Family favourites fill cookbook of delicious dishes
Cousins share recipes they serve their vegan and non-vegan guests
It’s not uncommon for a family to have its own version of a cookbook.
Usually, though, said volume involves an unco-ordinated collection of recipes torn from cookbooks and magazines, or hastily scratched onto notecards and scraps of paper.
But in the case of cousins Canadian TV personality Jillian Harris and food blogger Tori Wesszer, their assemblage of family favourite recipes is picture-perfect, which is to say it’s exactly the way the fans and followers of the lifestyle and food duo would expect it to be.
“If anybody follows me on social media, they know I love sharing my whole life with everybody. And same with Tori,” Harris summarizes of the cookbook debut. “So, to be able to share this part of our lives and our passion and our hearts with all of the people who have supported us over the years, our community, is such a gift.”
Titled Fraiche Food, Full Hearts: A Collection of Recipes for Every Day and Casual Celebrations (Penguin Random House Canada, $40) the book features more than 100 delicious dishes.
But, according to Wesszer, the most important element of the book isn’t how perfectly the plates are photographed, but rather how it highlights the unique connection their families have with food and the bond the two cousins share.
“I am two years older than Jillian is, so we have literally been doing everything together — all of the major events in life together since both of us can really remember. So for us to have something as significant and amazing as our own cookbook is a pinch-me moment for me, for sure,” Wesszer says. “It’s absolutely surreal.”
“This book is years and years of not only our grandma’s recipes and our parents’ recipes, but also our husbands’ recipes and their families’ recipes and then our recipes ... food is love,’” Harris adds.
The dishes go heavy on plants, but Harris is quick to add Fraiche Food, Full Hearts is not a vegan recipe book.
“I’m not vegan because I haven’t mastered that yet. But I kind of look up to vegans and I’m a vegan wannabe,” Harris says with a laugh. “And I certainly have been trying throughout the past six years, but there were just certain times, like throughout my pregnancy or with the kids or when I’m travelling, when I quote-unquote ‘failed.’ But, I really am happy that I’ve learned to take it easy on myself. I’m really proud of what I have done with my diet so far.”
Harris says that while she initially wanted to create a vegan cookbook when they started writing three years ago, Wesszer pushed for the book to offer readers more flexibility.
“I, at one point, wanted to completely strip it down, basically start all over, and make it completely vegan,” Harris says. “But after we talked to each other and our family, we really thought about what the cookbook was supposed to be. And thinking about a lot of my community and followers and how they’re all thinking about taking this plant-based journey but they don’t know where to start, or that it might be complicated or it might be expensive, we thought, you know what? Let’s try to do as many plant-based recipes as we can but make it flexible and make it easy.”
With Wesszer — who is a dietitian — as a guide, the pair cooked up the recipes with an eye on making them part of nutritious and “wholesome meals,” including options with meat, fish, eggs and dairy, as well as vegan-friendly, dairy-free and gluten-free substitutes for many of the ingredients.
“With our family, there are some people who are vegan, some who eat plant-based, some who are celiac, so when we are entertaining for our families it’s always like: ‘OK, what do we make?’” Harris says.
“We feel like most families are a lot like ours ... so when you open up the cookbook, the recipes are labelled as vegan option, nut/nutfree option and it really gives people the tools to say, ‘OK, whoever is coming over for dinner, we can make this work for them.’”
Wesszer says she hopes the cookbook also prompts people to take the stress out of eating by removing the labels from their eating habits and simply enjoy the food.
“We are addicted to all-or-nothing thinking. For some reason, we’ve developed this propensity to think of things as black or white in our society. Like, you’re vegan or bust. Or you’re gluten free. And we love slapping labels on ourselves — like, there’s nothing sexier than a label,” Wesszer says.
“I would encourage people to think about making healthy choices. And keeping nutrition pretty simple. For most of us, it doesn’t have to be overly complicated.
“Because there are people who have health conditions that do need something more complicated, and that’s very legitimate. Fill your plate with half vegetables, try to make plant-based choices more often, make local choices. Just make better choices. And cut yourself some slack sometimes.”
In the end, she stresses, food should be nourishing rather than a source of stress.
“Sometimes that means eating a kale-and-chickpea salad, which gives you so much rich nutrients and is so nourishing for your body. And sometimes that means having a piece of chocolate cake at a birthday because that’s nourishing in a different sense of the world. That’s nourishing for my soul and I’m celebrating with my family,” Wesszer says. “And that feels good and it feels right and I do it guiltfree. And then I carry on and have a kale salad again the next day. I think we need to give ourselves a little slack and some self love and be able to know that all foods can fit.
“Moderation isn’t a sexy word, but it truly is a sustainable word in the world of nutrition.”
Recipes from Fraiche Food, Full Hearts: A Collection of Recipes for Every Day and Casual Celebrations by Jillian Harris and Tori Wesszer. (Penguin Canada).