Think Culture Days is just for the singers, dancers and artists? Think again. All across the country, innovative food professionals will be sharing their skills, culinary passion and food heritage during Culture Days.

What is Culture Days?

Culture Days is a coast to coast to coast celebration of arts and culture which takes place every year in September. In 2011, Culture Days will take place on September 30, October 1 & 2. Culture Days will be prominently featured throughout Canada via a major national public relations and communications campaign.

Beyond public appreciation, Culture Days acts as the lynchpin in a vast, pan-Canadian network and movement to transform the way Canadians view and engage in the arts cultural life of their communities.

Not sure how you can fit in? Here are just a few of the food-related activities scheduled.

• Chef Demonstration
• Italian Pasta and Cookies
• Mussel Boil with Traditional Newfoundland Music
• Feeding An Army: 150 evolution of food rations (with samples)
• Cob Culture and Cooking

If you love food and want to share our culinary heritage, Culture Days could provide the exposure you need. Participation is free and the only requirement is your event take place at some time during the Culture Days time frame and be open to the public without charge.

Want to get involved? Click here for details. They have checklists, online help and an FAQ section to answer all your questions.

While the Culture Days media machine will promote your event widely via the web and print, we encourage any Cuisine Canada member hosting an activity to post a link in the comment section. We’d love to know what you’ve got planned.

Between Foodgawker, Tastespotting, Photograzing and This Is Why You’re Fat, you’d think there are more than enough food photo sites on the internet to satisfy everyone. But a recently launched food photo gallery has an added feature cookbook authors might like. With an emphasis “on recently published cookbooks and images associated with dishes made from those books”, CookbookKarma.com gives credit to the recipe source as well as the reviewing blogger.

Like other food photo galleries, the posts and food photos are submitted by the blogger, but the site automatically includes the cover for the book in question. Click on the cover’s thumbnail, and you’ll be taken to the cookbook’s page, which includes a picture of the cover, a description of the book and all related posts submitted to CookbookKarma.

The site is new and growing, so it’s hard to tell if this will become as big as its competitors, but CookbookKarma already has more than 12,000 cookbooks (from 2007 onward) in its database and hundreds of blog post submissions.

So what do you think? Is this just another site where bloggers provide free content? By aggregating the related posts is it giving away too much content? Or is this a much needed boost to the publishing industry?

It’s a new month. Fresh starts. New projects. Exciting news?

We’ll be posting the list of Canadian Culinary Book Award nominees soon. In the meantime, tell us what you’re up to this month — or even what you did last month. We’re flexible.

Cooking demonstrations, workshops, publications, book signings, media appearances, website news, product launches… we’re open to anything food related that involves our members. Just post a comment and after a brief delay for moderation, your news will go live.

Don’t be shy. We love hearing what our members are up to.

Photo © puuikibeach. Published under a Creative Commons License.

Pat Crocker, a long-time Cuisine Canada member, and cookbook author emailed with a question. “My friend, Dr. Arthur Tucker, a research professor at Delaware State University, specializing in the chemistry and identification of herbs and author of The Big Book of Herbs and others, recently asked me about Mignonette Pepper, of which I have no knowledge.” Pat is wondering if anyone in the Cuisine Canada community can help her out.

Here is the question (with permission from Art) :

For years our family has put mignonette pepper (whole coriander and black pepper) into our pepper mills. My heritage is almost entirely Pennsylfawnisch Deitsch (Pennsylvania German) except for my illiterate, drunken, syphilitic great-grandfather from Merton, Devonshire. (There’s a story…his real name was George Halls but he changed it to Tucker when naturalized in Wilkes-Barre, PA).

Anyway, I Googled mignonette pepper (not poivre mignonette, which is French coarsely ground black pepper), and ‘lo and behold, mignonette pepper is French Canadian. Now, my mother and father were voracious readers, and I remember that she used to buy the Toronto Star Weekly, later, 1968-1973, the Canadian Star Weekly at a little magazine store in Northampton, PA.  I think that this is where the mignonette pepper originated, as we have many fond recipes from that weekly, such as Chicken Maison (chicken, sausages, and vegetables in a clay cooker), and a lamb recipe studded with pine nuts and anchovies in a clay cooker (the anchovies dissolve to create a wonderful sauce). What do you know about the herbs and spices of the French Canadians?  Is there anything written about this?

It’s all about you! You, you, you.

Since Cuisine Canada’s mandate is to focus on networking, we’re handing the mike to you. Tell us what you’re up to. Events, workshops, publications, book signings, media appearances, website news… we’re open to anything food related that involves our members. Just post a comment and after a brief delay for moderation, your news will go live.

Over to you.

Need help blowing your horn? As a networking organization for culinary professionals across the country, Cuisine Canada is exploring new and immediate ways to support our members. With quick, easy and accessible information in mind, we have two new features to help members promote themselves or learn about food events in your area.

