Sherri Solomko
Sherri Solomko is a freelance reporter for SaskToday who covers food and community life through detailed human‑interest features. Her recent work ranges from profiling a Rosthern family ice cream shop that has become a destination for locals, to berry‑season stories and pieces about how libraries, arts groups and volunteer organizers bring people together. Across these stories, food is treated as one more way to show how people connect, build traditions and share time with each other.
Family-run food ventures and local destinations
Food stories in her coverage focus on the people behind the counter as much as what they serve. In her feature on a Rosthern family ice cream shop, she follows how a small operation grows into a “sweet” destination, emphasizing family effort, customer loyalty and the shop’s role in local routines. She treats success not as an abstract business metric but as something measured in repeat visitors, shared memories and a sense of pride in place.
Seasonal food coverage follows the same pattern. In her berry‑season piece, she writes about “Berry good things” coming to those who wait, using the short local season as a frame to show how residents plan outings, watch the weather and build annual traditions around picking and preserving. Her profile of TikTok’s “Grandma Sherry” similarly connects recipes to culture and care, showing how one home cook shares love, heritage and practical kitchen knowledge with a large online audience. Across these food‑related stories, she keeps the focus on the relationships, rituals and small details that turn eating into shared experience.
Community institutions as gathering spaces
Beyond food, Solomko’s reporting frequently centres on the institutions that anchor community life. She covers libraries as active hubs, such as her story on the Assiniboia library’s stacked‑up summer of programs, where reading, crafts and events are presented as ways to bring different age groups into the same space. In Assiniboia she also captures “what’s buzzing” around town in July, weaving together conversation about heavy rain, airport plans, sports and events into a snapshot of how residents talk about their shared environment.
Her work on arts and culture treats stages and studios as community rooms. She profiles a family of dancers whose multi‑generation passion takes them from a small town to centre stage, highlighting how training, travel and performance fit into everyday family life. She reports on a high school drama club eager to return to live theatre and on a professional storyteller performing at a local library, showing how performers and audiences collaborate to keep storytelling alive. Even public safety and civic campaigns, such as a piece reminding people that a safe Canada Day starts with individual choices, are framed through their impact on local gatherings and traditions.
Everybody Has a Story: personal profiles across platforms
Solomko extends this human‑interest approach into the Everybody Has a Story series carried through SaskToday partners in radio. In these pieces she profiles everyday residents whose lives illustrate larger themes: a long‑time entrepreneur and volunteer leaving a community after decades of involvement, or a pet owner whose African grey parrot becomes an unexpected focal point for family life. The emphasis is consistently on biography, small turning points and the texture of daily routines rather than on policy or controversy.
These profiles often read as oral histories in written form. She lets subjects describe how they came to their work, what keeps them engaged and how they relate to neighbours, customers or audiences. Details such as nicknames, favourite activities and personal mottos are used to make stories memorable and relatable. This cross‑platform work reinforces her core focus: every person has a story worth documenting, whether they run a shop, volunteer, perform or simply keep a distinctive pet.
Connecting past, present and future in local life
A recurring thread in Solomko’s reporting is continuity—how past decisions and traditions shape present life and future plans. In her piece on two 50‑year‑old Scots pines that inspired the naming of a neighbourhood, she shows how long‑standing landmarks become part of collective identity and decision‑making. Her coverage of a family dance legacy traces how one passion moves across generations, linking early lessons to current performances and future aspirations.
She also documents moments when heritage is threatened or re‑affirmed. Her write‑up on vandalism at a local museum records both the damage and the community’s response, underscoring the value residents place on preserving shared history. Across features on authors releasing novels set in past decades, elders sharing recipes and wisdom online, and institutions planning events that honour tradition, she highlights how people consciously connect past, present and future in the way they eat, celebrate, read and gather. For stories rooted in food as well as in culture and local institutions, her reporting offers a consistent lens: the concrete details of everyday life are the threads that tie generations together.
4 more food journalists.
Al Culliton
Al Culliton is a writer and historian whose work focuses on the American cocktail as a living part of food and culture, using obscure, historic drinks to show how bars, spirits and cities change. They write reported features that trace how forgotten recipes move from old bar guides back onto modern menus, reconstructing how cocktails originally tasted and explaining how new builds reshape them. Their beat is revived classics, regional specialties and low-proof aperitifs, covered one drink at a time with close attention to specs, technique, glassware and service. They write about cocktails as cultural artifacts tied to specific communities and geographies, using single recipes to explore place, identity, regional traditions and diaspora histories. Across masthead work and recipe writing, they combine primary-source research with present-day reporting from working bars, in precise, accessible prose grounded in technical detail.
Alaina Chou
Alaina Chou stands out for rigorously testing food and kitchen products and turning those hands-on trials into clear shopping advice. She is a commerce writer at Bon Appétit and Epicurious, where she makes newsletters and shopping guides for home cooks. Her beat is food commerce, with coverage of air fryers, meal kits, protein powders, pepper grinders, electrolyte drinks, and cookbooks. She focuses on what is worth buying, how it performs, how it tastes, and how it fits daily routines and wellness. She also writes sale-driven lists and roundup pieces, and she has worked on Bon Appétit’s Feel Good Food Plan. Her reporting is practical, direct, and grounded in product testing.
Amadea Tanner
Amadea Tanner is a food journalist for Daily Meal whose distinct focus is food history, culinary nostalgia, and the way everyday dishes reveal broader cultural stories. She covers canned baked beans, boomer-era casseroles, cowboy trail food, and sailors’ rations to show how preservation, technology, labor, and survival shaped familiar staples. Her beat includes retro recipes, mid‑20th‑century home cooking, old-school ice cream flavors, and vintage cookbooks, treating them as records of household budgets and aspirations. She also reports on kitchen culture and domestic design, from breakfast alcoves and pie safes to milk doors and wall phones. Tanner investigates global dish origins and contested national claims in pieces on haggis and pavlova. Beyond Daily Meal, she has worked across food, travel, and sustainability, contributing to outlets including Atlas Obscura, Beau Monde Media, Yahoo, and Tasting Table.
Amanda Garrity
Amanda Garrity stands out for turning food, holidays, and family traditions into practical service stories that help readers plan specific celebrations. She is a lifestyle editor at TODAY.com and has more than seven years of experience as a lifestyle writer and editor, including five years on staff at Good Housekeeping, where she covered home, holidays, food, entertainment, and other lifestyle news. Her work also appears in consumer titles including Prevention, Men’s Health, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and Best Products. Her beat centers on event-based menus, holiday explainers, and classic TV and film guides, with clear, list-driven reporting that gives readers specific dates, recipes, viewing options, and simple background for family planning.