A reminder that the Archives will be closed for the holidays at 12:00 noon on Tuesday, December 24th and will reopen on Thursday, January 2nd at 10:00 am. This year, we bid farewell to December with a holiday feast!
During the holiday season many of us gather with friends and family to share delicious meals and create cherished memories. Some may honour tradition by preparing recipes passed down through generations, while others may venture into creating their own culinary masterpieces. Today, we’re excited to share a few recipes from our vault for you to try at home. If you do, be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments – we’d love to hear how they turned out!
The Starter
This recipe, featured in The Real Home Keeper, a perpetual honeymoon for the Vancouver Bride, offers a simple yet flavorful soup fit for royalty: “Queen Victoria’s Favorite Soup.” As is common in vintage cookbooks, the instructions are minimal, leaving room for your creativity to shine. Here’s the full recipe:
“One cup cold baked chicken chopped as fine as possible, one pint chicken broth, one cup sweet cream, salt and pepper to taste, yolks of three hard boiled eggs mashed fine.”
“It might not look that appealing but it was actually quite tasty,” according to one guest. “It is pretty nice despite what it looks like,” said another.
The Main Dish
For the main dish, try this mouth-watering entree from Susan Mendelson’s The Official Cookbook of Expo 86 called “Grandma Faye’s Sticky Apricot Chicken.” This sweet and savory dish feeds 4 to 6 guests. Susan Mendelson graces the cover in space attire to go with the Expo ’86 theme.
This chicken was a “winner” according to one taste tester and “we will make this again!” according to another.
And for Dessert
Rounding out our meal, we’ve unearthed a treasure from the Roger’s Sugar fonds (AM1592), a classic Devil’s Food Cake recipe. Rich, decadent, and perfect for those with a sweet tooth and a love of mashed potatoes. That’s right, the main ingredient is mashed potatoes! This cake is sure to be a showstopper.
This cake was good but could use a little more chocolate. Time for unbiased taste testing.
“There’s potato in this?!” one employee asked in surprise. “This is really good.” Said another staff member.
We you invite you to try these out (or to stick with your tried and true, if that’s less stressful). See you in the New Year, Happy holidays!
