One cannot think well, love well, sleep well...

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." 

- Virginia Woolf

We gave ourselves just over 3 months to plan our wedding. Bags of time. Oodles. An eternity. No problemo.

Then I started researching the food. Because, as you’d expect, that was the most important element of the day.

If we were going to put money into anything in this wedding, it was the food.

With three months to plan the wedding I wasn’t worried.

My dream wedding, when I thought about it, involved 10 people in a restaurant with the freedom to choose what they wished from the menu and winelist. And I was aghast at the number of places whose imaginations stopped at: chicken or beef. I was not inspired.

And what they charged for that creativity! They were eating our modest budget... tartare.

I was telling my friend Julia this over dinner at her house one night. The night that she and Guy met Steve for the first time. Their beautiful home had just been renovated – they looked around. “How many people are you inviting," they asked.

 “About 50,” I said.

“You could have it here.”

We laughed…and then we stopped laughing…and then we thought about it…The back room was walled by French doors that overlooked a flagstone terrace. If it was warm enough, wedding outside, if not, by the fireplace. We agreed.

So we had a venue…we also had an officiant for the ceremony. My friend Karen, of the magic nuts, had an uncle who was an officiant. Done.

Next: back to how to feed them.

Our budget bled red everytime I called a well-known wedding venue…Steve’s face looked like he was hemorrhaging. And so it went: wedding venues/restaurants/big rooms/caterers/tables/linen/cutlery/glasses/rent-a-dream wedding…and I realized the wedding industry was salivating, poised for attack, waiting for me to give in.

Suddenly the wedding was less than four weeks away.

I was walking down Yonge Street one afternoon, after lunch with a friend, and walked passed The Stork on the Roof, a restaurant I loved and had been to a few times. It was owned by Jennifer Gittins and Michael van den Winkel, friends of friends. They had just finished their lunch service, so I went in to say hi and thought it wouldn’t hurt to pick their brains on how to make dinner out of cheese and crackers for 50.

They hugged me and asked how things were going. “Well I’m getting married in a month, and looking for a way to feed people. You guys don’t do weddings do you?” I hoped I didn’t look too desperate, but I think it was too late.

Jen looked at Michael and said, “Sure! We’d love to. We’ve closed the restaurant for birthday parties I don’t see why we can’t for a wedding.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. One of my favourite restaurants available? On a Friday night? In a month?

I tripped home like the not-so-giddy bride I was, and told Steve – he trusted my instinct (part of why I love him) – so we went to meet the chefs that weekend, before they opened. They pulled out a variety of menus. My jaw dropped. They were offering a choice of 4 appetizers, 5 entrees, and 4 desserts. There would be an open bar, a choice of wine, and champagne after the main course. I nearly teared up. It was what I had dreamed of for 10, but was getting for 50 instead. Steve loved the restaurant, it was warm and friendly and unpretentious and Jen and Mike oozed the passion they have for the food…We knew we were in good hands.

Then the price. I closed my eyes. We had chosen the more expensive menu. Open bar. Wine. Champagne. It came in at $65 per person…everything except the tip.

We came in UNDER budget. Who ever heard of such a thing? I let go my giddy side.

The day before the wedding my friends the graces all gathered at Julia’s to help slice, chop, prep the hors d’oeuvres we were serving before the ceremony. Julia wanted to take care of the flowers. Steve was busy mixing dance and dining CDs.

We laughed, and talked, and rejoiced at it all. It was elegant. It was communal. It was beautiful. Cook with love…it’ll show in the food.

And the next morning…Steve and I couldn’t help marveling at how happy the day was. It was sunny and warmer than normal. We were calm and happy.

Then Steve picked me up from my hair stylist at 4pm (an hour later than I expected). We fought traffic northward to Julia’s house, me in the passenger seat with my hair held up with over 100 bobby pins, realizing as I stared at the people heading home from work that I had written my vows, memorized them and stored them somewhere in my brain where the sun don’t shine. The nerves had arrived.

Then the words flooded back to the front of my brain and I could breathe again. We arrived, the food prepping was in full swing, I went upstairs to change. Dear Jain brought us champagne, and left us alone while we just marveled at the precipice we were on.

