Scammers get a hodgepodge earful
Annapolis Valley resident shares classic N.S. meal recipe with unwanted callers
Tammy Andrews-Tupper had had enough of scammers calling her home.
Sometimes it was about a credit card or an Amazon purchase. Or the Windows on her computer needed to be updated.
So she devised a way to handle the unwanted calls while spreading a little Nova Scotia culture.
“I just started telling them how to make hodgepodge,” the Annapolis Valley resident explains. “I think we had been talking about it as a family earlier and so it just kind of popped into my head, and so from then on, whenever I get a scammer, I just start telling them how to make hodgepodge.”
While hodgepodge is a well-known Nova Scotia meal incorporating fresh vegetables, it isn't as widely known in other regions of the country.
The callers on the other end of the phone line are persistent and will continue to push their agenda, but AndrewsTupper isn't deterred.
“I'll just remind them,
‘Well, this is really important. You have to listen to this. If you're going to call someone in Nova Scotia, you have to know how to make hodgepodge,” she says. “They'll ignore me. Well, I ignore them right back and I'll just start telling them, ‘Well, plant your garden early …”
Andrews-Tupper starts with breaking ground in the spring and takes them from field to the stove to the table.
“Sometimes I'll make it right to the end where you're ready to put the milk and the little dab of butter in and salt and pepper and sometimes I lose them before then.”
The length of the phone calls can vary, depending on the persistence of the person speaking with AndrewsTupper. Sometimes the call can be two or three minutes or last up to seven or eight minutes.
“They realize I'm not going to give them anything. I'm just gonna keep talking about potatoes and vegetables,” she says. “I figure if they're going to waste my time, I'm going to waste their time. And I'm not telling them anything personal, I'm just telling them how to make hodgepodge.”
If someone hangs in for the whole spiel, Andrews-Tupper asks if they wrote it down and then asks them questions about the recipe.
“The end result is they hang up before I ever hang up.”
Andrews-Tupper says she has been spreading the recipe to scammers since the summer of 2020. It came up recently when a friend posted about hodgepodge in a Facebook group.
“I laughed so hard,” says Linda Hulme Leahy. “I can just see the look on the guy's face on the other end going like, ‘What is she talking about?'”
Hulme Leahy is planning a newcomers' guide to living in rural Nova Scotia and was the friend who recently posted about hodgepodge that spurred the discussion. She has noticed an increase in questions from people who have recently moved to the region and knows there is always a lot of insight shared in social media groups.
“I'm thinking like, ‘Wow, you know, these are the things that we went through when we first moved here,'” she says, noting her family moved to Round Hill, where Andrews-Tupper lives, five years ago after previously living in the Eastern Passage and Cow Bay area of the Halifax Regional Municipality. “You arrive, you don't know anybody, you don't know where the services are, you don't know how stuff works in a new community.”
Hulme Leahy knew she would get plenty of replies when she made her initial post about hodgepodge but wasn't expecting the one she received from her friend.
“That was absolutely golden,” she says. “It's fun to have a laugh in the middle of winter, that's for sure.”
Hulme Leahy is originally from southwestern Ontario, but has lived in Nova Scotia for 30 years. She noticed hodgepodge was a regular topic of conversation as the vegetables get ready for harvesting and make their way to farm markets.
“Hodgepodge is just one of those cultural foods that it's like a rite of passage,” she says. “It's summertime and the veggies are starting to get good. You've picked your first batch of beans and immediately that recipe comes to mind. It's hodgepodge time.”
Hulme Leahy received more than 100 comments in the first week of her post, but Andrews-Tupper's was unique.
“I am so going to include that story in my book because it's golden.”
So, what goes into Andrews-Tupper's hodgepodge? New potatoes, carrots, peas, green and yellow beans, cream, salt and pepper and a dab of butter – as any scammer that's called her can tell you.