The celebration of local food has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years as more and more people want to know where their food comes from. Farmers markets, local food guides, food related festivals, special calendars, tributes to chefs—all help to promote delicious foods and wines grown in regions throughout the province.

This weekend it’s Thanksgiving. Next weekend, on Saturday the 17th, it’s World Food Day at the Richmond Cultural Centre. World Food Day is a global event and this will be the fifth such celebration that’s put on by the Richmond Food Security Society.

What happens is that from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m., 14 groups such as the food bank, community meal programs, community kitchens, the health department and the Richmond Fruit Tree’s Sharing Farm to name a few will have information tables set up. This is a perfect time to drop by and find out what’s happening here in Richmond in the realm of food security

Groups will also be introducing volunteer opportunities. And listening to what people think is important to Richmond as a place, and their role in making our city beyond 2010 more food secure.

Visitors will have a chance to meet food activist Arzeena Hamir who will share her experiences, and passion, in growing and eating locally. She and I were talking this week about some of her thoughts regarding the 10 Mile Diet.

She wrote: “One thing....is how important community is becoming in food security. Once you do the 10-mile diet a few times, you see how important it is to have others in the community to share recipes with, trade veggies, and just provide moral support. I loved how people would hand me bags of hazelnuts or plums or give me seeds to try next year. I think that’s what this is all about. There’s no way I’ll ever be able to grow everything to meet my own let alone my family’s needs but as a community, we can certainly go much farther.”

This year’s theme is potatoes. Lulu Island potatoes! Chef Ian Lai with the help of students from the Northwest Culinary Academy of Vancouver will be preparing all the food. Ian told me there will be: “Two items—one savory, one sweet. The sweet item will be zucchini something. Savory item—rice cups filled with a medley of fall root vegetables, topped with ginger threads. I will be getting potatoes from W&A. Sun chokes from Terra Nova.”

There’ll be live music provided by five different musicians. Performers include a Guatemalan vibes group outside in a tent and later inside, Milton Randall on the stage with 40 plus drums that people can play.

In the outside plaza there will also be the Farmers Pocket Market (the last one of the year). There will be lots to choose from to buy—especially autumn veggies such as a variety of squashes and root crops.

Most of us will be enjoying turkey this weekend as families gather to eat this meal as part of a deeply rooted Thanksgiving tradition. At the World Food Day event there will be a Richmond resident and author, Sabine Eiche attending. She has recently moved back here after spending over 30 years in Italy where she wrote about Italian food, culture and travel for The Florentine, a biweekly English-language newspaper in Florence. It was in Florence where she wrote a fascinating book, Presenting the Turkey, which she will be selling and signing with some of the proceeds going to the Food Security Society.

“Sabine Eiche traces the bird’s reception and impact in the Old World, drawing on the accounts of such contemporary authorities as cooks, farmers, courtiers and naturalists. She examines how the turkey’s outrageous behaviour inspired colourful expressions to describe aspects of human behaviour, and she presents over sixty works of art that reveal the changing role that the turkey has played in our lives from the Renaissance to the present.“

For the price of $20, this book would make a perfect Christmas present .

Next week’s World Food Day event sounds like a high-energy day filled with food, music and a chance to meet the people in Richmond who are making a difference in introducing food security to the community. Not just in an educational sense, but an inspirational and motivational one too. Their commitment and passion is contagious.

Happy Thanksgiving.

And in a week from now it will be another World Food Day where all are welcome.

Music and food are free although donations to the Richmond Food Security Society will be encouraged.

See you there!