September 24, 2012

Eating Local and a Metro Gift Basket Giveaway (Ontario only)

tofu lasagna

September is a fantastic time for visiting the farmer’s market in Ontario – not only is there still a wide selection of later summer produce available, but you also start to see a lot of the autumn vegetables and fruit that I look forward to all year!  I can’t always make it to the market on Saturday morning though, which is why I love that local produce is also available at the grocery store.  

Metro is one of Ontario’s leading grocers, and through their Harvest from Home program, which runs May through October, they support growing, purchasing, and eating local food in Ontario.  Metro provides a wide variety of the freshest and best tasting produce that is readily available and grown in Ontario, and by implementing Harvest from Home, they purchase locally grown foods from more than 100 farms across Ontario, directly supporting local farmers and the local economy.  You can learn more about the latest Harvest from Home produce and new arrivals in store and on Metro’s Facebook page.

Metro contacted me to ask if I would be interested in spreading the news about their Harvest from Home program and some tips on eating local, which I definitely support, but they also offered to treat one of my readers to a gift basket worth over $50, so I obviously agreed!

First up, here are Metro’s 5 reasons you should be eating local (which can apply to those outside Ontario too!) 

  • Selection: Ontario has a wealth of locally grown veggies and fruit to choose from – your recipes won’t have to adapt a bit, you can get everything you need from home
  • Fresh: From field to fork – Typically food travels 1,500 miles to grocery stores. By eating local, your “food mile” reduces drastically to 45 miles. That means when you pick up your next Ontario apple, it’s that much fresher, that much more delicious
  • Better for you: Less preserving chemicals and genetic modification measures are used in the growth of local produce
  • Environmentally friendly: The thousands of travel miles our produce takes to get to our plates blasts six per cent of CO2 emissions into our local environments. By eating local, you’re helping future generations breathe easier
  • Invest into your local economy: Purchasing local food means directly supporting local farmers – this way, money stays in Ontario to  be reinvested into our local economy


And now for the fun part!  To give a taste of what they have in store, the nice people at Metro sent me over a gift basket filled with ingredients to make a comforting fall dinner with fresh, local ingredients.  As pictured above, I made the budget-friendly mushroom lasagna from Metro’s website, but it turned out a bit watery – I realized after that I should have drained some of the excess liquid from my sauce, used oven-ready lasagna noodles to absorb some of the liquid as it cooked, and waited at least ten minutes to cut into it before I served it!  

Photobucket


Regardless of my rookie mistakes, lasagna is still a great comforting meal for the beginning of fall, and one lucky Ontario reader is going to win a fabulous gift basket from Metro to make their own favourite lasagna recipe!  The winner will receive a gift basket of the dry ingredients needed to make a lasagna (noodles and seasonings), along with a $50 Metro gift card to go purchase the fresh ingredients!

For your chance to win this great prize worth over $50, just leave a comment below telling me what is your favourite local ingredient to cook with or eat.  And if you have tips on making a great lasagna, I'd welcome those too!  The giveaway will close Sunday, September 30 at midnight EST, at which point I'll randomly select one winner, who will be announced next Monday morning.  Please be sure to leave a valid email address when you enter so that I can contact you if you win.  The commenting system below will prompt you to leave an email address when you enter - it will not be published but you need to leave one so I can contact you.  Good luck!

Please note that because Harvest from Home is only offered at Metro locations in Ontario, this giveaway is open to Ontario residents only.

For those having difficulty leaving a comment, here's how - it's easy!


UPDATE: THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.  THE WINNER HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED HERE.


Disclosure: Metro provided me with the same gift basket that the giveaway winner will receive, along with information about their Harvest from Home program. All other opinions are my own.

49 comments:

  1. I love to cook with fresh fall squash ...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm heading into the kitchen this morning to make a large batch of Plum Conserve. My absolute favourite local ingredient this time of the year just HAS to be freestone PLUMS!! I'm hoping to capture and preserve their wonderful flavour so that we can enjoy it throughout the year ahead. Somehow, now matter how much I make, it never seems to last that long!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Example comment: My favourite local ingredient to cook with is ....

    ReplyDelete
  4. I like to cook with zucchini!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Freshly picked apples... Apple crisp, apple sauce, apple pie ... It's all good!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Tomatoes are my favourite ingredient

    ReplyDelete
  7. My favourite local ingredient to eat is apples!

