A new food and travel book includes a healthy portion of Parksville Qualicum Beach area food businesses.
When the weather is nice, Don Genova believes in taking advantage of the sunshine and hopping in the car to go explore. The result is an expanded version of his book Pacific Palate: Food Artisans of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands.
"You can discover so many things," said, Genova, who holds a Master of Food Culture from the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy. "I like to think people can put this book in their glove compartment.”
Genova's book features 10 PQB area businesses: BoMe Cheese, Little Qualicum Cheeseworks, Catie’s Hot Dilled Beans, Louis Pasture Pork Crisps, Natural Gift Seafoods, Stellar Bay Shellfish, Eat Fresh Urban Market, Old Country Market - Goats on the Roof and Weinberg’s Good Food.
The Qualicum Beach Farmers Market was included in the Mid-Island "Saturday Sojourn" section — a suggestion for how to visit five locations in succession on a day off.
Genova said he appreciates learning about all the sacrifice and investment that go into make a small business work.
Many of those featured in his book started off small, some at farmers' markets, before upgrading to a storefront or a commercial kitchen.
“I think Little Qualicum Cheeseworks is a great example of that," he added. "It started off as a dairy and they started making cheese and then suddenly they’ve got this amazing shop there that carries all their own products and products from the area, and they’ve turned it into a tourist attraction.”
Another standout for Genova was Louis Pasture Pork Crisps, based in Errington and inspired by owner Tamara Wensley's dietary restrictions. She needed to cut carbohydrates for her paleo diet, which meant she would miss out on crispy foods like potato chips.
“She thought about it and she realized there’s a lot of pig farms in the area that produce pork and quite often they just throw away the skins,” Genova said.
Wensley experimented and came up with her pork crisps idea — successful enough that the snacks are sold at 80 stores around B.C.
“I love being able to run into people like that and see where they started out,” Genova added.
Pacific Palate: Food Artisans of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands is published by Touchwood Editions.
