Fredi Magazine Special Digital Edition 2017 | Page 51

SUM MER
FO CACCIA
IRENE
MATYS
AT PLAN B
FARMS
RECIPE AT JAMIEOLIVER.COM
IT WAS 1974, and 5-year-old Irene Matys was sitting at her grandmother’s kitchen table eating
chicken on a green plastic plate when the unexpected happened. The Turks invaded Northern
Cyprus. What followed next would change the Ttofalli family forever.
In what seemed like an instant, Turkish soldiers
invaded homes in Northern Cyprus taking prisoners
and evicting people from their homes without allow-
ing them to take any personal belongings. Soldiers
took Matys’ father prisoner while the Cypriot troops
moved the rest of the family to Cypriot refugee
camps. They didn’t know if he was alive or dead. It
wasn’t until later that they found out he had been in
an underground prison, and if not for a young Turk-
ish soldier who helped him escape, they may never
have seen him again. Unable to return to their
homes, they became refugees – living in refugee
camps, displaced from the only home they had.
Eventually, their conditions improved when a fam-
ily member helped them emigrate to Canada.
Fast forward 43 years – that young refugee girl is a
photographer, food stylist, home cook and farm to
table advocate. Irene Matys, also known on social
media as the thespicyolive1, has 12.3 thousand
followers on Instagram. Once you follow Irene on
Instagram or Facebook, you will be drawn to her
positive demeanor, her vibrant images of food and
delicious recipes.
Matys has always had a love for food and cooking. As
a young girl, she cared for her brother, cleaned and
cooked for the family. Cooking wasn’t a responsibility
she resisted, in fact, she loved it. Given her deep ded-
ication to her family, and considering what they went
through during the war, Irene would do anything to
be in the kitchen. When she came to Canada, her fa-
ther insisted that she get a business degree. Although
she would have rather worked at the family pizzeria
in Sarnia, she wanted to make her parents happy, so
she obliged. She landed a job in finance and met her
husband who was also in finance and they married.
Once they started a family, Matys became a stay-at-
home mom.
She continued to consult in finance, but she felt
unfulfilled. She volunteered at her children’s school,
and as soon as her youngest also began school, Ma-
tys saw an opportunity to do more. When her hus-
band said, she should find a hobby; it didn’t take her
long to do that. “I wanted to be in the kitchen,” she
says with a great huge smile on her face. “One of my
friends said, ‘why don’t you go to cooking school?’
And I thought ‘why not’. I enrolled in the Liaison
College of Culinary Arts for part time studies in the
evening so I could be at home during the day.”
Two years ago, in a conversation with her father, he
said to her, ‟It’s time for you to give back to Canada.
You have a beautiful life, your kids are healthy, you
have a beautiful family, you travel, so now it’s time to
give back.” “I remember growing up in soup kitchens
as a refugee, feeling hungry, and since I love food,
fredi digital 2017 •
51