Punjabi Patrika is a bilingual Punjabi – English newspaper out of Abbotsford, B.C. Its publication began in October 1996 and continues to be published weekly to this day in 2023. Digitization of the first 18 years of the newspapers physical archive (1996-2014) was recently completed, all of which are now available through UBC’s Open Collections! In combination with the Patrika’s own digital collection, which contains editions from 2015 to present day, the entire history of the newspaper’s publication is now available as a digital archive! In celebration of the completion of this project, I was excited to feature the Punjabi Patrika archive in a blog post.
In usual newspaper fashion, each edition of Punjabi Patrika contains many unique articles which cover many subjects, making it a great source to explore many topics relevant to Abbotsford and the Greater Vancouver area. The many editions of Punjabi Patrika newspaper include a wide variety of articles on politics, religion, community events, health, beauty, wellness, opinions, profiles, interviews, reporting on local current events and much more.
However, there was one thing in particular that caught my eye while exploring this collection, and that was the recipes. Many of these recipes were part of a recurring column known as Women’s Page, which was written by Harpreet Kaur Sinha, and sometimes they appear to have been contributed by various readers.
There were so many amazing looking recipes in this collection, I clearly had trouble narrowing it down… this blog post features eleven recipes and there’s many more I didn’t include here. I highly recommend browsing the collection if you’re interested in finding even more.
Full disclosure, I was not able to test these recipes before publication of this blog post, but I am certainly planning to at least attempt to recreate some of them in the near future.
This recipe is from pg. 25 of a November 1996 edition of the paper. This recipe is contributed by Ravi Gill.
These three recipes were published in a May, 2001 edition of the paper on pg. 35. The Five Jewel Creamed Lentils recipe was contributed by Julie Sahni, the Dal by Sucha Pannu Singh, and the Murgha Kari by an unknown contributor.
This recipe was included on pg. 51 of a January, 2013 edition of the paper and was part of Harpreet Kaur Sinha’s recuring column, Women’s Page.
This recipe is another that was part of Harpreet’s column, and was featured in a February, 2013 edition on pg. 43.
Sinha included these recipes for Lemon Rice and Onion Chutni on pg. 43 of an April, 2013 edition of the paper.
This is yet another recipe from Harpreet Sinha’s column. Featured in a January, 2013 edition on pg. 26.
Chickpea Salad with Lemon and Herbs:
If you were at all discouraged at the level of skill required for many of these recipes, there is still good news! This recipe is great for those who may still be developing their culinary expertise. Featured in Sinha’s column from April, 2013 on pg. 23.
This recipe is yet another from Sinha’a column. From pg. 43 of March, 2013 edition.
That’s all for this blog post. I hope you enjoyed and were inspired to try some of the recipes posted here (or any others you may find in the collection)! I know it inspired me. Please let us know in the comments if you try any of these recipes and how they turn out!
