SWEET TREATS: THE REVELSTOKE BUSINESS BEAT

A REVELSTOKE BAKER SPECIALIZING IN THE ART OF DELICIOUSNESS SERVES SATURDAY MORNING SWEETS, AND A CHOCOLATE MAKER WORKS WITH RAW INGREDIENTS TO TURN BEANS INTO BARS.

By Nora Hughes.

For the month of March, we bring you two businesses blessing our community with sweet treats: Moondilly Treats and RIVA Chocolate. When it comes to their delectable hand-crafted creations, RIVA and Moondilly products have something in common: they’re not made to satisfy the masses. Artisan goodies come out of these shops in carefully curated batches, using the finest flavours and fastidious care in ingredient selection.

Moondilly Treats

Revelstokians may recognize Josee Zimanyi from Moondilly Treats’ beginnings at the Revelstoke Local Food Initiative summer farmer’s market. Captivating crowds with her delicious handmade doughnuts, Josee opened Moondilly at 427 Second Street East in October 2022 to continue supplying the community with heavenly treats.

A little about Josee: this isn’t her first rodeo. She’s been a pastry chef for over 30 years, baking and cooking your day better. She was co-owner and founder of the Modern Bakeshop and Café. She’s fed hungry skiers, hikers, tree planters and everyone in between at remote backcountry lodges, private celebrations and high-end restaurants, and spent time as a chef during two Olympics for the Canadian national cross-country skiing team. As she puts it, “a baker must bake.”

“I love baking and cooking, connecting with customers, and seeing joyful faces eating delicious baking,” she says. “I source the finest ingredients, organic, local and seasonal when possible. Moondilly specializes in combining tradition with innovation to produce exquisite flavour and strives to improve recipes by lowering sugar, adding whole grains and protein.”

Josee specializes in the art of delicious. Saturday mornings at Moondilly, customers can find her famous vegan doughnuts embellished with a thick layer of glossy frosting. Moondilly also stocks a healthy supply of other treats, such as artisan chocolate bars, cinnamon buns, cookies, homemade pop-tarts, Stoke Toast and more. Moondilly Treats is only open Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Josee says running the business this way replicates the market vibe and keeps it special. For more information on Moondilly Treats’ menu, store hours, pop-up events and more, visit www.moondillytreats.com

Riva Chocolate

If you thought chocolate making was like something out of Willy Wonka, you probably haven’t heard of bean-to-bar chocolate making. Zuzana Chmielova is a bean-to-bar chocolate maker in Revelstoke. She works with raw ingredients to turn cocoa beans into chocolate bars, using the beans, cane sugar and nothing else.

A chocolatier and a chocolate maker are two entirely different jobs. A Chocolatier is a person who makes dipped, cream-filled, ganache, truffle confections, but a chocolate maker makes chocolate from scratch.

Zuzana started Riva Chocolate in 2021 following a trip to Mexico in 2019 to learn about the cocoa bean harvesting process. Theobroma cacao also called the cacao tree and the cocoa tree, is a small (6–12 metre tall) evergreen tree that produces seeds, aka cocoa beans, that are used to make chocolate.

Zuzana says the pre and post-harvesting process of the beans is highly complicated, and for this reason, the cocoa bean farming industry isn’t sustainable. That’s one of the reasons she was interested in making bean-to-bar chocolate, to honour the traditional farming process and to offer a sustainably sourced product.

“My philosophy is about sustainability for the cocoa bean harvesting,” she says. “For me, the cocoa plant is like a goddess.”

Despite using only two ingredients, Riva chocolate bars come in various flavours. Zuzana describes the process of roasting cocoa beans, sourced sustainably from around the world, to develop unique, vibrant and perfected flavours.

First, she sorts the beans, husks them, and then sorts them again to remove the husks leaving only the nibs infused with the bean’s unique, rich, fragrant flavours. She makes her bars by roasting one kilogram of beans at a time. After roasting the beans to perfection, the beans are ground and mixed with cane sugar to create a traditional dark chocolate. Zuzana is meticulous regarding the chocolate’s texture and experiments to create a high-quality product.

Zuzana’s goals for Riva Chocolate include becoming a direct trader of her cocoa beans, expanding on the types of chocolates she makes and opening a tasting room. You can find her hand-made chocolate bars at markets around Revy, at health food store Mountain Goodness and Powder Rentals during the winter season, or at Rivachocolate.ca.

Poet Shane Koyczan Anchors Busy March At Rpac

By Revelstoke Mountaineer staff

Arts Revelstoke hosts five events at the Revelstoke Performing Arts Centre in March, ranging from kid-oriented performances to classical chamber music.

On Mar. 4, Monster Theatre presents a young audience-oriented science fiction play, Crisis on Planet Z! Terraformers come to the realization that their way of life on Planet Z is unsustainable, so they must change their ways.

On Mar. 10, Jane Stanton, Amber Harper Young and MC Sharon Mahoney present comedy tour act Ha Ha Harem. This trio of funny ladies has appeared alongside famous comedians and fancy venues, so, Revelstoke, let's not bring their stock down. Pease, brush the sawdust off your mackinaws before you arrive, and remember: spit goes into the spittoons.

On Mar. 22, Movies in the Mountains presents Call Jane, presents the vignette of Joy, whose stable 1960s suburban life is upended by a pregnancy complication, hurling her into the culture wars embroiling the USA.

On Mar. 23, Rossland-based chamber music string quartet La Cafamore explores the music of Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn. The group features Kai Takeda on viola, Natasha Hall on violin, Maria Want on cello, and Carolyn Cameron on violin.

On Mar. 31, Canadian poet Shane Koyczan presents his spoken word show that explores the human experience. "Lauded for his sold-out live performances Koyczan has carved out his own artistic path and taken his work beyond the conventional," writes Arts Revelstoke.

The Revelstoke Performing Arts Centre is located at 1007 Vernon Avenue in the Revelstoke Secondary School building.

The Revelstoke Visual Arts Centre welcomes their new art gallery exhibition featuring work by art residency students from a unique program, two expressive artists living on Vancouver Island, a sculpture artist from New Denver and an interactive community project.

On March 9, the RVAC will host an opening celebration for the new exhibition which will be in the gallery until April 2. New for this opening event is a quiet viewing that will take place before the celebration. The viewing will be relaxed and quiet with tea and light music playing in the background. The social will have live music, the bar, and generally a bigger crowd.

Parks Canada partners with the RVAC, bring work from their artist residency program Art in the Park, to the main gallery. Since 2008, the Art in the Park program has provided visual artists with special access to explore one of Canada’s national parks and share their experience through art. The gallery will feature work from the nine artists that participated in the residency in 2022: Thomas Kero, Paule Poulin, Stuart Arnett, Hayley Stewart, Remi Goguen, Jolene Mackie, Margaret Blank, Nicole Barrette, and Tatjana Mirkov-Popovicki.

March Rvac Exhibition Features Work From Art In The Park Residency Students

By Nora Hughes

In the side gallery, artists Sarah Hill David and Halima Rogers explore and to foster connection, through playful, exploratory art-making. The Vancouver Island-based artists will paint sequentially in closest connection to furthest apart, both physically and thematically.

In Side Gallery Two, Roni Jurgensen from New Denver B.C. will display work centred around an ethereal kinetic sculptural installation which moves with a breeze.

Side gallery 3 will be an interactive community project where visitors will be able to get hands on and crafty with some wool. This will be a fun, family friendly activity. Everyone is encouraged to stay a while.