A masterpiece of food on plate, and shirt

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/03/2018 (3106 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a crusading newspaper columnist of the guy gender, I think of myself as being stylishly dressed if all of the condiment stains on the front of my golf shirt are in the same colour family.

Unfortunately, that was not the case last Saturday as I sat in front of a large crowd of onlookers at The Forks, where I once again was able to stuff my face for free as one of the “expert judges” at the Great Manitoba Food Fight.

This marked the 10th consecutive year I have been on the judging panel for this early spring battle, wherein teams of budding food scientists and nutritionists from the University of Manitoba duke it out to see who has created the tastiest and most marketable new food product.

The way this battle works is that nine teams of gluten-hating students pitch their state-of-the-art food items and provide tasting samples to an elite panel of judges, consisting of my pal Judy Wilson, a marketing expert and photographer; the loquacious Dave Shambrock, executive director of Food & Beverage Manitoba (formerly the Manitoba Food Processors Association); and me, an overweight newspaper columnist who lacks the ability to transport food from a plate to his mouth without spilling it on his shirt.

We will get to the stains in short order, but first I want to discuss how this student food fight has changed over the past decade. In the early years, most of the new products were from my favourite food group, “things that have been dipped in chocolate.”

For instance, the first competitor I recall was Winnipeg chocolatier Constance Popp, who gave us a “Manitobar,” which was a chocolate-intensive bar shaped like the province. It was so delicious that I actually asked Constance to marry me, despite the fact both of us already have spouses.

She spurned my offer, but I still become overwhelmed with emotion when I think of that chocolate bar.

In contrast, the vast majority of the products dished up in recent years have been packed with fibre and vitamins and antioxidants and probiotics and come from a group designed to “improve the gastrointestinal health of old geezers such as me.”

When I was at university, my friends and I were not concerned with the gastrointestinal systems of older persons. No, we were more concerned with using empty pizza boxes to construct fully operational models of nuclear submarines.

But today’s young food scientists are focused on health, which was obvious when we tasted something called “3C Buns,” which were tiny baked goodies that got their name because they contained the standard ingredients of all delicious treats, namely chick pea flour, cinnamon and… cricket powder.

Yes, these buns contained dried crickets that had been turned into a powder for baking. “It (cricket powder) is getting a lot of buzz in the news,” one of the students told us. “The world is moving in the direction of consuming more insect products.”

As far as I know, the only time I have knowingly consumed insects was the day when I stuck my head out the window of a moving car and accidentally sucked in a large fly, possibly a bee. The cricket buns were far more delicious than whatever bug it was I accidentally inhaled.

When I asked judge Judy how she felt about deliberately eating crickets, she smiled and said: “I don’t want to chirp about it too much.”

Another healthy item we swallowed was the “Flaxseed and strawberry smoothie,” which basically looked like a bowl of strawberry soup. As I attempted to use a spoon to get this red goop in my mouth, I dropped a huge glop on the front of my shirt. Fortunately, I was able to lick it off without too many people noticing.

The next item to adorn the front of my shirt (just below my chin and just above my belly) was something called “Seabuckthorn Greek-Style Yogurt,” which was a wildly delicious yogurt containing a purée of orange-yellow sea buckthorn berries. (For the record, I ate judge Dave’s sample while he was making serious judging remarks.)

For those of you who are not hip to food trends like me, seabuckthorn is a trendy superfood that is considered to be one of the most nutritious and vitamin-rich foods in the world in the sense it is one-third the size of a blueberry, but packs 12 times the vitamin C you would find in an orange.

They also make a lovely bright orange-yellow stain when you drop a heaping spoonful of them onto the front of your already-stained shirtfront.

In the end, the big non-staining winner was a product called “Vegg Whites,” an egg-white replacement made with Aquafaba, which is the liquid you find in a can of chickpeas.

The student team used their egg replacer to whip up vegan-friendly baked goodies, such as brownies and bite-sized lemon pies, all of which I inhaled as the other judges were offering instructive comments.

“This product addresses a huge market requirement,” judge Dave told us. “There’s a lack of product that provides ingredients to food processors and servers trying to provide natural products that are vegan and taste good. It’s really on trend from a market perspective and a health perspective.”

Student Kristen Hill, 20, said her four-person team was thrilled and surprised to win with a food item that was really an ingredient for other foods. “I’m pretty excited about it,” Kristen gushed. “Baking is a huge part of my life. I’m used to using substitute ingredients. This is easy to use and it works every time.”

The truly important thing is that the future of food in this country could not be in better hands. And that’s as plain as the stains on my shirt.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca