Smoked cheddar & carrot bread + Crow Lake

A savoury bread with a root vegetable as its star, and a book about the power of our roots

Hello hello and welcome to Good Book/Good Bread! If you’re new here, the concept is pretty simple: I review a book I loved in part 1, and in part 2 I show you a bread I made that fits with an aspect of the story. This issue’s book is an older one, a throwback to 2002. Enjoy! 

Part 1: Good Book

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson (2002)

Setting the tone

Early Morning Rain by Gordon Lightfoot, here 

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In a nutshell 

Crow Lake is a slow burning work of fiction that follows seven-year-old Kate Morrison and her three siblings after the death of their parents in the book’s first chapter. She has a toddler sister, Bo, and two teenage brothers, Matt and Luke. The four siblings live in the remote farming community of Crow Lake, in the heart of the Canadian Shield. The story is told from the perspective of Kate at aged seven, and also in her late twenties as she looks back on the formative year following the loss of her parents. Central to the family’s story is the tight community that looks after the orphaned Morrisons, several significant misunderstandings, and the tensions that form from her older brothers’ sacrifices for their little sisters. 

I included Lawson’s most recent book, A Town Called Solace, in a previous issue, and paired it with the delightful and bizarre fougasse bread (read here). 

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Why I was drawn to this book

The descriptions early on in Crow Lake of the area’s seemingly endless deep, cold lakes and their steep and rocky shorelines stirred up some nostalgia in me. This book is set very close to Temagami, Ontario, where I spent big portions of every summer at a rustic camp on an island. My parents would drop me off at the camp bus in the city, and after a five hour drive north, my fellow campers and I would unload our packs at a dusty boat landing. The camp caretaker, Jerry, a red-bearded older man who lived year-round at the camp, would arrive in a creaky barge. All the campers would climb on the barge with their packs, and it would slowly putter around a point until the camp’s peeling cabins and dining hall came into view. Kate’s early appreciation for the natural world around her home inspires her future career, and I loved reading her descriptions of an area I have such rich memories of. 

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Three things I liked about Crow Lake

1. The slow bread crumbs of suspense 

The major tragedy of the Morrison parents dying takes place very early on in the book. It would be easy to think as the reader that the rest of the book would just focus on the fallout of this. In some ways it does, but Lawson also immediately begins hinting that something else explosive happens to the Morrisons. It is hinted at every few chapters, and the reader knows it’s tied to a nearby farming family with a dark past. The way Lawson alludes to it made me think I’d always be just about to learn what this built-up event was, but then she’d simply develop the suspense and plot further. In many ways this book is a gradual building of a story about family, but it also has elements of a thriller. 

2. Prose put me right in the moment 

I didn’t really feel like I was reading about the Morrison family. I felt like I was sitting in their house and a part of every scene. Lawson’s graceful, detailed writing and ability to create characters who seem like real, flawed people made this a truly captivating read. 

3. Details of how the Crow Lake community helped the Morrisons 

One of my favourite parts of Crow Lake was the community of characters Lawson created to help the four children survive without their parents. Despite having few resources themselves, the Morrison’s neighbours made sure the family always had enough. The General Store owners, who hadn’t needed extra help for decades, suddenly had an opening for a part-time job for Luke. Farmer’s wives seemed to have a rotating schedule that saw them preparing hearty meals for the children. And a few figures provided the requisite tough love and authority the children needed. I especially enjoyed that all of these acts of generosity were done in a subtle way—like when a character would have “made too much of something” and stop by with a huge quantity of food for the children. 

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Notable passage

“That last stretch of the journey from Toronto to Crow Lake always takes me by the throat. Partly it’s the familiarity; I know every tree, every rock, every boggy bit of marshland so well, that even though I almost always arrive after dark I can feel them around me, lying there in the darkness as if they were my own bones. Partly too, it is the sensation of going back in time, moving from “now” to “then,” and the recognition that wherever you are now and wherever you may be in the future, nothing alters the point you started from.”

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Part 2: Good Bread

Smoked cheddar & carrot skillet bread 

Why this bread for this book?

At its core, Crow Lake is about family and sense of place. When I came across this recipe, I thought the inclusion of generous amounts of carrots, a root vegetable, was fitting for a story about rootedness—and the pain of leaving those roots behind. And, on a more practical note, I baked this during a storm the night before what was forecast to be the biggest powder day in Revelstoke in weeks, and I wanted an extra special bread (read: full of cheese) for my chairlift sandwich. 

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Recipe

I got this recipe from a Bread edition of Better Homes & Gardens magazine (I believe this is a sign I am now firmly out of my twenties). It includes a cup of grated carrots, a cup of smoked cheddar, and a heaping tablespoon of paprika, all contributing to its savoriness and bright hue. You hold back some of the grated smoked cheddar to sprinkle overtop before baking, and it gives it a crunchy, salty exterior.  

Works well as:

Chairlift sandwiches. My current favourite chairlift sandwich, which could also be equally enjoyable eaten on a hike, on the couch, or even in bed, includes salami, arugula, havarti, mayo, sriracha, and banana peppers. 

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Looking forward 

Book I’m looking forward to reading: Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi 

Bread I’m looking forward to baking: Pane Siciliano, here 

New album I’m looking forward to listening to: The Record by Boygenius

Have other books, bread, or music you’d recommend I check out? Reply to this email or leave a comment. And, if you liked this issue, feel free to hit the heart button (it helps other people find my newsletter!)