The Gourmet Girls
Imagine if you could eat at a five-star restaurant every Saturday night, even during COVID-19. That’s what has been happening in one neighbourhood in Calgary since May 2020. A recent menu included flavourful prosciutto-wrapped asparagus sprinkled with fresh parmesan and lemon by Charlene Delcourt; juicy garlic-rosemary turkey glazed with Dijon and honey mustards and accompanied…
Potluck faith
Every year around this time, the congregation I belong to makes plans for Gathering Sunday. After a summer of sparser attendance at worship services, our gathering on the first Sunday after Labour Day is always a celebration, a reunion for those of us who vacationed outside the area and for those who stayed put during…
Sourdough spirituality
Baking bread is more than just a business for Joel Kroeker. It’s also a way to further important conversations. With a deftness that comes from repetition, he slides another two loaves of bread into the oven. By the time he finishes for the day he will have baked 20 loaves and mixed another batch of…
‘To the heart through dal’
During my year of living in Canada as part of the International Volunteer Exchange Program (IVEP), sponsored by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), I made dal (lentil soup) a number of times. In my country, India, dal is a basic everyday food. My IVEP placement was at Thrift on Kent, an MCC thrift shop in Kitchener,…
Ashisha’s spinach lentil soup
In 2018 Ashisha Lal, a young Mennonite from India, worked at the Mennonite Central Committee thrift shop in Kitchener, Ont. This spinach lentil soup (Palak dal) reminds her of her mother who died of cancer. Read her story here. Ingredients: ¼ cup pigeon pea lentils or yellow split peas ¼ cup red lentils 2 cups…
Oma’s Peppernuts
This recipe for Pfeffernusse (peppernuts) is from my Oma (grandmother) Maria (Wiebe) Kroeger and my mother Helen. (See more at “Family tradition goes back 500 years.”) Ingredients 2 cups butter or margarine 2 cups white sugar 2 cups Rogers Golden syrup 1 tsp ginger 2 tsp star anise or aniseed 1 tsp mace 1 tsp…
Family tradition goes back 500 years
“Pfeffernusse,” Dora repeated after me in amazement! She couldn’t believe that my Christmas treats were the same as hers. It was Nov. 7, 2002, and we were sitting around the pool at Toddy’s Backpacker Hostel in Alice Springs, Australia. Nostalgia crept among us; we had wandered far and wouldn’t be home for Christmas. At the…
Diana’s Sugar Rolls
Diana Shaw grew up watching her mother express love and caring by preparing and sharing food. Diana says, “This recipe from my mother is easy to make; it can be frozen, thaws quickly, and is easy to eat!” It makes approximately 90-100 sugar rolls, depending on the size. (Read “Following my mother’s example” here.) 1½ tbsp.…
Food and love are entangled
Like many women I know, my mother carries a deeply ingrained impulse to feed others. Once I watched her tend Penguin, her black and white tuxedo cat, clucking and fussing as she prepared and set food before him. To my eyes, the hefty Penguin was doing just fine, and the fuss seemed to be unnecessary.…
Good food enhances camp ministry
Every summer Melita Penner and her daughter, Denelda Fast, spend a week cooking for summer camp at Shekinah Retreat Centre, north of Waldheim, Sask. They’ve been doing it for 15 years. In the early years they volunteered for children’s or teens’ camps, cooking for up to 65 people each week. But for the past three…
