Plenty Epicurean Pantry

Cindy & Todd Ryan created Sally Bun (two doors down from Plenty) and recently sold it in order to devote time to their son’s foundation, The Dirty Wall Project.  Their son, Kane, has headed up a remarkable project that builds schools and hosts medical clinics in India. The DWP is currently developing a sports field and garden in the Saki Naka slum area of Mumbai. The anniversary dinner will help raise funds for this project and others. We are pleased to provide an auction item for the dinner.  So please attend and bid for a collection of great Plenty goods.

Cindy recently spent time in slum homes to watch and learn how to cook amazing, simple, Indian food.  DWP will be publishing a cookbook of the recipes to raise funds.  Watch for it at Plenty.

The 3rd Volume of PechaKucha Night Victoria will focus on yummy food…slow food, organic farms, community food groups, local food entrepreneurs, local drink entrepreneurs, local food stylists, local food photographers, urban food foresters, local chefs, local food enthusiasts, food designers…what a great way to celebrate the summer in Victoria!

August 12, 2010 7:30 pm – 10:00 pm at Victoria Event Centre, 1415 Broad Street  $10/$8students

PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.  It has turned into a massive celebration, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world, inspiring creatives worldwide. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of “chit chat”, it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It’s a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.

PechaKucha Night started as a simple idea for a one-off event, devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham architecture as the first event held at their creative kitchen SuperDeluxe in Tokyo, in February 2003. Since then it has grown into an international movement.

OPEN CINEMA and Food Roots are collaborating on a special screening event of “FRESH: new thinking about what we’re eating”.

On Wednesday, September 22nd, OPEN CINEMA Season Eight launches with the Victoria premiere of “FRESH: new thinking about what we’re eating” followed by open forum discussion.  The event starts at 7pm, the discussion will start around 8.30pm and the evening will wrap-up by 10pm.

Food Roots is also hosting a Canning Workshop: Time to Preserve the Harvest.  It takes place on Wednesday, August 18th form 6:30 - 9:30 pm at the Fairfield-Gonzales Community Centre Kitchen (1335 Thurlow, east end of Sir James Douglas School).  Register by Tuesday, August 17th by sending your name, email address and phone number to Lee Fuge, leefuge[at]pacificcoast[dot]net or call 250-385-7974 and leave the requested information.

Victoria Public Market 1891-1959, Victoria Archives

The City of Victoria is currently inviting feedback on the Draft Downtown Core Area Plan. There was a Community Forum held at the Conference Centre on Friday and it continues Saturday from 10 am - 4 pm where the city is seeking feedback on the downtown plan and the Official Community Plan.

The Draft Downtown Core Area Plan mentions the prospect of a permanent public market for the city (on page 80) under the heading “Urban Animation”.  It discusses the development of outdoor cafe and dining areas and continues:

9.4.22 Review and update the City’s policy on public markets to:

• Determine guidelines and standards for maintaining and expanding

existing markets and for establishing new markets.

• Identify the conditions and thresholds that must be met to trigger the development of a central public market within the 30-year term of this Plan.

Public markets provide much more than ‘urban animation’ but I am pleased to see that a public market is at least contemplated. I’m greatly discouraged though by the timeframe given.  A permanent public market is needed within 5 years - not within 30.  If you agree please contact the city to say so: ocp@victoria.ca, or attend the Saturday forum, or one of their future downtown planning events to say so in person.

[ READ FULL ENTRY ]

Window display by Rebecca, photo by Trevor

Have you made plans for International Picnic Day yet?  It’s on Friday, June 18th - so prepare to converge on Beacon Hill Park or another grassy patch with friends and family for some bites to eat under the evening sun and stars.

Tara Austen Weaver has a wonderful blog called Tea and Cookies where she vividly describes a picnic.  Here is part of her posting (visit her blog for beautiful descriptions, photos, and recipes):

But more than the food—which was outstanding—were the people. Friends old and new, some met that very day. A conversation that dipped and wove its way through stories and laughter and strong opinions. The sharing of thoughts and hopes and experience, and even outrage sometimes, as the sun arched across an impossibly blue sky and headed for the horizon.

It reminded me of a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that I’ve always loved:

I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred.  I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.

And here is a link to another of her great posts about the pleasure of picnics.

Recently, I borrowed a book that I’d noticed at D’Ambrosio Architecture & Urbanism, where my wife Erica works.  Thanks to Gwen and Franc for loaning me their copy of The Great Good Place: cafes, coffee shops, community centers, beauty parlors, general stores, bars, hangouts, and how they get you through the day (Ray Oldenburg. 1991, Paragon House).

For a book about cafes, bars, and hangouts it wasn’t as rollicking a read as I imagined it might be, none-the-less Oldenburg’s case for “the informal public life and the Great Good Places essential to it” sheds light on some fundamental elements of culture and society that too often we overlook.  He points out that,

Great Civilizations, like great cities, share a common feature.  Evolving within them and crucial to their growth and refinement are distinctive informal public gathering places.  These become as much a part of the urban landscape as of the citizen’s daily life and, invariably, they come to dominate the image of the city.  Thus, its profusion of sidewalk cafes seems to be Paris, just as the forum dominates one’s mental picture of classic Rome.  The soul of London resides in her many pubs; that of Florence in its teeming piazzas.  Vienna’s presence is seen and felt most within those eternal coffeehouses encircled within her Ringstrasse.  The grocery store-become-pub at which the Irish family does its entertaining, the bier garten that is father to more formal German organizations, and the Japanese teahouse whose ceremonies are the model for an entire way of life, all represent fundamental institutions of mediation between the individual and the larger society.

