The Memory Lane Cookbook

Virginia Gillham is the senior librarian at Wilfrid Laurier University
and an international figure-skating judge.

Arriving in Canada as a war bride in 1919, Annie Poirier, who had been
raised in cosmopolitan London, suffered extreme culture shock when she
came to grips with the realities of rural New Brunswick. In an effort to
recreate a part of the life she had known, she began writing home for
favorite recipes. The seeking of recipes became a life-long hobby; in
seven decades she wrote some 10,000 letters, including many to heads of
state, political leaders, and members of royal families. Although many
of her recipes were published in newspapers and magazines, many more
appear in The Memory Lane Cookbook, which is published as a tribute to
Poirier, who died several years ago.

The appeal of this book is that the foods created are “comfort
foods,” remembered from childhoods. Each recipe, however, has been
adapted to meet current, much-improved, health standards. Proportions of
fat, salt, and sugar have been drastically reduced, but each recipe has
been carefully tested to ensure that the resulting dish is as good as
the original one. Hence, the best of both worlds ... old-fashioned food
with new-fashioned health standards. What could be better?

The book also includes both Imperial and metric measures, preparation
tips, and health information (calorie counts, though not, unfortunately,
fat gram counts), and a helpful, detailed index.