With longer summer days and more reason to whip up big meals for our loved ones, many of us are looking for ways to spend more time in the kitchen. Whether we’re revisiting our relationship with food, brushing up on our culinary skills, or contemplating new perspectives on how we cook and eat—we’ve got you covered with both delicious all-time favourites and upcoming titles we can’t wait to devour!
NONFICTION/MEMOIR
Edible and Medicinal Flora of the West Coast: British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, Expanded Edition by Collin Varner (Heritage House)
Looking to add new and fresh ingredients to your recipes? This newly expanded and revised edition of Edible and Medicinal Flora of the West Coast is your beginner-friendly guide to more than 150 edible and medicinal flora growing wild throughout the west coast of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest states.
“Clear, concise and beautifully photographed” according to author Dan Jason and now updated with additional species and recipes, this compact, full-colour forager’s guide by Collin Varner offers images, descriptions, safety tips and warnings, as well as culinary and medicinal uses from both Indigenous and settler traditions, for every type of wild-growing plants and fungi in the region.
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Crip Up the Kitchen: Tools, Tips and Recipes for the Disabled Cook by Jules Sherred (TouchWood Editions)
If you’re craving the many benefits of cooking at home but have been turned off by the ableist approach of some cookbooks, this one’s for you!
Compiled by food photographer and mind behind the disability and gardening website Jules Sherred, Crip Up the Kitchen offers 50 recipes that take into account varying physical activities and energy levels as well nutritional information and methods developed specifically for disabled and neurodivergent cooks—all while using only three tools: the electric pressure cooker, air fryer, and bread machine.
Crip Up the Kitchen provides everything from thorough, tested and inclusive recipes, rich photography and food histories, a step-by-step guide to safe canning, a template for prepping your freezer and pantry for post-surgery, as well as pantry prep, meal planning, shopping guides, kitchen organization plans, and tips for cooking safely when disabled.
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The Good Garden: How to Nurture Pollinators, Soil, Native Wildlife, and Healthy Food—All in Your Own Backyard by Chris McLaughlin (UBC Press)
Maybe the goal is to reduce food miles and plastic waste by growing delicious berries. Maybe it’s to meet neighbours who also care about the planet through a seed-swap. Maybe it’s a quiet moment patting the bunny whose manure will replace toxic fertilizers in the soil.
For Chris McLaughlin, making a good garden is about growing the healthiest, most scrumptious fruits and veggies possible, but it’s also about giving back. How can your little patch of Earth become a sanctuary for threatened wildlife, sequester carbon, and nurture native plants?
Drawing from established traditions like permaculture and French intensive gardening and his own hard-earned experience, McLaughlin’s The Good Garden gives you all the fundamentals, tricks, and tips you need to grow the sustainable garden of your dreams. It’s a joyful photographed guide for newbies and experienced gardeners alike, offering both endless knowledge and inspiration for all the many decisions that go into developing a green thumb.
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Food Was Her Country: The Memoir of a Queer Daughter by Marusya Bociurkiw (Caitlin Press)
In the mood for a different spin on the role of food in immigrant stories? Food Was Her Country explores the tempestuous culinary relationship between a god-fearing Catholic, immigrant mother and her godless, bohemian, queer daughter.
From accounts of 1970s macrobiotic potlucks to a dangerous mother-daughter road trip in search of lunch, this memoir draws upon a queer archive of art and activism, stories from Marusya Bociurkiw’s popular food blog Recipes for Trouble, as well as social histories of food, evoking new beginnings and fresh ways of tasting the world.
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Sustenance: Writers from BC and Beyond on the Subject of Food,edited by Rachel Rose (Anvil Press)
Rachel Rose cooks up more than just food in Sustenance, an anthology of short pieces that will shock, comfort, praise, entice, or invite reconciliation, all while illuminating British Columbia’s living history through the lens of food.
Punctuated by beautiful local food photographs, interviews with and recipes from some of our top local chefs, Sustenance is also a community response to the needs of new arrivals or low-income families in our city, and a portion of sales from every book will support B.C. farmers, fishers, and gardeners and go towards providing a refugee or low-income family with fresh, locally-grown produce.
