The following has been contributed by Steffani Cameron, who lives and works in Victoria. Just before the pandemic she completed a 4-year worldwide adventure that she has chronicled at FullNomad.com.
Old Grist Mill Preserves photo by Steffani Cameron
Playing with Old Grist Mill Preserves
When I took possession of a small pantry share from Old Grist Mill & Garden in Keremeos, it included a few things I’ve got a good idea on how and when to use them, like the Lemon Jelly or Quince Jelly, which will be delicious as anything from the sweetener in homemade dressings to using for the glaze on home-baked pastries.
But then it came with fun stuff like “Cowboy Candy” and “Roasted Garlic Scape Powder”.
As a share buyer, you’d have your own choices for the products you’re given, but us writerly types get what we’re given. Luckily, it’s been a fun exploration with Old Grist Mill Preserves!
When I chatted with Chris Mathieson, proprietor and chief food nerd, we got talking about kitchen essentials and recipes. The one recipe packing on the pounds at his house these days is listed on their website, a Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake, perfect for seasonal baking. Don’t forget to support BC Dairy Farmers by getting some whipped cream or ice cream on that plate too.
For us writers, budget-watching is natural, so splurging on food is something I think twice about doing – except with preserves and vinegars, because they’ll literally last years.
Chili Lime Jelly Marinade by Steffani Cameron
In my pantry share, I had Chili Lime Jelly. Sure, you can smear that on a bagel and cream cheese, but it’s also sensational in a marinade, like I did. I pureed several cloves of garlic, a tablespoon of Chili Lime Jelly, some peppercorns, olive oil, and a little white wine vinegar, then marinated a flank steak in that. It turned out delicious on the barbecue.
As for the Lemon and Quince jellies I mentioned earlier, they’ll be ideal in salad dressings or marinades too. Making dressings is simple – you need a whisk and a bowl, so it’s not high-tech science going on here.
Three parts oil to one part vinegar is the typical ratio, which Mathieson subscribes to, but I like more acid so I’m more a 3:2 kinda gal. Then you add your flavours – like a jelly that’ll be the flavour profile and bring sweetness. Next, use a subtle hand with a dash of mustard powder, or a bolder hand with a mustard you love. Me, I collect mustards and can choose from over a dozen – another great thing to invest in, since they’ll keep for years. Mustards will also help emulsify the dressing, so it coats your salad better.
Here’s an example:
3 tablespoons olive oil
1-2 tablespoons vinegar of your choice (raspberry, champagne, white wine, you name it!)
2-3 teaspoons of your chosen jelly
1-2 teaspoons of mustard
salt & pepper to taste
Essentially, any vinaigrette recipe you use that calls for sugar or honey, you can simply replace that with your Old Grist Mill jams or jellies. I’m hatching a plan to make a lemon-herb vinaigrette for my arugula and chicken salad, using the Lemon Jelly.
Cowboy Candy Hamburger Buns by Steffani Cameron
As someone who’s always ordered nachos with a “hold the jalapenos” caveat, you can imagine my surprise when it was the Pantry Share’s Cowboy Candy that I really fell hard for. It’s candied jalapenos, and they’re gold. Unlike some more mass-produced varieties of candied jalapenos I’ve seen in stores, Mathieson uses a drier process, resulting in a definitively more “candied” texture to the jalapenos. He tells me he loves making cheese breads with the jalapenos in them.
So, naturally, I got it in my head to make some sourdough hamburger buns with them. After I delivered a couple to my grill-fiend hunky Air Force pilot next door, he reported back that they were the best hamburger buns he’d ever had. Part of it is because the Cowboy Candy’s made with sugars and apple cider vinegar, both of which act as a “dough enhancer.”
But not everyone’s a bread baker. So, here’s the other thing that will now be a staple in my fridge – Cowboy Candy Mayo. Simply take a cup of your favourite commercial mayonnaise and add 2-3 tablespoons of the Cowboy Candy, blitz that up, and bam – the best burger spread you’ll ever have. Sriracha mayo ain’t got nothing on the complexity of Cowboy Candy mayo. I also use it for my breakfast sandwiches with an egg, two slices of bacon, and a slice of cheddar. (It’ll keep for as long as the mayo is good for, according to the jar’s best before date).
