You Grow Girl™

Last Wed, Feb 24 I hosted the official Toronto Grow Great Grub book launch party. Thanks so much to everyone who made it out to help me celebrate the launch of my new book, despite bad weather warnings and the big Olympic hockey game.

Here we are at the reception table before people arrived.

Photo by Mark Disero of Garden Toronto.

As guests came in they were handed one of these cards with a special “Grow Great Grub” 1″ button that I made just for the party and a pack of heirloom vegetable seeds courtesy of Urban Harvest.

One of my goals for this party was to offer good food with some healthy options. I have low blood sugar issues and don’t like attending early evening parties that only offer sickly sweet options. For that reason I turned to Carole Ferrari of The Local Cafe. I have had her food at several local events and buy treats from her stand at the Trinity Bellwood Farmers’ Market through the summer months. Several party attendees raved about the food and I have to agree. It was incredible. And to top it off, Carole parked just outside the venue and prepped the food on this beautiful retrofitted school bus.

Here’s some of that yummy food. The organic red velvet cake had beet in it. See, even the sweets were healthy-ish! Sharing the plate are vegan thumbprints with almonds, oats, brown rice syrup, honey and fair trade jam (raspberry, blackberry, and peach).

In this photo we have local and organic rainbow carrots and cucumbers with organic black bean chipotle dip.

Unfortunately, I neglected to take a photo of the full food spread but the remaining menu was as follows:

• Galette with Butternut Squash and Caramelized Onions (SO GOOD!)
• Organic Veggie Quinoa Sushi with Beets, Cucumber, and Sesame Seeds (I didn’t get to try this one)
• Organic Veggie Salad Rolls with Brown Rice Noodles and Spicy Peanut Sauce

I could really go for some of that food right now.

Nature’s Path supplied a truckload of take home granola bars. Truly, no one went home hungry.

In a former life I taught art classes to kids and co-hosted my share of activity tables. It must be those experiences that lead me to add a relevant and fun activity table to adult parties. In my experience these compostable cups are just the right size and depth for starting tomato seedlings so I supplied a bunch along with soil, hand-stamped tags, and instructions. Yes, I stamped the cups too.

I added a few of my own faves but most seeds were provided by Urban Harvest, Cubit’s Organics and McKenzie.

McKenzie also supplied a big box of assorted vegetable seed packets — enough for everyone to take home and get their gardens started.

The launch of this book happened to coincide with the 10 year anniversary of the You Grow Girl website and I wanted to go the extra length to thank this community (you) for supporting me through the decade. Thanks to more generous donations I was able to put together 7 fantastic prize bags. Alas, I did not photograph them!! Raffle tickets were given away at the door and prizes were drawn throughout the night.

Here are the contents:

• Cotton produce shopping bags containing variations on the following: a copy of Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces, a Cobrahead Precision Weeder and Cultivator, gardening gloves by Womanswork, a set of seeds from Cubit’s Organic (this was so cute packed inside a canning jar with wooden plant tags), and finally, a selection of some of the garden buttons and magnets we design and sell through our online store.
• A Full Beginner Home Canning Kit from Bernardin. The kit included a kettle and rack with jars, tools, and a DVD guide.

In lieu of flowers that would have been wasteful, I placed apple mint and compact ‘Blue Boy’ rosemary plants on every table that guests were sent home with at the end of the night. These were the herbs I wrote about buying several weeks ago.

That was fun!