Culinary Historians of Canada newsletter, August 2022: Barbeques, picnics and cookouts, oh my! 🍉🍔🍒

Annual General Meeting Notice

The 2022 CHC AGM falls on Saturday, October 1, 2022. All members in good standing are invited to attend. With a seventh wave of COVID upon us, and in the interests of making it easy for everyone to attend, we have decided to hold our third annual virtual meeting. All members will receive an email with Zoom login information a week before the meeting.

On the agenda—some exciting announcements, a proposed change to the Constitution and a really entertaining piece of scholarship. More will be revealed over the next six weeks.

We are looking to expand the CHC board. Will you join us? We are actively seeking new board members, and hoping to fill the positions of president, vice-president, secretary and co-chair of communications.

If you think you could commit about three or four hours per month and might like to help organize events, manage our social media accounts, bake historic refreshments or handle administrative details, please consider joining us. We also welcome volunteers from any part of the country to offer even a few hours a year to one of our committees (Membership, Programming, Communications, Education, Publicity, Volunteers and Refreshments). Find out more at info@culinaryhistorians.ca.

All 2022 memberships expire on the day before the AGM; only members in good standing may stand for board membership, elect board members and vote on official matters that may arise. Those who renew before January 1 will be charged our current price of $30 per year ($55 for two years). As of 2023, the rate will rise to $35.

To renew, simply visit the membership page on our website. If you are not certain whether your membership is still up to date, check in with our membership chair, Judy, at membership@culinaryhistorians.ca.

Advertising cards from Rennie's Seeds ca 1904 (Duncan Lithographing Co.), Baldwin Collection of Canadiana, Toronto Public Library. Public domain.

Just A Bite Report #4: Seeds and Harvest

By Carolyn Crawford

Just a Bite: Summer Food Memories from Ontario Seniors was a questionnaire widely distributed during summer 2021 among seniors' cultural groups, associations, clubs and service organizations. CHC asked questions that invited the sharing of youthful memories. This column is the fifth in a series to summarize the memories contained in the 68 booklets returned.

In this blistering hot summer of 2022, we look at what Ontario seniors told us in the Just a Bite questionnaire about seeds and harvests in their pasts. Many respondents saved seeds, canned, preserved, froze, sold and shared much of Ontario’s summer produce which many had grown in their family gardens or farms. I have tried to include as many recollections as possible for you to enjoy.

Eleanor Aldus from Peterborough writes of her memories from the '50s, "The cellar was lined with jars and shelves of pickles, relishes, canned tomatoes and fruit preserves nestled beside the bottles of maple syrup from the spring sap run ... The Department of Agriculture issued information on safely preparing and freezing foods [and] new cookbooks now had a section on freezing and canning."

Betty Bender of Goderich states, “I remember my mother poring over seed catalogues. She even wrote a poem about how much she enjoyed doing that.” Murray Borer (Renfrew) says that his family in Dundas "bought seeds from the hardware store" and that "tomato plants were traded [with his neighbour] for horse manure."

Steele, Briggs' Seed Co. garden guide for 1928, back cover (detail), Harris Litho. Co. (publisher), Humanities and Social Sciences department, Toronto Reference Library, Public domain.

Gaetano Tom Burgio, who moved to Virgil in the Niagara-on-the-Lake area from Italy said that “We would dry the seeds from the year before ... We saved them in jars. My brother gave me wild fennel seeds from Sicily, Italy, and I grow them today in NOTL. They taste so good in sauce.”

Lynn Clelland, formerly of Brampton, now in Renfrew, still remembers "coming home from elementary school to the wonderful smell of chili sauce." Barbara Cook (Caledon) said her father "shared with neighbours, friends and co-workers ... they would fill his vehicle with veggies before he went to work." Lloyd Cook, also of Caledon, recalls that "we preserved earlier on … Before we had our own [freezer] we rented three freezer lockers at the farm Co-op in Brampton and at Kaufman’s store in Inglewood."

Joseph Gray (Caledon) also mentioned that "we did not have a freezer growing up but had a freezer locker in Brampton at the Peel Seed Co-op store, where other members stored theirs…. We each had an area that was like large wire cages that had padlocks on it so others could not borrow your supplies." Also, "Mother preserved … many jars of different jams, pickles, and fruits that we stored in our basement [and] we used to store [apples] on the front verandah covered with blankets to keep from freezing until it got really cold, then we hauled the bushel baskets full of apples down to our cellar. Many springs a few bushels of rotten apples were hauled back out."

Elizabeth Glenney from Oshawa shares that while growing up in Newcastle, "the corn on the cob was boiled and wrapped in butcher paper and tied with butcher cord … and put in the freezer. My mother preserved peaches, pears, plums, cherries, tomatoes, grapes, and beets."

Susan Hitchcock from Syndenham says "mom and dad would make homemade chili sauce, dill pickles, jam … Dad even tried his hand at homemade wine. We spent an entire weekend picking wild grapes near his family home in Stanleyville."

Marilyn King, currently of Listowel, shared that her family’s harvest was sold at the Stratford Farmers Market. Her mother froze, canned and pickled, and made Dutch apple pie which they froze in quarters.

