Resa Lent has a lot to savour.
It’s not exactly April in Paris – but while the rest of us are bundled up in a typical Canadian winter- Lent and her Desert Rose Café Cookbook will be in Paris attending an international awards ceremony.
She left for Paris on Feb. 28 for the awards ceremony to be held on March 3 at the Folies Bergère Theatre in Paris.
“It’s now been short listed for Best Vegetarian Cuisine 2010,” Lent said.
She said that along with her book, there is one from the UK, one from Croatia, and a book from France in that category.
Over 1,000 people are expected to be at the event.
She said that from a recent email she had received, she learned that there were already 51 countries being represented at the awards ceremony.
Earlier this month braving a local winter storm, Lent was at the Elora Farmers Market signing copies of her book.
Visitors had the opportunity to chat with Lent, and sample some treats from the pages of her book.
What’s all the fuss?
The Desert Rose Café Cookbook had already won the Canadian English class in the best vegetarian cuisine cookbook category in the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards and it is now one of four on the shortlist for the top prize out of all the vegetarian cookbooks submitted from around the world. The locally produced cookbook is already in its second printing.
It is not just recipes, but also with photos, memories, and stories of the people who all became part of the Desert Rose Café family and a piece of Elora history.
Lent explained, “It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for probably 25 years. My customers have asked me since the day I opened the Desert Rose if they could get the recipes … but I never got around to it.”
“Finally, two years ago, I ‘officially’ closed the Desert Rose. That didn’t last long.”
Lent now operates Desert Rose Catering. “That’s a whole other story,” she laughed.
But closing the restaurant provided her with the time to actually write the book.
“I sort of took [on the book] as my full time job.”
As a result, Lent said she was able to complete it in roughly four months.
“I had all the recipes, it was just a matter of testing them. I would decide on the three I would make that day. I’d make those three – make all the changes – then I’d send them off to Marilyn Koop, who was the designer.”
Koop typeset the materials, and Lent said, “It was a lot of work as we hand placed all of the photographs in the book. It was a very one-to-one kind of a job.”
Lent and Koop discussed all the details of the work, from the location of the photographs, the recipes even where illustrating lines would be placed.
In describing her book, Lent said “It’s recipes, photos, and stories about Elora over the past 30 years.”
And it is those stories that Lent believes, makes the book really special.
In a tale spanning roughly three decades, there is always a beginning.
She first started cooking in the early 1970s, when she was a group leader with Canada World Youth.
“The kids and I were living north of Kapuskasing on an Indian reserve. We had to cook our own food and the kids wanted Kraft Dinner and would have been happy with spaghetti out of a can … I was horrified.”
Lent said she ended up taking a trunk full of lentils, legumes, beans, and all kinds of herbs and spices on the train with her up to the Constance Lake Indian Reserve.
“And that is where I started cooking.”
She said she always cooked a bit when she was younger and was always interested in it.
“My mother was a really great cook.”
Lent moved to Elora in 1977 and started work at the Elora Mill, and later, the Nightingale Tea Shop. “All the time, I dreamed about what I could do with that space.”
She ended up working at Café Floriel on Mill Street for 10 months, but kept thinking she could do something on her own.
“In 1979, I finally took the plunge and on May 17, 1979 I opened the doors of the Desert Rose.”
Lent explained that a Desert Rose is an actual stone from the Sahara Desert. She had stayed in Africa for a year in 1971.
“It’s always been kind of a lucky thing for me and I always have to have one in the building.”
All the recipes in the book are vegetarian, and were recipes she has used in the popular restaurant over the years.
Many were regular menu items or dishes people had requested.
“At the top of most pages, there’s a little story about the recipe itself or some of the people who’ve come to mind as I cook these recipes.”
She noted that last year there were over 8,000 cookbooks submitted from across the world. Those books represented 47 languages and 34 countries, Lent said.
“It’s a short list now,” she enthused. “It’s pretty phenomenal. It’s exciting, it’s really exciting.”
For Lent, the book does not need to do anything more than what it has already accomplished.
“I’m so over the moon about this. I love that someone from really far away has looked at what I’ve written about my small town, my community, and recognized what a really incredible special place it is. That’s what this book is. It’s all about this community.”
She has sold over 2,000 books, and sales have just crossed the one year mark, she added.
“I had to do the second printing four months after the first printing. That’s how fast they went,” Lent said.
She considered those sales to be “spectacular.”
Books are available locally at Santé Health Food Store and The Village Olive Grove in Elora, and at Roxanne’s Reflections in Fergus.
Barb Lee, of Savour Elora Fergus, was equally thrilled with Lent’s accomplishments.
“I’ve known Resa for years.”
Lee said that last year when Lent wrote the cookbook Savour Elora Fergus thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to bring it out into the public eye for people who might not be aware of Lent’s accomplishments.
“Along with our loyal locals, there quite a bit of visitor traffic, to the Elora Farmers Market” Lee said.
She added that one of the goals under the Savour Elora Fergus banner is to promote local talent from a culinary perspective whether it is chefs, restaurants, or makers of wonderful food.”
The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards were founded in 1995 by Edouard Cointreau. Every year, they honour the best food and wine books.
The objectives of the awards are:
– to reward and honour those who “cook with words”;
– to help readers find the best out of the 26,000 food and wine books produced every year;
– to help publishers with international rights to translate and distribute food and wine books;
– to help book retailers find the 50 food and wine books that each year should be offered to clients;
– to create an opportunity to access the major markets in English, Chinese, German, Spanish, or French for books originated in other languages; and
– to increase knowledge and respect for food and wine culture, which promotes peace.
The winners in each language are announced in November, and compete for the Best in the World, announced the following year at a gala dinner.
There is a large impact for nominees and winners of the Gourmand World Cookbook awards.
Winning entries get more visibility in the marketplace and higher sales, often with new print runs. Translations and international rights deals are negotiated.
Winners can use stickers to announce their award to the public. They issue press releases in their local markets, which helps make the Gourmand Awards become known worldwide.
The winners give permanent presence to the awards on their internet sites, in publishers catalogs, and in books and authors’ biographies.
The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards are the only truly international competition for their type. There are many local or national awards for food and wine books, with many different categories.
In order to fully represent the diversity of food and drink publishing around the world, Gourmand World Cookbook Awards have 41 categories for cookbooks and 18 more sections for drinks books.
In 2009, over 6,000 books were received for entry, from 136 countries.
The books have first to qualify in a national competition, with results announced in December.
They represent their country in the Best in the World competition, which are proclaimed the following year.
There are no entry fees. The competition is free and open to all.
Books may be entered by anyone: authors, publishers, or even readers.
The jury decides in which category the books will compete, and it may change nominees from one category to another at the final jury meeting.
The jury may decide that awards for some categories remain vacant, and there may be more than one winner per category.
