o-CNN: Authentic Rodizio and Caipirinha at Gaucho Brazilian Restaurant in Canmore and Calgary, Alberta, Canada

The Real One

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This is not the "Mexican all inclusive" beach variety. It is the real Caipirinha that requires a designated driver. Marry it with Alberta's finest beef and great Brazilian friends, and you've found a new home away from home. It is an amazing dining experience, guaranteed. I didn't know how much I love Brazil until I met Ede and his team.

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If you would ask my boys where they want to go for a family celebration, there is only one place they come back to time and again: Ede and Rosina's Gaucho Brazilian Barbecue in Canmore (with a location in Calgary as well). Henry and Jan invents occasions that take us to Gaucho! This is where Ede introduced us to the "Rodízio" and my other lovely girlfriend Caipirinha (please don't tell Margarita).

Rodízio

Rodízio is an all-you-can-eat style of restaurant service in Brazilian restaurants. In most areas of the world outside of Brazil, a rodízio restaurant refers to a Brazilian style steakhouse restaurant. Customers pay a fixed price (preço fixo) and the waiters bring samples of food to each customer at several times throughout the meal, until the customers signal that they have had enough. Pace yourself. Come early. It is a huge meal. 

In churrascarias or the traditional Brazilian-style steakhouse restaurants, servers come to the table with knives and a skewer, on which are speared various kinds of quality cuts of meat, most commonly local cuts of beef, pork, chicken and sometimes exotic meats. At Gaucho, rodízio courses are served right off the cooking spit, and are sliced or plated right at the table. Sometimes they are accompanied with fried potatoes, fried bananas, collard greens, black beans, and rice (served buffet style). Salad is not what you come for at Gaucho, but my wife assures me they are awesome companions to the other vegetables that are also served, like the chicken. 

At Gaucho, as is traditional in many restaurants, the diner is provided with a coloured card, red on one side and green on the other. The servers will only bring more meat if the card is flipped to the green side. Our card usually gets lost somewhere during the meal courtesy of my eldest. He is a big fan.

Caipirinha

Caipirinha is Brazil's national cocktail, made with cachaça, sugar and lime. Cachaça, also known as Pinga or Caninha, is Brazil's most common distilled alcoholic beverage. Although both rum and cachaça are made from sugarcane-derived products, in cachaça the alcohol results from the fermentation of fresh sugarcane juice (that wasn't burned, and in most cases is hand cut) that is then distilled, while rum is usually made from refinery by-products such as molasses. The drink is prepared by muddling the fruit and the sugar together, and adding the liquor. 

Although the real origins of caipirinha, as it is known today, are unknown, according to one account it began around 1918 in the state of São Paulo with a popular recipe made with lime, garlic and honey, indicated for patients with the Spanish flu. Today it is still being used as a remedy for the common cold. As it was quite common to add some distilled spirits to home remedies, in order to expedite the therapeutic effect, rum was commonly used. "Until one day someone decided to remove the garlic and honey (good decision, maybe?). Then added a few tablespoons sugar to reduce the acidity of lime. The ice came next, to ward off the heat," explains Carlos Lima, executive director of IBRAC (Brazilian Institute of Cachaça).

If you are keen on an authentic Caipirinha experience, you don't have many choices in Alberta. Cachaça is nearly impossible to get here, which is hard to believe considering it is the second most consumed spirit in the world next to Bourbon (...according to experts). Ede's restaurants is where you can get your fix, else you have to get a smuggler from Brazil to bring it in for you. There is also one Liqueur store in Calgary that stocks it. It has a Brazilian owner, and that is as much as I am going to say, because it is nearly almost sold out when I get there.

Enjoy our video about Ede and Rosina's Gaucho Brazilian Barbeque. It is a favourite place for us, and we hope it will become yours too.

Hendrik van Wyk

... and the lovely Caipirinha.

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Two Cowboys on a Journey: Nicole Tremblay at Fireweed Glass Studio - Canmore, Alberta

Make What's In Your Heart

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Nicole Tremblay has been blowing glass for over twenty years. After graduating from The Alberta College of Art and Design she spent several years living and working in Toronto and Milton, Ontario before returning to Alberta to work with Susan Gottselig at what would become Fireweed Glass Studio in Canmore, Alberta. http://fireweedglassstudio.ca

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She is a glassblower known for her generous use of brilliant colours, fluid shapes and her whimsical figurines and landscapes. Her work is exhibited and sold across Canada.

Glassblowing is a glass forming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble (or parison), with the aid of a blowpipe (or blow tube).

The technique was created in the middle of the last century BC, glassblowing exploited a working property of glass which was previously unknown to the glassworkers: inflation. Inflation refers to the expansion of a molten blob of glass by introducing a small amount of air to it. This property is based on the liquid structure of glass where the atoms are held together by strong chemical bonds in a disordered and random network. Therefore molten glass is viscous enough to be blown and gradually hardens as it loses heat.