Debra McAuslan (Clinton) tells us about their cold cellar in the basement: "In what I think was an old cistern, my dad would bring in dirt, and the potatoes and carrots would be buried in the dirt. I remember digging them out for supper [and] mom always had a few crocks of pickles with a plate over them … I would lift the plate and sneak my hand in to get a pickle!"

Margaret McMahon of Gorrie writes that "seed potatoes were usually the eyes off last year's crop if any potatoes were left." She also recalls "we had elderberry bushes growing right outside the barn … but we had to get them before the birds did. Shaking the berries into the big garbage bags was always a fun day. Pie to follow! Extras were frozen for the winter months." Ted Meyer in Waterdown says his "big family preserved a lot.... As we got older and had our own families, we would share and trade produce with each other; we all had our own gardens. It was a social event."

"Return from the Insect Fair" advertising card from Rennie's Seeds ca 1890, Baldwin Collection of Canadiana, Toronto Public Library. Public domain

Peter Myers speaks of growing up in a suburb of Winnipeg called St. Vital. He writes: "the Dominion Seed Catalogue arrived every winter.... The best product was corn right out of the garden, into the pot, and onto the table. Summer food." He also writes that "a Native person would come with blueberries once a summer … and mom would buy enough for a pie. Wild blueberry pie!"

He further mentions the summer tastes of Saskatoon berries, chokecherries, wild plums and caragana blossoms that he ate as child: "very easy to pick and the nectar delicious. Caragana were introduced to the prairies and became a characteristic element of the of towns and cities as well, I am sure, of shelterbelts when the first farms matured and before all were removed in the expansion of the massive farms of today."

Margaret Pearson from Milton recalls purchasing her seeds mostly from the store but "as a teen got them from the Agricultural Society for 4-H." Eva Norman-Vestergaard from London tells us that "heritage [garden] seeds were saved each year … and Dad would store clean grain and corn in bins." They also purchased their seed from Stokes, Dominion Seed House and Rennie’s Seed Annual. "Fruit tree cuttings for grafting came from neighbours and family," she says. She created and included her own recipe for Elderberry Squares:

Elderberry Squares

1 cup all purpose flour
¼ cup granulated sugar
½ cup butter

Use parchment paper in bottom of an 8" x 8" pan for easier removal and cleaning. Combine well the flour, butter, and sugar. Pat the batter into an 8" x 8" pan and cook at 325° F for 20 minutes.

Topping:

3½ cups elderberries
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 cup white sugar
½ cup all purpose flour
¼ tsp salt
1 Tbsp butter

Cook elderberries, lemon juice, white sugar, flour, salt, and butter. Add mixture to top of crust and spread evenly. Bake at 325° F for 20 minutes. When cooled, chill in refrigerator, then freezer. Cut in squares and remove from pan.

Sherry Murphy of Toronto was raised in Boston and Florida. Her family picked mangoes and citrus fruits, which they sold. Her mother also preserved some oranges and made marmalade. Peggy Parent of South River says that her "dad donated lots of vegetables" to her mother’s church ladies’ groups to use as fundraisers. She remembered going to Midland (her hometown) Flour & Feed to purchase seeds by the pound.

Ruth Quast (Renfrew) states that her family "froze corn and peas, preserved the fruit, made apple pies and froze them—anything in abundance went to anyone who needed it." She remembers that when the seed catalogue came in the mail, "It was almost as exciting as the Christmas catalogue—spring was coming!" Another Renfrew resident, David Reid, saved seeds "in hemp bags in a small mouse-proof wooden box that Grandpa had made." The Reids "sold asparagus to the local hospital and apples in the community." David notes that they did not have hydro until 1949, and they stored their frozen goods at the freezer plant in town.

Steele, Briggs' Seed Co. garden guide for 1928, p. 6, Harris Litho. Co. (publisher), Humanities and Social Sciences department, Toronto Reference Library, Public domain.

Nancy West of Lakeside says her family sold their summer harvest "extra to neighbours and the local grocery store" and that her "grandparents' place was well known for strawberries and raspberries that they planted in 1947." She transplanted some to her current home and says that "the raspberries are great, but the old strawberry variety has no shelf life."

Mary Williamson of Toronto shares with us many stories about wartime summer harvests. Her family grew their own small Victory Garden that had carrots and lettuce, and included an asparagus bed that her brother painstakingly dug for a month! She tells us that "rationing impacted the making of jams and jellies." But her mother managed to take advantage of summer vacation time spent in Northern Ontario and cottage country; Mary recalls, "My mother would take a walk and, straying from the usual paths, look for blueberries and other wild fruits. She would gather them (with my help!) and take them back home where they would be boiled up into jam, with sugar acquired via the special sugar ration stamps."

Mary’s uncles had a farm in what is now Burlington. She was "eager to help in picking fruit on their farms: mostly raspberries." Mary wrote more of these summer food memories in an article she included in her Just a Bite booklet titled "Feeding the Family in Wartime," which was first published in Edible Toronto issue 16 in the summer of 2011. She and her brother are pictured on its front cover picking raspberries. The article is based on a book she edited with Tom Sharp titled Just A Larger Family: Letters of Marie Williamson From The Canadian Home Front, 1940-1944.

Looking forward to the arrival of seed catalogues, planting, picking and preparing the harvest of fruits and vegetables, and doing these things as a family for themselves or for others, are prominently fixed in the memories of Ontario seniors.