Recipe:

​Ingredients:
- ¼ cup of butter  
- ½ med-sized onion (diced)
- 6-7 stalks of celery (sliced)
- 4-5 carrots (sliced)
- 2 bags frozen lima beans
- 3 cups mushrooms (sliced)
- Nutmeg (to taste)
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Half and Half Cream (to taste)

Tools Needed: 
- Large Pot
- Medium Pot
- Stove
- Something to stir with

1. Melt butter in a large pot over medium heat, saute diced onions, and add sliced celery.
2. Cook until onions and celery have slightly softened, around 10 minutes.
3. While sauteing onions and celery, boil carrots and lima beans in a medium pot with salted water for 10-15 minutes.
4. Add sliced mushrooms to the celery and onion once the onions and celery have softened. 
5. Drain carrots and lima beans and combine with celery, mushrooms, and onion in the same large pot.
6. Add half-and-half cream and seasonings to taste. Simmer on very low heat for 4 hours or longer.

---

Above is the always hard to find, frozen lima beans.

Above is the family red and white china, set for thanksgiving diner.

Above is the last vegetable melange made, at christmas.

*This story has been retold through several generations, so it may have been changed several times. This could be an altered version of the original way this recipe came to be.

This recipe started at the Fairmont Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia, where my great-grandmother, Gladys Gilbert, worked as a hostess. She had been working there for several decades and was close friends with many of the other employees there, including the head chef. In 1959, Queen Elizabeth II embarked on a major cross-Canada tour, with one of her stops being the Empress Hotel. 

The hotel had spent many weeks preparing for her stay, ensuring everything was fit for a queen. The kitchens had spent days working on a huge feast of extravagant new foods, one of which was a brand-new recipe invented by the head chef, Vegetable Melange. 

During Her Majesty’s stay at the Empress, she enjoyed the feast and the new foods she ate. But one of her favourite foods was the Vegetable Melange, which she then requested to have a copy of the recipe brought back with her to England. The other copy of the recipe was then gifted to the chef's friend, my great-grandmother, which has now been passed through generations of our family, copied several times into many different family cookbooks, the same original recipe, fit for a queen. 

Nowadays, one of the main ingredients, frozen lima beans, is very hard to come by. This past Easter, after searching all across Ottawa, at dozens of grocery stores, we had to resort to canned lima beans. It was still a delicious Melange, but tasted just slightly off and mushier. Our new go-to (both in Ottawa and in British Columbia, where a lot of the Gilbert family lives) is Uber Eats, which has somehow managed to find the frozen lima beans in stores where we couldn’t! Just a new modern way of making the same old, original recipe. 
​
Today, Melange is served at each holiday feast (Easter, Christmas, and Thanksgiving), made all across Canada in each of the different provinces and cities the Gilbert Family lives in. Every holiday dinner we host, it’s always served in the same red and white china, handed down to my Mom from my great-grandmother, Gladys, which will someday be passed down to my sister for when we celebrate our turkey dinners with our family recipe, Vegetable Melange.