taste

5 Food and Drink Items by Indigenous-Owned Businesses To Pack on Your Picnic This Weekend

Grab your pals and pack craft sodas, bannock, hot sauce and more.

By Kristi Alexandra /

There’s nothing quite like a picnic in the great outdoors—and this weekend is a good one to pay homage to the Indigenous peoples across the nation and honour their crafts (and tastes). Load up your baskets this weekend with these treats made by local Indigenous makers, from craft sodas to hand-curated charcuterie boards and bannock you can make at home.

Heartberry Soda

Heartberry Soda owner Nadine Jopson is the first female, Indigenous soda crafter across the nation—sourcing many of the ingredients for her sodas in the wild. Jopson, a co-owner of New Westminster’s soon-to-be-shuttered Another Beer Co., started brewing her wild-foraged sodas at the brewery and quickly expanded to selling crates of her four feature sodas across the lower mainland and Vancouver Island. Mixing tart fruity palates against traditional Indigenous ingredients, find cans of strawberry and rhubarb, raspberry and fireweed, lemon and birch and ginger and rosehips at Another Beer Co. until the end of the summer, or order online.

For an added bit of trivia: the brand is named after the Cree translation for “strawberries”.

 

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Raven and Hummingbird Tea Co

Squamish mother-daughter ethnobotanist duo Cease and Senaqwila Wyss are at the helm of West Vancouver’s Raven and Hummingbird Tea Co, which creates teas from plants grown in their community garden on the Capilano Reserve (Xwemeltchsn). Their tea blends come with ingredients harvested for a purpose, like the spring tonic—made with stinging nettles, rosehips, hawthorne berries, alfalfa leaf, mint, licorice root—to ward off cough, colds and sore throats.

Grab a bulk order online or find their stockists in the city.

Sriracha Revolver Hot Sauce

Move over, Sean Evans—Jordan Hocking is bringing the heat! Launched in 2017, Sriracha Revolver Hot Sauce has been creating sauces that range from “zingy” to hot and sweet (hello, mango habanero!) and luxe (did someone say beets and tequila?). Hailing from the Sweetgrass First Nation and of Plains Cree descent, Hocking makes craft-size batches of hot sauce, which she calls “the foundation for the feast.”

You can snag a bottle at spots such as The Gourmet Warehouse, FreshMart, Vegan Supply Chinatown, Welk’s and Meinhardt Fine Foods.

Bangin’ Bannock

It’s oft-debated where you can get the best bannock in the city (is it Salmon n Bannock? Is it the Mr. Bannock food Truck? Is it the Bannock Queen?), but there’s a secret third option—and you can do it yourself. Well, kinda. Bangin’ Bannock—started by Kelsey Coutts (Okimaw) and Destiny Houshte (Nakoda/Assiniboine) in Vancouver—makes a bannock dry mix and frybread mix collection that’s as easy to use as one-step pancakes. That’s right, you just add water. Pick up a cinnamon sugar packet along with your OG bannock mix, and you’re golden.

Find it at TruF Kits, Stong’s Market, Maker’s – Gastown, Local Boom and Jackson’s General Store.

Tawnshi Charcuterie

Made-to-order Tawnshi charcuterie boxes—started by Trevor Jansen and Marina LeClair in Vancouver—contain ingredients like baked bannock, various kinds of smoked salmon, milkweed pods, cedar jelly, sea bacon and brie. 

“The box is a selection of Indigenous foods that are not particular to one nation, group or area,” Jansen told VanMag previously. “It’s not meant to be an anthropology lesson, it’s a learning experience and an opportunity to connect with Indigenous culture.” 

Pre-order one of these boxes, get it delivered and pack it in your picnic basket. Boxes range from $26 to $94 and can be purchased at tawnshi.com.