Events Calendar

Colour-coded by region, our Events Calendar lists professional development activities and events that promote or feature Canadian food. Here you’ll find listings for:

• Trade shows
• Food and/or wine festivals
• Food or agricultural seminars
• Food or agricultural conferences
• Calls for papers

To add an event to the calendar, email Amy Proulx at chair@cuisinecanadascene.com.

Monthly Horn Blowing

Starting this month, we’ll promote our member’s individual achievements. Whether these events take place in Canada or outside our country’s borders, as long as you’re talking about Canada and food, we’d love for you to share. Tell us about your:

• Book tours / book launch dates
• Product launches (food or cooking related)
• Radio / TV appearances / Live cooking demonstrations
• Events you’re judging
• Public lectures
• Culinary lessons
• Awards or nominations
• Special events at your store or restaurant

Want to tell us about your activity? Just leave the pertinent details (including links to an appropriate website) in the comments section.  To reduce spam, these comments will be moderated, so it will take a little time for postings to appear.

Restaurants and retailers are building new, direct relationships with farmers and food producers.

Today, many restaurants showcase local, Canadian products.  While sourcing these  products is becoming more of a main stream industry with typical wholesale marketing, building direct marketing chains between food producers and restaurants or other retail markets is a real boon for both the agricultural industry and retailers.  Producers retain value on their product, while restauranteurs or retailers have the direct link, and the real story behind the product. All this helps meet increasing consumer demand for fresh, unique and local products.

In the spirit of building successful relationships between farmers and retailers, I’ve spoken with some people who have already built successful partnerships in the sector.

To launch this series, I talked to Donald Bowyer, Assistant Farmer in charge of marketing and logistics, at Ignatius Farm Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) in Guelph, Ontario, for his first hand perspective on building successful working relationships between the farm and their restaurant partners.

AP: How do you build a strong working relationship as a farm supplying restaurants?  How did you get started with this initiative?

DB: I can’t speak too much myself to how the restaurant end was started, but it is a natural extension of a CSA. Most CSAs either have  a farmers market they go to, or a restaurant to channel surpluses, as well as broaden the CSA membership pool. We build in a buffer into our planning so the CSA doesn’t get overly affected by poor crop years so always need a place to sell this extra produce. Restaurants are easier in some ways because they take less time than being in a market stand for a day at a time.

Communication is the key. It is hard to state how critical it is to meet with those who are ordering, as well as those working with the food to get a sense of their capabilities. Each time an order goes out, ask how things are going.  Same at drop off or pickup points- those are great opportunities to check in. I find it rather fun to get to peek into the kitchens and store rooms in restaurants I will often eat at, to see the inner workings.

AP: Do you have recommendations for restaurant owners who are interested in buying direct, perhaps a short list of “dos and don’ts” that make a farm-restaurant relationship smooth?

DB: Do talk to the farmer. Are they set up to clean, and package how you normally expect  your produce. Be very clear about what your own storage, cleaning and processing capacity when talking to the farmer, because not every farm will be a match. Often the farmer has a lot of produce coming in a small window, and you may not be able to take everything right when its ready. It’s good to have the farmer visit your place, see the storage and kitchens so they can get an understanding of your limitations and strengths to streamline ordering processes. If you are not really set up to do a final wash of potatoes, it may be better to order from a farmer who can do that final wash for you.

Be prepared to spend more time communicating if you are dealing with multiple small farm enterprises. They are often not set up to have someone to manage wholesale orders and so will take a bit more work than a dedicated salesperson might.

Farmers need some predictability. It has been very helpful for us to negotiate a base amount of produce the restaurant will buy. This makes crop planning much easier for the farmer, and makes the week to week ordering simpler when you have set amounts of produce coming in per week, with the flexibility on both sides to change amounts as needed.

Try to find time to do some evaluation in the down-season  to tune what had happened over the growing season. Usually the growing seasons are a bit too hectic for more involved conversations

AP: Can you tell me a success story, how your direct relationship with restaurants has enhanced the success of your farm operation?

DB: I would say our work with Bob’s restaurants (author’s note – Bob Desautels – The Neighbourhood Group) have been  a great success. They are very flexible about working with what we have in season, as well as always willing to try out some of our more obscure vegetables. As well they help us out by signing wholesale agreements, allowing us to crop plan for them, and for them to have a steady supply of vegetables without having to negotiate each week with each supplier. Predictability is a huge aid for everyone in weekly planning. We are also exploring some more fun possibilities like perhaps harvesting some ‘weeds’ for a true local flair in food.

Are you a farmer with a direct marketing relationship with a restaurant or retailer?  If so, tell us about your success stories. You can leave a comment below or click here to send  us an email.

Photo © Ignatius Farm CSA