We now offer the delicious “Village Kitchen” entrees and side dishes.

Village Kitchen is a gourmet grocery store and food shop located in Unionville, Ontario. Their side dishes, entrees and desserts were such a hit with their customers that they decided to wholesale their menu items to other fine food shops.

As always, any products that we sell in our store (but don’t make in our kitchen) has to fit with our philosophy of using only the best quality ingredients, and must be free of chemicals, preservatives and fake flavourings (of course, the food has to taste great, too!)

We offer the following menu items (we are continuing to add new entrees and side dishes to the list every month):

• chicken parmesan (best seller)
• veal parmesan
• beef stroganoff (my favourite, served over a bed of rice)
• beef pot roast (my Dad’s favourite)
• lamb curry
• chicken in a porcini mushroom sauce
• stuffed chicken breasts with a Dijon cream sauce
• low-calorie chicken cacciatore
• low-calorie chicken and spinach lasagna
• scalloped potatoes

potato salad "2 ways"

• potato salad with
  maple-dijon vinaigrette
• wasabi potato salad

I’ve been experimenting with a few new potato salad recipes (I can hardly call them recipes). Here are two very different versions that received rave reviews:

potato salad with maple-dijon vinaigrette

method

In a saucepan, saute diced shallots in a little butter and olive oil. Add equal parts of maple syrup (the real stuff!) and grainy Dijon, then swirl in some olive oil and mix. Boil tiny new potatoes (I halved mine) until tender, toss together with the maple-dijon olive oil sauce and season with salt and pepper. Throw in some chopped fresh dill, if desired.

wasabi potato salad

This salad was inspired by my visit to DELIca rf1 restaurant in San Francisco last year. They make a wasabi garlic potato salad (garlic potato salad with wasabi mayonnaise, edamame, snap peas and romaine hearts) that is to die for – by far the best potato salad I have ever eaten!

method

For my version, I tossed together cooked diced potatoes, a bit of mayonnaise, wasabi paste, crisp pieces of romaine hearts and a few handfuls of fresh shelled spring peas. Delish!

(Even my Dad, who doesn’t usually like wasabi, enjoyed this version.)

We have expanded our hours to serve you better!

We are now open:

Monday – Friday: 10:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.
Saturday: 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
The shop is closed on Sundays

We hope that by staying open an extra hour, it will be more convenient for many of you to stop in on your way home.

On May 7, 2008, my husband David and I welcomed our son John into the world. John weighed-in at just over 9 lbs. and measured 22 inches long (the cheese straws that we sell in the shop might have something to do with this!)… needless to say, he is a healthy, big, baby boy!

John is just shy of 10 weeks old now, and close to 15 lbs. David and I love being parents and are really enjoying this special time together.

As most of you likely know, I took off 8 weeks for a “shortt” maternity leave. I LOVED my time with John but I must admit that I also started to miss the creative challenges that my work provides me… so while I was away, I conquered a lot of recipe testing and completely re-vamped and updated our full-service catering menu!

I came back to work on a part-time basis in early July, and I am really enjoying the “best of both worlds”.

First, I want to thank the team at dana shortt gourmet for taking such great care of the shop and our customers while I was away, and second, I want to thank our loyal customers for their patronage during my maternity leave and support of my maternity leave. I really missed all of you and look forward to catching up with you soon.

I am back at the shop 10ish to 3ish Tuesday – Saturday (John pops in for lunch every day too, if you want to meet our little guy!)

If you would like to see a photo of John, you can check out some pictures on the following link:

john's photos

Try out the newest in fitness class, Zumba, at Columbia Lake Health Club. Sample nutrition products, browse great fitness wear and fall fashion, learn about living a healthy active lifestyle. All this and more is open to the public. Samples and fun galore.

TechTown is located on 340 Hagey Blvd. in Waterloo (just off of Columbia Street West).

garlic scapes!

Garlic scapes are the flower stems that garlic plants produce before the bulbs mature. Growers often remove the scapes and when harvested while they are young and tender, the scapes are delicious.

I simply wash them, cut them into 2” pieces, sauté with a little butter and season with salt and pepper. They have a texture similar to green beans with a subtle garlic flavour.

I’ve never seen them in the grocery store but they are often sold at the farmers market (I’ve found them at both the kitchener farmers' market and the waterloo farmers' market).

A couple weekends ago, I went to the Waterloo farmers market and was rather impressed with Mickey McGuire’s Cheeses.

Wendy and Mike gave us plenty of samples and we settled on an Italian sheep’s milk cheese, a delicious Swiss Gruyere and their signature smoked cheddar. If you are looking to purchase some fabulous cheeses, I would definitely suggest that you keep them in mind.

You can visit their website at:

www.cheeseplease.ca

One last thing – we’re hoping that all of you receiving this newsletter want to be on our distribution list.

If you would like to be removed from this list, please let me know and we will fulfill your request asap.