A cookbook with a cause
Gracia Janes knows homemade peach ice cream is more than a decadent treat on a hot day.
For the Niagara-on-the-Lake resident, the cool summertime staple made with stone fruit is a potential point of pride for anyone who calls this region home.
Ditto for plum crumble, pear-carrot coffee cake, or grape cheesecake. And if you’re hungry for any of them, you’re in luck. The recipes are in
Taste Niagara, a Niagara fruit-centric community cookbook recently published by the Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society (PALS).
Janes, who serves as secretary and treasurer for PALS, hopes the agriculture advocacy group’s collection of fruit-filled how-to’s makes Niagarans a little more protective of the cherry, peach, plum and pear orchards here.
“This is really so we can be proud of what we have,” Janes said. “It’s so unique. It’s some of the best fruit in North America because of the climate and soil.”
The simple coil-bound book released in the spring is the second edition of PALS’s Taste Niagara, and marks the group’s 40th anniversary. It’s packed with 200 recipes, updated to be healthier than when they were first published in 1983 — a time when lard ruled supreme.
“There may be a few disputes over lard versus margarine versus shortening,” Janes admitted with a smile.
But more than rigorously tested recipes developed by PALS members or adapted from old cookbooks,
Taste Niagara serves up some of the history of Niagara’s fruit lands. It’s loaded with lore about the early days of farming, from the first plantings of fruit trees in the 1780s to the urban sprawl of the 1950s that put farmland in jeopardy.
The latter is a problem that PALS has spent its existence railing against and continues to do so today. When the group formed in 1976, Niagara was home to about 12,800 hectares each of stone fruit orchards and vineyards.
Today, about 2,960 hectares of tender fruit, and 5,200 to 6,000 hectares of vineyards remain, Janes said.
Most of Niagara’s northern tier is now part of the Greenbelt, a two million-acre swath of protected farmland that stretches from the Niagara River to east of Toronto. But Janes and crew aren’t calling it a day on their cause.
“We like the greenbelt but you can get permanence with policy,” she warned. “We’re worried about it. We want to preserve it.”
So she and PALS are lobbying for restrictive covenants on fruit land. Such measures would see prohibitions on the sale and development of orchards and vineyards written on land titles. PALS also wants farmers compensated for the restrictions, and would like to see the province earmark $40 million for that purpose.
Janes said it’s been done with success in Michigan where development has slowed and fruit farming is on the upswing.
PALS came close to achieving the same thing here in the 1980s but a change in government at Queen’s Park saw the group’s plans sidelined.
To help their cause, Janes and the rest of PALS want Taste Niagara to be as much a call to action for residents to fight for Niagara’s remaining farmland as it is to get into the kitchen.
“The cookbook has been a really good way to popularize the whole issue,” Janes said. “It’s something we’ve found very successful and very educational, in a nice way, for the general public.
“We’ve been at this too long to quit,” she added. “But in the meantime, we keep educating people.”
Taste Niagara is free to B&B and inn owners in Niagara-on-the Lake. Copies are available to them at the town’s chamber of commerce office.
They can also be purchased for $10, plus shipping, directly from Janes. Email gracia.janes@bellnet.ca or call 905-468-2841.
— Tiffany Mayer is the author of Niagara Food: A Flavourful History of the Peninsula’s Bounty. She blogs about food and farming at eatingniagara.com. You can reach her at eatingniagara@gmail.com or on Twitter @eatingniagara.