Healthy, local recipes developed by Nancy Guppy, Registered Dietitian

The good news is that recipes posted to my food and farm blog have been tested so you can trust them to work reasonably well. I do agree that necessity is the mother of invention. So, feel free to play with ingredients and techniques to suit your needs.

I am featuring food by the season and posting recipes for ingredients as they come available to me from my garden, neighbouring forests and the Almaguin Highlands area where I live. We are a short half hour drive south of North Bay and 3.5 hours north of Toronto. Our growing season is slower than some! The recipes are basically healthy and use local and Canadian food ingredients. They aren't entirely local as most of us, including me, aren't going to stop using olive oil, balsamic vinegar and some other foreign favourites. I also feature foods that we can safely forage. Many people call it wild crafting and I think this name has good appeal.

The recipes are lower in fat, sodium and higher in fibre. They are nutrient dense meaning they are packed with nutrients instead of just calories. I also want them to be delicious, attractive and something you want to make with your family and friends. I will post the computerized nutrient analysis of the recipe and report briefly on the medicinal qualities of the food as well.

I was raised in a food family in northern Ontario. Jack and Peggy Guppy, my parents, operated Marg's Restaurant in Temagami for years. I have always worked around food and I have enjoyed being a dietitian for the past twenty or more years. Since I left my government job in 2005 I have done a lot of consulting and recipe development. A major client of mine is the Chicken Farmer's of Canada and you can find many healthy recipes there. www.chicken.ca

In the past year I have also done recipe work for Quaker Oats and Silani cheese. I am starting to work with schools, health units, restaurants and many different types of groups as a nutrition consultant with expertise in local food preparation and wild crafting. When life settles down a bit I hope to go into cookbooks and publish one or two!

I invite you to post your comments, recipes and ideas at my food and farm blog. I hope we can help further generate a small, heated, frenzy to promote local, healthy eating in the North Bay area.