Southwest Edmonton Farmers' Market

More than simply a way for you to connect with local food producers and buy incredibly fresh produce and beautiful handicrafts, the SWEFM is a fun destination! A place where you can learn about your community, where the kids can enjoy activities and where families can grab a bite to eat while visiting with friends, neighbours and family. It is a place where community bonds are strengthened. Where the local economy is supported in a significant way. And where the community spirit comes alive.

Showing posts with label travel with children. Show all posts

Wednesday, 30 April 2014

Sprouts Kids' Club

Introducing Sprouts: The Southwest Edmonton Farmers’ Market’s new Kids’ Club!

The Southwest Edmonton Farmers’ Market is launching a new children’s club on its opening day, May 14^th. Based on a program implemented by an Oregon City Farmers’ Market a few years ago, it is designed to inspire and empower children to make healthy and nutritious choices about food that they choose for themselves.

It is very easy to participate.

On market day, children, ages 4-12, come with a parent or guardian up to the SWEFM tent.

There the child enrolls in the Sprouts Kids’ Club and receives a free passport, a wooden token and a special reusable shopping bag (filled with fun goodies) that they will bring back with them each time they visit the market.

Each and every week that they attend, they come back with their brightly coloured shopping bags in tow, stop in at the SWEFM tent, have their “passport to health” stamped and receive another $2 token to spend at the market.

The catch is that their token can only be spent at market booths that sell fruit, vegetables or food plants.

And those booths are easy to identify, even if a child cannot yet read, by their large posters with the brightly coloured sprouts logo on them.

Kids can save tokens and purchase larger items
like this watermelon

Booth Signs

With the Sprouts Kids’ Club, children are empowered to make their own choices…they can buy a strawberry plant, a package of strangely filigreed kale, an alien looking kohlrabi or a perfect tray of red ripe raspberries. They can try an old favourite, or venture into the world of the unknown. They come to know their farmers and growers and develop an understanding of where their food comes from.

As Sprouts, children are more likely to try new vegetables and fruits because they are making their own decisions about what they will buy, letting their innate curiosity lead the way. They are encouraged to become active participants in the Eat Local, Shop Local food scene. Siblings can work together, with brothers and sisters pooling their tokens to make purchases together. Or kids can save up their tokens week to week to purchase something bigger, teaching them an important life lesson in saving, delayed gratification and working toward a goal.

The strange, alien spaceship looking kohlrabi

Often, when we think of issues surrounding children and food security, we think of children who do not have access to enough food. But living in an area of town, even like Edmonton’s Southwest, and raising children to embrace a healthy & active lifestyle has its challenges. Today’s children are bombarded with messages that entice them to eat sugary, salty, fatty, good-tasting foods. The supermarket aisles are filled with cartoon covered, child-friendly illustrations on food packages that lead children to believe that this is food made directly for them and that this is food that they are meant to eat. And it is often placed at children’s eye level. Television and the internet are filled with messages from fast food and packaged snack companies that directly target children, making it challenging to raise children in a healthy and nutritionally sound way.

A wall of carrots

The Southwest Edmonton Farmers’ Market has booths filled with beautiful produce: fresh fruits and vegetables directly from farmers’ fields and orchards; meat from animals raised in ethically, sustainable and often organic ways; and food that is prepared without preservatives and that is made from wholesome, whole-food ingredients.

With its Sprouts Kids’ Club, SWEFM hopes to back up parents in their attempts to raise their children in a nutritionally mindful way.

The purpose of the Sprouts program is to introduce kids to nutritional food choices, empower children to make their own healthy eating choices, educate them about where their food comes from, and encourage them to lead a healthy lifestyle.

Baby lettuce plants

A very special thank-you goes out to Dr. Darcy Dietz of Towne Square Orthodontics for financially sponsoring this program, to the generous grant of Communities Choose Well for investing in the nutritional health of our children and our community and to Brookview Montessori and AJM’s Out of School Care for their financial contributions to this program.

Thanks also to the vendors themselves, who bring their produce to market, who take the time to engage the Sprouts children in a dialogue around food, and who provide incentive pricing for the children to help their $2 go farther.

