Sift the dry ingredients. Cream butter and add to dry mix. Add rest of ingredients.
Roll to 1 inch thick and cut with cutter. Brush with butter and bake at 350ºF for 10 to 20 minutes.
Notes
This recipe comes from a fantastic cookbook prepared by the Friends of the Grist Mill in 2003 based on some of the most popular recipes in the Tea Room.
Preheat oven to 425°F. Use ungreased baking sheet.
Combine flour, salt, garlic powder, pepper, and cheese.
Add water to mix. Stir until forms soft dough.
Turn dough onto floured surface and knead about 10 minutes.
Place in greased bowl. Cover with damp cloth and rest at room temperature for 2 hours.
Divide dough into four portions. Roll each piece into very thin rounds 12 inches in diameter.
Transfer to baking sheet and brush lightly with beaten egg. Sprinkle sesame seeds on dough.
Bake 10 to 15 minutes until crisp.
Notes
This recipe comes from a fantastic cookbook prepared by the Friends of the Grist Mill in 2003 based on some of the most popular recipes in the Tea Room.
I’m writing to you today with a specific and critical request for our friends and supporters.
For the last decade, our dedicated team has worked tirelessly to protect, preserve and share the rich history of our beloved heritage site. We’ve invested heavily in our heritage gardens, facilities and educational content of the place. We’ve curated arts, culture and community events, playing host to special family events like reunions, weddings and celebrations of life. We’ve presented artisan markets, informative lectures and school tours. Throughout this journey, we’ve strived to be good neighbors, and honour the essence and efforts of those who have contributed to this exceptional place over the years.
We’ve accomplished this in spite of a unique set of challenges associated with our unusual situation: we get no operating funding from any level of government and shoulder the responsibility of maintaining the site—we even have to pay property tax on a piece of land we don’t own. We continue to do this because we care deeply about this place and our community—in many ways, this is the best and most impactful work we’ve ever done.
We’re blessed to have the guidance and support of so many wonderful people, yourselves included. Volunteers have played a crucial role in providing engaging experiences for tourists, supporting community events, and fundraising for special projects on site. Our patrons, friends and neighbours have been generous in their words of encouragement and enthusiasm for what we do. This community’s steadfast support has empowered us to carry out so much of this meaningful work.
Recent times have presented us with a seemingly unending series of challenges, however, from forest fires and the disruptive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to shifts in tourism and economic changes. This year, which we anticipated as an urgently-needed rebound, took an unexpected turn when another fire in August disrupted our busiest weeks, leaving our cherished site far quieter than it should have been. Our usual reserves have already been stretched thin by the last few years of difficulties, and this most recent set-back has tipped us into a tough situation.
What we need, most urgently, is immediate revenue to get us through the winter and into the start of next season. We have lots of activities and products available for you to purchase—we’re always willing to hustle for your support. Specifically, though, there a few things that would make the biggest impact on our cashflow right away and help ensure we can weather these challenges and build into an amazing 2024:
Pre-purchase Season Passes: By pre-purchasing a season pass for next year, you not only support us financially but also ensure your access to a year full of heritage, events, and cherished memories.
Book a Stay in Our Campground: Enjoy the tranquility and beauty of our campground by booking a stay. Your visit directly contributes to the maintenance and preservation of our beloved site.
Spread the Word: Your advocacy and word-of-mouth support are invaluable. Share your positive experiences and memories of the Grist Mill and Gardens with friends, family, and colleagues. Encourage them to explore and engage with our historical site and any of the things we do!
(If you want to make an even bigger impact, you can always make a donation to the Grist Mill Foundation, the volunteer-run charity associated with the site, or even talk to us about sponsoring one of our events or activities in 2024.)
Your contributions, whether through pre-purchasing passes, booking a stay, or spreading the word, will strengthen our efforts to overcome these current financial hurdles and continue our mission of preserving this significant heritage site.
We remain committed to providing a place where history breathes and nature thrives, but we cannot do it without your support. Let’s stand together to ensure that the legacy of the Grist Mill and Gardens perseveres for generations to come.
