Slow Food Saskatoon

Most of our gratitude goes to our 90+ guests who made our evening a roaring success. We saw many smiles, heard lots of laughter, and accolades for the four-course meal. Some guests even went home with some recipes!

But did we take any photos of the food as we were making the evening happen? Not really. An error we will remedy next time. In the meantime, we are also grateful to one of our guests, Lara Guerrero, for sharing her photos with us!

If you want to support Slow Food supporters, please consider visiting some of these businesses:

• Against the Grain Wild Rice
• Amy Jo Ehman
• Aurorastar Health Crackers
• Black Fox Farm & Distillery
• The Barn at Wind’s Edge
• Boreal Heartland
• dee Hobsbawn-Smith
• Casita Gluten-free Foods
• Federated Co-operatives Ltd.
• Floating Gardens
• Fresh Dish Catering
• G&R Gardens
• Goblin’s Grill
• Grandora Gardens
• Grassland Greens
• Harder Sheep Farm
• Jack & Jill Creations
• Jenn Sharp – Flat Out Food
• JJ Vegan Cheese Delight
• Just Livestock Inc.
• Lucky Bastard Distillers
• Max Produce
• Moss Mama/Foodie Forest
• Midwest Fresh Produce
• Renouf Farms
• Saskatoon Farmers Market
• SaskMade Marketplace
• Schumacher Seed Ltd.
• St. Tropez Bistro/Parlor Speakeasy
• Tall Order Communications
• The Gardener Magazine
• The Cure
• The Little Market Box
• The Night Oven Bakery
• Three Farmers

A Four Course Meal of Local Food

The evening began with eager guests arriving at the beautiful Avenue Room before the doors were quite ready to open. The bar was ready for them when they entered, with two cocktails on special: first, a gorgeous haskap fizz prepared by Chef Evelyn Reisner of Fresh Dish Catering using Black Fox Gin and Renouf Farms haskaps; second, a classic Negroni in honour of Slow Food International’s Negroni Week.

When the charcuterie boards hit the tables, they caused a sensation. Baskets of Red Fife Bannock (flour provided by The Night Oven) and sun-dried tomato fry bread, prepared by Chef Michael Beaulé were served alongside boards full of cured meats from The Cure, multi-coloured vegetable hummuses (beet, carrot and sorrel) prepared by Chef Carole Gallagher, Chef Evelyn’s pickles, puffed wild rice from Against the Grain Wild Rice and various condiments and fresh vegetables – tomatoes from guest Lori Mills and Slow Food Convivium Leader Noelle Chorney, and cucumbers from Floating Gardens. One guest hid his hummus under his chair when we tried to clear the table for the next course. Another guest found Chef Carole and went home with the recipe.

The second course was a gorgeous family-style pumpkin filled with roasted Black Fox pumpkin soup.

The main course was served buffet-style and included a fresh coleslaw and vegan chickpea curry by Felicia Fox, French lentil salad by Fresh Dish Catering, a Roasted Potato and Wild Rice Medley and Balsamic Roasted Mixed Vegetables by chef Michael Beaulé and the pièce de résistance, a stuffed, rolled leg of lamb by Chef Evelyn.

Between courses, guests perused a silent auction and selection of raffle items that supported Slow Food Saskatoon’s values and deep relationships within the community. There were rare heritage vegetable seeds, live Velvet Peach plants that are impossible to procure in Canada, started and donated by Slow Food volunteer Rina Veltkamp, also known as Moss Mama and founder of Foodie Forest. Local meats including free range beef patties and cuts of lamb were also big ticket items, as were wood crafted and hand-sewn items from Knotty Bob Pine Creations and Sisters Three Handicrafts. Books have long been a big part of Slow Food fundraisers, and this year was no exception with gardening and cookbook collections figuring prominently in the raffle items. Gift certificates to local establishments were also in the mix – gift cards to St. Tropez Bistro/Parlor, Goblin’s Grill and The Night Oven were popular items. Black Fox Farm & Distillery donated a tour for two, and Lucky Bastard Distillers donated a Caesar Kit. Beautiful gift collections were provided by SaskMade Marketplace and Federated Co-operatives Ltd. A homemade pie and books by Amy Jo Ehman were also a hit!

The final course was a gorgeous pear and Renouf Farms haskap galette with a caramel drizzle, served with whipped cream. What a way to finish a beautiful evening!

Our team was so gratified to see so many smiling faces and so much glowing feedback about the event and the food. We’re grateful to all who came out to support us, to all our chefs, volunteers, donors and suppliers. The event raised close to $7,000 that will go toward funding youth to attend Terra Madre Salone del Gusto in Turin, Italy in September 2024.