Sprouts is really a grass-roots effort. momstown Edmonton is supplying and hosting farm-themed Curbside Studio has designed and donated the awesome Sprouts logo and created the signs and information posters for the program. Matt Hendsbee Graphic Design has made the wood brand that burns the token images and helped with signage at the SWEFM tent. Karen Cooper has been tirelessly chasing down grants and pulling all the details of this program together. Café O’Play has generously donated passes to their facilities for the kids’ shopping bags and gift baskets for Sprouts draws. Ada’s Soap Shop has donated kid-sized bars of soap to the shopping bags. And Dr. Peter Clarke has donated and created the wooden tokens.
crafts for kids at the market.

It is really incredible to be surrounded by people who believe in a project to the extent that they work this hard, donating their time, financial resources, creativity and sweat equity, to help get a program like this off the ground, bringing our community together in such an engaging way.

Because this is a pilot program, it will initially be offered to the first 100 registrants. We will try to open it up to more children as it evolves. More sponsorships will mean that we can open it up to more children. If you are interested in helping us out with this initiative, please contact us.

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

Saturday, 22 March 2014

When Travelling with Kids... Explore a Local Market!

Fresh fruits and vegetables are easy to come by at local markets
wherever you go around the world. These are in Santiago, Chile.

There's only one week until spring break! And goodness knows, after the winter we've had this year... and with spring yet to show its face for more than a brief peek, we need that break!

In our neck of the woods, many people will be travelling with their families. Some will go to the mountains to play in the last vestiges of snow on the ski slopes. Some will go next door to BC's lower mainland to take in the spring flowers and blooming trees... to catch a glimpse of true spring and to feel like spring is really here on more than just the calendar! Some will simply venture to nearby cities to visit with friends and family. And some will go to far off, heat-packed adventures and destinations.

Markets always have something to distract, something to
intrigue and something to amuse children like these
live crabs in Chiang Dao, Thailand.

Travelling afar is something that really inspires our family.

It opens our eyes to the ways of the world. It gives us unfamiliar landscapes to explore, new people to meet, unique experiences to share as a family that help us to bond together with an original, shared history, and unusual adventures to undergo. It exposes us to different ways of living this life we are given. And it helps to put our lives in perspective.

We have travelled a lot over the years with our children, and I was amazed this morning when we tallied it up... 14 different countries with our children, spanning four of the six continents. And there has been one common experience, it seems, no matter where we travel... we inevitably wind up at a market.

At first, we saw them as safe and relatively inexpensive (compared to restaurant fare) places to find healthy and nutritious food on the go. When travelling with young children (who were, coincidentally, picky eaters), finding a farmers’ market was a godsend. We always knew we could find wonderful fruits and veggies, breads and cheeses and treats… and things to distract and inspire us too.

The tight lanes that cut through the ramshackle buildings along
Bangkok's Chao Phraya River were packed with market stalls.

To make the most of our market experience, we always travelled with an inexpensive and simple kit. This will all fit in a large sized Ziplock freezer bag. Here are our family’s travel essentials when vacationing with children:

Our Kitchen Travel Kit

The neat thing about travelling is that it exposes you to
incredible variety. You can truly appreciate just how diverse
our world's edible food system truly is. This photo was taken
in Singapore. Who knew there were so many varieties of Durian!?

---> Ziplock bags for packing up market treats, dividing them into portions & keeping them food-safe (I take sandwich-sized and snack-sized bags, held together in a bundle by an elastic)

---> A small portable plastic cutting board for preparing sandwiches, slicing carrot sticks and preparing other food on the go (I use an old Ikea plastic half board for this)

---> A sharp paring knife and protective sleeve (I love my Pampered Chef knife for its thick, light protective sleeve but a pocket knife works well too)

---> A small travel-shampoo-sized bottle of dish soap & a universal sink plug (big, flat & rubber)

---> A sharpie for labeling bags with family members’ names (using goofy names and stick drawings makes it all the more fun)… so you know who hasn’t finished their veggies!

You really get a sense of how important certain food elements
are to a local cuisine, when you see a gigantic sack of
spicy hot, ground chili peppers like this! Walking through a
local market gives you unique insights into the
culinary tastes and preferences of a foreign culture.

---> Portable, reusable shopping bags (Eagle Creek makes awesome ones that fold into themselves, packing away in a very neat, very portable way with a clip that attaches brilliantly to my camera bag, belt loop or purse strap)

---> A cork screw and rubberized expanding bottle top for those adult-beverage market finds (to enjoy once the kids are asleep!)

