Hot Chefs, Cool Beats, and a Good Cause with Alberta Pork in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Ode to The Chef

"My happiest place is when I am "in-the-moment". The world can go by when I am in the kitchen. Cooking makes me whole. It is my passion and purpose. It is what I am and what I do.

I am amazed by the chemistry and the intricate processes that take place when food ingredients are combined with energy. My knowledge and skill transform it into culinary perfection. I have no care in the world other than to watch steak grilling, sauce thickening, cake rising, and pork crackling transform into golden crispy bits of sunshine. 

My moments are complete when I witness precise olfactory, taste and visual symphonies of well-plated food. It becomes a magnum opus of culinary glee to see it, an experience that is only topped by the primal moans of pleasure coming from a loyal patron as they bite into a course I carefully prepared. 

This is what I am dedicating my life to. It is my vocation."

This is part of the TWO COWBOYS' EPIC GLOBAL TRAVEL & CULINARY EXPERIENCE - 2019! 

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Hot Chefs Cool bEats

We recently attended the "Hot Chefs Cool bEats" event in Edmonton, courtesy of our partner Alberta Pork. It featured interactive food stations from Edmonton's top culinary talent. Attendees could also sample wine, beer, & spirits from Canadian wineries, local craft breweries and distilleries. If that wasn't enough, it included performances from DJs, dancers, street performers, and live musicians.

The initiative began in 2011 as a fundraiser for The High School Culinary Challenge's Canadian Culinary Fund, and after a short break, it was back with a new home at Edmonton's Mosaic Centre and a restricted guest list of 200 privileged patrons. It meant that not only was the food top-class, there was also enough so that you didn't go home hungry or thirsty. Most importantly, it introduced you to some of Edmonton's more innovative chefs and their talents. You could sample a variety of the best creations like litchi moose, mini ice cream cone tacos, pork on a bun, and more.

Some of the highlights for the Cowboys were the Pork Coppa and Prosciutto made by the young chefs Peter Keith (himself an alumni beneficiary of the scholarship) and Will Kotowicz of Meuwly's Charcuterie, Sausage and Preserves. They promised us it was only BertaPork! Then there was Scott Downey from the ButternutTree's deep-fried Canadian moss. If we knew that these vegetables were so delectable, we would forage our forests until they are empty! Apparently, the moss was from Back East.

However, the start performance of the evening was Paul Shufelt's (The Workshop Eatery, Edmonton) collaboration on a Wagyu Holstein Beefetta. It wasn't pork. However, it was BertaBeef, and so they were forgiven for rekindling our love for meat on a stick. You just needed a large stick for this one and a massive appetite! They did promise us a suckling pig for next year, to honour their loyal sponsor, Alberta Pork.

All proceeds from ticket sales and silent/live auctions benefitted the Canadian Culinary Fund and its main program, The High School Culinary Challenge, so it was all for a good cause.

Observations

Being a chef is not an easy job, and to venture into the culinary industry requires guts and you to be a little bit crazy. It is a lifestyle and a vocation that continues to draw attention for its opportunity, but also for the harshness, low wages, and extreme physical and mental demands on the individual.

Contrary to the glitz and glee of television programs like MasterChef, it is far from glamorous. Most of what chefs do is monotonously droned behind the scenes, in hot holes, spending long hours with equally weird and crazy people feeding the masses with basic fair. Only a few become "rock star chefs". Even less survive as small businesses and entrepreneurs.

However, the culinary industry provides endless opportunity for creativity, learning and mastery. These are the opportunities that the Canadian Culinary Fund attempts to unlock for young people when they introduce and lure them into the possibilities in preparing food.

We salute them for it and congratulate them on a Hot Chefs Cool bEats event that set the bar high. We look forward to the next one. We travel the world for food, and we are entitled to our opinions. Edmonton's chefs should get more attention. They surprised us. It will get more from the Two Cowboys for sure if this is the standard we can expect.

Now, if only there were more pork...

Hendrik

Alberta Pork's Cowboy

P.S. We thank our partner Alberta Pork for making this work possible. Now, go eat more pork!

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Photos

On a Plate

Moss Discovered

Canadian Ceviche

Double Trouble

Epic!

Two Cowboys: Connecting with Our Food at the Olds College National Meat Training Centre in Olds, Alberta

Where's the Beef?

What we eat and drink determines who we are. It is a big part of us and integral to what we do each day. Throughout our evolutionary journey, as it is for every other animal on earth, our food ultimately determined and enabled our species, homo sapiens, to claim its place and standing on this planet.

