Picking berries for a good cause

I love to pick berries. So it was a pleasant task to spend a couple of evenings picking raspberries and black currents at the farm of Living Sky Winery, a new venture near Perdue. Owners Sue Echlin and Vance Lester hope to market their first bottles of fruit wine later this year. They're working with award-winning winemaker, Dominic Rivard, so the prospects are excellent.

Here's a bit of a bio of Dominic found online:

Dominic has won hundreds of awards and medals in national and international wine competitions.This has included the best desert wine in Canada in 2007 and various best of show awards in fruit wine and desert wine categories.Over the last decade, Dominic has been busy running numerous wine production and exportation projects for wineries in Canada, USA, Italy, Spain, Chile, Taiwan, Korea, Japan as well as China.

Follow the progress of Living Sky Winery on Twitter.

Downtown Grocery for Local Foods

It's been a few years since the last grocery store chain packed up and left downtown Saskatoon.

That's opened the market for a new independent venture. Two well-respected food establishments are joining efforts to bring a grocery store to downtown Saskatoon. While the store will have a range of goods, it will focus front and centre on locally-produced foods. That's not surprising considering the two partners: Calories restaurant, where the menu is local and seasonal, and Pine View Farms, purveyor of naturally-rasied meat. Accodring to a newspaper article, the store is set to open this spring or summer.

Their grocery store will be called Souleio - Provançal for "sun."

Saskatchewan InDemand

I can't resist an event featuring Saskatchewan food (especially when they invite me to give a talk). Here are some of the local food products featured at the show Nov 15 & 16 in Saskatoon:

Prairie Sun Orchard - Homemade ice cream from Saskatchewan berries. I can highly recommend their chocolate-cherry-almond bark. No website; call 306-242-7573. You'll also find them at the Saskatoon Farmers' Market.

Petrofka Bridge Orchard - I tried their apple cidre and bought a bag of apples, which were fabulous. So, I asked the owner why we can't buy Saskatchewan apples in the grocery store -- the answer had to do with lacking a storage facility to keep apples fresh in large quantities. So let's get on that...

Bluestone Homegrown Beef - Owner Karla Hicks was giving out samples of her delicious homemade beef jerky. Their Angus cattle are raised on grass, drug free and aged 21 days.

Cedar Creek Organics - Also raised on green pastures and certified organic. Ground, steaks, franks, smokies, roasts and jerky. They have an informative and professional presentation, for which they deserve kudos. I'm told their beef is available at Dad's Nurition Centre in Saskatoon.

Bedard Creek Acres - A unique family business that captures the flavours of wild flowers and herbs in products such as such as Black Pansy Syrup and Creamy Chickweed Salad Dressing. Yummm.

Saskatchewan Mustard Development Commission - They were giving away little bags of mustard seeds - yellow, brown and Oriental - and offering food samples like this Freezer Cabbage Relish. I didn't know you could freeze cabbage!

Saskatchewan Borscht in a Jar

Ever make a soup so good you could bottle and sell it? Elsie Rollie did. Her friend Neil convinced her to go into business and last year, the Yesteryear's Ukrainian Borscht Corp. was born on River Street in Moose Jaw. Elsie says this version is even better than her mom's because it's fat free.

I dropped into her bistro store yesterday -- the very day she launched a new bean and bacon soup she called BAMM because it packs a little more heat than the borscht. (Apparently, Emeril has trademarked BAAM so she used this creative spelling!) John and I opened the jar of BAMM for supper tonight and it was great. By the way, Elsie's bistro is not a restaurant, but she's happy to serve up sample bowls of her soups -- complete with sour cream, of course.

Salt and Pepper

Humans have been addicted to salt for a very long time. Fortunately, the earth is abundant in salt and salt mining goes back into prehistory. When we couldn’t mine it ourselves, we traded for it. The ancient Greek trade of salt for slaves spawned the saying "Not worth his salt."

Saskatchewan is blessed with salt, and some of it ends up on our dinner table. Sifto extracts salt at the town of Unity, where it is a major employer in a small farming community. It comes in fine, course and kosher grain. Try to buy Sifto salt to support Saskatchewan. You'll know it's from the Unity mine if there's a circle with the number 69 on the package.