Breakfast sandwich first — my first-ever quail’s eggs of any kind. Plus bacon, cheddar, avocado and candied jalapeño mayonnaise. On a candied jalapeño homemade bun. pic.twitter.com/ceEz3iRScR
— Steffani Cameron, Deep State Operative (@SnarkySteff) May 3, 2021
Another couple items to wow me are the two powders I received – “Roasted Garlic Scape” powder and “Mushr-umami” powder. They’re basically like dropkicking your food with flavour. The Roasted Garlic Scape powder, for instance, is amazing on anything with potatoes, for starters. Breakfast hash? Throw it in! Grilling a foil bag of potatoes? You need some powder! For those who don’t know, garlic scapes are part of the garlic plant, it tastes just like the head of garlic but a little mellower. These are roasted until dried, then turned into a boring-looking powder, but you’ll need far less of it for oomph than you think, and it brings way more to the party for complexity than regular garlic powder.
Ditto with the Mushr-umami powder. Use it to fortify sauces or add kick to mushroom risotto. Mix it in cream cheese for a nice sandwich spread.
What does the Chief Nerd and Food Geek at the Old Grist Mill consider as his must-have kitchen staples from their products? Why, the Cowboy Candy and their assortment of mustards, of course! Turns out that great geeks think alike. Mm, mustard.
This summer SHINE Experiences presents Wings and Wizards at BC Place. It’s an immersive entertainment experience that promises to bring back a little magic into the lives of the young and young-at-heart.
A Wizard’s Academy and an Enchanted Forest are just some of the features that will take up over 7,000 square feet inside the stadium.
Wings and Wizards at BC Place
When: Proposed June 8 start date may be subject to revision due to PHO orders during the COVID-19 pandemic
Tickets will be available online only via credit card purchase, with address verification built into that process. Should inter-provincial health restrictions on travel continue past the June 8 opening date, guests may rebook their tickets at no extra charge.
Where: BC Place
Tickets: On sale starting Thursday, May 13, 2021 at 10:00am via Ticketmaster
Wings and Wizards is an interactive exhibit that merges world-building, art, tech, storytelling, and design to create a magical adventure. The key to the entire adventure is a trusted magic wand, which will be used by your wizarding group to cast spells, solve riddles, and complete your quest. The wand is then yours to keep!
Self-guided and touch-free, the exhibition showcases the meeting point between technology and magic, making use of cutting-edge interactivity, such as motion tracking, proximity-based devices, lights, projections, props, and soundscapes — all to weave a truly spellbinding narrative experience.
This exhibit is produced by SHINE Experiences, a non-profit dedicated to bringing pass-through, audio-visual art experiences to the public. Wings and Wizards will showcase the talents of three of Canada’s top locally based production companies: Go2 Productions, Innovation Lighting and Spectra Event Group.
Onsite rules and procedures for this contactless experience will include a mask requirement, hygiene stations, a definitive audience flow, and physically distanced, timed, and staggered entry for pods of up to 6 people within the same social bubble.
The Anvil Centre Theatre is set to host The May Long Festival, an on-demand, online festival featuring New Westminster-based or affiliated performers. This festival features four unique performances from a diverse group of talented local creators. Each will share their talents through the lens of our times and our community with stories for us here and now.
The May Long Festival
When: May 21-24, 2021
Where: Online
Tickets: Available now for $10 per device for each show. Festival passes $30 for all four shows.
Each show is filmed entirely at the Anvil Centre Theatre with its newly installed recording equipment. It is offered for on demand viewing in the safety and comfort of your home. With the breadth and depth of the performances available, there is certainly something for everyone.
Show Lineup
Janice Bannister: The Weirdest Year of My Life
Janice Bannister is excited to bring her “Weirdest Year” show to the stage. Her one-woman show includes stand-up, storytelling, laughter wellness, and a heart to heart chat. Janice shares her life experiences from Kootenay Girl with a Belgium warbride Mom, becoming a psychiatric nurse, single mom challenges, to the excitement of being a Boomer grandma. She welcomes you to laugh at her adventures, because laughter and joy are the best ways to get through these weird times.
