ALL YOU NEED IS MILK
Preview this year’s calendar recipes
Since the Milk Calendar first came out in 1974, it has introduced more than 500 recipes to Canadian kitchens, creating favourites that have become part of so many cooks’ repertoires.
That delicious broccoli cheddar soup recipe that a friend served from a Thermos in a Gatineau Park cabin? It came from the Milk Calendar for 2000. My favourite lemony cornmeal blueberry muffins? They debuted in the 1984 one.
The first Milk Calendar contained just eight recipes, each with the requirement that it could be made in 45 minutes or less and that it include at least one cup of milk. Those are still the requirements for each recipe, but the number has crept up: the 2016 calendar contains 19 allnew recipes.
Where do the milky ideas come from year after year?
“It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but one of my favourites goes back many, many years to when the Ontario Science Centre held a food show showing classic dishes from all different nationalities,” says Heather Trim, the Toronto-based recipe developer for the 2015 and 2016 calendars.
“Milk pudding was featured as a Middle Eastern food and, sure enough, when we travelled to Turkey as a family, they served it to us there.”
In addition to “Everyone’s Milk Pudding” (November) the 2016 calendar also includes recipes for fruit popsicles (July) that Trim says are inspired by paletas she had in a little town in Mexico last winter.
Past Milk Calendar recipe creators have included everyone from cookbook authors Bonnie Stern and Anne Lindsay to TV personalities James Barber and Christine Cushing.
Trim, who also writes for the LCBO’s Food & Drink magazine and Chatelaine, says she aims to create recipes that are at once practical and interesting.
“I’ve served that milk pudding to my girls — who are now in university — since they were little. You can make it the traditional Middle Eastern way, which is kind of trendy now, with rosewater and garnished with pomegranate seeds and pistachios, but it’s also delicious just with vanilla and maybe raisins on top. “
Trim started working on the new calendar in February, submitting about 85 concepts to the team from the Dairy Farmers of Canada, the group that publishes the calendar. Those 85 were whittled to 25 that Trim and two other food professionals perfected, trying them out on family, friends and neighbours until the recipes were favourites and foolproof.
“They will turn out like they look in the photos,” says Trim, who also works as a food stylist. “That’s important to me.”
She says another key consideration is the number of pots and pans a recipe requires. “Trying to minimize dishes — that’s crucial too.”