Slow Food Calgary Annual Report
December 2008

This is our first annual report. It is an opportunity to tell our membership what the Slow Food Calgary planning committee has been up to these last 12 months. We have aimed to keep the report concise. We invite members to ask questions about the content.

Contents...
Our Mandate
Food Events in 2008
Beyond Food Events in 2008
Community Outreach
Forging Community Alliances
Membership Update
Planning Committee Profiles



Our Mandate
To connect local consumers and chefs to local food producers and processors of agricultural products.
To build public awareness of local farmers’ products and of the restaurants and processors which support them.

The Planning Committee
This is a group of people who have been invited – first by the founding members of the committee and thereafter by the established committee members at the time – to do the work for the organization. The members of the planning committee are chosen for their specific skills (accounting, business, advertising, event planning and execution, web design, government agricultural policies and funding, for example) as well as for their particular relationship to the community of farmers, producers, chefs and entrepreneurs in locally-minded culinary fields.
Planning committee members change with some regularity due, in part, to the high demands of the volunteer work.
The profiles of planning committee members are appended.

What we do (and did in 2008)…

Food Events
One of the ways that Slow Food Calgary cultivates connections between consumers, farmers, producers and chefs, is to organize food events thatbring all of these folks together. Local chefs prepare dishes with local ingredients, farmers talk about the ingredients they grew or raised and consumers relish the flavours, the stories and gain an appetite (or more of one) for locally grown and made food.

January 17
Winter Feast with Calgary Petroleum Club’s Executive chef Liana Robberecht @ The Cookbook Co. Cooks
Chef Robberecht prepared rich and tender winter dishes from Poplar Bluff potatoes, Carmen Creek bison and Lund’s carrots. Rosemary Wotske, of Poplar Bluff, was there to talk about the potatoes she planted, tended and harvested. While outside a storm delivered snow and wind, inside Alberta producers and chef Robberecht delivered flavour, talent and inspiration.

February 26
Forage/Infuse Kitchen Party@ Infuse Catering with host owner/Chef Wade Sirois
Chef Sirois prepared a delicious meal centred around Allan and Joanne Vanden Broek’s Berkshire pork (a heritage breed of black pig). Allan and Joanne were there to talk about raising the Berkshires. A delicious and lively evening – as we have come to expect from chef Sirois’ kitchen parties.

March 9
Annual Roots & Shoots Dinner at River Café
Each year we celebrate the arrival (or approach) of spring by gathering a collection of Alberta chefs to prepare a seasonal feast to be served alongside a special selection of Canadian wines. River Café’s executive chef Scott Pohorelic leads the charge with his thoughtful cooking. It is a slow evening of many delightful courses. The 2008 dinner was a raving success.

April 23
A Spring Fling @ Vue Café
Chef Dwayne Ennest prepared Ewe Nique farms lamb in 5 ways for a lively crowd, packed comfortably into Vue. A great evening of beautifully-prepared lamb and conviviality.

June 21
Languedoc Food & Wine
Richard Harvey of Metrovino and Gail Norton of the Cookbook Co. Cooks, co-hosted this spirited summer solstice event. Just back from Languedoc, Gail and Richard were full of the region’s charms, stories and rich cultural details.

September 14
7th Annual Feast of Fields
It was a gorgeous late summer day and the perfect tribute to the farmers and fields of Alberta that supplied so many chefs with such delicious produce. Tickets were sold out two days before the event. Visit the “Directory” page of the web site to view a list of the producers who participated in Feast of Fields 7 (2008) and to learn where to get their products.
Student volunteers from SAIT were instrumental in the successful execution of the logistics on the day!

October 2
A Pre-Thanksgiving Kitchen Party @ Infuse Catering
Chef Wade Sirois prepared yet another evening of great food and spirited discussion. The centerpiece of this gathering was the turkeys that Darrell Winter and Corrine Dahm, of Winter’s Turkeys’, raised.

Beyond Food Events
Cultivating a community of good, clean and fair producers of local foods and chefs and consumers who prepare and appreciate these treasures involves some more direct forms of education. Here are some of the food-themed educational events that Slow Food Calgary hosted this year, that didn’t include dinner.

May 28
Slow Food Calgary joins forces with WORDFEST to get Barbara Kingsolver and her husband Stephen L. Hopp to Calgary for a speaking engagement at Knox United Church downtown.This event was an enormous success. A few hundred people came out to listen to Kingsolver and Hopp talk about their year of feeding themselves and their family from – almost exclusively – their small patch of land in southwest Virginia and the produce of farmers in the region. The stories from their year and their thoughts on the state of food in the 21st century are recorded in the New York Times best-selling book: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver, a delightful speaker, read excerpts from the book.Slow Food Calgary helped to land Kingsolver and Hopp an interview with Donna McElligott on CBC’s Wildrose Country, the day of the reading.

