So what have we got for you this month?

First up is a beautiful gift basket from Vita Health, valued at $70. This basket includes a gift card to Vita Health, granola, hemp seeds, coffee, chocolate, oats, a book and more!

The second prize for May is a Nutritious Kitchen Makeover, valued at $250. A team from the Department of Human Nutritional Sciences will come into your home to do a cupboard scavenger hunt and help you plan your family’s meals.

We have more prizes for June, July, August and September which you can check out on our Dig In Challenge Prize page. We’ll also be giving away prizes such as gift cards and CSA packages, so stay tuned on our Facebook and Twitter pages for more information about that!

To be eligible to win prizes…

1. Sign up for the Dig In Challenge (or, if you are a low-income family or want to take part in extra activities, sign up for the Dig Deeper Challenge)

2. Start doing some of the activities listed on the Pledge Activity page and attending some of the workshops listed on the Workshops page

3. Tell us all what Dig In Challenge activities and workshops you have done at the Community Activity page

We also invite you to talk to us on Facebook and Twitter, and to share your favourite local food recipes on our Recipe page (each month, a recipe will be chosen to be featured in the Winnipeg Free Press. It just might be yours!).

Have fun, and good luck!

Actually, researchers are calling cultured foods a missing food group! In order to provide your child with optimal digestive and immune health, it is essential to make cultured foods a part of your family’s diet.

Before refrigeration, our ancestors used something called lactic acid fermentation to preserve their food. Probiotics are formed as a byproduct of that process, so in the ‘old days’, we simply consumed probiotics in the food we ate.

Now, because of canning, refrigeration and other processing of our foods – we are missing this essential aspect of our original diet.

Luckily, cultured foods are making a comeback! Not only because they are an essential part of a healthy diet, but because they taste great!

Domestic Diva co-founders, Sherry and Adrienne Percy making kid-friendly ferments ('sweet' krauts and pickles).

Here are 29 kid-friendly ways that you can get cultured foods into your child’s diet (and they are great ideas for picky or timid adults too)!

1. model it for them by eating cultured foods yourself!
2. kefir juice
3. other fermented beverages (kefir water, kombucha, kefir milk)
4. start with the juice of cultured veggies by pouring it on food or in warm soup
5. pickles and cultured carrots are the most kid- loved cultured veggies
6. chop other cultured veggies into very small chunks and add to dishes like salads, bean and grain salads etc.
7. transform all your standard north american condiments like ketchup, mustard, relish, mayo and barbecue sauce into lacto fermented versions
8. make smoothies to hide kefir milk and kefir water
9. add carrots and ginger to your favourite cultured recipes to add a bit of sweet flavour for the kids
10.  make dips with cultured dairy or bean ones with whey or the juice of cultured veggies mixed in
11. put whey in your child’s water with greenleaf stevia and cherry or orange extract for a creamsicle flavour!
12. mix cultured veggies with creme fraiche or mayo and honey with dried fruit
13. kefir jello
14. miso soup or traditionally brewed tamari
15. use a mandolin to slice veggies, culture them and then dehydrate into chips
16. creme fraiche or kefir cream in soup and on everything
17. home brewed yogurt
18. cultured fruit (chutneys, jams and fruit sauce for pancakes!)
19. cultured applesauce
20. cultured fruit leather
21. sourdough bread and crackers
22. dressings, dips and sauces made with lacto fermented beverages
23. raw cheese
24. cultured butter
25. popsicles, kefir milk ice cream
26. sourdough cookies, cakes, muffins and biscuits
27. apple kraut (apple to cabbage 1:1)
28. lassi (yogurt drink)
29. mix sauerkraut with creme fraiche and cultured ketchup in lieu of salsa

Sherry Rothwell is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist and mother of two ‘highly-cultured’ children She is the co-founder of DomesticDiva.ca where she offers e-courses, including one on kids and cultured foods.

Mature plum trees on the farm. Beautiful fragrance when they're blooming!

Perennials, in horticulture speak, are leafy plants that die back to the ground each year, but grow again from their roots each Spring.  Food plants that grow each year for us are an excellent addition to the garden, even if you only have a little space!  There are many hardy, reliable varieties for Manitoba gardeners to choose and I am going to include woody trees and shrubs in this article.