    ReplyDelete
  8. my favourite local ingredient to cook with at this time of year is apples!! it smells like fall when apples are baking!

    ReplyDelete
  9. zucchini and red peppers are my favourite local ingredients, I am very lucky I work in Beamsville and pass at least 10 roadside markets in the summertime :) !

    ReplyDelete
  10. I'm cooking with sheppard peppers and tomatoes from my garden for lunch today.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I love using local Squash, especially butternut and acorn

    ReplyDelete
  12. Corn on the cob!! Baby potatoes! Cucumbers! mmm

    ReplyDelete
  13. My fav local ingredients would have to be corn\red and green peppers =)

    ReplyDelete
  14. janet @ the taste spaceSeptember 24, 2012 at 2:39 PM

    Lucky you! Looks like a great gift basket. So nice to see big grocers help the little bloggers. :)
    My favourite local ingredient: kabocha squash! and honeycrisp apples!! :)

    ReplyDelete
  15. This would be something new for me

    ReplyDelete
  16. I posted a photo of my plums earlier. Twenty-four cups of chopped plums made 12 - 2 cup jars of Plum Conserve. Here's my "after" photo...

    ReplyDelete
  17. I posted a photo of my plums earlier. Twenty-four cups of chopped plums made 12 - 2 cup jars of Plum Conserve. Here's my "after" photo...

    ReplyDelete
  18. omg.. now I want lasagna for dinner lol. My fave local ingredient to eat is fresh asparagus and corn from the farm 2 doors up from us. Love it!!

    ReplyDelete
  19. Hmm... lasagna ... yum !

    ReplyDelete
  20. Fav local ingredient... I'm loving fresh tomatoes right now. Trying to find ways of putting them in everything I make!

    ReplyDelete
  21. Love shopping at Métro. My favorite local ingredients is apples. At this time of they year they are so good and I make apple crisps, muffins, fruit ketchup with them.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Tomatoes are my favorite at the moment !

    ReplyDelete
  23. Absolutely Apples, from Algoma Orchards!

    ReplyDelete
  24. Definitely rice. It's part of my religion, background, and especially childhood. My mother would feed rice in so many different ways that there's never not anything new to make as a side to rice. :)

    ReplyDelete
  25. Ontario apples for apple pies!

    ReplyDelete
  26. Local tomatoes for spaghetti sauce.

    ReplyDelete
  27. corn on the cob...delicious !

    ReplyDelete
  28. Its hard to choose just one local ingredient. I love the fruit season of strawberries and apples and tomatoes (I still think of them as a veggie) But we also have great local cheese that I couldn't live without. And we are in the middle of some pretty great wineries too :)

    ReplyDelete
  29. Our local ingredient would be tomatoes and other veggies. We use the tomatoes to make sauce

    ReplyDelete
  30. Tomatoes -- simple, but versatile, and so easily grown.

    ReplyDelete
  31. ontario golden delicious apples! yum!

    ReplyDelete
  32. Garlic, especially when it's roasted.

    ReplyDelete
  33. My fave is Ontario Strawberries!

    ReplyDelete
  34. Love to use local tomatoes! Delicious and versatile!

    ReplyDelete
  35. I grow lots of tomatoes. I've already frozen 4 huge baggies of them for the winter, so my answer would be tomatoes!

    ReplyDelete
  36. Pumpkins! mmm Pumpkin pies! Delicious can't wait till its pumpkin picking time.

    ReplyDelete
  37. My favourite is squash any kind.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Fave local ingredient? Tomatoes! :)

    ReplyDelete
  39. My favorite is eggs from a local farm.

    ReplyDelete
  40. My children love local squash and quiche with vegges. They ask for it every day.

    ReplyDelete
  41. i love local corn - great on its own, as a side dish, in a salad etc.

    ReplyDelete
  42. Mushrooms....yummy :) I would put it in almost everything

    ReplyDelete
  43. Making Money - Work/Tennis: The Ultimate Guide
    The https://septcasino.com/review/merit-casino/ way you would expect งานออนไลน์ from betting on the tennis matches of herzamanindir tennis is to bet on the player you like 토토 사이트 도메인 most. But you also need a different

    ReplyDelete

Ingredient Index

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
Blogging tips