Food Unites All of US - Food Bloggers Potluck in Toronto

TORONTO FOOD BLOGGERS GET TOGETHER FOR 1st POTLUCK

I am a member of the Food Bloggers of Canada Community and although I don't participate in the Forums on a regular basis I saw a post by the people that run Food Bloggers of Canada, Ethan and Melissa, on the Facebook forum about a discussion they had about getting people together over food to combat some of the terrible things going on in the world.   Local Community Kitchen The Depanneur had some success with having some Syrian refugees use their kitchen to make their own food and it brought a lot of interest in their food.

So when they suggested that each City in the Canadian Food Blogger world organize small Potlucks to meet each other and share foods from their Ethnic Origin to get to know each other I thought it was a great idea.  I have always believed that sharing food builds relationships or in some cases not so much when it's families who hate each other forced together,  but that's not what we are talking about here.  My fellow Food Revolution Ambassador and Food Blogger of Canada member (Hema - Nomadic Nutritionist) has a membership at workshare space C.S.I. in Toronto so she was able to book a room that we could hold our Toronto potluck in that space.

After going back and forth on the date we settled on March 12th on a chilly sunday afternoon.  We were supposed to meet at Noon but a few got a bit lost so we waited as long as we could before diving into the food we had.  In total we had a total of 6 people but the diversity of backgrounds and foods was amazing.  We had Bloggers from Poland, India, Jamaica and with Japanese mixed roots and me who is all over the place.  

I decided to make a simple dish that my mom made because I wasn't sure about people's intolerances and allergies, so I just made a simple carrot salad with a simple vinaigrette.  My mom was from Europe and made this a lot especially in the summer when it was too hot to cook.  I just happened to have carrots and not a lot of time to make something so this was what I was able to do.

My fellow bloggers got a lot more creative.   We had fantastic cabbage rolls,  Cassava Pon,  Ackee and Saltfish and Festivals,  Pavlovas, a quinoa and something else mixed in latke and some great cardamom and chocolate cupcakes.  It was a fantastic lunch and it was great to get feedback on what everyone was doing and what was working or what they were trying to do with their blogs.

We hope to continue to do this on a Monthly basis or at least every couple of months if everyone is too busy and I know that there were many more Toronto bloggers that weren't able to make it but wanted to.  We hope that we can form connections and knowledge and try new foods at future Potlucks.  It's great to share a meal with people you have never met but still have something that connects you like food blogging.
Thanks to Hema for organizing and booking the venue and to everyone that took a chance and showed up,  with hangovers and time changes and all.

Now that we have done the first one let's see who turns up for the next one.  I am looking forward to trying some new foods and meeting the rest of the Toronto Food Blogger Community.

Thanks to Ethan and Melissa of Food Bloggers of Canada  for making the #FOODUNITESALLOFUS  suggestion for a Potluck event.  It got the ball rolling and we appreciate it.

This event really falls in line with the things I try and do with my Food Revolution participation.  It's all about sharing food and educating people about different food and eating real food.

See you all next time.  I will bring my Dish and a spare and my appetite and of course my camera too.

Food Revolution Day Toronto 2014 Part 2

I hosted 2 Food Revolution Day events this year.  The first event was an Italian Cooking Workshop that you can read about in a previous post to this one.  My second Food Revolution Day Event was a Potluck Challenge Dinner Party with friends at my home.  I hosted this event on the actual Food Revolution Day on May 16th and decide to make Jamie Oliver's Rainbow Salad Wraps as the main food of the Potluck so that everyone attending could participate by contributing an ingredient for the recipe and also getting hands on and getting their hands on the graters and grating all the vegetables for the salad.  I planned the Potluck after speaking with the people from Sobey's who had assisted me with my Italian Cooking workshop and were trying to encourage people to host or attend a Potluck dinner during the week of Food Revolution Day to coincide with the the Food Revolution Day Events.  Sobey's is one of the Jamie Oliver Foundation sponsors and are very supportive of all of the events that everyone is doing in Toronto.  

Canadians from coast to coast are invited to cook and share a meal together with family and friends. When participants share a post or photo of their potluck on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtags #PotluckChallenge and #FRD2014, Sobeys will donate $1 to the Children's Aid Foundation's Cooking Toward Independence Project, up to a maximum of $25,000.

For the Potluck Challenge I challenged my friends to bring one of the ingredients from Jamie Oliver's Rainbow Salad Wrap.  I chose this recipe because it's the recipe that he was using to teach kids around the world to make in a massive online class that he was doing to try and break a Guinness World Record for teaching the most amount of students and kids around the world to make.   Since it was meant to teach kids I thought it was a good recipe to use to keep things simple, easy and hands on.  Although a bit on the messy side it didn't need a lot of fancy tools.  I could have used a bigger table though.   I wanted to get everyone grating at the same time but I didn't have enough graters or space to line everyone up.  If the weather was warmer it would have been a great thing to make outside on a big picnic table.   Everyone had their hands in on the making of the salad part for the wrap and then when it was all mixed up we all rolled up our own wraps.  Super healthy vitamin packed wraps.  Since it was a dinner party we also had some of Jamie Oliver's Gangnham style chicken wings; the recipe was from Jamie's Save with Jamie cookbook.  I have made them before and they are super easy and really pack a punch of flavour.  We lost the healthy part a bit when we got to dessert though.   Since my Cheery Amaretto parfait was a hit at my cooking workshop I decided to do it again for the Potluck.   I made so much of it though and we also had Chocolate Covered Strawberries that my Joanne made and my friend Adam brought a small birthday cake for my belated birthday since I was teaching my workshop on my actual Birthday.  Talk about chocolate overload, but that wasn't all....  I also decided to use the leftover ricotta that I had made to experiment and make some chocolate chip Cannoli's.  I had the cannoli shells and just made the filling.   Well the important part was to cook it from scratch and share with friends and that's what we did.  And we tweeted away as many photos as we could.  It's hard to tweet and eat but I managed to snap a few shots as you can see.  We ate very well that night.

