Wine and Cheese and L’il Chocolate Chippers
I have a new friend, who just happens to also be my neighbour.
We (fittingly) met at a meeting of the Slow Food Calgary steering committee, and even before we had a chance to meet, she was sharing ideas and making suggestions that indicated our like-mindedness. Turns out she majored in photo (me too), is a food writer (ditto) and blogger (hello) and is married to a musician (this is weird) named Mark (almost). She also lives a block away – if you walked out my front door, across the street, through my sister’s yard, you’d walk straight into her yard and into her back door – directly into her kitchen. Where she bakes cookies.
Her name is Jenn Chic. This is her blog. She just got back from a month in the kitchen at Chez Panisse. I know! She makes a pretty kick-ass cookie, which she will be selling at the Hillhurst-Sunnyside Farmers’ Market every Wednesday afternoon starting June 2. She sells them from home every couple weeks too – raw or cooked – to pick up or have delivered by bike, just like Aviv‘s bread.
And the wine and cheese? That was dinner – I emceed the first Art for the Senses event at the Glenbow Museum – wine from the Cellar, cheese from Janice Beaton. National Gallery of Canada curator John Collins was here from Ottawa to talk about the work of impressionist masters and Glenbow’s Senior Art Curator Monique Westra illuminated the work of Quebeçois abstract impressionist painter Jean-Paul Riopelle in the Riopelle exhibition. We also drank bubbly and ate Riopelle de l’Isle cheese – a soft, gooey, smooth and nutty triple creme made on the Ile-aux-Oies, one of the islands in the Ile-aux-Grues archipelago in the St. Lawrence River, just east of Quebec City. Riopelle (1923 – 2002) lived on the island for years; months before his death, he agreed to lend one of his masterpieces – a mixed media piece that was at one time a door (it’s in the exhibition at the Glenbow now) for use on the cheese label, stipulating that one dollar from every wheel sold is donated to an education fund for the island’s youth.
I feel more cultured already. And I do believe I’ve met my cheese quota for the month.
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