Portland's Sunday Market had a whimsical booth filled with
hilarious head pieces... bolts, knives, pencils, saws, hammers,
tennis rackets... all made to look like you'd been
bludgeoned through the head!

Now that our kids are in high school and beyond, we still seek farmers’ markets out, for their food, for their beauty, for their entertainment, for their treats and for that sense of connecting with the community in which we are travelling.

Walking through a market gives you a sense of every day life... of how the people really live. And for me, it never gets “old.”

There are new people to meet.
Scrumptious foods to try.
New stories to hear.
And there is always that creative thing that startles and surprises me… sometimes with its beauty, sometimes with its creativity, sometimes with its mouthwatering delectability and sometimes with is sheer, creative audacity.--->

Visit our website at http://www.swefm.ca

Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/swefm.ca

Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee
Thanks to Towne Square Orthodontics who will be sponsoring our market's Sprouts (Kids') Program this year.

Friday, 9 August 2013

Recipe: Pickled Jalepeños (& Road Trips With Kids)

road trips and pickles... they really go together well!

It's summer time.... the season of family road trips to visit distant family & friends or road trips meant to leave the confines of our day to day home routines to take on a bit of adventure in our lives. Road trips are one of my favourite things. There's nothing like a road trip to relax, build some time together with a series of shared experiences and settle into an exploration of the gentle progression of our huge Canadian landscapes. To do a road trip well, and to truly relax and enjoy the experience, takes a good dose of planning and a bit of extra time. But the smoothness that that time & effort bring to your adventure makes a road trip go from a hectic, nerve wracking nightmare to a fun, relaxing time filled with companionship, friendship and fun.

Food is an essential part of a road trip for me. I don't mean stopping at roadside diners, fast food joints or Timmies.... Nope! I mean packing seriously good road trip lunches brimming with tasty sandwiches, crunchy veggies, great fruit, always homemade cookies & fun munchie treats. Sure, there's the odd stop at a favourite place... like the Bear's Paw Bakery in Jasper for their scrumptious raspberry & white chocolate scones and seriously good lattés, topped with a chocolate covered coffee bean, or the incredible muffins at the Swiss Bakery off the main drag of Valemont... but for the most part we avoid the high fat, high salt, high calorie roadside restaurant stops... both for health reasons (and the way it makes our bodies feel... sluggish, thirsty & uncomfortably full) and for the time it takes to do those stops, not to mention the expense involved when travelling with & shopping for a family of four. (The savings gained from NOT eating out en route can often pay for the difference between staying in a typical, boring, mediocre roadside motel, and staying in an independent boutique-y hotel full of character, personality & charm.) Life... it's really about choices, isn't it?

I'll let you in on a few secrets of our success when it comes to prepping and packing for a road trip with kids:

