Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

LIIDLII KUE/FORT SIMPSON - Daniele Gregoire believes she has the seeds to good health.

"We need to get away from eating junk type foods and into a more healthy way of living," she said.

Daniele Gregoire shows off a bowl of tomatoes with the harvest from the Fort Simpson community garden this past summer. - Andrew Livingstone/NNSL photo

In an effort to help people in Fort Simpson become more food savvy, she is leading them back to art of gardening.

"People are eating a lot of processed foods and not cooking as much," she said.

Gregoire and Pat Switzer got together and decided to teach people how to preserve food from produce they grow and demonstrate the benefits of a lifestyle free of processed, store-bought food.

"It was to show what we could do with our gardening," Gregoire said.

The workshops explained how to take home-grown vegetables, with a relatively short shelf life, and make them last through the winter.

"It teaches people how to be self-sufficient."

Switzer said using something you've cared for since you planted the seed is an accomplishment with a lot of satisfaction.

"It's nice to watch something grow right from a little seed right through to eating it," she said. "It's better than going to the store. You know exactly what you have when you do this."

Switzer has been preserving vegetables since she was in her early 20s. Her grandmother, mother and her aunt preserved their own food and it has carried on with her through her adult life.

"When I was with my first husband we had a gigantic garden. We had land in the Red River valley, a horrible place for flooding but the land was so fertile it was incredible. I remember one year I had so many tomatoes, I made anything and everything you could imagine. It was unbelievable," she said

Preserving tomatoes is a really easy task to complete, but it does take some time and patience to do so.

"You want to make sure you do it right so taking your time to follow the steps is important, she said."

Tomatoes are very prone to botulism, an extremely dangerous and sometimes fatal bacteria, so it's crucial to make sure proper sterilization is done.

"You want to sterilize your jars," she said. "This means you to put them in boiling water and boil the jars and the lids in the water. You want to do that for five minutes."

Gregoire said offering these courses will give people a better understanding of how the process works.

"It's a very special procedure and it's important you know how to do it right so you don't get sick," Gregoire said.

Red, ripe tomatoes are best for preserving, Switzer said. The tomatoes are boiled for five minutes to loosen the skin and then soaked in cold water for another five minutes to help remove the skin.

"When the cold water starts to get warm you want to dump it out and put in more cold water," Switzer said.

Tightly packing the tomatoes into the jars, you can add sugar and pickling salt, as well as tomato juice if you choose, for some added flavour. It's also very important to soak the jars once the cover is on for up to 50 minutes in boiling water to kill any remaining bacteria.

"The longer you do it, the better off you are because it will kill any bacteria in it and seal the jars real good," she said.

Both Switzer and Gregoire said people are becoming more conscious about what they are eating and where it is coming from. Allowing people the opportunity to produce their own foods in a community garden and teaching how to preserve that food will allow for more healthy options.

"People are talking about what they can do to eat better and this talk of being organic," Switzer said.

"We buy stuff in the store and we don't know what's in it. I'm not a health freak, but when you don't know half the words on the labels of food, you have to wonder."