Eat Your Spuds it's St. Patty's Day

Since St. Patrick's Day is nigh upon us, I dedicate today's musings to my grandmother, Josephine O'Hara. Or, as I knew her best, Grandma Jo. That's her on the right (below) with her mother-in-law, my Great Granny O'Hara, circa 1936. Grandma Jo was so proud of her Irish heritage that dinner on St. Patrick's Day was akin to Christmas or

Time to Stop and Eat the Flowers

Some people prefer to grow flowers and some people prefer to grow good things to eat, but me, I like to do both at once. Edible flower gardening. Here are four good reasons to eat flowers: Flowers are pretty. We already put flowers on the table – in a vase – so imagine how extra pretty they are atop a salad bowl or a dinner plate. Flowers

Orange You Hungry? Carnitas!

I remember the first time I picked an orange. Not from the produce section. Not from a fruit bowl. Not from the recesses of my Christmas stocking. Picked an orange from a real orange tree. I remembered it today because I just picked an orange and the smell took me back to the first time I plucked an orange from a tree and held it to my nose. It

A Culinary Lesson from Hannibal Lecter

One crisp winter day I set out to pick juniper berries at a local park. I planned to make bigos, an old Polish stew, for a dinner party that week, for which juniper berries are a traditional ingredient. Being both frugal and old-fashioned, I decided to forage the junipers in the wild, or at least the wilds of Kinsmen Park, Saskatoon. After all, why pay for

Fruit Kebabs Sweeten the Grill

My dad celebrated a significant birthday recently so of course we had a wiener roast. It's my dad's favourite meal. Few things are more "summer" than an open fire and food cooked on a stick. When we were little (my siblings and me) we followed dad into the "woods" around the dugout to hunt for wiener sticks. We'd each choose a straight young

Memories of Mom - Cream Puffs

I lost my mom this spring. She had Alzheimer's Disease so, in a way, we had lost a great part of her already. It was incredibly sad. I was assigned the task of writing her obituary for the local newspapers. As I scanned the fondest memories of my mom, it seemed so many of them involved food. Gardening in spring. Berry (and weed) picking in

Give a dog a bone AFTER soup

Sometimes I eat out of the garbage. Case in point: One year as we cleaned up Easter dinner, I asked my sister-in-law what she did with the ham bone. It was a good ham, we enjoyed it immensely. As I was eating it, I thought of the good soup I could make with the bone. Then she pointed to the garbage bin. Sure enough, there was the ham bone

And the winner is... Baked Beans

It seems every old cowboy movie had a camp cook serving up a mess of baked beans. I can see John Wayne eating them now. . . from a tin plate with an old battered spoon and a chunk of sourdough bread. So, it's fitting that when I asked rancher Art Unsworth for a recipe from the annual Murraydale Stampede and Picnic, he sent a recipe for baked

Swedish meatballs are right at home in Canada

On a recent trip to Sweden, of course I had to try meatballs. Here on the prairies, Swedish meatballs seem to represent the culinary tradition of an entire nation that sent so many sons and daughters to western Canada in pioneer times. And it's good to know that Swedish meatballs are still popular in their homeland.

At a restaurant in old Stockholm called Pelikan (est. 1733) the menu is unabashedly traditional. Along with pork knuckle, Baltic fish and mashed swedes, the menu offers the timeless Swedish meatball "as big as golf balls" served with cream gravy, lingonberries and a sliced pickle, a bowl of mashed potatoes on the side.

According to the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, about 40,000 Swedish immigrants came to the prairies between 1893 and 1914, most of them settling first in the United States (primarily Minnesota, Montana, Wisconsin and the Dakotas) before moving north to homestead in Canada.

Among them were Anna and Olaf Nilson who came from Sweden in 1905. After landing at the port of Montreal, they took the train to Melfort, Sask., crossing the country with their two daughters in a cattle car. Their first home had been abandoned by its previous owner. The roof leaked. The floor was earthen. Their first cow died in calving.

The nearest store was more than eight kilometres' walk, where they could exchange extra butter and eggs for a few staples such as flour and baking soda. Most of their food they grew, gathered and raised themselves. The Nilson (later changed to Nelson) family history notes, "Mother stated many times that, if money had been available, they would have returned to Sweden."

Well, it wasn't and they didn't. Despite the hardships – and obvious lack of Baltic fish – they did their best to make the traditional dishes that reminded them of home.

Recipes such thin crisp bread, St. Lucia buns (served at the festival of St. Lucia on December 13), pepparkakar (ginger cookies) and meatballs with cream gravy or lingonberry sauce. This recipe for Swedish meatballs was given to me by Joan Thompson (née Nelson) of Saskatoon, granddaughter of Anna and Olaf.

She got the recipe from her mother Myrtle (née Standberg) whose Swedish ancestors followed a different route to Canada. They first settled in Minnesota and, in 1903, their son Axel moved north to homestead in Canada, where he married his Swedish sweetheart Jenny. Life was hard for them, too. Myrtle, one of 10 children, got her first job at 14 cooking and cleaning for a couple of bachelor farmers. But they prospered.

By 2011, more than 152,000 people living in the prairie provinces claimed Swedish heritage, and no doubt, many of them are still fond of Swedish meatballs.

A word about lingonberry sauce: lingonberry is the Swedish word for low-bush cranberry, which grows abundantly in our parklands and Boreal forest. You can substitute currant jelly.