Rhubarb is one of our most reliable perennial food plants.  The red/green stems are tart and a little tough when raw.  However, cooked, stewed, baked and canned they are an awesome addition to the diet!  The large leaves of rhubarb are poisonous, so watch young children around the plants.  Apparently, they are so astringent and awful tasting that no children or animals ever eat much.  The leaves, when boiled gently with water, make an excellent natural insecticide for bad bugs that are chewing on your plants; one just sprays the cooled mixture on the plant being attacked, and when the bad bug goes to chomp…!  Rhubarb can looked great in a flower or shrub border: a mature plant will be about three feet wide and a couple of feet high with large, textured, heart-shaped leaves.  It wants full to part sun, average soil and doesn’t require much care!  A mature plant should be divided every five or so years, so it’s possible to get a free plant from a neighbor or you can buy roots or started plants from your local garden centre!

Asparagus is another yummy perennial that does well in Manitoba.  Is there anybody who doesn’t like asparagus?  The harvest improves as a plant reaches three to four years, so be patient!  Asparagus, after producing the spears in late Spring, sends up a flower stalk that is quite pretty: ferny, about five feet tall, and female forms will get little red berries.  It can look great at the back of a flower bed, or filling up a corner at the back of the yard.  Just make sure it’s an area that doesn’t get a lot of foot traffic!  Asparagus, like rhubarb, wants full to part sun, average soil and is fairly easy care.  Just to be safe, you may want to cover your plants with lots of leaves or straw in the Fall, just to keep it protected!

Many herbs will over-winter for us!  Chives and garlic chives are some of the most reliable!  A clump of chives can also looked great tucked into a flower border: they make a dense clump resembling fine grass.  Very decorative when they flower with their purple flowers, which are very tasty on salads.  Chives can be cut for things like salads or baked potatoes and will re-grow in the same season.  It’s a little plant that just keeps giving!  Here at Aagaard Farms, we’ve had great luck over-wintering herbs in the garden such as mints, oregano, marjoram, comfrey, lemon balm and thyme.  Again, a good covering of leaves or straw helps to protect them.  We’ve had parsley and cilantro come back, perhaps from seed, but not as reliably.  Sage and rosemary we grow in pots, which we bring indoors before frost.  They do not grow much in the winter when light levels are low; water sparingly and never fertilize until you see new growth in the Spring!  All our herbs we cut throughout the summer and dry by simply hanging bunches upside down.  We then strip the leaves, clean out any bits of stem and store in glass jars.  The home-dried herbs are soooo much more flavorful than the store bought bottled herbs!

Manitoba gardeners are fortunate to have a wide variety of hardy fruits available to us!  Strawberries are classic perennials – each plant will live a couple of years, but the ‘mother’ plant sends out runners which, when pinned to the ground, will root and develop into a new plant.  Strawberries require full sun, consistent water and rich soil: amend the bed with well-rotted manure or compost.  They are another plant that benefits from a mulch of leaves or straw.  Raspberries, saskatoons, currants and gooseberries are other great choices for fruits.  Perhaps the hottest developments in fruit shrubs are the haskups or honeyberries – a tough shrub from Siberia that fruits early with a little oblong berry that tastes like a cross between blueberries and saskatoons!  Also exciting for Prairie gardeners is the work the U of Saskatchewan is doing with hardy sour cherries!  They are working on developing a sweeter cherry for us – and their new introductions are very good eating fresh, as well as excellent for baking and canning.  Both the haskup and sour cherries are smaller shrubs that are very ornamental and would do well in a small back yard.

Of course, we can’t forget the fruit trees.  There are numerous hardy apples for Prairie growers!  They won’t have the names you’re used to seeing in the grocery stores, but the flavor and quality are there!  There are varieties that are great for storage, some that are good for fresh eating and many that are perfect for cooking and canning!  Many plum varieties are available at your local nursery – great for fresh eating, baking and canning.  We also can grow pears, but they are a smaller fruit than the store-bought varieties and tend to need a long, warm summer and fall!  Apricots are possible, but not too reliable and have an annoying habit of suffering extensive damage in harsh winters!  Hazelnuts are also possible for us, and a hazelnut is a pretty small tree!  I highly recommend you go to your local nursery and check out all the great fruit varieties!  It’s a worthwhile investment, if you’re going to grow fruit trees, to do a little reading on proper pruning because it can make a big difference in the quality of your fruit and the health of your trees!  And a final word:  have you heard of Fruit Share Manitoba?  If you have fruit that isn’t being harvested, or you would like to harvest fruit but don’t have a yard, Fruit Share Manitoba will hook you up!

