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Farmers Market Challenge Week 15: The Finale!

October 16, 2016 By newwestfarmers

Oh. My. Goodness.

Wow!

Is that real?

It can’t possibly be bread, it must be cake!

They assured us it was bread.

Chocolate bread!!!

Last week was the final week of the summer market bringing the $40 market-spending challenge to a close. And in proper, good Katie form, I went all out.

Early in the challenge, I would never have purchased an $8 loaf of bread, chocolate or not. My spending was based on a strict budget where veggies took precedent. But, as the summer market started preparing for fall, the veggie selection became less vast, and, well, sometimes you really do need a reward for doing a great job.

I think I did a great job; chocolate bread was my reward.

Sadly, I did not read the ingredients. I did not realize there was orange infused into that bread. I do not eat orange-infused sweet treats; haven’t since I was about five years old and some totally evil person decided to underhandedly slip marmalade onto my toast – blech! In my mind, orange does NOT belong in chocolate.

Sigh.

fm16-chocolate-bread
Plus, we may have overdone the sweet factor: Chocolate French toast, syrup and all. Holy decadence!

 FINAL WEEK’S LOOT:

Zaklan Heritage Farm:                                     • 2 bunches of mustard greens: $5

  • 1 mini lettuce: $2
  • 2 purple onions: $2.65
  • 1 bunch parsley: $2

Ossome Acres:                                         • 1 zucchini: $2

Ripple Creek Organic Farm:                    • 1 garlic: $3

A Bread Affair:                                           • Chocolate bread: $8

Wild West Coast Seafoods:                     • 1 lb tuna: $16

Total spent was $40.65. 

When I started this challenge 16 weeks ago, I didn’t know what exactly it would present. I considered our family on the upper scale of health prior to going in, but admittedly we were a bit stale and stagnant in meal planning, eating the same-old, same-old week after week.

The market changed that.

It gave us new foods, new recipes, new cooking adventures, new menus, new tastes, new perspectives.

This is what the market gave my family:

fm16-collage
A collage of tasty goodness

In my first post of this challenge, I asked if the market was true to its negative stereotype of being “too expensive,” a sentiment I have heard echoed several times by my fellow Food, Nutrition and Health peers at UBC. After 16 weeks, I can handedly say that yes, some of the product is pricier than you’d get at grocery stores. But, and this is a huge but, the quality, flavour and freshness is bar none far superior to that of the chains.

When you know your food was picked that day, when you know your food hasn’t undergone chemical procedures to stall the ripening process, when you know every bite is going to be infused with an intense flavour that tickles your differing taste buds, when you know it’s going to last longer than a few days, as long as a FEW weeks even, that has to be factored into the budget.

When you know how to shop the market, as I quickly learned, when you know how to search out the best deals (two for $5 mustard greens made my list EVERY week), when you know how to plan, when you build relationships with the farmers, when you know how to use so-called wastes to your advantage (onion stems was a favourite discovery), you DO see a savings.

We did.

We stopped going to the veggie stand three times a week; our foods were lasting. We stopped buying salad dressings; the intensity of the greens didn’t require added flavouring. In meal planning, we started looking at multiple ways of using the entire vegetable – limited waste, so an environmental savings as well.

There were challenges. A vegetable one week was not guaranteed the next; something you had hoped would be there, didn’t make the cut that week; if you weren’t there early, chances were the items you wanted were all gone.

fmnopierogies
The week of no perogies!

 

Our final market meal was a trusty favourite we discovered the third week of the challenge – tuna loin. Unfortunately it had jumped in price since the beginning of the summer; what cost $12 in June, cost $16 in October due to a “crummy” season. It meant fennel was scratched from the list. It meant none of the maybes on the list would get into our bag. But man, that tuna – a drool-worthy, dream-worthy delicacy! Worth every sacrifice. Worth every penny.

fm16-final-shop
Challenge complete. Where oh where to get my mustard greens now?

 

Dear summer market, so much of you I shall miss.

Luckily, winter is coming!

Winter market starts November 5, and runs the first and third Saturday of the month, uptown on Belmont street.

See you there.

Filed Under: Buying local, Favorite Finds, Uncategorized Tagged With: Baked Goods, buy local, eat local, family, Farmers, farmers market, food security, Fresh Food, Katie Bartel, kids, local food, locavore, new west, New Westminster, RCFM, Shop Local, Winter Market

The inaugural Long Table Dinner

October 9, 2016 By newwestfarmers

On September 29, we hosted our first ever Long Table Dinner as part of Tourism New West’s Feast on the Fraser celebration. Forty-five hungry RCFM supporters came out to dine under an open tent in Tipperary Park. The menu was filled with delectable items from our vendors.