For humans, our involvement with food goes a little further. It also plays a large part in determining our identity. It defines our relationships with our environment and our fellow man. One can deduce a level of cultural and moral sophistication from civilization's connection with its food. It plays a pivotal role in defining a society.

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For a person, food is nourishment. Without food, famine is inevitable. If we don't eat well, we face disease. For a group, it is also a source of expression that influences and displays cultural convention, ritual, and perception. Families come together for celebration meals, heads of state dine together, and a nation's geopolitical and economic welfare is determined by its food production abilities. Food is security. Competition for resources to produce food is the principal source of revolution and of war. For eons, individual, tribal and national identities have been recognized through uniquely crafted dishes, ingredients, and meal preparations. It is fair to say that as humans, we have a fascinating love affair with what we eat.

Humanity now produces more food than ever before in history. Unfortunately, we are also more disconnected from our food now, than we've ever been.  Food manufacturing and industrialized levels of production have slowly been eroding our link with, understanding, and the role of our food, beyond the simple provisioning of sustenance. As a result, we may also be losing our sense of who we are, and in large part, of our societal identity.

We are also losing our ability to recognize and work with our food.  The art and production of food through baking, butchering, brewing and cheese making are falling by the wayside as our butchers, bakers, and cheesemakers depart, to be replaced by corporations with large processing facilities and factories focussed on a uniform, compliant output contributing to the bottom-line.

Even our chefs are spoiled by these companies, with pre-prepared manufactured products that merely requires heating and plating. The elementary art of cooking is under threat in the average meal preparation facility in North America. Fast Food is not food in the true sense of what it could and ultimately should be.

To illustrate my point further, we should only take a look at the degree of effort we put into making food unrecognizable. Celebrity chefs are beating a path to creating mouses, gels, pearls, pills, and pellets that is entirely void of resembling source ingredients. Meals come ready-made. Molecular Gastronomy, which should have remained a fascinating experiment, now trailblazes a departure from the familiar in favor of concepts such as multi-sensory cooking, modernist cuisine, culinary physics, and experimental cuisine.

The result is that we can now eat a perfectly looking, uniform, sterile, mostly synthetic, manufactured sandwiches containing the resemblance of meat, bread, and condiments, that is morally and culturally acceptable and available to the masses, across the planet. This is now our idea of "food"!

Should we be loving it?

Because food has always been closely linked with who we are, losing its origins and our linkages to what we eat have the inevitable result that we just succumb to also losing our sense of identity.  We mistakenly claim a false pretense of cultural "progress" and moral high ground when misguidedly people succumb to disorders, become vegan, or allow vegetarianism to take hold.

Human evolution did not result in equipping people to only eat plants, and unfortunately, no amount of moral or spiritual convention will change our biology in the short term. Maybe it is time again that our children know that milk comes from cow's teets? Chickens lay eggs. Renin and bacteria make cheese and meat come from dead and butchered animals. Substances like blood make for great sausage!

When we rediscover food, we may find our true primal selves again void of pretense, and stripped from our delusions of civility. When we have the pleasure of eating what we always ate, the way we did, with the people we treasure, we may then also have the joy of re-discovering who we truly are.

That is why we seek out great food, places to find it, and why we celebrate the stories of the people and producers connecting us with ourselves - with our true primal being - homo puretus!

The Last Butcher School

The Olds College Meat Processing Program is one of only two remaining in North America that offers an educational certificate in the whole process stream of meat, from slaughter, processing, preserving to retail. Where big plants once dominated the industry, we are glad to say that the revival of the art is back in Alberta!

Olds College teaches hands-on practical techniques and age-old science of meat processing for the highest premium quality cuts. Successful graduates gain the experience needed to start their own entrepreneurial business ventures or take their skills to Canada’s third largest industry.

Olds College is the National Meat Training Centre for Canada. Three times a year its program takes in a wide range of students from all over North America and as far away as Africa. They teach techniques for professional meat cutting, trimming, boning, breaking, wrapping, sausage-making and curing with professional sanitation and food safety applications, including HACCP. It is Alberta’s training site for humane handling and stunning, and the only program in North America that teaches slaughter skills and techniques such as skinning, eviscerating and carcass preparation.

The College boasts an extensive multi-purpose facility that is fully equipped to teach the value-added skill sets and knowledge for the meat industry. Its services are expanded to cater to large and small industry, from sausage making and dried, cured hams to the installation of an industrial canner. It also boasts a favorite retail counter where students learn applied retail merchandising and customer service skills in explaining the attributes and benefits of various products and cuts.

