Chef Demo Saturday, Sept 1st @1pm

Chef Demo

Saturday, September 1st

@ 1:00 PM

Tahsis Community Garden

The Tahsis Community Garden will be a busy place this weekend. 

Silvie Keen will be presenting another chef demo just as Traci Berg’s cob oven project participants will be breaking for their lunch.
 

Stop by the community garden on Saturday, September 1st

as Silvie demonstrates two end of summer recipes using blackberries.

Recipes demonstrated will be a Blackberry & Carrot Layered Salad and Blackberry Wine Gelatin.  Food samples and copies of the recipes will be available at the demo. 

Special thanks to the Tahsis Supermarket for its support of the Produce Availability Initiative and the Tahsis Community Garden Society

Participation at either or both events warmly encouraged and are at no cost.  Join in, have some fun with your neighbours and play a part in support of your community.

Juanita's Harvest

Photo credit Juanita D. Juanita has been a successful and prolific gardener in our Tahsis Community Garden for 2 years now. Here is her latest basketful of goodies! Always quick with a helping hand or words of encouragement, she shares a valuable store of knowledge with novices. Juanita also has a place of honour in our community as the Keeper of the Ducks who visit from time to time when on slug patrol.

Upcoming Cob Oven Seminar

Cob Oven Seminar Poster

Harvesting

The place is humming with bees

Great harvest this week!

Hello Sun!

Roger and Alissa's Calendula and Squash bed is going crazy

Velvety sage tucked in a corner of the garden

I can't remember what the name of this herb is, but it's lovely.

Gorgeous

Bachelor Buttons, totally edible, by the way

Garden Art

We find ourselves right in the middle of summer and the garden is lush and productive.

Vegetable gardening as an art form? 

There are several of our gardeners who are showing off an artistic flair with their pretty beds. 

What's for supper?

Recently a friend of mine brought me a new cook book called "Make it Paleo"

There are some delicious looking recipes, including one for a noodle-free lasagne, which Glyn used as inspiration for our supper, after coming back from the Tahsis Community Garden with some fresh vegetables.

He made a lasagne using our yellow zucchini instead of noodles and swiss chard instead of spinach. It was fabulous.  Everyone has a favourite lasagne recipe, and when you have fresh produce from the garden it tastes that much better. 

Make your favourite red sauce (make it on the thick side, since there's lots of water that cooks out of the squash), with or without meat, layer it with chard, zucchini sliced lengthwise, cottage cheese, parmaesan, mozzarella, fresh herbs, whatever ingredients you like, (that paleo book recommends avoiding dairy, but we used lots of cheese) as many layers as you prefer, bake at 350 until cooked and melted, brown under the broiler to get that nice top layer, let it sit for 15 minutes to firm up and cool off a bit and then dig in.  

Even better on day 2 cold out of the fridge.  Comfort Food!

PS.  The yellow zucchini is so sweet, mild and buttery, it reminds me of avocado when eating it raw.  Homegrown for the win!    

  

Slugfest 2012

Tahsis Days has been alot of fun this year, and one of the highlights for many people has been the SLUGFEST event at the Tahsis Community Garden.  Many people worked very hard to make the garden's involvement in Tahsis Days a success, Catherine, Traci, Kim, Debbie and her daughters, Tena, Alisa, Roger, Sarah, Silvie, the younger kids, just to name some of them, and many of these same gardeners worked so hard on our Tahsis Community Garden Float for the parade, as well.  We did come in 1st place for our beautiful float!  Our FLOWER POWER themed float was gorgeous, and the kids who rode the float with Traci had a blast throwing out daisies and giving away homemade beaded necklaces, with the Jimi Hendrix blaring out the stereo.

Slugfest attracted children of all ages to our garden and the scavenger hunt organized by catherine was very challenging and fun.  kids were running around finding "something fuzzy/something for the compost bin/something to make tea out of/something smooth, etc etc etc.  One of the challenges was to try a piece of durian melon, an unusual delicacy to be enjoyed by adventurous people who are not deterred by odd smells and unusual textures.  The general consensus was that it was good, very sweet, like a cross between pumpkin, custard and banana.  The kids, who have had their horizons broadened and their palettes educated all school year by Silvie and her wonderful Farm to School program, rarely hesitated to try something new.

Local families and visitors to the garden this weekend commented on the beauty and success of our space.  It truly is a wonderful place, and all the people involved in our garden are part of this positive, healthy, remarkable growing spot of community spirit. 

And then there's the slugs, the bags and bags of slugs.... i didn't do a final count, but i estimate we collected up about two hundred slugs yesterday afternoon.  After the festivities, we brought the bucket over to Juanita's duck pens and without describing the brutally swift scene of carnage that followed, i can say that the 6 ducks greatly appreciated the feast.

The winning float!

Durian Melons

Scavenger hunt

Tena and Catherine

Traci and the kids making dream catchers

These guys found DOZENS of slugs

Visiting friends from the Produce Availability Initiative

Bags of slugs

Puddle stomping

slug hunter Ellen

Andrea and Marion on the float