Fraiche Food, Full Hearts

TV host and lifestyle influencer Jillian Harris and registered dietitian Tori Wesszer invite you into their world full of family, food, and casual celebrations. Living a stone's throw from each other, cousins Jillian and Tori grew up in a tight-knit family and were brought up like sisters. Fraiche Food, Full Hearts offers a peek into their lives and the recipes that have fed their families through the years. Instilled with a love of cooking at an early age by their granny, the kitchen is a place of fond memories and everyday home cooked meals. Like most families, their celebrations revolve around food--from birthdays, Valentine's Day, and Mother's Day to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve. Fraiche Food, Full Hearts includes over 100 heart-warming recipes--from breakfasts, soups, salads, veggies, sides, and mains to snacks, appetizers, drinks, and desserts--for everyday meals, along with celebration menus and ideas for casual gatherings with family and friends. Gorgeously designed with dreamy full-colour photography throughout, the recipes also incorporate vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free options. You'll find dishes like West Coast Eggs Benny, Vanilla Cherry Scones, Harvest Kale Salad, Squash Risotto with Fried Sage, Granny's Beet Rolls, Cedar-Plank Salmon Burgers, Veggie Stew with Dumplings, Cherry Sweetheart Slab Pie, and Naked Coconut Cake.

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

FINALIST for the Taste Canada Awards  

Praise for Fraiche Food, Full Hearts:

“[Harris and Wesszer’s] assemblage of family favourite recipes is picture perfect.”
—The Grove Examiner *

• “The beautifully illustrated Fraiche Food, Full Hearts cookbook by Jillian Harris and Tori Wesszer is, as it says, perfect for everyday and causal celebrations. It has impressive and well-organized holiday menus for every season and occasion from Mother’s Day and summer grilling to Christmas and Thanksgiving. It blends traditional well-tested recipes with modern day plant-based options.”
  —Dairy Free Indulgence

Auteur

JILLIAN HARRIS is the Founder and Creative Director of Jillian Harris Design. She is passionate about love, family, charity, fashion, food, decor, and much more. On her blog, www.jillianharris.com, you will find bright and heart-filling inspiration for fashion, food, and decor and everyday life. Jillian's signature style is both classic and feminine, and her eye for design and decor is enviable. As host of HGTV's Love It Or List It Vancouver and Love it or List it, Too, she brings her designs to life by bringing inspiring refreshes to homes needing love. Her biggest passion is her family, which includes fiancé Justin Pasutto, son Leo, daughter Annie, and dog Nacho Cilantro. TORI WESSZER is a registered dietitian, self-proclaimed foodie, and creator of Fraiche Nutrition, a lifestyle blog featuring recipes and practical nutrition advice that embraces moderation and quality without deprivation. As a busy mom of two young boys, Tori is passionate about taking the noise out of food and creating dishes made from wholesome, simple ingredients that the whole family can enjoy. Tori's content showcases uncomplicated and enjoyable healthy recipes along with her love for kitchen decor and design. She is also a regular contributor to jillianharris.com.

Échantillon de lecture
Introduction

Most people think we are sisters, but the truth is we are cousins—our moms are sisters. We grew up spending every possible moment together, going on any crazy adventure we could, and forever trying to match each other, from coordinated socksto matching yellow bikinis. 

Our childhood was awesome. We were both very responsible kids and mature for our age, so we were given a lot of liberty. It was a bit crazy! Once, when Tori was sixteen (the ink on her driver’s licence was still wet) and Jillian was fourteen, we went camping by ourselves in Tori’s mom’s mini van. Leaving from a family reunion in northern Alberta, we spent a week camping our way through the Rockies with a tent. Of course, that was long before cell phones, and we were too young for credit cards, so we relied on a bit of cash and a few pay phones to call home here and there to let everyone know we were still alive. We were nearly eaten by a bear in Banff, and Tori saved Jillian from choking on a tomato during a giggling fit (good thing for the Heimlich manoeuvre!), but we had so much fun.

Fast-forward to the present and we are still attached at the hip, living a stone’s throw from each other, both bloggers and moms to our sweet kids (who are nearly identical ages). Our relationship is so special; we are seriously two lucky gals. This book offers a peek into our lives and the recipes that have fed our families through the years.

As with most families, our celebrations revolve around food; it is serious business over here. Our granny is the head honcho and is always the first one on the phone delegating dishes and overcommitting herself to cooking a feast. We grew up in a Ukrainian-dominated culture where fresh, seasonal veggies weren’t exactly the highlight at mealtime. Holiday meals meant cabbage rolls, beet rolls, perogies, creamed mushrooms, turkey, gravy, stuffing, fluffy white buns, and green jellied salad (which clearly doesn’t qualify as a “green,” and don’t worry, it didn’t make the cut for this cookbook). Minutes before everyone sat down at the table, someone would throw a bowl of canned corn and some steamed peas on the table in between the bowl of sour cream and the dish of butter as a somewhat guilt-induced after thought. Sigh.

We would love to say that we raised our own chickens and made our own almond milk in our spare time, but that would be a big fat lie. We were a typical family ofthe ’80s. Processed foods were a routine part of our diet, and we never questioned where our food was from or what was in it.

Fortunately, our Ukrainian granny instilled the love of cooking in us at an early age. But family meals have become a bit trickier since we were kids! Two of our family members have celiac disease and can’t eat gluten, a couple of us have turned to a more plant-based diet and have all but eliminated animal products, at least one person is on a low-carb kick at any given time, and of course we have picky kids in the mix. We swear if someone develops a nut allergy, they’ll be kicked out of the family!

We suspect that our crew is not all that unique. Cooking for a crowd is tough to begin with, but cooking for a crowd with so many different food needs is enough to drive a person crazy! We wanted to find a way to help people create dishes for gatherings big or small, as well as everyday meals that can be easily adapted to fit everyone’s requirements. Family meals are important, and so is your sanity. Let’s face it, there’s only so much wine a person can drink. (We would know, for the record.)

We eat for so many different reasons. The most obvious is to nourish ourselves and our families. But culture also determines what we eat, and it has really shaped this cookbook for us. Meals that speak to the heart, those nostalgic dishes from our childhood: we include a lot of these in the book. Wherever possible we lightened up these dishes to make them healthier and more earth-friendly by adapting them to be gluten-free or vegan (at the risk of getting an earful from our eighty-six-year-old granny and every other baba in the world!), but in a few cases we left them in all of their decadent glory.

We made a conscious effort to make this book as plant-heavy as we could, and focused on providing plant-based substitutions where meat or dairy was used traditionally. There is zero downside to eating more plants and fewer animal products. It is b…