The Slow Food Calgary planning committee organized bountiful baskets full of locally made and grown products for the couple to take home – and to enjoy during their stay. On the evening of the event, Slow Food Calgary President dee Hobsbawn-Smith addressed the large gathering and made the link between the content of the book and the work of Slow Food – locally and internationally. Slow Food Calgary planning committee members offered a map and contact information list of local producers to everyone in attendance.

October 6
Movie Night “The Real Dirt on Farmer John”@ The Epcor Centre – The Engineered Air Theatre
This was our first movie night and we learned a lot in the doing. Though the audience was small, it was keen. And, it was a wonderful thing to get people together to watch this poignant farmer’s tale and talk about it afterward.
There was organic popcorn too! We look forward to hosting another movie night next year.z

November 17
Tales of Terra Madre @ Wild Rose Brewery and Tap Room at the Calgary Farmers’ Market
This evening we invited attendees of Terra Madre to speak and tell the story of their experiences at the largest Slow Food gathering in the world. The Terra Madre conference brings together farmers, cooks, producers, youth delegates and academics in an effort to work towards increasing small-scale, artisanal and sustainable practices of food production and consumption.
Of course there was delicious beer and bowls of warm food to accompany it. The Wild Rose brewery provided a warm and intimate setting – a great venue for storytelling and conviviality.

Nominations for Terra Madre 2008
Planning committee member and Vice-President of Training and Development for the Alberta Food Processors Association, Janet Henderson has been a working force behind the Terra Madre nominations to ensure that as many Alberta farmers and producers as possible were nominated to represent Alberta’s agricultural communities at Terra Madre. She also informed the nominees of grant funding opportunities and helped them to complete applications for funding through Food and Beverage Canada’s New Alberta Technology Innovation Program (ATIP), so that they could afford to travel to Terra Madre.Slow Food Calgary nominated 49 producers and chefs to represent our food communities in the province. Twenty-one of the nominees were able to attend. This is the largest representation from any single convivium in Canada.

Community Outreach Events
Slow Food Calgary participated in the following community events, by setting up a manned information booth and spending the day introducing people to the ideas behind Slow Food and to the work of the organization – locally and internationally.
These events not only fit with the goals and values of Slow Food, but also with the schedule of our local events and planning committee members’ time.

March 15
Calgary Seedy Saturday @ Montgomery Community Hall
Local gardeners, farmers, seed savers, native plant collectors and agricultural conservationists gather at this annual event to buy, sell and/or trade seeds and to exchange seeds and gardening expertise.
There were about 450 people in attendance. There was plenty of entertainment for children, too. This is a great event – and one way to start your garden planning in plenty of time. Slow Food Calgary will be represented at Calgary Seedy Saturday 2009.

May 31
Community Clean-up event organized by the West Springs/Cougar Ridge Community Association
@ West Springs CO-OP parking lot
This event gathered eco advocates and businesses together for a day of community education. Slow Food volunteers from our general membership manned the booth. A worthwhile event and a great way to get
Slow Food members involved in the work of the organization.

Forging Community Alliances
One of the goals of the Slow Food Calgary planning committee is to cultivate alliances with organizations, institutions and community groups that would like to make good, clean and fair food a global reality.

SAIT
With this in mind, the planning committee invited three chef/instructors from SAIT to join the committee. The chef/instructors are able to rotate their attendance to accommodate their teaching schedules. As a result of this alliance, a discussion is underway with the school’s administration to have a school garden on campus. Slow Food Calgary would plan an event around the inaugural planning and would hope to have an ongoing connection to the project.

WordFest
Working with the organizers of WordFest to get Barbara Kingsolver and her husband Steven L. Hopp to Calgary to read their book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, was a rewarding adventure. Planning committee members Gail Norton of the Cookbook Co. Cooks, Janic Beaton and Sal Howell of River Café held a special reception for the couple, rich in local foods. The event itself was attended by hundreds of people. The collaboration was a good one and we would pursue similar opportunities in the future.

Epcor Centre ~ Movies that Matter
This is a great facility. Now that we have a relationship with the staff and administrators, we look forward to planning another screening of a compelling food film or, perhaps, even a film series.

Calgary Horticultural Society
We were pleased to have the Calgary Horticultural Society represented at our 7th annual Feast of Fields. We look forward to future collaborations with this vibrant local organization.


Membership Update
We now have two capable, efficient women – Jodi Glassford and Joanne Wilson - looking after the Slow Food Calgary membership paperwork and communication. They reported a significant rise in membership over the past 11 months from
just below 150 at the beginning of the year to nearly 180 members near year’s end.