Make sure the food is good... good tasting, good quality, full of nutrients. Nothing too fatty or salty. Make them munchy things with lots of variety, packed in small bags to be brought out throughout the journey... bags of blueberries, carrot sticks, small tomatoes, pretzels, small plums, homemade cookies, jerky...). Lots of these items are available at our market!
Have fun with packing the sandwiches... we always use a sharpy marker to label the sandwich bags with goofy names, rhyming clues, silly things... these names change with each trip and usually cause a few giggles.
Be sure to include little treats... you can pack these in small, ziploc snack bags. Sometimes holding these out as a carrot (for finishing your carrots) works wonders for getting your family to eat healthy on the road.
Pack a half used (because it fits better) roll of paper towels in a plastic bag and shove it in the door pocket of your vehicle (great for the inevitable spills, & they make perfect road-lunch napkins).
No matter how old your kids are, pack a package of wet ones baby wipes (great for sticky hands & faces). Throw it in the glove box or door pocket for quick access.
Have water bottles (we use metal ones from MEC) on hand for hydration rather than sweetened, calorie-laden juices & pops or chemical-laden diet drinks.
If the road trip is very long, and the children are small, resist the urge to turn them into videy-its (you know what I mean... plugging them into movies and electronic devices for the duration of the trip) and engage them in the journey from time to time by reading to them or by playing games like Eye Spy, the licence plate game (where you gather a long list of province & state plates) or memory games. The public library and the internet are full of travel game ideas.
When the kids ARE sleeping or being good little videy-its, the driver & front seat passenger can relax and visit with each other and listen to podcasts that you've downloaded for the trip. My hubby & I love CBC's The Age of Persuasion (now called Under the Influence, an in depth look at the advertising world and at how advertising changes our habits and culture), Quirks & Quarks (a science show), and Dispatches (a travel documentary show).
A good latté smooths the way to fun conversation on the road. Never underestimate the value of a terrific road side coffee shop. Starbucks has a great app for the iPhone so that you can find the nearest coffee shop while on the road. But that being said, we always try to find the independent coffee shops when travelling... they're often quirky, full of personality and give you a good sense of the place through which you are travelling.
Pack a ball or a frisbee... something small... for a bit of rest-stop/roadside fun to break up the monotony of a drive and to stretch out squirmy legs (kids) and stiff muscles (adults) from the long time spent sitting. Many kids toy shops have terrific quirky balls and toys that you can bring out as a surprise on a trip... that can infuse a little novelty & fun into your adventure. The Science Shop and Laugh 'N Learn and Campers Village all have some super fun options. You can get squishy balls (our favourite is called the Waboba (WAterBOunceBAll), a ball that is gel filled & fabric covered that can actually bounce on the surface of the water), spiky balls, colourful balls and flashing balls that have lights in them that go off on impact.
Pack little baggies of small toys for young kids, rather than putting them in a big bin between the seats. Pulling out a bag periodically throughout the trip adds a sense of newness, novelty and wonder... where a large bin quickly becomes tiresome & boring. I used to sort them by imaginative themes... one bag might have finger puzzles, another small plastic dinosaurs, another playmobile people, another k'nex or lego, and another finger puppets. There are tons of possibilities here. Then throw those baggies into a cloth bag, kept on the floor well of the passenger seat & you're good to go.
We also had a "Mommy's Going Crazy" jar at our house that could be adapted for the road. In it were folded up scraps of paper with ideas for things to do (make the alphabet with your hands and arms, sing a song, count backwards from 20, name 10 things that are red, say a word that describes something you see out the window... the next person has to say a word that begins with its last letter... and so on). The kids, by pulling the paper out of the jar themselves, feel that they're controlling the moment and so they buy in to the activity. This can buy you countless minutes of peace & happiness.... staving off the inevitable "Are We There Yet?"s.
And depending on the length of the trip and the age of the kids, a bin, placed between the seats & filled with books, can act as the ultimate distracter for (and physical buffer between) the kids.

So there's a few ideas... feel free to comment with your own additions. And have a terrific trip!

pickled jalepeños

This really the secret to awesome (adult) road trip sandwiches! The pickling process takes away most of the heat of the jalapeños leaving you with a slightly spicy, very flavourful, moist addition to a sandwich. Because, let's face it, sandwiches can be dry & boring. Add this bit of colourful, moist heat and you take your sandwiches to the next level, guaranteed!

And the truly amazing part of this is that they are incredibly easy to make! If you've never pickled anything in your life, THIS is the recipe with which you should start! They can top any sandwich, from a veggie sandwich through to meat and/or cheese sandwiches. They are simply fantastic!

Jalepeños & red chilies are available at TR Greenhouses in little bags (watch out for the orange habeñero ones... they pack an incredible amount of heat!!!) or on plants at Dargatz Family Farm. Just be sure to wear gloves when handling them (I use latex disposable ones that I can find at any grocery store or drug store in the first aid section).

ingredients

1½ lb. green jalepeño peppers
½ lb. red jalepeño peppers (chilies)
4½ c. white vinegar
4½ c. water
3t. pickling salt
8 bay leaves
8 cloves garlic (optional)
8-1c. jars

instructions

Sterilize jars by boiling them in a canner (a large, lidded pot filled with water) for 10 minutes (do this while you're slicing up the jalepeños).
While the jars are boiling, put on gloves & cut the peppers into ¼" slices, discarding the stem ends. Don't worry about getting rid of the seeds or ribs. The pickling process dampens down the level of spice. This is a very quick step.
Combine the vinegar, salt & water in a stainless steel saucepan & bring to a boil.
Remove jars from boiling water. Put a bay leaf & a garlic clove (if using... I don't) in each jar.
Pack the jars tightly with peppers, leaving ½" headspace. Cover peppers with pickling brine, leaving that same ½" headspace. Seal & process jars in canner for 10 minutes at a rolling boil.
Remove jars from the water & let stand 24 hours. Check to see that seals worked. Store in a cool, dark place for a minimum of 3 weeks. Refrigerate after opening.