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YOUTH
Let’s Eat: Recipes for Kids Who Cook by DL Acken and Aurelia Louvet (TouchWood Editions)
Do you have a kid at home raring to get going in the kitchen? Seasoned cookbook author Danielle Acken, food stylist Aurelia Louven, and their six proteges (age 7 to 17) are here to help!
Let’s Eat introduces budding chefs to kitchen tools, techniques, and terminology across 60+ recipes with loads of variations to suit a range of tastes. Your child will work through everything from breakfast, snacks and sides, hot main courses, and desserts, setting them up for culinary success in a fun, choose-your-own-adventure style accompanied by colourful photography.
Available October 2023!
Arab Fairy Tale Feasts: A Literary Cookbook by Karim Alrawi (Tradewind Books)
The highly acclaimed Fairy Tale Feasts series brings together prominent writers from diverse cultures to create enchanting tales paired with traditional recipes easily accessible to young cooks and their families.
In this third instalment of the series, “there is much to be learned, even for readers familiar with Arab culture,” according to Kirkus Reviews, who calls the Arab Fairy Tale Feasts “an engaging literary cookbook that is a feast for the eyes, the heart, and the palate.”
Award-winning author and master storyteller Karim Alrawi is joined by artist Tamam Qanembou-Zobaidi and film director Sobhi al-Zobaidi to bring you magical tales featuring food and feasting, iconic recipes, and intriguing anecdotes illuminating Arab culture and culinary traditions.
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Meennunyakaa / Blueberry Patch, written and illustrated by Jennifer Leason, translated by Norman Chartrand (Theytus Books)
Ready for a journey back in time? In this dual-language book, an Elder takes us to the Duck Bay, Manitoba of the 1940s to join him in collecting blueberries for a traditional gathering that takes place every summer.
As he tells his story with humour and vivid imagery, he brings us aboard the trail of wagons heading east to experience for ourselves the plump blueberries, tall green grass, bannock baking over an open fire, clear freshwater streams and the tents the people slept in.
Meennunyakaa / Blueberry Patch is a beautiful dive into the story of how Indigenous people harvested berries and the ways this tradition continues to this day—as well as a reminder of the beauty of nature and our relationship to the food provided to us by the land we live on.
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One-Pot Wonders: James Barber’s Recipes for Land and Sea by James Barber (Harbour Publishing)
Canada’s most famous television chef and best-selling cookbook author James Barber makes gourmet cuisine accessible like never before in One-Pot Wonders, which features over one hundred simple recipes for delicious soups and salads, hearty breakfasts, delectable desserts, and exquisite one-pot main dishes that can be served for lunch or dinner. Each dish is easy and quick to prepare, uses readily available ingredients and only a few essential kitchen tools.
Barber also brings his years of experience cooking at sea to the many tips included in this cookbook, guiding you through the challenges of cooking away from land and offering suggestions for recipe substitutions and variations to address diminishing supplies at the end of a long trip.
Whether it’s finding ways to cook with only one pot or figuring out how to whip up a mouth-watering meal with only basic ingredients — One Pot Wonders: James Barber’s Recipes for Land and Sea has you covered.
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Good Food, Bad Waste: Let’s Eat for the Planet, written by Erin Silver and illustrated by Suharu Ogawa (Orca Books)
Ever wondered what happens to the food we don’t eat? Where does food waste even come from, and where does it go after we’re done with it?
Good Food, Bad Waste takes a look at the causes and consequences of the food we let go to waste. With inspiring profiles of food-waste activists and tasty tidbits on things like best-before dates, this beautifully illustrated book is both a primer on the basics of food insecurity and a reminder that we can be part of the solution from our own homes.
The waste might be bad, but there’s good news in how governments, communities, and individuals are working hard to tackle this giant problem. Good Food, Bad Waste offers nourishing food for thought and more by guiding us through the ways we can work together, decrease our overall waste and make sure everyone has secure access to enough food.
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