Writing reflecting justice, the natural world, food, fitness, fabric, and things handmade.

Growing up in an Air Force family as an athlete with horses as her closest companions, dee thought she’d be an Olympic equestrian, a vet… or maybe a journalist. In the end, after a peripatetic childhood, living on or near airbases across Canada and overseas, she left the family farm in Saskatchewan where her parents had settled, and decided to become a chef. She attended a fulltime program at Vancouver Vocational Institute; completed her apprenticeship and earned her Red Seal at Calgary’s Southern Alberta Institute of Technology/SAIT; travelled with her husband and their nine-month-old babe in arms to study with Madeleine Kamman at her graduate-chef-level cooking school in Annecy, France; and attended Darina Allen’s professional cooking school at Ballymaloe, East County Cork, Ireland.

In Calgary, dee worked as a cook, then started a family. She founded her catering company, Foodsmith, in the 1980s, then she and her husband purchased a small restaurant in 1992 and gave it the same name. Foodsmith was highly regarded for its innovative menus and stellar food. As chef, true to her training from Madame Kamman, dee featured the names of “her” growers and farmers on her restaurant’s daily evolving menus – more than a decade before the term “locavore” entered the culinary lexicon. Foodsmith’s influential but short-lived regional cuisine was among the vanguard that changed how Calgarians ate. But with two small children and her own health issues, dee and her husband decided to sell Foodsmith in 1994. 

In 1996, Gail Norton, owner of The Cookbook Co Cooks in Calgary, asked dee if she’d like to lead a farmgate tour of city folks traveling to the country to meet their farmers, and so was born the “Foodie Tootles Annual Farm-Gate Tour”. Once a year, dee researched, organized, and hosted day-long culinary ag-tourism road trips in a big yellow school bus, taking the public to local working farms & ranches around Alberta. These popular tours sowed the seeds for dee’s ongoing deep relationships with the farmers and growers who fed her. The Tootles included snacks and goods for purchase at each stop, and supper, cooked by dee and their hosts, at the final destination. dee led the Tootle until 2010, when she handed it over to foodie entrepreneur and writer Karen Anderson. 

Between 2001 and 2010, dee’s unique knowledge of the local food system of restaurateurs, producers, and growers made her a valuable resource, and she consulted to the Alberta government’s Agriculture and Rural Development (AARD) department. She provided insight and information on local food systems and distribution issues, agri-tourism, land and water issues, and organizations that support local producers, from Slow Food to Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs). During this time, she researched, organized, and hosted industry round table and panel presentations; organized and led culinary media tours; researched and wrote reports on provincial culinary anthropology; researched and designed province-wide self-guided driving tours; composed a handbook on conducting successful farm festivals; analyzed and reported on the current provincial state of regional cuisine; researched culinary tourism and screened potential ‘local fare’ restaurant participants for Dine Alberta’s ‘local foods in local restaurants’ initiative.  

At the same time, Slow Food arrived in Calgary, and dee signed on, pleased to find an organization with similar values – good, clean, fair, local food for all. dee’s commitment to local agriculture and sustainable foods led her to take an active and leading role in Slow Food from its earliest stages, first in Calgary and later in Saskatoon, where she was a co-founder. She is Past Chair of both Slow Food Saskatoon and Slow Food Calgary, and served on the Terra Madre nomination committee in Calgary, and attended Terra Madre in Torino, Italy, in 2008. She served on the steering committees of both Calgary and Saskatoon, spoke publicly on Slow Food’s behalf, and delivered an annual Slow New Year’s address to members – over dinner, of course. dee attended the national conference several times – a high point was the year Italian Slow Food leader and co-founder Carlo Petrini purchased four of the handmade poetry chapbooks dee had made as a fundraiser for Slow Food Saskatoon. In 2016, Slow Food Canada honoured dee with the designation of Slow Food Hero. 

In 1995, with her restaurant life behind her, dee became a busy culinary educator when her friend Gail Norton moved her shop, The Cookbook Co Cooks, into bright new digs with a kitchen. dee became one of the school’s lead instructors in hands-on and demonstration formats at public classes, private classes, and team-building corporate events. She worked as assistant alongside some of the era’s brightest culinary lights, among them Hugh Carpenter, Deborah Madison, Madeleine Kamman, Diana Kennedy, Bonnie Stern, and John Ash. Between 1995 and 2010, she taught thousands of Albertans the nuts and bolts of cooking methods, ingredients, knife skills, food and wine pairings, and food culture, and was described by students as a teacher “blessed with precision and whimsy.” As a chef who believed in giving people the practical tools to produce good food in a stress-free and relaxed manner, she specialized in culinary techniques (particularly knife skills) and flavour principles. She was especially fond of Indian fare, vegetarian and seasonal cuisine utilizing local producers, and the robust uncomplicated dishes of Spain, France, and Italy. She became a respected mentor to chefs, cooks and writers. Her teaching expanded to include annual kids’ summer cooking camps. 

After selling Foodsmith in 1994, dee started writing about food. Her first articles appeared in Calgary’s City Palate magazine in 1994; she would write regularly for the Palate until 2010. She wrote about local growers and Foodie Tootles in Alberta and beyond, but also about issues, ingredients, equipment, tools, chefs and cooks, Slow Food and CSAs, kitchen kids, men in the kitchen, and many, many recipes. Over the years she wrote food articles for a number of magazines, including Alberta Views, Avenue, Calgary, Canadian Living, Flavours, Northwest Palate, Western Living, West, and others.  

Drawing on her restaurant and catering experience, dee published her first book, Skinny Feasts, in 1997. The Quick Gourmet followed two years later; both were national bestsellers. After her marriage ended in 2000, she attended the Greenbriar Writers Symposium in West Virginia to sharpen her food writing chops.  

