The Urban Harvest team participated in Foodism Magazine and City of Toronto’s Love Food Hate Waste Brunch at the St Lawrence Market Kitchen. This was a kick off to the week-long Waste Reduction Week, Oct 21-27, to celebrate local and nationwide environmental efforts in helping reduce waste.

The focus of the brunch was to raise awareness on how to reduce food waste and make the most of our groceries through preservation methods such as pickling  and fermentation. Our Urban Harvest team set up a tasting station for our homemade jams and chutneys using imperfect surplus fruits harvested in the Black Creek Neighborhood. Our Urban Harvest Community Leaders who recently received training in food preservation prepared caramel apple and grape jams as giveaway samples to guests to inspire them in making their own at home.

Here is the link to the event… our Urban Harvest team photo is in number 43 of the slide show. https://foodism.to/features/love-food-hate-waste-brunch/

Jam tasting was also one of the highlights in this year’s first ever BCCF Halloween at the Farm event held in October 26. Our Urban Harvest Community leaders led the fun and interactive tasting station where families sampled various jams made at our community canning and preservation workshops. Guests happily signed up to the workshops to learn preservation skills. Furthermore, to spread awareness in waste reduction, we also hosted Swap and Share of Halloween costumes, roasted pumpkin seeds from the pumpkin carving station, and made apple cider using some donated surplus apples from the neighbourhood!