaneously-unifying “nope, we all agree we’re staying Canada” style.

Maybe that’s because it was made in Muskoka.

 Muskoka Dry®

– Christopher Kadonoff

Ingredients

4 or 5 oz. Muskoka Springs

Pale Ginger Ale

1.5 oz premium Canadian whiskey

3 dashes of bitters

1 sprig rosemary

Method

• Stir and enjoy on ice! Everything can be adjusted to taste.

President’s Notes

More typically a drink of this type would be garnished with lime. Kadonoff recommends taking a sniff of the rosemary first, then a swig.

 Easy Creamy Dill Pickle Coleslaw Recipe

– Andrew Allen

 Ingredients

1 small green cabbage, about 1 pound, outer leaves removed

1 small red cabbage, about 1 pound, outer leaves removed

1 medium carrot, peeled and shredded

1 package Milford Bay Smoked Trout (approx. 325 g)

1 cup (225 g) Muskoka Brand Gourmet Foods Dill Pickle Aioli

Method

• Quarter green and red cabbage through the core, then cut out the core. Cut each quarter crosswise in half and finely shred. Place the shredded cabbage in a very large bowl (you will have 6 to 8 cups).

• Add the shredded carrot to the cabbage and toss to mix.

• Roughly chop all of the Smoked Trout into pieces (leaving out any skin that comes off the fish) and add to mix.

• Pour the Dill Pickle Aioli over the mix, then combine well with two large spoons.

• If the coleslaw seems dry, add a little more aioli.

Chef’s Tips

Serve immediately, or place in the refrigerator for about an hour to let the flavours mingle and the cabbage soften. Not a fan of dill? Allen suggests, “Try our Creamy Sweet Italian Dressing instead.”

 Muskoka Granola

Power Bowl  

- Heather Glumac

Ingredients

½ cup yogurt (Glumac’s favourites: Liberte Greek 2% Coconut, Riviera Non-Dairy)

¼ cup chia pudding (to make: combine one cup of any milk and ¼ cup of chia seeds, stir together, refrigerate for five minutes, stir again, store in fridge until serving)

½ an avocado, cubed or sliced

¼ cup pomegranate seeds

¼ cup Muskoka Granola (any flavour)

¼ cup wild blueberries

Stir and eat!

 Yield: single portion.