Bready Elementary School students learned what our province has to offer the dinner table when they met Saskatchewan author Amy Jo Ehman at the North Battleford Library.
Two classes from the school, as well as students from North West Regional College and the general public came to the library to hear Ehman speak about her first novel.
Prairie Feast: A Writer's Journey Home for Dinner chronicles Ehman's attempt to eat only food produced in Saskatchewan for a year
Librarian Wendy Hunchak said the students enjoyed the presentation and learning about what foods are grown in the province.
"The kids asked a lot of questions, which really showed that they had paid attention," said Hunchak.
She added hearing Ehman speak was interesting for her as well, as she was surprised to learn it is possible to fill the pantry with local ingredients.
"It really is do-able," said Hunchak.
Although eating only food grown in Saskatchewan smacks of fads such as the 100-Mile Diet, Ehman's quest is not to be confused with such politically charged movements.
"My project was about celebrating the foods of Saskatchewan," she said.
Ehman, along with her husband, embarked on a year of eating only food grown in Saskatchewan after their friend decided to raise pigs, raising one for Ehman as well.
"Because I grew up on a farm, I had that imprint of what really good, right off the farm food could taste like," she said. "Encountering it again as an adult was a rush of memory for me."
Although Ehman writes she was already "aware that fresh-picked fruits and vegetables taste better than imported fruits and vegetables," she was surprised to find the same was true of meat. She decided to buy only meat from small-scale farming operations, where the pigs see sunlight and eat kitchen scraps.
"If locally produced food can taste so much better than the food I was buying in the grocery store, why wouldn't I buy it locally," pondered Ehman.
For her, it was entirely a matter of personal choice based on taste, but as she started out on her project, she discovered more benefits, such as a reduced environmental imprint and the increased nutritional value of produce that is able to properly ripen, as it doesn't have far to travel.
"Another great reason is when food dollars stay in the local community and circulate through the local community, it helps local farms and particularly family farms stay afloat," said Ehman.
Ultimately, her project was meant to be a celebration, not a sacrifice, so Ehman did compromise for certain items, such as spices. She also deemed food grown in Saskatchewan, but processed elsewhere, as acceptable.
Ehman gives the example of pasta, saying it would be unlikely, in a typical grocery store, to find a package of pasta with "Made in Saskatchewan," on the label, but the vast majority of durum wheat is grown in the province.
"I felt I was still buying a Saskatchewan product and I was supporting our local farmers by doing that," she said.
Pasta isn't the only example; chickpeas and lentils are also grown mainly in Saskatchewan and processed and canned elsewhere, with the province's lentils eaten worldwide.
"There's no way around it, except really starting from scratch," said Ehman.
This is one of the reasons Ehman isn't an advocate of the 100-Mile Diet, because some areas, like Saskatchewan, produce far more food than their inhabitants could ever eat.
"No one's going to ask our farmers to stop growing lentils; it's a huge industry for us," said Ehman. "We have to face the fact that we live in a global economy and these systems are in place."
During her year of eating locally, Ehman made many connections with local farmers, connections she was loathe to sever. And so, nearly six years after starting her project, Ehman is still eating locally, although she isn't as strict with it as in the first year.
"Now I do it just for the pleasure of it," she said.
In the local spirit, Ehman even published her book with a Saskatchewan-based publisher, Coteau Books.
The book is available at the North Battleford Library, as well as local bookstores.
