Story by Kevin Hollett
Photo by Dark Thirty
The Hastings Shuffle is the quest for Vancouver’s poorest to find food in the Downtown Eastside. Many find themselves traversing from food bank to soup kitchen and back again, in search of nothing more than a simple meal. For those living in one of the many Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels in the area—residences which are kitchen-less and equipped with only a hotplate—cooking up a meal can be a difficult task.
Enter Diane Brown, one of the cooks at the Carnegie Centre Kitchen. Brown’s created The One Pot Cookbook, a collection of recipes and basic food safety tips with an eye on teaching those without cooking acumen the basic ins-and-outs of preparing a nutritious meal for one.
“The impact that a poverty diet has on a person not only physically, but emotionally, and spiritually is terrible,” wrote Brown in an email to Megaphone. “And the longer you are on it the more devastating it is. Food is such a basic life need. How and what you eat defines the quality of your life.”
The book came about as an offshoot of last summer’s GOOD EATS! workshop series. The workshops—organized by The Centre for Sustainable Community Development with the Lifeskills Centre and the BC Persons with AIDS Society—were created to study the issue of food security in the context of HIV in the
DTES. Working with 10 participants, the workshop focused on such issues as where the participants ate, the barriers they faced in accessing healthy meals, as well as how to cook on a budget and where to go to purchase or grow their own food.
As part of the workshop, Brown was invited to give lessons on food preparation.
“I ended up giving a cooking class at Lifeskills Centre to the... participants with the goal of making simple but interesting food on hotplates,” wrote Brown.
“We made nori rolls, couscous salad, tabouleh, Greek chicken and a bunch of other stuff.”
The experience led to Brown’s brainstorm. “I suggested we do a cookbook based on some of the research from the project.”
The cookbook, which Brown hopes will be released as soon as this month, features recipes with a focus on nutrition and ease of preparation, as well as a consideration for the types of foods accessible to the would-be chefs. All that’s needed to prepare these healthy and tasty recipes is a hotplate, a saucepan, a bowl and a couple of utensils. Most recipes can be prepared in less than 30 minutes and all have vegetarian options.
“I created the recipe list and donated all the recipes, measurements, etc. and some of the food safe stuff,” Brown wrote. “Christiana [Miewald, food researcher at SFU] arranged to get extensions on the funding and Shane Turner, from Lifeskills Centre, has held all our meetings and coordinated everyone.
“Rani [Wangsawidjaya] from Loving Spoonful did some food safe stuff (and contributed a kick ass congee dish) and Katie Pincura (a student in food security at SFU) tested some of the recipes and did some of the editing.”
Megaphone was provided with an advance copy of the cookbook and got down to business. The goal: to re-create one of Brown’s recipes on a single burner.
We chose the Simple Pad Thai, which was tasty and not at all complicated to put together. Plus, it was easy on the wallet and quick to make (about 30 minutes, including prep time).
Other recipes include peanut vegetable curry, a beef and mushroom barley pot and chilli and cornmeal dumplings. The cookbook will be provided to people in the Downtown Eastside free of charge, and may even include a sachet of simple spices.
