There are lots of reasons for having a local food store, but I'm beginning to think that the best is ...well, the food!
Every week someone comes in with some new products or ideas, and every week something new and delicious appears! If you ask me for something you particularly like, I'll try to find it, and if it's not made/grown/raised around here, I'll put out the word and it will be an opportunity for someone. Already we have two local agencies who support particular groups of people in town looking at making products for the store. It will all be in approved facilities under the watchful eye of public health, but it will be using local ingredients and providing training in gardening, food handling and cooking. How great is that?
We've brought in rice cakes for those who need something gluten-free to eat with those delicious Marketside shitake mushroom, whitefish or sun-dried tomato pates. And for a quick supper, the pates can be thinned with a little milk or stock to make a sauce for the spelt noodles or gluten-free pastas.
As requested, we've also added products like no-sugar-added strawberry jam, no-salt-added organic tomatoes, and
Margaret's wheat-free baking.
We still have local carrots and and this week, truck willing, we'll have Jerusalem artichokes, greenhouse basil and chives and some other Ontario vegetables. If things don't grow in Ontario at all,like lemons and Ted's favourite Minneola oranges, we bring them in through Pfenning's, an Ontario organic distributor.
If you need play-off snacks, we have lots of organic popcorn and tortilla chips and several local salsas. Smoked rainbow trout is Ted's favourite snack food - keeping up his strength for overtime.
For those who like to build up their homemade stock or soup supply before it gets too warm, we have turkey carcasses, backs and necks, meaty beef soupbones and pork soupbones.
Or you could just buy Brenda's - proclaimed by one customer last week as "the best I've ever had - including my own."
I'd be happy to have rhubarb, leeks, herbs and seedlings if anyone has any to sell. And of course garlic!
One last note - Chicory Common Natural Food Store and Cafe, that great sister store in Durham, is up for sale. The business and building (with a cafe, basement, receiving area, storeoom and 3 bedroom apartment)with all the equipment and fixtures for only $215,000. Ask me for the contact information if you're interested.
Around the Sound Local Food Market is open Thursday and Friday 10 until 7 and Saturday 10 until 4, at 972 1st Avenue West. See you there!
Anne
519-416-3663
aroundthesoundfood.com