Community found in the kitchen
In 1989, my grandmother, Lorraine Braun, began creating a cookbook for my mother, Maurya.
In 1989, my grandmother, Lorraine Braun, began creating a cookbook for my mother, Maurya.
Some of ‘The Gourmet Girls’ meet in the Jeanette Thiessen’s backyard to celebrate Daunine Rachert’s birthday on Oct. 10, 2020. Pictured from left to right: guest Marjorie Kornelsen, Charlene Delcourt, Elaine Hovey and Daunine Rachert. (Photo by Jeanette Thiessen)
‘The Gourmet Girls’ enjoy prosciutto-wrapped asparagus. Pictured clockwise from top left: Daunine Rachert, guest Joanne De Jong, Marlene Nelson, Elaine Hovey, Charlene Delcourt, Jeanette Thiessen. (Photo by Joanne De Jong)
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.
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 the summer.
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 dough for the next day’s orders.
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.
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.
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.”)
“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.
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.
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. Who knows though?
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.
Recently, my husband and I sat with friends at a table in an Ethiopian restaurant. As we dipped pieces of injera (sourdough flatbread) into the tasty sauces, we reported on our lives: a new business, a new grandchild, past school experiences, current professional realities.
Consider what happens when people gather around the table:
‘Soup and Pie’ by Manitoba artist Margruite Krahn was featured in the November 2015 issue of Anabaptist Witness that focussed on food issues. She cites the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as her inspiration. The work hangs at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg.
“Everything in the world is about to be wrapped up, so take nothing for granted. Stay wide-awake in prayer. Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything. Be quick to give a meal to the hungry, a bed to the homeless—cheerfully.
I recently learned to eat anarsa—a sweet, rice-based treat—while travelling in India visiting with Mennonite women, and learning about their religious lives and food practices. It was late February, but I was told that Christians in India normally prepare anarsa at Christmastime as a seasonal and festive treat.
Pancakes played a role in the story told in “Mennonites connect over pancakes.” Here is a tasty recipe.
It was more than 20 years ago when two Mennonites from Germany travelled to Ethiopia to explore the possibility of doing mission work with the Mennonite church there.
The Canadian Foodgrains Bank walks a fine line on climate and walks it well. A recent and rare slip demonstrated the tensions it, like the rest of us, must navigate.
Four years ago, while part of a missional leadership group, Kara Carter, pastor of Wellesley Mennonite Church, received news from the local school parents advisory group that there were children who were coming to school hungry.
Last fall when Erin Froese and her household received the gift of many large squash they had trouble using it all up. They made a couple large pots of Butternut bisque and invited their neighbours to join them for a winter soup night.
Gord Enns leads a bicycle tour of five farms in the Osler, Sask., area that sell meat, vegetables, fruit and baked goods directly to consumers. (Photo courtesy of Gord Enns)
Participants check out the produce available for sale on the Local Food Trail. (Photo courtesy of Gord Enns)
Curious pigs come to check out the Local Food Trail bike tour participants. (Photo courtesy of Gord Enns)
On a sunny Saturday in early September, 13 cyclists set out to explore the Local Food Trail near Osler, Sask. Gord Enns, who is executive director of the Saskatoon Food Council and who lives on a farm in the Osler area, organized the tour in conjunction with the town of Osler and the rural municipality of Corman Park.
In her story about hospitality, “Sharing food with my two families,” Natasha Krahn describes being served a traditional Palestinian dish turned upside down on a large platter. Here is the recipe as found in the Extending the Table cookbook.
In large, heavy saucepan, heat:
I am a thief. I steal our food system’s waste.