Major Website interruptions in 2009

Hi there,

For those of your who are diligently trying to find us on-line...maybe you've found us here. Yes, our main dot ca and dot com sites are experiencing some technical difficulties! We'll try to get the site back up and running as soon as we can. Thanks for your patience.

Jennifer

Four of Canada's Best New Restaurants are on the Prairies

See, we do have great dining here on the prairies. Two of the ten best new restaurants -- as bestowned by writer Chris Johns and enRoute magazine -- were from Alberta. Congrats to The Trought Dining Co at 725B-9th Street in Canmore on its seventh place finish, and Blink Restaurant and Bar in Calgary on its ninth place finish.

Another two prairie restos made the "Next 20" list: Edmonton's Skinny Legs and Cowgirls at 9008 Jasper Avenue and Winnipeg's Oui Bistro and Wine Bar at 283 Bannatyne Avenue, #100.

To read the whole article in enRoute's annual food issue (November, each year), click on this link for the Top 10, and this link for the Next 20.

And yes, Jennifer is a recurring panelist for this list...but she has no say in what gets picked. That's all Chris Johns.

But let's face it, there are probably other great prairie spots that have opened within the last year that could have been contenders...so tell us about them. Post a comment and start our own prairie-wide list of great new spots for a fine feast.

October is (almost was!) Read Alberta Magazines month

This year, we were welcomed into the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association. The Alberta Magazine Publishers Association (AMPA) is a non-profit organization of magazine publishers working in Alberta and its supporters. You'll notice that we have the AMPA logo now in our magazine's masthead column. So far, it has been a great group to be associated with and we've learned a lot from the seminars, conferences and communications we've received from them.

In other words, we couldn't let October go by without letting our readers know that October is Read Alberta Magazines month. And since our publication is such a regionally relevant publication, local support is everything to us. Thanks to our local subscribers and readers. If you like our publication, why not check out the other fabulous publications written, produced and published in Alberta. Eat, drink and read locally!

You just can't keep a good cereal down!

In our very first issue of The Edible Prairie Journal, we ran a story about the return of Sunny Boy cereal and flour. The mill in Camrose and the product line had been bought by brothers who grew up near the mill and just couldn't bear to see it vanish into nostalgia. It garnered us a lot of attention because, as we found out, Prairie folks love their Sunny Boy cereal - a mix of flax, wheat and rye grains that cooks up to a thick, hearty porridge.

Well, unfortunately, the mill and brand went up on the auction block yet again, and we didn't know if there was any life left in this brand. Though the previous owners had wisely introduced an certified organic line of the cereal, the flours and pancake mix. Well, an Edmonton company thought that there was indeed life left in Sunny Boy, a product that has now fed at least three generations of Albertans and Saskatchewanians. (Manitoba has its own Red River cereal, though it is no longer locally owned; Smuckers owns the brand.)

It was actually an ex-pat Albertan who now lives in Quebec who sleuthed out the new ownership and informed us that we should start to look for the new packaging, coming to shelves. And this week, a straw-yellow resealable plastic package caught our eye as we cruised the grocery isles. Sunny Boy is back. The same products are back, but in different packaging, and are available in organic and non-organic versions.

Guess you just can keep a good cereal down! Here's the new logo that you can look for in Safeway, Sobey's, Federated Coops, Nutters and a few other local grocery stores. To find a retailer near you, contact the company in Camrose. Their contact info is on the Sunny Boy website.

Eek! Get Eating! Only one week left in Dine Alberta month.

Chef Mark Klaudt of Route 40 Soup Company in Turner Valley, Alberta.

September is a great month here on the Prairies. We are absolutely overwhelmed with fresh produce, market veggies, and the coolish temperatures kick starts our appetites. It's also Dine Alberta month here in ... well, Alberta.

Dine Alberta, for those who don't know, is a month-long promotion where restaurants, cafes and caterers across the province run special menus featuring great ingredients from their region. It's a program that began five years ago, and now includes over 130 Alberta producers and 125 eating establishments from the Crow's Nest Pass to Grande Prairie and beyond. Some are high-end restaurants, some a country cafes and coffee shops. But they all are doing their part to support the incredible and hard-working farmers, ranchers, and food processors in the province. Last year, Dine Alberta participating restaurants purchased $575,000 worth of local ingredients during the program. And 20,000 diners enjoyed these special menus and dishes.


We want to encourage everyone to get out there and Dine Alberta. The participating restaurants are listed on the Dine Alberta web site. It's a great site, with locator maps to all of the participating Dine Alberta restaurants and cafes. It also contains a great Alberta-wide local food sourcing guide, and so much more.
And keep on visiting these places in the months that follow, because 99 percent of chefs in 2006 said that they'll continue to purchase products from the producers they met through Dine Alberta. This just means fresher, tastier, more interesting food for all of us.

Savour Life, A great Website from Regina

Regina-based CJ Katz does a great job covering the Saskatchewan food scene. Her electronic newsletter Savour Life arrives like clockwork in our email basket every Friday afternoon and there are always interesting stories about local ingredients, chefs, recipes and happenings. We encourage you to subscribe to Savour Life and keep up to date with the Prairie food scene.

When she's not our reporting on the food scene in her neck of the woods, CJ also teaches cooking classes, food and wine pairing classes, and appears on CBC radio and CTV. She's tireless! Check out her new blogpage too. We'll add a link to it in our list of favorite Prairie food sites too.

Cityfarm Edmonton

Everytime we look, there is something new and exciting happening in the Prairie food scene. We have just learned about a great new project in Edmonton, called Cityfarm Edmonton. The mission of this farm is to have a place where the urban community can connect with agriculture.

"At the core of resources currently available to Cityfarm is the donated 3.5-acres of land by the Visser family, the owners Riverbend Gardens, a long time market garden business located along the North Saskatchewan river within the rural urban fringe in Horse Hill community. Cityfarm, Riverbend Gardens along with Legacy Lands are in the process of creating a long term land disposition that provides permanent occupancy for Cityfarm while protecting this green space from the development pressure of being located on the edge of one of the fastest growing cities in Canada." -- from CityFarm's web site.

This is definitely on our list of places to check out. The farm is open to the public on special days and there are programs for school-age kids too. Check out the website www.city-farm.org and mark your calendars for the Cityfarm Harvest Festival on September 15th.