Soupalicious is a soup-tasting and harvest celebration involving local gardeners, farmers, restaurants and chefs, featuring fresh, locally grown produce and showcasing the local community’s culinary talents through the creation of signature soups for delightful tasting. Our event on October 1st, 2022 was a huge success!
It was stunning weather (especially compared to last year’s downpour!) to be out at the farm - sunny and 21 degrees, with all the trees turning yellow around us. Farmers, Chefs, Artisans, Musicians, foodies, gardeners, kids, teens, adults, all milling about and enjoying the magic of a fall day on the farm. Some folks eager to taste every soup, (some even going back for seconds of their favourites!) and others playing giant connect-4 and other yard games loaned to us from the team at Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Association Farmers’ Market. Families and friends were uniting by the Harvest Stage where we enjoyed amazing tunes from Doug Waite and Heather Blush all day long. Shoppers milled about the artisan market supporting local makers and growers and picking up free books from The Little Red Reading House. Councillor Gian-Carlo Carra even took to the stage to weigh our giant pumpkins - 21lbs was our biggest this year! It was truly a community-driven day.
“My husband and I attended Soupalicious last weekend and it was excellent! Really fun event and it was such a beautiful day. Please pass along my appreciation and congratulations to the volunteers and event planners on a really great (and delicious) event!” - Lynne, Casual Soup Sampler
This event relied on the fantastic contributions of so many community members...
Thank you to our amazing soup creator line-up, with food producers from Shirley’s Greenhouse, Forage and Farm, Summit Hill Farm, Micro YYC, The Basil Ranch, Chef’s Farmer, Blue Mountain Biodynamic Farms, Root and Regenerate Urban Farms, and chefs from Fire and Flora, Donna Mac YYC, Light Cellar, The Cookbook Co. Cooks, Devour Catering, Glencoe Club, Milpa, Pranzo Italiano, and Pomeroy Kananaskis Mountain Lodge.
We would also like to thank the local vendors who attended our first Soupalicious Artisan Market and contributed to the community atmosphere of our event: Little Red Reading House, Burnt Glass Studio, Field and Bees, Enlightened Herb Cannabis, Gypsy Wishcraft, Hook Line and Tinker, and Flow Into Motion. We were honoured to have you join us!
Our team of volunteers contributed greatly to making this event so successful. We can’t say enough thank you’s to the individual folks who took the time to come out as well as the team from Sir Winston Churchill High School. And a great big thank you to Fresh Routes and Soup Sisters for your infrastructure support of tables and tents - these details gave our event structure and significantly added to the vibe.
Thank you all! Your investment of time and energy does not go unnoticed!
WINNERS
The winners of the First Place Soup Pot Award was determined by our dedicated duo of judges; Elizabeth Chorney-Booth and Marcello DeCintio. After careful deliberation, they decided on Micro YYC & Donna Mac’s Vegetarian Tortilla Soup. The team continues as our reigning Soupalicious champions!
The People’s Choice Award, ‘The Golden Ladle’, was chosen by your votes, and presented to The Basil Ranch and Light Cellar for their Lion's Mane and Oyster Mushroom Potage. Thank you to all our soup creators for blessing us with their delicious creations. There wasn’t a soup creator team without people’s choice votes, so they all were someone's favourite!
Over the day, we raised $3400 towards the build-out of the new year-round greenhouse at Highfield, where we will grow food and meet with our community no matter the weather!
It was a tremendous privilege to host the second annual Soupalicious at Highfield Regenerative Farm this year. Soupalicious is the kind of event that we are so proud to host. Watching the community come together over food to celebrate an abundance of local talent in and around Calgary, and doing so all in support of local food access and land revitalization is truly remarkable and inspiring. Thank you for making Soupalicious Calgary 2022 a great success!
Interested in participating next year?? Let us know!