What was your favourite childhood food? Who made it? What memories do you associate with it?

Finally, our Covid food project is complete! We have put together a collection of recipes, memories and photos, We are What We Ate: Recipes & Memories from Childhood. Would you like a copy? Email us at info@backlanestudios or call 647-313-1654: $20 plus $7 for shipping.

Thanks to everyone who participated, sharing their stories and recipes, and to everyone who helped: Lois Broad for her long list of potential participants, Ester Saltzman for contacting many people; Anne Wright Howard for exceptional editing; Jeana McCabe for bringing in participants and making videos of them; Michelle Edmunds for collecting some  fascinating stories.

We would like to continue this project! It has been fascinating — a great way to feature memories from our lives and those of our parents and grandparents! So, join us in collecting more favourite childhood food memories for our next publication! Call us (647-313-1654) or email info@backlanestudios.ca!

Here’s a small sample of some of the stories:

Joanne Shimotakahara:  Canned Salmon Tempura

My mother, Esther Kuwabara, was born at Skeena River, B.C., in 1912 and died in Hamilton in 2015 at age 102. She lived a long, productive life and will be remembered for her strength of character, sense of humour and wonderful cooking. 

Esther was a gifted cook from years of watching her mother, Moto Ennyu, make meals without recipes at our grandfather Sannosuke Ennyu’s lumber camp on the former Queen Charlotte Islands. As a young woman, she managed and cooked at her family’s lunch counters in Vancouver.  Savoury meat pies, lemon meringue and cream pies were specialties.  

In 1941, Esther married Masao Kuwabara. After World War II and internment of all Japanese Canadians in British Columbia, they were relocated to Hamilton. Mom cooked tasty, budget friendly meals for our extended family (stews, meat loaves, chow mein, sweet and sour chicken, pot roasts) with apple or lemon meringue pies on Sundays. 

In 1954, Mom became the summer cook at Ryerson Beach United Church Camp on Lake Erie so that she could buy the family a television. My sister Diane, brother Bruce and I had an unforgettable summer while Dad worked hard in Hamilton.

Mom directed a team of four university students and cooked for hundreds of campers using a large wood stove. She was called Cookie and everyone loved her meals, including birthday cakes! Bruce, a future architect, created structures in a sandbox outside her kitchen window, where she could keep an eye on him.

We will always remember Mom as a strong, exceptional woman, an entertaining storyteller and great cook. Memories of dinners at her table will endure for our lifetimes.  The canned salmon tempura, which I have selected as a favourite, was one of her many artful, low-cost but satisfying dishes.

The Recipe:

 Ingredients

• 1 can pink salmon (7¾ ounce) drained, reserve juice
• 2 cups vegetable oil for frying
• ¼ cup juice from salmon or water
• 1 egg
• ½ cup flour; ½ tsp salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 10 green beans, topped with tails on
• 1 carrot peeled and julienned into 10 strips
• ½  potato, peeled and julienned into 10 strips

Directions

1. In a mixing bowl, add egg to salmon.
2. Sift in flour and salt to make a thick, sticky paste.
3. Mix together baking powder and salmon juice.
4. Stir quickly into salmon mixture.
5. Add vegetables and mix well.
6. Drop by teaspoonfuls into hot oil. Brown quickly.
7. Drain on a paper-towel-lined plate.

Jeana McCabe: Grandfather’s Salad Days!

Jeana McCabe, right, holds a recipe book from Pasquale’s. Left, her grandfather Archie Puccini and grandmother Gysella Frediani.

