I'm not sure how I missed the release of this book back in April 2011. In my defence I guess my food blog was still in its infancy and I wasn't quite as plugged into the stream of food news that I am these days. I have always been a local history nerd - I get sucked into books about Victoria more easily than any other kind of non-fiction. I am fascinated by how much has changed about our city in such a relatively short amount of time.  

This book covers the very early history of the Victoria food scene, from the founding of Fort Victoria through the Gold Rush, the establishment of Victoria as the hub of BC and into the early part of the 20th century. The focus is on how early Victorians acquired the 'basics' — meat, bread, vegetables, coffee and spices and, of course, beer. I was surprised by the sheer number of goods that were produced in Victoria and then exported around the Province and the world. I was surprised to see how many of our current food trends are reflected strongly in the early history of Victoria! 

Purchase "Feeding the Family" at a bookstores, the Museum gift shop, or online at Amazon. 

This episode is a cooking episode as part of the Canadian Food Experience Project.  Head on over to acanadianfoodie.com to find out what other food bloggers from across Canada had to say about preserving our Canadian food heritage!

For this episode my fellow Victoria-based blogger Amy Bronee from familyfeedbag.com teamed up with me to jointly tackle this months challenge. Amy is an amazing recipe blogger who teachers canning classes here in Victoria, so I was extremely thankful for her for sharing her wisdom as I knew nothing about canning! 

Check out this episode to hear Amy talk about what you need to get start canning, the best times of year for different kind of preserving, an explanation of what 'safe' canning means and she even demystified pectin... 

Farm Folk City Folk is a BC food security initiative that does a lot of visible and invisible work here in the Province supporting other food initiatives and advocating for changes to food policy. Their annual fundraiser, Feast of Fields, is coming up this Sunday in Metchosin! 

If you haven't gotten your tickets already you can purchase them through Cook Culture in the Atrium in Victoria, or buy them online until 5 pm Saturday. Make sure to visit the Farm Folk City Folk website for all of the details. 

I sat down with the coordinator, Jennifer Freeman, who gave some really fantastic insight into the work of Farm Folk City Folk, and then some incredibly delicious sounding details about some of the food that will be available at the event. Warning: this may cause extreme hunger! 

This episode is a cooking episode as part of the Canadian Food Experience Project. The recipe is below, so prep your ingredients and you can cook along with me on the audio!

Ingredients

Instructions

In another meaty August episode I had a chat with Luke & Paige from Choux Choux, the little French charcuterie where they sell fine foods inspired by France including imported cheeses, house meats and all the fine ingredients from near and far you need to make a delicious meal! My partner-in-food-and-life joined me to host this episode and helped to pull out some fantastic stories from the often shy couple — how they met, the inspiration for all the delicious food they make and the passion, not necessarily business ethic, that drives them to success. 

As part of the national Canadian Food Experience Project Chef Cory Pelan from Whole Beast Meats talks about his nomination as the Slow Food BC Food hero as well as many more slow and delicious tidbits

Chef Karrie Hill from the Deadbeetz food truck and city councillor Lisa Helps help to explain the current food truck scene & what we can do about changing it!

In this episode of the Food Nerd Podcast, cocktail aficionado Shawn Soole really puts the "Nerd" in "Food Nerd" with the epic details on his vision for his soon to be new place, Little Jumbo. You can tell Shawn really has envisioned every piece of his new place down to the very last drop of water!

Shawn also gives some pre-release information about his upcoming book with Nate Caudle, Cocktail Culture: Recipes & Techniques from Behind the Bar soon to be highlighting the bartenders of the Island on the world stage! 

This episode is part of the Canadian Food Experience Project from www.acanadianfoodie.com. 

This month's topic is "regional Canadian foods of [insert your region here]" and so I thought what better to do than sit down and chat with Maryanne Carmack from the Victoria Downtown Public Market Society to discuss some of the regional delights that will be available when Victoria's first permanent public market in 50 years opens in the Hudson building in August!

Lisa from the Superior sat down to chat about her artistic inspirations for The Superior, her romantic inspirations for Mortiscycle donuts and some of her part in the food history of Victoria. 

Apologies for the background sound in this one - after this I've been recording in quiet rooms & things have been much better, but this one still has some pretty epic "ambiance"