Consumer expectations are systematically growing, with demands for foods with a number of attributes, which are sometimes difficult for manufacturers to meet. The engineering processes that are needed to obtain top-quality foods are a major challenge due to the diversity of raw materials, intermediates, and final products. As in any other enterprise, the food industry must optimize each of the steps in the production chain to attain the best possible...

Chuck visits Norma Condo, from the Mi'kmaq community of Gesgapegiac in Eastern Quebec who invites him to experience lobster fishing with Jeremy Jerome and crew. Back on the beach, Norma shares her traditional cooking techniques.

Chuck travels to Kitigan Zibi where he meets Cezin Nottaway. Together they gather ingredients by first going sugarbushing for maple syrup. Upon searching for the precious springtime liquid, they unexpectedly discover a delicious surprise.

Chuck travels to the Atikamekw community of Manawan where Odette, Therese, and Menic take Chuck foraging for precious wild blueberries. The three women also introduce Chuck to a partridge hunt by making a traditional slingshot with him.

Chuck travels to Toronto to learn about urban Indigenous cuisine. He meets chefs Shawn Adler and Johl Whiteduck Ringuette, who are dedicated to bringing the Indigenous culinary scene to life by sharing their cultural history through food.

Chuck travels to Six Nations in Ontario where several Indigenous Nations coexist. He meets Kitty, who works to preserve and share ancestral knowledge within her community and learns to prepare the Three Sisters soup, an Indigenous staple.

Chuck travels to Wikwemikong on Manitoulin Island where he and Theodore Flamand visit the site where Theodore and his colleagues want to reintroduce wild rice, a flagship plant of the First Peoples' diets, to the land.

"Irrational Persistence tells the story of Garden Fresh Gourmet, and how two entrepreneurs turned a million-dollar debt to a 100-million-dollar annual revenue. Woody Allen famously said that 80 percent of success is just showing up; but any entrepreneur can tell you that it's the other 20 percent that's key. The founders of Garden Fresh took that old saying to heart, building so many strategic advantages into their products and business that their...

"Chantha Nguon recounts her life as a Cambodia refugee who lost everything and everyone--her house, her country, her parents, her siblings, her friends--everything but the memories of her mother's kitchen, the tastes and aromas of the foods her mother made before the dictator Pol Pot tore her country apart"--