Wild Saskatoons and Roast Beast

Eat Alberta 2012: Session 3, Sausage Making

After a wonderful lunch (once again by NAIT) we were off to our third session of the day!


Sausage Making with Allan Suddaby, of Button Soup fame.

I've chatted with him on twitter a couple of times, as well as read and comment on his blog.
This was the first time we met it person.

It's always a nice feeling to meet tweeps in real life lol

February Supper Club and Pork Hocks

Earlier this month Mira and I tried our hands at our first supper club.
There was an ok turn-out, but the food was fantastic!

The Theme: Your Grandmother's Kitchen
We all had to bring a dish or two that our grandmothers or great-grandmothers or great-great-grandmothers, etc would've made on at least a semi-regular basis.  The foods of our heritages.

I did smoked pork hock in sauerkraut with bacon-onion perogies.
My grandmother, et al. is Ukrainian :)

Day at the Acreage

Today, being the day after Londyn's FIRST BIRTHDAY!, we went out to Grannie and Papa's at the last minute to do some gardening and food-stuffs.

We picked blueberries at Kathy's farm (my mom's friend. my mom being Grannie :) ). My sister Kristy and her son and our Aunt and Baba and Gido (Grandma and Grandpa for non-ukrainian types) came too for the last haul of the season.
Kristy brought up a couple BIG bags of corn from her trip to southern alberta earlier this wknd and Grannie and I made MY FAVORITE! corn relish and then frozen the rest of the blanched kernals.
From the apples Zac's grandma gave us and the sweet yellow plums from our friend Vala we made apple-plum sauce. Canned that for my little Londyn. She LOVES! applesauce :D

Now we're going through the process of doing a pig order for the fall through Country Quality Meats (Bon Accord). My good friend Nelson of Rose Ridge Land and Cattle gets his beef done there as well as all the smokies and jerky and sausages (and now weiners too! very good on the bbq :) ). He gave them a glowing revue and the pork that goes into his mixed meat sausages comes from the farmer's they deal with. All his products are BEYOND! excellent, so there's no reason to doubt the quality of the meats :)

I'm taking him a jar of my FAVORITE! corn relish for his sound advice :)

Farm Fresh Butter and Cream, PLEASE!

My mother and I made our way down to the Salisbury Greenhouse Farmer's Market yesterday evening to enjoy the products of Johnson Family Farm (Bonnyville).
She picked up a litre of cream for her mom (my Baba :) ) and I skipped all the way home with butter and cream in tow. They also had eggs and cottage cheese and buttermilk and a whole bunch of other goodies that I unfortunately didn't have time to go through as we had to rush back to the city so Mom could get to her meeting.

On the Johnson Family Farm business card they have listed: Pork-Meat; Cows-Meat, Cream and Cheese; Turkeys and Chickens-Eggs and Meat; Lamb-Meat.
Definitely worth going back for :)

With my butter I'm sure I'll be greedy and put it on 100mile homemade bread :)
And perhaps make some shortbread cookies. Because there's no other cookie that you can really taste the butter in quite like a shortbread :)

Now the cream... I bought it mainly just to say I found some lol It is pasteurized, which is wonderful. What to make...
Ice cream?
Custard? Pudding? Creme Brulee?
Soup? Chowder?
Make -MORE- butter and then make buttermilk biscuits? Or buttermilk pancakes?? (and then put the fresh butter on them :) )

oh dear.

I think I need more cream... :)

- DJK