As a long-term fundraising plan for City of Powell River’s new public library, recipes are being collected for a cookbook and historical narrative of food in the region.
“We were inspired by the Nelson Public Library, which now has two cookbooks,” said cookbook editor Megan Cole.
According to Powell River Public Library board of trustees vice chair Charlotte Gill, City of Nelson’s library has raised about $50,000 from only one of their cookbooks “and it’s still making money.”
Recipes for Powell River’s cookbook will come from professionals, chefs, restaurateurs, farmers and gardeners in the area. Simplicity is emphasized and recipes will be edited for readability and standardization across the entire cookbook, which has a working title of Water and Wood: The Story of Powell River Told through Food, said Gill.
“The contributors know food,” said Gill. She said local chefs and restauranteurs have been invited to submit recipes they would cook for their families that can be made from simple, local ingredients.
“Everyone has totally risen to the occasion,” she said. “They love the idea and totally get that it has to be something anybody can make.”
Recipes are only part of the cookbook, according to Gill. The other aspect features interludes in the story, beginning with first nations history and how they prepared, gathered and ate food.
One first nations food item, called eulachon, or candlefish, discovered during the book’s research was similar to olive oil, said Gill, and was traded by many coastal peoples.
“There is tradition that it can be burned like oil,” she said. “There are stories that it could almost be lit like a wick. It was a very highly prized staple food.”
Gill said the story of food will bring readers up to the present and include food of various millworkers who came from all over the world; how they gardened it, cooked it and ate it.
“It’s an agricultural history through food,” said Cole. “There are traditions of Italians, Hungarians and Scandinavians in Lund, and Chinese, including respected business pioneer Sam Sing, who was the first merchant and owned many properties in Townsite.”
A cocktail section will also be included and, according to Cole, feature the classic cocktails of Rodmay Hotel’s Rainbow Room.
“I wanted to have a cocktail section, but I didn’t know how it would fit in,” she said. “I wanted the history component because I didn’t want it to be just, ‘I want cocktails because I like cocktails.’ I wanted it to have that connection.”
Cole said she found connections to the past through various stories, such as there being a large whiskey still on Texada Island.
“It was one of the biggest on the coast during the prohibition era,” she said. Cole said she has also heard about Italian grappa distilled in Wildwood.
“We have a boozy culture in Powell River,” she said. “Powell River is a living library of foodie history.”
Local writers Sonia Zagwyn, Nola Poirier and Angie Davey, along with Cole and Gill, have volunteered to be responsible for the content. None have written a cookbook before but all, according to Gill, love them.
Nathan Jantz and Jennifer Dodd will contribute photographs and Ryan Thompson will take care of graphic layout and design.
According to Gill, the team is in the nascent stage of a long-term project that will, hopefully, be out by Christmas 2017.
“We are ultimately raising money for the new library,” said Gill. “One hundred per cent of sales will go to the new library capital campaign.”
