Bruschetta festival needs volunteers

The local outpost of the Slow Food movement is going to be holding a bruschetta festival at the Columbia Farmer's Market in a couple of weeks. They need volunteers and I can't think of a better way to spend a late-summer's morning than chopping fresh tomatoes and grilling crusty bread (I hope they use Uprise Bakery's inimitable batard).

Here's more info:

Volunteers needed for heirloom tomato bruschetta festival

Hello again, food enthusiasts!

Slow Food Katy Trail needs a few good volunteers to help make and serve bruschette at our annual Heirloom Tomato Bruschetta Festival on Aug. 23 at the Columbia Farmers Market. It's the fifth year for this popular fundraising event for our Slow Food chapter.

If you didn't get to volunteer for the farmers' market salsa-making event in July, here's another opportunity to help. Of course, if you did help make salsa and had a great time, we'd love to have you back for this!

Slow Food volunteers will be working from 8 until noon that day. We'll need help setting up; grilling bread; chopping basil, tomatoes and garlic; assembling the bruschette; and serving.

If you are interested in helping out for an hour or two, please send us a note.

Even if you can't help, we hope to see you at the festival!

Thanks,

Slow Food Katy Trail
slowfoodkatytrail@yahoo.com

Uprise Bakery

Uprise Bakery
10 S. Hitt Street
(573) 256-2265

Uprise Bakery, located in the spiffy new Ragtag Cinema location, is home to the best bread in Columbia. The whole spelt and honey wheat loaves make for flavorful, dense sandwich bread. The batard is a simple joy sliced, splashed with olive oil and salt and quickly grilled. You can buy their loaves at the farmer's market or Clover's, but the quality is far higher if you drop in to the Hitt Street location itself.

The clientele is predictably aimless and Macbook-y; lots of tatoos and Sartre-reading going on here. But if you can get past the stuffwhitepeoplelike.com vibe, you're in for a real treat. Lunch options are light and salad-oriented - a good place for those on a diet. Pizzas change every week. Right now it's a four cheese offering; the bacon and bleu cheese version I had a while back was commendable, redolent with the tang of the cheese and the fatty crunch of crisp bacon. The house-made crust was tender and pleasantly toothsome.