15 November 2016

The best culinary writers in the country were celebrated in Toronto last night at the 2016 Taste Canada Awards. Bestowed annually since 1997, the Taste Canada Awards showcase world-class, Canadian culinary writing.

This year’s winner of the Gold Award for Culinary Narratives was Sir John’s Table: The Culinary Life and Times of Canada’s First Prime Minister by Lindy Mechefske. A unique blend of culinary history and biography, Sir John’s Table traces the colourful life of Sir John A. Macdonald through some of the common foods of the day. Each chapter is accompanied by recipes of the era — many sourced from cookbooks of the time — allowing readers to try their hand at everything from gooseberry pie to mulled wine.

Also nominated in the Culinary Narratives category were Jeffrey Alford for Chicken in the Mango Tree: Food and Life in a Thai-Khmer Village(Douglas & McIntyre), Linda Gaylard for The Tea Book (DK), Alissa Hamilton for Got Milked? What You Don’t Know About Dairy, The Truth About Calcium, And Why You’ll Thrive Without Milk (HarperCollins), and Peter McClusky for Ontario Garlic: The Story from Farm to Festival (Arcadia Publishing and The History Press). For further information about the Taste Canada Awards, please visit tastecanada.org.