PTBOCanada Featured Post: Why Our Region Is So Unique When It Comes To Local Food & Agriculture
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Peterborough Blogs
A Lakefield Chef Was Part Of A Team That Just Made The World's Largest Butter Tart Ever
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The butter tart weighed in at about 8,000 pounds
Read MorePlant It Forward: A Class At Immaculate Conception Elementary School Created A Food Forest
/Lead by the folks at GrowHappy.ca, Immaculate Conception elementary school in Peterborough created a "food forest" as part of an amazing class project on Thursday (June 23rd). Mitch Champagne's Grade 6/7 class collaborated with Mim Devitt's Grade 1 class to create a permaculture food forest.
Permaculture is a system of agricultural and social design principles centered around simulating or directly utilizing the patterns and features observed in natural ecosystems.
A Food Forest is a low maintenance sustainable plant-based food production and agroforestry system based on woodland ecosystems—incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans.
Teacher Mitch Champagne, who live tweeted much of the day (see some below), says their School Based Food Forest Permaculture project focused on teaching students about food systems, habitat, environmentally sustainable farming practices, cooking, preserving, seed gathering and propagation, pollination and more.
Champagne says there is a great deal of research that links gardening in youth with positive mental health—something GrowHappy.ca espouses as part of their "Plant It Forward" approach—and the class explored these links.
"It was an incredible opportunity to create a sustainable Food Forest with our students," Champagne tells PTBOCanada of this memorable day. "The children brought so much energy, curiosity, and wonder to the whole experience. They really understood the links to positive physical and mental health and were very eager to 'Plant It Forward.'"
Two Dishes Cookshop To Be Featured On Hit Canadian Food Network Show "You Gotta Eat Here!"
/Peterborough's Two Dishes Cookshop & Catering (261 Charlotte St.) is going to be featured on an upcoming episode of the hit Food Network Canada show You Gotta Eat Here!
See this Instagram photo by @twodishes * 68 likes
Promoting restaurants across our great country, the show features the owners, talks to customers, and shows how signature dishes are created at incredible restaurants across our great land.
This will be great promotion for Two Dishes Cookshop, the downtown and Peterborough, and Two Dishes is soon going to be able to dawn the awesome You Gotta Eat Here! sticker in its window.
What dish they will have featured on the show is yet to be known but we're looking forward to watching some behind the scenes footage of one of this city's best locally owned restaurants.
Photo via Two Dishes Catering Facebook page
Photo via Two Dishes Catering Facebook page
Filming takes place Thursday, June 16th and Friday, June 17th at Two Dishes so it will be closed on those days for deelicious reasons.
—post by Aaron Elliott
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Why People Are Going Bananas For Peterborough's NICEcream Locally & Beyond
/Peterborough entrepreneur Brooke Hammer has created a unique—and yummy—product called NICEcream that consumers are raving about, and that is scaling locally and beyond.
Hammer, who took home multiple awards including the FastStart Innovation Award, the Women’s Business Network of Peterborough Award and the StartUp Peterborough People's Choice Award at the recent Bears' Lair entrepreneurial competition in Peterborough, is building terrific buzz about her product.
Founder Brooke Hammer (at left) with Innovation Cluster's Rosalea Terry at product launch event (Photos from launch by MossWorks Photography)
NICEcream is a delicious ice cream made entirely from bananas (no extra ingredients or preservatives are added), and is the signature product from Brooke's new startup Chimp Treats. NICEcream recently launched at Amuse Coffee Co., and people are going bananas for it.
"The reaction to it has been overwhelmingly positive," Hammer tells PTBOCanada. "As we all know, children are incredibly (and sometimes brutally) honest, but all of the children at our launch party loved it—and moms loved it too! I could not be happier with the way Peterborough has been responding to the product, and the kind words and encouragement that they've shared with me."
This healthy junk food alternative is available to order online, and is already available at Jo Anne's Place Health Foods, Amusé Coffee Co., Play Café and Baked 4 U in Peterborough. It will be expanding to other local retailers in the upcoming weeks and months, and plans are in the works to expand to retailers in Toronto and beyond.
NICEcream is unique in that Chimp Treats is recreating everyone’s favorite junk foods entirely from fruit. It is essentially junk free junk food, a delicious product that tastes like a treat but is healthy. Sweet!
Customer sampling NICEcream at launch event
Hammer, who credits the Innovation Cluster, FastStart Peterborough and Peterborough Economic Development for helping her develop and scale this business, plans to roll out other products—all made from fruit—down the road. "We're changing the game completely by reimagining 'junk food'," says Hammer, who studied Business & Entrepreneurship at Trent University.
"We've partnered with Sustainable Peterborough, River City Farms (they'll be utilizing our thousands of banana peels for compost for their crops) and local strawberry farmers (via the Agricultural Society) to create a strawberry banana NICEcream for the PTBO Ex," Hammer tells PTBOCanada. "We will also be present at many festivals and events in the coming months, such as the Peterborough Yoga Festival, Hootenanny on Hunter and more!"
Sampling NICEcream at launch event
Hammer tells PTBOCanada she has huge plans for the business outside Peterborough. "We are currently negotiating with a co-packer (and distributor), and have partnered with amazing investors, so we predict being available across Ontario within the next four months and across Canada within the next seven months. I am planning on growing this business on an international scale."
Customers sampling NICEcream at launch event
Creative Ingenuity: Look At What This Old John Deere Square Baler Was Converted Into
/Keene Summer BBQ—a fundraiser for The Keene Pumpkin Festival—was held Saturday (July 18th). It featured amateur ribbers going head to head to see who could make the best ribs and beans.
What drew a lot of attention—and pictures from the crowd—was Team Dummer's 2 smoker converted from an old John Deere square baler.
Here are pictures captured by our Kim Wilson...
photo by Kim Wilson
photo by Kim Wilson
photo by Kim Wilson
