{"id":33107,"date":"2023-06-01T12:26:41","date_gmt":"2023-06-01T16:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=33107"},"modified":"2023-06-01T12:26:43","modified_gmt":"2023-06-01T16:26:43","slug":"seasonings-is-catering-company-with-a-cause-with-yrfn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/seasonings-is-catering-company-with-a-cause-with-yrfn\/","title":{"rendered":"Seasonings is catering company with a cause with YRFN"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A new local catering company is cooking for a cause, working to highlight the realities of food insecurity while highlighting local solutions while adding flavour to your event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seasonings is a new initiative launched by the York Region Food Network and its resident Chef Maxine Knight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For events big and small, offerings from Seasonings highlight local, seasonal produce with proceeds going back to York Region Food Network\u2019s (YRFN) food security and education initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe create our food seasonally and we don\u2019t necessarily like to stick to a recipe,\u201d says Chef Knight. \u201cWe always try to move through the seasons with whatever we choose to prepare. As we were doing this, and people often enjoy the food we make when we have events here or cooking classes, we thought this was a great way to support the work we do. We can also show people outside of our immediate communities we work with what we do through the catering menu, how we prepare the food and have those healthy and nutritious foods prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seasonings started with the idea of how to share this concept with a wider audience while also bringing more awareness to the YRFN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Chef Maxine started her culinary career, she says she wanted to be a \u201cbig name\u201d and worked in many different environments from fine dining to vegan raw catering. But, when she first stepped into the YRFN\u2019s community kitchen on Industrial Parkway North, she said the \u201creality of food hit me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll the environments I cooked in, for the most part, were for people who maybe had a little bit more disposable resources; you could take a nice high-end vacation or got to a fine dining restaurant,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I came here, I started working more with just the community. I was working with a lot of immigrant communities and saw how passionate, creative [they were] and how differently people did things. When you start getting to know people, you start hearing the challenges and the struggles. It became a passion of just understanding that food is a right and we should all have it \u2013 and not everybody does. That reality started to hit me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCooking to promote either one\u2019s self, a style of cuisine, or something like that, completely lost its appeal and it was the reality that food is a right everyone should have but they don\u2019t spurred on my interest in wanting to be here, work with communities, and use foods as a vehicle to encourage that community-building, breaking down racial barriers to encourage knowledge about the benefits of good food and giving access to fresh food that maybe some communities don\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The establishment of Seasonings, it is hoped, will help further that fresh food goal \u2013 featuring a small but full menu of items that are just that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three main items are currently on the menu, including a potato and bacon quiche using local veggies, including garlic scapes for an extra punch of flavour, along with spinach, kale, and\/or Swiss chard, harvested from the YRFN\u2019s community gardens and sourced from local farmers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Falafel are another menu option, seasoned with local herbs, and, finally, there\u2019s a sandwich to suit many tastes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho doesn\u2019t want a good, tasty sandwich?\u201d asks Chef Maxine. \u201cIt\u2019s made from roasted veggies like onions, mushroom, zucchini, and eggplant, or it might be sweet potato. Depending on what it is, it\u2019s a really nice, hearty, vegetarian-based sandwich with a really nice, zesty, sundried tomato and pesto mayo. Each of those options come with a side salad reflecting the season we\u2019re in. During the summer months, you\u2019re going to see more of the leafy things, fresher produce. Over the colder months, more of our grains and legumes that are made into a salad. There\u2019s a lot of flexibility, lots of vegetarian options, and lots of gluten-free options as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSpices and herbs are the backbone. If your food isn\u2019t seasoned properly \u2013 pun intended \u2013 it really falls flat. When we eat something, we want to make sure the flavours are coming alive. My background is the Caribbean where we use a lot of herbs in our cooking. You\u2019ll find a lot of that influence in our food. The flavour profile will depend on what the actual dish is that we\u2019re making and we can definitely expect to have bursts of flavour, some interest and excitement from whatever it is we make.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more on the York Region Food Network, visit yrfn.ca.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new local catering company is cooking for a cause, working to highlight the realities of food insecurity while highlighting local solutions while adding flavour to your event. Seasonings is a new initiative launched by the York Region Food Network and its resident Chef Maxine Knight. For events big and small, offerings from Seasonings highlight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":33109,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/2023-06-01-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8BZ","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 13:14:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}