One of my lucky friends Cliff Fernandes won a a special raffle prize draw for a surprise Gift Box from
Amazing Clubs Canada.

Holiday Entertaining with Style and Ease

  

It seems like everyone is either Hosting or Attending a Holiday Party during December.  It's the Holiday Season where we try and spend time with friends, family and even co-workers.   The Holiday Party Season doesn't have to be exhausting if you pace yourself, get organized and simplify.

If you are Hosting a Holiday Party there are ways to make your life a little easier and more fun to spend time with your guests.

I have started a Holiday Tradition Party and this is the third year that I have Hosted an after Christmas Get Together Open House Party.

This year I am making it a lot easier on my time and expenses by having it be a Potluck Party.  To make it even easier I have chosen a theme of a Fondue Potluck Party.  I will supply the Chocolate and Cheese Fondue, my home and all of the tableware and platters and some basic drinks.   I will have a pitcher of flavoured water, a bottle of white wine, a bottle of red wine, a bottle of cranberry juice, a carton of orange juice and some soft drinks.   Setting up a fully self serve bar for people to mix and choose whatever the like to drink.

I have asked my guests to bring the dipping foods or foods that go well with the chocolate and cheese fondue's.

I will set up my Cheese Fondue and plates, platters and skewers ready for my guests to add their offerings for dunking into the decadent cheese fondue.  If guests arrive at different times there will always be new choices for dipping.

I will have the chocolate fondue ready to heat up and serve once the cheese fondue has gotten down to the last crunchy bits at the bottom of the fondue pot.

Then it's time for dessert.  The glorious Chocolate Fondue.  Decadent, delicious and satisfying and guests have fun interacting and selecting what their favourite dippers are.

For the past couple of years I have had little gifts ready for a fun gift exchange where people would choose a gift from a various selection of things and would have 1 opportunity to trade their gift.
This year since I am not working I have requested that my guests bring 1 Eco Friendly..ie.no wrapping paper and also something that they haven't bought but something that they may have gotten as a gift and have no use for or something they may have bought and never used or something they may have received at an event..ie..Swag..(Stuff we all get) something a lot of my friends get because they attend lots of charity events, film festivals and trade shows.   At the end of the year you end up collecting a whole bunch of things you don't need.   This is a way to clear your house of things you don't need and pass them on to someone that might have a use for it.   What's old is new when you trade something you don't need for something you don't have already.

You end your year by releasing all of the things that become clutter in your space and start your year with only things you like or need.   Hopefully if it all works.

Just to be safe I will add a few things of my own so that people can trade once if they don't like what they have chosen.   The last couple of years I had a mix of stuff I had from Swag, little things I picked up and stuff I didn't need anymore.    I still have things I don't need anymore or have no space for... like a couple of framed pictures that I have taken.  No more wall space, so I will add those to the gifts just in case someone forgets to bring something or people bring things nobody wants.   I will donate any of the left over items to Value Village so it can go for Charity.   Thus cleaning up my space and my friends space and passing it on to people that may need those items.

Will see how it goes this year.   If the Potluck, Eco Swap party works well then maybe I will make it an annual tradition.   Either way it's a good excuse to just have an Easy Get Together with friends.

I have hosted what I look as the in between party...  the days in between Christmas and New Years where most people are exhausted from rushing to parties and working and getting ready to ring in the New Year.   Hosting the in between party is more of a stress free party because a lot of people have time off and are shopped out, exhausted and don't want to rush around but they have nothing to do and don't want to have to impress anyone.   A potluck party where people only have to think about bringing  something like a baguette or fruit and something laying around the house and they don't even have to dress to impress.   You just have to grab a couple of things and go... and just chill out with friends.

Because I have asked for it to be a little more Eco Friendly... Reuse, recycle and skip the gift wrapping by putting it in a reusable container or a reusable bag...  this makes it a whole lot easier because you know everyone else is doing the same thing.   Good for the Environment, good for your stress levels.

Hopefully an event to recharge and get ready to ring in the New Year.

I will post photos and another post after the event to let you know how it turned out.

Some Suggestions for Dippers that guests can bring:

Baguette
Grapes
Cherry Tomatoes
Mini bananas
pound cake
Pears
Pineapple
Clementines
Marshmallows
Lady Fingers
Figs
Dried Apricots

anything that has a low water content...  chocolate will seize when you add water so skip the watermelon.