Swedish Meatballs
1 1/2 lbs ground beef
1 small potato, peeled and grated
1 small onion, grated
1/2 tst salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 tbsp cream
1 egg
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs
2 tbsp butter or oil

Mix everything but the final ingredient. Work the mixture with your hands or an electric mixer until the meat is smooth and fluffy.

With damp hands, form into balls. Heat butter or oil in a skillet. Fry the meatballs, turning to brown all sides. Open one meatballs to ensure they are cooked through to the centre. Tip: Shaking the skillet as the meatballs cook helps to keep them round.

If you need to cook the meatballs in two batches, add additional butter/oil if needed. Serve warm tossed with cream gravy or lingonberry sauce or both!

Cream Gravy
2 tbsp drippings from meatballs or butter
2 tbsp flour
2 cups warm chicken or beef stock
2 tbsp sour cream

Heat drippings or butter in a saucepan. Whisk in flour to a smooth paste. Add warm stock, whisking thoroughly to prevent lumps. Simmer and thicken. Remove from heat. Whisk in sour cream.

Lingonberry Sauce
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 cup frozen low-bush cranberries
1 tbsp fresh-squeezed orange juice

Heat sugar and water in a saucepan to a bubbling simmer, stirring occasionally. When the sugar is dissolved, add the berries and orange juice.

Bring back to a simmer. As the berries heat, they will pop and release their juices. You can help by pressing them with a fork. Boil lightly until it is jammy, but not too jammy, as it will thicken further as it cools.

A Berry Healthy Winter's Day

Long before there were Florida oranges and an apple-a-day, berries were keeping us happy and healthy through the long winter months. Fact is, berries are better for you than just about any other fruit.

Berries were vital to the well-being of the indigenous population, who made a kind of fruit leather by pounding berries and drying them in the sun. This was eaten raw or reconstituted in hot water or soup. They made pemmican by mixing berries with bison meat and suet, a power food that kept for months without refrigeration. They sold it by the sack-full to European explorers and fur traders, making it the first processed food industry on the Canadian plains.

The early settlers were wild for berries at a time when any other fresh fruit was hard to find. Back then, wild berries grew much more abundantly than they do today. Early memoirs relate tales of picking parties heading out for wild strawberries, raspberries, chokecherries, gooseberries, saskatoons and blueberries by the bucketful.

John Diefenbaker, Canada's thirteenth Prime Minister, remembers his parents picking like crazy in berry season, listing a typical haul at 30 quarts of strawberries, 50 quarts of saskatoons and 100 quarts of raspberries. A quart is the size of a large pickle jar.

By the time I came along, it was hard to find a wild raspberry or strawberry but, fortunately, domesticated varieties had been planted on the farm. We had a large berry patch and, from an early age, I loved to pick. I loved being outside on a hot summer day with the buzz of insects and the scent of dry grass. I loved the rhythm of picking, like a meditative exercise that occupies the body but frees the mind.

Best of all, I love eating those berries in the depths of winter. Toast with raspberry jelly. Cranberry scones with strawberry preserve. Blueberry smoothies. Chokecherry syrup on pancakes. And, of course, saskatoon berry pie.

Now there's a new berry on my pick list: the tart prairie cherry developed by fruit breeders at the University of Saskatchewan. It's perfect for cherry pie or a fruit compote on roast pork.

One year, my husband and I did an experiment in local eating, choosing not to buy imported fruit from the grocery store and relying on prairie fruit alone. We ate berries in one form or another almost every day. In the spring, he made a surprising observation: neither of us had suffered a cold all winter long. All things being equal, was our local berry diet responsible for our good health?

I like to think so. Berries are high in vitamin C, rich in antioxidants and full of flavonoids (the dark red, purple and blue colours) to boost the immune system and fight disease. Berries are as good as fruit gets.

This recipe is a great way to show them off. Clafoutis (cla-foo-tee) is a French dessert traditionally made with cherries (often unpitted, as the pits are said to add extra flavour) but I like to make a prairie version with a mix of berries I picked myself. It's perfect for brunch any time of year.

Prairie Berry Clafoutis
Use fresh or frozen berries (or a mix of both). In season, you can also add some sliced young rhubarb to the berry blend.

2 tbsp butter
3 eggs
3 tbsp sugar
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup flour
1 tbsp flour
2 cup mixed berries such as cherries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, low bush cranberries, saskatoons

Heat the oven to 350F. Put butter in a 10-inch cast iron skillet or a pie plate. Place in oven until butter is melted but not brown.

Meanwhile, in a blender mix eggs, sugar, milk, vanilla and salt. With the blades running, add 1 cup flour and blend well.

Toss fruit with remaining 1 tbsp flour.

Remove the skillet or pie plate from the oven. Pour in the batter and scatter the fruit on top. Return to the oven. Bake about 20-25 minutes, until the centre of the custard is set.

Serve warm with a dusting of icing sugar or cool with a drizzle of syrup.

(This article first appeared in Grainews.)

As Canadian as Oats for Breakfast

I started my day with a bowl of oatmeal porridge. Nothing could be more Canadian.

We grow more oats in Canada than anywhere else but Russia. Canada is the second largest producer – and the largest exporter – of oats in the world.

