Archive for the ‘Community’ Category
Community, Events, Global, Local, Slow Food Calgary
Slow Food Canada’s National Meeting 2013
SAVE THE DATES!
Delegates from Slow Food convivia across Canada will meet in the Okanagan from April 26th to 29th, 2013.
The planning is underway. Stay tuned for details!
The Slow Food Edmonton convivium hosted the National Meeting in May of this year.
Have a look at the agenda and guests speakers for 2012.
Community, Events, Growers and Farmgate Sales, Local, Slow Food Calgary
May-June 2012 Foodshed Rural Routes Road Trip
sponsored by city palate
You know your doctor, you know your lawyer, you know your accountant….Who’s your farmer?
Writer, chef, poet, and food advocate dee Hobsbawn-Smith takes to the road with this provocative question. Visit the farmers close to you and learn more about
Foodshed: An Edible Alberta Alphabet, the intimate guide to Alberta’s sustainable food scene.
Check out the locations and dates of all the stops on the Rural Routes Road Trip:
Foodshed_AlbertaTour
Community, Global, Recipes, Slow Food Calgary
Spring News from Slow Food Superior (Thunder Bay)…
The Slow Food Canada website is loaded with news of events and projects happening in convivia across the country. However, there’s no single source that does, nor could, capture the richness of thought and the complex of initiatives that occur in so many pockets of Canada under the rubric of Slow Food.
It would be a good idea to feature news from afield every month on this site. We’ll aim for that.
Here’s Slow Food Superior’s spring newsletter. It’s got recipes, end of winter root cellar advice and a great interview with a nine year old who is helping to form a Slow Food Kids convivium.
Check it out: Spring 2012newsletter
Community, Events, Local, Political Action, Slow Food Calgary
Community Capital Network for Financing our Foodshed
Tuesday, April 10 from 10:45 am – 1:00 pm
Global Business Centre (Calgary Economic Development)
4th Floor Meeting Room, 136 – 8 Avenue SE
Join REAP and its partners for our monthly gathering and discussion about local investing models. We’ll dial in to the BALLE - living economies - webinar on accelerating community capital from 11:00 am-12:00 pm to learn about Financing our Foodshed: A Slow Money Investment Club & Peer-to-Peer Model. Carol Peppe Hewiit, cofounder of Slow Money North Carolina, will present a new approach pioneered by in 2011 when Chatham Marketplace, the local cooperative grocery store, refinanced its loan through 16 individual investors.
Please arrive at 10:45 am so that you can get settled before the BALLE webinar begins. After the webinar we’ll introduce ourselves over lunch and chat about the opportunities here in Calgary. Andrew Watson from Slow Money Alberta <http://slowmoneyalberta.org/> will be in attendance to tell us about what is happening locally. Lunch will be provided. We’ll wrap up by 1:00 pm. This event is free to attend but registration is required for planning purposes. Click here to register through the Meetup page. <http://www.meetup.com/
Calgary’s Community Capital Network is proudly sponsored by REAP Business Association <http://www.reapcalgary.com> and its partners: Thrive <http://www.thrivecalgary.org> , First Calgary Financial <http://www.firstcalgary.com> , Conscious Brands <http://www.consciousbrands.
REAP, 1908 – 50 Avenue SW, Calgary, Alberta T2T 2W2, Canada
Community, Events, Local, Slow Food Calgary
Calgary Chefs Speak Out About Sustainable Food Systems
By Kristi Peters Snider
Across Canada, Chefs are facilitating local food movements by creating links between local farms and customers in their dining rooms through purchasing local products and featuring them on their menus. Restaurants and Chef’s interface with society in a unique way, and combined with purchasing power, they have the potential to be a strong driver for sustainable food systems change. Chefs are capable of introducing foods and influencing consumer choice; the root of many local food systems can be traced to the link between restaurant chefs and farmers; and restaurant food expenditures provide a viable market for local farm products.
We wanted to hear directly from some of Calgary’s top chefs about what they are doing in their kitchens, at their order desks, and at their back doors to support a sustainable local food system for Calgary. We caught up with some of them at the annual Slow Food Roots ‘n Shoots Dinner at River Café and this is what we heard:
Michael Dekker, Executive Chef, Rouge Restaurant
Photo Credit: Rouge Restaurant
What do you do to support a sustainable local food system?
To support our local food system, we go out into our surrounding area and use every possible resource of food we have here in Alberta. Both talking to our suppliers about new items as well as working with them to see how they can produce enough quantity of ingredients to hold it on a standard menu.
What are the daily challenges you face in your decision to support the local food system? What needs improvement?
The challenges are the supply of the given product and the cost.
How can we spread the word and get greater participation from Calgary Chefs?
For better participation we simply need to have more forums and resources for Chefs to be promoted. Booths at food shows and more presence in the local Chefs association could be one way. Also we need to develop larger supply chains to enable hotels and other larger function spaces to be able to order local ingredients and participate with their purchasing power.
Are there specific practices you have that promote food system sustainability in your kitchen? Ie. Charcuterie, training programs, community outreach?
We try to promote our food systems through daily activities while living in the reality that we can’t yet sustain ourselves locally. But every step we take in the right direction is a huge one!
Continue reading this article …
Community, Events, Local, Slow Food Calgary
Shots from Roots n’ Shoots…
Roots n’ Shoots is an annual multi-course dinner exploring the terrain of Alberta’s late-winter/early spring food landscape through the eyes and hearts of some of the city’s most inspiring – and inspired – chefs.
