Inuvik (Oct 11/04) - Gone are the days of cooking up a lunch of scrambled caribou brains on toast or roast beaver with apples but Alice Hunter's memories of her days hovering over the stove are still fresh.

Alice Hunter of Inuvik browses through the many recipes she compiled into a book almost 20 years ago. - Dorothy Westerman/NNSL photo

Her shining kitchen has grown quiet over the years but she recalls with fondness the many dishes she once lovingly prepared for her family.

"I remember the earliest time I began cooking and baking was when I was about eight-years-old," Hunter said.

"I used to punch the bread dough for my mother," she said of the weekly routine to ensure freshly baked bread was always at hand.

Hunter, who is from Inuvik, learned to cook many Westernized dishes. Once she was married and travelling around the North with her husband Bob, however, she also created and discovered many traditional recipes.

She eventually compiled them into a cookbook entitled Alice Hunter's North Country Cookbook, which was published in 1986.

"My husband liked to eat. He was the one who tested everything," she laughed, as she explained her interest in publishing the cookbook, filled with traditional food recipes.

Now Hunter has found another way to share her enjoyment of cooking with others.

Over the past two years she has invited elders into her home on a regular basis to share a meal and good times.

"I like to have them for dinner and then sit down with them as they do the storytelling," she said.

And as for the enjoyment Hunter gets from preparing her many dishes, she said it is much more than the meal itself.

"I like it when somebody asks for seconds or asks you how you make it -- then I know it is good," she said.