My daily bread...
Well, hello fall, I swear it happened overnight.
One minute everything was still green, and suddenly the trees have turned, the mornings have that unmistakable little fall chill, and we’re looking at the last full week of September. And what a beauty of a week it’s shaping up to be, sunshine, warm afternoons and temperatures in the low 20's. We’ll take every single one of them.
The Farmers Market is absolutely bursting right now, and of course I couldn’t help myself this weekend. Franbetta had the sweetest little mini-pumpkin centrepieces, and a few of those may have followed me back to Rise. You’ll spot them around the café this week.
And yes, I know I sound like a broken record, but use that patio while we’ve got it! These next couple of weeks could be some of the prettiest patio days of the whole year.
A little heads-up when you come by this week: our roof is being redone, so things around the building may be slightly more congested than usual. We’ll do our very best to keep parking and access as easy as possible while they’re working.
Meanwhile, inside Rise, we’ve been finding our fall rhythm and apparently you’re loving it.
Last week was our first full go at the new lunch lineup. Wednesday’s Farmers Market Chicken Noodle Soup - sold out. Thursday’s Golden Harvest Rice Bowl - sold out. And Friday’s Ginger Beef Pizza - sold out too.💛
Okay then. I think we’ve got ourselves a plan.
Mondays and Tuesdays will keep rolling with all our usual grab-and-go goodness, wraps, salads and everything else we manage to tuck into those fridges. Sourdough bagels are back on Tuesdays, Wednesday is Soup Day, Thursday we’ll cook up a lunch special, and Friday is, of course, TGIF Pizza Day.
So, let’s get into it...
Monday Morning at Rise ☕️
Doors open at 7am, the coffee bar is ready, the pastry counter is filling up, and yes, pie has officially become a regular around here. There will be something beautiful waiting on that counter for you.
And speaking of coffee...
Pumpkin Spice Lattes have officially hit Rise.
I can’t even remember if I properly told you about these last week, but they are here and, of course, we make our pumpkin spice concentrate in-house. We start with real pumpkin purée, freeze-dry it, grind it into a powder, and build our concentrate from there. The pumpkin flavour is intense, the spices are warm and cozy, and paired with our Birdy Coffee espresso... it is pretty darn delicious.
As the morning rolls along, the kitchen keeps filling things up.
This week we’re keeping the wraps to Grilled Chicken, and we’ll have those out as quickly as our Monday-morning hands can get them made.
And, of course, the Rise BLT is ready whenever you are. Breakfast at 7am... absolutely. Lunch... obviously. Somewhere in between? Even better. Toasted focaccia, bacon, fried egg and all the good stuff — all day, every day.
Our salad bowls take a little longer. We chop, roast, toss and build those fresh Monday morning, so look for them closer to lunchtime.
And one little reminder: you won’t find our sourdough loaves on the shelf Monday morning. Sourdough is a two-day process around here, so we’ll get that dough started Monday and have fresh baked loaves ready for you Tuesday through Friday.
Coffee first. Then we just keep filling the place up from there.💛
Tomatoes...
Can we just talk about the heirloom tomatoes I’ve been picking up from the Loveland Acres booth at the Farmers Market?
They have been absolutely spectacular these last couple of weeks, every color, every shape, and so full of flavor. I've been hauling them back to Rise and we have been using them in every little corner of the kitchen we possibly can.
They’ve been making their way into our bruschetta, onto lunch plates, into salads and now into something brand new we’ve been playing with.
And that brings us to our latest little kitchen experiment...
Meet the Bialy.
Last week we did a little kitchen testing on bialys, pronounced bee-AH-lee and oh my gosh, these are fun/delicious!
If you’ve never had one, think of something that looks a little like a bagel without the hole. Instead, there’s a beautiful little depression in the center that is just begging to be filled with something delicious.
We’ve taken ours in a very Rise direction.
A soft sourdough dough, rolled in our Everything Bagel Spice mix, gently pressed in the center and filled with our creamy queso, garlic cheese spread, then topped with a thick slice of one of those gorgeous heirloom tomatoes and a crumble of chevre before heading into the oven.
Savory. Cheesy. Sourdough-y. Everything-spiced. Tomato-y. Crazy goodness.
And Wednesday is their day, so when you come in for your Wednesday soup, you’ll have options: grab one of our beautiful sourdough milk buns alongside your bowl, or try a warm savory bialy. And honestly, one of these with a coffee sounds like a pretty great little breakfast or mid-morning snack all on its own.💛
Sourdough line-up...
Monday - no sourdough loaves
Tuesday - Red Fife Country Loaf and Superseed Multigrain Loaf and Sourdough Bagels (Everything Spice & Pumpernickel)
Wednesday - Classic 60/40 Brown Loaf and Organic 100% Whole Grain Dark Rye Loaf and Sourdough Milk Buns and Bialys
Thursday - Light Rye Loaves
Friday - Red Fife Country Loaves & Sourdough Cinnamon Buns
LUNCH AT RISE | WEDNESDAY • THURSDAY • FRIDAY
WEDNESDAY | SOUP DAY
Roasted Corn, Bacon & Squash Chowder
We’re starting with a rich house-made chicken stock because with the amount of chicken you people have us roasting and grilling around here, you better believe we’re making use of every last bit of goodness left behind on the pan.