Krystle Dos Santos and Friends: BLAK | Canadian Women in Music & Arts
Krystle Dos Santos takes the audience on a musical journey celebrating notable Black Canadian women in music. She shares historically important stories about the underground railroad, civil rights movement and key events in black history while weaving in iconic songs from the eras in which these women lived and performed. Featuring artists like Measha Brueggergosman; Canada’s First Lady of the Blues Salome Bey; Vancouver’s First Lady of Jazz Eleanor Collins and many more. With special guest performers Dawn Pemberton and Marisa Gold.
Devon More: Devon More or Less
Devon says “Live art is too dangerous, but how about TV dinner – and a show?” Devon More was a regular performer at the Heritage Grill for years. She is mixing music and insightful musings, as usual and serving up select favourite earworms from her one-woman cabarets (Berlin Waltz, Flute Loops, Hits Like a Girl) – along with a brand new surprise or two… Devon more or less just wants you to know that New West IS still the best, and she misses you.
Jaylene Tyme, Allan Morgan & Friends: Reflections Iconic Vancouver drag queen Jaylene Tyme and legendary actor Allan Morgan have created a conversational performance filled with laughter, song, tears and most of all…heart. Featuring stories from the Massey Theatre’s Gay Seniors Storytelling group, the program reflects on their pandemic experiences and offers some fierce drag that you don’t want to miss.
To highlight the global pandemic’s impact on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside community, Employ To Empower is hosting the Cardboard Project 3.0 — featuring a talk show-style event and a new online gallery.
All proceeds will help low-income entrepreneurs access business mentoring and resources through Employ To Empower.
Attendees can sign up for individual sessions, multiple sessions, or for the full day.
Held live virtually for the first time, the Cardboard Project is a unique collection of 100+ written experiences by DTES residents. Submitted by members from across the city, the messages on the cardboard pieces reflect responses to this year’s question: What have you learned about connection and community in the past year?
The event will feature three talk show sessions, with three diverse speakers each — all offering a unique perspective to the dialogue. Following the event, viewers can head to a living digital display on the website, linking the stories behind each cardboard piece collected over the past three years.
“We want to provide a space to reflect on the past year, remind us of our resiliency, and shed light on the importance of staying socially connected within our communities, in whatever way we can,” said Christina Wong, Executive Director of Employ To Empower. “Most importantly, we hope to give insight to the impact that the global pandemic has had on our DTES community.”
Session 1: Creating Connection from 10:00am to 12:30pm will feature speakers Diane Finegood (Simon Fraser University Professor and Fellow), Iven Simonetti (DTES peer and Founder of Medicine Art), and Minah Lee (DTES peer and Founder of ArtActionEarWig).
Session 2: Real-Talk from 1:30pm to 4:00pm will feature speakers Niki Sharma (MLA of Vancouver-Hastings), Sarah Blyth (Executive Director of Overdose Prevention Society), and Jeannette & Alley Blais (Founders of Back Alley Apothecary).
Session 3: On The Frontlines from 5:00pm to 7:30pm will feature Hannah Ahn & Shafia Ali (Licensed Practical Nurses at Providence Crosstown Clinic), Austin Lui (Community Developer at EMBERS Eastside Works), and Mark De Freitas and Elwood Price (Founders of Crap Trapper).
Employ to Empower (“ETE”) is a registered charity, launched in 2018, that provides residents in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside with access to development and entrepreneurial resources, such as affordable microloans and business mentorship, to have long-term positive impact on their personal and economic well being. ETE, which also organizes the Street Store in December, actively advocates for positive social change in the DTES community.
The following has been contributed by Steffani Cameron, who lives and works in Victoria. Just before the pandemic she completed a 4-year worldwide adventure that she has chronicled at FullNomad.com.
The Old Grist Mill Pantry Share
There are folks with passions and there are geeks. Chris Mathieson is a geek. His whole career has been a series of geek-outs – Executive Director at Vancouver’s Police Museum, Assistant Director at a gifted teens’ excursion called the Satori Camp in Spokane, Washington. Today, he’s the head geek and chief nerd of all things food, history, and garden at the Old Grist Mill & Garden in Keremeos.
These days, that means rolling up his sleeves and creating great edible delights from the bounty grown at the Old Grist Mill and the surrounding farms and offered through their delectable “Pantry Share Program.”
