Pioneer Pudding and The Delights of Community Cookbooks When I turn to my collection of community cookbooks, there are so many possibilities to write a blog about but today I was drawn to “Pioneer Pudding”, written by the Tumbler Ridge Alliance Church in the 1980s. Community cookbooks often give us some history of the community. […]
Archive | Cookbooks
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Basic Cooking Skills Basic cooking skills never go out of date.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 […]
Mona Brun and James Barber – Taste Canada Hall of Fame
Mona Brun and James Barber inducted into Taste Canada Awards Hall of Fame The Culinary Landmarks Hall of Fame / Le Temple de la Renomée du Livre Culinaire Canadien award was created by Taste Canada[i] in 2009 to honour the publication of Culinary Landmarks: A Bibliography of Canadian Cookbooks 1825–1949 by Elizabeth Driver who became its first recipient. It […]
TASTE Canada Cookbook Awards- BC Cooks and Authors
BC Cookbooks and Cookbook Authors Making History in TASTE Canada Cookbook Awards TASTE Canada is a national not-for-profit that aims to inspire readers to discover delicious recipes and diverse food stories written from a Canadian perspective.[i] Each year they host the Canada’s Cookbook Awards: A champion of Canadian cookbook authors. Awards are given in the […]
Wedding Cake Recipe Search
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 […]
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 […]
Community Cookbook Analysis – “Personal Recipes”
Community Cookbook Analysis – “Personal Recipes” – All Saints Anglican Church, Vernon, BC Old cookbooks are endlessly fascinating. They cause us to remember events and occasions of the past and when we thumb through them we may remember aromas, first tastes, traditions, failures, good and bad times. Community cookbooks provide a window into women’s lives […]
Cookbook Research
Cookbook Research Provides a Window to BC Food History – The Navy League Chapter of the Imperial Order of Daughters of the Empire Victory Cook Book (1941) Cookbooks are increasingly being recognized as primary sources for historical research as they offer original, uninterpreted information often reflecting tastes and cooking practices of the home cooks. […]
Four Ways to Roast a Turkey in BC
Four Ways to Roast a Turkey in BC Food researchers are increasingly using cookbooks sources for historical, cultural, and sociological data. Some people suggest that one way to approach recipe research is to look at examples of the same recipe from different cookbooks (e.g., Cotter,1997; Leach & Inglis , 2003; Wheaton, 2014)[i] . By examining […]
Getting Organized for Christmas
Getting Organized for Christmas In 1943, BC Electric Home Service[i] produced a Home Service Bulletin booklet titled Christmas Festivities[ii], eight pages of menus and recipes. It began with a time-table: What stood out for me on this list was putting up the decorations on December 22. I am already seeing decorated Christmas trees and outside […]