In Their Kitchens

A Kitchen Story

Jean Pare didn’t know she was launching an empire from her oven with 150 Delicious Squares

By Sally Johnston

Jean Pare makes a special effort when company’s coming and today is no exception. Today, I’m the company. The smell of freshly-brewed coffee welcomes me and she ushers me into her Edmonton home with the friendliness of a long-time neighbour. Her pine kitchen table is set for two with rose-patterned fine china plates and matching mugs. The kitchen is a cook’s dream, and the walls are painted a soft eggshell blue. A large window looks out to the sunny, plant-filled atrium of her condominium building. Two ovens stand side-by-side.

Pare is Canada’s most successful cookbook author, the astute businesswoman who created the internationally-acclaimed Company’s Coming publishing empire. She’s sold more than 25 million books, travels all over the world, has numerous awards and is a Member of the Order of Canada. But there’s none of the boardroom boor about this corporate culinary queen.

“When I know that someone is dropping by, food is definitely the first thing I think about. Every memory I have of any happy time involves food,” says Pare. As she’s talking, she glides through her spotless kitchen and deposits a dish of yummy-looking raspberry strudel muffins in front of me. The gleaming countertops are clutter-free, the sink sparkling clean. As she pours me a coffee I bite into a muffin, revealing a generous helping of sweet berries. Naturally, they’re delicious and I start heaping on the compliments.

“Actually, I had the test kitchen make them,” she admits, looking sheepish. She’s referring, of course, to the test kitchen at the Company’s Coming headquarters in south Edmonton where the recipes for her books are developed.

This sunny kitchen is celebration central for her large blended family. She has four children, three stepchildren, 18 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren. Pare will turn 80 in December and could justifiably hand over the kitchen tongs to younger relatives, but says she still loves to prepare frequent feasts for the sprawling clan. That explains the second oven.

“Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving are always at my place,” she says. And it’s no surprise that Christmas is her favourite holiday. “It has such a variety of food. I start baking in October and freeze dozens of squares. And I make 12 plum puddings for family and friends,” she says.

A couple of years ago she moved from a large house in Vermilion to her smaller, yet still spacious, city abode in an adult condominium. Downsizing hasn’t cramped her cooking style one bit.

“I can fit 10 at my dining table and eight at my kitchen table, and if there are more I use TV trays or card tables,” says Pare, a picture of elegance in a blue print silky dress with neatly styled thick hair.

Family get-togethers gravitate to her home. “Recently a bridal shower was planned for one of my granddaughters and it was ‘Can we have it at your place, Grandma? Do you think maybe you’d have some squares around?’’

Squares are what started it all. Twenty-six years ago, Pare published her first cookbook, 150 Delicious Squares. It launched the Company’s Coming series that now includes more than 100 titles, with around eight more published each year. What began as a one-woman operation has grown to include a staff of 70, including professional recipe testers. Pare still works regularly in the test kitchen. Her son, Grant Lovig, is president of Company’s Coming and her daughter, Gail Lovig, is director of marketing. Pare “eats her way through every cookbook” before publication, develops many of the recipes herself, writing them out in longhand, and proofreading every final manuscript.

The first cookbook was in response to repeated requests for her recipes from satisfied customers of the catering business that she ran in Vermilion from 1963 to 1981.

Her style in the kitchen reflects her manner: homey, no-nonsense and efficient. The popularity of her fully-illustrated, soft-covered cookbooks is not surprising. She delivers approachable recipes for ordinary Canadians with limited or no culinary skills who want to get a tasty and nutritious dinner on the table in a hurry. Her recipes are easy to follow and often suggest shortcuts such as using dried onions and ketchup.

“I’m not a purist when it comes to food,” she says. The dishes reflect the approach towards meal-making that Pare learned from her mom. “The most rewarding thing is when people come up to me or write to say, “You taught me how to cook,’” she says.

Pare grew up in the small town of Irma, population 250, where her parents ran the general store. “I was about nine when I began making shortbread and fudge, because although my folks ran the store we couldn’t just help ourselves to candy,” she recalls.

By the time she was 12, Pare was preparing all the meals for her parents, sister and two brothers. “Sunday was always the day for entertaining. So on Saturday we’d make about six pies.”

Invariably there would also be a stranger or two seated at the table on those Sundays during the Depression. “We’d feed men who rode the railroad and stopped off in our town,” says Pare.

Her mom also pledged Pare a Maritime green tomato pickle recipe called chow chow, which she’d gleaned from her own mother growing up on Prince Edward Island. Each fall, as the days shorten, Pare hauls her heavy canning kettle out of storage and cooks up 20 jars of chow chow, a family favourite.

Travel has also been a major influence on Pare’s cooking. With her late husband Larry Pare, who died in 2005, she flew around the world twice and she’s has made repeat visits to many countries including Australia, India, Singapore and the United Kingdom.

“Larry was a meat and potatoes man whereas I would try the local foods,” she says. “I even like the food on airplanes.”

Many of the recipes in her books were inspired by exotic fare sampled overseas. “In Singapore, for example, I tried fish and tofu stir-fry for the first time. But I made a mental note that I’d cut the tofu smaller because I don’t like biting into a big squishy piece.” A simpler version of that dish eventually appeared in her Stir-Fry cookbook.

From curries to jambalaya to baps, Pare has tasted her way around the globe. Not bad for a woman who was 40 before she ate a shrimp and who only included an escargot recipe in an appetizer cookbook in order to please her daughter.

Company’s Coming recipes were originally based on plain and traditional home cooking. While the recipes are still straightforward, their scope has expanded because Canadians have developed a passion for international flavours. Ingredients such as fresh ginger and lemon grass, previously unheard of in Alberta, are now commonplace on grocery shelves.

But it should still be easy. “We’ll only use ingredients that have been readily available in grocery stores for at least two years,” says Pare.

A combination of success and good health - she mall walks from 6:30 a.m. to 7 a.m. each day - enables Pare to continue to enjoy her family, friends that include a women’s coffee group in Vermilion that’s been meeting for 35 years, work, cooking and travel. But life wasn’t always so rosy. Her first marriage was to Clarence Lovig. When he left the young family, she struggled as a single mother to raise the young Grant, Gail and her other sons Lyall and Brian.

Pare found happiness when she married her second husband, Larry, in 1968. An electrician and a single father of three, he became a regular customer at a small cafe she briefly ran in Vermilion. Even when money was scarce, Pare found ways to make wonderful food memories for her blended brood.

In her biography, An Appetite for Life, by Edmonton author Judy Schultz, Gail describes how birthday parties were always special with big cakes and banana splits.

Today Gail says, “My appreciation for a well set table comes from enjoying the many family meals Mom has done. Mom is the heart of family gatherings. It just wouldn’t feel right to be anywhere else.”

Pare, meanwhile, still has a lot on her plate. Company’s Coming receives constant requests for new titles and she is cognizant of the need to keep in tune with the nation’s always-changing attitude towards good food.

The recently published Whole Grain Recipes acknowledges a growing interest in healthier eating. It features ideas for cooking not only rice and barley but also quinoa, amaranth, millet and other grains appearing in Alberta fields.

Where did she come up with the Company’s Coming name? “You know, when we had guests my mother would always call out “company’s coming’ and that seemed so exciting to me. When I did my first cookbook, it was the first name I came up with. It just seemed a natural fit.”

For more information, visit Company's Coming.