Hungry Month of March (Web Site)

Hungry Month of March is the story of the fishers, farmers, hunters and foragers who supply the new Newfoundland cuisine. This flowering of haute cuisine in a remote and harsh northern landscape is a kind of rediscovery of who we are. Our identity springs from the heart of a hungry winter, when feeding ourselves took all our time and ingenuity.

This most easterly Canadian province, the planet’s 15^th largest island, has 18,000 miles of coastline, sparsely populated by fishermen and their families who once searched for harbours to build a house, and to fish from. But before roads, when winter came and the harbours froze, you only ate what you had got.

By March month, provisions began to dwindle, and hunger became threatened. Those times are gone now but chefs who follow a seasonal, local aesthetic, cooking only with what they’ve managed to store and preserve, are still faced with familiar challenges come the hungry month of March.

But despite a hard climate, the land and sea is bountiful. There’s thousands of moose, hares and bears. Millions of birds. The berries and the bees. The codfish is still king. (If you could only have a couple of sheep, as my Aunt Marion would say). The suppliers behind our new local food movement have a perspective on the essential elements of life that seem to have vanished in the 21^st century, but are nevertheless at the core of who we are and what we eat.