Who would have thought a bunch of dented cans would lead to the creation of an artichoke salad that became a Toronto favourite, sold at Pasquale Bros. on King St. But that’s what happened, and it was my grandfather Archie Puccini, who came up with the recipe.
Archie immigrated to Canada from Ghivizzano, in the Italian province of Lucca, in 1921. He got a job at Edward Pasquale’s store, which specialized in olives and pasta. Pasquale had arrived from Italy some years earlier.
One day Pasquale asked my grandfather what they should do about all of the products they couldn’t sell because of dented cans. Archie, who lived for food and was the real cook in our family, embraced the challenge.
After some experimenting, he devised a delicious concoction of herbs and spices, along with ingredients from the damaged cans. That was how Archie’s Famous Artichoke Salad was born.
The antipasto was a hit for decades. It drew people from all over Toronto and even further afield. Archie would personally dish out his salad, filling containers for customers to take home and eat, accompanied by crusty bread and accordion music.
Mr. Pasquale, as our grandfather insisted everyone call him, used to drop by my grandparents’ tiny Willowdale bungalow, and bring his old suits for Archie. My grandmother Gysella Frediani always said she would have preferred her husband get a raise, instead. She was very grateful, though, when Pasquale paid for an addition to their house.
My grandfather worked for Pasquale for over 40 years, and revered him. When he visited, they used to sit in the kitchen for hours drinking wine and enjoying each other’s company. My grandmother would serve them homemade soup with bread and, naturally, artichoke salad.
I can still remember savouring every bite, the tasty herbs and the velvety smooth artichokes. It was certainly one of my favourite childhood food experiences – and still is. Here’s the recipe!

ARCHIE’S  ARTICHOKE SALAD

PREPARE

1. Chopped parsley with garlic
2. Unico pickled mixed vegetables, Progresso roasted peppers, Unico sweet pickles, Banana peppers (Cut all in small pieces)
3. Plain black olives (small amount cut up)
4. ARTICHOKES 4 jars (cut up), CHICK PEAS 1 tin

SPICES

Paprika, Allspice, Sweet basil, Salt and Pepper, Oregano, Bay Leaf, Oil and Vinegar

LAYER IN PAN

Put quite a bit of oil in pan. Sprinkle parsley. Spread a bit of vegetable mixture. Add SPICES: paprika and pepper (quite a lot) Allspice (little) Sweet basil (medium) Oregano (medium) Bay leaf (medium) Salt (medium)

Layer Chick Peas and Artichokes

Sprinkle vinegar

REPEAT

Brenda Gravelle makes her grandmother’s pulla recipe.

Brenda Gravelle: Section House Life

The Section House along the Algoma Central Railway. Below, Brenda’s Vaari, Mummo, mother and aunt.

Three generations of my family worked in Northern Ontario for the Algoma Central Railway (ACR), starting with my grandfather (Vaari in Finnish). He was a section foreman, who looked after part of track, and he and my Mummo (grandmother) lived in the section houses that served the rail lines. These houses had no electricity and no running water.  Most of the cooking was done over a wood stove. We bathed in a traditional sauna built by Vaari.

My mother, raised with her sister in the wilderness, hated the bugs and lack of indoor plumbing, and most of all, she hated sweating over the wood stove. But not my grandmother! She was a force to be reckoned with in that kitchen. Her meats were dry and overdone, but you were in for a treat when she roasted vegetables, fried fish or baked. Pulla, a sweet, cardamom-flavoured braided loaf known as coffee bread in English, was my favourite.

To get supplies, Mummo would write her list on a piece of paper, tie it to a stone and wait for the passenger train to pass by each evening around  4:15 p.m.  When we heard the whistle blow at Mile 45, we would wait on the veranda.  Mummo would stand by the tracks waving the yellow flag. That would let them know we had an order and to have the baggage door open. Either my oldest brother or my Mummo would wait for the conductor’s hand signal, and then they would toss the note into the baggage car. The next morning, the train would stop and our groceries would be delivered, like magic! 

The smell of pulla brings back memories of a simpler time, swimming in the lake, going to sauna each night, watching the stars from the section house veranda and of the warmth and love of my Mummo. I can still picture her standing in front of the wood stove on a hot summer day, apron on, hair tied up in a scarf, her favourite sleeveless cotton “housedress” on, putting more wood into the oven to keep the temperature just right for baking pulla. Watch Brenda’s video.

