Thoughts From My Belly

The Dosanj Family Presents a Cheque to Heart and Stroke

First,  congratulations and thank you to the entire Dosanj family and the great staff at Poppadoms for putting on an incredible evening of food and entertainment for a great cause. If you follow my tweets, you’ll know how much I enjoyed the “Indian Summer” event, but you won’t know that they managed to raise $7304 for the B.C. Heart and Stroke Foundation.

Secondly, I want to apologize for my absence over the last few weeks. As many of you know, I have chaired the Smoke On The Water BBQ Festival for the last two year. Just like last year, the event kept me very busy in the days leading up to in and the week or two following but things are now back to normal. A big thank you to all our sponsors and volunteers for helping the event to grow into one of Kelowna’s biggest food events in just four short years. We had great weather and even better food which lead to around 8000-10,000 people coming down to the event to enjoys the sights, sounds, and flavours.

I should also add a big congratulations to Chef James Hanna and Raudz Regional Grill for their first place finish in the Tabasco Restaurant Cookoff at Smoke On The Water. Their Dungeness Crab Cake was absolutely incredible! All of the participants did an incredible job this year creating not only delicious, but also absolutely gorgeous Tabasco themed dishes.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t congratulate Chef Neil Schroeter of Okanagan Street Foods (at the Kelowna Farmer’s Market every Saturday!) on being the highest placing local team in the Pro BBQ Competition at Smoke On the Water. He finished 4th out of 20 teams from all over the Pacific-Northwest in just his 2nd BBQ competition ever! I would also like to thank our local first time competitors: Filthy Boar BBQ, Sausage Party, Heart of Texas BBQ, The Smoke Show, Lord Pork’n Noise, and The Smokin’ Newbies.