SCOFF: Seniors' Celebration Of Food & Film
Our SCOFF video series was filmed to celebrate, build upon, and preserve seniors' food knowledge in Newfoundland & Labrador
“Back in my times, everybody was a gardener and a fisher. They used to fish and do gardens. That was what they called the good days.” - Warren Lovell (from his film on root cellars)
Food First NL’s SCOFF video series celebrates, preserves, and shares a wealth of food knowledge from seniors in Newfoundland & Labrador through 8 short, humorous, and enlightening documentaries.
These videos include a bounty of simple instructions on food skills like bottling beets, building your own slug zapper, easily maintaining a potato garden, preserving berries, building your own root cellar on any kind of property, getting the most out of your fish, and more, like how to make your own fertilizer that’s free, found on our own shores, and far better than anything store-bought.
By sharing these skills among seniors and with the next generation alike, we can save this food knowledge from being lost, while saving money at the grocery store (by learning how to procure and preserve more of our own food).
You can watch the whole documentary below, or read a little more on each video, and watch them separately:
Leo Hearn
Cleaning Cod
Leo’s video goes beyond filleting fish. It show us all the other edible parts of a cod that many people simply throw away, such as cod sounds, tongues, cheeks, and one of Leo’s favourites – the nape.
Warren Lovell
Root Cellars
Warren’s video is about using root cellars to keep the fall harvest fresh well into winter. As the video shows, you can get creative about where to build one. Warren set up his cellar below his shed.
Hope & Louis
Freezer Jam
Hope never has to run to the store for a bottle of jam. She grows a bounty of berries in her backyard, and picks wildberries as well. Her video teaches us how to make “freezer jam,” and why she prefers it.
Donna & Garth
Bottling Beets
Donna’s video shows us how easy bottling is, and talks about the ways preserves preserve community spirit and food security alike, by leaving fewer people reliant upon store-bought foods.
Marina Ploughman
Fish Stew
In this video, Marina shares her grandmother’s French recipe for fish stew. The sentiment in her video harkens back to the fading tradition of cherishing and passing along family recipes.
“We want to get every kid we can out on the water. Not to be a fish harvester, but to have the connection of being on the water that we grew up with. That’s going to be lost if we don’t give them the opportunity to see what it’s about. Otherwise, how do you learn, and know your culture?””
Garfield & Pheobe
Veggie Gardening
This video is a gem, for its humour, knowledge, and highly memorable quotes about all things gardening-related. This includes handy tips to pester the pests away from the fruits & veggies of your labour.
Elisabeth Penashue
Innu Donuts
Elisabeth’s video champions traditional Innu country foods. “There’s all kinds of problems now” she says. “Cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure. We didn’t have that in the bush in the country.”
Marg Hancock
Potato Patches
When Marg moved to Gander in 1964, she planted some potatoes, and has been using the same seed ever since. This film walks you through just how easy it is to maintain a potato patch of your own.
