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Well, it’s finally happened—grains are going to the dogs.
It’s a good thing, though. Claire St-Francois works for SteamWhistle Brewing
in Toronto and decided that maybe there is something more to be had from
grain production. Not only do her Bark n’ Barley dog biscuits use the spent
barley mash from beer production, the product also contains all-purpose
flour, organic eggs and natural peanut butter.
She heard of the idea of repurposing spent grains and thought it might fit
with SteamWhistle’s green initiatives, as well.
“Our manager said, ‘does anyone have any cool ideas that might benefit the
brewery?’” said St-Francois about a meeting last fall. “I wrote the proposal,
pitched the idea and they loved it.”
Within a few short months, she was selling Bark n’ Barley at SteamWhis-
tle’s farmers market in January. She’s been barking up a storm in her modest
apartment kitchen ever since.
“The dogs loved it, they just gobbled them up,” said St-Francois, admitting
she’s also sampled the biscuits, calling them “pretty crunchy.”
The next step for St-Francois is to get Bark n’ Barley on store shelves and
build a loyal network of furry clientele.
Recycling for Rover
Photo by: Claire St-Francois
TASTE OF THE PRAIRIES
Two University of Alberta nutrition researchers have
devised a menu plan that combines the vaunted Mediterranean diet with in-
gredients and tastes from the Prairies.
“We wanted to model it on the Mediterranean diet, but we also wanted to
give it a Prairie flavour,” said Cathy Chan, one of the researchers behind the
plan. “It took a lot of work—not just by us, but by many students and other
helpers—to develop the menus so that they reflect what Albertans actually eat
and use foods that are familiar to people who live on the Prairies.”
The 28-day program is called the
Pure Prairie Eating Plan
. For each week of
the program, the plan outlines daily menus that include three balanced meals
and several snack options designed to meet the recommendations of
Canada’s
Food Guide
. Nutritional information is also provided for all of the meals, in-
cluding tips on how to make each recipe even healthier.
Originally, Chan and co-author Rhonda Bell created the plan for people with
Type 2 diabetes. People with the disease, Chan said, often have trouble manag-
ing their diet.
“If they go to their physician or dietician, they get some advice, but it’s pretty
generic,” she said. “A lot of people request more concrete examples, so we started
developing meal plans and using them in our research.”
Chan and Bell soon realized their meal plans could be used to help people
without diabetes to make smart food choices, so they compiled them into a book.
At the book’s launch party, a lunch was served featuring several recipes
from the plan, Chan said. By the time it was over, the guests had happily de-
voured everything in sight. According
to the authors, the response to the
book has been just as positive.
“People have really liked the reci-
pes,” Bell said. “They’ve really liked the
emphasis on foods that are easy to find,
widely acceptable and can be served to
everybody in their family.”
The book’s release coincides with a
wider local foodmovement that pro-
motes locally sourced ingredients and
environmental sustainability. For many
people on the Prairies, this represents a
return to their agricultural roots.
“Most people aren’t farmers any-
more. They might not even know any farmers,” Chan said. “They’re a really
long way from knowing much about where their food comes from, so I think
many people are interested to learn more about that.”
The plan helps remind people about the great food that is produced in their
own backyard, Bell said, as well as the benefits of supporting local producers.
“When it’s grown here in town or here in Alberta, it keeps money here in
Alberta, it helps to support our own economy, it helps to keep others employed
and it really highlights all the wonderful things we do, right from production
all the way to processing, cooking, then serving,” she said.
Pure Prairie Eating Plan
is now available in bookstores across Alberta and
Saskatchewan. It can also be purchased online through the plan’s official web-
site, pureprairie.ca, or on Amazon.
The Food Issue
2014
grainswest.com
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