Chow Time: Janice Wong featured in Canadian Living Magazine
Janice Wong is featured in this month's Canadian Living
magazine (March 2007). The article is titled Chow Time: Celebrate
Chinese New Year with traditional home-style recipes compliments of the
Wong family.
Janice is my second-cousin, once removed. Her father and my
maternal grandmother are cousins. Her grandmother Rose, was the younger
sister to my great-grandmother Kate (Chan) Lee. We may both be
Wongs now… but we are both descended from Rev. Chan Yu Tan – one of the first Chinese ministers ordained in Canada.
After the death of Janice's father Dennis (whom many people say I look
like), she made up a memory book of pictures, stories and recipes as a
gift to her brother and sisters and mother. It was also a gift to
her nieces and nephews so that they would know more about their
grandfather. One of Janice's friends saw the book, and suggested
that she send it to a publisher.
Earlier this Wednesday, Janice me told the story about how her memory
book full of her father's recipes from his Prince Albert SK restaurant
made the journey to become a published award winning book. She
was guest speaker for our writing workshop, taught by author/editor
Brandy Lien Worral, produced for the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia.
She passed her original gift book around. I was amazed to finally
see it, after having become involved in some of the book's promotional
events from it's October 2005 book launch to being on panel discussions
at the West Vancouver Public Library and Vancouver Public
Library. I gazed at the pictures to see pictures of her father
Dennis as a child, and grown up with his brothers and sisters, cousins
– all relatives that I knew as I grew up.
Janice and me, at her studio during the East Side Culture Crawl
read the story:
Eastside Culture Crawl: Visits to Janice Wong studio at 1000 Parker
Here is the script from Canadian Living Magazine:
was through an artist's eyes, and with an artist's deft touch, that
Vancouver native Janice Wong delved into her family's rich
history—which straddled the Canadian West in the 1920s, as well as the
political quagmire that was China in the 1930s—to share their
fascinating story in the pages of CHOW, From China to Canada: Memories
of Food and Family (Whitecap, 2005, $24.95).
In this multilayered
book, for which Wong was awarded the 2006 Cuisine Canada Culinary Book
Award for Canadian Food Culture, the artist-author weaves together a
charming—and revealing—blend of photographs, memories, artifacts,
family lore, and of course, recipes.
In crafting CHOW, Wong pays
homage to both her rich Chinese heritage and her colourful family in
one stroke. Her father's Lotus Café in Prince Albert, Sask.—one of
Dennis Wong's two restaurants—was an institution, and it's this man who
inspired many of the recipes that fill the pages of CHOW.
–Canadian Living Magazine, Food, p. 163, March 2007
The
article includes recipes for Chinese Barbequed Duck, Dungeness Crab
with Dow See, Pineapple Chicken and Peanut Butter Cookies
http://www.janicewongstudio.com