Mountains of our oats are turned into brand name breakfast cereals, oatmeal cookies and granola bars, as well as many raw oat products from rolled oats to steel-cut groats to instant porridge.

Saskatchewan grows about half the oats in Canada followed by Manitoba and Alberta at 18-20 percent each, with the remaining fraction grown by farmers in other provinces. The "oat belt" runs from the Red River Valley in southern Manitoba, up across Saskatchewan like a Miss Universe sash, and north to Alberta's Peace River Country.

According to historians, oats have been grown in Western Canada since the days of the fur trade; they were a major food group of European fur traders and their livestock. Oats were an important crop for the pioneers when, in the days before tractors, oats were the fuel for the horses and oxen who broke the land.

Many are the stories of struggling homesteaders reduced to eating porridge three times a day. Even the Scots could get sick of that!

Speaking of the Scots, oatmeal was the culinary touchstone of immigrants from Scotland, as we read in this except from They Cast a Long Shadow: The story of Moffat, Saskatchewan by Kay Parley:

"Oatmeal was the most popular food and there was porridge on every Scotch table for breakfast, always stirred, as it cooked, with a wooden spurtle. . . Oatmeal was used in scones, cookies, dumplings and puddings. It appeared in fish dishes and meat dishes. It was used to stuff the turkey. New potatoes were coated with it."

Leftover oatmeal was pressed into a wooden box and cooled, after which it could be sliced like bread. This would be fried up for supper or packed for a long journey by horse and buggy as a filling snack along the way, especially in wintertime.

Before we get cooking, here's a lesson in oat vocabulary:

* Oat groats or whole oats are the oat seed with the outer hull removed. They take the longest to cook and are often pre-soaked.
* Steel-cut oats (also called Irish oats or Scotch oats) are oat groats cut into smaller pieces by steel blades.
* Rolled or old-fashioned oats are whole groats flattened in a roller. They cook more quickly than groats.
* Quick oats are chopped groats flattened in a roller. Because they are small and flakey, they cook quite quickly.
* Instant oats are precooked so they can be prepared simply by adding hot water, and are often flavoured and sweetened.

Take note that oats have a high fat content and, once the hull has been removed, can go bad quite quickly. For this reason, most “raw” oat products are steamed and dried so they can be stored at room temperature. Some specialty mills sell un-steamed rolled oats, which have more flavour and nutrients, but should be stored in the freezer.

Here's a recipe for oatmeal made with groats. It's more time consuming than using rolled oats, but it's also more filling and flavourful. You might also like this recipe for chocolate oat clusters.

Apple Honey Oatmeal
1/2 cup steel-cut groats
2 cups water
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup dried apples, chopped
1 tbsp honey

The night before, mix steel-cut groats with water and bring to a boil. Simmer 5 min. Remove from heat, cover and leave overnight.

In the morning, add another 1/2 cup water and bring to a simmer. Add the salt, cinnamon and dried apple. Cook, stirring, until desired porridge consistency is achieved. Stir in the honey and eat!

(This article first appeared in Grainews.)

Take Your Pulse and Make Greek Fava

Take your pulse. Not that pulse. I'm talking lentils, chickpeas, beans, peas. The United Nations has declared 2016 the International Year of Pulses.

That's something we can celebrate here on the Canadian prairies, where we grow more pulses than most places on earth.

But we don't eat them, not nearly enough. Almost all our pulse crops are shipped to other countries where lentils, chickpeas and split peas are everyday fare. Tonight in India, families will sit down to a meal of masoor dal. In Spain, they’ll enjoy spicy lentejas con chorizo. And in Chile, they’ll fill up with a bowl of lentils de la Abuela, like grandma used to make. All with lentils from Canada.

Not only do we grow a lot of lentils (a record harvest of 2.2 million tonnes in 2015) we grow more varieties of lentils than anywhere else. In India, they prefer small red lentils. In Chile, it's large green lentils. And in Spain, it's pardina lentils also known as Spanish brown. We grow them all here, and more, such as little black beluga lentils, so named for their resemblance to the black caviar of the beluga sturgeon. Chefs love them.

The United Nations has proffered several reasons for declaring 2016 the International Year of Pulses. In developing countries, pulses account for 75 percent of the daily diet. Yet, worldwide, pulse consumption is declining. The UN would like to reverse this trend.

Pulses are a good source of protein yet less stressful on the environment than raising livestock. Pulses provide 20-25 percent protein by weight, double that of wheat at 10 percent and about half that of meat at 30-40 percent.

However, growing pulses uses much less water than raising livestock. According to the UN, a kilogram of lentils requires 50 litres of water while a kilogram of chicken takes more than 4,000 litres and a kilogram of beef consumes a whopping 13,000 liters of water.

Pulses help reduce food waste, which the UN estimates at one-third of all food produced worldwide. Since pulses are a simple food and stored dry, there is little lost in processing and much less spoilage compared to vegetables, fruits and meat.

The UN also notes that pulse crops replace nitrogen in the soil, reducing the use of petro-chemical fertilizers. This is a prime reason why pulse crops are so popular in Western Canada – they make economic and environmental sense when included in rotation with other crops such as wheat, flax and canola.

Pulses fit with another UN initiative: eliminating world hunger by 2030 while, at the same time, tackling climate change and improving sustainable farming. If we all start eating more pulses in 2016, that goal will be easier to reach.

