Mining towns such as Barkerville, BC presented a particular challenge for the provision of food for miners and others rushing into the Cariboo during the 1860s Gold Rush. There was little local food production and public eating places such as restaurants and stopping houses provided food for many people. Lately I’ve been reading The Cariboo […]
Archive | Heritage foods and recipes
Butter-making: A mark of excellent housekeeping
By Mary Leah de Zwart on April 30, 2018 in BC agriculture, Food Preparation, Food Preservation, Intergenerational food stories
Butter-making used to be a mark of excellent housekeeping for farm women. It requires close attention to sanitation and methodical treatment, from the way the cow is milked to the removal of liquid in the final working of the end product. It is both a science and an art and has been part of human […]
Laura Rose – Canada’s Dairying Queen
By Mary Leah de Zwart on April 12, 2018 in BC agriculture, Food in History, Intergenerational food stories
Laura Rose Stephen (1866-1963) was Canada’s Dairying Queen. Until big business took over the Canadian dairying industry she had a profound influence on quality and production of dairy products. She was born at Georgetown, Ontario, daughter of Lawrence Rose, a flour mill owner and had at least one sister and five brothers. The famous “Five […]
Milk Separators
The milk separator helped create a source of income for farm wives and the establishment of the dairy industry in Canada. Nowadays the milk separator is an object of mild curiosity in museums and at antique auctions. There’s one at the Greater Vernon Museum and Archives; when I heard a parent tell her child, “That’s […]
Selling BC Apples
It was challenging to sell BC apples in the 1930s. In 1931, based on data from 1926 to 1930, British Columbia led five provinces in total apple production (reported at an average of 1,279,000 barrels). In 1937, while BC apple production had increased it was surpassed by Nova Scotia. In 1942, BC once again edged out […]
A Case for Retro Recipes
Many of the recipes that I enjoyed in my childhood and youth now fall under the category of “retro recipes”. Recently I was struck by the contradictory and changing relationship that Canadians have with food and cooking. “Easy Does It”, an article by Corey Mintz in the Globe and Mail argues that we tell ourselves […]
Root Cellars
By mgsmith on February 13, 2018 in Food in History, Food Preservation, Heritage foods and recipes, Uncategorized
Root cellars have been around since the beginning of agriculture. The early settlers across Canada, including those here in BC. often did not have the option of a visiting a grocery store in the middle of winter for fresh fruits and vegetables. They often “shopped” in their root cellars. Before the advent of home refrigeration […]
Kootenay Fruit Growing and Falkland Community Cookbook
By lpeterat on February 10, 2018 in BC agriculture, Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Heritage foods and recipes
Kootenay Fruit Growing and the Falkland Community Cookbook are the topics of the latest book reviews. For more book reviews, go to: http://www.bcfoodhistory.ca/food-history-resources/book-reviews/ Lost orchards, vanishing fruit farms of the West Kootenays began as a thesis by Joan Lang in the History Department at The University of Victoria in 1996. It documents the development and decline […]
Homemade Recipe Books
Homemade recipe books have a special place in my cookbook collection. Older ones are handwritten or typed on mimeograph machines or spirit duplicators and put together by hand. The covers are manila-tag, or in more sophisticated efforts, wallpaper samples or oilcloth trimmed with pinking shears. They have been replaced by photocopied cookbooks and print-on-demand with […]
Margaret Henderson and the Province Modern Kitchen
Margaret Henderson was one of several BC newspaper food writers who influenced the daily lives of thousands of women. During Henderson’s tenure as Director of the Vancouver Province Modern Kitchen from about 1935 to the late 1950s[i], the home economics division of The Province tested recipes and produced regular cooking columns, seasonal supplements and weekly […]