Long has the harvest been an important part of my life and long has it been associated with fall, bountiful cornucopias of food, and Thanksgiving. Growing up in the Okanagan Valley, the fall harvest meant picking the last of the fruit and stripping our garden of its remaining plenty before tilling the vegetation back into…
Maple-Apple Jelly
At its most fundamental level, cooking is pure chemistry and physics. At its most profound, it is art, tradition, culture, identity and love. Nothing arguably combines both as purely as making preserves. Thus when I took up the most recent challenge in The Canadian Food Experience Project chose to make it personal, I found myself with the challenge…
Preserving: Our Canadian Tradition
I grew up among trees. Indeed, trees define a huge part of our national identity – and our food – in this country. Speak to any foreigner about their image of Canada and it will almost universally be of “wilderness” and the wide expanse of mountains, water, open spaces, and trees. Growing up, everywhere I…
My Cherished Canadian Recipe … My Grandma’s Soup
My Grandma nourished me. When she passed away seven years ago, she left a hole in my world; and much like the hole left in Haida Gwaii’s Cathedral Forest when its giant Golden Spruce was tragically removed, a space nonetheless remains even while on its verges new growth finds space. I have survived, even thrived,…
The Shore Lunch … My First Authentic Canadian Food Experience
A few weeks ago, I jumped into the Canadian Food Experience Project in medias res when I wrote about my Canadian Food Hero. Now, circling back to the beginning, I’m being challenged to write about an authentic Canadian food experience. I was a bit stumped by this challenge and I understand in retrospect why this is…