Of course, I don't need to recommend more hummus and lentil soup. We've got that covered. But, I will propose this recipe for yellow pea fava, a Greek mezze (appetizer) made with yellow split peas. If you like hummus, you'll like this. 

Yellow Pea Fava
2 cups yellow split peas
2 cups finely chopped red onion
1 fat clove garlic, finely chopped
4+ cups water
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
3 tbsp lemon juice
1 cup olive oil
2 tbsp finely chopped parsley

Put split peas, 1 1/2 cups red onion, garlic and 4 cups of water into a medium pot. The water should cover the peas. Bring to a gentle boil. Skim the foam that rises to the surface.

Reduce heat, cover pot and gently simmer for 1.5-2 hours, until the split peas are completely broken down. Check periodically, adding more water if needed to just cover the peas.

Once the peas are fall-apart soft, cook uncovered until the liquid has evaporated and the peas are thick and bubbly. Stir frequently to prevent sticking to the pot.

Remove from heat. Add salt, pepper, lemon juice and 3/4 cup olive oil. Stir vigorously until well mixed. Cover pot with a tea towel and leave to cool.

To serve, scoop pea purée into a serving dish. Top with remaining 1/2 cup red onion. Sprinkle with parsley. Drizzle with remaining 1/4 cup olive oil. Serve with bread, pita or crackers.

The UN website includes many more pulse recipes from around the world.

(This article first appeared in Grainews.)

Fill Your Ice Cream Pails with Scuffles

My parents never threw out anything that might be something else. This was never more evident than in the stack of plastic ice cream pails leaning like the Tower of Pisa in a corner of the laundry room. No kidding, it's taller than I am.

Growing up, we ate a lot of ice cream. It was the easiest dessert with the highest approval rating. Now that my parents are no longer cooking for a family, they don't cook much at all. Why bother with all that when you can go straight to dessert, um, ice cream? It's become the food group at the top of the pyramid, the one you eat first. Which adds up to a bottomless pit of ice cream pails.

My fondest use of ice cream pails – once they're free of ice cream – comes at berry picking time, particularly saskatoon berry season in mid-July. With the handle looped into my belt, the plastic pail bobs effortlessly at my side while both hands are free to pick berries at will. This alone is good reason to eat more ice cream.

Just this past summer, while helping my parents clean out their big chest freezer, I discovered four ice cream pails full of frozen saskatoons. I also discovered three ice cream pails full of ice cream. When I grew up and got a house of my own, I equipped myself with a small stack of ice cream pails from my parents' stash. Their uses were endless.

I kept the cleaning supplies in an ice cream pail. I bought bulk lentils and stored them in an ice cream pail. I used them in the garden (picking weeds, picking peas, picking potato bugs) and for washing the inside of my car. The compost bucket was an ice cream pail under the sink.

I checked with my friends, who added a few more uses to that list: fermenting pickles, gathering eggs, stashing toys, trick-or-treating for Halloween candy, pre-mixing a batch of six-week muffins, making vodka slush and collecting small engine parts and other odds and ends you "might need someday."

My friend Carol keeps modelling clay in an ice cream pail and, on occasion, uses the lid as a paint palette. Speaking of lids, how often have you entered a content by writing your name on a piece of paper and dropping it through a slot in the lid of an ice cream pail?

This time of year, I imagine moms and grandmas across the prairies are filling a fair number of ice cream pails with seasonal goodies and staching them in the freezer ready for company and family holidays. This might be the most anticipated reuse of the plastic ice cream pail since berry-picking season.

No doubt, your family has a story like this one from Richard, who discovered his mom's secret stash of cookies in the freezer: "I would eat them and as Christmas approached, I'd tell my brothers about the ice cream pails. Of course, when my mom asked where the cookies had all gone, I'd have to tell her I'd seen my brothers rooting in the freezer."

However, others such as my friend Jen observe that plastic ice cream pails are not what they used to be: "If I can have a Grandpa Simpson moment, they're just not made like they used to be. We used them to collect eggs and carry water, but they're clearly making them flimsier and flimsier to make them cheaper. I wouldn't trust a modern day ice cream pail with 30 eggs!"

No, but I would still trust them with cookies like this one, which freezes very well. But no guarantees they won't mysteriously disappear.

Scuffles
2 1/4 tsp yeast (1 packet)
1/4 cup warm water
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar
1 cup soft butter
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten
Sugar and cinnamon for rolling

Dissolve yeast in warm water. In a bowl, stir together flour, salt and sugar. Work in butter with your fingers.

Combine milk, eggs and yeast. Add to flour, mixing well. Turn onto a floured surface and knead briefly until smooth. The dough will be sticky. Wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Divide dough into six balls, working with one ball at a time. Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon generously on the countertop, place a piece of dough on top and roll to a circle 1/8 inch thick.

Cut the circle into 16 wedges, like pieces of a pie. Roll up each wedge from the wide end to the pointy end.

Place 1 inch apart on lightly-greased baking sheet, fashion into a crescent and bake at 350F for 15-20 minutes. FREEZE!!

(This article first appeared in Grainews.)

Falling for Zucchini Chocolate Cake

When my husband and I got married we had one prenuptial agreement, at his insistence: that I would never plant more than six zucchini at a time.

Talk about tough love. Zucchini is my favourite summer vegetable, for a number of reasons. It grows quickly, it’s lush and attractive, the flowers are big and sunny, and it produces a ton of edible food. Well, perhaps not literally a ton, though it may seem so at times...

