A VIRTUAL GATHERING

October 24th, 2020 at 1 p.m. EST

“Three-Stone Fire, Two-Burner Stove: A Canadian Cook

Learns a Thing or Two in a Maasai Camp Kitchen”

Michele Genest is the author of several cookbooks celebrating the wild and cultivated foods of the boreal forest; she also writes cooking columns for Yukon, North of Ordinary Magazine and What’s Up Yukon. Her first encounter with wild, foraged foods was on a small island in Greece, where Michele lived for three years in the early 80s. When she moved to Whitehorse from Toronto in the ‘90s she found a similar tradition of reliance on and love for indigenous ingredients, a tradition generously shared by Yukon First Nations. In her work Michele likes to experiment, combining local ingredients like mushrooms, berries, and game with cooking techniques and practices from around the world.

In November 2019 Michele and her husband Hector volunteered at a Maasai camp in northern Tanzania, where Michele worked side by side with three Maasai cooks, creating dishes in a “new” tradition they affectionately dubbed “Maasai Fusion Cuisine.”