Pepper, on the other hand, is not grown in our climate. But a resident of Saskatchewan, Carole Stratychuck, grows pepper on her property in Costa Rica, where she spends the winter. Carole sells her pepper (and her coffee) at the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market in the summertime. Her pepper isn’t Saskatchewan grown, but it is grown with Saskatchewan hands. That’s close enough for me!

Cerridwen Farm

In the last 20 eyars, Saskatchewan has become one of the world's leading producers of lentils, chickpeas and split peas. The problem is, most people in Saskatchewan don't eat lentils, chickpeas and spilt peas. In fact, many pulse farmers don't eat the food they produce! It's shipped right off to markets overseas.

This is the experience of Cerridwen Farms of Medstead. The bulk of their organic pulse crops are sold in British Columbia in areas populated by immigrants from the South East Asia sho eat pulses every day. I put in a big order through Canada Post, which was delivered right to my door

Pronounced CARE-i-den, the name is a Celtic word referring to the moon and the harvest. The farm is a collaboration of the Dank and Haubold families. They sell many other products, including stoneground flours and mixes for pancakes and muffins.
306-342-4945.

Source - Daybreak-Scheresky Mill

Ray and Marianne Aspinall are doing something quite unique on their farm south of Estevan. They have an old stone mill where they grind all sorts of grains into wonderful organic flours.

The Aspinalls have been farming organically since the 1980s, but they wanted to get more value for their products. Even at premium organic rates, farmers get the short end of the stick (or the price tag) when they truck raw food off their farm to be processed somewhere else.

A few years ago, the Aspinalls made a deal with retired farmer Alvin Scheresky. For four decades, Scheresky ran a successful organic food business from his farm, shipping his grains to health food stores across the country. But he wanted to retire. The Aspinalls bought his mill and his customer list and revived the business. They also bought Alvin’s seed varieties, some of which date back to Europe and were brought to Canada with the settlers.

In respect to Alvin, and in recognition of his brand appeal, they added his name to that of their farm, to create the Daybreak-Scheresky Mill. Now, the Aspinalls are cleaning and milling organic grains for mail order and for sale in health food stores. They grow many of their own grains (including wheat, millet and buckwheat) and they also purchase from other local organic farmers.

I visited the Scheresky farm in May and left with 10kg bags of whole wheat flour, rolled oats and pearl barley. You can reach the Aspinalls at (306) 927-2695, or see their entire product list at www.daybreakschereskymill.com.

Christie's Mayfair Bakery

Since bread is the most ancient and noblest of foods, we are blessed in Saskatoon with a bakery that elevates bread to the place of honour it deserves. Christie’s Mayfair Bakery produces magnificent artisinal breads in the European tradition – Italian chibatta and focaccia, French baguette and batard, German volksbrot and old-fashioned peasant sourdough, to name a few.

The signature specialty of the baker is the chocolate bowtie – a croissant fashioned into the shape of a bowtie filled with Belgian chocolate. In France, it would be called a chocolatine and it would be a favourite among children, served with warm milk for breakfast. Here, it’s a favourite with adults, too!

The passion behind this artisinal bakery is Tracey Muzzolini, a young baker who is taking over the business from her parents, Janet and Ennio. (He emigrated from Italy in the 1950s.) Growing up, Tracey swore she would get as far from the bakery as possible – and she did. She moved to Australia and then Toronto. But baking was in her blood. She enrolled in culinary school in Minneapolis where she learned to be absolutely meticulous about bread, using the best Saskatchewan flours, strictly measuring the temperature of each ingredient, and baking in a European-style steam oven. Now she runs the bakery with her brother Blair.

Be warned, there is a lineup at the door every Saturday morning. But if you’re a regular, you’re sure to see a friend to chat with as you wait. There’s a coffee counter where you can sip café au lait, or come for a panini for lunch – each sandwich is named for a European soccer star.

Christie’s Mayfair Bakery: 420 33rd Street W. Saskatoon.
306-244-0506.