What's in Store with Marissa Papakonstantinou : Krinos Canada's Feta Cheese Plant in Edmonton, Alberta.

2025-03-19

Hey everyone, it’s Paralympic medalist sprinter and Canadian record holder Marissa Papaconstantinou! I’m proud to continue exploring my Greek heritage in partnership with Krinos Canada by visiting some amazing spots around the country spreading #FetaCulture.

Since making my national team debut at age 15, a lot has changed in terms of how I fuel my body to train and compete. As you might imagine, there was lot more cheat days in the early days as a teenage high schooler!

My diet is essential to helping me find those extra tenths or even hundredths of seconds on the track that is always the difference between a podium spot and last place. Accordingly, I’m conscious of making not only healthy choices, but considering things like where my food actually comes from and how that could be even more beneficial than simply picking a salad over a pizza.

While visiting one of my national team teammates in Edmonton, Alberta, I took some time to head out to nearby Camrose where Krinos Canada’s Cheese Plant is. Feta cheese is an easy creamy and salty kick to a variety of my go-to weekly meal preps. Generational cheesemaker Manolis Georgantelis heads up the facility and showed me what it takes to make the best feta is Canada.

The first thing that struck me was how family-oriented the production was, from Manolis’ daughter running around his office to Amanda, the pasteurizer operator, whose sons also work here. Their love and passion for each other and what they do is an integral part of the business. “It makes it easy to communicate, develop new products, and continuously improve our current recipes.” mentioned Manolis.

Speaking of recipes, the one they use here for feta brings together the best of Greece and Canada. “We are using a recipe that I brought with me from Greece with all the traditional ageing and production techniques.” Manolis said. “Our milk is from farmers nearby here in Alberta. It comes very fresh, and we pasteurize the milk as soon as possible so we have the best quality.” With his educational background in food technology and growing up working the production lines of his grandparent’s cheese factory in his native Greece, Manolis is well equipped to run the show here.

At any given time, there is over 300 pallets of cheese flowing from the production floor to a supermarket near you. Not only do they make feta’s like cow’s milk and goat milk varieties, but also saganaki (which is amazing grilled) and mizithra (great grated over pastas).

It was amazing to finally see how something I eat on an almost daily basis is made and to know that it comes from such humble roots. That’s all from me for now! Make to stay tuned for my next visit on the Krinos Canada Kitchen Blog.