Whether you like to shop or eat, events this weekend have got you covered. If you like to shop and eat, that works too.
Between a beefy fundraiser and a celebration of the collective that could, here’s what’s shaking in and around Calgary.
This weekend, Market Collective is celebrating its 9th anniversary with its largest event yet. More than 150 designers and artisans will fill the Yellow Warehouse in Inglewood for three days of shopping, food and music.
It’s a move up from where founders Angel Guerra and Angela Dione started. Back in 2008, their idea to create a place that would support local artists found a home in the Carpenter’s Union Hall.
This weekend, they will fill a warehouse.
For more than a third of the artisans, this will be their first time taking part in Market Collective. Joining them are old favourites, including Coutu Kitsch and Velour Clothing Exchange – both of which have evolved from their vendor days to permanent locations.
Along with wares for sale, food trucks (see, food and shopping!) and live music, the collective will play host to interactive installations throughout the space.
If you want to make sure you get your body moving this weekend, you can check out the collective’s annual Bike Scavenger Hunt on Sunday, from noon to 4 p.m., or pedal without a destination with four free 25-minute YYC Cycle Classes. Junction 9 is hosting two 50-minute yoga classes, as well.
Market Collective kicks off Friday from 4 to 9 p.m. and then runs through the rest of the weekend, 10 to 6 on both Saturday and Sunday.
For more information or to see a list of all the artisans taking part, head to the Market Collective site.
If your tastes, literally and figuratively, tend more toward eating adventures, you can head south on the Cowboy Trail to the Bar U Ranch National Historic Site. There, you can get a little taste of cowboy cuisine with some authentic western stew made with a recipe from The Canadian Cowboy Cookbook.
Throughout the weekend, in exchange for a donation that will go to the Salvation Army, earmarked for those affected by the BC wildfires, you can grab some stew and settle down to eat it where the Bar U range riders tuck into theirs. (You can also purchase a signed copy of the limited edition cookbook, so you can make it again at home.)
The Cowboy Cuisine event, done in partnership with Parks Canada and Alberta Beef, runs Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Stick around for the Bar U’s Harvest and Heavy Horse weekend and watch as the horses are put through their paces in competition.
Gwendolyn Richards is a Calgary-based food writer and the author of Pucker: A Cookbook for Citrus Lovers. She regularly contributes to Avenue Magazine, the Calgary Herald and is the restaurant columnist for Where Calgary. She shares her cooking and eating adventures – and occasionally some of her shoes – on Twitter and Instagram at @gwendolynmr.