Then in goes roasted corn, beautiful butternut and kabocha squash, potatoes, leeks, onions and all those good market vegetables I've been hauling into the kitchen.
We’ll purée just enough of the roasted squash and potatoes back into the broth to make it thick and creamy, while still leaving lots of beautiful chunks and texture.
And hell yes, there will be bacon.
Smoky, salty little pieces running through all that sweet roasted corn and squash
We start ladeling bowls at 11am, and we’ll have litres to grab-and-go while they last.
And maybe your bowl needs a sourdough milk bun alongside it... or one of those brand-new bialys we were just talking about.
Just saying.💛
THURSDAY | HOT LUNCH
Old's College Bratwurst/Beef Onion Sausage on Focaccia Bun
You’ll hear more about my little weekend field trip later in the newsletter, but let’s just say it happened to take me right past Old's College... and there was absolutely no way I was driving by without stopping.
So Thursday lunch is going to be a good one.
I brought back some of those incredible Old's College bratwursts you may remember from Open Farm Days a few years ago, along with their Onion Beef Sausages so you’ll have your choice. Brats - pork, onion beef - no pork.
We’re grilling them up and tucking them into a warm Rise focaccia bun, then loading them with mustard aioli, fried onions, warm cheese sauce, our Dill Pickle & Heirloom Tomato Relish, and a little pile of fresh microgreens to finish it all off.
Messy? Probably.
Worth it? Absolutely.
Thursday lunch starts at 11am. and we’ll keep grilling until we run out.💛
FRIDAY | TGIF PIZZA
The September Garden 🌿🍅
We’re giving the garden the whole pizza this week.
We’ll start with our creamy garlic queso base which has pretty much become a Rise pizza signature around here and then pile it high with roasted red beets, cabbage, carrots, onions, zucchini, cauliflower and peppers. A good blanket of mozzarella, and into the oven it goes.
But you know we’re not finished when the pizza comes out of the oven.
That’s when we load it up with garlic aioli, fresh greens, a thick slice of those beautiful Loveland Acres heirloom tomatoes, a drizzle of Parthena balsamic, cracked black pepper and a little Vancouver Island flaked sea salt.
And then comes the good part.
Remember those crispy shredded potatoes we piled onto our Bacon Cheeseburger Pizza a couple of weeks ago?
We’re doing it again.
Golden, crispy, herby little tangles of potato scattered right over the top.
Yep, The September Garden is completely vegetarian but I have a feeling nobody is going to be asking where the meat went.
Pizza coming out of the oven at 11am. See you there.💛
CHEESECAKE FRIDAY - Salted Caramel Apple 🍎
Is there anyone with an apple tree in their backyard right now who isn’t staring at approximately 60 pounds of apples wondering what the hell they’re going to do with them?
September in Alberta. 😂
Well, we know what we’re doing with ours.
This week’s cheesecake starts with a brown butter graham crust, followed by our classic New York cheesecake loaded with little pieces of roasted cinnamon apple and ribbons of salted caramel running right through it.
And we’re not stopping there.
Partway through the bake, we’re layering the whole top with thinly sliced apples tossed with brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger and a little salt. Another drizzle of salted caramel goes over those, followed by a buttery brown sugar oat crumble, and then the whole thing heads back into the oven to finish baking.
So essentially...
New York cheesecake meets apple crisp meets salted caramel.
Once it’s chilled and ready for Friday, we’ll finish it with Chantilly around the edges and because apparently we have no restraint whatsoever a little more salted caramel.
It’s apple season. We’re leaning all the way in.💛
A Little Back-Road Road Trip💛
Sometimes you just need to rearrange the weekend.
On Thursday, a post popped up on my Instagram from an amazing woman I know down in Cremona. She was having a sale, I hadn’t managed to make it out there once this year, and I immediately thought, I have to go.
Did it make the rest of my weekend a little crazy? Yep.
Did I care? Nope.
I needed some back roads, the windows down, great music playing, solo road trip and it did not disappoint.
Of course, I came home with a few treasures.
One of them is the sweetest little vintage drop-leaf kitchen table with a wood-grain top that is somehow slightly ridiculous and absolutely perfect at the same time. 😂 It fits into Rise like it was meant to be there, and you’ll see it first crack Monday morning when you come for coffee.
And then I found the bus.
If you know me, you know I have a little grandson and right now, The Wheels on the Bus is pretty much the soundtrack of our lives. Sitting there was an old Fisher-Price bus, complete with all the little people and even the little dog. I’m almost positive I had one just like it when I was a kid.
Well, obviously that came home too.
It got a good scrub and sanitize in the kitchen sink this weekend, and it is officially ready for its new life with Raiden.
It was just one of those really great days.
And with this beautiful stretch of September weather ahead of us, I hope you’re finding your own ways to squeeze every last drop out of it too. Take the back road. Go camping one more time. Sit on the patio. Roll the windows down. We all know what’s coming soon enough.❄️
Our patio is still open, the roof project is happening around us, and inside Rise it’s business as usual, coffee pouring, amazing food cooking and that kitchen of ours absolutely buzzing with creativity and all things delicious.
Come see us this week.
And I’ll be right back here next Sunday to tell you what we’ve gotten ourselves into next.💛
