The very first and most elaborate farm to table event in Canada!

It’s over, another Royal Agricultural Winter Fair and it was amazing! I opened the 2011 Royal Agricultural Winter Fair at the Journey To Your Good Health cooking stage and I closed it. In between there were dozens of cooking demos with some of Ontario’s most delicious local food organizations. I made a sinfully delicious Honeyed Apple Crisp with Honeyed Apple au Jus with Nancy of the Ontario Beekeepers Association, a savoury and luscious Sweet Onion Tart with Jamie from the Holland Marsh Growers Association and a succulent and decadent Ice Syrup Pork Tenderloin with the good folks at Willowgrove Hill Farm – the only pork rich in Omega-3 goodness.

We offered tips on how to cook the best scrambled eggs (add melted butter to the eggs before you cook them!) and which apple varieties were best for baking (Ambrosia won for both flavour and texture) and eating. We discovered the flavour richness and juiciness of Yorkshire Valley Farm organic chicken and how a medley of Ontario greenhouse vegetables comes alive with a C’estbon Chevre cream sauce over a steaming bowl of ravishing red fife wheat rigatoni.

Nutritionist, Judy Scott Weldon was the dazzling host of the Journey To Your Good Health cooking stage and she skillfully weaved the cooking demos in between culinary contests and energetic performances about food.

It was the good folks at the Ministry of Agriculture and Foodland Ontario that organized the 2-week long eat healthy, eat local cooking experiences. Around the stage were farmers selling their products, a nutritionist to answer questions and milkable cow.

If you’ve never been to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair or the ‘Royal’ as the locals call it, it’s a must attend event. There is a continuous parade of livestock that is judged, you can hear roosters crowing throughout the aisles and majestic horses prance in their rings. These beautiful animals are a site to behold while displayed nearby are the largest vegetables, the most perfect and the ugliest. There are butter sculptures and egg displays, ribbons for the best cheese and the Bernardin contest for the best preserves. The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair was and remains the very first and most elaborate farm to table event in Canada!

Besides the cooking demos and generous samples, the fair offers traditional farm food from apple dumplings to peameal bacon on a bun and booths to buy unique items from garlic spreaders, cutting boards and hand crafted blankets and hats. There’s always the deals to be had from beautiful silk scarves, Egyptian cotton bed sheets and quality pots and pans.

The 2011 Royal Agricultural Winter Fair may be over for another year but the recipes gathered, the culinary tips remembered and the flavours savoured will continue to excite for an entire year. Make sure you get there next year