I arrived home from my weekend at Be Well Camp (details of our full itinerary in future posts) hosted by the Manitoba Canola Growers with two expectations: 1) I would have to hustle to get MSD (Mandatory Sunday Dinner) on the table and 2) dinner conversation may focus around what I had learned on my weekend away and that eating more items which had been produced by provincial growers and processors (no matter what the cost) was going to be my new mantra.

Imagine my delight when I walked in the door and was told to go directly to the dining table as dinner was being served.  There were purple and blonde beets from our Blue Lagoon crop share, wild chanterelle mushrooms which had been foraged from the Belair Forest where our beach house is located, wild rice linguine, and live, rope grown mussels simmered in canola oil, a splash of wine and local herbs.  I know, I know the mussels came from PEI but if Manitoba was adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean, we would have enjoyed Manitoba mussels instead.

I added two loaves of bread for dipping into the broth produced by the mussels.  One loaf was left over from my weekend breakfast basket which had been assembled by Chef Mary Jane Feekes of Benjamin’s in Selkirk MB and the other had been purchased a top of a hill at the Asessippi Autumn Feast.  The wheat had been milled, formed and baked in 45 minutes right before my eyes.

Our family is crazy about Floating Leaf brand rice blends and pasta that we have been tasting over the summer.  Floating Leaf is a Winnipeg producer of Shoal Lake Wild Rice and the linguine is made from stone ground wild rice flour, durum wheat semolina and farm fresh organic free run eggs. The artisan pasta is thinly rolled and slow dried at room temperature. When handled thusly, the unique nutty flavour of the rice is maintained.

For dessert we had the heavenly heart shaped cookies that had been made for us by the Kracher family of Freefield Organic Farms and pumpkin scones that the Frenchman had just whipped up (recipe in a future post).

I feel so blessed to have been invited on my weekend, but also to come home to a family who already “gets” the importance of from scratch-cooking with the best that Manitoba  has to offer.

Kath’s quote: “Cookery, or the art of preparing good and wholesome food, and of preserving all sorts of alimentary substances in a state fit for human sustenance, or rendering that agreeable to the taste which is essential to the support of life, and of pleasing the palate without injury to the system, is, strictly speaking, a branch of chemistry; but, important as it is both to our enjoyments and our health, it is also one of the latest cultivated branches of the science.”-Frederick Accum (1769-1838)

Love-that is all.

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