Pasta: Nature's Farm offers a wide selection of pasta types and unique flavours, including 100 mile suitable and organic products like wild rice linguine. Purchased at the St. Norbert Farmers market but also spotted at Organza, Vic's Fruit Market etc. Prices range from $3.50 to $5.50 a bag. Very reasonable and delicious! http://www.naturesfarm.ca/
Barb's Kitchen provided us with whole wheat noodles at St. Norbert Market. All ingredients are local, haven't tried them yet but they look darn good! Contact them at barbskitchen@mts.net or just stop by the market!
New Bothwell Cheese: Huge variety of products from Manitoba's largest and most famous independent cheese and dairy manufacturer. They're all amazing but try the goat cheese feta! Can be found in most organic, whole food stores and even supermarkets. Try Vic's Fruit Market for a nice selection! Cheese does contain salt so depending on how strict your 100 mile challenge is, or how much you love cheese, they may or may not be suitable.
Eggs: Where to start?! There are heaps of Manitoba egg producers, whether you source them direct from a farm (thank you Stefan and Blue Lagoon Organics!) or supermarkets, it is quite easy to find local eggs. Again, Vic's Fruit Market (awesome place) carries five or six different types ranging in price depending on size, organic, free range, etc.
Milk and Butter: Organic Meadow Milk seems to be the most common local organic milk company. Can be found at most organic and whole food stores in the city. Expect prices around three times that of supermarket milk ie. $6 for a 2L and $12 for 4L.
Honey: Expect to use lots of honey to replace sugar in recipes and such. Lots of local providers, go to any market and you'll have no trouble finding honey. So why not try an unusual variety!? There are heaps of different flavours and types of honey, we've tried a few types ranging from a dark molasses like buckwheat honey to a raspberry creamed honey, hot damn!
Oil: Not being able to cook with olive oil originally posed a problem, until we learned about cold pressed sunflower oil from Tall Grass Prairie Bakery! Its pressed in store from local sunflower seeds, has an amazing nutty smell and taste, and cooks really well! Around $10 for a 500ml bottle.
Bison: You can really get bison anywhere now, and most is local, but one cool product we came across is deli bison at Vic's Fruit Market. Its local and deliciously smoked, get it at the deli counter either shaved or sliced for $3.50/100 grams. Made our university lunches wayyyy easier and tastier!
