Passionate advocate for homegrown food helms Food Day Canada

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TORONTO — A uniquely Canadian meal for 7,000 people is just one of the events being hosted as part of the country’s largest culinary party.

Chef Andrew Hodge is gearing up to feed hungry oilsands workers near Fort McMurray, Alta., a special menu this Saturday to mark Food Day Canada.

Meanwhile, Roary MacPherson at the Sheraton Hotel Newfoundland aims to be first to celebrate Food Day Canada by kicking off a two-day party on Friday.

Food Day Canada organizer and founder Anita Stewart expects some 250 restaurants across the country will mark the occasion with special menus.

She says the annual event is a chance for Canadians to celebrate the country’s farmers, fishers, chefs, researchers and home cooks.

Hodge’s meal for Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., workers is the largest Stewart has seen in the dozen years she’s been co-ordinating Food Day Canada.

The chef has divided his menu into main and side dishes from western, eastern and central Canada, while the dessert tray will also feature sweets from across the country.

His interpretation of food from the west includes sweet and sticky saskatoon berry barbecue ribs, corn on the cob and maple and bacon roasted brussels sprouts. From the Atlantic region is seafood stew, while a poutine bar represents central Canada.

MacPherson has invited chefs from the region and several provinces to take part in his East Coast party in St. John’s. The public can mingle with the chefs at the hotel on Friday, while the main event Saturday is called “The Great Canadian Food Market.”

Diners can check the Food Day Canada website for participating restaurants in their area along with their stories and menus.

Home cooks too are invited to “cook their own stories” at backyard barbecues and picnics and share them via social media, Stewart said from Elora, Ont.

“The goal is to create a strong culinary nation. That’s what we have to do and having a national food party is the best way to do it,” says Stewart, author and food laureate at the University of Guelph.

Stewart says many Food Day Canada chefs “are doing pretty cool things in terms of sustainability, harvesting the wild and preserving the harvest.”

Chef Derek Bendig of Siwash Lake Ranch, at 70 Mile House, B.C., forages and creates condiments using rosehips, crab apples, spruce tips and wild mint, juniper- and spruce-scented mustards and pestos with wild onion and dandelion.

Chris Stewart at Mission Hill Family Estate Winery’s Terrace Restaurant in Kelowna, B.C., mitigates waste by drying carrot peels and pulverizing them into powder, which is then used to give a blast of flavour to the carrots he serves.

At Manoir Hovey’s Le Hatley restaurant in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, chef Francis Wolf uses birch syrup made from tapping the abundant trees on the property in the spring.

“These chefs want to differentiate themselves and make something special and they also want to celebrate where they’re at,” says Stewart.

You don’t have to go to major cities to find great restaurants, she adds.

“There are little clusters of excellence across the country that cross all genres of cooking and a variety of price points,” Stewart says.

Food Day Canada was initially called the World’s Longest Barbecue and was launched by Stewart in 2003 to support farmers whose livelihoods were threatened in the wake of the mad cow crisis.

Visit Food Day Canada online at www.fooddaycanada.ca.