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There is nothing else as universal.  There is nothing else so powerful.  When you understand where your food comes from, you look at the world in an entirely different way.  I think that if you really start caring about the world in this way, you see opportunities everywhere.  Wherever I am, I’m always looking to see what’s edible in the landscape.  Now I see Nature not just as a source of spiritual inspiration - beautiful sunsets and purple mountain majesties - but as the source of my physical nourishment.  And I’ve come to realize that I’m totally dependent on it, in all its beauty and richness, and that my survival depends on it.

- Alice Waters, A Delicious Revolution, Center for Ecoliteracy (*this is one of my favourite articles about food)

We’ve recently received some copies of Alice Water’s new cookbook, In the Green Kitchen.

Alice Waters has been a champion of the sustainable, local cooking movement for decades.  To Alice, good food is a right, not a privilege.  In the Green Kitchen presents her essential cooking techniques to be learned by heart plus more than 50 recipes—for delicious fresh, local, and seasonal meals—from Alice and her friends.  She demystifies the basics including steaming a vegetable, dressing a salad, simmering stock, filleting a fish, roasting a chicken, and making bread. An indispensable cookbook, she gives you everything you need to bring out the truest flavour that the best ingredients of the season have to offer.

Contributors: Darina Allen * Dan Barber * Lidia Bastianich * Rick Bayless * Paul Bertolli * David Chang * Traci Des Jardins * Angelo Garro * Joyce Goldstein * Thomas Keller * Niloufer Ichaporia King * Peggy Knickerbocker * Anna Lappé & Bryant Terry * Deborah Madison * Clodagh McKenna * Jean-Pierre Moullé * Joan Nathan * Scott Peacock * Cal Peternell * Gilbert Pilgram * Clair Ptak * Oliver Rowe * Amaryll Schwertner * Fanny Singer * David Tanis * Poppy Tooker * Charlie Trotter * Jerôme Waag * Beth Wells

Five-by-Five fundraiser for Lifecycles

Support the great programs at Lifecycles and enjoy a fantastic locally-based dinner!

Explore your backyard’s rich terroir at the table through five gourmet courses from five farms and food producers in five distinct regions of southern Vancouver Island.

You can pair each course with award-winning cider, learn about the unique terroir of the island, meet the five-star local food producers who are feeding you, tour the ciderhouse and bid on unique picnic experiences during a silent auction. All proceeds to benefit LifeCycles programming.

Also, Lifecycles is offering a Boulevard Gardening Workshop!

Lifecycles is hosting a Boulevard Gardening Workshop next Saturday, June 5th from 10-1pm in Fernwood. Come out to this workshop to learn- hands-on- how to build a boulevard garden! We will build a garden on a highly visible, unused boulevard in Fernwood, discussing issues around bylaws, watering, types of plants, theft, ownership and more. The workshop includes a walking tour of boulevard gardens in the neighborhood and concludes at Koffi for discussion and Q and A.

Cost is $10-15 sliding scale, but no-one will be turned away.

Find out more and RSVP at uahub@lifecyclesproject.ca or by calling (250) 383-5800.

Why is eating locally so important? Find out in You Are What You Eat, a great clip about community organic farms in B.C., and please join us this Wednesday (7 - 9 pm) for Table Talk at Haliburton Community Organic Farm.

Also,

• Haliburton Community  Organic Farm seeks an apprentice Market Gardener:

We are urgently seeking an Apprentice Market Gardener to run our market garden – from seed to sale - on about 1 acre of our Society land in 2010. For more information, see Haliburton Apprentice Market Gardener.

• View a list of local farmers markets from chef Heidi Fink.
• Here are some great local produce box programs:

Haliburton Community Organic Farm

FoodRoots

Good Food Box

Share Organics

Saanich Organics

Public Domain image of a Mayan God

Masha, who works with us at Plenty, recently shared some wonderful trivia about chocolate and the Mayan creation myth of Cabaguil (Heart of the Sky) in the store Communications Log:

Short Story: In Mayan creation myth the Creator (known as “Heart of the Sky”) made all the world, sky, earth, water, plants, animals and insects and all living things before deciding to make humanity.  After attempts with mud and wood and clay, none of which held together or sparked to life, H. of S. mixed a little of everything together and bound it all with cocoa.  Success!  That is one of the reasons that eating chocolate brings us joy.  It’s What Binds us together and fills us with life!

Also, in the realm of chocolate trivia, the SOMA Black Science Madagascar [available at Plenty] uses Criollo cocoa beans.  This variety is considered to be the best, most flavourful bean in the world but the trees are finicky and slow to produce, meaning that only 5% of the chocolate in the world uses them.  It’s very elite.  I know a couple of the other regional bars use the trinitario beans which are a cross between the Criollo and the other variety of cocoa (a bit, hearty, heavy producing plant with less exciting flavours but lots of cocoa butter (50%) which makes up 80% of the world’s available cocoa beans) meaning that the Trinitario is also considered a superior bean and relatively uncommon @ only 15% of the beans used.  Serious gourmet chocolatiers use only Criollo or Trinitario.

Thanks Masha!