Alison Colwell

When you were a child, how did you get your food?

Mostly from the garden, or from neighboring farmers. We lived in the country, on what used to be a farm. And also, there weren’t supermarkets where I lived, I think there were very few supermarkets anyway, even in the big cities. And tradesmen came to you, you didn’t have to go out much. But the bread man came, and the fish, the butcher and people came to you, and you bought at the door.

When you were young, how did you keep your food?

Well, in the first house I remember, we didn’t have electricity, it was a very comfortable little old farmhouse, and the most important place for keeping food was a north-facing little very cool room with thick walls, slate shelves, so stone shelves, a small window, and very closely screened so no flies could get in and food was kept on either the cold stone floor or the cold stone shelves, and we had fly screens for everything. One of the things we did was make little net covers, little net rounds weighted and the edge with beads, and if you had a milk jug or something, you would put that over to keep any flies or bugs out, or dust. All food was covered; there were screens, small screens and big screens, and dish covers, and keeping food cold was the main aim of this little pantry, as it was called.

How is getting food different now from when you were a kid?

Well, today you have the supermarket, the big store, and rather than getting the food brought to the door, you go to the store, walk up and down the aisles, pick out what you want, and take it home with you! Also, in those days very few people had cars. We didn’t have a car, so that it would have been a big problem, unless you had a pony and trap, which of course I uses to have on Galiano. It was a problem going and getting your food, so that’s not how it worked. Food came to you.

What is your favorite local food?

I think I’d probably have to say salmon.

Tell me about a food memory you have from childhood.

I think my mother’s spaghetti. She wouldn’t cook the pasta very much, not squishy. I’m afraid most English people overcook their food, but she was a very good cook. She would make this delicious tomato sauce, and then grated cheese on that, and then, the finishing touch, this is what made all the difference, she would put a fair little handful of chopped mint in the sauce at the last minute and stir it around. And then, when you served the spaghetti, the sauce, the white cheese, she would top it all off with some roughly chopped raw dandelion, and I do that to this day. The contrast in taste is absolutely delicious and I loved it even when I was a little kid. It’s pretty too. And very Italian. You know the Italian flag is green and red and white.

What seasonal foods so you eat?

As much as possible I do, and as the year goes round, the first is nettles, in February, and going through the spring, the wild greens, and I get all excited when the asparagus comes in, the strawberries are coming in now, and I won’t eat tomatoes out of season, because they’re mostly not worth eating. I wait until our own local tomatoes are here, and then they’re worth eating. So I go through the year like that, and in the fall I hope to get some deer meat. I don’t always, but it’s really nice. And in the very brief herring season, one of my favorite Galiano foods is if I’m able to get a bucket of herring and salt them down, or make pickled herring. So I would have to give you a long, tiresome list. And there’s mushrooms. There’s all the wild greens, and I think there’s another category for that, so we won’t go into it, but all the garden food,s I try to wait till the proper season and not buy then brought in from out of province, I try to get foods grown here.

How do you overwinter your food?

I don’t do much now. When I lived on my little farm, yes, I would make sauerkraut, and well, I still freeze quite a lot, it was mostly freezing and bottling, and preserving in that way. When I needed to I borrowed a dehydrator, that is a great help. You can make excellent things with dried food. You could dry your beans without any particular fuss, just lay them out in a flat basket.

How and where do you shop for your food?

Well, now Mrs. Krebs takes me out in the car and we go shopping once a week and we only shop on the island, unless there is something needed that is not carried on the island, and neither Mike not Daniel can bring it in, but that doesn’t often happen. So I go to the three stores on the island, the Market, the Garage, and the Corner Store once a week, and that’s how I do my shopping.

How did obtaining your food change when you moved to Galiano?

That was an excellent change. I slowly bit by bit got into gardening. I started out with a little patch about as big as this table with potatoes and onions, and it grew from there till it was quite a big garden, and I was very proud of it. Until I got too ill to go on, I had not bought any vegetables for thirty years. And I raised rabbits, and sheep, and had hens for eggs, and when they got too old to lay they went into soup. So I didn’t spend an awful lot on food till I had to move here. But that was the big change moving to Galiano and it was such fun doing it, I really enjoyed it.

What foods make you think of spring, and why?

Greens! The fun of finding the very first little nettles peeking up in February, and then the Siberian lettuce, and fiddleheads, not everybody like fiddleheads, but I love them. The sheep sorrel, and dandelions. It’s the wild food that make me think of spring.

