I Gave Up Teaching To Make Bannock Full-Time

When I was small, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ place; it was in the Louis Bull First Nation, which is in the Maskwacis area of central Alberta. My kokum was a bingo bug, and she’d start cooking dinner for us right after school so that she could drive to Edmonton in time for the game. That dinner was often bannock. I used to stand there watching her stir and fold it, and it would always come out perfect. With melted butter and jam, it was probably the best thing I’ve ever eaten. We weren’t very close, my kokum and me. I don’t remember getting a lot of hugs from her. But I do remember watching her make bannock.

I didn’t start cooking bannock until I was in my 30s. My first husband was tired of getting it from his mother, so I tried making it for him. And you know what? It didn’t turn out that great the first time around—I over-kneaded it, and it was rock hard. But I just kept at it. My memory of how my kokum made it is how I do it, and now it comes out just like hers. These days, I’m a kokum myself: I have five children, 30 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. It’s a lot of work being kokum to all those grandbabies! But I try to make myself available to them as much as I can and help my children achieve their goals.

I studied early childhood development and then worked in the field for 25 years. I moved to Calgary about 10 years ago for a new job, but after a few years, I was tired and ready to take a risk. I’d gotten good feedback on my bannock, so I took a business course and started Kokum’s Bannock Kitchen in 2017. It was slow at first, but people would tell others, “You gotta try it.” I was able to quit my day job within a year. I couldn’t have done this without the support of my second husband, who always pushed me forward when I was feeling overwhelmed, and I want to dedicate this piece to him.

Bannock is traditionally made with flour, baking powder, salt and water, and it’s either baked or fried. We put a spin on it with different flavours: We do one with cheese, one with cinnamon and sugar and one with strawberries, raspberries, blue­berries and sometimes blackberries right in the dough. We make our own bison patties with a secret spice blend and use bannock for buns. People really come back for those. There’s also a bannock sundae, where we top cinnamon-sugar frybread with ice cream and a wild-berry sauce. My test audi­ence is my grandkids: If they don’t like it, we don’t serve it.

At first, we did outdoor markets—not just in Calgary but in smaller places too, like Cochrane and Okotoks. We’d get up at four in the morning, prep our bannock and then hit the road. We were selling out before the markets were over, so we had to start getting up even earlier to make more bannock. Then we started catering events and going into schools to share a bit of our culture with the students. I’d do a cooking demonstration, have the students make their own bannock and talk to them a bit. Both of my parents are residential school survivors, but I went to a non-Native school in the white town. I didn’t learn much about my culture until I went back to school at Maskwacis Cultural College after having my babies. That was an eye-opener for me.

When COVID-19 hit, all the catering jobs disappeared. So I went home to the reserve to take care of my mom. I got a job there, working with at-risk families. When things started to ease up, I received an email from the manager of a food market in Calgary. He said, “We have a kitchen here that you could use. Are you interested?” And I said, “Of course!” I started running a food stall at the market from Friday to Sunday while continuing to work on the rez from Monday to Thursday. When I finished my contract with our reserve, I came back to Calgary full-time.

At the kitchen, I put up a sign explaining what bannock is, and people sometimes read it and said, “Oh, I didn’t know it came from Scotland!” And I’d tell them that Scottish settlers brought the recipe over, and then we adapted it and made it our own—we just do it a little bit better. Frybread originated in the U.S., when the Navajo tribe was moved to a different territory and had to adapt their foods to the environment. People would ask if we ever cook bannock on sticks—ew, no. Then they’d start asking questions about our people. Food is always a starting point, right?

Some people were skeptical. I don’t want to say haters, but not everyone is ready to try our food. I kept some sweetgrass and sage on hand to deflect that bad energy, because you always want to have good energy when you’re cooking.

Orange Shirt Day last year was hard. We were crazy busy right up until the 30th, delivering bannock from 3 a.m. until 8 p.m. to mostly non-Indigenous folks. Sometimes we ran a little late, and some orders weren’t perfect. People were impatient, and I just felt there was no consideration. We were busting our butts to help other people feel complete. After I delivered the last order, I thought about everything my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents endured. It just hit me, and it really hurt.

During that time, when we were so busy, we kept dropping pieces of bannock. When that happens, it’s our ancestors showing us that they’re hungry too. The following Sunday, I closed the kitchen, and my family and I had a feast for our loved ones. I had to bring that culture back to us rather than just getting caught up in the world of môniyâwak (white people).

Our final month at the market was last November. Now I’m hoping to buy a food truck. Or maybe I’ll go up to the reserve and help young moms, give them some life skills and cooking lessons. There are other options. I want to drive to all the small-town summer festivals—anywhere they have a rodeo or a celebration. Those are the people I want to serve my bannock to.