One Week Until our First Market Day(!!!): Market Update

The warm weather we experienced at the beginning of the week is heralding in our market season. And things have certainly been heating up behind the scenes as well! We are getting quite excited!

We have a long list of vendors lined up, bringing you a wide variety of wonderful items to purchase from specialty food items through to the creative work of artisans. There are large plants and potted arrangements to make it FINALLY feel like spring, and there are wee seedlings to purchase for pots, kitchen windowsills and gardens. There are special treats to sample. And there are food trucks to explore with many sumptuous offerings for dinner for your family, friends and neighbours.

In short, there are quite a number of things to look forward to at our market in the upcoming weeks! Let me highlight a few...

for the kids

• Inflatable Slide Kids' Zone:
Starting May 22nd, we will have a towering, incredibly huge, ever-so-fun giant inflatable slide on site each week that is sure to excite the kids! It's 16 feet wide, 30 feet long and 22 feet high!! Just think how much energy your kids will expend racing up and down this slide... and how well they'll sleep at night! Rides will be $1 each, or $5 for unlimited slides. (Please note: unfortunately it is not able to be there for opening market day... it begins with the second market day of the season.)

• Buskers: 
Each week we will have special performers at the market, playing music, creating balloon art, doing face painting and creating a fun & vibrant atmosphere for families with their very special, highly creative & engaging talents.

• Puppets on a String:
 On May 15th, these puppet performers will be at the market, performing their very popular puppet shows. These will be happening in the centre of our market, along the avenue of trees.

• Special Garden Project: 
On May 29th, children can take part in our Plant A Row, Grow A Row kick off event with a special garden project. Sustainable Food Edmonton will be on hand helping everyone create a newspaper pots and planting seeds to begin to grow their very own donations for the Food Bank.

for everyone

• Edmonton Public Libraries
EPL will be on hand May 15th, handing out free library cards as part of their birthday celebration. This is a terrific opportunity to save yourselves a little cash and support your community library, all at the same time.

• The Truck Rally!
Starting May 15th, Don't forget to make Wednesday night, "Dinner At the Market Night" for you, your friends, neighbours and family. There will be lots of food on hand from gourmet comfort food to ethnic food (Greek, Mediterranean), from hot dogs to gourmet poutine, and from vegan to gluten free food... and there will be treats galore! Think cotton candy, fudge, ice cream, mini donuts, cupcakes, pastries and many other decadent delights.

• Blog Format Change
When our market is in season, from May 15-October 2nd, our blog will change its format. Each week there will be two posts. One will be a "fresh sheet," a place where we can tell you what things to expect at the market that week... what vendors will be there, what fruit and veggies will be in season, and it will draw your attention to new and unique things that are going on. This will happen on Tuesdays, the day before market day. Wednesday, of course, is Market Day!  On Thursdays, the blog will post a rceipe that you can try at home, based on things that are in season at the market that week... you can try it out with purchases you made the day before, or plan to purchase the ingredients at next week's market. Sometimes it'll feature one of my recipes. Sometimes it'll feature yours. And sometimes it'll feature a vendor's favourite. We plan to hold recipe contests throughout the season, so get your thinking caps on, your spatulas in hand, and your tastebuds fired up...

• Garden Festival, May 29th
This is our special kick off for Plant A Row, Grow A Row... our unique partnership with the Edmonton Food Bank. Keep collecting those egg cartons to bring to the market in two week's time. Also, remember to buy a bag of rice for the food bank and bring it to market at our Garden Festival kick-off for Plant A Row, Grow A Row and help us fill our wheelbarrow (the food bank will be on site collecting any & all donations May 29th... so you can also feel free to bring boxed, canned & bagged food as well). There will be garden demonstrations. Expert gardeners will be on site, ready to answer any questions you may have about gardening. Master Composter will be there, ready to inspire you to grow your own compost (it's easier than you think!). There will be a planting project for the kids to do & take home, free of charge. And our wonderful farm vendors will be at the market with beautiful hanging baskets, tomato plants and vegetable seedlings, ready to entice you to bask in all that your garden can possibly be (for your own enjoyment, your own local food production, and to help you grow a donation for the food bank).

a few reminders

Don't forget that the market has moved slightly to a new location... no longer hidden to the west of the rec centre, you will find the Southwest Edmonton Farmers' Market in the first parking lot, bordered by 23rd Avenue on its south side. Look for the signs, inflatable slide (after the first week), flags and tents... you can't miss it.

