Calgary Foodies Unite: A Community Cookbook Is Born

Dan    Thoughts     awesome, calgary, club club, cookbook, cooking, mac 'n cheese, news, recipes

Do you have a favourite go-to recipe? Something you love to cook and are always proud to dish out to friends or family regardless of the occasion? I bet you probably do! Three lovely young food enthusiasts here in Calgary knew that too and decided to start a neat little project. They put the word out to the community that they were in search of as many fantastic, trusted recipes as they could find. Cookies, cakes, meatloaves, salads, it didn’t matter. If there was a person with a cherished recipe, they wanted it! Now, that idea hatched back in the early spring, so let’s fast forward to September and you’ll find their hard work had finally paid off; a Calgary community cookbook has come into existence. Kind of sounds a bit like a foodie fairy tale, doesn’t it?

Erin Woodward, Lisa Schindel and Katie Radke are the young women behind Calgary’s newest cookbook. Their book, the Club Club Community Cookbook, ended up having over one hundred contributors and more than two hundred recipes. Submissions came from anyone from teenagers and grandmothers to food critics, writers, and even a few food bloggers (perhaps myself included). It seemed like everyone in the city was more than happy to contribute their favourite dishes to the book.

For the launch of the book, the women organized a giant potluck, where they invited all contributors to bring their signature dish so that everyone could have a taste of what could be found within the pages of their new publication.

During the celebration, I had a chance to sit down and chat with the trio about how the book came to be…

When did you come up with the idea to put together a community cookbook? Back in January, we formed a club of sorts—which was mostly just an excuse to hang out as friends—where we’d do different activites every week (craft club, crib club, croquet club etc.).

At the first meeting the idea of a community cookbook was suggested and it just took over. We thought it would be great to own a book of all the favourite recipes of our friends and family, but once other people heard about it and wanted to be a part of it, we realized it could be something much bigger.

If you enjoyed this article please consider sharing it!