For those willing to offer their support or have any questions, please reach out to us at info@oldgristmill.ca.
Thank you for your unwavering support and belief in our shared heritage.
New cabinets and concrete countertops in our kitchen.
Through the off-season, we’ve been busy with all sorts of improvement projects around the site, from kitchen renovations and washroom upgrades to plumbing and electrical improvements. We’re also significantly expanding the deck around our Visitor’s Centre, reorganizing all our gardens (and adding some new ones) and much, much more!
As difficult as COVID has been for us (since we rely on tourist visits and hosting large events), we’ve been really fortunate in finding grants and other supports that are allowing us to make some much-needed improvements on the site.
A new wrap-around deck for our Visitor’s Centre makes the perfect place to enjoy lunch in our garden
We’re now in the process of installing new site furniture (benches, garbage barrels) as well as updated informational signage. In fact, the Grist Mill Foundation volunteer group will soon be offering up dedication plaques on our new benches as a special fundraiser for their work. Make sure you subscribe to our newsletter to be among the first to hear about this unique opportunity to commemorate a loved one or special event on our spectacular grounds.
New slab benches provide the perfect places to stop and contemplate the beauty around you.
We’re particularly excited about the upgrades behind the scenes, like all the improvements to our kitchen including new cabinets, concrete countertops, electrical upgrades as well as a new commercial range and oven that will give us even more capacity for our Pantry Share program, for catering special events here and elsewhere and for our popular lunch service.
Serious upgrades to our kitchen equipment!
We’re also excited about our ongoing garden upgrades, which are intended to bring back some of the incredible heritage seed research and preservation done by the amazing Sharon Rempel back in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. It’s truly amazing how many rare heritage varieties of food and ornamental plants she was able to collect, display and share. Although bringing back her work is a long-term project, this is the season that visitors will see the largest changes to our gardens as we massively reconfigure them in exciting ways!
With all this big work happening on site right now, we hope you can make plans to come visit us this summer, we’ve got some really big things to show you!
It may not look like much, but that little black box is running a fully-powered computer dedicated to listening to and analyzing birdsong on our site. Using microphones, data on the six thousand most common bird species around the world, and some amazing software, it can listen and analyze what it hears in real time.
This project started a little over a year ago when we first discovered an amazing iPhone app called BirdNET, a project out of the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology and the Chemnitz Institute of Technology. Using your phone’s microphone, you can record and submit bird calls to their system for near-instant analysis. On a walk or in your backyard, often you hear birds before you can see them and we loved being able to pull out our phones and record anytime we heard an interesting bird song.
Hour-by-hour breakdown of the species the box has identified this morning.
We couldn’t help but wonder how we could offer that feature as a service to those visiting our beautiful heritage site; because of our unique combination of tended gardens and old creekside cottonwoods, plus being on a major migratory pathway, we get an awful lot of interesting bird visitors. After a little research, we discovered that there were several efforts underway to take the key features of BirdNET and have them run on a kind of small hobby computer called a Raspberry Pi. This special software has been written by a small group of enthusiastic volunteers and is still in active development, constantly adding new features and improving reliability.
The process of setting up our bird box was a little technical, but we’re excited that we’ve now been collecting data for a week and hope to soon upgrade the microphone as well as put the whole thing in a solar-powered, weatherproof case. Eventually, we hope to give our visitors access to the recordings and statistics through our website as well as have some sort of automatically-updating signage so that site visitors know which bird species to watch out for as they tour the site.
A spectogram showing the sort of data the box uses to identify birds by their sounds. This image features a particularly chatty robin.