Observations

We are saddened by the fact that Olds College is one of only two remaining programs of its kind in North America. On the other hand, we are encouraged that it still exists, is more popular than ever, and a mere hour's drive from our home base in the Rocky Mountains. The retail shop is a favorite stop for our monthly meat purchases.

Alberta is famous for the quality of its agricultural produce and its rich heritage in producing quality feed for animal husbandry. We are convinced that Alberta boasts the best tasting beef, pork and, dare we say it, lamb (sorry, New Zealand)!

What we need now, is a supportive regulatory food production climate and consumers that invite our producers back to rearing fantastic animals and our butchers again into our towns. The Old-World fostered an appreciation for its producers, and the food that resulted for our ancestors were just incredible. In the New-World, we have the opportunity not only to re-rediscover this rich food heritage but cherish it more than ever. It is where we come from, what we can do, and who we ultimately are.

We are meat-loving Cowboys.

Hendrik van Wyk

Cowboy

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Photos

Focus

Evolution

Bones

How It's Made

Hours

Traveling Cowboys: 2017 Feast and Frolicking and SmokinQ some BBQ at Lynnwood Ranch, Okotoks, Alberta

BBQ Feast

It's not BBQ. It is chef inspired gourmet cooking with locally sourced Alberta produce. Alberta Pork, Beef, Chicken, Alberta smoke and truly amazing Alberta BBQ talent.

Gus Leduc and his team at Lynnwood Ranch hosted the annual KCBS' Alberta Chapter, BBQ on the Bow, for the seasonal kick-off of Alberta's 2017 low and slow BBQ competitions. If this sounds like a mouthful, let me explain.

The Kansas City Barbecue Society (KCBS) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and enjoying barbecue. It is the world's largest organization of barbecue and grilling enthusiasts with over 20,000 members worldwide. KCBS sanctions over 500 barbecue contests worldwide. The annual event at Lynnwood Ranch is one of three in Alberta where a team can earn a ticket to the annual World Championships in the U.S.A.

Here is the first of two videos to showcase the events of the May 12 weekend.

Feast and Frolick and SmokinQ

Video 1 of 2: Feast and Frolic

Video 2 of 2: SmokinQ

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The Feast and Frolic precede the SmokinQ competition to give the BBQ teams a fantastic feast, a dance and a chance to be judged on the preparation of inspirational food items outside the KCBS criteria. Almost 300 people attended the event to sample from a series of starter dishes prepared by the teams. It was accompanied this year by Gus' own outstanding smoked brisket and "Alberta" salmon.

Competition day is known as SmokinQ. This year 35 teams competed with a fair number of newcomers to the "sport" of BBQ. I questioned Steve Alvarez (the KCBS representative in attendance) on why it is referred to as a "sport"? He clarified, "There is a lot of physical activity that goes into preparing good Southern Style BBQ. It can take up to 18 hours to have the food prepared perfectly and on time for judging". We here mistakenly thought that to eat BBQ was the sport!

Observations

The hospitality at Lynnwood Ranch was as usual, outstanding. There was nothing too much for Gus and Wendy when we wheeled in our Motorhome on Saturday afternoon ahead of the Feast and Frolic. They are the perfect hosts.

If there is one thing that stands out in the BBQ community other than the great food, it is the community and the friendships amongst the people involved. People from different locations, as far as Manitoba come to the event. They are from diverse backgrounds, varying levels of cooking skills and experience. All of them come together for a fabulous weekend around their love for a particular type of food. If you were ever looking for a real festival of food, then this is the single best place to experience it all first-hand.

We are glad we can be part of it all and tell the stories of the people involved.

Hendrik van Wyk

Brisket Cowboy

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Photos

We have a thousand photos. See all the event photos here.

Competition Time

Arrival

It is Called a Braai

o-CNN: Big Sky BBQ Smoked Meat and Beer With Friends in Okotoks, Alberta

BBQ With Friends

(Learn: * Inspire: *** Amaze: ** Live: *****)
(The Two Cowboys Subjective Rate-o-Meter.   )

Rob Bolton has a lot of friends. Believe me. A lot of them!

"For as little as $1/month you will get the inside track on content like this and follow the travels of the Two Cowboys & A Camera. Join here."

It is not just because he does amazing BBQ and serve cold beer. It is because he is a community guy, an entrepreneur at heart and he knows what his customers want. We are a fan of whatever Rob is cooking up next. That is why we cannot wait to get the word out about his latest adventure.