Thank you to Dean Rennie of the Manitoba Alternative Food Research Alliance for filming and editing the video, and to Jeannette Adams of the Manitoba Master Gardener Association for facilitating this excellent workshop.

Please visit our Workshop page to check out upcoming workshops, and sign up for the Dig In Challenge at www.DigInManitoba.ca/challenge.

Helping our children understand the importance and honour of eating local, organic food from farmers we often know and love is something we as parents take seriously. Creating an environment rich with books about food, farmers, gardening and other food related topics helps us accomplish this goal. Read below for some of our family favourites, categorized by season.

Not all the books are about healthy, local food, but they can serve to spark a discussion about these things! The bolded titles are ones that we have read, though there are likely many more that have been read and haven’t come to mind. The others are on our wishlist to read soon. Have you read any of them? If so, share your thoughts in the comments – and add your family favourites as well!

………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

SPRING

Spring is a time of planning, of planting, and a very exciting time of watching green break through the earth once again.

The Carrot Seed, by Ruth Krauss

Zinnia’s Flower Garden, by Monica Wellington

The Tiny Seed, by Eric Carle

A Seed is Sleepy, by Dianna Hutts Aston

The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle

Mud Pies and Other Recipes,  by Erik Blegvad Marjorie Winslow

And Then It’s Spring, by Julie Fogliano

Secrets of the Garden: Food Chains and the Food Web in Our Backyard, by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld

From Seed to Plant, by Gail Gibbons

………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

SUMMER

Children start to see the results of their hard work in the garden, and see the fruits of the labour of farmers when they pick wild foods, visit farms or shop at the farmers’ market with an abundance of beautiful foods in season.

Blueberries for Sal, by Robert McCloskey

Peter in Blueberry Land, by Elsa Beskow

Blueberry Shoe, by Ann Dixon

Making Plum Jam, by John Warren Stewig

Jamberry, by Bruce Degen

Pancakes, Pancakes, by Eric Carle

Secrets of the Garden: Food Chains and the Food Web in Our Backyard, by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld

It’s Summer!: What’s in Season Now?, by Peggy Curry

To Market, to Market, by Nikki McClure

The Vegetables We Eat, by Gail Gibbons

The Beeman, by Laurie Krebs

The Bee Tree, by Patricia Polacco

………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

FALL

The Apple Pie Tree, by Zoe Hall

Apple Picking Time, by Michele B. Slawson

Pumpkin, Pumpkin, by Jeanne Titherington

Pumpkin Circle: The Story of Garden, by George Levenson

The Pumpkin Blanket, by Deborah Turney Zagwyn

How to Make Apple Pie and See the World,  by Marjorie Priceman

One Red Apple, by Harriet Ziefert

………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

ANYTIME

Mama Panya’s Pancakes, by Mary and Rich Chamberlain

Let’s Eat!, by Ana Zamorano

Chicken Soup With Rice, by Maurice Sendak

Fanny at Chez Panisse, by Fanny and Alice Waters

The Omnivore’s Dilemma for Kids: The Secrets Behind What You Eat by Michael Pollan

Kris Antonius is mother to four budding chefs, ages 2, 5, 8 and 12, and is passionate about good food. She enjoys exploring sustainable farms, food and recipes with her family and nurturing the seeds that are planted on their numerous food adventures – in and out of their home.

Here are 8 tips to help you eat safely:

1. Call ahead

• If you are invited to a friend’s, call and ask about how you can eat safely. Offer to bring the dish most likely to contain your allergen (dessert for a celiac, for example). Call the restaurant to ask how they can accommodate you.

2. Avoid restaurants at peak busy times

• Mistakes are more likely if the serving staff and kitchen are overwhelmed. You’ll have less opportunity to discuss your needs with the chef and everyone else is rushed.

3. Bring your own foods

• Always have backup foods anywhere you go. Don’t miss a school event because you can’t eat the pancakes – bring your own and share in the fun! Take your salad dressing along to brunch at your friends’ in case they forget.

