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Chew on This Tasty Tours

A recipe from my mum

Published 6 months ago • 1 min read

There are certain recipes that carry more than flavour.

They carry memory.

Growing up, Sunday dinner was the one day my mum made Indian food. If it were up to my dad, we would have had it much more often.

My mum hadn’t learned to cook while growing up in India, so when she and my dad married, they went to the library together to learn how to cook the flavours of their childhood from cookbooks.

Over time she typed many of those recipes out and passed them along to us. They now live in a purple three-ring binder that has followed me through decades of kitchens. Some pages are in her familiar cursive. Others were added later from family and friends, or printed when I was looking for a recipe for a special occasion.

Recently I requested that my partner make one of those recipes. He's definitely the main chef in our home! In the binder it’s simply called “potato curry.” My mum had a habit of westernizing the names of the recipes.

It had likely been more than 35 years since I had tasted it.

The moment I tasted it, I was transported back to the Sunday dinner table.

The flavours were instantly familiar. The kind of taste that lives in your memory.

Food has a way of doing that. It connects us to memory, to place, and to one another.

We gathered for a winter Rooted in February, and it reminded me again how powerful it is when people come together around a table. When people share food, conversation tends to deepen, and strangers often leave as friends.

Over the years I’ve come to believe that the most meaningful gatherings are rarely complicated. They’re shaped by story, shared food, and the simple act of sitting down together.

That spirit is part of Rooted.

Rooted is a small, guided tea-blending gathering at Tradish in Fort Langley led by Chef Sarah Meconse Mierau. Guests create their own tea blend, learn the cultural roots behind it, and then sit down together for lunch. The room fills with the scent of herbs and tea leaves as people begin blending their own.

It’s intentionally small. Intimate. Thoughtful.

This year’s public dates are:

May 23
September 26
November 7

If you’re curious to see what the gathering looks like, you can find the details here:

And if you’d like to try the potato curry that brought me back to my parents’ table, I’ve included the recipe below. If you make it, I’d love to hear how it turns out.

Warmly,
​

Lise

From my mum's recipe book

Rooted is one of the small gatherings we host through Chew On This, designed to bring people together around food, place, and story.

Chew on This Tasty Tours

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