We checked in with Rob on the opening weekend of his new venture: Big Sky BBQ.

It is a BBQ Pit, Barn, Drive-Through, Drive-By, Patio, Drive-in, Biker Yard, Lawn, Bar, Hangout. Call it whatever you will. One thing is for sure. It is going to be the meeting place on the 22A into Okotoks, Alberta. The place where women will come looking for their husbands.

What we didn't expect is Rob's plan to make it an Okotokian Breakfast stop on your way to work in Calgary. He assured us that the app is in development. We checked with the developer in new Zealand. It is on schedule. The plan is for all breakfast to be eatable one-handed and that you will have it within 30 seconds from pulling up to the window. How you clean your hands in the car is your problem.

I guess a sticky steering wheel will just serve as the ideal reminder to pick something up for dinner on your way home.

Rob, you have a winner. You had us at BBQ and Beer. We are glad to be friends. Now we have one more excuse to make the trip to Okotoks.

Guess where it will be?

Hendrik van Wyk
BBQ Cowboy

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Head Office

Outside Bar

Smoker Love

Carnivores

Balsamic Love

Hangout

o-CNN: Cowboy News Network - Serious BBQ Lynwood Ranch, AB

Real Southern Barbeque in Southern Alberta. 

Lynwood Ranch, just South of Calgary hosted the first of three events for the Kansas City Barbeque Society's (KCBS) Alberta Cup Competition, 2016.

It was one of three sanctioned events in Alberta that agreed to offer BBQ teams an extra chance at winning some special prizes with their smoked brisket, pork ribs, pulled pork and chicken. It all happened at Lynwood ranch on 14 and 15 May, 2016, and we were there.

This was Lynnwood Ranch’s second annual KCBS sanctioned BBQ competition and BBQ Feast. The KCBS BBQ Competition “Smokin Q” was started in 2015 after a friend, Bernie Kenny of BBQ on the Bow paid a visit to Gus & Wendy LeDuc at Lynwood Ranch. Bernie spoke of the need for more BBQ competitions in Alberta, and naturally this well known ranch came up as the perfect location to kick off the tour. (Bernie is on the lookout for more venues to have more competitions for his 150 qualified BBQ judges. It is a great idea to get the community involved, do some fundraising, and have a major tourism event with awesome food. Get in touch with him here.)

We, the Two Cowboys were ready to get on a plane to New Zealand for some prior commitments. But, we just couldn't pass on Gus' invitation to attend the event before the big day. There is no way we can leave without getting a taste of Alberta's legendary Barley fed pork at the BBQ Bash “Feast & Frolic”. This event preceded the competition the next day. With the help of the BBQ teams that were competing, Lynwood Ranch put on an amazing feast for almost 300 people attending.

Impressions

I've learned one important thing from attending this amazing event: "This is serious business!" 

As born and raised South Africans we can probably write the book on barbecue. We "braai" at least three times a week since birth. However, nothing could prepare us for what we were to experience. 

The food flavours, sophistication and complexity we tasted could rival items from any menu in a five star restaurant establishment, anywhere in the world. Some of the meat smoking technology were space-age computer contraptions with minute tolerances and titanium precision. It was amazing to see the care and commitment that went into the most exquisite byte of flesh, jalapeño or burned-end. In contrast, the purists relied on perfect ingredients, traditional flavours, simple smokers and a lot of love and care for their art.

The biggest impression on us was seeing how much fun people were having. It was a weekend family affair for the teams, and also for the spectators. Folks travelled together, ate together and drank together. Everyone was made to feel welcome.

Hopefully, this is the first of many instalments we get to bring you of Alberta's barbecue underworld. It is definitely something people should know more about. 

Lynwood Ranch is the place where you can lose your barbecue virginity. Gus and his team has a first class venue. He himself knows a thing or two about southern style barbecue. He is famous for his prime rib roast. Don't pass on an opportunity to taste one of the best. Gus, thank you for giving people a chance to cook great food.

The Two Cowboys bring you Canada's Cowboy News Network (o-CNN). We support communities by covering real people, real events at real locations. You should see them!!

Hendrik van Wyk
The Prime Rib

Get rewarded for supporting our local Producers. Receive special offers and invitations from the Two Cowboys.

Who we are: We are a social enterprise. We are funded through donations and sponsorship. 
All our earnings are applied back to covering our costs of marketing and promoting Producers and inspiring local communities. Please support us to bring you more (www.forwardthefavour.com)

Photos

Master

Friendship

Machines

Make Something

Lynwood Ranch's Own