4. Designate a gluten-free/allergy-free zone in your kitchen

• Keep gluten-free foods on the top shelf. No crumbs from gluten-filled products will fall on your items.

5. Label everything

• Use colour coded labels – green for allergy-free, red for the problem food or ingredient. This is especially effective if you have multiple allergies in your home.

6. Be clear about your needs

• You have a medical condition that is managed with food (or the avoidance there of!). Do not apologize for requiring accommodations to stay alive!

7. Know your limits

• An anaphylactic reaction requires extra vigilance. Always have your medications on hand.
• A little bit of gluten is not ok.

8. When in doubt

• If you’re not sure, if your gut tells you something doesn’t feel right, trust yourself and refer to number 3.

Sharing food in social situations is a wonderful part of being human. Food allergies and intolerances need not get in the way of this enjoyment. With some thoughtful planning ahead of time, you, too, can enjoy all the dining pleasures the world has to offer.

Jodi Lee is a human ecologist, professional home economist, and food blogger. She writes about eco-smart living, and being gluten and soy free at LifeFromScratch.ca. Mom to 2 school age children, one of whom is Celiac and soy allergic, she is passionate about whole, healthy, and allergen free cooking. Jodi is also co-owner of Gluten Free Wellness, offering workshops and support to anyone on a gluten-free diet: www.glutenfreewinnipeg.com.

We call it the ‘snack zone’ in our house and as a mom I love it for these four reasons:

1. It’s helped end the meal and snack time battles.
2. It honours your child’s hunger rhythms. Most of the time kids have to eat when someone else (parents/teachers etc) say they have to – whether they are hungry or not.
3. It provides many ‘teachable’ moments where children can discover the benefits of self-regulation, cooperation, and the pride of responsibility.
4. I can actually sit down and eat with everyone else (bonus).

What is a snack zone?

The snack zone is a designated area or container in the fridge that is sticked with kid-friendly, healthy foods. The philosophy behind the snack zone is that it allows children to make their own decisions about what they eat. If you have a child who regularly rejects what’s put on the table (whether it’s snacks or meals) this can be a great solution. There’s no questions about what to do. Get thee over to the fridge and make your own choice.

How to create your own snack zone

1. Allocate a space in your fridge that is the snack zone. You can use a basket or container to hold the ‘snack’ foods.
2. Talk to your kids and get them involved in designing and stocking it. (Of course they are going to like it better that way!)
3. Put snacks in clear containers so it’s easy for the kids to see what’s available. Simple mason jars even work.
4. Make sure the snack zone is always filled with several items (food and drink) to choose from.

Snack zone food ideas

• Fresh fruits
• Fresh vegetables
• Homemade dips
• Homemade granola or lara bars, homemade cookie or biscuits.
• Homemade crackers (yes, you can even put the pantry items in the snack zone!)
• Yogurt (you can make it into individual helpings if your child can’t make their own portions yet).
• Cut up cheese
• Nori (seaweed)
• Applesauce
• Homemade jerky (beef, bison, elk, turkey or salmon)
• Homemade fruit roll ups
• Kombucha, juice kefir, water kefir
• Kale chips
• Chicken or egg salad

You can see the sky is the limit here…and what you put in your bin will vary depending on the age of your children as well as if they have allergies)

Why kids love it:

• It empowers them to make their own choices.
• They get a say about what goes in it.
• They don’t have to ask someone every time they want something (it teaches self-reliance).

You may have to tweak your snack zone to see what works for your family. For example, some kids might eat five granola bars if there are five available. Rather than you restricting that food however, you might want to consider just letting it run out and allowing your children to learn to self-regulate. i.e “Hmm. If I eat all that in one sitting there will be no more for the rest of the week). There might be some crying and protests at first (if they want certain items restocked NOW) but a firm and loving attitude is worth the outcome.

Do you have a tip for nurturing healthy habits in your children that you can share? Please do! We’d love to hear them!

Adrienne Percy is the mother of 2 active, young children who are alternately budding chefs and food critics. Her passion is finding ways to bring nutrient dense, sustainably grown foods into her community. You can find out more about the workshops she offers and read more about her kid-friendly, culinary adventures at DomesticDiva.ca.

