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With chalk in hand we've consulted chefs, planners, architects and engineers, staff, volunteers, and friends of friends. A big white square here, a blue rectangle there, a little erase over, here a little more chalk on the floor over there and finally, we have come up with a plan. Thanks to David Oleson of Oleson Worland Architects for his architectural expertise our blue prints have been submitted to city hall.  The final layout allows both the kitchen and the store to work in a complementary way and includes:

• an accessible washroom
• a “mop room”
• a veggie prep room
• a cafe sitting area/workshop space
• an office
• a walk in cooler

all in just over 2500 sq.ft.. oh yes, and there is even room for a pantry for the kitchen!

Most recently we’ve been talking with engineers and HVAC professionals (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) to ensure the co-op is kept at a proper temperature to facilitate the running of all our coolers. We've been looking at equipment, and are starting to get a clear idea of how our budget will meet our needs. Now, this is shopping I can enjoy.. hand blenders as tall as me, and mixers.... well.. as tall as me! and sinks, and ovens, and fridges and stoves. Needless to say Ayal is having even more fun than I am, and is already baking up a storm in his mind.

In other "big news" we received an industrial dishwasher as a donation from the City of Toronto’s Peer Nutrition. In return for the dishwasher we will be running The Peer Nutrition Program in our kitchen, this is a free Toronto Public Health nutrition education program offered to parents and caregivers from ethnically and culturally diverse communities in Toronto. Another perfect partnership for WEFC!

And so, along we go, once our drawings come out the other end of the city hall machine we will be ready to erase those chalk lines and start to build it!

I went out to Tuesday, October 18^th’s AGM precisely because it looked like it wasn’t going to be your average annual general meeting. The West End Food Co-op is known for its alternative approach to… well… pretty much everything, and I was looking forward to getting in on some of the action. The offer of local food combined with “outbreaks of democracy” were all that it took to convince me to attend.

True to form, this AGM wasn’t run of the mill. In fact, it really wasn’t an AGM at all. It turns out that due to some oversights around the governance bylaws of the co-op, they needed a quorum of 51% of members to be able to vote on anything. Thanks to a successful membership drive this year, attendance in the church basement wasn’t quite 51% of the co-op’s 500+ members! They made alternate arrangements to proceed though, such as getting quorum last Monday, October 24th at the Sorauren Market to vote on some key issues…including a move to change the quorum guidelines for future AGMs!

Despite the technical challenges, October 18^th’s event was the best almost-AGM I’ve ever been to. After getting updates on various co-op activities like the store’s renovations, meeting the new co-op coordinator Lynn Bishop, and going through the financials, we were onto the World Café – a lively participatory forum to discuss some of the big questions the co-op is trying to answer right now.

World Café is a dynamic and collaborative approach to hearing from many parties on a variety of issues. Each paper-covered table had a different question printed on it and each group got 15 minutes to discuss the question and record their thoughts and ideas on the paper. After time was up, we all moved to a new table and explored the next idea. I found it was a fascinating way to not only learn about the kinds of questions the co-op is struggling with, but also to hear the myriad perspectives offered by the diverse members in attendance.

Questions posed to us included “How should the co-op store determine its purchasing policy?”; “How can the co-op support small farmer producers?”; and “What are some ways the co-op can continue regular community consultations with all its members?” It was through these discussions that I realized how challenging it would be for the co-op to effectively engage all four types of members: consumers, producers, workers, and community partners.

If anyone is up for this challenge, however, it’s the West End Food Co-op’s incredibly committed leaders and members. If this past year is any indication of what’s to come, I look forward to a year of innovation, great food, and lot’s of fun.

Well, it has been three weeks since my first day as West End Food Co-op Coordinator and it is feeling as comfortable as an old shoe.. well comfortable, if your idea of comfort is being super busy, busy, busy, meeting, planning, thinking, writing, drawing, talking, and learning ever so much! Ayal and Sally have done a wonderful job introducing me to many of our fabulous community partners, other WEFC staff, the current board, and a ton of the many many volunteers that make this organization such an amazing entity. Its been a whirlwind, but it's all making perfect sense!

So, some talk of the big picture, and much work on the next steps. I've been meeting with architects and engineers, plumbers and electricians, as well as Melinda from Fourth Pig who will be our general contractor and will head up the renovation.  The most fun of all has been sketching out the kitchen appliances and store layout with input from various staff and professionals. Most recently two chef friends of Ayal's, Jennifer and Joshna, came to see our layout and gave a few suggestions. It was amazing to get their input, and really reassuring when they didn't have any big changes to suggest! Here is a picture of them "working" in the proposed kitchen.

So, things are starting to take shape and we are beginning to see how this space is really going to work.... and work it is!! So stay tuned, as we move forward in the coming months, I will post pictures of our progress, so you can all enjoy the process.

Originally posted - July 8, 2011

Photo: Emily van Halem  

deFloured's most popular pastries are their
savoury gallettes

Brownies, muffins, cookies, tarts, loaves, and gallettes. They arrive by the boxful to Sorauren Market every Monday afternoon and are gobbled up and gone by the market’s end. You can find them under the deFloured banner; in fact, you might have found your way there already. I’m willing to bet you thought their food was delicious. And the odds would also be in my favour if I guessed you thought it was made with wheat.

deFloured, a fitting name for a company that uses only gluten-free flour, has been delivering sweet and savoury fare to the Sorauren Market for over a year now. Their success is evidence that gluten-free can taste great. So much so that about 60 percent of their customers don’t even know their pastries are gluten-free!

They definitely have a growing gluten-free following though. Many folks who suffer from a gluten-sensitivity (e.g. Celiac or wheat-intolerant) regularly stock up on the gallettes – the ever-popular open faced savoury pies. Vegans, too, can enjoy the pleasures of deFloured’s pastry perfection in their assortment of muffins.

Originally posted - June 17, 2011

On Wednesday night, my bicycle and I rode over to the Gladstone Hotel where we were met with a crowd of other bikes locked to just about everything in the area. Any other passer-by would have pegged the convergence on a gathering of hockey fans watching Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final. But no, instead the place was full of supporters for the West End Food Coop, here for the Food Close to Home fundraising party.

An original recipe from our master canner Heather Kilner - adapted from the one available on her website here: http://backyardfarmsto.blogspot.com/2010/05/can-jam-5-gus-and-barb.html

This is another recipe for those who cannot wait to can!

Fiddleheads and asparagus are some of the first signs of spring at your local market.

The Bernardin recipe is available here: http://www.bernardin.ca/pages/recipe_page/51.php?pid=135

This time last year Liz Driver from Campbell House Museum welcomed a group from the West End Food Co-op into her historic kitchen and taught us to make rhubarb jam the (really) old-fashioned way. We boiled the "fruit" over the fire, filled glasses, and cut circles of paper to be soaked in brandy and placed on top. After the brandied paper (which keeps mold from growing on the surface) we soaked another circle of paper in egg white and placed it on top of the jar, smoothing down the sides - this dries to make a more or less airtight seal. Jams, chutneys, and marmalades were sealed in similar ways for hundreds of years

Recipe adapted from Bernardin: www.bernardin.ca/pages/recipe_page/51.php?pid=241

Apple Butter is a delicious wintery luxury - its strong, rich flavours give the impression of complexity but the ingredients are surprisingly simple. Usually the recipes posted here come directly from our workshops. In this case we used a slightly different version in our latest workshop but I just stumbled across this recipe, which uses honey instead of sugar. If you try it feel free to share your experiences in the comments!