It took place on Monday, March 19th
at this event’s abiding venue:
River Café on Prince’s Island Park
Community, Events, Local, Slow Food Calgary
Reading at the Table: Alberta’s Foodshed by the Mouthful
Dinner and a reading with dee Hobsbawn-Smith.
Featuring local producers and products from dee’s latest book, ‘Foodshed: An Edible Alberta Alphabet‘.
WHERE: The John Snow House, 915- 18th Avenue S.W.
Community, Events, Local, Recipes, Slow Food Calgary
Foodshed: An Edible Alberta Alphabet
Join dee Hobsbawn-Smith as she launches her new book…
Foodshed: An Edible Alberta Alphabet
WHEN: Tuesday, April 17, 6:30-9:00 PM
WHERE: Cookbook Co. Cooks 722 – 11 Ave SW, Calgary
“As an author, an artist, a cook, a thinker . . . dee has created an important treatise on the evolution of culinary Alberta. This is a great book, as free-form and unconventional as the author herself.” -Anita Stewart, culinary activist, author, founder of Food Day Canada, and member of the Order of Canada.
Meet dee and hear her read from Foodshed at
other events around town:
Calgary joint reading with Dave Margoshes
[reading from A Book of Great Worth (Coteau)]
Wednesday, April 18, 7:00-9:00 PM
Shelf Life Books #100, 1302-4 St. SW, Calgary
Slow Food Calgary Youth
Food Movement/SAIT Polytechnic talk
Friday, April 20, 1:00-3:00 PM
John Ware Building, SAIT Polytechnic, Calgary
Slow Food Calgary reading and dinner
Friday April 20, 6:30 PM John Snow House
915-18 Ave SW, Calgary
Tickets at The Cookbook Co. Cooks, 722-11th Ave. SW (403-265-6066)
Kingsland Farmers’ Market launch & signing
Saturday, April 21, 11:00 AM -2:00 PM
Kingsland Farmers’ Market 7711 Macleod Trail S, Calgary
ABOUT FOODSHED In this intimate guide to Alberta’s sustainable food scene, writer, poet, professional chef, and food advocate Dee Hobsbawn-Smith profiles more than seventy-five of the province’s growers and producers. Learn the A to Z’s of each producer, from Asparagus growers to Zizania cultivators, and enjoy the twenty-six original recipes, one for each type of produce. The book also examines the ground that farmers stand on: government involvement, sustainability and the environment, animal welfare, farm labour, and organizations from Slow Food to the grassroots Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement. An (agri)cultural examination of modern farming that offers a clear look at current government policies and sustainable growers’ best practices, Foodshed sets forth some of the issues that modern farmers face, as seen by the growers themselves.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dee Hobsbawn-Smith is a poet, award-winning journalist and writer, chef, educator, and advocate. Her food writing, fiction and poetry has appeared in newspapers, magazines and literary journals in Canada and the USA. Between 1992 and 1994, she was chef and co-owner of Foodsmith, a Calgary restaurant that featured locally raised ingredients on a menu that changed daily. For eight years, Dee wrote a column for the Calgary Herald called “The Curious Cook.” She also hosted an annual farm tour for the City Palate for twelve years. These experiences provided her with ample opportunity to visit growers in their fields. Foodshed is her fifth book; she is currently working on a poetry manuscript and a short story collection. She lives west of Saskatoon with her partner and their pets.
Community, Events, Local, Slow Food Calgary
An Invitation to attend Cows and Fish Digital Story Premiere…
…Hello to our Friends and Colleagues,
We want to invite you to attend our upcoming Premiere of our REAL Beef Digital Stories, March 30, in Lethbridge.
This Short Film Premier and Reception is an opportunity to build connections between Alberta agricultural producers and food consumers and support stewardship efforts that create healthy landscapes and communities.
Some of you will have seen Digital Stories short films before, created by producers and consumers, sharing their personal stories about stewardship – we thank them for sharing their stories. If you haven’t seen any of these stories before, or want to enjoy some more, please visit http://www.cowsandfish.org/
We hope to see you there! Feel free to share this poster with other people that would be interested.
If you have any questions, please contact Norine Ambrose (403-381-5538;nambrose@cowsandfish.org).
Share the Poster: REAL Beef DST Premiere March 2012 poster
Community, Events, Slow Food Calgary
Cocktail Classes with a Good, Clean, Fair Twist!
CROWBAR COCKTAIL CLASS – BOURBON
So, now that you’ve been bitten by the cocktail bug, we’re guessing you might like to start making cocktails like the ones featured in Crowbar at home. We have created a series of cocktail classes to introduce you to the liquors, their uses, and the best techniques.
Wade Sirois approaches cocktails the same way he approaches food, so you’ll be learning more than how to follow a recipe!
Classes are held in the Crowbar Lounge inside Forage (2508 – 19th St. SW in Marda Loop). In each class, you will be making two cocktails. The first class will focus on Bourbon, and in particular, stirred Bourbon cocktails. Here are the details:
Crowbar Cocktail Class – Bourbon
Wednesday March 14th, 2012
7 pm to 8 pm
$40 plus GST
Space is very limited so please email your requests to info@crowbarcalgary.com We’ll reply by email and then confirm your spot with credit card payment.
Upcoming classes will include: Gin, Rum, Tequila and a class featuring Unusual Cocktails.