I read a good question on another blog: "Why isn't there any such thing as Canadian cuisine?". But then I thought - well sure there is! We've got donuts! Not those gross Krappy Kremes - I'm talkin' good ol' Tim Horton's baby! We've got sugar pie. Tortiere. Beaver tails. Kraft Dinner (I know y'all have Kraft Macaroni and Cheese but we get to call it KD). Beer with actual alcohol content. Hell we've got Smarties with maple leafs on them, eh?
Yeah, I know - sounds fattening, but we work it off trying to outrun polar bears and rabid beavers.....
But seriously, what foods am I forgetting that are distinctly Canadian?
3 comments:
Moose??
Canada's native people have heavily influenced this nation's cuisine. There's pemmican (dried meat mixture), buffalo meat, wild turnips and wild rice to name a few. The traditional method of preparing these dishes has been abandoned but not forgotten. As heard in this CBC Radio interview, two elders from Western Canada remember the days of slow-aged pemmican and bannock bread cooked over an open fire with sticks.
• Some original native recipes include roast polar bear, boiled reindeer, sweet pickled beaver, squirrel fricassee, fried woodchuck, stuffed whale breast, steamed muskrat, boiled caribou hoofs and baked skunk. Mmmmm.
• Wild rice is a type of tall grass yielding edible grains. It is one of few grains native to North America. It's found near lakes and rivers. The native people have harvested and eaten wild rice for centuries.
• Early Scottish settlers first introduced bannock, a type of bread, to Canada's native people. Traditionally the dough mixture was wrapped around sticks and cooked over an open fire. These days bannock is usually fried in a pan.
• Pemmican is made by taking thin strips of meat, usually buffalo or caribou, and drying them in the sun or over a fire. The dried meat is then pounded flat and mixed with fat and sometimes saskatoon berries.
• Saskatoon berry is native to the Prairies. It resembles a wild blueberry and tastes like a cross between blueberry and cherry with a hint of almond.
• In June 2004, Britain temporarily pulled saskatoon berry products off its shelves over concerns about the safety of the berries since there was no history of people in Europe eating them.
• Mark Wartman, Saskatchewan's agriculture minister, criticized the ban, saying the members of the Royal Family enjoy saskatoon berries when they visit Canada. The minister said that if the berries are good enough for the Royal Family, they should be good enough for commoners. Canada is currently (2004) trying to overturn the ban.
(from CBC Archives)
Also Maple Syrup, Fiddleheads, Back Bacon, Buffalo Burgers, Poutine, Winnpeg Goldeye, Canada Dry Gingerale, McIntosh Apples and Nanaimo Bars.
Nancy (CA-14)
I feel the need to point that while natives might have (and maybe still do, but none of my native friends here in Quebec do)eat baked skunk or polar bear, etc....it really isn't candian cuisine. If most of the poeple haven't eaten it, you can hardly call it the national cuisine. And it doesn't do wonders for people reading this who might think we do nothing but hunt and live in igloos up here....we don't.
I agree with the last paragraph though, poutine, nainamo bars and maple syrup etc...salmon too...
And give me some good old fashioned tourtiere anyday!! YUM!
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