Grilled Vegetable & Spinach Stratta: Egg-washed sourdough bread layered with grilled peppers, eggplant, zucchini & spinach. Topped with smoked cheese and baked. With cucumber, tomato & mint salad in a yoghurt & honey dressing. $18

DeVine Wines recommends:

2007 Main Divide Riesling (Canterbury, New Zealand) $11 glass (5oz) $52 bottle

Heady honeysuckle, lime, mango, pineapple & peach aromas with a crisp, tart, citrusy palate and a spicy, zesty, slightly gingery finish.

Review by Meghan Mast

Eating his way through fields and farms, Noble focused on filming local farmers who participate in alternative farming methods, particularly the movement towards a more local and sustainable food system.
Tableland presents the argument for localized eating in a refreshingly visual way through colorful images of the process and results of sustainable farming production.
Along with a visible passion for good food, the people Noble interviews also possess a bit of quirk. Take for example “The Oysterman” on Marina Island who wears a pom-pom toque and is seen slurping up his shelled beauties in nearly every shot.
Equally interesting is the seed-saver, author and farmer on Salt Spring Island and the feisty French Canadian restaurant owner of Toque! in Montreal.
Each of the interviewed individuals has a unique approach, but all share the common goal of producing good food. This means bypassing the short-cuts of heavy pesticides and many other conventional agriculture tools.
Producing good, real food is tough work, and as Noble ventures into chicken coups, apiaries, microbreweries and vineyards, he comes to understand first-hand how much work is required to produce a quality product.
During his two years of traveling, filming and helping out whenever possible, Noble began to think of himself as a “professional squatter,” a self-proclaimed “well fed nomad.” Fortunately, his squatting served him well when Tableland won best feature at the New York Food Film Festival 2008.
What is so mesmerizing about Tableland is the raw honesty of seeing real people produce food. Plus the food looks so dang good. Tantalizing images of fresh, colorful food will leave viewers salivating and with a vivid understanding of why sustainable production of real food matters.

Tableland is currently independently produced and distributed, and can be purchased by emailing Craig Noble at cnoble@p1-productions.com
For more information about the film, visit the pixel one productions website at http://www.p1-productions.com/tableland.html

Review by Meghan Mast

Eating locally and cooking from scratch are beautiful ideas, but when it comes to doing both of these things, some instruction is helpful. Simply in Season, the third in a trilogy of World Community Cookbooks is just the solution for successful from-scratch, local eating.

The book itself is a genuine community effort with a collaboration of more than 450 contributors from around the world sending in 1, 600 recipes. Each recipe was tested by individuals at small groups and church potlucks. Others provided anecdotes, tips and interesting facts to accompany the recipes.

In a refreshingly simple approach, Editors Lind and Hockman-Wert begin the book with a guide to fruits, veggies and herbs that for each includes a picture, description, nutrient information, serving suggestions and instructions on selection, storage and preparation.

After covering the basics, the book delves into tantalizing recipes for spring, summer, fall winter and all seasons. These palate-pleasing dishes advertise through catchy names like the Golden Glow Melon Freeze, Velvety Vegetable Soup, Secret Chocolate Cake and Poultry Pasta Primavera.

To encourage healthy eating, the recipes make no mention of processed food, but instead feature real foods such as fruits, vegetables and herbs with some meat and carbohydrates.

Along with promoting healthy eating, Simply in Season aims to connect consumers with the farmers who produce the food. Commissioned by the Mennonite Central Committee, an organization committed to justice, the cookbook sends a message that the choices we make about what we eat have a local as well as a global impact.

This dynamic cookbook with a conscience will wake up yawning palates and get bored chefs off of the couch and into the kitchen!

I love being on this mailing list so many good updates and book reviews.
Best sign up I have ever done! Thank you.

Shaun Lafferty
Head Football Coach
Jasper Place High School

Peter Jackson of Jack’s Grill at the Downtown Farmers’ Market.

Check out some of the vendors here…

Appetizer- Baked Goat Cheese

Entree - Veal & Shrimp in a White Wine Porcini Mushroom Sauce with your choice of pasta or seasonal vegetables

Dessert - Tiramisu

We will also like to offer a lunch option for all of Forkfest (July 13-17, July 20-24)

$20

Salad - Warm Spinach Salad with a light Tuscan Goat Cheese Dressing
Pasta - Penne Smoked Pheasant in a Red Port Wine Sauce

Choice of:

Small Salad or Double Gelato

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Domestic Beer or $5.50 GLASS OF WINE
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Pizza

Grilled free range chicken marinated in an “Amber’s Brewery” Pepperberry Ale Citrus & maple BBQ sauce served with baby potatoes tossed in pesto butter & grilled baby organic beets

Lemon verbena & rhubarb crème brulee

Grilled Alberta pike fillet, corn and black bean salsa, horseradish mashed potato, herb butter sauce

Flourless chocolate cake, confit of fennel, milk chocolate rosemary sauce, rosewater almond cream and basil oil

$35/person

Reservations available online at www.thebluepear.com or by calling 780 482 7178