Recipes & Roots is based in Canada. While we love global stories and recipes, we believe that sustainable living starts where you are, by supporting your local growers and makers.
This new series features inspiration for Canadian Made meal plans, with province-specific ingredients.
Late summer in Canada is a season of contrasts. The days are still warm, but evenings carry the first hints of autumn.
Late August in Canada is a moment of abundance. The hedgerows are heavy with berries, gardens are brimming with herbs, and meadows hum with pollinators visiting the last of the wildflowers.
In much of Canada, late August is a turning point. The days are still long, the sun still warm, but the light shifts—less a blaze, more a burnished gold. Historically, this was a critical time for food gathering. For many Indigenous Nations, it marked the height of berry season and the beginning of autumn preservation. For settler homesteads, it was the month of cellars filling with jars, drying racks heavy with herbs, and baskets of fruit set out to ripen.
By late August, Canada’s landscapes are brimming with plants that have long served a dual purpose — they refresh and they sustain. Along field edges, rosehips begin to redden, holding the promise of winter tea. In the north, fireweed flowers signal the last rush of the growing season, while in boggy lowlands, the leathery leaves of Labrador tea are ready for harvest. These plants, along with a host of berries, roots, and seeds, once filled travel packs, medicine bundles, and winter stores.
The edges of the land have always been important. For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples knew where berry patches would ripen each season, where wild roots could be dug without harming the population, and where migrating birds or animals could be hunted as they passed. Later, settlers marked property lines with hedgerows and fruit trees, inadvertently creating long, narrow larders for future generations.
By late August, Canadian hedgerows and meadows are full of small, edible surprises. Along rural fencelines, clusters of crabapples hang from gnarled branches, their skins flushed with red or yellow and their tart scent carried on the breeze. In nearby fields, clover blossoms stand bright against fading greens, their round flower heads still drawing bees in the warm afternoon light.
Late August is a month of change in Canada’s landscapes. Days are still warm, but nights begin to cool. In Northern regions, the first leaves blush yellow on poplars. Fields shimmer with goldenrod, berry canes droop with fruit, and the air holds a trace of autumn. For foragers, this is a pivotal moment — the last full flush of summer growth before the pace of the season slows.
When people speak of Canadian food, it’s often in generalities—maple syrup, poutine, butter tarts. But the real story of Canadian cuisine is one of interwoven legacies. Ukrainian food, especially on the Prairies, is not just a cultural layer; it is a foundational thread in how rural communities fed themselves, celebrated, and built resilience on new soil.
Shara Cooper is the founder of Recipes & Roots. She is the mother of two teenage daughters, one dog, and one cat. She lives in the Kootenays in BC, Canada. At times, Shara isn’t sure if she’s an introverted extrovert or an extroverted introvert.
Canada’s food history is rooted in ingredients that grew, swam, or roamed freely across this land. Long before refined wheat and industrial farming arrived, Indigenous communities sustained themselves with nutrient-rich staples harvested in tune with seasonal cycles. These were the original examples of sustainable cooking and ancestral cooking methods — systems where food, ecology, and community were inseparable.