Before potatoes there were….parsnips. This homely root vegetable was popular up to the 16th century in Europe when the potato finally made its way across the Atlantic Ocean as part of the Columbian exchange. Parsnips are first cousins to carrots and native to Eurasia where they have been eaten for thousands of years. Their botanical […]
Archive | Heritage and Indigenous Foods
Heritage and Indigenous Foods
Early Contact Foods of BC
Early Contact Foods of BC In this post I want to share a few gleanings about BC food history from some general history books of the 18th and 19th centuries. A story emerges from this era of explorers and traders bringing to the Northwest seeds and plants from their home country, of them being introduced […]
Okanagan Bitterroot
Okanagan Bitterroot This week as part of RespectFEST[i] in Vernon BC, I listened to Mollie Bono, an Okanagan elder, speak on the History of the First People: Pre-Contact. She spoke about the traditions of everyday life among the Okanagans, especially from a woman’s perspective and their relation to the land and their food sources. She […]
Saskatoons – true Western Canada fruit
Saskatoons – true Western Canada fruit Saskatoons are a true Western Canada fruit; they sustained First Nations over millennia and by extension newcomers. Saskatoons (Amelanchier alnifolia) are bushy shrubs native to Western Canada, growing on riverbanks, the slopes of coulees and as high as 3400 m. in the Rocky Mountains. The white blossoms appear in […]
Strawberries Native to British Columbia
Strawberries Native to BC When I was young, the highlight of our summer was two weeks at the lake in a rustic cabin with no running water or electricity and just a Coleman camp stove. If the weather was cool and we weren’t swimming or on the beach, we would tramp through the fields […]
Food on the Go – 1850s Style
The history of food in BC gives a new meaning to “food on the go”. Ship passenger lists published in the British Daily Colonist from 1858 into the 1860s frequently list miners and sappers as occupations. Sappers were “ready to do anything or go anywhere” according to Beth Hill (1987, p. ix) who described sappers as, “ […]
Trading Fort Foods
Trading Fort Foods Lately I’ve been reading a lot of 19th century history of British Columbia, trying to understand the traders, sea captains, drovers, packers, sappers and others who ventured here in those days. References to food appear occasionally among these readings. This blog discusses trading fort foods, from ships biscuits to salmon. In the […]
Cariboo Sunflowers
Cariboo sunflowers are a beautiful marker of spring and in the not-too-distant past they were also an important food crop for the First Nations peoples of the BC interior. This plant, also known as arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata), is a member of the aster family. Nowadays it grows plentifully on hillsides and grasslands. […]
Spring Foraging – Stinging Nettles
Spring Foraging – Stinging Nettles For many people, when the winter snow and rains give way to spring, and new life begins to green the landscape, it is time to “eat your greens.” For First Nations and early settlers, the early growth of plants such as the stinging nettle, chickweed, miners lettuce, dandelion or fireweed […]
Wild Mushrooms
Wild mushrooms that grow in British Columbia have wonderful names; Hideous Gomphidius, Blewit, Fat Jack, Shaggy Parasol, Lion’s Mane, Tippler’s Bane, birch polypore. They were some of the surprise findings on a recent wild mushroom tour I took with Charles Reuchel of Elements Adventures , based in Vernon, BC. Mushrooms are fascinating on many levels. The […]