This is the second of a series of citizen-science projects we’re undertaking on site (the first was installing our own weather monitoring) and we hope to add more as we’re able–we’d love to be able to monitor the conditions of the creek running through the site (oxygen levels, water level, temperature, cloudiness, etc) for example. There is also people working on developing systems that can do the same real-time identification as our bird box, but for ultrasonic bat calls and insect buzzing. If you have ideas on other project that might suit our unique space, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Some of the many birds we’ve seen on-site in the past. We wonder what else we might hear…
Coordinate a Retreat, Schedule a Meeting, Create a Product, Start a Business, Record a Podcast, Organize a Dinner, Plan a Party, Arrange a Farmer’s Market, Harvest a Crop, Build a Community Resource, Establish an Institute, Run a Workshop, Develop a Prototype, Film a Vlog, and so much more…
Two years ago, we thought we were so smart… we’d just come up with a lovely pun to launch a campaign to encourage others to do all sorts of wonderful things here. We’d never had as many great ideas, or planned such an amazing schedule as we had planned for summer 2020, but then COVID happened–putting a stop to everything.
We’re optimistic about 2022, though, and so we’d like to try again… the “2020 Vision” pun doesn’t really work anymore, but maybe we can pretend this is 2020 version 2.0?
The Grist Mill and Gardens is more than just a lovely heritage site; it’s the perfect platform to build your own entrepreneurial opportunity. We’re now accepting pitches from the community for ways you would like to use this site in 2022. Maybe you want to host a retreat or special event, maybe this is the perfect place to grow or add value to a product you’ve always wanted to create, or maybe you have a whole new business you’d like to develop.
Among our many assets are the 12 acre site itself and its heritage buildings, lovely gardens, wide-open spaces, 5 acres of uncultivated farmland and creekside campground. We have A/V equipment suitable for presentations, concerts and more. Our (newly renovated!) inspected commercial kitchen is available after-hours and off-season with a variety of gear you might need. We also have online infrastructure like an ecommerce store and ticketing system as well as thousands of fans on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, email and more. We even have tables, chairs, string lights, chalkboards and all the bits and pieces that help make events here a success.
We definitely have our own plans for 2022 as we we hope to return to our usual series of community and private events, give tours and offer a range of workshops, presentations and concerts but we recognize that there’s room for so much more. Maybe you’ve got the perfect idea and the drive to make it happen…
Although we’re always willing to entertain good ideas, we’re in the middle of planning for the coming year and will be considering pitches submitted before March 15th, 2022 . We will keep whatever you submit confidential and you own your own ideas–if we can’t support your idea, you’re certainly welcome to take it elsewhere. (Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions along the way; email us at info@oldgristmill.ca.)
So, what’s your 2020-Two vision, and how can we help make it happen?
Submissions will be reviewed in the order received; we’ll be in touch within two weeks to schedule a meeting, either in person or by phone.
The Grist Mill and Gardens has now started planning our 2025 lecture and workshop series and we’re looking for speakers and hands-on presenters for a wide variety of topics.
We are a 12 acre BC heritage site in the heart of the Similkameen Valley featuring western Canada’s only working waterwheel-powered flour mill (built in 1877) and stunning ornamental, herb and vegetable gardens. History, agriculture and art combine in fascinating ways on our site and here are just some of the sorts of topics we’d love to see:
Lectures – These are offered on weekend afternoons or weekday evenings and are usually no more than an hour long. Weekend lectures are offered at no additional cost to visitors and seasons pass holders. We generally offer an honourarium for these presentations.
Hands-on Workshops – These are generally two or more hours long and run on weekday evenings or during half or full days on the weekend. They often have registration fees associated which are split with the presenter.
If you’re interested in presenting here in 2025 on these (or any other topic that seems relevant), please use the form below to tell us more about what you’d like to propose.
Please direct all questions to Chris Mathieson, Site Operator / General Manager at info@oldgristmill.ca and please share this with anyone else you think might be interested. Deadline to submit a proposal is March 15, 2025 and submissions will be considered in the order received.
As a heritage site with several acres of gardens, we’re always looking for new ways to use our gorgeous plants to tell stories; not only the stories of the plants themselves–where did they originate? how did they get here? what makes them important historically?–but also their broader uses and meanings. Many of our plants are edible, for example, or have special medicinal or artistic uses, or are otherwise just exceptionally cool.
