Someone new has come to the pantry this year! Introducing Natasha Johnston .....This summer we headed off to Just Us! Roastery in Grand Pre for a day of fair trade training and coffee cupping with Just Us!'s Director of Coffee, Austin Anderson. This is Tasha cupping in the coffee lab. Natasha pulls double duty at the coffee shops here in the valley. Monday mornings and all day on Tuesday she's @ the Pantry in Berwick and weekends you will find her behind the counter @ T.A.N. Coffee in Coldbrook. Natasha makes (by ALL accounts) the very best cheese biscuits and chicken wraps so lunch time on Tuesdays brings many of her loyal customers to the Pantry. Tasha also steams milk like no body's business so her capps and lattes are awesome! Our new espresso machine (we have named her Simone) arrives in September and Tasha can hardly wait to show us her expertise on this new baby. She has been working with the same model @ T.A.N Coffee for many months...exciting days ahead!
Nicole Crouch Diaz...joined Kate's Pantry counter culture in Feb 2010. On March 24 2011we said goodbye and god(dess) speed as Nicole started a new journey. Nicole has a deep passionate love for life and really enjoys helping others to experience this abundance ...she was our kinda girl!... and we are going to miss her...Nicole is so artisitic and creative..she studied Scuptural Installation & Ecology @ Antioch College , made a wicked cappuccino and stepped behind the pantry counter on Tuesdays Thursdays and Fridays... So long dear friend!
Kate the Store Keeper. This is our old coffee counter. We love it! It used to be in a candy store in Halifax, Nova Scotia.(Thanks Katherine)The logo on the front is for a chocolate bar "Sweet Marie". Under the logo it says "Food and Energy" . That fits so well with what we are offering..local, fair trade food and energy! Our alternative name for the store is "Sweet Marie's " in honour of this beautiful old counter.
My love for the pantry began in a 200 year old house that my husband, Brian and I bought in 1978. We were just married, had a beautiful baby girl, Melyssa, and were excited to restore this weathered old home. A few people said we should just tear it down and start over, but they didn’t see what we did. This house was strongly built of posts and beams and had settled well into the centuries old rock foundation. Layer by layer we uncovered the history of this building. Wide plank pine walls stained with milk paint, fireplaces, a bake oven, and of course the pantry. The pantry was a long narrow hall of a room just off the kitchen. Painted wooden shelves lined one wall which ended in a tiny north facing window. Out this window I could see North Mountain through the branches of an old elm tree. The picture to the left is Melyssa and my very first pantry circa 1980. I revelled in stocking those pantry shelves. I went begging to local restaurant kitchens, asking for glass gallon jars that I filled with flours, rolled oats, and Demerara sugar. I began learning the art of preserving, boiling fruit and sugar on our kitchen wood fired cook stove, slicing cucumbers and onions and drowning them in a hot bath of vinegar, sugar and spices. I felt a deep contentment when my shelves were filled with mason jars of home preserves, jars of raisins, pastas, flours and oils.
We said good bye to that wonderful, old home in 1992 and built a new post and beam home on North Mountain, retreating a bit from the busyness of the Annapolis valley. In 2000 I started my own restaurant with my sister, Anna and her two daughters, Meagan and Jenny. This picture is us in 2004. We named it the Union Street Cafe. It is just the sort of place that you would expect to find a pantry. My niece, Jenny now owns and runs the place and she fills bodies and souls with beautiful food and fun. Jenny’s kitchen shelves are lined too .......with jars, boxes and bags of local and exotic food.
My husband, Brian and I created Kate’s Pantry in a tiny little storefront in the big, brick building that is home to Union Street. We jokingly call it our “big box store” as it really is no bigger than a box and well, you can probably guess how we feel about those “other” big box stores. Our new storefront is just the perfect size for a pantry. From Monday to Friday you will find me behind the counter from 7AM to 4PM serving up organic, fair trade coffee and tea from Just Us! Coffee Roasters. We have the best in local food to “take away”, Jenny’s sweets, Anna’s falafels, Leah’s traditional Cornish pasties made with local beef from Van Oostrum Farms and of course a veggie pasty too! For those of you who love to bake, we offer beautiful baking supplies from Speerville Flour, a Maritime organic flour mill which produces fresh and nutritious flours and cereals from locally grown grain. If you do a lot of baking (like me) join our Speerville Buyers Group which allows you to purchase larger quantities at a discount. The Pantry shelves also hold the complete line of Just Us!’ yummy organic, fair trade chocolate bars ....on a sunny winter afternoon you can sit at our window table (this is really our only table) and dunk Marie’s French Bakery biscotti in an espresso or cappuccino , ahhhh, now this is the life! The perfect comfort food to soothe your soul.
Welcome to Kate's Pantry! Local, Fair Trade.....Food Matters!
Someone new has come to the pantry this year! Introducing Natasha Johnston .....This summer we headed off to Just Us! Roastery in Grand Pre for a day of fair trade training and coffee cupping with Just Us!'s Director of Coffee, Austin Anderson. This is Tasha cupping in the coffee lab. Natasha pulls double duty at the coffee shops here in the valley. Monday mornings and all day on Tuesday she's @ the Pantry in Berwick and weekends you will find her behind the counter @ 
Nicole Crouch Diaz...joined Kate's Pantry counter culture in Feb 2010. On March 24 2011we said goodbye and god(dess) speed as Nicole started a new journey. Nicole has a deep passionate love for life and really enjoys helping others to experience this abundance ...she was our kinda girl!... and we are going to miss her...Nicole is so artisitic and creative..she studied Scuptural Installation & Ecology @ Antioch College , made a wicked cappuccino and stepped behind the pantry counter on Tuesdays Thursdays and Fridays... So long dear friend!
Kate the Store Keeper. This is our old coffee counter. We love it! It used to be in a candy store in Halifax, Nova Scotia.(Thanks Katherine)The logo on the front is for a chocolate bar "Sweet Marie". Under the logo it says "Food and Energy" . That fits so well with what we are offering..local, fair trade food and energy! Our alternative name for the store is "Sweet Marie's " in honour of this beautiful old counter.
My love for the pantry began in a 200 year old house that my husband, Brian and I bought in 1978. We were just married, had a beautiful baby girl, Melyssa, and were excited to restore this weathered old home. A few people said we should just tear it down and start over, but they didn’t see what we did. This house was strongly built of posts and beams and had settled well into the centuries old rock foundation. Layer by layer we uncovered the history of this building. Wide plank pine walls stained with milk paint, fireplaces, a bake oven, and of course the pantry. The pantry was a long narrow hall of a room just off the kitchen. Painted wooden shelves lined one wall which ended in a tiny north facing window. Out this window I could see North Mountain through the branches of an old elm tree. The picture to the left is Melyssa and my very first pantry circa 1980. I revelled in stocking those pantry shelves. I went begging to local restaurant kitchens, asking for glass gallon jars that I filled with flours, rolled oats, and Demerara sugar. I began learning the art of preserving, boiling fruit and sugar on our kitchen wood fired cook stove, slicing cucumbers and onions and drowning them in a hot bath of vinegar, sugar and spices. I felt a deep contentment when my shelves were filled with mason jars of home preserves, jars of raisins, pastas, flours and oils. 
We said good bye to that wonderful, old home in 1992 and built a new post and beam home on North Mountain, retreating a bit from the busyness of the Annapolis valley. In 2000 I started my own restaurant with my sister, Anna and her two daughters, Meagan and Jenny. This picture is us in 2004. We named it the 
My husband, Brian and I created Kate’s Pantry in a tiny little storefront in the big, brick building that is home to 