What foods make you think of summer? Why?

Strawberries! Asparagus! Tomatoes! Those are wonderful foods of summer that you don’t eat any other time, and it’s such a treat. A tomato picked warm right off the plant and chomped right there is one of the delights of life.

What foods make you think of fall?

My very favorite used to be corn, corn on the cob. Have you ever eaten corn raw? This is a treat, let me tell you, even better than eating peas out of the pod. On a nice warm fall morning, strip a perfect ear off, peel it down to where you can get at it and sit there in the sun and chomp raw corn. It’s so good! That is delicious!

What food make you think of winter and why?

Good solid British food, I’d have to say. Steak and Kidney pie. Plum pudding for Christmas. Love it! That is, as far as I’m concerned, British pemmican. Take a good slice, wrap it up and put it in your pocket, and go for a long cold winter ride. That’ll really keep you going!

When you were a child how did you get your food?

Well, my mother and dad provided it for me, and my four brothers and sisters. My dad grew all our vegetables throughout the whole year. Sometimes he’d be out there at six o’clock in the morning digging and hoeing and cultivating before he went off to work, just to keep the vegetable garden going. We had lots of apple trees, we had plum trees, we had a peach tree,and so that’s how we were fed .My mother made our own bread, and did baking, sometimes she would buy cookies I guess,but she bought the ingredients from the grocery store, and so that’s how we were fed, and we were fed very well.

How did you keep your food?

Well, we didn’t have a fridge until, I think, I was quite grown up, in fact I don’t know if we ever had one while I was living at home, I left home when I was eighteen, but on the back porch, which was on the north side of the house, we had a cooler, which was basically like a cupboard with holes cut out of the back of it and covered with screen so the cool air could get in, and when it was hot in the summer we just didn’t try to keep food that would go bad. My mother preserved a lot of food, she canned fruit and made jam and various other ways. I remember once she had a big crock. You know what a crock is, it’s like a big earthenware pot. We also had chickens and she had learned that if you put this..I don’t know what it was she put into the crock… it would preserve the eggs. I just remembered that.

Where did you grow up?

In Sidney, B.C.

How was getting food different when you were a kid?

Well, all of what I’ve just explained, but also, I remember that my mother could phone the grocery store and give them a list of the groceries she wanted, all the ingredients for baking and extra things,and the store would deliver them to her in a truck. We also had a milkman who had a dairy farm and he brought milk every morning. Do I dare tell you the first one I remember..delivered it in a horse and carriage And then we had one named Mr. Corser who delivered it in a truck every morning except weekends, maybe.

What is your favorite local food?

Well, local food…one of them is my own plum tree, I brought a picture of harvesting my prune plums. Because my dad grew all our own food when I got my own place I wanted to do that too. I never did it as well as he did! When I bought the property on Warbler road I planted an Italian prune plum tree, which produces masses of prune plums every year. I think there was only one year when I didn’t get very many. Here’s a picture of all the prune plums, in 1992 I think. I love them, they’re good to eat raw, I bottle some and make jam and I freeze some in my little freezer. But I also like fresh salmon, I don’t like shellfish but I certainly like fresh fish, sometimes we can go down to the wharf and buy it from the fisher people.

Tell me about a food memory you have from childhood.

Does it have to be a good memory? Can it be a bad one? Well of course all the fresh fruit and fresh vegetables that my dad grew. But as a child I hated Brussels sprouts. I like them now, but I hated Brussels sprouts and whenever we had Brussels sprouts for dinner i just couldn’t get myself to eat them and so I would be sent to the sink with my plate and dinner I’d have to stay there until I had eaten my Brussels sprouts while the rest of the family all had pie for dessert, because my grandmother always made pie for us every Sunday. I don’t mind Brussels sprouts now. I think maybe I found a little green worm in one once, because it was fresh from the garden.

What seasonal foods do you eat?

Well, I try to just eat foods that are in season. I try not to buy lettuce in the winter, because we don’t grow it here. I love fresh tomatoes out of the garden and fresh vegetables in season, in the spring and summer.

How do you overwinter your food?

I do canning. I bottle fruit, my own plums, applesauce sometimes, and I make jam, and the rest I put in my little freezer.

How and where do you shop for your food?