It was a happy wedding. As 7pm rolled up to us, I finally lost it…I giggled for about five minutes as we all gathered outside on the terrace – lost it. Not mascara-smudging lost it…but almost. Steve lost it once I’d said my vows to him. He was speechless – which is something for Steve. Then when he said his vows, they came out in a whisper. At least the officiant verified he’d promised a bunch of stuff, no one else heard a thing.

Then we were off to the restaurant – and the orders were taken and the meals flowed out of that small kitchen like poetry. The room was almost silent as everyone tucked in. I chose the seared scallops, the venison and then the crumble. Cook with love…

Jen and Michael sold the restaurant last year. They closed on my birthday. So we went for one more dinner – I had my first soufflé. I know they’ve taken some deserved time off and are thinking about re-opening with a different theme…and I can’t wait. But I don’t think they realize how far beyond fulfilling my dream they went. They will always be embedded in the memory of the happiest day I’ve known. And that’s something.

Have a wonderful weekend…
Eat, love, and sleep well…

The Missing Link

Steve sat across the table from me – his eyes sparkling from sudden realization and a little too much wine. His arm was extended, his finger pointing. “You think that I gave up?”

He had achieved the perfect smirk.

I could feel my cheeks flush, my eyes narrow, my arm rise, my finger point back, “You mean you think that I gave up?”

We stared for a bit.

Then I grabbed the corkscrew, another bottle of wine, the dessert and headed for the living room…and he followed.

I knew my life had just shifted – like an earthquake had just passed through the kitchen.

All because of a lost email.

A few weeks before that dinner, our very excellent friendship took a strange, vortexed dive into the weird world of email flirtation. He admits now he was the big, dirty slut who started it all (his words, not mine). But only because, he claims, I must have “meant something” when I emailed him and signed it with just an “n”. I didn’t…but it’s kind of a spurious denial now.

This needs perspective. I am still living down my reputation as an oblivious non-flirter. I was single for four years. My friend Bill told me he was going to pay to have my radar fixed, because something was obviously very wrong. I NEVER noticed when someone noticed me.

When I did stumble into flirtation – I lived up to my obliviousness: I emailed one guy I liked a downright lascivious invitation to “keep in touch”. I was so proud of how forward I was. I never heard from him again.

My friends, those so-called graces of mine, nearly peed their pants. I still hear that story.

So falling in love has a lot to do with good fortune. Because in my case it almost didn’t happen.

Steve and I met through one of my best friends, one of the graces in my life, Carol. She and Steve had been college buddies. They had become rock climbing partners after losing touch for a bit, and we started hanging out.

Steve walked into the pub the first time I met him, and smiled. His smile lit me up. He’s the kindest person I have ever met, one of the most compassionate, and has a sense of humour that chokes us all…and he used all that to get through a hard time.

He was coming out of a long-term relationship – and since Carol and I have both been there, we understood the emotional landslide.

Then, after a winter-long road trip through North America and into Mexico he came home to climb back into his new life.

The emails started about a month later. And as we sneaked toward my birthday at the beginning of May, he offered to cook me dinner. Before we knew it, we were debating the merits of various super villain costumes and how good showers are.

I didn’t take him seriously – because my radar is, as I’ve said, extremely off track. Besides, I kept saying – IT’S STEVE.

Then after a flurry of furious, very lusty typing – he suddenly stopped.

He simply wrote one night that: “he had a visitor coming.” Didn’t know what that meant…but it stopped.

I was certain I had been wrong, misread it all, couldn’t flirt to save my life…See?

And so it went for the next week – we dove back to the fringes of friendship and just agreed on the mundane details of scheduling the dinner and where it would be and who would be cooking and what time it should be.

My stomach fluttered when he arrived. I felt foolish and embarrassed and worked at being normal. He showed up on his motorcycle with a smile and a dinner already cooked. He had planned a menu he could pack into the paniers on the back of the bike.

He walked in with: a chilled bottle of champagne, homemade guacamole and bread to start, curried shrimp and spinach on rice, homemade na’an bread, homemade raita for the main, and homemade apple turnovers for dessert. He was wearing the closest thing he could find to an Indian shirt…all because I love Indian food.

And he prepped it all while I was writing (on deadline).

Then we ate. It was beautiful. As we finished up the last of the main course, I got up to open another bottle of wine. And I tested the water – dipped my toe in… “So we never concluded whose Catwoman costume was the best…”

And he said, “Yes we did. Julie Newmar. I said so in the next email. You got that one right? Because my computer crashed right after I pressed….”

