So, Boss, you say you’re looking for a hot sauce that will put the spice back in your life? Or a drink that brings back the old zing? How about a caramel sauce that could melt even your heart?
Then Boss, come on to Alberta where everyone from heavy duty mechanics to retired civil servants are cooking it, bottling it, baking it and selling it.
We call it the Taste of Success. Food processors who got their start in their kitchens are stepping out and trying to break into the big time. They’ve got hot sauces made from peppers grown at Brooks and juices made from old prairie favorites like saskatoons, currants and rhubarb.
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This year, Boss, a half dozen people showed what they could do with some moxie, some home-grown ingredients and a whole lot of patience when some recipes flopped and others sailed.
If you showed up at the Taste of Success festival, you’d meet Judy Meyers, a transplant from down East. She’s milking 40 goats and uses the milk to make fudges and caramel sauces to die for.
Then there’s Basil Simmons from Lethbridge. He missed the hot sauces his mom used to make in Guyana. The guys at work kept telling him he should bottle the hot stuff and sell it. When he retired from public service, he and the wife and daughter did just that.
After a big feed of South American food laced with Fire and Brimstone sauce, you’d better walk – no, run – over to see John Schussler.
Boss, this is a man who says he’s no cook. He’s a mechanic. Maybe, but one gulp of his black-rhubarb juice and you know you’re drinking ambrosia with the gods. Before you leave, he insists you get a taste of his kitchen sink jam made from six different fruits, most of which he grew at his Lethbridge farm.
Are you ever in the mood for rabbit food, Boss?
After a sample of Chrystal Hay’s salad dressing, it’s almost enough to make you turn vegetarian.
This Calgary woman cooks her dressings, dips and antipastos in a commercial kitchen in her home and makes sure ingredients are natural and can be found in anybody’s pantry.
Fill ‘er up
And what about some comfort food, Boss?
You might want to try Souperior Soups made by Denise Isbister and Elle Ethier of St. Albert. These two have been best buds since they were five years old. They like to do everything together so decided to go into business. They’re still friends and sell dried soup mixes. When you add water and stir, the soup fills you up to the top, Boss.
Still hungry?
There’s dessert.
Cheryl Moller makes a combination pie and cake called a kuchen. Down at Medicine Hat, she and her husband Heinz sell about 600 of these decadently delicious treats every month. Cheryl is so fussy she bakes them all in a little oven that takes no more than four kuchen at a time. When they’re done, the kuchen are popped in the freezer to preserve homemade flavor.
That’s the Taste of Success, Boss. But it doesn’t end there.
At the end of the day, there’s a soiree called the Harvest Gala. Since it’s a western formal, we get ourselves down to Tuxes R Us, rent a dinner jacket and wear it over Wranglers.
It’s the classiest buffet event of the year, Boss, where 1,000 folks hit the Stampede Grounds in evening attire and cowboy hats. This is when we say thanks to Alberta’s 50,000 plus farmers and ranchers and tuck into food prepared the way it should be.
There’s Wild Boar pastries and Boer Goat lasagna that melt in your mouth.
There’s also some pretty good Alberta beef and pork and golden caviar. Don’t ask where the caviar comes from, Boss, but my gum-popping teenagers have declared it the snack du jour.
So Boss, that’s how we do it in Alberta. After all that good eating, I have to go lie down.
Talk to you later.
