At this meal, there are no white tablecloths on the tables. There is, however, long white oilcloth draped over a dozen or so folding tables. Seated around these tables are groups of women, the majority of them over the age of 60.  The occasional husband can be spotted, waiting for the dinner to start.

This dinner is taking place in a small seaside restaurant in the village of Meteghan in southwestern Nova Scotia. It’s one of the many french-speaking villages that make up a region known as Clare on municipal maps, the French shore amongst anglophones, or la Baie Sainte-Marie amongst its residents. Tonight’s event is a dinner to highlight the work of Acadian women in preserving their culinary heritage, and has been organized by La société Madelaine LeBlanc, a women’s society named after one of the first Acadian women who settled the area. Madelaine was known for being a go-getter, a no-nonsense woman who took charge when it was needed. I was invited to speak, despite my gender, because of my appreciation for the caretakers, providers and creators of this kind of work.

In my case, that appreciation took the form of a book, called Pantry and Palate: Remembering and Rediscovering Acadian Food, one of the first new books published on Acadian food in a generation. It is rare for the society to open its doors to the greater public, so I make sure to thank them when I am invited to get up to speak.

At first glance, the room is a forest of greyscale and glasses. I look around and recognize certain faces. Mothers of children I grew up with. A former elementary teacher, or two. They’re here for the dinner, and to hear me talk about how cooking — a daily task — is often a story onto itself. A story of foodstuffs and foodways they recognize as their own, a role and responsibility that they, and generations of women before them, bore. I am here to say thank you to them, all of them, living and gone, for that work, that role, that story — the story that fed us, feeds us. This is of us.

Amongst certain Acadians, there is a habit in our introductions. When we introduce ourselves, we not only present ourselves, but our progenitors.  Je suis Simon à Hector, à Ulysses, à William, à Celestin, à Isadore. I am Simon, son of Hector, son of Ulysses, son of William, son of Celestin, son of Isadore. It is a palimpsest, with my name being the most recent written.

This is not declaration made out of patriarchal reverence, though it would be easy to see it that way. No, this list of names is an open parenthesis, looking for others to possibly close it at their own end. This mnemonic recitation is both a habit and a story that lives in more than one place or point in time.  Its function is to discover if you and I are perhaps related, once divided, now reconnected.

That is the story of many Acadians. Once divided, now reconnected. We live in the past and the present, with hope for the future being cemented in that reconnect.

It is difficult to know where any of this started, this being the history of Acadian food, my history, the history of many regions. Five years ago, I got the chance to explore that history with Pantry and Palate: a collection of recipes, extended family anecdotes, culinary research and a reconnection with the women who came before me, via a series of old recipe notebooks. For the sake of argument and exposition — and with apologies for glossing over difficult and nuanced history — I will try to explain who the Acadians, my ancestors, are. (Again, I use the present tense. Time is a vague and fluid framework amongst us.)

The Acadians are the descendants of the first french colonists to North America. In 1755 — and the proceeding decade or so - the Acadians were forcibly removed by the British from the land that they had been occupying. The reason? They would not sign fealty to the Crown. They spoke french, but did not view themselves as French citizens. To the British, however, they were an unsteady variable in the machine that was mid-18th century North America, a figure needing to be erased. During this time, some Acadians hid deep in the woods, some fled for other areas that were sympathetic to them, and many were forced on ships and sent away.  This expulsion is known as le grand dérangement.

Over time, some of the survivors of this grand dérangement returned to what is now known as Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, as well as parts of Maine, the Magdalene Islands and even parts of Québec. Some finished their journey in Louisiana, going on to be known as Cajuns, an anglicization of the word ‘cadiens. This oversimplification does not express the multitude of racial, economic, linguistic, and religious interplays that fostered the birth of Cajun identity, but that’s another story best told by Cajuns.

The Acadian relationship to terrain is akin to our relationship to time: We are here, yet we are not. There is no nation,

geographically speaking, of Acadie. And perhaps that is why we have  survived. Having come from France, we were indeed colonists (and all that entails), so the idea of being rooted to any place is tenuous at best. At the same time, we would not sign our names to any nation across the sea, be it a false matriarch of a country we did not know, or the land of les goddamns.