I shop in Sidney for large items like sacks of flour, but I buy food locally too, mostly down at the garage store, because I can walk there. So I buy both locally and off-island.

Why did you choose this recipe?

I guess you’re referring to a recipe that I have brought? Because I have the plums, I brought a plum and apple crumble recipe, because I can use my own plums, and I can use them when I’ve already frozen them, I can take them out of the freezer and put them in the casserole, and use that recipe, so that’s why I brought that. Here’s another one, it’s different, it involves using Bisquick and that kind of thing, but it also uses Italian prune plums.

How did obtaining food change when you moved to Galiano?

Well, I joined the food co-op, which was a group of people who got together once a month and ordered food, usually they liked us to order it by the case, or large quantities, and then Loney would take his truck and go to Delta or somewhere, and bought it I guess at wholesale prices and would bring it back to the island, and then what I remember was going down to Primal Point where Willow, particularly Willow, and Johanna, would sort it all out .so that was inexpensive for me because I didn’t have work when I first came. I guess when I got a full-time job at the school in ’76 I probably stopped doing that.

What food makes you think of spring?

Well, I guess fresh peas. Lettuce, and fresh beans and nettle soup, which I’m going to make today when I get home..because that’s what out there! And also those fresh green vegetables are very full of vitamins, they’re very good for you! I even like spinach now!

What foods make you think of summer?

Well I guess fresh tomatoes start .there’s nothing like them right off the vine..and things like zucchini, and I guess ice cream, which I don’t grow, I’d like to but I haven’t found the secret.

Which foods make you think of fall?

I have a wonderful pumpkin soup recipe which I brought from Australia…when we went to Australia it was March, but it was their fall, and everywhere we went they served us pumpkin soup! I don’t like pumpkin pie. I don’t like pie.

What foods make you think of winter?

Probably the food that I’ve either bottled or made into jam, and then of course turkey and Christmas dinner. Not much grows in winter, so it’s usually preserved food.

Food Memory

Every spring my family went to visit friends out in the country and we went to the Sugar House because a lot of people made maple sugar and maple syrup from maple trees. In the spring as soon as the snow had melted they would plant little spiggets in the trees, bang, bang, bang, and then attach buckets on them. Then they would go around with horses with bigger buckets and empty the small buckets and bring all this juice, the sap, to the sugar house, they would boil all the water out and it would take hours to boil all the water off. A big bucket would make a little syrup, about 50 to 1. So that was a source of sugar. Of course we could buy sugar in the store but maple sugar is so much better. At the sugar House we would eat eggs fried in maple syrup, bacon fried in maple syrup, slices of homemade bread with thick cream and maple sugar on top. Then, of course all the kids would run around everywhere with the horses and the calf on the farm, we would ride that. That was our big spring excursion. We drove about an hour and ½ and my parents had friends who had relatives with a big Sugar House.

How not to cook with Soap

I cooked with soap once. When I was living in France with Cody’s mother and Grandmother we all went hiking one afternoon into a deep, deep valley and we got home and everyone was very, very tired. So I whipped up dinner in no time at all, I made some lamb chops, I think, except when I brought the lamb chops to the table Jenny took a bit and said YUK!!! And I said “come on Jenny don’t be fussy” but she said there’s bubble on it…I can see the bubbles and so I tasted mine and sure enough there was bubbles in it and it tasted like soap. What happened was that there was a container of cooking oil, yellow and a container of soap, also yellow. So in my hurry I took the container of soap and poured it in the pan. So the moral of the story is don’t rush while cooking.

Raw Octopus

When I was in Korea once I was invited by the people I was visiting to go to a fish restaurant to eat raw octopus. So we went to this fish octopus, a very simple with dirt floors and big tanks full of live fish. So they pulled out a live octopus from the tank, long with long tenticals and then they put in on a chopping board and went chop, chop, chop and then onto a plate and brought me the plate. And so in the plate the little bits of octopus were still wriggling. I took my chopsticks and I tried to grab one but it was sucking onto the plate, they were hard to get off. So I finally get a piece onto my chopsticks and bring it to my mouth but it was still wriggling, still wriggling and ooooohhhh I finally popped it into my mouth. It was very good and fresh and I ate the whole plate, it was quite good actually.