Remember that there is always overflow parking to the west of the Terwillegar Recreation Centre. Many of the parking lots between the west doors of the rec centre (down the arena hallway) and the Catholic High School (Mother Mary Margaret) are often virtually vacant.

Please drive slowly when visiting the Farmers' Market. Leger Road and the parking lots surrounding the Terwillegar Recreation Centre will have lots of people on foot at market time. There are 2 crosswalks that lead to the market location. Please be mindful of our traffic patrol volunteers.

Volunteers will be on site doing everything from answering questions, manning the Community Tent, entertaining kids and directing traffic to schlepping things, handing out shopping bags and directing people within the rec centre itself. Please be sure to give them a smile and thank them for helping to make our market such a community driven, friendly & inspired place to be.

Visit our website at http://www.swefm.ca
Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/swefm.ca
Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee

A Little More About Food Trucks & Our Market

Food trucks are one of the trendiest things on the foodie scene:

• There is an Eat St. app that you can download for free off iTunes that links your current location to the nearest food truck so that you can, on a whim,  get your fix of gourmet comfort food. 
• There is the wildly popular Food Network show of the same name, Eat St. which is actually a Canadian show that features trucks, their recipes, interviews with their chefs, that tells their stories and that shares their inspiration with its viewers. 
• And food trucks are popping up all over the place, with Calgary and Edmonton hosting some of the hottest food truck scenes in Canada. 

Essentially gourmet kitchens on wheels, food trucks usually offer up comfort food, cooked fast and fresh on site, often using locally-sourced ingredients. And, from our old view of food trucks as hot dog, hamburger & fries stands and carnival fare, they have made us redefine our view of what a food truck can and should be. Bully Truck will be at our market this year, using food sourced from the local vendors who are at our market, making wonderful things like sumptuous food offerings like Mac & Cheese, Poutine with Sausage Gravy, Turkey Burgers, Fresh Vegetable Salad topped with Smoked Meat and Black Garlic Aeoli, and Pulled Pork Grilled Cheese Sandwich. Yum!

I was driving around earlier this month, listening to CBC's interview of the Food Network's James Cunningham, producer of Eat St., a wildly successful show on the Food Network that tours around, filming and interviewing the chefs behind popular food trucks throughout North America. (To hear the interview, go to http://www.cbc.ca/albertaatnoon/ and scroll down to April 12, at the 16:30 minute mark). He was in Calgary, filming one of their food trucks there. Though it is a Canadian show, Eat St. does most of its filming States-side, partially due to the fact that there are far more trucks down south where the population is substantially more numerous and the climate allows for trucks to be open for far longer seasons than it does in Canada. However, we Canadians are a resilient bunch, and are coming out to support food tucks, hand over fist! So we have a definite presence on the North American truck scene map.

Wendy & Dean of Bully Food Truck

He made some really interesting points. He stressed that the chefs who rent or own and operate these trucks had to be a bit crazy and super passionate about food to run a food truck, as it is a lot of work. And he likened what is happening now, on the food truck scene, to what he called a Food Truck Revolution. Food trucks are a phenomenon that have absolutely exploded onto the street scene because of two serendipitous things occurring in North America a couple of years ago.

