HUNTSVILLE, Ont. - Keeping butternut squash soup off the shirts and ties of world leaders is among the finer points organizers in Ontario's cottage county are focused on with less than two months to go to the G8 summit.
While Deerhust Resort, the venue for the summit, is famous for its version of the soup -- spiked with maple syrup that is made on site -- it's been told it's a no-no.
"All the food has to be very simply presented so it's not hard to cut, it's not hard to pick up," said Anne White, the resort's director of public relations.
"So it's kind of like the very executive version of don't order messy spaghetti on a first date."
G8 leaders, a group that includes U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, want to avoid showing up for photo-ops sporting a bright orange smear of soup spill, White explained.
Instead the chef has been tinkering with turning that specialty into a butternut squash creme brulee, White said.
With major, multi-million dollar projects on or ahead of schedule for the June 25-26 meeting in Huntsville the focus has turned to making sure every detail is perfect.
Even the town's mayor isn't above getting his hands dirty in the effort.
Claude Doughty's days aren't exactly brimming with free time, but he's making time for his wood-working hobby and creating some of the newel posts for staircases in the summit centre.
When he's wearing his mayor's hat, Doughty's days are filled with interviews with journalists from around the world, meetings and conversations with federal summit officials and, of course, running Huntsville -- a town of about 18,000 in the northern part of Muskoka.
"I'm just trying to get to tomorrow at this point," Doughty says at first when asked what's still on the G8 to-do list.
"Lots of last-minute decisions in terms of landscaping and all the nuances to really make these projects sing."
In fact, he said, many projects are actually ahead of schedule. The summit centre will open on May 23, so the public can have a glimpse, and the road improvements and beautification measures are mostly complete.
Doughty hasn't yet been told what the exact function of the $20-million summit centre will be, but he said he has been led to believe it's security related.
The Waterloo centre, which will house environmental studies facilities for the University of Waterloo after the summit, is also well underway, after the town of Huntsville chipped in about $8 million for that building as well as other G8-related projects.
"We've put about $5 million into the infrastructure to create that research park with roads, sewer, water, all of the services, so now we have some equity in those sites we can build on," he said.
"So we did contribute more than we initially thought, but the value is certainly there."
At Deerhurst preparations are in full swing to not only host the meetings, but also house and feed world leaders and the reams of support staff needed to ensure the weekend runs smoothly.
"There's a plan B, C and D for everything," said White.
The strict security conditions and the relative remoteness of Deerhurst -- compared with a hotel in downtown Toronto -- means contingencies need to be in place, right down to the nitty gritty details, White said.
"Because of security perimeters and limitations on what and how you can bring (items) in...our kitchen is working with local farmers," she said.
"The lettuce will come in, they're growing it especially in sod and it will come in in boxes, so we'll be picking things like lettuce and herbs so that we can still have fresh produce even though access to the site will obviously be restricted."
Deerhurst, normally ramping up for the busy summer season, will be closed to the public from June 15 to 30, and in the days leading up to the summit will be converting every space for a G8 purpose.
"No corner will go unused," White said.
Deerhurst has 45,000 square feet of indoor meeting space, but there are many other spaces needed, she said.
The original Deerhurst lodge, down by the water, which now houses a theatre, will be the media centre during the summit. Indoor tennis courts will be turned into lounge space and briefing space. An arcade will become an area for translators. A daycare will be converted into facilities for printing and photocopying.
There will be thousands of mouths to feed during the two-day summit and in addition to Deerhurst's six permanent kitchens running at full capacity a seventh kitchen will also be set up.
"We're in the process of finalizing and testing menus," White said.
She can't reveal definitively what the world leaders will be feasting upon when they're in Huntsville. But White did note that people like Obama and Merkel have likely never tasted fare famous around Muskoka such as cranberries from Bala or smoked trout from Milford Bay.
The G8 summit will be immediately followed by a larger meeting of the G20 leaders in Toronto on June 26-27.
