Food Revolution Day Cooking Demo at Hendrix Toronto

FOOD REVOLUTION DAY COOKING DEMO 

Photos credit: Linda Matarasso & @hypebelly

Food Revolution Day around the world happened on May 15th but on May 16th I hosted my FOOD REVOLUTION DAY Wonky Veg Cooking Demo at Hendrix Restaraurant Supplies & Equipment's brand new Showroom space in North York.

The Hendrix staff were amazing to work with.  I spoke to Alissa who organized things with me at least once a day for a couple of months to get things organized.  On the day before while I was in the store to drop off some things I mentioned to the manager Chip that it would be great to have big signs pointing to the store.  He said "I think we might be able to work that out" and the next morning there was a huge sign in the entrance that they took outside.  I also talked to another staff member Alex about the beverage station and she mentioned that Jennifer from Pluck Teas might be interested in providing teas to the attendees and poof a bag of After Eight teas was promptly sent over that evening.  Another staff member drew a fun chalkboard sandwich board to welcome people into the store.  Everyone really pitched in to make all the little details great.  Hendrix even offered up a $20 coupon for people that spent over $50 during the event.

When people arrived at the event they were greeted by my friends Lisa and Martina who are my volunteer pals from the Toronto Film Festival.  We are experts in greeting people as we have been a team for years so I knew that they would know what to do when people arrived.  When people arrived they collected their Eventbrite registrations for a ballot or were given a ballot to fill out.  If there were kids they were given Sobeys aprons and a cookbook by Sarah Elton called Starting from Scratch and they were also given fun straws, measuring spoons and fun things to use in photos. 

Once in the store they were able to have a tea or some iced flavoured water with fresh mint and lemon and lime and I think the staff were also making coffees on demand.  They then had a bit of time to stroll around the showroom and see all the great things before settling in for my demo.

photo credit: @hypebelly

I took over their shiny new test kitchen to grill up a lot of vegetables and we mixed up batches of fresh pita dough that we grilled on flat grills and Lodge cast iron grills.  Whatever hot surface we could use we had food cooking on it.   I also had a huge stock pot with carrots boiling for a spicy carrot soup with the flavouring from Good Food For Good's Taco sauce.  I hoped to use some crazy looking vegetables but all of the vegetables I got from Fresh City Farms and Sobeys looked perfect so it was more of a demo in options of how you could make the vegetables your own.  

I had assistance in the kitchen from 2 food bloggers.  Susan Ng is a food blogger who's blog is Susanssavourit.  She is also a Food Revolution Super Ambassador for Canada.  Susan whipped up 9 batches of my pita dough recipe on 2 kitchenaid mixers to feed everyone and grilled most of the vegetables.  Susan was my right hand while food blogger Jenny Roger of Ice cream and knishes blog was my left hand prepping all the vegetables for grilling and the citrus for the flavoured water.  She started as a novice on the Mandolin and became an expert at it after loads of slicing.

Photo credit: @toongrrl & hypebelly

Since I was buzzing around trying to organize everything and then doing the actual demo of how to make pickled onions, the carrot soup and the pita dough from scratch I needed lots of extra hands in the kitchen to make enough food so that everyone could taste the food.  I was expecting over 80 people to attend and was planning on cutting things up into small samples but because people these days don't bother showing up to things the people that did attend were able to have a full buffet style sandwich and soup.  We set up all the pitas and the different vegetables along with a tahini sauce, mint yoghurt sauce, parmesan cheese and crumbled feta and the pickled onions and some fresh mint too.  They were able to customize their pita sandwiches according to their own preferences.  That way people who were gluten intolerant or lactose intolerant or just didn't like certain things could still try whatever they liked.  I think it ended up being a good thing because we were able to have people participate in a more interactive way and get to know people better at the same time while saving us a lot of time assembling the sandwiches.  We only had from noon to 3pm to demo the food and have everyone try it.   I also gave everyone a chance to get their hands dirty by setting up the tables to roll out individual pitas which they were then able to bring home to try and cook them up at home on their own.

