New Books In Food

In 2018, Janis Thiessen, Kimberley Moore, and collaborator Kent Davies refashioned a used food truck into a mobile oral history lab. Together they embarked on a journey around Manitoba, gathering stories about the province’s food and the people who make, sell, and eat it. Along the way, they visited restaurant owners, beer brewers, grocers, farmers, scholars, and chefs in their kitchens and businesses, online, and on board the food truck. The team conducted nearly seventy interviews and indulged in a bounty of prairie delicacies, from Winnipeg’s “Fat Boys” to Steinbach’s perogies to Churchill’s cloudberry jam. Thiessen and Moore serve up the results of this research in Mmm... Manitoba: The Stories Behind the Foods We Eat (U Manitoba Press, 2024). Mixing recipes, maps, archival records, biographies, and full-colour photographs with fascinating stories, they showcase the province’s diverse food histories. Through the sharing and preparing of food, the authors investigate food security and regulation, Indigenous