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.

Chance find of ceramic shard led artist to create clay cookware

There was no hunting or searching. All she had to do was look down. The jagged earth-toned pottery shard was resting in the rocky shallows waiting to be found, as if some unseen being had laid the artifact in her path.

The sight sent tears rolling down her cheeks — the weight of history, blood memory and personal journey colliding on the banks of the Whiteshell River.

“It was a profound moment for me because for the first time I really felt connected to the land,” says KC Adams, standing in the colourful kitchen of her Winnipeg home. “I knew that I was on the right path.

“I also felt connected to the ancestors because I picked it up and realized that a woman had made this 300, 400 years ago, maybe even more, and I’m the first one to touch it again since it disappeared.”

Perogy hotline raises funds for Ukraine, nourishes the soul

A jangly ringtone breaks through the din of conversation in the basement hall. Shirley Kowalchuk, wearing a white apron and a hairnet, leaves her post at the packing table and hustles over to the landline on the opposite wall.

“Yes, how many dozen?” she asks, while jotting notes on a piece of scrap paper. A black and white framed photo of Maxim Hermaniuk, the former Ukrainian Catholic Archbishop of Winnipeg, looms over the makeshift call centre.

The perogy hotline at Holy Eucharist Ukrainian Catholic Church is one of many Winnipeg institutions that has been satisfying cravings for handmade potato dumplings — the kind baba used to make — for decades. Today, the 104-year-old church founded by Ukrainian immigrants is using its hotline to raise money for refugees of Russia’s war in Ukraine. It’s a small gesture, but, right now, dough-pinching feels better than hand-wringing.

Fundraising through comfort food has always been a core tenet of the club. Parishioners started making and selling perogies to support church programs after moving into the new domed chapel built on the corner of Watt and Munroe in 1954. Elaine Bowman’s parents were founding members.