Planning Committee Profiles

dee Hobsbawn-Smith, President
A poet, chef, educator, author and award-winning
gastronomic writer. Since selling her restaurant in 1994, dee teaches and
writes fulltime, in North American publications from Portland to
Newfoundland, profiling growers' philosophies, politics and best practices,
cooks' ingredients, kitchen science and techniques. She believes in the
primary value of growing, cooking and sharing food, and teaches children and
adults to cook as the most practical day-to-day basis for societal growth
and change.

dee has written three best-selling cookbooks, co-authored two, and
contributed to eight others, plus three Canadian textbooks. Her most recent
book, Shop Talk, a resource guide for cooks, was published in April 2008. A
staunch advocate of local terroir, dee is currently working on a book about
Western Canadian growers. She is intensely interested in culinary
anthropology, and consults to the Alberta government about food in Alberta.
A fifth-generation prairie dweller, dee resides in Calgary with her youngest
son and her miniature Schnauzer. She is converting her small yard into an
edible landscape, and is learning to play guitar.

Eric Giesbrecht, Vice President
A self-employed chef-consultant operating under the banner of Meta4 Foods in Calgary, Alberta. Leaving the restaurant industry in 2005, Eric has gone on to cook privately in people's homes, teach cooking classes at a local culinary school, consult in restaurant/food service development and has also grown a wholesale shellfish business from scratch, specializing in premier quality oysters from both east and west coasts of Canada

Karen Anderson, Events
Karen Anderson is the owner of Acquired Tastes Food Tours and loves to share her passion for small markets and local producers with all who live in or visit Calgary. She is also a free-lance food and travel writer and has been a guest columnist on the CBC radio.

Janet Henderson, Government-Relations, Advertising
A founding member of Slow Food Calgary in 2001. She is interested in global food politics and economics – with a focus on food safety, health and wellness and fair trade practices. She works with processors and producers of all sizes in her work as a VP for the Alberta Food Processors Association to innovate and expand their businesses with a view to a greater public awareness of the Alberta bounty. Of particular passion, is farmers markets and small owner/operator businesses, where everyone has a story to tell – if you don’t have a story, it’s all about price and if that is the case, one day your doing well and the next? As a mother of 2 young children, the issues of childhood obesity and poverty is of particular concern.

Jodi Glassford, Membership
A registered dietitian who enjoys all things related to food. She was raised on a small mixed farm in Southern Alberta.

Tonya Lailey, Web Development
Tonya is a founding partner of Lailey Vineyard winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake and the one woman show behind Alberta wine agency Origo Wines ltd.Tonya initiated a Slow Food convivium in London, Ontario in 2003, along with a group of chef friends. She lead the London convivium until 2006 when she moved to Calgary to raise a family and to promote her family wine in the west.
Andrew Hewson, SAIT Ambassador and Liason
A chef instructor in the School of Hospitality and Tourism at SAIT Polytechnic. Before moving into a teaching role Andrew worked in kitchens in Vancouver, New York, England and Philadelphia. Now settled in Calgary with his family he enjoys sharing his knowledge and experiences with the future culinarians of the industry.

Kris Vester, Terra Madre Liason
A Germanicist and Classicist by education, a thinker/writer/visionary by nature and a peasant farmer by choice. Having abandoned an academic career in 1998, he now runs a 160 acre, certified organic, biodynamic, highly diversified farm near Carstairs, Alberta, together with his elderly parents. Blue Mountain Biodynamic Farms produces grain and forage both for sale and for on-farm use and meat products, herbs and vegetables for retail stores, restaurants, and home delivery services. Kris is always keen to spread the gospel of sustainability and good, clean and fair food, and has done so on radio and at a number of public events in the past. He does not suffer fools gladly, but does believe that ignorance can be cured.
Maxwell Lawrence, SAIT Ambassador and Liason
A chef instructor in the Hospitality & Tourism Department at SAIT, since November of 1987.The involvement with the Slow Food Calgary in such a natural evolution in teaching Professional Cooking. My philosophy and that of Slow Food’s makes it such a natural fit . My membership and association with Calgary Academy of Chefs and Cooks contribute as well to the bigger picture of culinary education and development for me. Further to that I have committed to forming partnerships with the regional growers and producers for our ongoing curriculum and production needs, through the assistance of the Jan Warren, New Venture Business Specialist, Agriculture and Rural Development. Exciting and challenging opportunities and times for our culinary educational needs.

Catharine Hortsing, Treasurer
A devotee of food and wine and a management consultant.

Beth Lipsett, Secretary
A professional gardener, community activist and committed locavore.

Gail Norton
Owner of The Cookbook Co. Cooks, publisher of Calgary’s City Palate, guide and instructor of European food tours she designs along with a crew of local food and wine experts. Gail is a founding member of Slow Food Calgary and a pioneer of the now vibrant Calgary food and wine scene.