“Feast in the Mountains” – Whistler’s Unique Celebration

This time being in Beautiful British Columbia, I passed Vancouver and continued driving Highway 99, the Sea to Sky Highway, up to Whistler, the Host Mountain Resort of the 2010 Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games. Filled with utmost curiosity I was off to an event in Whistler’s Rebagliati Park where I would participate in celebrating the “connection between farm and fork” with a Feast in the Mountains!

In this inaugural year of Feast in the Mountains the Chefs represent Whistler’s brightest culinary talents and some of the finest BC beverages.

With the wine glass and a menu received at the entrance, I walked from booth to booth various times, tasting beautiful arranged tidbits of food in the order they appealed to my palate (and personal sense of menu order). While taking my time, I ventured to the quieter booths of the producers of that bounty. “Amongst the beauty of these mountains lie fertile lands that have long produced food for this valley and beyond. Upon that land a small number of committed farmers toil without glamour or acclaim to ensure the integrity of our food chain. This event is inspired by them – their commitment in the face of great challenges, their passion for the land that sustains us”, writes Astrid Cameron, Co-founder/Co-producer of Feast in the Mountains.

Furthermore, several organizations were represented; I encourage you to check them out:

Slow Food, an international organization that was founded in 1986 as a response to the standardizing effects of fast food and the fast life. It supports good, clean and fair food. Ocean Wise, Canada’s leading sustainable seafood restaurant program, Green Table, a network of sustainable foodservice and their suppliers in the greater Vancouver, BC area (although foodservices from elsewhere are welcome), and Farm Folk/City Folk, an organization that connects farm and city and that focuses on cultivating a local, sustainable food system.

I really liked the relaxed atmosphere full of laughter that comes along naturally with good quality food and drink (especially in an outside setting). Yes, it was a great feast in the mountains – and also a conscious one that celebrated the whole food chain and gives dining out again a meaning of true hospitality.

Find all pictures taken at this event at our flickr site

The “American Track” is international – www.amtrak.com

Amtrak (the National Railroad Passenger Corporation) is the transportation for enjoying the journey while traveling the US, as well as Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal in Canada.

Amtrak took its international approach very thorough and translated its entire content into Spanish and German language. I explored the German part and I am pretty sure that the Spanish is of equal excellence:

Portal (to the various languages): When arriving at www.amtrak.com, you clearly can see the links in the native language ‘Español‘ and ‘Deutsch‘ written vs. the sometimes ambiguous flags that are used to indicate a foreign language page.

Images: Images with text are translated, special offer picture ads, even the search button are translated for the German visitor. It gives the whole website a very integrated look and feel.

Customer Service: The German traveler finds all info on individual Amtrak stations, can search for current special offers, latest information on critical issues (such as swine flu), and use the reservation system in its native language. Amtrak provides an interactive map to search routes and plan trips which is in English, yet it is acceptable because the search goes via an image map of the US or by station and region names. And in case German visitors don’t find an answer in the question and answer section of the website, they can go to the contact page and submit their request… the answer they receive will be in German.

Don’t gross out the world…

Following link I received today via email. It is an amusing and educational short quiz to test your international restaurant etiquette:

www.fekids.com/img/kln/flash/DontGrossOutTheWorld.swf

Have fun!

10th Anniversary of Chef Wayne in Andaluca

Yesterday, I was honored being a guest at Chef Wayne’s 10-year anniversary at Andaluca.

I liked the warm welcome by the Chef himself, the background music creating the Andaluca atmosphere, and the delicious food that puzzled my taste buds with new sensations (I definitely want to go back to taste more). I was faszinated by the stories, the journey, the achievements shared about Wayne, his thanks to his crew and team in the kitchen. I enjoyed the variety of interesting people I met – his friends, family and other foodies.

Wayne, I wish you all the best for your journey ahead.

photo credit: Lacey Lybecker of LovingLocalFood. Thank you Lacey!

chocolate – Schokolade – qiaokeli – chocolatl

Following is a guest post from my friend Laura, Swedish to English translator. It is originally published in “The Northwest Linguist”

Cultural Corner

By Laura A. Wideburg

 

“Why not write a Cultural Corner on chocolate?” asked Kenny Barger at the annual WITS Board meeting. “Everybody’s interested in chocolate.”

Chocolate is made from the cocoa bean, and the cocoa plant is native to the Americas. The word has become international today: chocolat in French, Schokolade in German and qiaokeli in Mandarin Chinese. Many people assume that the word is borrowed from Spanish chocolate, and it is true that Spanish was the medium from which this word entered the international arena. But the truth of the matter is that Spanish borrowed the word chocolatl from the Nahuatl language, a native language of Mexico. Nahuatl, not surprisingly, is also the language of origin for cacao (cocoa is derived from this word as well): cacahuatl.