Our kickoff is taking place next week on Saturday, April 21 at 1pm at the Forks. There will be a food demo, a farmer presentation, and a scavenger hunt – don’t miss out! Click here for more information.

There are a lot of exciting workshops and activities taking place throughout the challenge. To keep track of the ones you’re excited to try and the ones you’ve already completed, we’ve added a special CHALLENGE CHECKLIST to your Dig In profile. Here’s how to access it:

1. Create a profile at www.DigInManitoba.ca (sign up if you haven’t already, or log in if you’ve previously made an account)
2. Click on “edit profile,” and switch from your “Main Profile” to the “Challenge Checklist.”
3. Start checking off boxes!

Your Challenge Checklist will be visible to anyone who visits your public profile. You can also access it easily by clicking on the “Challenge Checklist” in the top right-hand corner of the website, where you can log in / log out of the website.

Which activities and workshops are you most excited about for the Dig In Challenge?

Thatʼs the thing about an early Spring in Manitoba – itʼs just not to be trusted! Northern Manitoba had snow this past weekend and there were freezing temperatures in southern Manitoba. The forecast says chilly the next few days, with evening temperatures well below freezing, then it will warm up later in the week. But who knows what will happen next week? So whatʼs the gardener to do? Wait? Plant?

For any gardener or grower, anything done in the next four weeks is a gamble, a crap shoot like the tables at Vegas! For the home gardener, planting a $2 pack of carrot seeds is not a huge gamble. If the seeds are killed, itʼs not a huge investment to buy another. But what about the canola grower, wheat grower or the sunflower producer looking at planting hundreds of acres? Just getting the machinery out and filled up with diesel is hundreds of dollars invested. The cost of seed alone could be thousands of dollars. Will that grower take the gamble?

And what about the Market Gardener, the small vegetable grower, selling at Farmers Markets or through a CSA program? One of the best ways to have the busiest table at the Farmers Markets is to be the first to market with baby potatoes, peas, beans and especially tomatoes, all the fresh and tasty veggies people have been craving all winter! Most of us have seeds started inside, or baby plants ordered from the local greenhouse. I think most of us would say they are fine where they are, for now! Here at Aagaard Farms, we start way too many tomatoes, so we have a few to play with. This year, weʼre going to experiment a bit with cold frames, straw bale raised beds and our plastic hoop house. Weʼve already seeded one of our raised bed cold frames with carrots, lettuces, spinach, kale and radishes, all seed left over from last year, so not a great loss is anything catastrophic happens. Weʼve still got quite a bit of carrot seed from last year, so we intend to seed some out in the garden this week – what the heck! Follow along on our blog ʻThe Vineʼ to see how the experiments work out!

What weʼre more concerned about are perennial crops and fruit trees – things weʼll have a harder time protecting from the whims of Mother Nature. Has your rhubarb started to grow? Is the asparagus peeking out yet? Those are things that could be devasted by hard frost. Established plants might come back from the root, but young plants could be wiped out by hard frost after they have started growing. And the garlic – we love our fresh garlic, and so do our CSA families! There is so much more flavor to fresh, naturally grown garlic than the store bought kind! And indeed, some of our fall-planted garlic is pushing through the soil. Usually, we would mulch it well with straw, which we did not get done this past fall. If it was mulched, weʼre never in a hurry to remove the mulch; we may still add some straw to get it through this unpredictable April!

I keep checking our apple and sour cherry trees. The buds are already starting to swell. Anything that blooms in early Spring like our hardy fruit trees, made the flower buds last fall. They are well protected all winter by layers of almost bark-like growth, but once that
starts to split in anticipation of Spring, much of the protection is lost. The flowers become the fruit, so any damage now is irreversible. An entire seasonʼs crop could be wiped out in one cold night! Many people have seen a crop lost with a light frost during
bloom time, so this year we may have a longer period of possible disaster! There isnʼt much one can do to protect a fifteen foot tree – youʼve just got to roll with the punches! As every year, it will be interesting to see what crops thrive, and which ones donʼt make
it! Have you planted anything yet?

Learn more about Aagaard Farms on their website, THE VINE.

Simply sign up as you would for your family and include your organization at the bottom of the registration form. All participating staff members, volunteers and other members of your workplace can do the same.