Favourite local foods: oysters, crab, salmon, all kinds of sea food

Spring: Asparagus,

Summer: gin and tonic……barbequed burgers

Fall: pumpkin pie

Winter: pork roast

Lennis: We grew lots of vegetables when I was a child, and later on we lived where there were abandoned orchards and we used to go and pick apples because they would stay on the ground, one or two, and we would throw one apple down at a time for them to catch them, so they wouldn’t get bruised…and that way they would last, sometimes right up to February a nice King apple would last. And it was so good then! That’s how we kept our fruit, that’s what fruit we had.

And when I was littler and we lived by a lake, we used to catch fish. But we had no fridge, so we used to salt them and keep them, and then when you wanted to cook them, they would just be covered in salt, so we would have to wash it all off and then soak them for a few hours to get

some of that saltiness out, and then we would cook them. And we always had a cow or more than one, we all learned to milk a cow by the time we were six or eight. And so we would milk our cows, but we had no fridge to keep our milk, but we might have two gallons of milk, with the cream on top. ‘Cause we always had Jersey cows. We would take the cream, we’d set it for half a day or so in a cold place down by the well, and then we’d skim the cream off and and then we would in the summertime you great aunt Julie and i would go pick blackberries in our big blackberry patch, it was our job to go and pick blackberries for lunch and for supper,, and we would have blackberries and whipped cream every day because we had so much cream..And my mom and great grandma would make butter, sometimes we did too , with a small churn, not those big ones with the pump type thing. So we’d make our butter. And we canned a lot…fruit forever! Pears, crab apples, plums,applesauce. That was the fruit. And we also canned meat, because we had no fridge. If we butchered an animal we had to can the meat to keep it, and it would be nice and tender.

Taylor: How did you keep your food?

L: Mostly by canning, and by salting the fish when I was very little, and keeping the milk cold down by the well. By the lake, when I was small, this was northern Alberta, where we always had a big garden. The well was at Jedediah island, up the coast. Canning was everywhere. big vegetable garden, canned corn, lots of corn. One time the pressure canner top popped off the pressure cooker and there was corn all over the ceiling. That wasn’t a joke!

T: How was getting food different when you were a kid?

L: We lived isolated very much of the time, and when we bought food we bought it in bulk when we did buy food, big bags of dried beans and big bags of dried peas, and the rest of the food mostly, and wheat, for porridge.We would cook that up to supplement the food that we grew. Mostly we grew our own or collected it from abandoned orchards.

T: What is your favorite local food?

L: Here on Galiano? mostly I like fruit. I like King apples, they’re my favorite, they’re local, they’re right here.

T: Tell me about a food memory you have from your childhood.

L: Well, there were lots of children in our family so no one ever complained about what was to eat. So we quickly got whatever we could and ate! We didn’t want that because it wasn’t coming around again, the plate would be empty by the time it got back!

My favorite food memory..Making ice cream..it was nummy! That was it! That was when I was very little. One time my mother got the ice people to bring ice, and we had a big pile of sawdust,and they buried it in sawdust, because there was no fridge, there was no electric, we lived very far from electricity. And we didn’t have propane fridges or anything in those days, then in the summer we would dig it out from the sawdust, break it up with a sledgehammer, it came in big blocks, and we had a ice cream churn with a churn you turned by hand, there was a little container in the middle that you put the custard in; we had our own cows, and we’d add vanilla and sugar and good stuff in there….and then around the edge in the bigger container, the wooden container, you would put crushed ice and coarse salt, that would keep the ice frozen longer, and the inner thing was hooked to a handle that when you turned it it kept turning around and around and inside, in the inner container where the ice cream was being made, there were little wooden paddles that would scrape it off the edge as it got cool and then push it into the middle, and then more creamy custard would be cooling, making delicious ice cream so we had ice cream right at our house, without going miles to the store.

T: What seasonal food did you eat?

L: In the summertime we ate all our own vegetables and we ate fish and some of our own animals, sometimes sheep, I remember once we had goat but it wasn’t my favourite food memory.

T: What was the flavour of the ice cream?

L: Vanilla. We didn’t put fruit, I don’t recall putting fruit, cause the fruit wouldn’t be ripe yet, by that time the ice would be melted, because it would be very hot in the summer. And we used to pick wild strawberries, and wild raspberries too, there would be lots up there.

T: How do you overwinter your food?

L: Right now, how do I overwinter it? I still can, peaches and raspberries, pears and crab apples…fish. I love canned fish, salmon. I have a freezer that I use as well.

T: Where do you shop for your food?