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Menu

We were lucky to have a beautiful autumn day and the tables looked a treat thanks to a donation by the Bloom Bloom Room, a local florist based out of Sapperton.  The centrepiece garlands added the perfect ambiance for a harvest feast. The Uptown Business Association kindly allowed us to use their giant tents which set the stage.

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Table for two?

Diners were greeted with a glass of local Pacific Breeze wine and shrubs donated by Vancouver-based Mixers & Elixers. Shrubs are drinking vinegars—slightly sweet and slightly tart, we mixed them with soda water. They were served by marvelous volunteers from the New Westminster Youth Ambassadors Society.

The table held an abundance of bread donated by A Bread Affair and butter that was almost too pretty to eat. The Local Churn donated some unique combinations including tart cherry and sherry.

The opening course comprised a Caprese Salad that featured locally grown vine ripened tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and a balsamic reduction. There was also a Hundred Mile Salad with kale, spinach, beets, goat cheese, candied pecans and what I sincerely hope were edible flowers.

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The salads

Salads consumed, we then moved onto the entrees which included char-grilled, wild-caught BC salmon that was served with a roasted pineapple salsa. If you haven’t yet tried Wild West Coast Seafood’s products we can attest to their top-notch quality. The diners also feasted on mushroom-hunter grilled Rockweld Farm chicken breasts, another generous donation from one of our popular local vendors. This wasn’t one of those either/or situations—everyone got both salmon and chicken as well as mozzarella-ricotta stuffed agnolotti as a side. We also had roasted in-season local vegetables (because it was a Farmers Market event after all) and grilled corn on the cob from the Fraser Valley. We were lucky to be able to purchase ingredients from some favourite market vendors including Zaklan Heritage Farms, Bose + Sons Family Farm, Ossome Acres, and Greendale Herb & Vine.

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The entrees!

Unbelievably, diners still seemed to have room for the exquisite goodies donated by Sweet Thea and Delish Gluten Free Bakery. There was a choice of assorted tarts and gluten-free brownies and I do believe more than one person tried both a tart and a brownie (no judgement here!). Unfortunately no photos remain because anyone standing in the way of the dessert table would have been taking their life in their hands.

The Long Table Dinner was an incredible community feast! The generosity of local RCFM vendors + the company of good friends and neighbours + the deliciousness of eating local = the best kind of evenings in our books.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, Buying local, Uncategorized, Vendors Tagged With: buy local, eat local, family, Farmers, farmers market, Farms, food security, Fresh Food, fundraiser, local food, locavore, LongTableDinner, new west, New Westminster, organic, Shop Local, Vendors, wine

Eat local, eat in season

May 19, 2009 By newwestfarmers

Many people are becoming more concerned about food quality, food security, and greenhouse gas emissions caused by the long-distance trucking of their food. The best thing you can do is to eat local, eat in season. And here in the GVRD, that is becoming easier all the time!

Did you know that…

· While there are many farmers in the Fraser Valley, most sell their produce to large distributors via advance contracts. It is hard for them to take time off from farming (what they do best) to travel around to sell at markets. This story in the Georgia Straight illustrates the complexity of what faces our local farmers.

· Growing vegetables in hothouses in BC causes fewer CO2 emissions than trucking them in from Mexico and California. Typically, you will save about 70% of the weight of the vegetable in greenhouse gas savings by buying local produce.

· If you have to make the choice between eating trucked-in organic produce or local conventionally-grown produce, it’s better for the environment to get the local stuff.

· The provincial government supports local products via its “buyBC” campaign. There are specific guidelines for terms such as: BCgrown, BCmade, and BCproduct; in general, these items have >50% local content.

· In BC, food security is closely tied to the province’s Agricultural Land Reserve or ALR. Without the ALR, the 100-mile diet will become impossible. With real estate prices sky-high, the ALR is under constant pressure. A recent report (PDF) by the David Suzuki Foundation gives some recommendations regarding the ALR.

· “Community Supported Agriculture” is another model of supporting local farmers.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: ALR, buyBC, CSA, environment, food quality, food security, greenhouse gas savings, seasonal eating

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Land Acknowledgement

Our market is grateful to operate on the unceded land of the Qayqayt, Kwikwetlem, and other Halkomelem speaking Peoples. We acknowledge that colonialism has made invisible their histories and connections to the land. We acknowledge the incredible gift this land is to our market and BC Agriculture. We commit to the ongoing work of decolonization and allyship.

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