Two Cowboys: Grown Up Cookies With Real Treat and Scotch in Cochrane, Alberta, Canada

Grown-Up Cookies

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Have you ever had your cookie with Scotch? Didn't think so.

Most people outgrow cookies by age twelve and rediscover it when their babies cut teeth. The next time a substantial amount of cookies make into your diet is when little Suzie signs up for Girl Scouts. The excuse is that you have to help her make her sales target. Yeah, right. There are other occasions when cookies feature in our lives. Christmas, birthdays and tea time with English relatives.

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That was before we met Jacqueline Day. She introduced us to grown-up cookies, or rather cookies for grown-ups. Thanks to her we've invented a whole new reason for cookies. Cookies with Scotch! Let me introduce you to her fledgeling cookie empire called Real Treat.

She describes her flavour creations as unapologetically delicious. She is allowed to do that because she's taken flavouring cookies to a whole new level. Without compromise. I mean top class chef quality creations wrapped in a cookie form factor! The layers are there, the textures are there, the pairings are divine. This is no ordinary cookie.

Jacqueline mentioned that Real Treat is serious about ingredients. That is a given. The traditional bits are there. Butter, sugar, eggs, and wheat flour forms the base for most of them. Then comes in-house candied lemon peel, smoked pecans, organic dark chocolate, cinnamon caramel. The list goes on and on with exotics that make it into the recipes.

Anyone can add exotic ingredients and make just another cookie. For Jacqueline, it is not only the quality of ingredients that make Real Treat cookies a real treat. It is rather her processes of flavour pairings that she infuses into the base. It delivers a balanced and delicious surprise every time you let one melt in your mouth.

All her cookies are hand-made and baked in a tiny little kitchen in Cochrane Alberta. She sells them at farmers markets and pop-up stores and selected retail stores across Canada (list on her website). She recently launched her online cookie store to ship all over Canada.

Observations

Chefs are entertainers. 

Everything they do with food and flavour is intended to solicit a reaction. If you want nourishment then cook a steak, make a sandwich, eat some McDonalds and drink Starbucks. If you want to be taken on a journey and experience flavour entertainment, find a good Chef, Chocolatier, Brewmaster, Gelato Master, Winemaker or Barista. These people specialise in olfaction and gustation titillation. 

Jacqueline is on the same journey. She entertains people with cookies. We predict that today it is cookies. Tomorrow it will be something else. What drives her? The pleasure of seeing the surprise on people's faces when they enjoy her cookie creations. It is this surprise reaction, and her drive to learn, discover and create that makes Real Treat cookies so unique. As with all makers, her cookies contain a little bit of Day personality.

It is this that we appreciate about a Real Treat Cookie paired with our favourite peaty Scotch. They both come highly recommended.

Hendrik van Wyk
Cookie Cowboy

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Real Treat

Lemon Peel

Smoked Pecans

Cookie Nest

Sold!

Two Cowboys: A Lifetime of Making at Wild Rose Jewellery & Gifts in Okotoks, Alberta, Canada

New Home

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Garo Yanikyan was born in Armenia. At the age of twelve, he started with his apprenticeship pulling gold wire for his uncles. With his family members, he trained to become a Goldsmith. One day he would travel the world and settle in Okotoks, Canada.

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In those days and within those cultures, people were born into a vocation. One grew up with it and in it. It was who you were, even before you picked up your first implement to make your first ring. You were expected to do it. Your trade was you and your family's identity and association.

Years, even decades of work will pass to improve your techniques and hone your skills until finally, you became a Master Craftsman. It was the way to support and provide for your family. Until one day, it became your duty to lead and train new apprentices to follow your footsteps.

Passing on knowledge and experience to the next generation assured the continuation of the craft. It was the work that made it possible to earn a living and provide for one's loved ones. It is was also the work that contributed to the values of one's community and the beauty of one's life.

It was in this life where the journey started for Garo. It would eventually bring him to a small town south of Calgary called Okotoks. Here he became the master Goldsmith for Okotoks. He raised his family and contributed to this community. Yanik became Okotokian. Canadian. He is Wildrose Jewellery.

In Okotoks, he watched life go by for more than thirty years. For a small oil town at the Foothills of the Rocky Mountains, that is more than a lifetime of change. It grew from a sleepy little farming community to one of the fastest growing and popular living destinations in Alberta, Canada.

A lot changed since Garo and his wife arrived in the early eighties. Not only did the town grow, but the people also changed. The world has changed for the Goldsmith. The appreciation for the millennium-old craft of goldsmithing declined as people's expectations increased.

Progress or Regress

The age-old demands of quick turnarounds and bold or delicate new designs prevailed. Only now, the distinction of the craftsman is getting replaced by a machine that does it faster, better and cheaper.

It is the birth of jewellery manufacturing. Rings are now designed on computers. Milling and casting machines fabricate faultless and perfect copies, on mass, in automated "factories". Machines do a better job at making jewellery, and it costs almost nothing to put out thousands of items. The smith's road is coming to an end. Garo's world is disappearing.

