Christmas is right around the corner and it's never too early to go shopping! Happening on November 22 to 24 at the Abbostford Tradex Centre, the West Coast Christmas Show & Marketplace is Western Canada’s leading holiday season show that brings together holiday gifts, fancy foods, personal services, decor ideas, festive seminars and culinary presentations under one roof.

Conscious Public Relations Inc.

Listen to holiday-themed music performed live on the sounds of Holidays stage while you peruse the 200+ exhibitors in the marketplace.

Food exhibitors and presenters include Brian Misko, House of Q, Cabin Fever Sweet Sensations, Checkers Premium Fudge, The Chef Nose Spices, Clearbrook Coffee Co., Coconama, Chocolate Cooking Essence, Damiani Fine Foods, Edible Gardens, Epicure Selections, Flavors of the Med, Jump Up and GoGo, Kidd Brothers Honey Processors & Western Sage Honey, Make Cheese Inc., Mr. Mom's World Omega Crunch, Serengeti Tea Canada, Simply Delish Soup & Salad Co., Spiceworks Food Creations, Sundance Seafood, Sunset Gourmet Food Co., Sweet Thea Cakes & Honeybread Cookies by Renata, Tea Sparrow, Trugs Gourmet Foods, Wineland Dressings, Auntie Kim's Better Bickies, Dan D Foods, European Foods (Candy Meister), Federation of Pugliese Social Clubs of BC, Kitchening & Co., L.B. Emporium and Living Lotus Food & Nutrition Inc. (plant-based desserts).

Designers and other speakers will also be present on how to create dramatic wreaths and festive table or hearth-decorating ideas on the Home of the Holidays Stage. Also on stage are numerous talented local chefs who will offer great ideas for your holiday cooking including celebrity chef Anna Olson from the Food Network Canada. Canadian Dairy Farmers will hosting their very popular cheese tasting seminars at the show!


Looking for the big man himself? Get photos with Santa Claus and one with your pet as well! Bring your pets for professional pictures with Santa (Pets may only come in for pictures at posted times and then must be removed from the show building due to health regulations, and sorry, no snakes or reptiles)

Conscious Public Relations Inc.

The Fraser Valley Model Club will be on hand with interesting displays of many of their model creations.  They will also be holding a 'make and take' of airplane and car models for children aged 8 and older for FREE! And don't forget to ride on the new Christmas Train, looking at Fraser Valley G Scale‘s steam-operated train!

Conscious Public Relations Inc.

And be prepared to be wowed by the display of fully decorated Christmas trees in the Festival of Trees competition!

Conscious Public Relations Inc.

Event Info

Hours: 
Friday, November 22, 11am-9pm
Saturday, November 23, 10am – 6pm
Sunday, November 24, 10am – 5pm

Location:
Abbotsford TRADEX Centre, 1190 Cornell Street, Abbotsford, BC, V2T 6H5


Interested? Learn how you can win a pair of tickets to the show!

GIVEAWAY

To enter, one or all of the following:

1. Like Mashed Thoughts on Facebook. If you are already following on Facebook, just leave a comment saying so below. (1 entry)
2. Like or share the contest post on Facebook for another entry (1 entry)
3. Like the West Coast Christmas Show on Facebook  (1 entry)
   
   
4. Follow @Mashedthoughts and @WestCoastXMas on Twitter
   Follow @mashedthoughts and Follow @WestCoastXMas
   
   AND tweet the following (1 entry per tweet, you can do this once per day):
   

   RT to win tickets to @WestCoastXMas on Nov 22 - 24, 2013 from @MashedThoughts http://bit.ly/17Gc9S7 #giveaway

5. Leave a comment on this post - visit http://westcoastchristmasshow.com and tell me what are you most looking forward to seeing at the show (1 entry)  

This giveaway will end on Friday, November 15th, 2013 12:00pm. Good luck!

EDIT: Congratulations Shirley @ssmc99 on Twitter!

The 6th annual Fraser Valley Food Show was held this past weekend at the Tradex Exhibition Centre in Abbotsford, BC.


I went on the Saturday to check it out. I was pretty stoked since there were a lot of events going on such as the Sausage making competition, the Master Chef competition and all the celebrity chef demonstrations! 

We checked out the 2nd annual Great Canadian Sausage Making Competition first. The judges were in the midst of tasting all the entries which were from dozens of professional sausage makers from all over B.C. There were over 100 sausage entries in 12 different categories, ranging from chorizo to bratwurst. That's a lot to taste!