L: I usually shop for most of my food in Sidney, at Fairway or the Co-op. Some things on Galiano. Usually on my trips to town, when I have to go overnight.

T: How did obtaining food change for you when you came to Galiano?

L: Most of my life I’ve lived isolated, so I bought food when I was in town and packed it. When I was first married and we were logging out on the mainland it used to be a whole day trip to come to town and get groceries. I remember once forgetting the eggs and the crew wouldn’t be happy with no eggs, I forgot a whole twelve or fifteen dozen eggs and had to go all the way back and get some. And I still pack. I’ve got a truckload of groceries that I haven’t finished unloading yet from today’s trip!

T: What foods make you think of spring?

L: Salmonberries. I guess. The first fruit to be edible in the spring.

T: What foods make you think of summer, and why?

L: Peas on the pod straight from the garden. I know a story about some boys, not from my family, but when I was little, this is a very cute story. They were out stealing peas from the garden and their mom asked them to quit pickin’ the peas out in the garden, so you know what they did? They were still in the garden, maybe they were supposed to be weeding,and they would reach up, split the pod open, and strip the peas out and leave the empty pods hanging .Weren’t they nasty boys?

T: What foods make you think of fall?

L: Ffish, pears, blackberries in late summer…pumpkin pie.

T: What food make you think of winter?

L: Soups and stews. I love pea soup, it’s my favourite.

Taylor had a recipe that she wanted me to give, a BREAD RECIPE.

The fruit and seed bread: I put flax, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, cracked wheat, millet, ground brown rice, cornmeal ,well, don’t put the cornmeal in, but the other I put in …cook it on the stove like a porridge for at least a half hour, and then you can let it sit for a long time, I do that in water, then I cook in soy milk, some cornmeal, that thickens it, then I add molasses,eggs, and some lemon juice, it helps the yeast work, and in a little while I put a bit of sugar, and some yeast, and let it bubble, and then I add brown flour and whip it in till it’s sticky and thick, too thick to whisk any more, and then I add unbleached white flour till it’s bread. The last time I made it, I don’t know whether it was the weather or what but it seemed to come up and then it fell down and I was lamenting it and your brother said that I shouldn’t worry because maybe the next time I made it I’ll learn to make it right again. I forgot..I also put chopped up dried apricots and craisins in.

Here’s some more about storing food: With potatoes, to keep them, we used to have a little trapdoor in the floor, and there was a hole under the house where we kept them, so they wouldn’t freeze, because it would snow all winter there. When we lived on Jedediah we had dug a big hole in the ground and we kept them down in that hole and covered it over so that they wouldn’t freeze. Even today I keep my potatoes in the coldest part of the house.

In the logging camp, when we forgot the eggs, I think we went halfway back, we could phone from there and then somebody else brought them out, because it was a long ways out, it took us two and a half hours by boat and then we had to go across Quadra and then catch the ferry on the other side to get to town….somebody rounded them up on Quadra for us and then brought them out most of the way. For a logging crew, they want their eggs for breakfast. You had a big list, and you tried not to forget things.

Even when I lived in town, I always just shopped one day a week. One shopping day, go get it and be done. And if you didn’t have it, well, just make something else. Don’t drive off to the store to get it just because you wanted to make that certain thing. You can substitute…the recipe’s a guideline. That’s all. You do the rest. Sometimes you forget how and your bread falls!

“I grew up in a sterile urban environment where I thought that the whole world was paved and that kind people dug up the pavement to plant seeds and let plants grow. My only joy was what was in the window boxes, my life long desire to be in nature.”

Here is a recipe from Dora Fitzgerald.

“I liked simple foods – no scary bits or weird flavours. One of those favourites was a nice serving of rice arranged on a plate to make 5 or 6 wells – just indentations. Gently pour melted butter into the wells and sprinkle the whole plateful with sugar & cinnamon. What a treat!

Rowan: When you were a child, how did you get your food?

Betty: Wherever we lived, my mother out a garden in right away. And we had chickens. We used to go to the butchers, and we got fresh cut meat. It was fresh, because we didn’t have refrigerators. And then where I lived, in South Vancouver, a Chinese fisherman used to come up. He had the big hat, and he had a pole over his shoulder with two baskets. The baskets had sacking on therm. And he’d lift the sacking and there were lovely fresh fish. He came to the door and all the bread companies had their bread wagons and they came to the door, whatever you ordered, bins or anything, brought to your door, fresh. And the same with the milkman, you put a note out saying you wanted a bottle of milk, a bottle of cream, or butter, and you got it fresh. Or, you could go to the store and get it, but we didn’t have refrigerators, we just had coolers, But now, if you don’t have a fridge, and you think you’ll keep something in an icebox and you buy something from a supermarket, it’ll go rotten in no time. That stuff’s not fresh, it’s old.

