Here's hoping this column reaches you early Saturday morning, as part of your complete breakfast, like in advertising, when yogurt, granola and orange juice round out the complete breakfast of the one part that is Choco-Frosty Sugar Pops.

We need to talk food. I need your help with some, and not with cooking, either, or chewing.

At this moment, Regina is in the thick of a contest with the provincial capital one range of hills and a splash of water to the west. As part of the Great Canadian Food Fight, Victoria and Regina are racing to see which city can, by supper tonight, 6 p.m. (B.C. time: "dinner"), collect the most noodles, soup, cereal and what-not for their respective food banks.

The rivalry is billed as the Battle of the Queen Cities, for obvious historic reasons. Both capitals were christened in honour of the British monarch who reigned during settlement of the west: Fort Victoria, in 1846, and Regina, in 1882, from the Latin word for "queen," but only because her nickname was already snapped up by a city in Ontario (Ajax).

With metro-area populations of about 300,000 (them) to 200,000 (us), Victoria has an edge in people power, but not so much as to put a chill on the bravado and swagger so often typical of these inter-city challenges.

Mayor Pat Fiacco, for example, has said that if Victoria wins, which it won't, he will mow the lawn of Victoria Mayor Dean Fortin. Vice-versa, when Regina wins, Fortin will shovel the snow from Fiacco's driveway.

Seems I find myself tangled in a similar side wager. My bet is with columnist Jack Knox, a name that many long-time Leader-Post subscribers will instantly recognize as Scottish Presbyterian.

Jack does exactly what I do, whatever that is, except he does it for the Victoria Time Colonist, and way funnier, wearing shades and shorts to work rather than a tuque and scarf, and spotting tulips for the signs of spring rather than gophers.

Roughly 87 years ago, Jack was a rising star at the Leader-Post. When a job opportunity arose back home on Vancouver Island, Jack, for whatever reason, took it. I still remember shovelling his car from the snowbank for the trip west, boosting the battery and asking, why, Jack, why?

Jack and wife Lu made a gift of a four-foot-tall rubber tree from their vacated apartment that day, and we all hugged. The plant has long since died, but the pot and soil still remain in my office cubicle. That's how much Jack's friendship means to me. He is, and forever will be, my bucket of dirt.

Striking our bet was the easy part, being as we're both blowhards. Setting the stakes, that was the creative strain. At first we toyed with having the papers fly us east or west to duplicate the wager of our mayors.

After slapping our thighs over that bon mot, we heaved the sigh of newspapermen in times of economic uncertainty and got serious. (Besides which, as Jack pointed out -- and here I'll ask that you hold your palms aloft in the universal gesture for balancing one notion against another -- a winter visit to Victoria versus a winter trip to Regina. Fiacco, you wily dog).

Jack suggested we present to the other's bank the food item in shortest local supply, in his case, to Regina, potable water. I chuckled, of course, being one of those rare fans of vintage humour, circa 1982. My idea was that the pro football jersey switcheroo never gets old -- that, if Regina wins, Jack appears in his paper decked out in 'Rider green, and if Victoria wins, I pull on ...

Oh, right.

Another option was to celebrate our regional agricultural products. If I lost, my food donation would be flour-based, from the iconic wheatfields of the Regina Plains. Likewise, Jack could make a trip to the rural outback of the Island and hope like heck to return with some market produce before the helicopters descended and agricultural arrests were made in a horrible misunderstanding of his being around the iconic crop at the wrong time.

At least we were on to something, which led to our final agreement: if Regina wins, Jack makes a donation to the Victoria food bank of shredded wheat, puffed wheat, Wheaties or some other wheat-based cereal.

If Victoria wins, I'm on my way to the Regina food bank with tins of salmon, which is some sort of fish, apparently.

Saturday couldn't work out better. Today is when many of you, I know, do your grocery shopping. Grab a little something extra, will you? I can't -- I won't -- lose this one to my beloved dirt bucket. If not for me, do it for families out there who need a break, or do it for the old girl herself, Victoria 'Ajax' Regina.