This was the coveted 1st place trophy that went to Dressed to Grill Gourmet Meat & Poultry’s Robin Brooks. He also won 1st place in the Bratwurst, Chorizo, and Kielbasa categories. Also worth noting is that Chris Wilkinson of Wilkyz Grill mobile catering food cart in Abbotsford won the 2013 People’s Choice Award for his Italian sausage!


Right next to the judging area was the Oktoberfest Sausage Tasting area! It was very busy with people all jostling to get a taste of the sausages.

For only $2, attendees could taste all the entries and wash it down with a glass of Erdinger Gluten-Free Beer! A live band was also playing Oktoberfest music so it was very lively in that area!


Right next to the sausage fest, the 11th annual Master Chef Competition was well under way. A total of 17 chefs competed head to head for this year's title of Master Chef. Each chef had only 35 minutes to prepare a main course from only the mystery foods a box contains.

Though it wasn't as dramatic as it would be on TV, it was still very interesting to watch. Some of the black boxes includes weird combinations like turkey and octopus. Chefs had to really think on their feet!

Here were some of the beautiful dishes that the chefs made. I had left before the final competition but I heard that Executive Chef William Tse defended his title as Master Chef and won again this year!






Throughout the day, celebrity chefs were showing audiences the secrets to cooking on the Food Network Celebrity Stage. I managed to catch Rob Feenie and Chef Corbin Tomaszeski.

Chef Corbin Tomaszeski, host of Food Network's Dinner Party Wars & Restaurant Makeover, was soo funny. He is such a great entertainer!

He asked for two volunteers that were inept in the kitchen (ok only one actually was) and made them do all the work. He wanted to demonstrate that anyone can cook! He showed us that it is so easy to make soup. Use local and in season ingredients and the most important thing is to HAVE FUN!


Hahah the volunteers were taking that advice to heart. Wayne here is pouring wine heavy-handedly with a paper towel on his arm.

Chef Corbin even asked someone to sing for us, because no dinner party is complete without music! This boy volunteered after a bit of coaxing and bribing. Chef Corbin says that since he discovered him, he should get 10% of all his future performances. XD

I got a photo with Chef Corbin Tomaszeski after his demo!

The Dairy Farmers of Canada Cheese tasting seminars proved to be very popular. TOO popular! People had to line up at least 40 minutes before the tasting started to get in!

Those lucky people got to taste a variety of cheese made from 100% Canadian milk. Reg Hendrickson, a trainer/consultant with Dairy Farmers of Canada shared his knowledge of the characteristics of soft, semi-soft, firm and delicious blue cheeses.

I don't drink so I didn't go into the Wine, Beer & Spirits Tasting Pavilion but there were a lot of people in there enjoying their drinks.

After the sausage tasting cleared out, there were wine tastings at Grapes and Hops Presentation Stage.

The choices at Bite of the Valley were pretty small compared to Bites of Vancouver at the EAT! Vancouver. There were only four restaurants and two of which were already at EAT! Vancouver.

Frankie's Italian Kitchen & Bar

Jamaican Jerk Pizza

An Indian Affair Restaurant, was popular with their butter chicken, samosas and mango lemonade.


 Dunn's Famous served open faced Montreal smoked meat sandwiches.



There were many things to see, drink and taste in the exhibitor marketplace. I'll mention the ones I found the most interesting, starting with BC Cranberries! Two ladies were dressed in waders in a box of water full of floating cranberries! That got a lot of people's attention!

Next to the Cranberry ladies, was the BC Agriculture in the Classroom booth.

 Teachers and students were preparing Apple Choux pastries for the crowds to taste.

 Lots of sausage,

 and cheese exhibitors at the show.

Serengeti tea was selling coffee and tea sticks! Just dunk the stick into a hot cup of water and stir for 2 min. So convenient and the used stick can be recycled, same way as aluminum cans.


Hawaii Grown Papayas. They are SO SWEET! I wish I could have brought all of the papayas home with me. So delicious!


Amola flavoured salt. This is a rebranding of the Sea To Sky Seasonings. All the colour in the salt are from the natural ingredients; there are no food colourings or other flavour enhancers of any kind in their products.

The last thing that interested me was the Vitamix blender. It seems that they have come out with a new model! The container is shorter and fatter and the base is way quieter than the previous model.


This year was also the first Gluten Free Living Show, so everywhere you looked there was a gluten free booth!  



I had a great time at the Fraser Valley Food Show. Lots of see and do and wasn't as crowded as the shows in Vancouver. I especially enjoyed meeting Chef Corbin Tomaszeski and trying out all the different foods!