Of course, my mother was a wonderful cook, and the women made everything, pies and cakes. Wonderful food. My mother was Welsh, but it was sort of English cooking, meat and veg., that kind of stuff. And they made things that would take a long time to cook, like they’d take tongue and press it, and they’d make what they’d call head cheese, that was out of a pig’s head, and they made all kinds of stuff like that.

R: When you were young, how did you keep your food?

B: In the cooler. Just in the cupboard, but the stuff like milk and whatnot was in the cooler, which was simply a cupboard which had holes to the outside with screen on it, so that animals couldn’t get in.

R: How many days would milk last then just in that cooler?

B: Not too long, I can’t remember exactly except that the stuff was fresh, the stuff was fresh and they didn’t use sprays and all that.

R: How was getting stuff different when you were a kid?

B: I told you that already, a lot of it was delivered. Once a week my mother would go downtown to Woodwards. Woodwards was the big store that is now gone. It was famous for its food department, you went downstairs, they used to say foods from all over the world, and it was. Just once a week she’d go down in the streetcar, which took a long time, cause we lived way out on forty-ninth, and pick up like tinned stuff. We didn’t use a lot of canned stuff. I don’t know, maybe tea, coffee, I don’t remember. And then there were no bags. The girls at the counter had these great big sheets of brown paper, and they were absolutely amazing. They would pile this stuff up in a great big pile, and then wrap it in brown paper, and then they had really strong string…their poor hands! They tied it in a big knot, and then they cut it like that. And it was heavy, and it was big. And then we’d trail all the way home in the streetcar and all the mothers would be carrying this great big thing from Woodwards, as well as shopping bags. My little brother and I, we didn’t want to shop, so my little brother and I would sit on the steps, and of course it was wonderful, because we saw all these people coming into Woodwards, we just sat and watched the people, it was quite famous for its food department. The Woodwards family had a big ranch at the time, so they probably grew a lot of that meat. And then one of the other stores, Spencers, the big department store downtown, had an English couple, and soon in their food department they made crumpets! That’s all they did, this English couple with funny accents you know? They’d put the little metal frame down, and pour batter…they just made crumpets. And they were hot, oh! They were fresh, and so good!

R: What was your favourite local food?

B: Everything! My mom was a good cook.

R: What was your favourite food that your mom would make?

B: Oooooh! She’d say, what do you want on your birthday? And I’d say, roast pork with crackling, with mashed potato, mashed turnips, and gravy…..

R: You would ask for mashed turnips on your birthday?

B: Yeah, but they tasted better. Now, they don’t make….they’re not very interesting. There was no margarine then, and there’s no margarine allowed in this house. Ever! I don’t remember what I asked for for dessert. She used to make a wonderful rhubarb custard. I never tasted anything like it again. It even tasted good cold afterwards.

R: And you never got the recipe and made it yourself?

B: No. I don’t make pies. I can’t make pastry. I don’t like things sticking to my fingers.

R: Tell me about a food memory you have from childhood.

B: Well, my mother was Welsh, and so was my Dad. I’m Welsh. And And she’d just make them on the top of the stove.

R: What seasonal foods do you eat?we had a big wood and coal stove, black, and she’d make what they call Welsh cakes, make them right on the stove, they’re just like a soft round cookie and they’ve got currants in them Like a scone, a little round flat scone only they had currants in it.

B: Now? I like everything except okra. I hate okra. Slimy! Sometimes I find some of the kale and chard kind of strong.

R: How do you overwinter your food?

B: My old stables where I kept the horses is wonderful. There’s an old cupboard in one of the seed rooms, that one of my partners built for me, and I store apples in there, and pears, and I don’t store anything else, because I really don’t grow it. I could store squash, but I don’t have to because I can get it from Daystar.

R: But I know, for example, that you grow peaches, and make jam.

