Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #372594 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-08
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.10" h x 9.60" w x 8.40" l, 1.80 pounds
• Binding: Spiral-bound
• 316 pages

Books in Canada
Possibly the most uniquely Canadian book I’ve seen in several years is Habeeb Salloum’s Arab Cooking on a Saskatchewan Homestead: Recipes and Recollections from the Canadian Plains Research Centre at the University of Regina. Salloum’s parents emigrated to Canada from Syria in the early 1920s, and settled in Saskatchewan. He grew up as a prairie farm kid, joined the RCAF for World War II, then worked for the federal government for thirty-six years before retiring to a third career as a freelance historian, writer, and, on the evidence presented in the book, a food lover.
As cookbooks go, this is the real deal for people who like middle eastern cuisine, but it is a lot more than merely a cookbook. It is also a fine piece of cultural history written by a man about equally rooted in Arab and Canadian culture, in agricultural and nutritional science, and, most firmly, in Saskatchewan’s history of rural immigration. It is therefore a useful book on several grounds.
Brian Fawcett (Books in Canada)