Month: August 2015

Held our 2nd Annual Family Day Garden Picnic yesterday down at the Woodland Park Community Garden where the Grandview Woodland Food Connection, in partnership with Evergreen Foundation help manage the Le Chou Garden. Le Chou is a part of the larger community garden and is providing gardening space for the WATARI Latin American Community Kitchen Group, the Britannia Healthy Choices Seniors group and the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre.

WATARI helped to cook up a wonderful BBQ with Latin American beans, rice, and corn. We were treated with a great Guatemalan marimba group and of course lots of activities for the kids.

These picnics, food gatherings and celebrations are an integral part of our community food programming. As someone noted, our food security work is perhaps most effective in building social inclusion or engagement. This is a point well taken and certainly the foundation of all community development – relationship building and creating opportunities for community members to get involved in community that improves their life situation. This work is increasingly important as our social fabric is unraveling in our hyper consumeristic and individualistic culture. In response, the act of preparing food and eating together is a radical act of building community, of getting to know others we might not normally associate with.

Check out more photos:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gwfc/albums/72157655291733144
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gwfc/albums/72157634936907720

We are thrilled that Homesteader’s Emporium has choosen to support the Vancouver Neighbourhood Food Networks.

Check out all their amazing products and workshops at Homesteader’s Emporium.

Become a member of the Homesteader’s Emporium (it’s free!) and make an impact! 1% of all member purchases will be donated to the Vancouver Neighbourhood Food Networks to support food-based initiatives, programs and collaborations in neighborhoods all across the city! Visit the Homesteader’s Emporium today (649 East Hastings) for all of your urban homesteading needs.

A big thanks to the VEGA health foods volunteers that came out and joined us at our Garden 2 Plate youth program this past week. With their help we were able to build a new garden bed and plant blueberry bushes, expanding our vision to plant many more indigenous berry bushes.

We also tried some VEGA smoothies adding gooseberries, currents, spinach, kale, pursalane and beets from the garden. Justin, one of our youth participants treated us to a variety of great tasting smoothies.

And at all our Garden 2 Plate workdays we are treated to a fantastic lunch prepared by our professional chef Anna Bell. The youth have an opportunity to prepare great tasting food, using ingredients and veggies picked fresh from the garden. This week included sautéed collard, green salad with fresh green beans, spaghetti and meatballs, and egg frittata.