The Food Gathering

So as you all know I went away Thursday and Friday. It was an awesome experience and I am so glad that I was asked to go!

Thursday Morning The ladies I went with picked me up and we, after stopping for gas and coffee, headed out of town. We hit Truro first where one lady did a little food costing for soup at the BulkBarn. I took advantage of that and picked myself up some hot lips candy and a few candy type things for xmas stockings.

From there we hit the Truro mall. We split up (one lady seperated) and then we did a bit of window shopping. I picked up a few more xmas things at Zellers (I know, I rock the window shopping). We had a small bite at teh small food court and I bought myself an AWESOME pair of slide on sneakers and a cute pair of earrings for kev's xmas party. From there we headed to our destination. The Debert Hospitality Center.

It was an awesome place. An old military/ airforce base with "pods" for barracks. The whole convention was held in the 1 building with the rooms on one end and teh kitchen/ meeting rooms on the other. The "pods" we were in were all named after aircrafts flown by the canadian airforce. Haha I couldnt pronounce mine so Im not going to bother trying to type it. We were given 2 keys. One opened the door to the pod and the otehr your room. You went into the pod and to the side was a common area with kitchenette and seating and cable tv. To your front was a frightening set of steps (lol). youd go up a small flight and on every landing there was a door on either side of you and a "Water closet" with either a toilet or a shower, and always a sink and mirror, depending on whick floor you were on. There were 8ish rooms per pod. We were in 5 and teh other 2 ladies from amherst were in 8. The rooms were tiny with 2 small but kind of comfie beds.

The first seminar I sat in on (there was usually about 3 to choose from) was on community gardens/ children's gardens. It wasnt bad but wasnt the best I saw.

I went to the food mentor speech of course becuase I was there on teh food mentor's buck (lol). I cant wait for the training to become a mentor myself.

As the point of the 2 days was supporting local and food security (by supporting local, makes sense) we were told that all of the food we would be served was out of a cookbook called "Simply In Season" by Mary-beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert. (More about that in a few...)

The meals were AWESOME! Delicious and fresh and WOW. Soups, and Veggies, and meat and meat alternatives. There were snacks between sessions, delicious homebaked in the galley kitchen goodies. Awesome fare.

There was a speech by the minister of agriculture Brooke Taylor where he announced the 2.3 million dollar inititive to help people buy local by supporting local farmers markets in the next few years. Awesome news!

A few of us ran to Masstown and grabbed a bottle of wine or 2 for teh evening. We gathered our wine and a bit of local cheese and healthy crackers and headed for a room where we joked and chatted until about 12:30am. Then off to bed.

7:00 came SUPER EARLY! we were downstairs as a group for breakfast by 20 to 8. It was delicious, scrambled eggs, pancakes with local maple syrup, buscuits, wild blueberries. YUM.

Friday morning I went to the presentation on breastfeeding and a more breastfeeding friendly NS. I thought it was a panel discussion... I was wrong. LOL. It was a type of panel in that the speakers were seated at the front while waiting to speak. Low and behold I was one of the speakers. Everyone else had a powerpoint presentation prepared, I had nothing. LOL I super winged it. I was told afterward that I did a great job. Its a bit of a blur. HAHA. I always liked public speaking though so I had a good time.

I sat in on a session by the author of Simply In Season, Mary-Beth Lind. It was an awesome presentation about buying local and preparing according to season. So inspiring in fact that I bought the book and plan on making it my new year's resolution to start cooking according to season and buying local where possible.

We had another delicious lunch then a presentation from Av Singh on growing your own vegetable gardens. It was very interesting and informative. :)

Then home to my loving Kev who missed me very much. then the kids got home... DUN DUN DUN.

Donavan is teething. nuff said.