Thematic, educational, and participatory activities

This is a great opportunity to reflect on ways to improve our daily diet and increase the year-round availability of local foods!

• Host a potluck with the theme of cooking 100% local. In the summer, turn it into a picnic. It’s a chance to share and discover delicious recipes highlighting local products.
• Organize a blind tasting. Venture into less common or lesser-known foods and drinks to add a challenge: sea buckthorn, haskap berries, Swiss chard, kombucha, whelks, kimchi, etc. Be mindful of allergies!
• Arrange a culinary workshop with colleagues: Take a cooking or mixology class that showcases local products. What’s more fun than cooking together with your teammates?
• Invite a speaker: Nutritionists, sustainability experts, and others can share their knowledge.
• Explore the guide Autonomie alimentaire, created by École-O-Champ, which helps secondary school teachers lead a concrete and engaging educational module on food autonomy in Québec.

Organize a quiz or riddles

Get as many people as possible at your institution involved. Use multiple-choice questions, true or false, open-ended questions… It’s a fun way to learn more about Québec foods.

Engage in inspiring readings about local food : gastronomic, sociological, economic, or playful works.

Book / story suggestions :

• L’avenir est dans le champ
• Mangez local (tome 1 et tome 2)
• Forêt : Identifier, cueillir, cuisiner et Cueillir la forêt : Guide d’identification des plantes sauvages
• Le garde-manger boréal
• Mangez Québec
• L’apéro au Québec or Boire le Québec
• The sélection alimentation from Éditions Écosociété
• Comics about food and/or rural life, such as Faire campagne, Le nouveau monde paysan or a selection of thematic youth albums depending on your audience
• The magazine Caribou : thoughtful Québec culinary culture

Organize a viewing on the theme of local food and spark discussions. Encourage participants to think of ways to eat more locally.

• Look for relevant episodes on show and podcast websites featuring local or regional food producers and projects: Mange ton Saint-Laurent, De par chez nous, Les fermiers, L’Épicerie, La Semaine verte, Moi j’mange, Le Québec dans le garde-manger, etc.
• Check out webséries de la plateforme Mordu, Radio-Canada’s gourmet platform.
• Present a recent documentary on the topic, such as La ferme et son état, etc.
• Explore examples of current initiatives: Portrait de nos champions, Le goût d’inspirer, On a échangé nos cuisines, etc.

Florence-Léa Siry

Florence-Léa Siry is an expert in fighting food waste and reducing garbage. Her work leads her to host over a hundred conferences a year, across Quebec. Author of 5 books, her creative and playful approach is impactful. She will equip you to reduce your waste, but most importantly, she will motivate you to have a positive impact on the environment through her accessible, creative and delicious tips.

• Website: Chic frigo sans fric
• Download the zéro gaspi digital booklets for a wealth of tips and recipes that will allow you to make the most of them, in collaboration with the Mouvement J'aime les fruits et légumes.

Bobby Grégoire et Guillaume Cantin

Guillaume Cantin and Bobby Grégoire are co-initiators and respectively Executive Director and advisor for the Perte Zéro consulting service at La Transformerie, a non-profit social economy organization. In May 2019, they launched their flagship project, Les Rescapés, which consists of reducing waste through the production of delicious spreads, marmalades and sauces, and helping to fight food insecurity by redistributing food to emergency food assistance organizations.

La Transformerie offers a strategic advisory service to accompany large companies and institutions in their desire to effectively reduce their ecological footprint as well as their food losses and waste.

Contact them: guillaume@latransformerie.org 

Website: La Transformerie