As part of the town’s ongoing 150th anniversary celebrations – and in what is hoped to become an annual tradition – Greenville recently hosted a dinner featuring French-Canadian cuisine and music, celebrating the large contingent of residents descended from French immigrants from Quebec and Acadia.
Greenville had two separate waves of French-Canadian immigration, one in the tail end of the 1800s and early 1900s, and another in the 1960 and 1970s, with immigrants moving to town from Quebec and Acadia, most commonly from Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, northeast of Quebec, and the Lévis area. Once, the town had one of the largest French-speaking populations per capita.
The town celebrated that heritage with a dinner populated by recipes handed down through Greenville families for generations.
People from Greenville, as well as other towns with strong French-Canadian heritage, including Gardner, Fitchburg, Jaffrey, Lowell, Nashua and Manchester, attended, with over 150 people joining.
The menu consisted of boules de ragout (a Quebec-style meatball stew) crepes, Acadian poutine, râpées (a dumpling with meat filling), chiard (a meat and potato dish) stew, pea soup, baked beans and pâté chinois (a shepherd’s pie).
For desert, there was tarte a sucre (sugar pie), tarte au raisin (raisin pie), pets de soeurs (French cinnamon rolls) grand peres (maple syrup dumplings) and salmon pie.
Live music from Quebec and Acadia accompanied the meal. Eric Boodman took to the fiddle and provided vocals, along with Emily Troll on accordion and fiddle and Jessie Ball on guitar, mandolin and foot percussion.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 603-924-7172, Ext. 244, or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.