Harvesting grape leaves for Kurdish dolma connects past, present

Dappled evening light filters through the branches above while Suzan Palani inspects an overgrown section of bush. The grape leaves she’s looking for are mingling haphazardly with other species of greenery. She wants to be certain before picking.

At Rainbow Community Garden, newcomers to Canada grow food and forge relationships

Black beans, hot peppers, tomatoes and cabbage. Like many other Winnipeg gardeners, Henriette Mukesa’s seedlings are off to a slow start thanks to a waterlogged spring. Still, there’s plenty to eat in the shoulder season.

“Before the beans, we eat this,” she says, pointing to the legume’s bright green leaves, which she’ll fry up at home and add to her dinner of fufu, a starchy dough, and vegetables or meat.

It’s the same story with the okra and zucchini sprouting in the shared bed of the Rainbow Community Garden at the University of Manitoba. In fact, Mukesa prefers the leaves of the zucchini plant to the squash itself.

She bends over to pinch off a shoot, demonstrating how to peel the spiky outer skin before softening the greens in water and salt — a method of preparation used in her birthplace, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and adapted to vegetables that flourish in the Canadian Prairies.

The taste of Manitoba walleye by way of the Philippines

WINNIPEG BEACH — The rod twitches lightly and Eric Labaupa jumps out of his seat. The telltale sign of a nibble. He pulls up to set the hook and starts reeling.

“Ah, it’s just a small one,” he says, the excitement dropping from his voice before the fish breaks the surface. When you’ve been fishing as long as Labaupa, it’s easy to tell when you’ve got a keeper on the line.

After a photo and a quick inspection, he tosses the young sauger back into the murky brown water. Today, he’s on the hunt for walleye — or pickerel, as the mild freshwater fish is often marketed.

Walleye is the ideal local substitute for one of his favourite meals: Ginataan na Isda. In the Philippines, the dish, which means “done with coconut milk” in Tagalog, is typically made with milkfish or tilapia poached in coconut milk and aromatics.

Handmade family cookbook holds more than recipes

At one point in time, Michelle Trudeau was the proud owner of more than 500 cookbooks.

“I’d rather read a cookbook than a novel,” says the avid home cook.

The collection has been whittled down recently through downsizing and decluttering, but she’s kept a handful of her favourites — mostly of the rare and vintage variety.

One such publication, a slim, dog-eared number with a hand-lettered title, is so rare, in fact, that there are only a dozen or so copies in existence. That’s because it’s a Trudeau family original.