Recipe from Southern Living's Little Jars, Big Flavours
Visit our website at http://www.swefm.ca
Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/swefm.ca
Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee

Thursday, 18 April 2013

Farmers' Markets Can Delight & Surprise

There are many varieties of durian.

I have always loved and admired the artistry and arrangements of colourful fruits and vegetables in markets the world over. There is something incredible about pyramids of stacked foods that tickles my fancy. I've seen pyramids of spices in Cairo, pyramids of flower heads in Little India in Singapore, pyramids of tea leaves in New York, and pyramids of fruit and veggies, some of which are delectably strange and intriguing (like durian, dragon fruit and mangosteens) the world over. Artistry & colour. That is what I love.

Over time we have explored many markets as a family, and what our kids love are the edible treats! They love being surprised by the delicious & decadent food items that creative vendors invent and make for their customers.

Sweet Stuff's Mini Cupcakes

Our Southwest Edmonton Market has salty sweet kettle corn by Original Canadian Kettle Corn, incredible cookies (like potato chip chocolate chip) by Gourmet Girl Cookies, decadent & beautiful cupcakes by Sweet Stuff Cakes, luscious fudge by Phil's Fudge Factory, gluten-free treats (like cinnamon buns) at Celebrate Gluten Free, puff pastries and tea cakes by Raspberry and Cocoa, and mini donuts at The Pink Kernel. These are things that kids all love... and that many an adult gets weak-kneed over for as well! And the best thing about them: you can munch them as you walk the market and browse the stalls of our other vendors.

Chicken Feet

But in other cultures, the things that are regarded as treats can be often quite surprising. In many a Chinatown we have seen pigs ears and chicken feet offered up for sale. And very, very pungently odoured (a.k.a. stinky) durian slices.

In Singapore we saw people lining up for sticky, paper thin, eight inch squares of meat... they shined and glinted and we had NO idea what they were. Finally on our last day, the kids got brave enough to try some... and they turned out to be slices of sweet, carmelized bacon called bak kwa. Our son and daughter thought they were in heaven and kicked themselves for not being brave enough to try them earlier!

We have tried strange-tasting popsicles made of red beans and coconut milk, or jack fruit and bean paste.

Bak Kwa in Singapore

In Thailand we loved the coconut-sweetened sticky rice with red beans, cooked inside bamboo stalks over coals or steamed to perfection, and we took them on hikes with us, peeling them open when we were hungry.

We have enjoyed a decidedly bizarre version of a snow cone... piled high with shaved ice and colourful syrups making a beautiful rainbow pattern on top... with grass jelly and red beans and corn kernels in the bottom!). That discovery definitely shocked us!

The Singaporean version of a snow cone...
with a very unusual surprise underneath!

Though I love the eye opening nature of many of these treats, and love the exposure that they give us to the unique and unusual aspects of other cultures, there are many treats that are more familiar and satisfying to us... like the elephant ears, which are like large flattened donuts topped with icing sugar, in Portland.... and of course, the treats in our own market.

There are many ways that a farmers' market can delight and surprise you with special and unique treats. Come out and explore the Southwest Edmonton Market. There you will find food trucks that can satisfy many a food craving. And food vendors with treats aplenty! There are sure to be wonderful surprises in store for you there.

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

Monday, 18 March 2013

Making Seeking out Farmers’ Markets an Essential Part of Travelling With Children

Fresh fruits and vegetables are easy to come by at
local markets wherever you go around the world.

With spring break on the horizon, I thought writing about travelling with children would be a helpful idea and a timely topic. We have travelled a lot over the years with our family, and we inevitably wind up at a market wherever we go.

To make the most of our market experience, we always travelled with an inexpensive and simple kit. Here are our family’s travel essentials when vacationing with children:

Markets always have something to
distract, something to intrigue
and something to amuse children.