Edible Vancouver Island Holiday 2022

E D I B L E R O A D T R I P

Light Up Your Christmas IN LADYSMITH & CHEMAINUS

WORDS CAROLYN B. HELLER

E ven during the hottest days of summer, Kate Cram is thinking about winter. The chef-owner of Ladysmith’s Wild Poppy Market draws on the bounty of produce available in summer and fall to prepare meals for the colder months. Preserving or freezing fruits and vegetables to use in winter dishes, she says, “brings a pop of summer when it’s a cold winter day.” Cram is just one of several chefs and food entrepreneurs along the east coast of Vancouver Island who relish the quieter winter sea son. When the summer holiday makers are gone, you can leave the Island Highway south of Nanai mo and explore the communities of Ladysmith and Chemainus, with time to enjoy the region’s fes tive celebrations, welcoming cafés and sustaining holiday foods. Hearty Winter Menus

“We’re making this hub of local ness,” says the chef, who likes to support other Ladysmith-area food and drink businesses, in cluding the town’s Bayview Brew ing. She recommends Maya Norte as well, where owners Anne Man ning and Peg Montgomery offer Mexican- and Spanish-inspired fare. Coffee, Pancakes & Twinkling Lights Around the corner from Wild Poppy, Ironworks Café & Crê perie offers winter wanderers an other kind of coziness. Dina Stuehler recalls how her mother, whose heritage is Dutch Indonesian, made crêpes for the family in the traditional Dutch style. These pannenkoeken were slightly thicker than French crêpes, a tradition Stuehler con tinued after opening her Lady smith café. She now operates crê

Enjoy the region’s festive celebrations, welcoming cafés and sustaining holiday foods.

Homemade cranberry sauce on turkey sandwich at Wild Poppy Market

peries in Duncan, Nanaimo and Port Alberni, as well. In winter, Stuehler recommends crêpes filled with a sweet-salty combination of spinach, artichokes and brie served with a maple sauce, or a seasonal special, like cranberry dessert crêpes. She gets into the holiday vibe by warming up with Ironworks’ chai latte and by decorating the shop during the annual Ladysmith Festival of Lights. The festival was launched in 1987, when Ladysmith resident Bill Fitzpatrick proposed a winter “light up” to bring residents into town as the days grew dark. The multi-week Festival of Lights now illuminates the downtown streets with more than 200,000 twinkling lights, where over 1,000 volunteer hours are put in to make the town sparkle. The event draws people from near and

Wild Poppy Market, which Cram and her husband Geoff oper ate on Ladysmith’s main street, sells ready-to-eat meals, sand wiches and freshly made baked goods. All their products are glu ten free, and many are vegan. “We’ll pickle and we’ll ferment. We braise a lot of veggies,” says Cram, getting them ready to use in hearty winter stews and soups. While summer leaves are still green on the trees, she starts making sauerkraut and kimchi and begins prepping Christmas puddings. Cram, who trained at the Culinary Institute of America in New York and is also a registered holistic nutritionist, draws on this education to create dishes offering a rainbow of colours and textures and respecting the ingredients that area farmers have grown. “We try to use as many local and small producers and growers that we can.” On her winter menus, “We use a lot of squash, pumpkin, beets and kale. Lots of cabbage, for slaws or fermenting, or we’ll do cabbage rolls. We do a lot of curries in the winter, too,” she adds. “We’re kind of famous in town for turkey sandwiches. We make home made stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, and we roast all our turkeys. And we do a lot of pumpkin pie, pecan pie and apple pie.”

far during its kickoff with a parade and fireworks. More Winter Food and Drink Experiences

Ladysmith vegan café Plantitude leans into the winter spirit, too, offering private dining in heated outdoor bubbles. In Che mainus, you can walk past the dozens of heritage murals painted in its alleyways, then see what’s on tap at Riot Brewing, where the menu of craft brews over the bar is itself a riot of colour.

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