Lola: A Honey of a Gal!

I was so pleased to see Lola Canola at the downtown farmer's market yesterday. I met her two years ago when I performed Madame Beespeaker at the same market. She was selling honey left and right--people just couldn't get enough of it, and they wanted the really big buckets. She says that people here have become passionate about eating local.

I love these prayer flags Lola made with the word "honey" in several different languages.

Kids love the honey sticks. The all time favorite is root beer flavor. The sour flavors are popular with teenagers.

"Do you dream about bees," I ask her? "Yes I do," she said, and I worry about them. I dream about our bees, about moths getting into the honey because I forget to put the lid on the hive." Last night I dreamed there was a zucchini at the market that was so big that someone made a table out of it. That'd be one big zuke.


This honey is made from alfalfa nectar. People were asking what to do when it crystallizes. "Just gently heat it up," she says. Then she explained how you can place the jar in a water bath in a pot of hot water until it melts down into the liquid state. I bought a chunk of honeycomb to melt onto my porridge in the morning. Yum.

Michael Fernandes told me that he lived in a town where there was a beekeeper who always had a few stray bees flying around him as he walked through the town. (I suspect they were wasps attracted to the traces of honey on his skin and clothing.) One woman in the town who got stung by a bee (or was it a wasp?) tried to sue the beekeeper for damages. The case was thrown out of court.

Lunch at Leva, Sweets at Cibo

It's a gorgeous fall afternoon, warm and sunny with the leaves starting to turn from green to orange and yellow, so Edmonton performance artist Lance McLean and I headed over the bridge for lunch on the south side in the university district. Lance thought I might like Leva because they use fresh, local ingredients, and he was right. I had a delicious thin-crust pizza with porcini cream, Cambozola, mozzarella, potato, and mushrooms. We talked about life, the universe, and performance art while black and white magpies dove through the yellowing trees over head. I had a view of the the herb garden planted in the boulevard in front of the café where they grow the basil for their margherita pizzas.

Next, we headed to Cibo for dessert, which is right by the Garneau Theatre. I had read that they had hired a fancy French chef for the desserts, but they were decidedly Italian. I had the tiramisu and Lance had a nutty gelato. They were both good, but the dessert counter at Leva had looked a bit more interesting, just so ya know. I know there's a debate going on out there on which place has the best gelati. Get out there and enjoy the sunshine, Edmontonians! Tonight we party at the pool.