Eatdrink #65 May/June 2017

The LOCAL Food & Drink Magazine May/June 2017 | 55
Recipes
Feast
Recipes and Stories from a Canadian Road Trip
By Lindsay Anderson and Dana VanVeller
Review and Recipe Selections by TRACY TURLIN
What do you get
if you take two
friends, add a
37,000-kilometre
road trip, and five months
of camping? For most of us
this could equal a recipe for
disaster. For two Canadian
authors, it adds up to a lot
of fun.
Lindsay Anderson
and Dana VanVeller
describe themselves as
“Vancouver-based writers,
adventurers, wanderlusts
and co-creators of Feast: Recipes
and Stories from a Canadian Road Trip. The two
women spent half of 2013 travelling across
Canada collecting recipes and stories, and
exploring the country’s sense of national
identity as it relates to food. They chronicled
the trip on their blog, edibleroadtrip.com.
Back at home, they compiled their notes and
photos to create the book. It’s a beautiful
collection gleaned from chefs, food writers
and educators, friends, family and a few
Canadian food icons.
Lindsay Anderson is from northern BC,
while Dana VanVeller is originally from
Sarnia. Both have worked
and studied across the
country as well as across
the ocean. Check out
their blog for more tales
of their adventures, from
Sarnia to Sri Lanka.
Along with the recipes
in Feast are stories
from each province and
territory that the authors
visited. Photos are mostly
their own and include
some haunting images
that capture of the beauty
of our country, as well
as some that bring
memories of childhood
visits to grandma’s
kitchen, wherever that
might have been.
I received this book very
early in the spring and was
leafing through it when I
noticed that the rhubarb
in my garden was already
trying to peek through the
snow. A few years ago, in a
fit of nostalgia for childhood
memories of rhubarb stalks
dipped in sugar, I transplanted
a bit of the stuff from my mom’s garden. That
small cutting became firmly entrenched in
my tiny herb garden and now threatens to
take over the entire thing. A sensible person
would probably just dig it up. But I discovered
that I love rhubarb — stewed, baked or added
to homemade applesauce. It has become my
first taste of spring. So I was delighted to
find a recipe in Feast from Canadian Living’s
Elizabeth Baird for “Lunar Rhubarb Cake”.
This is not the prettiest dessert you’ll ever
make but, like so many messy things, it is
well worth it. It gets its
name from the crumbly
topping of brown sugar
and butter that makes it
look like the surface of
the moon (and taste like
a slice of heaven).
While I was watching
my poor, optimistic
snow-dressed rhubarb
I noticed that the poor,
Authors Lindsay Anderson
and Dana VanVeller