Other words borrowed from Nahuatl which have entered the English language include tomato (tomatl), coyote (coyotl), shack (xacatli), avocado (ahuacatl) and the place names Mexico and Guatemala. Nahuatl is a major Aztec language and a lingua franca in Central America at the time of the Spanish conquest. Nahuatl is still spoken today and is one of the largest Native languages in the Western Hemisphere with almost 2 million speakers.

The sound combination “tl” in Nahuatl should be well-known to Pacific Northwesterners. It is the sound which appears in “Se-a-tl”, the Luhotsheed name for the Duwamish leader from whom the city of Seattle derives its name.

Prior to European arrival, there were thousands of Native languages spoken on this side of the planet, of which barely 300 remain as living languages spoken by at least one person. In the United States, the largest languages are Navajo (Diné), with 200,000 speakers, Ojibwe, Cree and Lakota. The languages which had the most influence on American English are Algonquin languages (including Wampanoag spoken by the Wampanoag Nation, whose people aided the Pilgrims in 1620 and who still live in Massachusetts today) and Lenni-Lenape (spoken by the Lenni and Lenape Nations previously known as the Delaware, and found in the Central Atlantic states, including the area where Washington, D.C. is now located).

Just think, every time you bite into a piece of chocolate or sip a cup of cocoa, you are using a word you have received from the Aztec Nation and the Nahuatl language!

Tender at the Bone – Continued

A Spanish bistro in the heart of the city, in a house individually shaped through history since 1930, with murals depicting a fairy tale from the founder of modern Russian literature, Alexander Pushkin, with just enough seating that the Chef can greet every guest personally and still cook their meals – with a careful selected team, of course. This is Olivar, and it is the perfect setting for a small personal event with food writer Ruth Reichl and those special fans who love food, write consistently, explore continuously new recipes – yes, I am speaking of the food blog writers of Seattle.

Keren Brown of Keren Brown Media made it all happen and we had a wonderful dialog with Ruth Reichl where we not only talked about food but also about women and more specifically mothers, and in particular about the relationship of child and mother – about Ruth’s latest book “Not becoming my Mother”. It was Ruth’s big challenge to write it, pushed beyond her comfort zone as food memoirs writer and editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine, and into a realm of emotions, briskly ones, because they start as early as in the womb. It changed Ruth’s understanding of her mother completely, filled her with tenderness and love for her – to the bones.

After the dialog, Chef Philippe Thomelin served appetizer, tender, brisk and unique as his restaurant and the event with Ruth Reichl.

 

Keren Brown

Ruth Reichl

Including links in your blog entry

The World Wide Web is a world wide web, indeed. It is living through all the links within the websites that link to each other – and blogs add an even greater dynamic to it – this is what makes your web presence interesting, what makes people coming back to it, that’s why people link to your website and blog. With that, give that karma wheel momentum and add links to your blog:

The link function in your blog (i.e. www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com) works similar to the function in Microsoft Word. Highlight the text you want to add a link to, look for a link icon in the tools bar (above the field where you enter the text) and click it. A pop-up window allows you to enter the web address to where you want to link to. If you can chose the “target” [location of the link], select “_blank” or “open link in a new window” for linking to someone else’s website or blog (i.e. your local Chamber of Commerce or the restaurant affiliated to your hotel). Chose “open link in the same window” (or some similar wordings) for linking within your own blog (i.e. referencing a previous blog entry of yours). Click “ok” and you can see that the highlighted text you added a link to is underlined and presented in a different color.

Start connecting with the world from your first blog entry on and enter the world wide WEB, literally.

Modify "target"

 

 

Link icon

What is the definition of social marketing???

Wikipedia starts its definition with:

“Social marketing is the systematic application of marketing along with other concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good.”

Furthermore, Wikipedia defines that originally, the primary goal of ’social marketing’ is ’social good’, whereas in ‘commercial marketing’ the primary aim is ‘financial’, what does not mean that the commercial marketers can’t add to the common good at the same time.

Social marketing in the question above refers to social media marketing.

“Social media marketing is an engagement with online communities to generate exposure, opportunity and sales. The number-one advantage is generating exposure for the business, followed by increasing traffic and building new business partnerships.”

Tools commonly used for social media marketing include Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn

Well, there is another concept, called Mashup. It came to my mind when pondering on this social marketing question and seeing following publicity in downtown San Francisco.

Tired of Twitter?

One day after the class I received an email:

For those tired of Twittertalk how about Flutter instead?

Three Chicks on Social Marketing

Nems and Jayme of Three Chicks Catering were teaching a Social Marketing class at Clover Park Technical College. As I recently entered the world of Social Marketing I hoped to get more info on navigating through that ultimate NetWorld.

The class was an unlimited never-ending flow of information of different mind sets, social website names, intro to the ‘new’ language, how to start and learn swimming, go with the flow with your own constant expanding net of ‘friends’, ‘connections’, ‘followers’, etc.  

Nems and Jayme were such an inspiration that I am finally back on blogging, joined Twitter right away, will complete my profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, integrate Skype much more effectively in my communications – so ‘follow me’ and see what’s happening…

Thank you Nems and Jayme!!!