A Canadian Family

“Pain et Melasse, Cherie!”

1. Memories      2. Five Roses Molasses Cookie Recipe     3.  Acadians and Slavery

1. Memories  Growing up in 1960s Quebec, my sisters and I had a regular morning routine on school-days. First we’d wash up, then my mother would tie up our pony tails with fresh ribbons and we’d return to the upstairs hallway to dress. My mother had laid out our school uniforms the night before. She draped them neatly over the metal railing – three matching dark navy blue tunics with buttoned belts, crisp white oxford shirts, white or blue knee socks, black pumps). While we finished dressing she’d slip downstairs to finish preparing breakfast. 

My dream breakfast would have been Cocoa Puffs – but Mom didn’t agree. She said Cocoa Puffs were a snack not a breakfast. My mother was very nutrition-conscious  and in the middle of a Montreal winter that usually meant a hearty breakfast of eggs and bacon or sausages or perhaps a warm bowl of Cream of Wheat. Always Cream of Wheat NEVER Oatmeal. My mother had always despised oatmeal. Why? Because she grew up in depression-era New Brunswick in a very large farm family. She was the eldest daughter  of over a dozen children and each morning – before leaving for  school – it was her job to scour the heavy pot that held the oatmeal.

There was someone else at the morning breakfast table – my father. He usually liked a heavy breakfast but every once in awhile when my mother would ask him what he wanted, he’d answer “pain et melasse, cherie“. This meant he wanted 

some bread and molasses, and although I didn’t know it at the time this is actually an old Acadian tradition. In our family we used a heavy, country-style bread and Grandma molasses. You could actually pour a few drops of molasses on the bread or serve the molasses in a little saucer in the middle of the table. Only my middle sister developed a taste for pain et melasse, but we all loved molasses cookies!

2. Five Roses Molasses Cookies      Here’s a recipe from my mother’s 1950s Five Roses Flour cookbook.

3.  Acadians and Slavery   The Acadians settled in what is modern-day Nova Scotia back in the early 17th century and they lived quite well off the land and the sea. Eventually they found themselves with a surplus and were able to buy goods and foodstuffs from British trading ships. Native Americans had shown Acadians how to harvest one of the best sweeteners on the planet – maple syrup – but Acadians were happy to add some variety to their diet with molasses.

Molasses came from what was then the British West Indies where it was processed from cane sugar and the Acadians paid for it with fish. The story of my Acadian forebears is a sad one – they founded a new land, then were dispossessed and scattered to the four winds. But the story of the workers who produced the molasses was far sadder. They were not free men or even indentured workers. They were slaves and they worked in punishing and inhumane circumstances. It’s very distressing to imagine that my forebears enjoyed food produced by enslaved humans. My ancestors had originally voyaged from small hamlets in Poitou, France to the middle of a wild, new land. I wonder whether they knew about slavery – and how their sweet “melasse” was produced?  

Of course, this is not just a question for my forebears but for myself as well.  For instance, what are the living standards of the workers who pick the cocoa beans for the chocolate in my breakfast Cocoa Puffs?

Recipes:
Grandma Molasses Recipes

Thomas MacEntee’s Gingerbread Cookies

History/Social Justice:

A Poor Man’s Meal: Molasses in Atlantic Canada

Cocoa Trade and Child Labour

3rd  Canadian Genealogy Carnival

Around the Kitchen Table

3rd  Canadian Genealogy Carnival

Around the Kitchen Table

January 27, 2009 Posted by Evelyn Yvonne Theriault | . | Acadian, food, French Canadian, recipe | 2 Comments