Olives on our Warm, Dry Islands

By Janet Nicol

Pender Island is a long way from the Mediterranean, yet luscious black olives grow at Waterlea Farm. Owner Andrew Butt has 100 trees, and in a few more seasons, he plans to produce olive oil. There’s no doubt he took a chance, planting saplings from California in soil this far north. Yet this pioneering enterprise flourishes nine years later, all because of the unique dry weather locale off the Georgia Strait.

By Michael Marrapese

Photo by Brian Harris

I grew up on the East Coast. Almost every kid had friends, aunts, uncles, or grandparents who lived on a farm. I remember playing in the corncribs, climbing trees in the orchards, picking baby corn, harvesting tomatoes in the summer, and binning potatoes in the fall. The smell of green peppers on a hot day and the taste of freshly pulled young carrots are still vivid memories forty years later.

But a lot has changed.

Downtown Kelowna has much to envy: waterfront on Okanagan Lake, balmy summer evenings, and a superb farm-to-table restaurant, RauDZ (looks hard to pronounce, but it’s just “Rod’s”).

Jellyfish on the Rise

By Jeff Nield - Photo by Jenn Pentland

It is with some trepidation that I bring the chopsticks to my mouth and insert the jellyfish. My concern isn’t flavour, it is texture. Jellyfish are the tofu of the sea; they take on whatever flavour a chef throws at them. Since I’m standing at the bar to the open kitchen at Blue Water Cafe watching chef Frank Pabst prepare the dish, I trust I’m good on the flavour front. But what he’s placing in the clear glass bowl on a spiral of cucumber slices and topping with black sesame seeds looks suspiciously like tentacles.

The road from root beer to ginsicle

By Michelle Gourley

It was a screaming hot day in August. The kind when you see a wavy mirage of water constantly disappearing on the road ahead of you. I was on my home turf in Nova Scotia, plastered together with my husband and his two kids in a sand-filled rental car. We were dazed and parched and high on sunscreen fumes. Lukewarm lemonade sloshed untouched in cans at our feet—we needed more, something chilly and sweet to distract us from our prickly, sunburned skin.

I began reminiscing about root beer popsicles.