Food is a great connector, and relationships are at the core of our humanity. It is a joy to gather people together over good local food that can be traced back to the faces at the table. Our growers and makers often dine with us. Stay tuned for our next event where you get to meet makers and growers face to face at our Lucky to be Local cocktail evening on March 21, 2024.

Slow Food Saskatoon’s Fall Supper on September 21 is going to be a gorgeous four-course collaborative meal of thoughtfully prepared local food. Vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free diets accommodated.

What to expect from one of our dinners?

You’ll be fed generous amounts of beautifully crafted local food. You’ll rub elbows with community members who care about food security and the environment. And you’ll get a ‘taste’ of Slow Food’s magical space between joy and justice.

We only procure as much as we need – so we need to know if you’re coming by September 14

We know it’s a lot to ask for you to commit ahead of time, but we are not a restaurant, and we are procuring fresh ingredients for the exact number of people we expect to attend. That means that right now, it’s still in the fields. One of our values is preventing food waste, so we ask that if you’re planning to come, buy your ticket as soon as possible. Our numbers will be set on September 14.

We’re delighted to share a menu that is vegetarian, vegan and gluten-friendly

Appetizer:

Charcuterie boards with both meat and vegetarian options (cured meat, fresh vegetables, hummus, pickles, bannock), GF options available, served family style

Soup:

Creamy pumpkin soup served in pumpkin shell tureens (served family style), vegetarian, vegan option available

Served buffet: 

Rolled stuffed local lamb leg (GF)

Chickpea Curry (vegetarian option)

Roasted potatoes

Seasonal vegetables

Lentil salad

Green salad

Dessert

Local fruit dessert

Additional Notes:

Doors open at 6pm, dinner starts at 6:30.

Cash bar with local options

Silent auction and raffle for local crafts and foodie delights!

Tickets available at Showpass

Join Us
September 21st for Collaboration and Community

Slow Food Saskatoon/Saskatchewan is delighted to announce the reinstatement of our Fall Supper fundraiser. It will take place on September 21^st, 2023, in collaboration with the 2023 Nourish Food for Health Symposium, which will be happening in Saskatoon on September 20th and 21^st. The symposium, which explores how health professionals and leaders are reimagining food in health care to improve health equity, climate action, and patient healing, is supported by CHEP Good Food and shares many values with the Slow Food movement.

As a grassroots organization, Slow Food Saskatoon/Saskatchewan has been working on establishing collaborative partnerships with organizations that share its values with the goal of having the greatest impact on the food culture and food security in our city and province.

There will also be a silent auction of unique food products, books, and experiences available for bidding. Proceeds will go towards sending promising young local chefs, producers or academics to Terra Madre, Slow Food International’s biannual conference in Turin, Italy.

Slow Food Saskatoon has been hosting annual fundraising dinners for more than 10 years, and the planning committee has decided to feature some of our favourite recipes from past dinners at this event, including vegan and vegetarian options. The dinner will offer an appetizer course, soup course, a meat and vegetarian main with sides and salads, and dessert.

The event will take place at the beautiful Avenue Room event space at 119 3^rd Avenue South, hosted by Fresh Dish Catering. Our planning team includes several chefs and caterers and each of them is adding their expertise to the various courses and dishes. The menu is still under discussion as we secure suppliers for the dinner – stay tuned for the menu announcement, coming soon! [We’re working on sourcing lamb to make the stuffed rolled lamb roast, photo at left, that was a hit at our 2019 Field to Shield dinner. Pumpkins from our friends at Black Fox Farm and Distillery have already been secured for a remake of pumpkin soup served in pumpkin shell tureens from our vegetarian fall supper from 2018.]

Check out our Facebook Event or purchase tickets online.

Due to lack of ticket sales, we have had to cancel our Lucky to be Local Event. We’re super disappointed, first because we wanted to have an opportunity to connect with our supporters over good food, and second, because this would have been a one-of-a-kind evening. Nowhere else in Saskatoon would you get to experience this mix of chef talent, businesses committed to local food, and local producers in one room. 15 tables with appetizers, plus drink samples, for the price of admission.

We are committed to supporting our local businesses, so this was not set up as a trade show. We had arranged to pay producers for their products, and chefs for their expenses to attend the event. Which is why we needed a certain number of tickets to make it work. We apologize for the inconvenience to our suppliers and chefs, as well as to those who had purchased tickets. Refunds will come later today.

We understand it’s a difficult time to be holding events, so next time we’ll apply lessons learned and give everyone some more lead time for planning and promotion purposes.

I love the connections I got to make just in planning the event, and the good will is palpable. And I know some new connections were made between chefs and suppliers, which I hope will continue. Watch for events coming up in the Fall!

