Bringing local colour and tastes far and wide.

For the past few years, I have been working at Devour! The Food Film Fest as a programmer, helping in the selection of films, and doing a few other bits and bobs at the five day festival.  This year Devour! is taking place from October 25th until the 29th in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. I'm looking forward to a bunch of the screenings, but especially Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry. I'll also be hosting a panel discussion after the screening talking about farming and community. You can check out the trailer below.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down and interview noted journalist and author Jan Wong. Wong and I talked about her latest book, Apron Strings, at the Halifax Public Libraries' Central Branch. Wong is known for her work as an investigative journalist and former columnist for The Globe and Mail, especially her famous "Lunch With Jan Wong" column. I could make a joke about how the tables have turned...

Photo by Albert Lee

But talking to Wong about Apron Strings was a great experience, as was reading her book. A blend of travel journal, food writing and personal essay, Wong takes her son - and her readers - to France, Italy, and China, and writes a story about how family, culture, and food intersect. But this is not an idyllic jaunt - Wong presents the bitter with the sweet on all three topics. You can read part of our interview over at Atlantic Books Today. 

Speaking of interviews, I'll be heading to Toronto quite often for the next few months, as I recently took on a side gig working with Couleurs Locales, a french language current affairs show on Unis TV. The show was kind enough to allow me to talk about Pantry and Palate - what it's like to write about and help preserve Acadian food culture - for my first time on the show. The weekly show and is a great pan-canadian look at news that I am proud to be a part of. 

Also in Toronto, I'll be appearing at the Royal Winter Agricultural Fair on Monday, November 6th. I'll be doing two presentations on Acadian food, preserving culinary heritage, and doling out some tasty goodies as well. I only wish I could stay for the whole week for all of the other culinary events happening. Come on down and say hi!

And last but not least, I finally followed the advice that came from a few of you, and I created a Facebook Page. I'll be posting some of the content from here, as well as about things that catch my eye, postings about Pantry and Palate, and more. Do me a favour and check it out, and click Like. 

Fall into it.

Fall smells of apples to me.

Old Fashioned Gravensteins from my parent's orchard in Church Point, Nova Scotia.

Apples on trees waiting to be picked, apples baked into pies, apples covered with oats and nuts in crisps, apples turned into apple sauce. 

It’s a smell, and a season that makes me think of family, and of work.

When I call my parents at this time of year, they tend to answer while they are picking and packing apples. “I packed forty bushels today,” my mother will say. “Your uncle and I picked another forty to replace that one,” my father will say. Everyone wants to eat newer varieties like Honey Crisp, but my parents and I prefer older types of apples. I’ll ask about what’s being picked, and they will rattle off varieties like Gravenstein, Paula Red, Macintosh. Varieties that should be eaten when they come off the tree, and savoured for their brief time in the sun. 

Ever since I came across Rowan Jacobsen’s book, “Apples of Uncommon Character,” I’ve become obsessed with finding older varieties of apples. I ask farmers and vendors, and have some across some interesting types, apples which have wonderful spiciness, sweetness, acidity, and crunch. Fall is here. That means you should be eating apples, and good ones at that.

***

Fall also makes one yearn for the summer, but I will admit I was pretty happy with this summer. Pantry and Palate did well, and continued to gain momentum and mentions in the media. I was pleasantly surprised at where the book would pop up, from a review and recipe mention in local newspapers across the country like this one in the Kingston Whig Standard (by fellow food writer Lindy Mechefske) to a profile in l’Acadie Nouvelle, as well as a feature in The National Post.

Part of the interest in the book has been because of the 150th anniversary of the founding of Canada, and so people were looking to find stories about food that may have been overlooked before now. I was interviewed by Radio-Canada to talk about the role of culinary heritage, as well as on CBC about the revelations I experienced around my personal culinary heritage while writing the book.

Speaking of storytelling, I recently had the chance to shoot with the gang from The Perennial Plate. I first came across The Perennial Plate years ago when they first started telling stories about food producers in their native Minnesota. Years later, multiple world trips and a couple James Beard Awards later, it’s creators, Daniel Klein and Mirra Fine spent a month here in Nova Scotia looking into food stories in this part of the world. Stay tuned for a video this fall. 

In fact, stay tuned for all sorts of goodies popping up here. I'm getting ready to do promotional work for the U.S. this fall, and who knows, maybe I'll be in your neck of the woods. Stay tuned.

Wild and Sweet

Today my sister would have been 44. I don't post personal items on this website very often, but today felt like a day where the exception is perfectly acceptable.

Every year when wild blueberries start appearing on kitchen tables, my mother would tell the same anecdote. “You sister would come from from camp, and I’d make her a wild blueberry pie for her birthday,” she would say.

I remember those summers. My sister Ginette, blonde and smiling from ear to ear, happy birthday being sung, and wild blueberries falling out between layers of pastry. Blue smears on plates and children’s faces. Cake wasn’t missed. It would seem out of place.

This will be the first time Ginette’s birthday will pass without her.  Over the past few weeks, my parents, my in-laws, and friends and I have all had the same thought, “She’s not here.” 

***

“Are you baking a pie this year,” I ask my mother. There is a slight pause on the other end of the line. “Maybe,” she says. “She was the one who liked it the most.” I suggest doing what she feels is best. No one expects anything to be normal today. 

It’s hard not to use words like “strange” or “weird” when discussing life after death. We lack a vocabulary for the sensations, emotions, and passing of time that we endure while we grieve. The world has shifted, or maybe it’s us that has. Things that held positive significance become double edged.  Ceci n’est pas un bleuet sauvage.

***

In 2014, my sister received her first cancer diagnosis. She soon lost her sense of taste due to cancer treatments, and food became a chore for her, rather than the pleasure it had been for so long.  

