On Strike for “fair” Chocolate In the previous blog, I highlighted the irony that Carol Off considered in her book Bitter Chocolate[i] and the vast distance she described between the hand that picks the cocoa and the hand that picks the chocolate bar from the store shelf in our community. In both cases the hands […]
Archive | Heritage foods and recipes
Plum puddings and Proust
By Mary Leah de Zwart on December 15, 2019 in Food Preservation, Food preservation and food safety, Food writers, Heritage foods and recipes
Plum puddings and Proust Marcel Proust ate a madeleine – and a flood of memories resulted in a deep philosophical text about making memory conscious through one’s senses. In fact the madeleine has become a symbol of memories that arise unintentionally. The practicalities of baking give another dimension to memories, requiring skill, equipment and for […]
Cookie Recipes Set in Stone
Cookie recipes are set in stone – or are they? One way to preserve a favourite recipe is to have it carved in stone on your tombstone. Atlas Obscura[i] is an online magazine and travel company seeks out unusual items around the world. It recently featured a recipe on a granite tombstone in Brooklyn, New […]
Wedding Cake Recipe Search
By Mary Leah de Zwart on September 15, 2019 in Cookbook Research, Cookbooks, Food writers, Intergenerational food stories
Wedding Cake Recipe Search Few food historians can resist the urge to help someone find a recipe. When the BC Food History Network received a request for a wedding cake recipe, we all tried to help. Here’s the request: Hi there, I had a lady make my wedding cake in 1989 in Victoria BC. The […]
Wild Potatoes – Tsilhqot’in First Nation
By M. Gale Smith on July 3, 2019 in First Nations, Food in History, Heritage foods and recipes, Plants native to BC
Wild Potatoes – Tsilhqot’in First Nation A few years ago I had the wonderful opportunity of visiting Nemaiah Valley in the heart of the Chilcotin, home of the Xeni Gwet’in First Nation, one of six Tsilhqot’in communities[i]. I was hired by Preserve Safe™ [ii] to do a workshop on up-to-date safe food preservation methods. While […]
Cariboo Potatoes
Cariboo Potatoes The Cariboo Potato is not a BC Heritage potato but it’s applicable to BC Food History for its name and its history of being grown in seed potato programs in BC. The ’50s were a time of rapid plant development by both the Federal Department of Agriculture and plant […]
Haida Potatoes
Haida Potatoes After several years of living in a condo, my husband and I moved to a small house with a yard on Vancouver Island. I was delighted to think about having a garden again. As we dug around the yard we realized that the soil was very poor and would need some work to […]
Cookbook Research – Windermere Cookery
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 […]
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 […]