A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book that Shaped 2019
Winner of a 2019 Alcuin Society Award for Excellence in Book Design
Winner of a 2020 Gourmand World Cookbook Award in Canada
Finalist for a 2021 Pacific Northwest Book Award
Finalist for a 2020 Taste Canada Award
Finalist for a 2020 BC and Yukon Book Prize

Homegrown, modern recipes that feature the most treasured local ingredients from Vancouver Island’s forests, fields, farms and sea.

Off the shore of Canada’s west coast lies a food lover’s island paradise. Vancouver Island’s temperate climate nurtures a bounty of wild foods, heritage grains, organic produce, sustainable meats and artisan-crafted edible delights. This thoughtfully curated, beautifully photographed cookbook brings Vancouver Island’s abundant food scene into the kitchens of home cooks everywhere.

While celebrating such treasures such as fresh blackberries, foraged chanterelles and fiddleheads, freshly harvested spot prawns or oysters, line-caught spring salmon, grass-fed beef, and cultivated foods like heritage red fife wheat, the book's recipes highlight the most sought-after ingredients on the island and honour the producers and artisans dedicated to sustainable and ethical producing and harvesting.

Try recipes like Craft Beer–Braised Island Beef Brisket, Nettle and Chèvre Ravioli, and Beetroot and Black Walnut Cake featuring Denman Island Chocolate. Divided into four sections—forest, field, farm, and sea—Cedar and Salt puts the taste of Vancouver Island on a pedestal, and then brings it to your plate.

Danielle (DL) Acken is a Canadian born international food photographer who splits her time between London, UK and her farm studio on Canada’s beautiful Salt Spring Island. A self-proclaimed compulsive traveller, her photography is inspired by the multitude of palettes and moods found throughout her wanderings. See her work at dlacken.com.

D.L. Acken's profile page

Emily Lycopolus' profile page

• Short-listed, Pacific Northwest Book Award
• Short-listed, BC and Yukon Book Prize
• Short-listed, Taste Canada Award
• Winner, Gourmand World Cookbook Award
• Winner, Alcuin Design Award

"Acken and Lycopolus are persuasive ambassadors for their beloved Island. Cedar and Salt’s visual food tour, complete with lists of local farmers markets and farm-to-table restaurants, makes it hard to resist a trip to Vancouver Island for a real-life food tour." —Foreword Reviews

"It’s easy to be inspired by the terroir on and around Vancouver Island, but Salt Spring Island and Victoria food writers D.L. Acken and Emily Lycopolus do a spectacular job of gathering it all up and putting it on a pedestal . . . unpretentious and completely approachable." —Julie Van Rosendaal, Globe and Mail

Lush and eloquent . . . Cedar and Salt is among a new breed of regional Canadian explorations. Inextricable from its location, it's a snapshot of a specific food culture with expansive appeal all the same . . . The choice to structure the book by geography coupled with Acken's atmospheric photography gives readers a deeper sense of place." —Laura Brehaut, Postmedia

"As lovers of food and photography, we can’t think of a more inviting activity this season than to hunker down in the kitchen with the newly published, hyper-local Vancouver Island cookbook, Cedar and Salt. (Equally so, ogling and drooling over its pages while cozied up on a comfy chair.)" —The Islandist

"This cookbook focusses a lot on the abundance of Vancouver Island’s local ingredients that grow year-round in some cases." —Victoria Buzz