Zucchini is incredibly versatile in the kitchen, whether the size of a baby finger or the size of a small canoe, whether in a soup, salad, main course or dessert. Best of all, zucchini flowers are edible, too, and what better way to curb the natural fecundity of a zucchini plant than to nip it in the bud.

In my first garden, I planted twelve zucchini. I had grand plans. I filled the flowers with a mix of herbs, bread crumbs and parmesan cheese, rolled them gently in batter and fried them until crispy and gold. When the zucchini were small, I sliced them into pasta primavera or a pot of minestrone soup. When they were as wide as my wrist, I chopped them into ratatouille or grilled them sliced with olive oil and rosemary.

When they reached the girth of my grandmother's rolling pin, I grated them for vegetable lasagna and zucchini chocolate cake. When I couldn't keep up, I stacked the most plump and matronly zucchini like cordwood waiting for winter. And that’s when John came into the picture.

“What’s with all the zucchini?” he asked.
“Do you have something against zucchini?”
“No.”
“Good,” I said. “You’re having it for supper.”

Cooking for two had the positive effect of doubling my zucchini consumption, but it seemed to make no dent whatsoever in the quantity of the raw material. The zucchini kept pace, as if sensing the drain on resources required a corresponding increase in supply.

There’s a saying in rural parts that the only time you really need to lock your car is during zucchini season. John, however, had a slightly different take on this old adage. He suggested I box the zucchini, add a big red bow and put them in my car unlocked.

As winter settled in, the last of the zucchini began to shrivel and turn yellow in my basement. I had to concede that, perhaps, too much of a good thing is not necessarily a good thing. “I’ve decided to take your zucchini pledge,” I announced, “and to prove my commitment, I’m going to toss the last of these zucchini into the compost pile.”
He glanced at the bucket of yellow zucchini. “They’re rotting,” he said.

“No," I insisted, "just a bit soft." I poked one to prove the flesh was still firm enough for the side of the grater. I made one final zucchini chocolate cake and, in a soft December snow, committed the last of the zucchini to the compost pile. True to my word, I reduced my zucchini patch to six and then to three, and miraculously, I've always had enough for one last zucchini chocolate cake as the snow flies.

I often make this cake in two smaller pans and freeze one for another day. In fact, it's often better on the second day, if you can resist it warm from the oven!

Zucchini Chocolate Cake
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cardamom
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup soft butter
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
3 cups grated zucchini
Handful of mini chocolate chips

Sift the flours, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt and cardamom into bowl. In another bowl, beat sugar, butter, oil and vanilla until light and creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each one.

Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the buttermilk. Stir in the grated zucchini. Pour batter into pan that has been greased and floured. Sprinkle on chocolate chips.

Bake at 325F for 40-50 minutes, until a knife inserted in centre of cake comes out clean.

Still more zucchini? Make chocolate zucchini muffins or zucchini oatmeal cookies!

(This article first appeared in Grainews.)

Mrs. Diefenbaker's Cookbook

Since we're in the midst of a federal election campaign, I'm thinking of John Diefenbaker's dinner. The Dief was Canada's thirteenth Prime Minister and a proud prairie boy. . . especially proud of his mother Mary's good prairie cooking.

Diefenbaker was born in a small town in Ontario in September 1895. In 1903, when he was seven, his family moved west so his father, William, who had been diagnosed with tuberculosis, could take advantage of the healthful prairie air.

William took a teaching position at a one-room school near Fort Carlton, a mounted police depot and former fur trade post mid-way on the wagon trail between Winnipeg and Edmonton. Their home and school served as a community centre and rest stop where locals, travellers and new homesteaders were welcomed for a friendly conversation and a bite to eat.

In his memoir, One Canada (Vol. 1), Diefenbaker recalls North-West Mounted Police officers dropping by, humorously noting: "No doubt it was coincidence but they usually arrived at mealtime."

Residents of the local reserve frequently came for tea, and Gabriel Dumont, leader of the Metis uprising of 1885, visited now and then with a gift of game for the stew pot. "He could speak no English but he could shoot, and he gave us some examples of his marksmanship," writes Diefenbaker who, as a boy, was awed by the stature and stories of the legendary Metis hero.

Their daily diet was typical for prairie settlers at that time. Day to day, they ate rabbits, fish, wildfowl, prairie chickens and domestic chickens. Neighbours brought them Mennonite sausages, cured hams and garden vegetables until the Diefenbakers had a garden of their own. They picked wild mushrooms and berries by the pail full at a time when the prairie was bountiful in wild fruit. Diefenbaker lists a typical haul at 30 quarts of strawberries, 50 quarts of saskatoons and 100 quarts of raspberries!

In 1906, the family moved to a homestead near Borden, Sask. (the province of Saskatchewan having been created the year before), where they kept a milk cow and planted a large garden, particularly potatoes. Mary made excellent butter, which she traded at the general store for groceries such as flour, sugar and prunes. Her harvest meals were exceptional, and it was not unnoticed by young Dief that the harvest crews, usually consisting of 15-20 men, slowed their pace of work so they could stick around for one more meal.

