If you’ve ever thought about trying to eat local, this documentary by filmmaker Suzanne Crocker is for you.
Part love letter to local food producers and part food diary, First We Eat follows Crocker and her family of five in Dawson City, in the Yukon territory, as they decide to stop relying on store-bought food that is trucked into the remote area, and to eat local for an entire year.
Beginning with a kitchen sweep of all store-bought food, the filmmaker brings us on her journey visiting the people of Dawson City who grow, harvest and hunt the fruits, vegetables, dairy, herbs, and meats in the Yukon.
The food experiment documents the exhaustive milling, grinding, storing, baking and cooking that goes into every ingredient, and while her husband and three children gamely dig into the meals, they don’t hold back on their opinions on how they taste, and what foods they miss the most.
As the seasons change, and access to fresh food wanes as the Klondike and Yukon Rivers begin to freeze, it’s a rush against time as the Crockers try to stock up on whatever they can before winter arrives.
Knowing exactly who helped bring every single ingredient to the meal on your plate sounds like an impossible feat, but this film proves that it can be done.
