It started with my grandmother’s cookbook. She lived in Montréal for much of her life and would have seen the early years of the glowing Five Roses sign (erected in 1948) near the Port of Montréal, so, you bet there was a Five Roses Cookbook in the house. She told me in my twenties that since I was the first in the family to give her grandchildren, she was passing the cookbook down to me. The most tattered pages from my use are the carrot cake, the quick cocoa cake and the brownies, I would say. Those pages are a mess from batter flung from a nearby blender.
As a parent (then a single parent) in my twenties, I found (no surprise) that my days and nights were very different from most of my friends. One of the best ways to have time with those friends was to invite them all over. So, a few times a year, I would haul out the cookbooks and host a cocktail party. In those early years, I was in Vancouver and some of my favourite cookbooks were local: Inspirations: The Girls Who Dish and The Lazy Gourmet put many dishes on the cocktail party table (and my Moosewood cookbook, a gift from a dear friend and her brother, was a go-to for lunch and dinner).
Fast forward to the Ontario cocktail party years (2010-2020 or so). By then, even though so many recipes were online, I added Plenty to my cookbook shelf (there are so many sure hits in that one book that it almost always makes an appearance on the party table). And now, for my Montréal cocktail parties, a gift to self last year was Salad Pizza Wine (from local restaurant, Elena) and I already have some favourites from its pages.
As I make the menu for my December 2024 cocktail party, I would like to raise a glass to those who share and hand down recipes, to those who write and publish cookbooks, and of course, to the people we invite into our lives and our homes. Here’s to you … santé!
a few words ... from Montréal 