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 | Cooking and Food Preparation
Cooking and Food Preparation
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Basic Cooking Skills Basic cooking skills never go out of date.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 […]
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 began in 1790 when a Dundonian, James Keiller, bought rotting Spanish oranges (either […]
Canadian Stew and War Cake
Canadian Stew and War Cake What makes stew “Canadian”? Why was the name of War Cake in the First World War changed to Eggless Spice Cake in the Second World War? An extensive collection of military rations and cooking in Baird and Wranich’s book Recipes for Victory features almost 150 pages of recipes drawn from […]
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 […]
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. “Chop Suey Nation” published in 2019 and written by Ann Hui, mentions chop suey and ginger beef, two popular menu items in Chinese Canadian restaurants from Victoria, BC to Fogo Island, Newfoundland. These constructed dishes have more to […]
Wild Game Cookery
Wild Game Cookery A recent CTV news item suggests government incentives to use more food from the land, or “country food”.[i] Presently chronic food insecurity and hunger is a miserable fact of life for many Inuit and other Indigenous peoples in Canada’s Far North. The supply of commercial foods is unreliable in cost, quality and […]
Snacks
Snacks by Janis Thiessen Janis Thiessen will make you re-think snacks and the class snobbery that blames them for an array of health problems and obesity. She begins by admitting that she loves potato chips and grew up in a family that regularly purchased pop and a variety of candy and processed snack foods. Thiessen […]
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 […]
Simple Pancake Recipe
By Mary Leah de Zwart on July 31, 2018 in Cooking and Food Preparation, Food for Holidays and Special Occasions
Simple Pancake Recipe How quickly can you make pancakes? Pancakes and flapjacks played an important role in early BC food history. Camp cooks worth their salt[i] were expected to rustle up pancakes at the drop of a hat. The right combination of ingredients will produce a fluffy, memorable pancake. Barss (2016)[ii] tells us that cowboys […]