Prince Albert woman aims to preserve family recipes in community cookbook

PRINCE ALBERT -- A community cookbook project is helping a Prince Albert women raise money for the local Legion and preserve precious family memories and recipes.

Both of Leah Taylor’s grandfathers were in Canadian military and served in the Second World War. Her grandfather Jerry Vogelaar was a tank gunner, and grandfather Fred Gordon was a paratrooper. She remembers making family meals with her grandmothers and having the food they prepared enjoyed by family around the table.

“With my grandma being gone the only thing I have left of her is her recipes and doing things that she used to do, so when I want to think about my grandma, I start baking her recipes that I have written down and it really helps me feel like I'm closer to her,” Taylor said.

With several recipes for buns, dumplings and more only recorded on paper, Taylor said she wanted to create a book to preserve them for her children and extended family. That’s when she got the idea to turn the book into a community cookbook. She’s collecting recipes from people with the same dilemma in Prince Albert and area.

With the pandemic and a decrease in poppy sales, Taylor said she plans to donate all of the proceeds from the book to the local Royal Canadian Legion.

“Every cent raised will be donated to the Prince Albert Legion. I want to give back to them. I want to make sure that the ones that are still here have access to anything they may need,” Taylor said.

Some of the recipes Taylor is submitting for the book are from the Second World War-era and have simple ingredients.

Prince Albert Historical Society’s Museum Educator Joanna Wreakes, said recipes passed down through generations from war eras often consist of ingredients from locally grown food in the climates where they lived. The good cuts of meat were shipped overseas for the troops and the rest, including organs, and were left at home for local consumption.

“They would use their rations and what they could find at the store and grow in their gardens to improvise in their kitchens,” Wreakes said.

People would pool their rations to make cakes for special occasions. There was also less import goods on store-shelves.

“This book from 1942 has 250 ways to save sugar in this cookbook, so the recipes are giving some alternatives for how to sweeten your food without sugar in ways that are possible with your sugar rations,” Wreakes said.

To submit a recipe for the book people can email: [e-mail]

Deadline for recipe submissions is Nov. 25.