He paused. He smirked, and pointed, “You think that I gave up.”

I pointed back at him and we stared at each other for a long time. My radar was working fine.

He never really left. Even though he’d just rented an apartment and furnished it.

He explained that because I hadn't answered the "missing" email, he figured he'd offended me, gone too far...tested the limits. So he backed off and looked at the dinner as a friendship salvation mission.

Five weeks later, down in a park that juts out into Lake Ontario, on the first day of summer, we went out on an actual "first date". (He even left a voicemail, introducing himself and asking me out and said his friend Carol had said we should meet...)

He sat on a log, I sat on the ground leaning on his legs, and he said he wanted to marry me. And I said I wanted to marry him. Then I told him, he hadn't actually asked me. So he did.

I pulled out a half bottle of Veuve Clicquot I had bought just in case (since my radar was by now, so polished, I sensed what was coming). Then I did a happy dance on the rocks – the wind blowing with me, the sun dancing in and out of the white clouds, the cormorants skimming along the surface of the waves.

There was no existential hesitation. It was an instinctive reaction, a gut feeling, a crazy, impetuous, underthought life change. It was soooo unlike me.

I was so happy.

I’ve lived with Steve now for two years – well, 2 ½. We work together in the same room everyday: our office by day, our living room by night.

About six months into the marriage I realized how lucky I’d been. We had learned more about each other – knew more about our moods, our needs, our habits…I felt richer and luckier. We are good partners.

We share cooking duties – and love cooking together. We talk. We lean on each other. We push and challenge each other. Then we talk some more. And I’ve learned to keep saying I love you out loud and often – because I now know how rare it is.

So this weekend we’ll be celebrating 2 years of fixed radar, lost and found emails, and I think we have enough imagination to leave out the catwoman suit. I never knew how rich life could be.

Another Broken Spine Recipe

My cookbooks live on top of the cupboards over my sink. At 5'10" I can reach them no problem - although dusting them is still a chore. I came across another book with a broken spine - and it's one of those expansive titles again: The Top 100 Pasta Sauces, by Diane Seed. I don't know if you've seen it, my copy was printed in 1992.

I let it fall open and it showed its cracks on page 97 - which belies tasty and easy...and if you read Adam's pro-fat manifesto, you will be supporting him by trying this - think of it as a good or delicious deed:


Rigatoni alla Norcina - Rigatoni with Norcia Sauce

550g/1lb rigatoni or short pasta

1 small onion
15ml/1 tbsp olive oil
200g/7 oz pork sausages
100ml/4fl oz white wine
250ml/8fl oz double (heavy) cream
50g/2oz (generous 1/2 cup) freshly grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper

Slice the onion very finely and fry slowly in the olive oil in a covered pan. The onion should not be allowed to change colour. (Did you know that if you cover the pan, the onions will take longer to brown? - Handy to know if you're still chopping and you only want the onions translucent and perfumey and soft and silky, but I digress...)

Remove the skin from the sausages and divide the meat into very small pieces. Put them in the pan with the onion and add the wine. After 10 minutes, add the cream and simmer gently, uncovered, for about 10 minutes.

Remove from heat, add salt to taste, and keep warm.

Cook the pasta. Drain it, toss in the grated cheese, and turn into a heated serving dish. Stir in the sauce, add freshly ground black pepper to taste and serve at once.

Feeds 4. Oh my...

Zap

I have a memory of tagine. It’s from Paris. I was a tagine virgin. I had just climbed the ramparts of Notre Dame cathedral. I walked among the weird-headed gargoyles – at the ready to spit rain down on the poor mortals on the ground.

Suddenly the bells clanged to life, and I found myself walking with a limp, all hunched over. It was glorious.

And when my imagination and my body came back to the ground, I was hungry.

I found a restaurant on the Left Bank (well it was left from where I was standing) – a little North African place and thought I’d treat myself to a little tagine. When you’re sitting in a restaurant on your own, with no one to eavesdrop on, you look around with all your senses – and I wanted time to stand still for just a moment while I let it sink in that I was in Paris, sipping wine, and waiting for my tagine to head out of the kitchen.

It was one of my best meals there - I found Paris difficult to eat in on a backpacker's budget. My absolutely favourite meal, was a loaf of rustic bread, some raw cheese and a tomato that I picked up on my way to the Louvre and ate on the grass before going in to see Napoleon's tomb. 