Another way to look at plants, though, is through their symbolism. In the Victorian era, it was in vogue to use special meanings attached to different flowers to create bouquets that communicated a wide variety of sentiments that might be awkward or otherwise couldn’t be spoken aloud in prim-and-proper Victorian society. With the help of any one of many popular flower “dictionaries” available at the time, one could communicate blinding love, deep longing or crushing regret with a handful of carefully selected blooms. Even today, we still associate red roses with love.
This coming summer (2022), as part of the significant improvements we’re making to our gardens, we’ll also be making available pamphlets that will help you learn about the meaning of some of the key flowers we’ve planted on site and add an extra layer of meaning to your visit, if you’re interested.
We’re also excited to be selling some cards featuring lovely botanical illustrations that share some thoroughly modern sentiments. You can find those in our online store.
Warm the milk in a large heavy-bottomed pot, stirring continuously until it reaches 195F and then remove from heat. (We don't want any of the milk to scorch to the bottom, so be diligent about the stirring.)
Pour in the vinegar and stir gently once or twice to ensure the acid is evenly mixed, but don't over stir and risk damaging the curds.
Watch as the white curds start to develop and separate from the yellow whey. As they cool, the curds will get firmer, and stick to each other. This should take about five minutes.
Carefully ladle the warm curds into a strainer lined with multiple layers of cheesecloth–resist the temptation to pour them from the pot into the strainer–it'll only damage the curds and those little pieces will clog the cheesecloth. Capture the whey in a bowl placed under the strainer. Once cool, you can drink it (it's delicious!), use it as extra flavour in soup stock or use it as plant food in your garden.
Add salt at this point, if desired. You can also add other herbs or spices, if you'd like to experiment. If you add something, give it a gentle toss with a fork to spread your addition through the curds.)
For queso fresco, gather the cheesecloth edges together and twist gently to give the cheese a little squeeze and let sit on a draining rack as the whey continues to drip out of the cheese. For paneer, take the cheese and place in a cheese mold with a weight on top to more firmly press the cheese. As soon as it's cold, it's ready to use!
This cheese, in either form, will last about a week in the fridge. Unlike other cheese, paneer and queso fresco can also be frozen without much effect. Also, because of its firm texture, paneer can be fried without melting.
Enjoy!
Notes
At its most basic, making cheese is simply the process of turning milk into something solid and tasty. There are many different ways to accomplish this, but they generally involve using some combination of acid, heat and enzymes. This simple and quick cheese recipe will use acid and heat to turn a gallon of store-bought milk into about a pound of something you could call “queso fresco” or “paneer”.This isn’t a hard process, but you need to pay close attention to get the best results.
Rhubarb is a vegetable that pretends to be a fruit, but we love it anyway. One of the very first harvests of spring, signaling the abundant garden bounty that will be coming soon. Older plants can often be very productive, so if you know someone with a well-established yard it’s entirely possible that they have more rhubarb than they know what to do with. It never hurts to ask.
This simple recipe is very straight forward, and the results are sure to impress anyone. Serve it with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream or a big glass of cold milk.
Place rhubarb in a greased 10-in. cast-iron or other heavy ovenproof skillet. Combine sugar, flour and nutmeg; sprinkle over rhubarb. Drizzle with butter and set aside
For batter, in a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar until blended. Beat in the egg. Combine the flour, baking powder, nutmeg and salt. Gradually add to egg mixture alternately with milk, beating well after each addition until completely combined.
Spread batter over the rhubarb mixture. Bake at 350° until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 35 minutes. Loosen edges immediately and invert onto a serving dish. Serve warm. If desired, serve with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream or a big glass of milk.
Another way to look at plants, though, is through their symbolism. In the Victorian era, it was in vogue to use special meanings attached to different flowers to create bouquets that communicated a wide variety of sentiments that might be awkward or otherwise couldn’t be spoken aloud in prim-and-proper Victorian society. With the help of any one of many popular flower “dictionaries” available at the time, one could communicate blinding love, deep longing or crushing regret with a handful of carefully selected blooms. Even today, we still associate red roses with love.
