Rather Than Hoarding, Mary Berg Suggests a New Place to Shop as MARY’S KITCHEN CRUSH Returns to CTV

By BILL HARRIS

Special to The Lede

Be an anti-hoarder! Go shopping in cupboards, fridges, and freezers!

That’s the important message from Mary Berg in these challenging times of coronavirus, with new episodes of MARY’S KITCHEN CRUSH airing Sundays at 7:30 p.m. ET on CTV, beginning March 22.

“Any time I’m about to make a recipe, or dinner, the first thing I do is shop my pantry,” Berg said. “I think this is the best time to have that mindset. Because we don’t want to hoard, we shouldn’t be doing anything like that.”

Berg, of course, is Canada’s culinary sweetheart, a national best-selling cookbook author, and a former winner on CTV’s MASTERCHEF CANADA. In each episode of MARY’S KITCHEN CRUSH, she creates original recipes inspired by her family and close friends.

But with so many people spending more time at home due to the worldwide pandemic, getting a bit more creative in the kitchen has never been more important, not only for sustenance, but also, quite frankly, to help pass the time.

“People are thinking more about what they’re going to cook, and giving each other ideas,” Berg said. “When I make recipes, whether it’s for the show, or my book, I try to make it as ‘pantry staple-y’ as possible, because that’s just the way I cook at home. I hate it when I get a recipe and I have to run to the store for a special ingredient. So hopefully the recipes in these upcoming episodes can spark imagination, so we get ourselves out of this quarantine rut.”

Berg definitely practices what she’s preaching.

“Right now, literally on my stove, I had some chicken bones in the freezer, I had some leftover duck that was from a restaurant a couple of months ago, I’ve thrown all of that into a pot with a bunch of vegetable ends that were looking a little worse for wear, and I’m just making a big pot of stock that I’ll turn into soup for my husband over the next little while,” she said. “It’s basically figuring out how to minimize waste. I think that’s the key, way more than hoarding.”

And Berg’s philosophy can be seen specifically in one of the upcoming new episodes.

“I’m making brunch for my brother and his … well, at that point it was his fiancée, but they’re married now, so he did go through with it,” she said. “But I make these danishes from things that are staples in my house. Basically it’s just a flour, butter, pastry situation, with water in it, super simple and delicious. And then just jam – like, that errant jar of jam you have at the back of your fridge that you haven’t thought about forever. You can use that and whip up something tasty and homey. Because I think everyone’s going to have to find a new hobby, and what better hobby than playing around in the kitchen and figuring out how to use those things up?”

Berg also hopes that her show can provide some “comfort food” in a wider sense.

“When every morning there’s a press conference with spooky news, I think having something that’s just light, and for lack of a better term, just innocuously fun, I feel is a great thing,” she said. “As we’re all kind of isolating ourselves, the whole vibe of the show when we were making it was, ‘You’re at my house and we’re hanging out.’ So I just hope that continues to come across, especially when we’re so distant from the people we’d normally be close to.”

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