Book Review: Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Café and Other Stories From Canada’s Chinese Restaurants, by Ann Hui, Douglas and McIntyre, 2019. Ann Hui is a food reporter for the Globe and Mail. She writes about her fascination with Chinese Canadian cuisine, sometimes called “chop suey” cuisine or in her family, “fake” Chinese food. […]
Archive | Heritage foods and recipes
What’s Making Food History – April 24, 2020
By Mary Leah de Zwart on April 24, 2020 in Food in History, Food preservation and food safety, Heritage foods and recipes, What’s Making Food History
“Sweet Spot – The Doukhobor Jam-Making Enterprise” is the first article in a five part historical series by Jonathan Kalmakoff, in the West Kootenay Advertiser, a supplement to the Nelson Star, Castlegar News, Trail Times, Rossland News, and Grand Forks Gazette and Arrow Lakes News. https://issuu.com/blackpress/docs/i20200423040004465/2?ff&pageLayout=singlePage&fbclid=IwAR2HhCBp6G9PMOzTJuk6_gJpHRGK32i9ibPGK-VJ90hzNHDhafbyd4NEgk0
Soda Water
By M. Gale Smith on April 8, 2020 in BC food businesses, Heritage foods and recipes, Innovations and Inventions in Food History
Soda Water in BC As food history researchers we never know what might pique our interest. Recently I was looking at the collection of food images in the BC Archives Royal BC Museum website[i]. When I came across an advertisement for Thorpe’s Soda, I immediately wanted to know what it was all about. It turns out that […]
Basic Home Cooking
Basic Cooking Skills Basic cooking skills never go out of date. “Our grandmothers and mothers [sic] learned how to cook by the trial and error method….A child allowed to watch the cooking in the kitchen could be taught how a dough looked and felt when it was ‘right’….not many children or mothers [sic] have the […]
Easter Ham: Scruffy Hospitality
By Mary Leah de Zwart on March 17, 2020 in Heritage foods and recipes, Intergenerational food stories
The Easter Ham was a tradition in my family. Neither 12-foot drifts, 75 mile-an-hour winds, or the prospect of having to walk up to 25 miles could stop our dad from getting home to carve it. On March 15 and 16 of 1951, a huge snowstorm swept through Central and Northern Alberta. On the first […]
Seville Oranges and Dundee Marmalade
Seville Oranges and Dundee Marmalade Oranges do not have to be from Seville and marmalade doesn’t have to be made in Dundee, Scotland. Yet, marmalade that’s not made with bitter oranges runs the risk of being just “orange jam”. And Dundee marmalade is a Scots creation by a canny Dundonian, James Keiller who turned a […]
On Strike for “Fair” Chocolate
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 […]
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 […]