Slow Food Saskatoon is back! After three years of hiatus our team of amazing volunteers is ready to start raising funds to strengthen the Slow Food community in Saskatchewan.

Since 2020, we have had to postpone our events and instead invested our funds in our community member organizations. Instead of sponsoring young chefs or local food supporters to attend Terra Madre, Slow Food’s international conference in Italy, we gave back to local slow food businesses struggling during COVID closures. But we’re ready to get back to what we do best – connecting chefs, producers and the community over locally grown food and drink.

SLOW FOOD SASKATOON PRESENTS:  Lucky to be Local Cocktail Evening An evening of connecting with local producers, distillers, brewers and chefs.

Meet us in the beautiful Avenue Room to sample appetizers, cocktails and mocktails featuring local ingredients from field to shield while talking to local producers and chefs.  Some of our participants include:  • The Night Oven Bakery • Farm One Forty and Odla • Pig & Pantry • Saskatoon Spruce Cheese • 9 Mile Legacy • Black Fox Farm & Distillery • Fresh Dish Catering • Boreal Heartland • Floating Gardens • Grassland Greens • Hunting Season Spices • Those Girls at the Market chocolate • Naturally Amped fermented foods • Kinsmen Glory Farms Many more chefs, and many more local ingredients including honey, charcuterie, lentils, wild mushrooms, microgreens, to name a few! Where: The Avenue Room (119 3rd Avenue S) When: 6 to 10 pm, May 11, 2023 Regular Tickets: $60 Students and Underemployed: $40

Get Tickets Now

Slow Food Saskatoon has announced our spring volunteer project. We are offering the cooking skills of our chef members and access to fresh, local food to the kids attending Camp Tamarack this summer. Slow Food Saskatoon and Camp Tamarack are calling for food and packaging donations as they prepare soups, stews, baking, and healthy snack items for the camp.

“We’re so grateful for Slow Food Saskatoon’s support of Camp Tamarack,” says Tamarack Foundation President Sharon Thomas. “Diet is extremely important to children with learning disabilities and we want to educate children on the importance of healthy eating.”

“We’re pleased to be able to support Camp Tamarack,” says Slow Food Saskatoon Leader Noelle Chorney. “Slow Food is committed to good, clean and fair food for all, with a special emphasis on connecting with youth. This is a great opportunity. Plus, Slow Food Saskatoon has a great team of chefs and caterers that love to feed people, so it’s a fun project for us to take on!”

The Tamarack/Slow Food partnership is reaching out to food retailers and wholesalers to access meat, dry goods, frozen fruit, packaging, and other items that can be used to create make ahead meals and snacks for 400 kids attending the camp in July and August.

For a specific ingredient list, contact Slow Food or Camp Tamarack. Contact Evelyn Reisner of Fresh Dish Catering at 306-262-5586 to arrange delivery or pickup of donations.

About Slow Food Saskatoon

Slow Food Saskatoon is a grassroots community of chefs, policy supporters, farmers and food activists who support good, clean and fair food, and like to mix joy and justice. For more information: www.slowfoodsaskatoon.com

About the Slow Food movement

Slow Food is an international non-profit organization. Its cultural, environmental and social mission is the recognition of the central role of good, clean and fair food. For more information: www.slowfood.com

About Camp Tamarack

Camp Tamarack has been helping children with learning difficulties since 1977. The children and their families see Camp Tamarack as a place where children experience success, find a friend, and realize that learning can be fun. These experiences follow them into their classrooms and create a foundation for a successful life.

Camp Tamarack is supported by the Tamarack Foundation, a duly registered Canadian charity, and operated by a Board of Directors made up of professionals with varied business backgrounds, as well as parents who have the common desire to make a difference in the lives of children with learning difficulties – diagnosed or undiagnosed.

I would like to begin by acknowledging that this event is taking place on Treaty 6 Territory and the homeland of the Métis. I pay my respect to the First Nations and Métis ancestors of this place and reaffirm our relationship with one another.

My name is Noelle Chorney for those of you who don’t know me—although I do see many friends in the audience—thank you so much for coming. I am the leader of Slow Food Saskatoon. My steering committee, made up of people whom I have come to love dearly, nominated me to attend Terra Madre, Slow Food International’s biannual conference in Turin, Italy. We also sponsored Jessica Kormos, food services coordinator at Station 20 West to attend.

I had been told that the experience would be transformative. In my case, I feel as if I am continually transforming, and Terra Madre was the most recent of many transformative experiences for me in the last few years. But it does something to you, spending a week with people who are as committed to a cause as you are. I feel closer to my Canadian and North American counterparts and have had many important conversations about what this grassroots movement means and how it is evolving on Turtle Island.

