Flavourful Saskatoon, October 23, 2017


Our Farm CSA
Our Farm is organically certified and grows a wide variety of different vegetables. Sign up now to receive a weekly selection of vegetables from July to October. “It is like having your own garden without the work and veggies showing up fresh picked and in season!”

Cooking Classes
Ah, home-made apple strudel! Simon’s Fine Foods offers such a wide assortment of cooking classes – from apple strudel, Italian torrone, and Christmas cookies to a Moroccan or Spanish meal. There are also pizza and beer or parent and child classes. Sign up yourself or offer someone else a gift certificate.

Slow Food Canada National Meeting, Apr. 19-22
A heads-up for those of you who are interested in food that is good, clean, and fair – Slow Food Saskatoon is hosting the national meeting of Slow Food Canada from Apr. 19-22. Give Slow Food Saskatoon a shout if you would like to help organize the event and be sure to set aside those dates to meet people from across Canada and go on some really interesting field trips.

Gratitude
I continue to be profoundly grateful to the farmers and producers who work crazy hours and take exceptional risks to provide us with good food to eat. I was buying organic goat cheese from a local farmer Saturday morning and she told me that the freshest cheese had been made that morning (there were two others that had been aged for longer periods of time) – and I’m assuming that first she had milked the goats. It was only 10 o’clock in the morning, but she had already put in a full day.

What I’m Thinking: Supermarket Checkout Operator
“I make no judgments about your shopping; your eight cans of lager a day, your chocolate habit, your inability to resist doughnuts, your reliance on sliced white and spread. . . . Sometimes, some of you don’t see us, and after 10 hours of scanning and beeping, your refusal to acknowledge me is upsetting. Carry on your phone conversation, nurture your bad mood, be irritated by not finding what you wanted, and I will carry on smiling. But deny my existence as a person and you will wreck my day.”

Syrian Bakers
Refugees face so many hurdles, and they don’t even have the comfort of familiar food or the ability to carry on in their chosen profession, as a baker, for example. “If you want to destroy a culture, the earth-scorching Romans knew, destroy not only its armies, but also its food sources and traditions.”


Heritage Apples
I am tired of being offered Gala apples no matter what country I live in. We have lost so much of the variety of our heritage fruit through standardization. I am thrilled to learn that Perry Court Farm in Kent, England, grows 150 different varieties of apples and 30 varieties of pears. Wouldn’t it be fun to do a taste test and compare one apple or pear to another!

Photo credit: London Farmers’ Markets Facebook page

Flavourful Saskatoon is a weekly Monday feature. I also post articles about food that is good, clean and fair; travel; and books. You may also enjoy EcoFriendly Sask profiling Saskatchewan environmental initiatives and events.

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