B: I grow peaches, pears and apples. Oh, and I freeze them, I slice the peaches and I just boil them a little bit, and I put them in containers so I basically have fruit year over for dessert. And my freezer is full of frozen peaches. And when my pears ripen I’ll have frozen pears to eat all winter. I make peach jam, gooseberry jam and pear ginger jam.

R: Yeah! Do you ever pick the blackberries?

B: I used to. I used to put a lot of berries in, but I have an itchy skin and I discovered it’s berries that cause it.

R: Oh man!

B: This is sad. So for the last few months I haven’t had raspberries, strawberries or blackberries. But normally I would, I had a lot in my front field and I’ve gotten other people to come and take them.

R: How and where do you shop for your food?

B: Daystar. On Friday. A little bit at the store for the stuff Daystar doesn’t have. Like Scotch. That’s its own food group.

R: How did obtaining food change for you when you moved to Galiano?

B:Well, I freeze a lot more. I think I probably eat more fruit and vegetables. I think Daystar’s a lovely store when it comes in on Fridays. It just looks like a painting in there. If Sandy goes to town I go with her, and then we go to the Red Barn. They sell some meat that’s non-medicated and they buy as much as they can from Vancouver Island. But I don’t like large portions of meat and I don’t eat meat every night.

R: What food makes you think of spring? Why?

B: Well, I guess lettuce and tomatoes and fruit. Those tomatoes you can buy, they look gorgeous and they have no taste at all. I’m growing my own now. I have three pots of tomatoes and a great big thing of green beans. I used to have a great big vegetable garden until…I guess when I went back to work, after my husband died, I stopped because I had so much to do. I was working and I had two horses and cats and dogs and all these things to look after…..but I love gardening.

R: What food makes you think of summer?

B: All the lovely fruits. Fresh vegetables. Corn on the cob!

R:What food makes you think of fall?

B: I guess the squashes, they’re so beautiful, all the different kinds, that’s a fall thing.

R: What foods make you think of winter?

B: Brussels sprouts. Cabbage. Because they grown in the winter!

R: Thank you.

B: You’re welcome. That wasn’t too bad!

We lived in Cheshire England, the war was on, the war started in ’39. Food was rationed, we were only allowed so much per week per person. We were only allowed one egg per week per person. The food that was rationed for families was generally termed as fats which was butter or margarine or lard plus sugar and meat. Meat was rationed in a different way instead of them saying you can have so many ounces per week it would go by price, so they may say that for this period of time your meat ration would be a shilling. Therefore when you went to the butchers you would look around for the cheapest cut. You may get a lot of cheap meat or you may decide to get two chops. We were rationed because we were at war and we were an island and we got as lot of our food from different countries. The Merchant Navy sure helped us out. The convoys coming across the Atlantic they helped us out with food. Sometimes the rations were decided on by whether there had been a lot of shipping that had been bombed or torpedoed and there would be not as many ships coming in with food so then we knew that our rations would not be as big. We were often hungry. Oranges were very, very scarce and the only people to get oranges were expectant mothers and toddlers for the vitamin c. I don’t remember oranges at all and I never ate a banana until I came to Canada. Even sweets were rationed, sweets and chocolate you couldn’t just go to the store and buy some you needed a ration card. We couldn’t believe the variety of food when we came to Canada; rows and rows of cookies I remember particular. Even now I prefer to shop in a small shop where I can only see so many cookies so I don’t have to choose from 50 packets of cookies. We had never seen so much food. Well the ration was on for ten years by the time we came over so we had never seen so much food. We came over in ’49 and the rationing went on until ‘53/’54. The war was over in ’45 but we were still on ration. After the war we sent food to Germany and Europe. We were in need but they were more in need.

Coming to Canada

Friends of our lived in Chilliwak and my brother had just got of the army just after the war and the friends said come on over to Canada, it’s a beautiful place and lots of work and of course England was in a real big turmoil in 1946/47so he came over. And my Mum decided, right we’ll follow, so we followed him in 1949. I was 21 (Jean) and I was 17. You have no idea what a big change that was….we are still getting over it! Everything was so different, the amount of food….you could eat and then eat again if you wanted to. I remember coming over on the train and the waiter came to see what we wanted to eat and we chose ham, I think. He brought two plates and put them down in front of us, there was five of us and then he went back to get more food but we thought that these plates were between all of us because it was such a huge amount of food and what we were waiting for was more plates and knives and forks. I think he was quite stunned when I asked is this just for me? I think that after you have been with limited food for a long time you don’t need as much and I do really think that we were all very, very healthy children. And we have said between ourselves and friends of mine, “if only we could get back to the rations during the war”, everything was given to us for a purpose. It was the best food available at the time and obviously it was enough because none of us starved to death, although we often went to bed with an empty stomach. There was no sense in saying well go and get a cookie or a piece of toast. Well if you were permitted so many slices of bread a week and you ate two on Tuesday you could forget bread on Wednesday. But some of us liked sugar but we got very little per week so my brother liked sugar and he would eat his very rapidly whereas I would eat mine slowly. I still do, I still ration myself.

