Randy Shore

Randy Shore is a lifelong print journalist with a flair for both bluntness and humor, as evidenced by numerous awards for column writing and most recently conservation journalism. His first book is the result of six solid years of retooling familiar dishes with local, sustainable ingredients.

Randy Writes:

For some people food is simply fuel, but it was never that way for me.

My earliest memories are of eating cherries and apples off the trees outside my parents’ tiny Campbell River bungalow and the pickled beets on Nana’s Boxing Day table. Add to that, pineapple upsidedown cake from a cast iron skillet, battered salmon and chips, fresh biscuits and dumplings with stew, roast beef and Yorkshire puddings, curried chicken with raisins (which I actually hated and still loathe) and you have a stream of consciousness visual representation of my childhood.

I can’t remember the faces of my little friends, but I do remember the food.

My father — who grew up on a farm and had a natural touch for cooking country fare — was a high school history and social studies teacher. That did not stop him from developing his own cooking class for the boys from the shop building.

Old Frank was called upon to cook at large gatherings, which he usually hosted at his home. He favoured baron of beef in the evening and sourdough pancakes the next morning for partied-out stragglers.

The importance of food to family and friends is my frame of reference for life. Food isn’t fuel, it’s a natural adhesive for relationships.