By Shari Peterson
I spend a lot of time thinking about colour. It is almost always about colour for our home, places we work, dine, or spend indoors. I don’t often think about the colour of our food, unless I see it in a wonderful display. When I was asked to consider food in Saanich and perhaps tie in with colour, I immediately thought, how fun! This gives me a chance to look at my local supermarket differently or spend a little more time looking at my meal before eating it. The first place to view beautiful rich colour in our local foods is to find where it is grown and see it in its natural state. This is an absolutely perfect time of year to see an abundant crop of fresh colourful fruit.
Galey Farms on Blenkinsop Rd is the best place in Saanich to find local strawberries freshly picked the same day you buy. This year the berries were huge, juicy, full of flavour and of course bright and shiny red! The colour of ripe strawberries are a true red. When I researched online the definition of the colour of strawberries, I kept coming across pinkier tones. I’m not sure why the association of strawberry falls to the pink side, may be for the colour of strawberry ice cream? In any case, we don’t want to eat our strawberries pink, or too ripe when they start going dark and brown. So hopefully you had a chance to eat some local berries this year, straight from the farm!
Out for my Sunday morning run, I came across this cherry tree in Broadmead. I couldn’t believe how early and full the tree was, and the crows hadn’t found it yet! The colour cherry can relate to three common but different kinds of cherries, Bing, Black, or Royal Ann varieties. The most common colour connotation is a deep rich red bing cherry. These are the cherries that fall on the slightly warmer side of red, yet when we think of cherry, it tends to be on the cool side of red. So perhaps cherry can be both. I like to think cherry red is cheerful, racy, and irresistible whether it’s the colour of a dress, lipstick or a new car.
In 10 years, we have never had so many apples. Our beautiful green apples make wonderful pie and apple sauce. They are a little bitter to eat (but my yellow lab doesn’t think so) but every year I always get a couple of batches of apple sauce. This particular shade of apple green, I find quite pleasant and easy on the eye. It is restful and soothing. I’ve suggested apple green as an accent colour to clients for many years, it goes beautiful with greys, browns, and most earth tones. Anyway, this year we may be eating a lot of pie and apple crisps!
