Yumfest at Edmonton’s Farmers Market and a visit to Breadland Bakery.

Earlier this week a friend and I paid a visit to Breadland Bakery, in Oliver Square. Every time I’ve tried to go there (all two times) it’s been closed. I’ve missed them by minutes. So it was nice to finally go in there, it’s such a nice place inside. They have a wide variety of vegan bread and buns as well as gluten free baking. I tried the wheat free foccacia and a vegan chocolate chip cookie. The consensus was that both items were fabulous. The gluten free foccacia was tasty, moist and flavourful, and lacked a “gluten-free” aftertaste. The Chocolate Chip Cookie was crumbly and chewy, but broke in half before I could grab a picture of it in all it’s glory. This was the best cookie I’ve had in a long time.

Yesterday morning was another cloudy rainy early morning at the Edmonton City Center Farmer’s Market. Lot’s of great stuff as usual, but I went with a mission. I wanted to pick up a few products from LimeGreens since she tweeted about the availability of truffles and macaroons on Friday (isn’t technology wonderful?) I was actually surprised at the turn out at the market, but Edmontonians take their farmers marketing seriously, so despite the weather, lot’s of people were out shopping and taking advantage of all the fresh new produce that has arrived.

I wandered around for a bit looking at what was available. I had to go back to Olga’s Nature’s Sense and get some coffee infused soap, and another mint chocolate soap bar since I sent the last one to a PPKer in the USA.

Copious amounts of fresh veggies this week, I’m really looking forward to the weeks to come because I know it’s only going to get better. I picked up a beautiful purple kohlrabi, a bunch of carrots and some lovage from Sundog Organics, which upon returning home turned into my breakfast.

The LimeGreen’s tent was well stocked and I picked up a couple of bags of vanilla macaroons and a variety of truffles. The macaroons were delicious and popular with both friends and family. It’s so exciting to see innovative raw vegan products. There was also a new flavour of kale chips this week, and I hope they appear every week. The sour cream and onion (& still vegan) kale chips were fantastic, the flavour was perfect and I liked them a whole bunch more than the cheesy kale chips.

I asked around to find out more information about some of the things I thought had potential to be vegan at the Farmer’s Market. The soft fresh pretzel people let me know that their pretzels contain both butter and eggs. Ukrainian Baking (that is also located at the St.Albert Farmer’s Market) has various vegan breads available (my favourite is the onion loaf) but their sweet items and dinner buns have margarine (with dairy) in them. I keep meaning to ask about the locally produced Alberta wine, but that will have to wait untill another weekend.