What’s the benefit of getting my organization involved?

1) Commit together. The Dig In Challenge is a community initiative because working together makes everything easier and more fun! If you’ve already signed up for the challenge with your family, you’ll find yourself partaking in additional activities when you have coworkers to cheer you on and take the challenge beside you. Perfect when you need that extra bit of motivation!

2) Team building. Looking to boost morale in the workplace? There’s no better way to do it than to get together to share ideas and connect with one another. Start composting at work, host a local food potluck at lunch or have a friendly competition to see who can come up with a recipe that highlights the most local ingredients.

3) See your name in lights. Well, maybe not quite “in lights,” but all businesses/organizations/faith groups/school names will be bolded on the Challenge Participants webpage.

4) Share resources and connect with other businesses. This challenge isn’t just for families to connect with local food stores and farmers. You can also learn about other organizations around the province that are equally as committed to supporting healthy, local, sustainable and fair food!

Organizations that have already made a workplace commitment to the Dig In Challenge include: 

• Mondragon / Sacco & Vanzetti’s
• Harvest Moon Food Co-op
• Green Action Centre
•  Aagaard Farms
• Green Umbrella School

Sign up today!

1 year olds:
• washing and drying produce
• passing ingredients as required for the recipe
• playing with cooking utensils, pots and pans
• exposure to tastes, smells, and textures of food is also meaningful

2 year olds: all of the above plus:
• stirring, dumping, pouring
• helping to set the table with supervision and likely hands-on help
• rolling dough
• tearing up lettuce
• greasing pans
• wiping tables and chairs

3 year olds: all of the above plus:
• peeling and chopping (a crinkle cutter is an excellent investment that is relatively safe for tiny hands)
• helping with a hand-mixer
• scooping cookie dough or muffin batter
• mashing, kneading, and scooping

4-6 year olds: all of the above plus:
• learning more about math through measuring
• starting to chop with a knife with careful supervision
• cracking eggs (into a separate bowl so you can fish out any shell fragments before
adding to the main bowl)
• grating
• squeezing
• helping to read recipes if they are starting to read

7-10 year olds: all of the above plus:
• working with items on the stovetop with adult supervision – stirring, flipping, etc.
• chopping
• cooking simple things like boiled eggs
• pancakes, grilled cheese, french toast

11+ year olds: all of the above plus: can take ownership over entire meals, with facilitation and support of an adult

Keep in mind that this list is reflective of my family and the development of my children. Some children may do more or less at any particular age, depending on their motor skills and interest level. With some experimentation, you will soon find what works best for you and your crew!

Don’t forget – children of ALL ages benefit from trips to the local farmers’ market, farm, or grocery store to meet the farmers who grow their food and learn more about the foods that nourish their bodies!

Kris Antonius is mother to four budding chefs, ages 2, 5, 8 and 12, and is passionate about good food. She enjoys exploring sustainable farms, food and recipes with her family and nurturing the seeds that are planted on their numerous food adventures – in and out of their home.

• Fun with Food: a cooking demo by Localvore high school chef champions
• Farm-fair Food: a presentation by local farmers
• Find that Food: a scavenger hunt for kids – every child who participates will receive a small gift and will be entered to win a wonderful prize courtesy of Green Please!

Snacks will also be provided by Tall Grass Prairie Bakery, while quantities last.

We hope to see you there!

Where they grow:
Boundary Creek Farm
3036 Huminicki Rd.
Winnipeg Beach, MB
boundarycreekfarm@mymts.net

What they grow:
Vegetables distributed through CSA and Gimli Farmers’ Market; pork; chicken; storage onions; garlic; eggs
We also distribute lamb and honey for neighboring farms.

Where to find it:
www.boundarycreekfarm.com

Warm tender naan bread. Sopping up curry juices. Tearing off pieces to scoop up some chicken or vegetables. Oh yes………pleeeeeeeeeeeeease.

I figured some things just couldn’t be done in the home kitchen when said kitchen is gluten-free, but I have managed to make very very good bread so why not? And this….oh, my…this naan….you must make it now!

And yes… I did bring it to the restaurant…it was so fabulously divine.

