Flavourful Saskatoon, August 26, 2019


Local Happenings
The Saskatoon Farmers’ Market and Our Farm are overflowing with local fruits and vegetables. I’m super impressed by the cauliflower, green beans, fava beans, spinach – and the list goes on and on! Our Farm on Broadway has organic ground cherries and purple Beauregarde snow peas (and they stay purple when you cook them!).


Petrofka Orchard is hosting an Apple Fest from 12-6 pm, Sept. 7. There will be everything from orchard tours and pie-eating contests to carnival rides for the kids.

Nestor’s Bakery is hoping to beat its own record for the world’s longest donut on Sept. 11 as a fundraiser for Str8 Up.

I love the look of Yay Thai’s reusable bento boxes – great idea!


Recipes 
Kaleidoscope Vegetable Gardens at the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market has heaping stacks of padrón peppers. If you’ve admired them but not been sure how to cook with them, here are some recipes using friggitelli peppers, the Italian version of Spain’s padrón peppers. It’s worth noting that you can shop waste-free from many of the Market vendors – just bring your own bags and containers. 


Books
Truffle popcorn, truffle chips, truffle cheese – unless you’re very rich, you won’t have tasted authentic French or Italian truffles. They’re too rare and too expensive. And that rarity has led to fraud, theft, poison, and murder. The Truffle Underground by Ryan Jacobs reads like a true-crime novel. It will change your opinion of foraging as a safe, pleasant pastime forever.


Food for Thought
“Last year, Cannon Michael left over 100 acres of ripe cantaloupes unharvested. The sixth generation grower could not justify paying workers to pick them all because the cost of labor, packing, and, shipping would have been more than the price he could get for the fruit. And so, he left about 30 percent of his perfectly edible cantaloupes to decompose and get churned back into the ground.”

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 nature/environmental initiatives and events. 

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