I ended up interviewing her about the loss of her sense of taste for CBC Radio. I listened to the interview and had forgotten that the it ended with she and I commiserating about peaches - specifically the peaches we ate as kids in our parent’s orchard.

One of the most important things she said to me, to her husband, to her kids, and to everyone who knew her, is that happiness is a choice. So even though today may seem like a day to be sad, I choose not to be be. I choose happiness. 

Pantry and Palate is in stores, in kitchens, and on your screens

It’s amazing what a good story will get you. It can entertain, enlighten, give pause, or give focus. The same goes with a book. Or in this case, promoting one. 

Promoting Pantry and Palate has landed me - and the book - in all sorts of places. It graced the front page of the Arts and Life section of The Globe and Mail, with an excerpt of the book and then was included in a series of new books talking about Canadian cuisine. I also had a really great chat with fellow food writers Jonah Campbell and Linda Mecheksfe over at Quill and Quire.  An interview I shot a few months ago for the french language media organization TFO also went live on social media.

Also on the french tip, I also did two interviews for Radio-Canada- one for the local morning show Le RéveiI, as well as Tout un Samedi (at 9:15) which airs in Atlantic Canada.  Over at CBC I was back on the air, but this time on the other side of the microphone, being interviewed by Jonna Brewer at Information Morning in Moncton.

I also wanted to give special mention that I had a great time shooting a video interview for Chatelaine magazine, which you can watch here. Soo Kim and the rest of the gang at Chatelaine were great to chat with, and I only wish I’d had more time. Next time. 

A glimpse of Chatelaine's Instagram Stories promoting Pantry and Palate. 

Pantry and Palate is on store shelves. Pre-orders of the book have been dropped off in mailboxes across the country. I’ve started getting messages from people on social media that they have received and are enjoying the book.  People are making everything from seaweed pies to salted onions. One person told me that they made the cornmeal molasses bread for their kids and that they loved it. I get random tweets and Instagram photos of people’s efforts. It’s no longer a bunch of recipes on my computer screens. It’s living in their cupboards and fridges. 

Photo by Bobby Grégoire.

But the thing that arguably marked me the most was a recent trip to Toronto to speak at the Terroir Symposium. The main topic of the conference was Canadian food. It’s not easy to define or focus such an expansive topic. There were agricultural, historical, cultural, and ethical issues to discuss. There were amateur and professional chefs, writers, and academics. And of course, there was food. But I was there to tell a story, and talk about Acadian food.

I was to speak on a panel about French-Canadian cuisine with some pretty distinguished guests, including Cyril Gonzales and Alex Cruz from École Buissonière (previously from Société Original,), chef Anne Desjardins (who helped promote season and Canadian cuisine way before people really thought about such things) and Geneviève from Caribou magazine, (a french-language periodical that intently and intensely looks at the food and people of Québec). 

I was the last to speak, and the only one to speak about French-Canadian food outside of Québec. I was glad to be invited to the table, and felt it was my obligation to sing for my supper - or in this case tell a story. But it was also my job to lay claim to a place at the table - and I say that knowing that I risk making myself sound a little adamant. The refrains I kept (and keep) hearing were “I didn’t know about this cuisine. I didn’t know about these stories.  I didn’t know about these lives.”  And this was often followed by “yet I still connected with it.”

Telling a story about food is an act of reconnection: familial, temporal, mnemonic. We often our food stories are intensely unique - and in a way they are - but in a more important manner they are universal. And when that story hasn’t been told, or listened to, or had a light shone on it very much, it’s rewarding to see it come through and connect to so many.

New Things for Spring: A book, a tour, and a talk or two

After over two years of research, cooking, writing, editing - and a lovely photo session - Pantry and Palate is finally hitting bookshelves in May. 

Because I've spent so much time living within that book for so long, I will admit I am at a bit of a loss for words when it comes to tell you what it's like to live outside of it. The work is done. The book is being printed and bound as I type this.  I will have a copy in my hands in a couple weeks. Copies of it will be sent to pre-sale buyers in Canada after May 30th. You can pre-order your copy at Amazon.ca, over at Indigo.ca and via Nimbus Publishing. But for those of you who can wait until it's in stores, might I suggest you check out your local independent bookstore? It's always a good idea.

But the buzz has already started. Chatelaine magazine mentioned it in their 10 Cookbooks We Want This Spring and Amazon has listed it in their  Hot New Releases in Canadian Cookbooks.  And the book isn't even out on shelves yet. (Excuse me while someone helps me pick my jaw up off the floor.)

Now begins the promotional part of the book, and I'm headed to the Terroir Symposium in Toronto on May 29th at the Art Gallery Of Ontario. I'll be on a panel with other speakers reflecting on the origins of French-Canadian cuisine (and Acadian as well!) and its current path. It also looks like I'll be doing some interviews and a bit of promotional work while I am there.  

After that I am off to New York with the gang from Nimbus Publishing to  Book Expo  America where I'll be signing copies of Pantry and Palate. And if I know myself, I'll be heading to a few bookstores - namely Kitchen Arts And Letters and Bonnie Slotnick - to fill up my suitcase for the trip home. Last time I went, I kind of went overboard and ended up paying $100 at the airport because my luggage was over. But lesson learned: bring an empty carry-on just for books. 

But my favourite upcoming event is happening here in Halifax, with a book launch at the Halifax Public Library's Central Branch. I'll be talking about the process of how the book came to be, the importance of culinary history, documenting food ways, and of course, serving up a wee bit of grub. 

Now that the book is in the can - I should be holding a copy in my hands in the next week or so - expect to see more updates, more stories, and more info about Pantry and Palate and much more. Stay tuned!