If you’ve never been, the Old Grist Mill in Keremeos is a wonderland where heritage agriculture meets history in Canada’s food basket of the Similkameen Valley, adjacent to the famous big sibling, the Okanagan. Nestled in a valley the Crowsnest Highway slices through, the Grist Mill and Keremeos are often overlooked by those in hot pursuit of wine-tasting in the Okanagan.
But it’s a highly recommended stop.
When it’s not a pandemic, that is.
The grounds are gorgeous – the perfect place to get out and stretch your legs after a long drive. Explore the heritage gardens, learn about the importance of seed-saving in significant agricultural regions like the Similkameen and Okanagan. But then eat in their terrific restaurant – good, honest fare that’s well-priced and locally sourced.
Proprietor since 2013, Mathieson loves the Grist Mill’s gardens and its food-history contribution to BC. In his early years, restoring the grist mill was a labour of love done to precision. Today, he’s using a well-earned grant to expand their historical gardens.
As a true history geek, of course his first step in creating the new grant-driven gardens was to dive into research at the provincial archives in Victoria, where I caught up with him and took a delivery of some of the world-class preserves he’s been cranking out of their kitchen.
Mathieson is outspoken and passionate on everything from heirloom vegetables to social responsibility, so he’s been first in line with cancelling camping reservations or closing their doors when public safety has a priority. But doing the right thing doesn’t mean the pandemic hasn’t taken a toll on his tourist-driven business too.
Luckily, his knowledge of food and food history meant he could turn to something else to raise funds – the art of preservation.
Latching onto the trending “Consumer-Supported Agriculture” (CSA) programs out there, he launched their “Pantry Share Program” three years ago, but it exploded in popularity during 2020, thanks to the pandemic.
How the Pantry Share Works
Essentially, you pay in advance for guaranteed product from their upcoming harvest. So, you pay to secure $200 or more worth of preserves from whatever harvest the Grist Mill has this year. That puts you front of the line for this year’s Lilac Jelly or “Cowboy Candy” Candied Jalapeno. You choose the products you want – out of some 120 or so products.
The Old Grist Mill is a purveyor of preservations of a different ilk. With over 200 edible plants and fruits, many being heirloom varieties, on the Grist Mill’s 12 acres of heritage gardens, plus a strong showing from Keremeos’ local producers, they’re banging out over 10,000 jars of artisanal preserves a season.
Running the joint since 2013, preservation isn’t new to Mathieson, since that’s what historical food was all about. But he’s been ramping their project up every season.
From chutneys to powders to jellies and puddings, his curiosity and ongoing quest for innovation means he loves product research and experimentation.
As is explained on the Grist Mill Pantry Share page, “For every $100 in your share, you can expect to receive an average of ten jars (110mL jars for jellies, 375mL and 500mL for pickles, and 190mL for almost anything else) of product across all of our kinds of products.” It works out to about a 15% discount off retail pricing.
The products include jellies and jams, salsas, chutneys, powders, and even seasonal products, like their famous boozy Christmas fruitcake. Learn more about the program and sign up here.
Being a food nerd myself, I was chuffed to try out some of the Grist Mill’s products that Mathieson sent my way. Turns out, when you’ve got a history nerd with a passion for cooking, it results in some tasty and unique product!
Please help keep an important part of BC’s food history alive in Keremeos. All it takes is buying and eating delicious things to support one of BC’s great food communities.
Win a $200 Pantry Share Credit
You can join the Pantry Share! Miss604 is giving away a $200 credit, which means you’ll get a delivery of this wonderful, delicious bounty right to your door when they do their next run. Here’s how you can enter to win:
[clickToTweet tweet=”RT to enter to win a $200 @Old_Grist_Mill Pantry Share credit and get the bounty of this heritage garden in the Similkameen Valley delivered right to your door http://ow.ly/JRMC50EGRmB” quote=” Click to enter via Twitter” theme=”style6″]
One winner will be drawn at random from all entries at 12:00pm on Thursday, May 13, 2021. Winner must live within the delivery area which is Lower Mainland, Fraser Valley or Okanagan. UPDATE! The winner is Heather.