First, there was the down turn in the North American economy. Often, the people behind the gourmet food trucks are 5 star chefs. At this particular time, some were out of work (and, he added almost sheepishly, some were simply office workers who desperately wanted out from behind their desk to do what they love) but they still wanted to be gainfully employed in the culinary arts in which they were trained and were passionate. They were nervous to roll the dice and open up their own restaurant in the height of a recession. So these chefs rented or invested in trucks, hit the pavement and took their inspiration to the street to do what they loved.

There is a flip side to this point as well. With the downturn in the economy, especially in the United States, many people were no longer going to expensive 5 star restaurants. But they still had a passion and a desire to be eating gourmet food.  So these people began turning to more expensive, but gourmet, street food as a replacement for eating out in fine dining restaurants.

The second thing was the social media explosion that has occurred in our society with social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest being all the rage. These sites have the possibility to make things popular, to make things go "viral," and to get news out almost instantaneously. Food truck chefs can tweet out their information throughout the day. And their customers can retweet or "like" that info out once again to their friends, who "like" or tweet it to theirs, and so on. When it comes to food trucks, this can include menu items, their location for that day, and what is hot & popular on a given day. As a result, food trucks have their fanatical followers, and lineups at the trucks can be insane. James Cunningham likened it to a gourmet flash mob where there's an energy and an enthusiasm in the line up & the air is a-buzz with excited "What are you getting? What did you get? What's good here?" chatter.

The success and popularity of the food truck phenomenon has made another important thing happen. Cities, like Edmonton and Calgary, are recognizing what a great thing having a vibrant food truck scene is for the atmosphere and profitability of a city, and they are giving parking spots to the food trucks along with their licences in prime, downtown locations. 

The chefs in these trucks are beholden only to themselves and this creates a unique opportunity to blend influences from their upbringing and fuse them with their own unique style in preparing comfort foods. The gourmet result is a surprisingly delicious and inspiring fusion cuisine. A carte blanche, if you will, to do what they want & to bring their inspiration to the street.

Edmonton's food truck scene has taken off this year with some new trucks hitting the pavement and setting up on our streets. Our market will feature a few one of these newbies. 

Sailin' On started up with a few test runs prior to its grand opening this month (April, 2013) and has already developed a rabid, ravenous following.... just check out their twitter feed and scan through the comments (@sailinon780). People are raving about scrumptious offerings like their Vegan Reuben sandwich. Everything that Garrett and Mike make is vegan fare. Think Burritos with Green Hecka' Hot Chile Sauce, Seitan Reuban Sandwich, and Curry Chips. Mmmmm!

Mike and Garrett started off in the food truck direction years ago, with an annual event on the front stoop of their home in Garneau, where they made vegan corndogs for their friends and passers by. This event became quite popular, and so, after much preparation & research, they have taken the leap from making their immensely popular vegan corn dogs to expanding their menu and jumping into the Edmonton food truck scene this year, "bringing vegan street food to the masses."

On their website, they proclaim, "Gripping hard to their punk rock roots and DIY work ethic, they built a truck, tested and re-tested their menu through pop-up and special events, learned to look good in hairnets and rocked plenty of tight jams along the way." Check out their particular flavour, style and the creative take that they bring both to the food that they prepare and to the atmosphere of our market. You're sure to be surprised, delighted and satisfied...  

There aren't many opportunities in Edmonton to see multiple food trucks gathered together in one place. It is a really cool "must-try" experience. Our market, with its opening day Truck Rally, is one of those. Come out and see what all the fuss is about. And if those trucks are well supported and do well on that day, they will be back each week, making sumptuous food for us! Make Wednesday night Dinner-At-The-Market night for your family and friends. See you there!



Visit our website at http://www.swefm.ca
Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/swefm.ca
Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee

Food Trucks At Our Market: Market Update

One of the best ways to experience a culture is through its food. That’s one of the main reasons why our family avoids chain restaurants, both at home and when travelling abroad. Food is like a window into a culture and every culture has its specialties that are just waiting to tempt and entice you, waiting to delight and surprise you, waiting to be discovered and explored, waiting to be sampled and treasured….