Naan Bread

1 ½ cups brown rice flour

1 ¼ cups corn starch

1 cup tapioca starch

1 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp instant yeast

1 tbsp xanthan gum

¾ tsp unrefined sea salt

1 ½ tsp gf baking powder

1 egg

11/3 cup plain yogurt

3 tbsps olive oil

How to Do it

• Mix dry ingredients in a stand mixer with the dough hook attachment.
• Whip the egg until frothy.
• Add egg and other wet ingredients to dry mix.
• Mix on low/medium for about 5 minutes. Scrape sides of bowl half way through. It will be stiff and make your mixer shake.
• Dust your counter with corn starch.
• Turn dough out and flatten with your hand.
• Cut into 6 wedges. Cover the dough you are not using.
• Dust your rolling pin with corn starch and roll each wedge into the tear drop shape. Thickness about  a quarter of an inch.
• Place on parchment lined cookie sheets. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm area until double the size.
• Heat your oven to 500degrees. Bake naans one sheet at a time for 4 minutes, flipping half way through.
• Brush with butter and broil until browned on each side. Repeat with remaining naan.

Best enjoyed the day you bake but you can gently warm them, wrapped in foil, in a warm oven.

Jodi Lee is a human ecologist and food blogger. She writes about eco-smart living, and being gluten and soy free at LifeFromScratch.ca. Mom to 2 school age children, one of whom is Celiac and soy allergic, she is passionate about whole, healthy, and allergen free cooking.

Throughout the challenge I’ll be blogging regularly on my experience with eating locally. I like to think I eat fairly healthy, and I try to eat local when I can at stores such as Vita Health or from farmers’ markets in the summer, but there’s a lot of room for improvement. For example, I don’t generally buy direct from the farmer, I’m not part of a food club, I’ve only visited one farm in the past five years and I don’t compost at home. Dig In Coordinators – they’re just like us! Truthfully, this five-month challenge is going to be a great opportunity for all of us to explore local foods and learn new food skills. If ever we needed the motivation and the tools to eat healthy and local, the Dig In Challenge is it!

Will you take the challenge with me? Sign up by clicking here, or if you’re already taking part in a lot of local food activities, take it one step further with the Dig Deeper Challenge.

Sagan Morrow is Coordinator for Dig In Manitoba. Contact her at digin@foodmattersmanitoba.ca if you are also interested in sharing your Dig In journey with the public.

There’s a number of ways we can eat local all winter.  One of the easiest for most people is freezing fresh vegetables and fruits.  Having an extra freezer can be a great investment, but buying an old, energy-sucking model may not be saving you any money in the long run!  We do know people that have an old freezer outside and simply unplug it once the weather stays below freezing.  There is the risk, very apparent after this warm winter, of temperatures rising, the freezer doesn’t get turned back on and all that lovely food is spoiled!

Freezing food is quite simple:  fresh food is blanched or briefly cooked, to neutralize enzymes and such that lead to decay.  The food is then submerged in ice water to stop the cooking, dried off thoroughly and placed in containers for freezing.  We freeze in portions suitable to two people, and we use a lot of freezer bags so that we’re stacking  small, thin containers.  We make pesto sauce from our fresh basil and freeze it in ice cube trays for portions.  We roast our winter squashes like pie pumpkin or butternut and then freeze the cooked meat in one cup portions perfect for a quick batch of muffins.  Two packages makes an ample pot of soup!

Drying or dehydrating is a great way to store food.  We grow shelling or soup beans like ‘Jacob’s Cattle’, ‘Dragon’s Tongue’ and others.  We simply allow the beans to get mature on the plant (the pod will be brown, dry and crispy), shell them, sort through them and clean them, pour them into a clean jar and put them on the pantry shelf!  They’re there all winter for soups, stews and chilis and so good for you!  And fresh dried beans don’t require as much time soaking in water.  We hang bunches of herbs to dry in the house, a very easy task!  We have also just acquired a dehydrator which we’ve used for fruit leathers, herbs, sliced berries and more; we can hardly wait to explore the uses for it more this coming summer.  Dried food can be stored in the pantry or cupboard, no freezer required.  You can dehydrate in the sun, in the oven and in a microwave.