In 2001, dee became a weekly freelance culinary columnist and regular food features writer for the Calgary Herald. She adopted the handle of “the Curious Cook” with a wide mandate to explore cooking, profile growers, chefs and cooks, kitchen science, cooking methods, the food of new arrivals, hunger and sustainability, regionalism, local food-distribution systems, land and water access, animal welfare, farm labour, organics and biodynamics, agri-tourism, and organizations from Slow Food to Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), with emphasis on Western Canada and Alberta, including photo credits. Many of her columns and features were picked up and carried by many other papers in the Southam chain. Her third book, The Curious Cook at Home, based on her columns, came out in in 2003, and was a national success. In 2008, she published Shop Talk, a culinary resource guide that combined her interest in supporting local growers with the challenge of sourcing ingredients in a city of diverse ethnic and cultural residents. dee’s relationship with the Calgary Herald ended in 2008, when the Canwest newspaper chain let go of many freelance writers. 

In 2005, on the advice of a poet-friend, dee attended Sage Hill Writing for the first time in the Qu’Appelle Valley of southern Saskatchewan. At Sage Hill, she met more poets, and encountered the magic of the writing community and workshops, and the power of writing in rural retreats. Her first poem was published in 2007. A year later, dee attended a writing retreat at the Banff Centre, and met Dave Margoshes, a Regina-based poet, writer, and journalist. Sparks flew. After a long-distance courtship of several years’ duration, dee and Dave moved in together, and relocated to her family’s farm west of Saskatoon in the summer of 2010. A year later, a flood engulfed much of their farm. For seven years, they lived next to a virtual lake, in the company of shorebirds and waterfowl, all of which provided ample grist for dee’s writing mill. 

dee immersed herself fulltime in the world of writing fiction, essays, and poetry. She joined a writing group, and returned to Sage Hill repeatedly. In 2012, dee published Foodshed: An Edible Alberta Alphabet, in tribute to her long-time sustainably-minded farm and ranch friends in Alberta. It received Best Food Literature Book (Canadian English-language) at the 2013 Gourmand World Cookbooks Awards; Best Culinary Book, 2013 High Plains Book Awards; and 3rd prize, 2014 Les Dames D’Escoffier M.F.K. Fisher Award for Excellence in Culinary Writing,. 

A lifelong learner, dee returned to university in her 50s and again in her 60s. She earned an MFA in Writing in 2014 at the University of Saskatchewan. Wildness Rushing In, dee’s first poetry collection, was published in 2014, followed a year later by her first short story collection, What Can’t Be Undone. With a new book idea in mind, dee earned an MA in English Lit in 2021. Her Master’s thesis explored gender and genre in MFK Fisher’s translation of Brillat-Savarin’s 1825 classic, The Physiology of Taste. 

In 2021, she published a collection of essays titled Bread & Water, a deeply personal memoir and mediation on food, family, place, and love, and was awarded the Saskatchewan Book Awards University of Saskatchewan President’s Office Nonfiction Award. It is a finalist for Taste Canada Book Awards’ Culinary Narrative Award. In 2022, her first novel, Danceland Diary, which arose from her MFA in Wiring creative thesis, was published. Her second poetry collection, Among the Untamed, will be published in 2023. 

dee is a highly regarded and active member of the writing community. She taught creative writing at St. Peter’s College, in Muenster, Saskatchewan, served as poetry editor for Grain magazine for three years, and was the 35th Writer in Residence at the Saskatoon Public Library. For three years running, she led Sage Hill Writing’s summertime week-long writing workshop camp for teens. Her reputation as a generous and inspiring educator dates back to her decades of teaching cooking in Calgary, where she was recognized as a teacher “blessed with precision and whimsy.”  Her literary teaching offers the same quirky, detailed, and deeply involved focus. She has mentored many writers, and offers writing workshops on a variety of craft-based topics, only some of which include any mention of food.  

Beyond writing her own poems, essays, and fiction, dee has also edited a novel, The School of the Haunted River by (the late) Colleen Gerwing, plus five nonfiction books for several Canadian presses: Saskatoon: City of Bridges by Amy Jo Ehman; Moose Jaw: Tunnel City by Mary Bishop Harelkin; Every Day We Disappear by Angela Long; The Evolution of the Provincial Court of Saskatchewan by Amy Jo Ehman; and Finding My Way: A Memoir by Lois Simmie. She also produced and edited Food Works: plums in the ice box, a food poetry chapbook that features the work of 23 Saskatchewan poets. It is hand-bound-bound and hand-stitched, a limited-edition poetry chapbook designed as a fundraiser for Slow Food.

dee is a talented and engaging public speaker, and has addressed food conference, literary conferences, and many things in between. She is member of the Writers Union of Canada, The League of Canadian Poets, Slow Food, and the Saskatchewan Writers Guild. She writes a regular food column for Grainews, which is read by thousands of Western Canadian farmers and ranchers. dee’s wide-ranging and peripatetic life and inspiration extends from her passion for handmade in many forms – quilting, cooking, writing, sewing, gardening – to ongoing commitment to personal wellness and fitness, and social and environmental causes.  

A lifelong athlete, dee runs half-marathons, walks, swims, and has a daily yoga practice. For fun, she turns to quilting and sewing, cooking, painting, growing orchids and vegetables, and betting on the ponies at the track. She loves crossword puzzles, good coffee, better wine, mysteries and period movies, books and reading, folk music, R&B and bluegrass, animals, and the natural world. She is the proud mother of two adult sons who are fabulous cooks. dee Hobsbawn-Smith and her husband, the poet and writer Dave Margoshes, live in Treaty Six Territory, home of the Cree, Lakoda, Dakota, Nakoda, Dene, and the traditional home of the Métis Nation.