When a large event is approaching - a play, a wedding, an International Goat Symposium - it's all about the lead up. How you're preparing or not. Panicking or not. And, ultimately, ready or not.
Wait! What? You didn't know there was an Internation Goat Symposium?! Crazysauce! Under what bush have you been hiding?! Actually, I didn't know either until about a month ago when I was booked to help out with the finer food stuff. Apparently, goats are farming's new frontier. According to the Symposium brochure. Also, and this I'm getting from the photocollage on the front of said brochure, goats make WAY better poster animals for farming than cows. These goats are kind of cute from every angle. Having living on a dairy farm for a brief stretch, I can tell you that cows have one or two bad sides.
I don't actually know that much about the actual Symposium. I know they're having vendors and farm tours, and seminars about goat raising and goat farming and general goatiness. They have keynote speakers and, slightly weird to me, Dan Needles is doing a thing called 'A Stroll Through Persephone Township.' Dan Needles, for those not up on their rural Canadian theatre, is the author of the Wingfield Farm series, made famous by Rod Beattie. I'm not sure, but I think there are seven plays in the series now. All of them are funny and poignant and very enjoyable. And about a city boy trying to be a farmer with hilarious results, so I guess it makes sense. To find out about the ACTUAL Symposium, go to www.goatsymposium.com. My thing is the food part. That's what I'm here for. And it's already promising to be hilarity cramm'd. (See? Shakespearean reference. This is Stratford, after all.)
THE PLAYERS:
Michael-Owner and proprietor of Let Them Eat Cake, a bakery/cafe on Wellington Street in Stratford, Ontario. If you're at the Avon Theatre, walk straight past the LCBO and take a right at Wellington, pausing to wait for the light to turn green, of course, and it's a few store fronts up. Excellent food, excellent desserts, and a whole whack of new menu items, as well as a clever and pithy (if I do say so myself) after theatre menu. Michael is lovely and an excellent business man, but he's young when it comes to food awesome. There will be lots of Michael funnies.
Wendy-chef of Let Them Eat Cake and The Three Houses Inn on Brunswick Street in Stratford. She planned all the menus for the IGS (International Goat Symposium, and that's the last time I'm typing all those letters). She's got a good forty years of food experience under belt, from time spent in product development with Campbell's Soup to co-running a catering company called Nathaniel's Oyster to working in restaurants all across the 'star' scale.
Jess-sous chef for the IGS, and actor/playwright in the real world. That's me. I'm also sort of a fac totem, garnish girl, ideas child, and general beautifier of food and space. I grew up around food and in kitchens and that is the extent of my credentials.
Thom-general support for the IGS and chef at Fellinis' Italian Grille and Cafe in Stratford, Ontario. Keeping Wendy planned out and on top of it all. Also taking care of the GIANT slabs of goat meat that are coming in, graciously donated to the cause of farming's new frontier by some local goat farmer that I'll get the name of later.
Jenn-IGS chenucky, which is a kitchen term for person who helps. Okay, yes, a loose translation, but close enough, for you pedantic speakers of kitchenese out there.
Anyway, I now I have to drive to Toronto, but keep tuning in for menus and stories. Coming up: the Great Cracker Bake Off 2010!
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