There are often line-ups for food
truck fare, but the wait is worth it!

One of the best ways to discover the specialties of a region, a foreign country or a different culture is to ask around. If you are wandering the streets and see a lineup of local people at a restaurant or a market stall or at a food truck, ask a few people in the lineup what’s being served. Ask them what their favourite item is. And ask them where else they like to eat. This advice can be as good as or better than any published review, up to date guide book tip, recommendation from a concierge or taxi driver (who may get a kick backs for referrals), or online reviews.

And one of the best ways to find great food for a decent price, both at home and abroad, is at a local market. Chances are that the food that’s being prepared is made from fresh, in-season ingredients… and often those ingredients are sourced locally. So you are supporting the local economy, tasting great food and getting tremendous insight into a culture.

The Southwest Edmonton Farmers’ Market is very proud to be offering up tremendous local fare this year. Part of our vision of the market is that it be more than simply a way for people in our community to connect with local food producers and buy fresh produce and handicrafts. Rather, we would like it to be a destination of sorts. A place where community bonds are strengthened. Where the local economy thrives. And where the community spirit comes alive. Food Trucks are an essential part of our community-minded vision. There's nothing like bringing friends, family and neighbours together over a casual meal in a vibrant, fun setting where there is a lot going on.

Food trucks are rather new to the dining scene in North America. Like mobile kitchens on wheels, they serve up great, often gourmet food, quickly and from their roadside, mobile location. And Edmonton's food truck scene is heating up! Though we are still in the recruiting stages, I wanted to give you a sneak peak at what food truck fare you can expect to sample at our market.

Starting May 15th, make Wednesday evenings a dinner out for your family. Come out and enjoy food from...

Try some great gourmet comfort food at the bright orange Bully Truck

Bully Food Truck: Wendy & Dean proudly proclaim that they're heightening awareness around the issue of bullying… and going along with that theme, they offer to take your lunch money and turn it into good quality gourmet comfort foods! Think sumptuous food offerings like Mac & Cheese, Poutine with Sausage Gravy, Turkey Burgers, Fresh Vegetable Salad topped with Smoked Meat and Black Garlic Aeoli, Pulled Pork Grilled Cheese Sandwich... all featuring food providers at our market! Check them out online at Bully Food Truck Inc. or on their Bully Truck Facebook Page. (We're quite excited that they plan to include food from growers and producers at our market in their menu! That will add so much to the sense of community at our market, and help to establish it as a unique destination for our market shoppers.)

Little Village Food Truck: Theo will be serving up delicious Greek food. Check out his website for photos... Little Village Food Truck website

Fat Franks: Long before food trucks were an item on the trendy food scene, there were vendors like Darren at Fat Franks offering up a favourite North American staple: the infamous grilled hot dog! Top your dog with some of the 60 condiments he'll have on hand... items like onions, olives, sauerkraut, 12 different mustards, numerous hot sauces from mild to wild, corn relish, pickles, jalepenos, hot peppers... and try a customer favourite: the Avenue Dog, topped with Canadian cheddar and bacon.

The Pink Kernel: Shirley & Anthony will be offering great items to round out your meal like mini donuts, Hawaiian Ice, freshly squeezed lemonade, novelty ice cream and bottled beverages.

The food truck trend is sweeping across North America and bringing wonderfully fresh and inventive foods to its streets and city markets. These mobile kitchens offer up really creative, extremely delicious, often very gourmet foods, and are an exciting new “must try” experience on the culinary landscape. Come to our market to experience it for yourself… your tastebuds will thank you! Bring your families down on Wednesdays, starting May 15th and (even better perhaps!!) you won’t have to cook that mid-week meal! Stay tuned for more updates as our 2013 market slowly, but surely, comes together...


Visit our website at http://www.swefm.ca
Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/swefm.ca