The Week in Yum, Baron Samedi and World Vision #HungerFree



I had a bit of an odd week, media event wise. I attended two very different events at the same venue a few days apart from each other.


WORLD VISION #HUNGERFREE

I am always interested in organizations that are working towards food security, ending hunger and making healthy, tasty food available to everyone so I looked forward to attending this one. The gathering at Berkeley Field House (attached to the Berkeley Church), here in Toronto, was to celebrate with World Vision, who teamed up with Dennis Prescott to share his experience working with them in Kenya. World Vision is inviting Canadians to celebrate food with them and help support food projects for a #HungerFree world and this dinner was the official launch party. The setting was lovely with long tables covered with flowers and persimmons at every setting where everyone shared in a three course meal prepared by Prescott.

To learn more about World Vision Canada, #HungerFree and find ways to get involved, click here


BARON SAMEDI

Later in the week, I returned to Berkeley Church for something completely different.

This time it was to celebrate the launch of Baron Samedi Spiced Rum. It was all skulls, purple lights and copious rum drinks with an appearance by the man himself, Baron Samedi.

Okay, he isn't actually a man because according to Haitian lore, Baron Samedi is a Voodoo loa who is Master of the Dead and a Giver of Life. Popularized in the Bond classic, Live and Let Die, he has also made appearances in the TV shows Supernatural, Heroes and Grimm among others. THIS Baron Samedi is the face of a brand new Spiced Rum that is finally available here in Canada.

Although I did try one of the two featured cocktails at the party, I preferred to sip my rum alone, on ice. It's more lightly spiced than some other popular brands and I liked that - most spiced rums are great for baking and nice in a rum and eggnog but this is the first one that I would considered drinking straight up. At $30 for a 750ml bottle, it won't break the bank either.

Best Loot Bag EVER. Full sized bottle of rum with themed treats 
The Berkley Church was transformed into a Voodoo gathering f

the airbrush "tattoo" parlour had line ups from the minute we got there 

It's Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend and, here in Toronto, the weather is beautiful, the sun will be out and I hope that there is a turkey in every oven and a table full of friends and family to celebrate with at all of your homes. Happy Thanksgiving!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vietnamese Chicken Meatballs

Image
I have had a serious craving for bun - if you eat Vietnamese food, you know what I'm talking about. A bowl with crisp, shredded romaine lettuce, cold rice noodles, lots of chopped dry roasted peanuts, fresh mint and cilantro, shredded carrots, cucumbers and some sort of sticky, sweet bbq meat that you pour nuoc chom over and then scarf it all down like a maniac because it's so refreshingly delicious that you can't stand it?? Okay, if you don't eat Vietnamese food and don't know what I'm talking about, go find some. Honestly. So my quest today was to make some but I didn't feel like tackling the bbq pork today but The Kid loves meatballs so I thought I would whip up some sort of Vietnamese meatballs out of ground chicken and do a kind of   Bun Ga Nuong . The only thing I was worried about was the sticky, caramelized glaze on the outside when I found this recipe on the Food and Wine web site.  It's from a cook book called Small Bites by Jennifer J...
Read more

Travel Diary : Toronto to Nova Scotia 2021- First Stop, Montreal

Image
 Hello my lovlelies! The family is on our first vacation in almost two years and it's a covid friendly affair. Not ready for international travel, airports and sharing air for 8 hours, we threw our Segway Ninebot Max scooters on the roof of the car and headed east. We stopped in Montreal for the first night, thinking we would just get up early and continue on our way. HAH who is going to bitch about burrata and rose outdoors? Like that was going to happen. I booked us into the brand, spanking new Hotel St Thomas on Sherbrooke, we dropped all of our crap into the ginormous room and hit the road on the scooters. It was a Monday night, which means just about any restaurant I would want to visit is closed so we did the only thing you can do in on a Monday.... we went to Old Montreal and grabbed an outdoor table at Bevo Bar and had a lovely bottle of Rose, some pizza and apps, perfect after a long day of driving. Once we woke up, we all knew we wanted to stay another night so I took ca...
Read more

Sous Vide Pork Souvlaki

Image
I love the idea of pork souvlaki. I love the flavours, I love the charcoal flavour that the grill imparts and I love any meat that gets dipped in lots of tzatziki. What I don't love is dry, leathery meat and, unfortunately, that is almost always the case when people try to cook small chunks of lean meat over the grill. That's where sous vide comes in. I just made my regular marinade and instead of cutting the pork into bite sized pieces, I cut my pork tenderloins into 1" slices and then after 24 hours of soaking in the fridge, I sous vide them before cutting some of the disks into chunks and skewering them (I left half of them as is and grilled the medallions, which worked even better) right before we threw them on the grill for a quick char. I finally have my perfect pork souvlaki - tender, moist (OH MY GOD THAT HORRIBLE WORD AGAIN) and with all the wonderful souvlaki flavours but without the dry, overcooked bits that are almost unavoidable when you grill them fro...
Read more