Canning is a huge part of home preserving!  Water bath canning, where you submerge jars of food in hot water to seal the jars, is a Prairie tradition.  Many people are timid to start canning but, really, it’s as easy as following any recipe!  You don’t need fancy equipment – you just need proper canning jars, it is not safe to reuse jars from store bought foods.  A large soup pot or stock pot can be your canner, you just need something like a trivet in the bottom to keep the jars off the bottom of the canner for good circulation.  Keep everything clean and disinfected and follow directions and your food will be safe!

The problem with water bath canning is that the food is preserved with either sugar or acid.  That’s why water bath canned food is either sweet like jams, jellies and fruit in syrup, or sour like pickles.  We have been using a special pectin called Pomona’s, which allows us to can with honey and low levels of sugar, but the food may not store as long.  Fortunately, tomatoes are acidic enough to be canned for homemade sauces, salsas and such!  If you want food other than sweet/acidic you must invest in a pressure canner, which allows you to can other foods like beans in water, homemade soups and even meats!  Pay no attention to stories of pressure canners blowing up and such: new technology is very safe, just follow the directions!

Perhaps the ultimate in large scale food preserving is a root cellar or cold storage room.  This is a space that stays just above freezing, with some humidity.  Potatoes and many of the root vegetables like carrots and beets as well as cabbage can be held a long time in cold storage.  Many types of apples hold well, although they won’t look fresh: they wrinkle and brown a bit but are still tasty and nutritious! It’s often too much humidity for winter squash and the skin gets moldy; they do better in the house in a cool, dark place.  Lots of older homes have cold rooms or one can easily be made by walling off a cool outer wall.  Many newer homes are too energy efficient for a cold room, and it’s not possible to dig a root cellar.  You can use a deep hole or trench for storage, deep enough to be below the frost line in your area, covered but accessible through the winter.

This post is just a summary, you need more information before proceeding with any method!  For canning, we refer to the great Canadian site Well Preserved which is about so much more than just preserving!  For beginning canners, also check out Food In Jars, and a wonderful introduction to canning she wrote here.  For all types of preserving, we often refer to the book ‘Keeping the Harvest’ by Nancy Chioffi and Gretchen Mead, a great investment if you want just one reference.  And for storage methods, we highly recommend the book ‘Root Cellaring’ by Mike and Nancy Bubel.  There’s a great article on Hobby Farm Magazine on root cellaring here.  And here’s a good article on Drying Food on the super site www.pickyourown.org, which has lots of info on using/keeping fresh and local food!

• Bison Burgers and Greek Salad
• Spaghetti and Tofu Balls
• Nurturing a Love for Cooking

Bison burger and Greek salad

That being said, it can be tough to make the transition to bring healthy, local food into schools. Here are a few ways to introduce healthy, local food to children in the classroom:

1) Send your child to school with a healthy lunch. Check out the kid-friendly recipes right here at DigInManitoba.ca! Talk to your kids about the types of food they enjoy, and get them involved with grocery shopping and making meals, if they’re old enough. By giving them healthy, local food that they really enjoy, your child will be much more receptive to eating nutritious food… and they might even end up getting the other students in their class on board with local food!

2) Talk to your school about starting a healthy lunch program. Diversity Food Services at the University of Winnipeg has an excellent kitchen philosophy of committing to socially responsible practices. Encourage your school to learn more about how they can connect with local food growers and provide healthy, delicious options for kids. Farm to Cafeteria is another great program to link children with healthy eating.

Kids can cook!

3) Visit NourishLife.org for great classroom activities and school-focused resources for bringing fair food issues to the table. Make use of the free curriculum ideas and resources offered on their website, and get the discussion going among students. Hands-on activities are another really good way to get kids excited about eating healthy and local food.

4) Get the discussion going among parents. We provide articles for school newsletters written by moms, for moms on the topic of healthy eating. The more parents that get involved with eating healthy and local, the better it is for students! Share the newsletter articles with others to increase dialogue and help raise awareness about local, healthy food.

5) Grow a school garden. This is a fun, hands-on approach for children to learn about growing their own food. And vegetables become much more interesting if kids get to pull them from the ground themselves! Check out the Getting Growing Indoor School Kits to find out about grow kit options as well.

“Eat Local…” is a blog series to help you overcome the barriers to eating healthy and locally! Email Sagan at digin@foodmattersmanitoba.ca to let us know about any barriers you’d like us to address.