Flat Out Delicious: Your Definitive Guide to Saskatchewan's Food Artisans

Shortlisted for a 2021 Taste Canada Award and four 2021 Saskatchewan Book Awards

A robust and inspiring travel companion for both local and visiting food-lovers alike that reveals the stories, inspiration, and friendly faces of the people who craft great food in Saskatchewan.

From the province's southern grain fields to its northern boreal forests, from its city markets to its small-town diners, Saskatchewan is the humble heartland of some of the nation's most delicious food.

Author Jenn Sharp and photographer Richard Marjan spent four months travelling Saskatchewan, chatting at market stalls, in kitchens, bottling sheds, and stockrooms. Flat Out Delicious is the culmination of interviews with small-scale farmers and city gardeners, beekeepers and chocolatiers, ranchers, chefs, and winemakers. Together they tell the story of Saskatchewan's unique food systems.

The journey is organized into seven regions (including a chapter each for restaurant hotbeds Regina and Saskatoon), with essays that delve deeper--into traditional Indigenous moose hunts, wild rice farming in the remote north, and berry picking in the south. There are profiles of over 150 artisans, along with detailed maps, travel tips, and stunning photography, making the book the ideal companion for a road trip that involves plenty of stopping to eat along the way.

You'll meet a lettuce-grower who left a career in the city, and the small-town grad who worked his way up in the Saskatoon restaurant world; couples who are the first in their families to raise livestock, alongside new generations maintaining century-old operations. Whether you're visiting for the first time or are Saskatchewan born and bred, prepare to be surprised by the abundance of personalities and culinary experiences to be found here in the land of living skies.

Jenn Sharp is a writer based in Saskatoon. She was a features writer, columnist, and editor at the Saskatoon StarPhoenix for five years. Today, her Flat Out Food column runs in the StarPhoenix and the Regina Leader-Post. She's a regular contributor to CBC Saskatchewan and Eat North. Her work has appeared in the Globe and Mail and numerous other Canadian publications.

Richard Marjan first picked up a camera when he was ten and has loved everything about taking pictures ever since. After thirty-five years as a photojournalist at the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, he's now retired and does occasional freelance photography. He's won several photography awards from the Canadian Press, and his work has appeared in Canadian Geographic, the New York Times, and the Globe and Mail.