When the Acadians were permitted to re-settle in Nova Scotia, the English were fearful we would congregate in large numbers. They ensured our communities would be far-flung from one another, surrounded by people who did not speak the same language as us, or practice the same faith. Acadian communities abutted other cultures and communities: English, Irish, Scottish, or German; the first people of this region — the Mi’kmaq, as well as free men and women of colour, and former Loyalists. This mishmash of cultures and cuisines influenced much of the daily foodstuffs and practices found in Acadian households, from cornmeal and molasses in certain breads (a Loyalist influence), to the particular ways in which Germans used potatoes to thicken a meal and fill a belly.

I’m often asked what Acadian food is. My short answer — it is humble, homey, occasionally homely, and very comforting. At its core, Acadian food began as food of subsistence and survival, like much of the food in rural communities of North America. Foodways were strengthened and fostered by the climes, connections and cultures that surrounded them. Think of one pot, one-dish meals, variations on potato, root vegetables (things that would grow well in less-than-perfect soil), salted meats and salted vegetables/herbs. Think of food that will sustain hours of work in the fields, out on a boat, or in the woods. Think of variations on a theme, whittled and whistled out of habit and comfort.

Many dishes are often recognizable in meals such as fricot, a meat and potato dumpling stew. The meat is often chicken, such as in fricot à la poule. Even the language is familiar yet unique: the word fricot is distinctly Acadian, but poule pulls at your ear.  And it is to be noted that it is poule, not poulet. A poulet would be a young chicken, a pullet too valuable for its eggs. A poule, however, would be akin to an old hen, its flesh best suited for long slow simmers for a fricot.

Beyond the chicken stock — rarely flavoured with much more than onions — it is the small potato dumplings that catch the eye, and the tongue. Potatoes are cornerstones of Acadian kitchens. They store well in cold storage — root cellars were incredibly common in many rural maritime communities all the way up to the 1970s, with modern homes often having a designated and insulated “cold room” in the basement – and they grow relatively easily in most terrains. Outside of boiled, mashed, or refried in a meat/fish and potato hash, they are also rasped and grated into pulp or shreds, and then extricated from their starchy liquid. And that’s where it gets interesting, texturally speaking.

The history of rasping potatoes for this unique texture is apocryphal at best, filled with modern day conjecture at worst. There are many written records — most of them early and mid-20th century interviews by folklorists — of how Acadians came in contact with German settlers after their expulsion. In many of those kitchens, the habit of rasping and grating potatoes — and the crucial step of squeezing and extruding all of the liquid found therein — is used in making various dishes, notably a potato knödel or dumpling. That dumpling would soon become a poutine, either as a meal onto itself, or as a small dumpling in a fricot.

These poutines bear no relation to our Québecois cousin’s dish of chips, curds, and gravy. Throughout Acadie, poutine is a generic term for potato-based dumplings, its execution varying on how and where it is served. In a southwestern Nova Scotian fricot, the poutine is not much bigger than the spoon used to shape it. In parts of New Brunswick, a poutine is a softball-shaped potato dumpling studded with salt pork inside, boiled and served as a dish unto itself.

As for rasped potatoes, that pulp is instrumental in the making of a large casserole-style dish known as rapûre, or rappie pie. Using that very same rasped potato pulp, the liquid is strained out of it, mixed with boiling stock, then placed in a large pan known as a bassin à rapûre to be studded with meat — most often chicken, but occasionally wild game or even bottled clams. This dish is baked for hours until a sought-after crust appears on top, and served with copious amounts of butter, perhaps with sweet-sour pickles, and even molasses.

Acadian food is food made for families, for communities. It is food made to fill and warm you, to sustain you and tell you who you are.

Back at the dinner, when I am invited to come up and speak, I introduce myself in the manner to which many in my community are accustomed. "Je suis Simon à Hector, à Ulysses, à William, à Celestin, à Isadore." There are nods of acknowledgement, a subtle ‘yes, we know those names’. “But I would like to talk about the work of women, tonight,” I say. “I would like to talk about the bodies and hearts that fed and filled bellies, and of the under-acknowledged but abundant trust that took place over generations. So, let me introduce myself again.”

"Je suis Simon à Jeanne, à Rosalie, à Ellé, à Marie, à Marie." 🌱