Food supply chains involve all levels of the economy. These days we hear about food supply chains in terms of obtaining imported out of season foods, but the concept also applies to maintaining food sufficiency and security. I remember seeing a “For Better or Worse” comic strip by Lynn Johnston, where her protagonist Elly Patterson […]
Archive | Heritage and Indigenous Foods
Heritage and Indigenous Foods
Creative Gifts from the Kitchen
By M. Gale Smith on December 13, 2021 in Food for Holidays and Special Occasions, Heritage and Indigenous Foods
Creative Gifts from the Kitchen The pandemic and supply chain issues have many people seeking out more personalized, thoughtful, homemade gifts. Creative gifts from the kitchen in the form of recipe and food items, provide ideas for many gifts through food history. Framing Family Recipes Chrissy Smith, a home economics teacher and graduate of the […]
Hazelnuts
Hazelnuts When people who are trying to “eat local” or use various versions of regional diets ask “What to do about nuts?”, the most popular recommendation was hazelnuts up to a few years ago. Commercial Production Hazelnuts have been farmed in various parts of BC since at least the 1930s[i]. Commercial cultivation in the Pacific […]
Salal Jelly
Salal Jelly How to make salal jelly continues a BCFHN blog from May of 2018 on the topic of salal, https://bcfoodhistory.ca/salal/. I was inspired by a patch of salal under a stand of cedar trees close to where I live on Vancouver Island and intended to follow up with a post on salal jelly when […]
Pine Mushrooms
Pine Mushrooms Pine mushrooms provide a source of income in various parts of British Columbia from August to November. This summer, you may come across signs on the highway throughout BC offering to buy mushrooms. The arrow points to a mushroom depot where buyers pay cash to wild mushroom foragers and commercial harvesters for BC […]
Savory Rhubarb
Savory Rhubarb Cakes, crisps, crumbles, muffins, pies – tart and sour stalks of rhubarb have long provided a tangy, citrus-like food addition to plain, bare-bones diets. Rhubarb is the “pie plant” and as stated in previous blogs, the availability of sugar in the late 1700s increased its popularity. But, rhubarb goes further than pie. Savory […]
Misunderstood Rhubarb
Misunderstood Rhubarb. A vegetable treated like a fruit. Understated. What do you know about it? Try this quick quiz (T/F). Bright red stalks and green/red stalks are equally ripe. Its leaves are poisonous and its stalks are not. It requires a few weeks of cool temperatures (under 5 C or 40 F) and moderate summers […]
Wild Potatoes – Tsilhqot’in First Nation
Wild Potatoes – Tsilhqot’in First Nation A few years ago I had the wonderful opportunity of visiting Nemaiah Valley in the heart of the Chilcotin, home of the Xeni Gwet’in First Nation, one of six Tsilhqot’in communities[i]. I was hired by Preserve Safe™ [ii] to do a workshop on up-to-date safe food preservation methods. While […]
Cariboo Potatoes
Cariboo Potatoes The Cariboo Potato is not a BC Heritage potato but it’s applicable to BC Food History for its name and its history of being grown in seed potato programs in BC. The ’50s were a time of rapid plant development by both the Federal Department of Agriculture and plant […]
Haida Potatoes
Haida Potatoes After several years of living in a condo, my husband and I moved to a house with a yard on Vancouver Island. I was delighted to think about having a garden again. As we dug around the yard we realized that the soil was very poor and would need some work to get […]