RECIPE: Finnish Coffee Bread (Pulla) (3 loaves plus 8-12 buns or 4 loaves)      

•  1 cup sugar. 1 square fresh yeast 
• 50 grams or 4 tablespoon dry yeast (2 envelopes) plus 2 teaspoons sugar
• ¾ cup softened butter
• 2 cups warmed milk
• ½ cup warm water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Seeds from 12 cardamom pods crushed (¼  to ½ teaspoon)
• 4 eggs
• 8 to 8½ cups flour
• Topping : 1 egg,  sugar, 1 tablespoon water

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Stir all ingredients together adding flour to make a sufficiently firm dough. Knead lightly with hands until dough doesn’t stick to fingers. Cover dough and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk. Form into loaves and let rise again until more than doubled. Mix egg and 1 tablespoon water together and brush loaves with mixture. Sprinkle sugar lightly over top. Bake at 375F to 400F for 25-30 minutes. 

Ester Saltzman: A Cookbook memory

Ester Saltzman’s parents were married just after the war.

As an elderly woman and stroke victim, my mother spent her last years in a geriatric hospital in Montreal. Her speech, mobility and short-term memory were dramatically affected, but her long-term memory was still somewhat intact. 

Once during a visit to the hospital gift shop, accompanied by her companion, she saw a copy of the cookbook Second Helpings, Please! by Norene Gilletz. She became very excited and insisted that her companion purchase it for her. Clearly she was no longer able to cook and did not have access to a kitchen, but just flipping through the book was comforting enough for her.

The  recipe for apple cake, one of my childhood favourites, came from that cookbook. Just thinking of it reminds me of the lovely aromas of sweet dough, cinnamon and cooking apples. My mother frequently made it Friday evenings, when my grandfather (her father) came over for dinner at our modest apartment in Montreal’s NDG.  She would prepare a roast chicken or brisket, and often she might make a noodle kugel (noodle pudding). She would always bake a cake. 

My mother came from a family — and a society — where marriage was expected. At age 31 soon after the war ended, she married my father, gave up her job as a secretary at Canadair and became a full-time homemaker. 

Although I have many memories of her cooking and cleaning up in the kitchen, my most vivid image is of her lying on her bed reading a book. She, of course, would cook regularly, but her meals were simple and routine. Often,  however, I would catch her flipping through magazines checking out recipes – perhaps dreaming about what she might make some day. Years later, looking through the pages of that favourite cookbook from the hospital gift shop would have perhaps offered her the solace of familiar recipes from the past.

Katy Petre: Plums, Potatoes, Dumplings

Katy Petre prepares plums in her backyard to make her favourite child food — plum dumplings made with a potato dough.

 When local plums are available, it is time to make my favourite childhood meal — plum dumplings or “gwetsche knodele.” This seasonal treat is particularly special because the dough contains potatoes, the food that saved my parents’ lives.
Both my parents’ ancestors migrated some 200 years ago to eastern Europe from Alsace Lorraine. My mother’s side ended up in a small German-speaking village in Yugoslavia; my father’s, in Romania.
After the war, the German-speaking families of men press-ganged into the German army were stripped of their homes by Communist partisans in Yugoslavia and were used as forced labour for two-and-a-half years. Later, my father, Joe, met my 18-year-old mother, Grete, in a coal mine.
She once told us she was so hungry that she stole a potato knowing full well that she would have been shot if caught. My father likely would have starved to death if a kind farmer had not slipped him potatoes.
I was born in a tiny town called Rtanj in Yugoslavia (now Serbia) in 1949. We lived in one room with a dog, Spitz, before moving to Germany when I was one and then Canada when I was five. I started Grade 1 in Toronto without knowing a word of English.
When my strong-willed mother made the dumplings, she was always in charge. She would not let me touch the dough, but I was allowed to help by removing the pit from the purple plums.
I remember her ricing the boiled potatoes before adding eggs and flour. She rolled out the dough, not too thin, and cut it into squares. Then we inserted a half plum in each square, closed it up and boiled the dumplings. When they floated to the top, they were done. We would fish them out onto a plate and sprinkle them with bread crumbs fried in lard.
Then began the game of who could eat the most among our family of four. We cut them up and sprinkled them with cinnamon and sugar. In those days, we never heard the word “diet.” Watch Katy’s video.

