So, it has been a few months now since my book, Pacific Palate, Food Artisans of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands has been published. And there’s good news, bad news. Bad News: The first print run was so successful the publisher hasn’t been able to send any more to bookstores and artisans in the book who want to sell it. The Good News…you can still find it via Amazon (link above) and a number of bookstores still have a few copies, with more on the way soon with the second printing!
If you are on this page and still wondering whether you should buy this book, I have put together all links to digital media about the book right here on this page. There are audio interviews from CBC and CFAX, profiles of me on Edible Vancouver Island and Scout Magazine, and features in the BC Review, Parksville-Qualicum Beach News, Kelowna News, and Yam Magazine. The most recent features are a 42-minute interview I did with Ryan Price on CFAX Radio for a special Canada Day edition of his show, and a profile done by Elizabeth Nyland in Edible Vancouver Island…which actually exists as a print magazine and you can pick it up for free at many places around the islands. When the new shipment of books arrives I’ll be making some autumn travel plans and speaking engagements where you can meet me in person.
https://ediblevancouverisland.mydigitalpublication.com/july-august-2025/page-6
https://thebcreview.ca/2025/05/26/2562-coleman-genova
https://www.yammagazine.com/vancouver-island-local-food-guide-don-genova
Finally, it’s here! The second edition of Food Artisans of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands is now available at most bookstores across British Columbia and you can also order it online 
I grew up in a family where my mother spent much of her day in the kitchen or in the garden (that’s her on the left with a 3.5 pound tomato from the garden).Spending the time harvesting vegetables like peas, corn, beans, lettuce, tomatoes and more in the garden meant lots of time spent processing them in the kitchen. And yet she always made the time to put a really decent meal on the table for our family of five. She knew how to cook, how to shop for what she didn’t have in the garden, and didn’t have a huge collection of cookbooks. She clipped recipes from newspapers and magazines and taped them into a big notebook. The ‘tips’ she gleaned from her readings were cut out and taped to the inside of the kitchen cabinet doors. I’m lucky that I frequently watched her cook and helped her with shopping and in the garden and picked up the basics of cooking almost by osmosis, because before I left home I never really cooked anything but still knew how most things worked in the kitchen.
Amanda Swinimer’s passion is kelp. Yes, that green stuff from the sea. Around 30 different kinds of kelp are found in the waters around Vancouver Island. It’s easy to get caught up in her passion if you listen to her talk about the medicinal and nutritional qualities of this seaweed she’s been harvesting on a commercial basis since the early 2000’s. Her sustainably-harvested products include dried winged kelp and bull kelp, rich in minerals and vitamins. Her dried product is available online and in many of the specialty shops described in this book.
Chefs also order seaweed from her to use on their menus. On an outing with Amanda to learn about seaweed off of Whiffin Spit near Sooke with chef Oliver Kienast of Wild Mountain Food & Drink, I was treated to seaweed tea, bread, spread, and even popcorn sprinkled with Dakini’s Kelp Flakes. Seaweed is loaded with umami, that mysterious fifth basic taste after sweet, salty, sour, and bitter that may be hard to describe other than saying, ‘tastes good’.
Amanda is a marine biologist and also a folk herbalist, which means she also makes medicinal salves out of seaweed. She told me she got turned onto seaweed while learning about wild crafting with herbs. “You should have seen my tiny one-bedroom apartment,” she laughs. “It was always laced wall-to-wall with long strings of seaweed hanging to dry.”