Jasper Municipal Library staff
Family Literacy Day is on January 27, and this year the library is celebrating by compiling a Community Cookbook. If you have a favorite recipe, please submit it to the library by the end of January. We鈥檇 love to hear from you.
In the spirit of our Community Cookbook project, we would like to share some other food-related resources available through our library, specifically through our e-resources. While there is plenty to explore in our physical collection, you might be surprised at how interesting and diverse our digital collections are:
- A-Z World Food: We absolutely love this resource, which allows you to explore the food culture, dining etiquette and recipes for daily meals and special occasions of 174 countries. It contains over 650 articles about ingredients, from basic pantry staples to exotic fare like scorpions and camel meat, including taste and nutritional profiles. There are historical timelines, conversion charts, articles about food-related inventions and dietary philosophies, over 2,000 food quotes, a food glossary defining over 800 terms and the opportunity to compile a personal recipe book from the over 7,000 food and drink recipes available in the database. Whether you鈥檙e travelling, hosting travelers or amping up your armchair exploration of other cultures, A-Z World Food is a must-have companion resource.
- Read Alberta e-Books: Looking for something more local? Our Read Alberta e-Books Collection, which encompasses the Prairie Indigenous e-book Collection, is the place to look. You鈥檒l find information on local game and foraging, growing herbs and vegetables in our climate, regional food history and lore, even food-related poetry and memoirs based in our province. You鈥檒l also find plenty of recipes in various seasonal, Indigenous, cowboy and iconic restaurant cookbooks.
- Frontier Life: Borderlands, Settlement & Colonial Encounters: Frontier Life contains primary source documents like journals, logs and letters from as early as the 17th century, so it may be difficult to read some of the handwritten quill-and-ink recipes and observations contained in this database. Take the time, however, and you鈥檒l find a world of fascinating recipes, home remedies, food-related yarns and information about supplies, botany and animal husbandry during European expansion through Africa, Australasia and the North American frontier.
- Hoopla: This is the resource for you if roughing it on the frontier is not your area of interest. You want to make Instagram-ready cakes, artisan breads and fancy pastries? You want to impress your friends at the cookie exchange, or add seasonal flair to your table on holidays? Hoopla鈥檚 Craftsy series will show you how. And that鈥檚 just the tip of the iceberg; Hoopla has innumerable resources for upscale dining, including travel guides for food tourism, resources for wine and beer enthusiasts, and over a thousand specialized recipe books for various ingredients, regions and lifestyles.
If you find something you love in any of these collections, feel free to share it.
Need some help getting started? Please drop by the library. We鈥檇 be happy to help.
