Chef with ALS puts legacy into cookbook

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This article was published 28/03/2019 (2565 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CARBERRY — A Carberry chef diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, has put her years of culinary experience to good use creating a cookbook to raise money to fight the disease.

Bringing together recipes from her more than four decades of experience as a chef, Cheryl Orr-Hood captures a selection of her favourite dishes in “Taste Bud Pleasers: Recipes by Cheryl Orr-Hood.”

ALS has left Orr-Hood non-verbal. She uses a speech-generating device to communicate. A metallic dot is placed on Orr-Hood’s nose and a camera on the device tracks her movements, allowing her to “type” to talk.

“The dot is my mouse,” Orr-Hood said.

Using this device and help from her husband Bruce Hood, she brought together two huge Rubbermaid tubs full of recipes. Working together, the duo slowly narrowed down the dishes to fit into the 110-page cookbook.

“She had some favourites, I’m sure, and I think there’s a lot of recipes in there that are not just your standard cooking recipes,” Hood said.

She would have added more recipes into the book, Orr-Hood said, but she wanted to complete the work.

She began talking about publishing “Taste Bud Pleasers” in the late spring of 2018 and got to work on the book at the end of the summer.

The cookbook was officially finished a few days before Christmas.

Time-consuming to write, Orr-Hood painstakingly typed the recipes online, writing, editing and adding personal comments along the way.

“We did that day in and day out for months,” Hood said.

Orr-Hood recommends experimenting and adapting the dishes to suit individual taste buds.

“Part of the adventure is to explore using ingredients that are available and convenient, and to share your cooking with your family and friends,” Orr-Hood said in the introduction of her book.

Born and raised in Carberry, Orr-Hood fostered a passion for cooking from a young age.

When she was six years old, she and her sister would can dandelions and chamomile at their family farm, and she often helped her mother with meal preparations for the family.

Upon graduating from high school, she enrolled in home economics at the University of Manitoba, choosing to major in food and nutrition. She spent the summers of 1963 and 1964 at the Wasagaming Golf Course, where she became a master at making pies as she would often craft 18 pies each shift from scratch as a pastry chef and server.

Moving to Toronto in the late 1970s to further her studies and work in urban planning, baking soon took over her life.

“I started supplying restaurants to cover my living costs,” Orr-Hood said.

Supplying treats to restaurants, she became a baker on the rise, wholesaling decadent desserts to a number of restaurants and catering on the side.

Her passion for food led her to open her bakery, Sweet n’ Savoury Food Inc., soon after she moved to Toronto.

“The business grew by word of mouth,” Orr-Hood said.

The cookbook boasts many recipes from the bakery, treats she spent years perfecting.

Moving back to Carberry in 1999, Orr-Hood offered catering services in the community, all the time continuing to experiment and perfect her recipes.

The two were wed in a small ceremony with friends and family in 2007. Orr-Hood catered the event.

Things changed in 2016 when Orr-Hood began experiencing falls accompanied by numbness in one of her fingers.

“We were wondering if it was a mini-stroke,” Hood said.

A difficult disease to diagnose, Hood described it as a process of elimination before she was officially diagnosed with ALS in February 2017.

“I was pretty shattered,” Orr-Hood said.

ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, causes the death of neurons controlling voluntary muscles, gradually leading to paralyzation as the brain is no longer able to communicate with muscles in the body. There is no known cure for ALS.

Orr-Hood hopes the cookbook encourages people to talk about the disease.

“It’s not a common disease. It’s not like cancer, where everybody knows someone that has cancer,” Hood said. “So it’s slightly more difficult to get funding.”

Copies of “Taste Bud Pleasers” are $20 and can be purchased at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba. The net proceeds of the book are donated to the ALS Society of Manitoba.

“I enjoy hearing that folks are finding the recipes are delicious,” Orr-Hood said.

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