To increase the stiffness of the molten glass, which in turn facilitates the process of blowing, there is a subtle change in the composition of the glass. During blowing, thinner layers of glass cool faster than thicker ones and become more viscous than the thicker layers. This effect allows production of blown glass with uniform thickness, instead of causing blow-through of the thinned layers.

Impressions

If there is one observation from a glassblower's work environment, it is, that it is hot! There is a lot of energy going into melting glass. During the long Canadian winters, it may not be much of a problem. Summer makes glass blowing a vocation of love for anyone that is temperature sensitive.

During our visit, Nicole highlighted a very important principle of art. We think it is a universal principle for all the work of producers and makers: "Make something that's in your heart." If you worry what people are going to buy, then you are likely going to sacrifice creativity to conform to perceived expectations. The end result will lack value for yourself, and most likely then also for your customer that should share in this value.

The most important drive for your work should be for the utmost value it holds for yourself. This can only happen when your whole heart is into it. If the maximum value makes it into what you do, only then do others really get to share in your value. They share in it when they appreciate, buy and use what you produced. This is how an artist and Producer produces their best work.

When I asked Nicole how long she works on perfecting a piece, she mentioned that it can take her up to two years to perfect the technique for the production of a single type of item, and everyone is still unique. This is an enormous commitment and speaks to the dedication and devotion that goes into practising this very challenging art form. For one, I am looking at a hand crafted glass article from her or any glass artist in a whole different light. Think of all the broken glass that must go into perfecting one beautifully formed, and very useful article, like the beautiful beer mugs Nicole made for the Cowboys.

The second important takeaway from Nicole's interview was that the art of glass blowing also goes hand-in-hand with utility. Glass is something we use every day anyway, without thinking much about it. Because it is so much part of our lives, we may as well use something that is hand crafted, beautiful and useful from a maker like Nicole and her colleagues at Fireweed Glass Studio. Now, you can get it from your local glass blower.

Thank you, Nicole, for our Beer Mugs. They are treasured possessions and welcome companions at the end of a hard days of work.

Hendrik van Wyk
Producer

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o-CNN: Destination Marketing Just Tanked in Canmore, Alberta

The Mountains Are All We Need

Or is it?

Canmore Business and Tourism (CBT) packed it in, closed, retired, ceased operations and left the building. The voice of, and for Canmore business is silent. Call it what you will, but things are not going to be what they've been before.

I am not going to make this a long post. Watch the video for our thoughts on the matter. 

Alberta's businesses are hurting, and as a result its people are hurting. For a short while, here in the mountains we thought we may be immune to the contagion that is murdering the enterprising spirit of Entrepreneurs and Producers in the rest of the province. Business is good in Canmore we tell ourselves. Tourism is up. We are lucky. People can work. While it is famine everywhere else, the mountain towns are thriving. 

It is then unfortunate that here too finally we have to face the reality that maybe our own community is not really as immune as we thought. No, we are not referring to the fall in oil revenues as the driver for our misfortune and the supposed cause for the Alberta recession. Rather, we are pointing to a lack of realization and understanding of what makes a community and a Province's future possible and successful in the first place: It is its Producers, the entrepreneurs, their businesses that follow, the jobs that are created as a result, and the opportunities it presents for people to move here, live and thrive. We profile them and make videos of what they do. You can see who they are on this site.

Contrary to (more recent) popular belief: Without a healthy and thriving business base, there is no community. As they say in the country of my birth - Africa: "If you eat the chicken, you have no more eggs." Give businesses a reason to be here and Entrepreneurs the encouragement to establish themselves, and see how well the rest of the people do as a result. Why is this so hard for our politicians to get? Market this destination.

Every weekend, thousands of cars drive by our town. Thousands of opportunities are lost until we flag them down and tell them our story, and show them what we have on offer. Canmore Business and Tourism was tasked to do this job, and they've done well with what they had at their disposal.

While the model for Canmore Business and Tourism was less than ideal, its motive, commitment and results were exemplary. Surely, there was a way to make it work then, Mr Mayor?

Canmore is not a business friendly town. Ask any entrepreneur and established business owner that tries to start or operate here, and they will testify to the hazards of navigating high operating costs, stupid property lease fees, labour shortage, skewed zoning laws, high living cost, autocratic and overbearing permitting, and a less than business friendly Town Council. Then add the more recent Provincial Government's taxation and legislative agenda, and it is a wonder any business is left in Alberta.

It is sad to see the one party, who was seen to be standing for the success of businesses in this town decide to call it quits. I personally don't blame them.

CBT just had to finally do what most businesses do under similar circumstances: They close down and/or leave. As a community we are going to be worse off for it. I cannot fathom what our Town Council was thinking to let this happen. Someone will have to take this one for the team.

Hendrik van Wyk

Canmore Business Owner

P.S. If Canmore Town Council think they can step in and do the job of destination marketing, then it will be time for us to reconsider our commitment to this lovely town too. I hear Nordegg is looking for new businesses... and they have mountains!

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)