"People still need to get things fixed," Garo says. "That, machines cannot do, yet. It still makes me useful." While Garo's world is disappearing, the rest of us are also losing something profound. Soon we may be living in a world with no Goldsmiths. Old-world Artisans like Garo, are disappearing from our towns and communities that are now driven by automation and a fixation with consumerism. With them, they take thousands of years of knowledge and skills that were honed through generations of artistry. With them, they take away art. The evidence for civilisation.

By losing them, we are losing a kind of person. We are losing a producer, a maker and an artist. With this loss, we may be losing our very identity.

At least we will have our perfect rings.

Hendrik van Wyk
Wildrose Cowboy

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We are a content company. We earn our livelihood from producing great content about inspiring people and their stories. We use Patreon to help us earn from our work. It allows us to have a closer relationship with our collaborators and grow our audience. If you Sponsor us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/twocowboys or Donate to our cause on GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/twocowboys we can do a lot more for you, your business, event or community.

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Happy Place

My Place

Community

Beauty

Next Generation

Two Cowboys: Remembering Mum's Kitchen at Home Ground Coffee and Roasting House with Rebel Bean Coffee, Okotoks, Alberta, Canada

Cinnamon and Coffee

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There are two distinct smells that I remember from my childhood in my Mum's kitchen. Cinnamon and coffee. Cinnamon made it into the hot, soft, sticky, cream cheese frosted rolls. Freshly brewed coffee was right beside it. The first thing of focus in the morning.

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Thanks to Wikipedia we know that a cinnamon roll is a sweet roll served commonly in Northern Europe and North America. In North America, its common use is for breakfast or dessert. Its main ingredients are flour, cinnamon, sugar, and butter, which provide a robust and sweet flavour.

In some places, it is eaten as a breakfast food and is often served with cream cheese or icing. History tells us that Sweden is to thank for the creation of this delectable treat. Swedish dough typically also contains cardamom (powder or buds), giving it a distinctive flavour. Canada takes a lot of pride in its versions of the cinnamon bun, possibly because of its Nordic heritage. No matter where you are in Canada, you are guaranteed to find some variety. Whichever variety you do get, the best way to eat them is as fresh as can be. Preferably, right out of the oven.

If you are in Okotoks, Alberta, and you can make your way down Elizabeth Street (old Main Street) towards North Railway Street, you will find a very, very small establishment on your left named Home Ground Coffee and Roasting House. Here they make several batches of buns by hand every day to ensure that customers get their cinnamon buns as fresh as possible.

Home Ground is a tiny kitchen that just so happens to also have a few chairs for patrons. It is probably the closest you will get to mum's kitchen stocked with buns, soups, and other pastries to get you through your day. People come for the buns. They also come for the great coffee. If the building is not small enough for a kitchen and a few chairs, they've managed to squeeze in a single origin coffee roaster by the name of Rebel Bean Coffee.

Observations

Home Ground is a busy place. Heather van Aalst, the owner and her team of helpers, are jumping to get the food out for the day's patrons. Mornings are the busiest as people step in for their Rebel Bean coffee fix and a cinnamon bun. It is the kind of place where they know your name. No drive-through here. The coffee is real, so is the food and the people.

One person in the kitchen is dedicated to only making the famous cinnamon buns. As soon as the first batch leaves the door, the second batch goes into the oven. At around 10:00 when it is tea-time, they are already on batch number eight! The day continues.

Late morning Kerri Ann Colby, the rebel from Rebel Bean Coffee fires up the roaster and the aroma's of freshly roasted coffee lingers down Main Street Okotoks. It is a magnet for downtown folk.

At lunch, you can have freshly baked bread and soup. Everything is home-made right in front of you in the tiny kitchen. After work, you can step in for your wine and beer. Yes, you heard it right. This is a kitchen that goes the extra mile. Breakfast, brunch, lunch and sundowner.

We wanted to know from Kerri Ann, why she named her roastery "Rebel Bean"? In every batch, she explained, there is one single bean that inexplicably doesn’t roast. That bean is among the thousands in each batch that is exposed heat of more than 200°C. Every other lost a good deal of its moisture, lost a percentage of its natural caffeine, and its sugars have caramelised to darken its colour. Except for one. This one bean seemingly flips the bird at chemistry and does not roast. She found one in every batch and termed it, the Rebel Bean. There is a little jar of rebel beans on the shelf in the room where she roasts at Home Ground. The name stuck. It became the personality for the brand and its customers.

Home Ground and Rebel Bean both have tonnes of personality. It is a combination that works. It has energy. Busyness. It is the kind of place you look for in every town. The place where they know your name, and you get a great coffee with an awesome cinnamon bun, that was roasted and baked by the people of the town that morning.

The Two Cowboys & A Camera never drives past Home Ground. It is our people. Please join us in supporting our locals.

Hendrik van Wyk
Rebel Cowboy

Get rewarded for supporting our local Producers: Receive special offers and invitations from the Two Cowboys and our Producers when you subscribe to our email list.

We are a content company. We earn our livelihood from producing great content about inspiring people and their stories. We use Patreon to help us earn from our work. It allows us to have a closer relationship with our collaborators and grow our audience. If you Sponsor us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/twocowboys or Donate to our cause on GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/twocowboys we can do a lot more for you, your business, event or community.

Photos

Yes We Do

Busy, Busy

Okotoks' Coffee

Rebel Beans 

Hmmmm, Aaaaahh