Into the Wild, Part 2: A Canadian Thanksgiving

Once again our friends at Vancouver-based Le Marché St. George cafe invite us to take part (at least from a distance) in their yearly French-Canadian Thanksgiving adventure. This year, family, friends, and coworkers gathered at Janaki Larsen and Pascal Roy’s remote property in Oroville (a town in eastern Washington state) to partake in a three-day outdoor camp celebration that included open-fire cooking, foliage-adorned table settings, and nature-seeking activities.

Photography by Janaki Larsen and Issha Marie for Le Marché St. George.

Above: The landscape of Janaki and Pascal’s Oroville property is desert-like—hot and arid in the summer and extremely cold and dry in the winter.

Above: The Thanksgiving table is placed in the middle of a field with an open view.

Above: A mix-and-match assemblage of vintage folding chairs collected over the years.

Above: The makeshift long table benches are fashioned from reclaimed wooden planks placed on top of cinder blocks. The tablecloth is a laundered painter’s canvas drop cloth.

Above: The table is set with ceramic plates and bowls by Janaki (she’s also a ceramic artist). Wild greenery and branches gathered from the surrounding fields dress the table.

Above: “Since we were such a large group, everyone had to bring their own dishes. Most of us brought a plate or two made by Janaki, and at the end we had enough plates to set the table,” Marie says. The gold tumblers are from Atelier St. George.

Above: On the menu: char-roasted cauliflower and brussels sprouts, a warm fruit compote, and a roasted medley of root vegetables. “The dinner was heavily inspired by Francis Mallmann’s methods of cooking over an open fire,” Janaki says.

Above: Roasted lamb and chicken, also part of the Thanksgiving dinner.

Above L: Roasted carrots and fingerling potatoes with herbs and onions. Above R: Warm fruit compote with apples and coronation grapes.

Above: Lola (Pascal and Janaki’s daughter) and her friend Malachai playing outside an abandoned homestead.

Above: Lola holding one of the neighbor’s new golden retriever pups.

Above: Marie brought some colored smoke sticks to play with for a personal project. “I wanted to share one of these sticks with the rest of the group who had cameras, so I set this off not too far from one of the abandoned homesteads. We had two minutes to photograph this against the incredible landscape before the pink smoke died down,” Marie says.

Above: The open fire pit surrounded by the orange and purple skies of Oroville.

Above: Family and friends of Le Marché St. George.

For more of Le Marché St. George:

• Into the Wild: A Canadian Thanksgiving
• Thanksgiving, Canadian-Style at Le Marché St. George
• Peasant Chic: Atelier St. George in Vancouver