"Mother was a good cook," he writes. "We always had plenty of wholesome food." Diefenbaker was so enamoured of his mother's cooking that he saved her cookbook, Good Housekeeping's Favourite Recipes and Menus From Our Kitchen to Yours, which is now part of his collection at the University of Saskatchewan Archives in Saskatoon.

The cookbook is well used, frayed at the edges and splattered with the memories of cake batter and tomato sauce. Additional recipes clipped from the newspaper are glued to the inside covers, most notably recipes for chocolate cake. Perhaps it was a favourite of young John and his brother Elmer.

Mary's cookbook includes this recipe for baked string beans. The original recipe calls for an unspecified "fat" for which I used butter. I also cut this recipe in half, since I am not feeding a harvest crew or a couple of active prairie boys.

Baked String Beans and Bacon
2 lbs string beans
6 slices bacon
1 1/2 cups light cream or thin white sauce (see below)
1 1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
3 tbsp melted butter
1/2 cup fine bread crumbs

To make a thin white sauce: On the stove, melt 2 tbsp butter in a small pot. Add 2 tbsp flour and blend well. Pour in 2 cups cold milk. Heat, whisking vigorously until bubbling and thickened. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and cook on low heat for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut string beans into one-inch pieces and cook in salted water until tender. Dice bacon and fry until crisp. Drain beans and mix with bacon, thin cream or white sauce, salt, pepper and 2 tbsp of melted butter. Place in a greased baking dish.

Mix bread crumbs with remaining 1 tbsp of melted butter and sprinkle over beans. Bake at 425F for 20 minutes, until golden brown.

A page from Mary Diefenbaker's favourite cookbook: the food spatters may tell us this was one of her favourite recipes.

(This article first appeared in Grainews)

Apple Nostalgia in Berlin

In Berlin, I left the hotel room early one morning in search of coffee and apples. Anything with apples.

Wandering the neighbourhood, I found a sunny little bakery on a leafy street near the Brandenburg Gate. It had a tiny sidewalk patio with four tables and a plethora of potted plants. Best of all, a sign on the sidewalk said the bakery specialized in fruit kuchen.

Sure enough, there on the glass countertop were two large round fruit cakes, one plum and the other apple. But don't imagine the kind of fruit cake your grandmother made at Christmas time. They were what we here on the prairies might call "coffee cake" with a cake base, a layer of fruit and a crumble topping. In German, the apple version is called apfelstreuselkuchen. It was delicious, or lecker.

Ever since I was a child, I've loved anything with apples. We had two kinds of apple trees on our farm: a couple of big old crabs and a "pie" tree with large yellow apples, the variety of which no one recalled. We children were allowed to climb the crab apple trees and eat as many as we liked. But we were forbidden to climb the "pie" tree or eat any of its apples without permission. They were seriously earmarked for baking.

When my mother came to the farm as a young bride, she knew very little about cooking. Her mother (my grandmother) was a fabulous cook but she failed to pass on this knowledge to my mom. So my mom learned to cook from her mother-in-law. My Grandma Ehman was not a fancy cook but a good farm cook – hearty wholesome meals with produce from her own gardens, rich in cream and butter, from simple recipes that reflected her prairie roots and German heritage.

This included apple kuchen, applesauce cookies and apple pie. Her apple jelly was fantastic on toast, with pork chops and sandwiched in the centre of jam jams. I'm quite sure I was weaned on her applesauce. I have loved anything with apples ever since.

In the early pioneer days, apples were a rare treat. Dried apples were available in country stores, but fresh apples arrived by rail from Ontario. In 1914, pioneer Julie Feilberg, whose family homesteaded at Nokomis, Sask., recorded that a barrel of apples cost $4.25. She bought them as a special treat with Christmas money sent by her grandfather in Denmark.

Many farmers planted apple trees on the home quarter and, by the 1920s, some had opened their orchards for u-pick excursions. This coincided with the spread of automobiles and apple picking became a pleasant family outing.

Then came the legendary winter of 1942, which was so harsh that most of the apple trees on the northern prairies perished in the cold. Work began in earnest to breed new varieties of apples better suited to the prairie climate, based on experiments already underway at orchards such as those at the Seager Wheeler farm at Rosthern, Sask., and the Morden Experimental Farm at Morden, Man.

Thanks to their passion for apples, I was able to climb a big old crab apple tree in my youth and fall in love with my grandma's hand-picked apple kuchen.

I was thinking of my grandma that day in Berlin when a little bird landed on my table, brazenly eyeing my cake. I put a crumb on the far corner of the table and we enjoyed our apfelstreuselkuchen together in the morning sunshine.

Apple Kuchen
For the cake:
1 cup soft butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 3/4 cup flour
2 lbs apples, peeled and sliced

Cream butter and sugar well. Beat in eggs. Stir in vanilla, salt, baking powder and flour. Remove 2/3 cup and reserve for the topping. Press remaining dough into a greased 9 x 12 inch pan. Cover with sliced apples.

For the topping:
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup cake dough
2/3 cup flour

Sprinkle apples evenly with sugar and cinnamon. Mix reserved cake dough with flour until crumbly. Spread over apples. Bake at 350F for 40-45 minutes, until the top is lightly browned and the apples are soft.

(This article first appeared in Grainews)

Familiar Flavours Far From Home: Shashlik

Imagine if you had to solve a word puzzle before you could eat. But the puzzle is in a different language and a strange alphabet. That was the challenge of ordering dinner in Izmail, Ukraine, a small historic city on the Danube River near the border of Moldova.

