August is a busy month on the local food scene
August brings a cornucopia of culinary events to Edmonton area
I’ll be away for the next couple of weeks, so am going to leave you with some food events in August to think about, including the Babas and Borshch Ukrainian Festival that takes place in Andrew on Aug. 23 and 24.
Part of the festival involves a competition among home cooks to see who can produce the best borscht. The deadline to enter that little smackdown is Aug. 1. There is no entry fee, and yet, there are prizes and substantial bragging rights.
If your borscht isn’t yet competition-worthy, attend the borscht cooking demo class taught by chef Gail Hall on Aug. 23 in Andrew. The class is $10, and soup samples and recipes are included. Write babasandborshch@gmail.com or call 780-365-2434 for details on the class. Rules and a registration form for the borscht contest are on the website at babasandborshch.ca.
Alberta Open Farm Days takes place on Aug. 23 and 24 at various locations across the province, and there is a culinary component to this weekend of farm tours. As part of that, Slow Food Edmonton, together with chef Kathryn Joel of Get Cooking, is hosting a farm-to-fork supper on Saturday, Aug. 23 at the new location of Joel’s cooking studio at MacEwan University campus.
It’s call Savour Local, a Flora and Fauna Patio Party, and will see Joel’s crew roast a pig (supplied by Irvings Farm Fresh) on the patio. Joel’s menu will also focus on produce from Reclaim Urban Farmin Edmonton’s Garneau area, one of the farms available for touring on Sunday, Aug. 24 through Open Farm Days. Visit the website for details at albertafarmdays.com. You can purchase tickets for Savour Local at slowfoodedmonton.ca. Community garden, on the University of Alberta south campus, has opened the gardenmarketfortheseason.The market is open Tuesday evenings from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and on Saturdays from 11a.m. to 1 p.m.
The garden is a joint project of the University’s School of Public Health and the Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences. Volunteers manage the garden and most of the seeds, plants and equipment are donated. The vegetables, herbs and flowers are all free of pesticides or artificial fertilizers.
Garden produce is available in exchange for a donation. Organizers suggest donations be based on what you might pay for similar produce at a farmers market or in the grocery store. All of the donations are sent to the Tubahumurize Association, a non-profit organization in Rwanda that provides marginalized women with vocational training, health-care education, and other forms of support. For details, email gggarden@ualberta.ca or phone 780-492-9079. publichealth.ualberta.ca
This year, there are 508 different things to eat at the Servus Heritage Days Festival happening on Aug. 2, 3, and 4 at Hawrelak Park.
A list of all those nibbles is now on the festival’s website. Jack Little, executive director of the festival, calls it the “best selection of food items we’ve ever had” — drawing particular attention to new items, including daabo from Ethiopia, mititei from Romania and zvikanganway hama (fried chicken gizzards and hearts) from Zimbabwe.
You can buy food tickets in advance at all Save-On-Foods, Servus Credit Unions, and at Tix on the Square. Planning ahead can help you save time in lineups during the very busy festival, which is the largest multicultural festival in one location in the world, according to organizers. heritage-festival.com