by Brad Holden
When Becky Eveland bought a rundown house on Elizabeth Street three years ago, she'd recently retired and planned to make a pastime of renovating and flipping houses. The only problem was, she quickly fell in love with Creemore, and by the time she'd fixed up the house, she'd decided to stay.
So earlier this year, she and her daughter Jordan Menicucci, who now lives with her in Creemore, began brainstorming what she could do in her newly settled existence. Most times, the discussions were over dinners with an international flavour, a reflection of Eveland's other hobby, sourcing exotic ingredients and sampling different cuisines.
And so arrived the idea for Sola Sun Sea and Earth Co., the store that Eveland recently opened in the former teahouse at the corner of Mill and Francis Streets. Named in honour of Eveland's granddaughter, the name conveniently has two meanings - in Latin, it means "sun," which is of course responsible for much of the great food available there. In Italian, it means "alone" or "unique," and the store certainly qualifies as that.
Divided into areas reflecting different cuisines, from Mexican to Greek to Indian to Chinese (and many more), the store offers a cornucopia of interesting and hard-to-find ingredients. Of course, for those not familiar with cooking some of these foods, there is a great selection of cookbooks available as well.
Evelend also has her eye on the "easy gourmet" market, and will be offering a variety of "cooking kits," featuring prepackaged spices, noodles or rice - just add the meat and you'll have an instant exotic meal.
On Saturday August 28, Eveland will host an official grand opening, and she has several tastings planned. The main event will be a "salad-off," featuring Caprese Salads made with three different cheeses - a regular cow mozzarella, a water buffalo mozzarella from Ontario and a water buffalo mozzarella from Italy.
The event will set the mood of the store going forward, as Eveland is the type that finds cooking fun, and she hopes the store will reflect that.
Sola's grand opening begins at 10 am on Saturday, August 28.
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