I came poor of birth I was born blue into childhood of a childhood cut from my parents’ impulses gifted second-hand a copy of a 163rd reprinting Baby and Child Care a gift of new and old it was a time when being conceived out of marriage being born was the end not a beginning…
Leftovers
Fortune was the recipe — or fate — it depended what was undercover in the fridge leftover from the week past. Tupperware containers half-filled last with remnants of meals: a roast of Dad’s beef sad butter crusted beans some old tomato dyed cold spaghetti some gravy for sauce. Tossed together my Mother of invention added…
Herbs — A Gateway to Freedom and Abundance
As a child, I hated the family garden. It represented work. It represented indentured servitude. It represented poverty. There isn’t more evidence in my life of the difference perspective can make. Growing into a man, my perspective changed when my attitude changed — when I stopped working a garden for others and started working it…
Harvesting an Identity
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…
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…