My husband and I had just arrived in Ukraine, travelling down a country road full of potholes, the creaky old bus zigging and zagging while the onboard television blared a popular music show, the performers singing a familiar Beatles tune, slightly altered, All You Need is Peace. After a day of travel, we were hungry.

In Izmail, the only restaurant that appeared to be open was on the main drag, a popular place full of well-dressed millennials sipping cocktails and raising a din of conversation, of which I understood not a word.

At the table beside us was a young couple on a date. Behind us, a group of clean cut young men (perhaps soldiers) with a bottle of vodka on the table between them. The dance floor was empty (the DJ arrived later) and, playing on a giant screen, music videos of beautiful models in tropical locales.

Our waiter didn't speak a word of English and neither did his menu. It looked Greek to me. Literally. Prior to Ukraine, we had travelled in Greece, where I became somewhat adept at reading Cyrillic letters. The Cyrillic alphabets of Greece and Ukraine are close enough that I opened the menu and began sounding out the offerings. But even though I could pronounce it, I had no idea what it meant.

You might be surprised to know that restaurants in Ukraine often don't serve Ukrainian food, or what we here on the prairies know and love as the foods of our Ukrainian ancestors. Vareniki, holubtsi, kutia, babka and borshch – these are familiar foods in Ukrainian homes, but when people go out to eat, they're happy to dine from the smorgasbord of the world. Ethnic restaurants are as familiar in Ukraine as anywhere.

Working my way through the menu, I suddenly came upon a word I understood: Карьонара. Carbonara. Below it was вологнесе or Bolognese. Italian!! Both were delicious.

In Odessa, we ate several meals in a sweet French bistro and in Kherson, we enjoyed grilled skewers of meat in an outdoor Georgian grill (that's the former Soviet republic of Georgia, not the U.S. state). In Kiev we ate paninis from vendor on the street.

The grilled meat was called шашлік, which I recognized instantly. It's shashlik, a familiar food among descendants of Russian and East Ukrainian immigrants, also known here on the Canadian prairies as shishliki. In the Old Country it's common to add lemon juice, but since lemons were impossible to find on the prairies more than a century ago, local versions tend not to use it.

Old timers will tell you a secret to making good shishliki is to mix it with your hands, so don't be afraid to put a little elbow grease into it.

Shishliki
Traditionally it's made with lamb, but pork and chicken are good, too.

2 lbs meat (1 kg), cut in 2 inch cubes
Salt and pepper
1 big onion, sliced

Put meat in a bowl. Sprinkle generously with salt (a good teaspoon) and pepper. With your hands, rub the seasoning into the meat. Mix in onion. Cover and refrigerate 3–7 days, turning the meat once a day. Thread meat onto skewers. Grill over hot coals or BBQ.

(This article first appeared in Grainews.)

The Farmland of my Roots and its Vinegret

My farming ancestors came to Canada from Russia in the 1890s and, ever since I was a child, I dreamed of visiting their village on the Dnieper River.

That opportunity came in April. Despite the conflict between Ukraine and Russian separatists, which is unfolding east of the Dnieper, I made a trek to the little village once known as Klosterdorf.

It was also a journey into the history of wheat. Some 2,500 years ago, farmers along the Black Sea – from the Danube to the Dnieper and beyond – supplied wheat to ancient Greece and Rome, neither of which could grow enough grain to meet the essential bread demands of their populations.

The shores of the Black Sea are dotted with the ruins of Greek colonies such as Histria in Romania and Olbia in Ukraine, both of which I visited on my way to Klosterdorf. Beautiful pottery, delicate glassware and gold coins on display in the archaeology museum of Odessa paint a picture of a prosperous agricultural society on the shores of what the Greeks called the Hospitable Sea.

Fast forward to the 1770s. The Russian army captured the area from the Ottoman Empire. Czar Catherine the Great invited farmers to return to the land and they did, from all over Europe, including my German ancestors.

A century later, the port of Odessa handled 40 percent of Russian’s grain trade. No doubt, some of that grain was grown on the fields of Klosterdorf.

Today, Klosterdorf is no longer a place on the map. It has been amalgamated into a larger village called Zmiivka, Ukraine. That was my destination as I boarded a dusty bus on a sunny spring day in April along with my husband, John, and an English translator named Viktorya.  

The old bus rattled down the country road, gears grinding and shocks falling flat. Apple trees were blooming and the young wheat was green. On either side, the fields were so wide and flat and straight to the horizon it reminded me of home, where I grew up in Saskatchewan.

We had not gone far when Viktorya began chatting up the old women at the front of bus. They laughed, flashing gold teeth and peppering her with questions about our venture to the village at the end of the road.

Before long, we had been invited in for tea, given a brief history of the village and pointed in the direction of Naberezhnaya Street, which was in former times the main street of Klosterdorf.

It looked as it might have a century ago, long low cottages on tidy lots that run perpendicular to the road, hens in the yard and laundry on the line. Gardens were turned and ready for potato planting. “We love our potatoes,” one lady told us through Viktorya. “Without potatoes we would probably starve.” Hmmm, reminds me of my dad.

Another old-timer recalled a little German church at the far end of the street, but it’s gone now. Most of the German settlers left long ago. Today, Zmiivka is better known for its Swedish settlers who have maintained some ties with their former homeland.