What I would like to share with you tonight is the gift that I believe the Slow Food movement brings to the world. Thanks to my recent travels, I now fully understand it and feel more committed to Slow Food as a result.

For those of us who care about the welfare of our planet and the survival of humanity, and I believe I’m in good company tonight, it is a daunting time. There is so much change that needs to happen, and so much work to do. I see the struggle of the social activists I know—the frustration bordering on despair.

When I think of one word that makes Slow Food stand out from other similar movements, that word is enjoyment.

It isn’t surprising that Slow Food was founded in Italy. Visiting there for the first time, the richness and level of integration of the food culture assumes enjoyment first. That appears to be what the culture is founded on. And when I think about North America in contrast, enjoyment rarely comes first, and is almost always separated from ‘real life’ or the work that needs to get done. I see the preponderance of guilt from the puritanical overlays that many colonizers brought with them.

We have so much to feel bad about. Feeling good, in fact, seems frivolous. We may believe we don’t deserve to feel good. And we definitely shouldn’t feel good while fighting to end suffering. We feel as if we deserve to suffer as long as there is suffering.

The work to right all the wrongs is never ending and overwhelming. That is true.

What is also true is that joy is a far more life-giving and affirming fuel source than anger or despair. And for myself, I was never able to commit to anything that didn’t also feel good. And while I always knew that everything about Slow Food appealed to me, it wasn’t until I heard this statement from Slow Food USA leader Richard McCarthy that I realized why:

“We live in the magical space between the joy and the justice.”

For the longest time I have been describing Slow Food as an organization that promotes good, clean and fair food for all. That’s the elevator speech, but it lacks the joy that we are speaking of.

What Slow Food really is, is a social change movement that is thoughtful and complex. None of the issues are black and white. And those who are committed to Slow Food are working for many different causes:

• If you care about animal welfare, you have a place in Slow Food.
• If you care about biodiversity, you have a place in Slow Food.
• If you care about Indigenous rights and sovereignty, you have a place in Slow Food.
• If you care about women’s rights, you have a place in Slow Food.
• If you care about climate change, you have a place in Slow Food.
• If you care about food access and food insecurity, you have a place in Slow Food.
• If you have ever felt the sense of nourishment—the joy—that follows a meal, grown, harvested, prepared and served with love, and you wish for that feeling for the entire world, and see the healing potential of that joy, you have a place in Slow Food.

If you care about any combination or all of the above, come talk to me or my kick-ass team about how to get involved. We are living proof of what you can accomplish when you’re fuelled by joy—such as hosting the Slow Food in Canada National Summit last April, the meal you have just enjoyed on Black Fox’s beautiful property, or our next big project, Camp Snail, in partnership with Camp Tamarack—we are planning a Slow Food weekend of foraging workshops, cooking lessons and gathering around tables and campfires in celebration of local food. Mark your calendars for the weekend of June 7 & 8, 2019.

We are energized by the experience of living in that magical space between joy and justice, and whatever your cause, we acknowledge that the revolution will look different from where each of us stands. And we need every single one of those perspectives to reach the tipping point. We also acknowledge your part in the revolution, and on behalf of Slow Food Saskatoon, from the bottom of our hearts, we wish you joy in your own quest for justice.

Our pumpkin-themed fall supper, taking place during Black Fox’s annual pumpkin festival, is only two weeks away. Tickets are available on Picatic. We’re excited to share our menu for this four-course vegetarian and vegan-friendly dinner. Four of our chef committee members have teamed up to offer some amazing dishes. Tickets are only $40 for adults. Kids are also welcome, with reduced pricing for kid-sized portions.

We’re serving:

• Éloté, a Mexican-inspired roasted corn salad with pumpkin-cashew cheese by Michael Beaulé
• Coconut curry squash and pumpkin soup by Carole Gallagher
• Pumpkin, vegetable and lentil terrine with mustard gin sauce by Chef Jenni
• “Fall miniatures” for dessert—you’ll have to see it to believe it—crustless pumpkin pie in the shape miniature pumpkin and a tiny caramelized pear [vegan dessert will differ] by Evelyn Reisner

Spend an evening on Black Fox’s beautiful property, enjoy a cocktail with dinner, and learn a bit more about Terra Madre Salone del Gusto 2018. Noelle Chorney, our Slow Food Saskatoon leader will be just returned from this transformative event and will be speaking (briefly) at the dinner.

We’ll also be announcing our next big project (it’s exciting and ground breaking). This is a fundraising dinner, so come prepared to buy some 50-50 tickets!