The MCC Relief Sale in Morris, MB is the ultimate kick-off to Autumn each year.MCC puts on this combination of farmer's market, craft sale, bake sale, flea market, auction and fall supper every September as a fundraiser for food, water, and other missions projects for the Mennonite Central Committee.
You can find hand-knit winter mittens, cottage cheese vareneki, damson plum jam, giant homegrown watermelons and Manitoba apple cider and quilts and antiques... and so many other exciting things.
Then you can eat yourself into a stupor! What more can you ask for?
The jam table and the mittens table. The jam went pretty fast this year, but the mittens were plentiful. 
The fresh produce and food tent. It's a little different from a farmer's market in that you don't actually get to talk to the people that grow or produce the food - it's completely run by volunteers. Some of the food is produced by large companies - farmer sausage is donated from Winkler Sausage and the noodles are donated by a local pasta company. But most of the produce comes from regular folks' gardens.
Noodles and apples.
The food is cheap as borscht....
And so tasty at 10:30 in the morning! 
This is the booty from this year's trip. 4 liters apple cider, 4 dozen frozen cottage cheese vereneki, a link of Winkler's liver sausage, a bag of windmill ground rye flour, four jars of jam, two pairs of mittens, 9 pounds of tomatoes, 5 pounds of apples, a head of romaine lettuce, a giant watermelon, 3 green peppers, 2 big onions and two dozen eggs.
Everything is cheap, locally produced, and all proceeds went to the MCC.
For more info on MCC Relief Sales, check out this link: http://mcc.org/manitoba/morrisreliefsale/
2 comments:
I stumbled upon this when searching for a recipe for cottage cheese vareneki, which my mom used to make...she was born in 1910 in Manitoba.
I can't find another single reference on the internet. She also made plum vareneki, they were awesome.
I wish I could find something, hope you can help.
If you want Manitoba Mennonite recipes, the best place to look is in the Mennonite Treasury of Recipes. I guarantee there will be recipes of all the Mennonite food you fondly remember (and maybe some that aren't fondly remembered!)
Here's a link if you're interested in purchasing one: http://www.derksenprinters.com/store/cookbook_catalogue.shtml
And here's another post of mine on vareneki: http://planetborscht.blogspot.com/2006/10/happy-thanksgiving.html
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