From a high point on the street, we had a spectacular view of the Dnieper by which grain was transported in former times. The river has been dammed downstream, flooding some of the land once associated with Klosterdorf, but it presents a picture of a contented and self-sufficient village that time forgot.

We wandered back to the bus stop with time to sit and have a cool drink outside the little grocery store, where the clerk calculated our purchase on a wooden abacus. A curious gentleman sat down and asked our story, what had brought us from Canada to Zmiivka, which Viktorya related to him.

He looked at me thoughtfully. “Yes,” he said. “When I look at your face I can see your ancestors.”

This beet and potato salad is ubiquitous in Ukraine and a favourite in my kitchen back home in Canada.

Vinegret
2 potatoes
2 beets
3 carrots
2-3 dill pickles
1/4 cup onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp vinegar (optional)
Salt and pepper

Boil potatoes, beets and carrots separately until cooked. Cool and peel. Chop vegetables and pickles in a small dice. Mix with onion, oil and vinegar. Season with salt and pepper.

(This article first appeared in Grainews.)

Ancient Goddess of Agricuture - Greek Salad

For more than 2,000 years ancient Greeks made a pilgrimage to the temple of Demeter, the goddess of farming. A few weeks ago, I did, too.

Today, the temple is in ruins, but it is possible to walk the stone streets, run your hand over ancient walls and contemplate the importance of farming in Greek mythology. Demeter was more than the patron of farming – it was through her that one was granted everlasting life in paradise, a place the ancient Greeks called the Elysian Fields.

Here is her story, in a nutshell: Demeter was sister to Zeus. One day, while picking wild flowers, her daughter Kore was kidnapped by Hades, god of the underworld. Demeter searched the land for her daughter, so distraught that she neglected to make things grow. The people implored Zeus to find and return Kore before they starved to death. In the meantime, Demeter stopped to rest at the town of Elysium, where she was treated kindly.

Eventually, Kore was returned to her mother with the proviso that she return to the underworld for part of the year. While in the underworld, it was winter on earth. When she returned, it was spring.

Demeter was so grateful she gathered up wild wheat and barley and showed the people of Elysium how to farm. They were so grateful, they built a temple to worship her. Demeter also gave them special rites – to eat her bread, sip her sacred drink, chant her prayers – by which one was granted life after death in the green Elysian Fields. Just as a seed of wheat comes to life when placed in the ground, the soul came to life in paradise.

These rites took place once a year at Eleusis, a short distance from Athens. It was the desire of everyone in the Greek world to make this pilgrimage once in a lifetime. Every personage we know from ancient Greece, from Plato to Socrates to Pericles (the ruler who built the Parthenon), would have done so, as did the pre-Christian rulers of ancient Rome who changed the names of Demeter and Kore to Ceres and Persephone. Ceres is the basis of our word for cereal grains.

Today, the temple site is surrounded by urban sprawl and the sacred wheat fields have given way to oil refineries, factories and container ports. But stepping through the gates, it is possible to turn ones back on the modern world and walk the same paving stones as thousands upon thousands of pilgrims for whom wheat was more than food, but a sacred symbol of life itself.

At the Acropolis Museum restaurant, I ate a delicious wheat salad but sadly, they would not share the recipe. So instead, my other favourite, a true Greek Salad. No restaurant in Canada had prepared me for the simple marvel of a real Greek salad.

After sampling several in Greece, I have drawn these observations: The vegetables are crisp and chunky, dressed with good olive oil (no vinegar or lemon juice) and topped with slabs of feta cheese (not crumbled or cubed). The peppers may be any colour (including yellow banana pepper). Onion may be white or red and the olives maybe replaced with capers. In one version, the feta was topped with finely chopped pistachios. I have fond memories of Greece, but the taste memories are the best.

Greek Salad
2 ripe tomatoes, cut in wedges
1/2 cucumber, cut in thick slices
1 sweet pepper, seeded and cut in rings
1/4 small onion, slivered
Kalamata olives (a few per person)
Greek olive oil
Slabs of feta cheese (one per person)
Sprinkling of dried oregano

Toss vegetables lightly with olive oil. Top with slabs of feta. Drizzle feta with olive oil and sprinkle with oregano.

(This article first appeared in Grainews.)

Rhubarb Pudding

In 1893, Hans and Kristiane Lien immigrated from Norway to North Dakota. In 1903, they moved again - north to Canada in what would, two years later, become the province of Saskatchewan. They brought everything with them, including a root of "pie plant" from their garden. Rhubarb!

Here is Kristiane's recipe for rhubarb pudding in the original Norwegian: 

Bland godt 1 kop mel og 1/4 kop brunt sucker.
Rub ind 1/2 kop smor.
Put rhubarb ind i en smurt dish.
Og dros med en kop huidt sukken some har 1/4 teaspoon kanel.
Nu press over rhubarb deigen og bak i en. Passe varme.

Rhubarb Pudding
1 cup flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
4 cups thinly sliced rhubarb
1 cup white sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Mix flour and brown sugar. Rub in butter until blended. Put rhubarb in a buttered baking dish. Mix white sugar with cinnamon and sprinkle over rhubarb. Press flour mixture over top and bake at 325F for 45 minutes. Serve warm or cold.

Thanks to Kristiane's granddaughter Irene Hagel for providing this recipe from the past.