Photo credit: Susan Ng

After everyone had a chance to sample all of the food then we started the prize draws at 3pm.  I had 2 large prizes that included a Jamie Oliver cookbook, Sobeys gift card, apron, pens and note pads,  Aroma Espresso Gift Card, Uber Card,  and a free bag of food from Fresh City Farms. 

At the event I explained what Food Revolution Day was all about and encouraged people to go to Change.org/JamieOliver to sign the petition for food education and also go to www.foodrevolutionday.com website to see how they can get more involved.

Everyone had a great time and a couple of people bought some of the tools I used to make the food so I hope they try my recipes at home a lot.  I tried to choose recipes that were simple but you could customize them to make them really interesting.  Simple ingredients anyone can get anywhere.  The only thing I used that they might have to look for at certain supermarkets was the Good Food For Good sauces but I used those as a time saver for people that don't have time to spend developing flavours when making soups or other things.  Richa does the slow cooking for you so you have more time for other things.  All of the feedback that I got was great, they loved the food, they were surprised at foods they thought they didn't like and loved the Hendrix store space and kitchen and I even got feedback on how informative I was which was really great to hear.

So although I was totally exhausted and had to stop for a few minutes while cleaning up it was a very successful event overall.   Thanks to all of the great sponsors who chipped into make this event a reality and a fun day.

photo credit: Sue Kurtz

There are more photos to come from my awesome photographer friend Alex @hypebelly but for now this is a compilation from photos from what I could take and from my friends that participated.

Northview Hts Squashed it for Food Revolution Day

This week was a flurry of activities all leading up to FOOD REVOLUTION DAY on May 15, 2015.

All over the world people were hosting or attending all kinds of Food Revolution Day events.  

On this day I headed back to my Grade 13 High School  - Northview Heights Secondary School for my pal and fellow Ambassador' Susan Ng's huge event with about 1200 kids either in the cafeteria, the gym, and patched in from other classes and schools.  We were in the Cafeteria with about 500 kids and a group of kids from Wilmington P.S. who were probably the most excited about the whole thing.

Other Ambassadors on hand to support Susan were Mary Catherine Anderson and Mardi Michels.  We were assigned to try and capture the events and for support for Susan.  Unfortunately we weren't able to capture the faces of the kids so I can't show you how excited some of the kids were.

They had set up a video conference system to patch in the other classes and also a feed to speak with Jamie Oliver in London.  Unfortunately there was only a couple of minutes to speak to Jamie and the audio wasn't working so all he could do was wave to all of us while he watched Susan holding the microphone and frozen.  Sadly we weren't able to speak to Jamie but at least he could see us and gave us a big wave.

The whole cafeteria was a flurry of vegetable smashing though as the kids were set up at different tables and given ziploc bags filled with vegetables to smash for Jamie's Food Revolution Day Squash It Sandwich.  It's a sandwich of various vegetables like cauliflower, red peppers, and whatever you have on hand and bashed up into little bits and then put onto a multigrain bun that is spread with hummus on one side of the bun and a ricotta or other type of creamy cheese on the other side and the vegetables in the middle.  The hummus helps the vegetables stick on the bun.

As you can see from the photo above the kids were given step by step instructions on how to assemble the sandwiches.   After all that smashing and assembling they got to eat the sandwiches.  They all seemed to like the sandwiches because all that was left were little bits of vegetables that had fallen out of the buns.

Other than the technical problems it was a very successful event.  I don't think Susan expected it to be as big of an event as it turned into.  She certainly didn't know that Jamie was going to be doing a video conference in.  The school board members were very excited about the event and their teacher Dimitra was so excited that she couldn't stop hugging all of us.  We were just there to facilitate,  Susan and the school really did all the work and of course the students participation.  

I hope that it translates into the kids taking it home and telling their parents they want to make it at home or if the kids are ever left on their own they will remember that they can make it themselves and always be in control of what they eat.

We will see in the future how this vegetable smashing event inspires them in different ways.  I hope we see future chefs or food advocates in the future.

Great job Susan!

You can read more about Susan on her blog Susans savour it http://susanssavourit.blogspot.ca/