(Lens culinaris)
During his time at the Crop Development Centre (CDC) in the University of Saskatchewan, Dr. Al Slinkard, the father of Canada’s pulse industry, advised and coached a number of graduate students. One of them, the man who eventually took on Dr. Slinkard’s position, was the super-charged Dr. Bert Vandenberg. Like Slinkard, he also grew up on farmland but his home was in southern Ontario’s fruit country. Vandenberg’s cultivars are taking the pulse industry to still another level. The Blaze lentil, the variety that Corey Loessin was planting on the day we visited his farm, is a Vandenburg release and the lentil cake that Corey’s wife/partner Joan Heath baked that spring day near Radisson used this delicious pulse. Here’s a recipe for Prairie Spice Cake that we love a lot!
Dr. Vandenberg has been appointed as the NSERC Industrial Research Chair and his legacy is one that will be part of Saskatchewan’s agricultural history.
With files from the University of Saskatchewan and Anita Stewart’s CANADA: The Food, The Recipes, The Stories (HarperCollins Canada 2008)
