Canada Day. It was incredible and one
of the best weekends I've had. I arrived on Friday and went straight to Tuck's for a Canada Day BBQ and drinks, then we all went downtown to watch fireworks at Victoria Park and then to Peakes for a dance party. Saturday morning we spent chopping vegetables and shucking muscles at Chef Michael Smith's house. We were feeding 1200 people the next day and had to do all the prep work for the seafood chowder and potatoes. Luckily there were a lot of volunteers and lots of people to help out. The military and the local biker gang were among the volunteers. After chopping veg, we went to Basin Head Beach to waste some time before going back to Michael's house for a HUGE feast prepared by the 8ish famous chefs that Michael had flown in for the occasion. They were all guys he worked with at the Vancouver Olympics, and they did not disappoint! There were about 12 different dishes, and each were mouth wateringly delicious. Needless to say we left for home stuffed, tired and very happy.
Sunday was the big show! The 4th annual Souris Village Feast. The Feast is a giant steak dinner with all the trimmings prepared by famous chefs. Tickets are sold and a
ll the proceeds go towards buying a cookhouse for a school in Kenya. They also raise money for the food bank in Charlottetown. Tuck and I got involved with this because we gave a presentation to the Feast committee last winter to talk about the impact these cookhouses have on the kids in the schools and the community at large since we spent all last summer working in the communities and with the schools that have received cookhouses in the last few years from the funds raised by the Feast. We were asked by the committee to speak to the 1100 paying guests plus the volunteers about the cookhouses back in the spring and we happily agreed and I booked my flight to PEI for the weekend. On Saturday, we were also asked to speak to all the volunteers, chefs and military guys about the impact of the cookhouses as a pep talk once everything was all set up and before paying guests started to arrive. They wanted the volunteers t
o be emotionally committed to the cause and t
o really understand what we were accomplishing by raising the money to buy the cookhouse. To add to everything, the Food Network happened to be filming a documentary on the event! I was more nervous to give the pep talk than I was to speak to the 1100 paying guests! We had a small group of people's undivided attention and cameras in our faces! It ended up going really well though, and we even had people coming up to us after to congratulate us on the work we had done, and on speaking so well. I think we managed to pull a few heart strings which was exactly what we were asked to do! We had more aprons made to sell at the feast, and we me
ntioned the apron project in our pep talk incase anyone was interested in buying some. The Food Network director came up to us after and said that our apron project embodied everything they want the audience to feel during the documentary and asked if they could interview us for the documentary.
We ended up selling about 100 aprons and still have more to sell. I'm really looking forward to seeing the documentary which airs this fall and I hope to have a screening party of some sort when it airs. If I was smart, I would have written about this a few weeks ago when it actually happened because soo many little details get blurred over the weeks. When we were getting interviewed, the light being reflected onto our
faces made my eyes water hard-core, so it's probably going to look like I'm crying throughout the whole interview!
On Monday, in the morning before
my flight, I waited outside the confederation building and got to see Will and Kate! Their plane was parked at the airport when I was there too which was kind of cool!
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