RECIPE: Plum Dumplings

Dough

• 7 peeled medium-size potatoes, boiled and riced (white or Yukon Gold, not new)
• 1 egg
• 1 to 1½  cups all-purpose flour (some potatoes are more watery so you may need more flour)
• Bit of salt
• Plums (Mount Royal-size plums work well.)
• Topping: Dry bread crumbs and lard or Crisco oil for frying.
• Cinnamon and sugar for sprinkling.

Mix dough ingredients together. Knead the dough till it’s not too sticky  Add more flour as needed. Roll dough out about ⅓-inch thick. Make sure there is flour underneath. Cut into squarish shapes. Put a half plum in each and close up. Keep dumplings separate so that they don’t stick together.

Boil about 10 minutes in salted water until dumplings rise to surface. (Lid on helps at the start.) Fry bread crumbs in lard or Crisco oil.

Remove dumplings to a plate and pour bread crumbs over the dumplings. Serve. Cut dumplings in half and sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on top.

Mary Louise Ashbourne shares her family’s secret for a perfect turkey.

Mary Louise Ashbourne: A Turkey Tip 

When I was growing up in Weston during the 1930s and ’40s, we would have a fresh turkey for Christmas. It would still have things like the claws and pin feathers on it. My mother would take a twisted newspaper, hold the turkey up, then set the newspaper on fire and singe off those pin feathers. She was very good at it, and fast.

We always cooked our turkey in a well-greased brown paper bag. As long as it’s well-greased, it never burns. All the flavours and the moisture are kept inside. That’s the way I’d still cook a turkey if I cooked one today.

In the good old days, we would have greased the bag with bacon fat. More recently we used just margarine or something like that. It had to be a solid fat, and you would rub it in well. We prepared the turkey with stuffing, sewed it up and I would place strips of bacon on the breast and drum sticks. (The kids loved the bacon, which always mysteriously disappeared before the turkey was carved.) The turkey went right inside the bag and into the roasting pan breast side up for a long slow cook in the oven at 275F. The stuffing always contained very dry breadcrumbs, onion, celery a pound of browned sausage meat and poultry screenings. There was always lots of delicious medium brown gravy. I never had a failure, and I cooked a lot of turkeys in my lifetime, every one of them in a brown paper bag.

Note: This was one of Mary Louise’s stories about food from her childhood, although she had many other favourites. We posted her turkey memories on Instagram and Facebook and received lots of tasty reaction.  Here are two of the many comments!

Jade Hemeon follows her parents’ tradition: I grease the bag with butter. Coarse salt and pepper on the bird inside and out, then put inside the bird a few herbs, half a lemon, celery, the neck and giblets and half an onion. Cover bird with butter. Once the bird is in the bag and in the pan, I then pour a cup of chicken broth into the bird. The bird must be completely enclosed in the bag, and I staple it shut. You could use 2 bags for a big bird. I cook at 350F; timing depends on size of bird. When the bird is cooked, the gravy is automatically there because the chicken broth has absorbed fat and flavour, and also kept the meat moist.

Taylor Alexander comments on the Culinary Historians of Canada’s Facebook page: ABSOLUTE and ultimate way to cook turkey. This was my grandfather’s method and the method I still use today as a professional chef. Everyone’s always skeptical until they taste it, and then there’s no going back.

The Project: We are What We Ate!

When COVID shutdowns began, we decided to collect memories by phone, as well as encourage participants to write their own submissions. If you remember, cooking and baking became front and centre during COVID isolation, as people mined their pantries for ingredients and experimented with new recipes — like sourdough! We thought favourite childhood foods would be a subject that just about everyone would enjoy thinking about and discussing, and a great subject for young people to explore with their elders.

Each favourite food story includes memories associated with the dish —  who made it, when and where it was consumed, and, perhaps, why it was a favourite. Our participants also shared photos from their childhoods and in some cases, pictures of the smeared recipe cards and cookbook pages.

Please email us if you would like a copy of the book. It is $20 plus $7 for shipping. Please call us at 647-313-1654 of email info@backlanestudios.ca.

We are excited about this project!!

The Power of Food Memories