Cornwall Ontario – For all foodies or anyone interested in exploring new flavours in food, Laura’s The Art of Living & Giving (Laura’s) will be hosting their first food tasting event, on Saturday May 6th, from 11:00am to 4:00pm, which will feature cooking demonstrations by local chefs. This event will celebrate the opening of their new Olive Oil & Balsamic Tasting Bar, and their newest addition of unique spices and seasonings.

In addition, Laura’s is excited to announce their latest initiative, involving the local food community. Partnering with Kozroots Community Empowerment Projects (KCEP), a local not-for-profit that supports and creates initiatives centred around agri-food and social enterprise, a shelf featuring locally grown and produced food products will be installed in Laura’s. “While our shop features items from across the globe, we are strong supporters of everything local and so felt that having one of KCEPs local food shelves in our shop would be the perfect fit for our customers.” said Kim Sabourin, owner of Laura’s. Sabourin is one of a number of entrepreneurs bringing the local food scene to new heights in Cornwall, with this new venture and also with Schnitzel’s European Flavours and Sheep’s Head Bistro.

The local food shelf at Laura’s will be branded with the “Local to SDG” logo, as well as Canada 150, since this year KCEP’s activities and projects centre around celebrating all things locally made in honour of Canada’s 150th anniversary of Confederation. This shelf will be the 5th of its kind spearheaded by KCEP, following shelves at St. Lawrence College and Foodland in Winchester.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with Laura’s to offer more local food to the community, and more opportunity for our local producers to sell their wares. Kim’s philosophy of supporting local fits perfectly with our mission and vision, and we are excited to see more local food hitting local shelves, and local tables.” said Brenda Norman, KCEP President. “The kind of support that Kim and Laura’s are lending to our organization is characteristic of the kind of community involvement that all of our projects have inspired, and it is due to this kind of innovation and generosity that we have been able to move forward with initiatives such as the Eastern Ontario Garlic Festival and other agri-food initiatives.”.