You didn’t drop into anyone’s home for a cup of tea or a coffee or whatever, you just didn’t. And you never went anywhere during a meal ‘cause they couldn’t help you and if they did help you then the lady of the house was probably going without.

Spring

Spring Cabbage and Strawberries, rhubarb, which I am enjoying right now. I very seldom ever buy fruit or vegetables out of season. I don’t think they are worth having; there is no taste to them. I’d rather wait which of course we did in England. We didn’t have the opportunity of having all the food that you have in Canada. A lot of the food in Canada comes from the States or Mexico whereas in England it was a much bigger trip to come so we generally ate things in season.

Cooking Changes

Our Mother made all of our bread in England and the flour is so different over here and the recipes just didn’t work so we had to change to Canadian recipes. Very, very few English recipes worked over here unless you adapted them so you had to learn by trial and error.

M: When you were a child, how did you get your food?

E: The local butcher, and we had a garden, and we had chickens, so that’s about it.

M: How did you keep your food?

E: Well, there weren’t any fridges, when I was a child. We had a cold pantry, usually in the shade at the back of the house. It had long, sometimes marble slabs, and that’s where we kept milk, and fish, and everything.

M: How was getting food different when you were a kid?

E: Well, when I was a child, we were lucky to get food. It was just after the first world war, 1918, when I was born, it was what they called the Depression. Not a lot worse then what they have now, they call a recession. And then when I was about thirteen it was really bad so we had to grow as much of our food as possible, and use our chickens, and my father used to catch rabbits, I used to go with him to help catch the rabbits. I grew up in Durham, County Durham, on the North East coast of England, a coal mining town.

M: What is your favourite local food?

E: Fish.

M: Tell me about a food memory you have from childhood.

E: We always had a big pot of soup, or broth as we used to call it, hanging on a hook over the coal fireplace. A big bowl of soup with a big ladle in it, it was always there when we came home from school. And homemade bread. We didn’t know any different then. It was during the second world war that sliced bread came out. I remember that. But mostly home-made bread was what we had. My mother used to make about ten loaves at a time. We used to have a fender in front of the fireplace and I remember all the loaf tins when I came home from school, full of bread rising. And we used to have the coal oven. It was a round one. We didn’t have an electric stove when I was a child, that was mostly later on, when I was a teenager.

M: What seasonal foods do you eat?

E: Seasonal food, well, it depends on the season, in the summer there’s fruit, and berries, and in winter mostly vegetables, I like asparagus in the spring.

M: How do you overwinter your food?

E: Mostly by freezing.

M: How and where do you shop for food?

E: Locally, as much as possible. The market for fresh vegetables and fish and chicken.

M: Why did you choose your recipe for the cookbook?

E: Oh, parsnip and carrot soup is very nutritious, good for you. Easy to make. and the pineapple cake has no fat in it, it’s very moist and makes a nice big cake. I have Yorkshire puddings there because they remind me of family gatherings, we always have Yorkshire puddings, especially in England. And my granddaughter, whose name was Yarrah, she used to come to this school, and she and her father used to have a competition who could eat the most Yorkshire puddings. And she always won. She could eat about twelve at a time.

M: How did obtaining food change when you moved to Galiano?

E: Well, we shopped in the city, in Ontario,mostly in supermarkets. Here, we shop locally.

M: What foods make you think of spring and why?

E: Spring….mint, parsley, asparagus, lamb, mint sauce and lamb, parsley..and fish.

M: What foods make you think of summer?

E: Strawberries, fruit, making jam, blueberries,and freezing; preparing for the winter.

M: What foods make you think of fall, and why?

E: Pumpkin pie, root vegetable and soups, I make a lot of soups, and freeze them, too.

M: What foods make you think of winter, and why?

E: Turkey, Christmas pudding, pork and bean soup, mincemeat pie.