Strawberries are a sure sign of summer, so head on over to the St. Lawrence Market to celebrate with the Market’s annual Strawberry Festival! Today from 10am until 1pm, you’ll have the opportunity to sample chocolate-dipped strawberries, grown by the Market’s farmers (well, the strawberries are grown by the farmers – the chocolate isn’t quite so home grown!) This annual festival is free, so revel in the taste of summer!
For more information go to www.stlawrencemarket.com!
One of the most delicious events of the year, the 12th Annual Taste of Little Italy gets started today! Continuing until Sunday, June 19th, this much-anticipated event takes place on College Street between Bathurst and Shaw. Catch musical performances, enjoy the wares of crafters/artisans, and of course, don’t miss your opportunity to taste the well-loved food of the Little Italy neighbourhood! Participating restaurants include Teatro, I Feel Like Crepe, La Forchetta Ristorante, Urban Thai, Golden Wheat Bakery and Pasta, LOL and many more!
For more information on Taste of Little Italy, go to www.tasteoflittleitaly.ca.
What’s the best way to eat gourmet meals while sticking to a grocery budget? By using one ingredient in multiple different ways! In this “hands on cooking class,” Chef Geraldine Cutajar will teach you how you can use a chicken to make multiple different meals. Learn how to make a perfectly roasted chicken, which can then be used to make chicken stock and a delicious roasted chicken salad!
The two-hour cooking class is hosted by the St. Lawrence Market Kitchen, and starts at 6pm. To register, call 416-860-0727, or email kitchen@stlawrencemarket.com. This class is $65 per person.
“Pairing cuisine and compassion,” Toronto Taste celebrates our city’s top chefs and beverage purveyors while raising support for Second Harvest.
Second Harvest is a non-profit organization that picks up donated perishable food which would otherwise go to waste, and then delivers that food to social service agencies across Toronto. Proceeds raised by Toronto Taste support Second Harvest’s delivery program, enabling the charitable organization to provide more than 16,000 meals to hungry Torontonians each day.
Tickets for Toronto Taste are $250 with a tax receipt issued for $125. The event takes place at the Royal Ontario Museum, and is guaranteed to satisfy your taste buds and your conscious as you help to put meals on the table of your fellow city-dwellers, while indulging in the gastronomic adventure of the year! For more information, go to www.torontotaste.ca.
It’s the May 2-4 weekend, and it wouldn’t be complete without grilling up some meat (or at least some delicious fresh veggies)! At Meat on the Beach you’ll find some of the best tasting, most wholesome, naturally raised, fresh meats, perfect for celebrating your long weekend. The selection doesn’t stop there – if barbecuing isn’t your thing pick up some oven-ready creations, such as rosemary-marinated Cornish hens, or succulent bacon-wrapped prime rib. If you don’t want to cook at all, there’s always ready made entrees, soups, and rotisserie grilled items, deli cold cuts and sausages, a fantastic selection of fresh breads and dessert items, and even flowers to put the finishing touch on your, uh, long-toiled over dinner party!
To find out more, check out Meat on the Beach’s website, and be sure to take a look at Heikki’s interview with store owner Ernesto Monte as they discuss the best-kept secrets of The Beach neighbourhood!
The promise of summer is officially in the air with the first Trinity Bellwoods Farmers’ Market of 2011, today! Located in the northwest section of Trinity Bellwoods Park at Shaw and Dundas West, this farmers’ market features a great selection of local fruits and veggies, fish and honey, seedlings and bread, coffee and artisan cheeses, and much more!
We all know that it has been an especially cold spring this year, so don’t come expecting peaches and raspberries (they will come eventually!), but there will still be plenty of wares to purchase, farmers to meet, and community to enjoy.
The Trinity Bellwoods Farmers’ Market starts at 3pm and wraps up at 7pm; for more information on vendors and to learn what produce will be available at the market, go to www.tbfm.ca.
A self-described “hotbed for culture,” the Drake Hotel hosts events every night of the week, including tonight’s event, “Food for Thought: Ged 86’d with Ivy Night.” Every Monday, event participants get their hands dirty with “food art” as contestants engage in a competitive cook-off. Be a guest judge for the competition, or get creative with some of your own food art. Tonight’s event invites you to bring out your old cookbooks to swap them for some gently used, “new-to-you” ones in a good old fashioned “Cookbook + Recipe Swap.”
Get 86’D with Ivy Knight starts at 7pm tonight (and every Monday) in the Free Lounge. For more information on this and other events, check out the Drake Hotel’s website.
Calling all “urban farmers” – explore the growing urban gardening scene tonight at Evergreen Brick Works! In this installment of the GE Cafe Chefs Series: Food for Thought, Anthony Rose, Executive Chef at The Drake Hotel, along with Rebekka Hutton, Urban Agriculture Manager for Evergreen, will help you learn how you can grow your own food at home.
Food security is an increasingly important issue, and growing your own food is a great way to up your food self-sufficiency. Rose’s emphasis on fresh and local ingredients, coupled with Hutton’s urban agriculture expertise, will make for an informative and fascinating evening which will include an interactive cooking demonstration, time to enjoy a meal, and a fascinating discussion about the merits of harvesting your own food right here in Toronto.
Each of the GE Café Chefs Series workshops cost $60 per person, and take place at the Centre for Green Cities from 6-9pm. Register now at the Evergreen Brickworks’ website.
Cupcakes have been trendy for the last couple of years, and For the Love of Cake has the art of the cupcake down to a science. Located in Liberty Village, this fantastic bakery features traditionally flavoured cupcakes, and the more unusual “man cakes” (think bacon, Guinness, and stout flavoured confections). In addition to their array of fantastic flavours, For the Love of Cake regularly hosts an “Iron Cupcake Competition.”
Iron Cupcake is a cupcake-baking contest open to the public. The concept is similar to “Iron Chef;” a “secret ingredient” is announced, and bakers must incorporate it into their cupcakes. The competitors make the cupcakes ahead of time and bring their finished product to the competition, where “judges” (this is where you come in!) award participants with points for presentation, taste and creativity. Want to be a judge? (Of course you do – who wouldn’t want to taste-test cupcakes?!) The cover for non-contestants is $5, and you’ll get to sample and judge the cupcakes and help decide on the people’s choice award! The tasting gets underway at 1pm today!
For more information on the Iron Cupcake competition, go to http://fortheloveofcake.ca/cupcakes/ironcupcake/. Be sure to check out Heikki’s interview with For the Love of Cake owner, Genevieve Griffin, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWiP5_XrHjg.
Hosted at the Young Welcome Centre on Saturdays from 9am until 1pm (in the summer the start time is 8am), the Evergreen Brick Works Farmers’ Market features the “best of the season.” Shop for fruits, vegetables, wild fish, meat, cheese, milled flours, eggs, and oils, all grown/raised/produced by local farmers. Purchasing local food is better for the environment, tastes fresher, and is good for your conscience – supporting Ontario farmers is a great way to “green” up your life!
Rhubarb, beets, cabbage, carrots, fiddleheads, parsnips, and many greenhouse-grown fruits and veggies are all in season in April, so visit Evergreen Brick Works and do your produce shopping for the week! Not only will you get your grocery shopping done, you’l have the opportunity to visit Toronto’s new community environmental centre in the heart of the Don Valley. For more information about Evergreen Brick Works, visit http://ebw.evergreen.ca/.