About

It is interesting to learn about how food has evolved through time from those who cooked before us and brought their food traditions to this continent from many countries.
Many historic sites have invited us into kitchens of the past. Come with me and together we will dine out with history on this website. And if you get a chance to visit those places in your travels ….go…. and take your children.
And may our food traditions live on.
Let’s stir soup together and learn with those who prepared food before us.

My love for historic food began the day I was laced into a blouse and donned a long wool skirt at Fortress Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island on Canada’s east coast. I had asked to work with interpretive staff for the day and was hoping to stroll the cobblestones in elegant finery of the upper class. Instead the decision was made to dress me as a servant to work in the kitchen of the Engineer as if in the year 1759, baking bread and cooking a chicken over an open hearth fire on a hot summer day. At the end of that day, I was hooked on historic cookery.
Since then, I have visited many historic sites learning about how our ancestors prepared food from the ingredients they had at hand. They did not have large grocery stores full of strawberries from across the continent and bananas from Central America at any time of the year. The few ingredients that were imported were precious and the creativity of those in the kitchens provided interesting home cooked meals for their family. I doubt that it was easy, growing and preserving food to last through the long winters.
Our First Nations ancestors had an admirable respect for the land that provided them with their food and they believed it was important always to give back. They saved the lives of the first European settlers by teaching them to live from what the land had to offer.
We can learn from the past together.