Wanderlust and Words

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’...

“Curiouser and curiouser the world makes me curiouser   I’ve so many dreams that come and go  Why is it so? Does no one know?”  It’s so easy to follow routines, to see what you expect to see, to fail to look around you. In an effort to explore the world around me with fresh eyes, I plan to post occasional photographs of things that have surprised me, made me laugh, or delighted me. Here are a few of the surprises I discovered in Richmond and while walking along False Creek in Vancouver. “Curiouser and Curiouser” It took me a while, but I was finally able to identify the beavers working on their lodge outside of Richmond Brighouse Canada Line station. Is it a lighthouse? A birdhouse? Or maybe a beached boat? None of the above! After digging around online, we found out it was a piece of public art installed by an anonymous artist , protesting the high cost of housing in downtown Vancouver. “I Love to Laugh” Who knew? An entire restaurant dedi...

My family spent many summer holidays on Vancouver Island, and I have happy memories of playing on the beach. One of my family’s favorite beaches is at Point No Point. It’s a private beach, but all you have to do is enjoy lunch overlooking the ocean or stay in one of their cabins to have access. As a child, a special treat was visiting Butchart Gardens after dark to enjoy the light display. There are free open-air concerts in the Gardens every night during the summer months. My sister and I enjoyed a performance by Ballet Étoile. The massed displays of flowers are impressive as are the fountains and amusing twig sculptures hidden in the bushes. In Victoria, my sister Clare and I walk at Willows Beach and Cattle Point most evenings.

Local Happenings Join the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market as they celebrate their 44th anniversary with a corn on the cob feast from 8 am-2 pm , August 24 . Churchill’s British Café will be opening for business on August 21 at 1702 Idylwyld Drive North. They’ll be serving everything from a full English breakfast to cream cakes and scones. Recipes “Kalamatas are the Parmigiano Reggiano of Greece . . . . It is certainly the most well-known olive and one of the more complex-tasting cultivars balancing all five tastes—salty, sweet, bitter, sour and umami. There is also a subtle smokiness to them that I really enjoy.”- stories and recipes Food for Thought “What I see is that farmers’ markets and market halls are having more and more street food and less and less produce . As, in general, we want to spend less time for cooking, the street food phenomenon follows the trend of times.” What they often lack is a local flavour. “Between 2010 and 2015 the number of migrants from El S...

Going to Ascot The Horticulture Centre of the Pacific holds an annual Arts & Music in the Garden with over 50 local artists’ booths set up along the paths that traversing the garden. Heron & Goldfish The Centre’s gardens encompass herbs, fuschia and lilies, a Japanese garden, an urban garden, a farm garden, and a birds, bees and butterflies garden and are a delight at any time of the year. But Arts & Music in the Park is special, and one of my favorite aspects of the event is the floral art designed and presented by the Victoria Floral Artists Guild . Many of them have a very wacky sense of humour. Seaweed at Sunset Additional photographs of the gardens are available at Sunshine and Shade: Horticulture Centre of the Pacific .

Local Happenings  The Saskatoon Food Bank & Learning Centre is holding its  annual community barbeque at the Garden Patch from 3-7 pm , Aug. 14 . There will be facepainting, games, and family activities. Recipes  Here are some interesting takes on how to dress up a baked potato . A topping of slow-cooked leeks or wrapped in seaweed and roasted sounds good to me. Food for Thought  The strange science inside your sourdough uncovered in Belgium’s sourdough library : “What is clear is that sourdough starters, and the bread made with them, represent human manipulations of the evolution of microbial communities. We channel the growth of particular members of these communities by raising or lowering the temperature of our dough, by feeding starters more or less frequently, and by giving them different kinds of flour.” Eating and drinking in Africa’s largest slum – in pictures. “Not only do these ‘compostable’ bowls not actually biodegrade, they end up...

The Zero Waste Emporium at 1728 Douglas Street (across from the Public Market) bills itself as Victoria’s first zero-waste grocery store. They stock a huge range of products from bulk bins full of nuts, seeds, flour, and dried fruit to personal care and cleaning products. What really impressed me was the emphasis on local products – Tree Island yogurt and Avalon Dairy milk and cream sourced on Vancouver Island, Salt Spring Island tofu , vegan protein from Victoria-based The Very Good Butchers , almond/oat/hemp mylk made in house twice a week, as well as vegan cheezes from BC-based companies, The Cultured Nut and Black Sheep . And the list goes on and on. Many of these products are also organic. The owners state they are, “promoting ecological awareness by offering customers reliable, sustainably sourced products that will help you reduce your environmental footprint and empower your Zero Waste lifestyle.” Make sure you visit the Zero Waste Emporium if you’re ev...

“We lived very simply – but with all the essentials of life well understood and provided for – hot baths, cold champagne, new peas and old brandy.” Winston Churchill  Local Happenings  If you’re looking for local apples and other fruit to harvest or have crops or plants to share, join the  Needs and Yields and Out Of Your Tree in Saskatoon Facebook groups. “ If you feed the soil, you’ll have healthy plants ,” says Dennis [Skoworodko]. “If you have healthy plants, they’ll taste good. If they taste good, they’re probably very nutritious.” ( Our Farm ) Food for Thought  Sarah Galvin, a Swift Current market vendor, shares her take on why summer at the market is great : “Food stories abound at markets as we shop directly from growers and makers. They share their trials and tribulations with us. The weather, the new oven or the long hours working to bring things together create a bond between them and the buyers. Buyers appreciate the efforts made, come rain...

"From the depths of the green garden-closes Where the summer in darkness dozes Till autumn pluck from his hand An hour-glass that holds not a sand; From the maze that a flower-belt encloses To the stones and sea-grass on the strand How red was the reign of the roses Over the rose-crowned land!" The Year of the Rose , Algernon Charles Swinburne Photos were taken at Government House Gardens , Victoria, British Columbia, July 2019