Cookbook Research: Windermere Cookery Using Cookbooks to Document the Challenges and Solutions of Daily Home Life Cookbooks (and cookbook research) are sometimes not taken seriously. Ferguson (2012) suggests that cookbooks deserve respect as a form of minor literature: they are written in stripped-down functional English that can be easily recognized (like poetry): they are political […]
Archive | Heritage foods and recipes
Chop suey and ginger beef – Chinese Canadian cuisine?
Chop suey and ginger beef – Chinese Canadian cuisine? Almost all small Canadian towns have a Chinese restaurant. Ann Hui reprises the “surprising history and vibrant presence” of these restaurants from Victoria, BC to Fogo Island, Newfoundland in her recent book, “Chop Suey Nation” (2019). She observed a gap between her childhood food experiences as […]
Cuban Lunch
Cuban Lunch The Cuban Lunch is a true Western Canadian chocolate bar and hasn’t been made for almost thirty years. Thanks to a Camrose woman and her mother’s love of this chocolate-peanut candy, it’s available once again. Winnipeg claims to be the original source (this is hardly fair, they get Winnie the Pooh AND the […]
Enjoying Apples
By Linda Peterat on September 29, 2018 in BC agriculture, Food in History, Food Preservation, Heritage foods and recipes
Enjoying Apples It’s apple harvest time in the Okanagan. The orchards are beautiful with ripe apples and the farmers’ markets offer many varieties for sale. I am fascinated by the way apples have been marketed over the years and the traces of attitudes and beliefs that remain today about apples as a result of […]
Sushi in British Columbia
By M. Gale Smith on September 12, 2018 in Food Preparation, Heritage foods and recipes, Intergenerational food stories
When did sushi come to British Columbia? BC’s claim to the California Roll begins with the assertion that Chef Hidekazu Tojo of Vancouver first introduced it to Canadian and international tourists. Because the roll was so popular with tourists from Los Angeles, he named it after their home state. However food historians in California say it […]
Best loved cookbooks
Best-loved cookbooks, the ones with food stains all over the pages and split bindings are very far philosophically from coffee-table cookbooks with beautiful photographs and exotic ingredients. They’ve become popular ideas these days for contests. The Old Grist Mill at Keremeos featured a “dirtiest cookbook” […]
Quantity cookery
Quantity cookery, or cooking for large groups of people, is an underrated skill and one that needs to be retrieved. Considering that $31billion worth of food is wasted each year in Canada, amounting to 40% of all food produced, food waste is both an economic and a social problem. Of the 40% of food currently […]
Three Sisters
A Three Sisters garden is made up of corn, runner beans and squash or pumpkin, traditionally grown by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, a sovereign people composed of five (later six) Indigenous nations in Ontario , Quebec and Northern New York. The beans give nitrogen to the soil for corn and pumpkins; the corn stalks support the […]
1860s BC Mining Town Food
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 […]
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 […]