Anyway, tagine is one of those dishes that grabs your nose and won’t let go…and it ain’t as difficult as it may look – believe me, I’d know.

A couple of weeks ago I was leafing through a Canadian magazine that had a recipe for tagine. And it was one of those rare moments I had almost everything at hand or in the cupboard. I had just bought a piece of fresh lamb from our favourite place: Fresh from the Farm – and now I knew what I had to do with it.

Here’s a strong recipe from what I thought would be a bland source…I was wrong. It will zap your home with beautiful, exotic scents - it actually drew our dear landlady Diana, an adventurous eater herself, downstairs to see what was up in the stewpot. (She's off in Turkey right now having her own food adventures which she promised to remember for me.)

Moroccan Lamb Tagine with Apricots and Golden Raisins
Adapted from Canadian Living, September 2006 issue:

3 lb boneless lamb shoulder
2tsp ground cumin
1 ½ tsp cinnamon
1 tsp each salt and ground ginger
½ tsp each turmeric and pepper (I overdid it on the turmeric, still worked out)
2 cups chicken stock (if you have any homemade…oh my…what a difference)
1 tsp saffron threads
¼ cup slivered almonds
3 tbsp vegetable oil
2 onions, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
4 carrots, sliced diagonally (I would steam these a little ahead, I was standing around waiting for them to cook through)
1 cup sliced dried apricots
½ cup golden raisins (I only had Thomson raisins, which worked fine)
1 tbsp liquid honey
1 tbsp fresh mint (actually does make a difference even though it’s a garnish)

Trim the fat from the lamb and cut into 1 ¼” cubes. Set aside.
In a large bowl, combine cumin, cinnamon, salt, ginger, turmeric and pepper; remove 1tsp and set aside. Add lamb to bowl and toss. Set aside.
In sauce pan, heat stock until hot; add saffron and let stand for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile in large shallow Dutch oven, toast almonds over medium heat until golden. Remove and set aside.
Add 1 tsp of oil to the pan, heat over medium high heat and brown the lamb in batches, adding more oil as necessary. (I found this went very quickly – so keep an eye on it). Transfer to a plate.
Add remaining oil to the pan; fry onions, garlic and reserved spice mixture over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until garlic is golden, about 5 minutes. Return lamb and any juices to pan. Add stock mixture and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low; cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until lamb is tender, about 1 hour.
Add carrots, apricots, raisins and honey; cover and simmer, until carrots are tender about 30 mins. (I would steam the carrots a bit to get them started)
Uncover and boil over medium heat until thickened to consistency of gravy, about 5 mins.

The recipe says this can be made ahead – just let it cool for 30 mins. Then put in an airtight container and refrigerate. Keep for no more than two days.

Then sprinkle with almonds and mint. And enjoy…I served this with rice…and not a drop was left - and I wanted to know if it tasted better the next day...I have a feeling it would. Bon Appetit.

One

I love eating out. Even alone. When I do, I do the book crutch – I bring the book, but don’t necessarily read it. Or I read it. Whatever. I might spend the whole time just watching other people eating together, alone, or alone together.

(I’m a notorious eavesdropper. Why do people talk about the stuff they talk about in a restaurant? How can’t I listen to why they’re breaking up/having an affair/going bankrupt/or talking about others who are? And I mean, it’s just so rude of me…my nearest and dearest can do an impression of me at a table, leaning like I’m being slightly pushed by the wind toward the conversation, my ears pink with curiosity and swelling to the size of satellite dishes. I know…it’s bad.)

Steve and I went out one night last spring to a swishy restaurant and watched a couple spend the first half hour of their coming together, each in separate communion with a Blackberry.

We giggled, but in that we’re-all-going-to-die, hysterical kind of way.

Anyway, a few people I’ve met fear eating alone more than almost anything – although they fear just being alone even more.

I’m not one of them.

I remember a friend wondering at it – after his marriage broke up under him, while he swirled in that endless sea of emotional muck, almost drowning, just treading water, begging for solid ground – “But what do you do when you’re alone? How can you stand it?”

I think part of what he was asking was how do I fill my time? And more profoundly, why doesn’t it fill me with dread?

I don’t understand. Is the fear of being alone the fear of stuff you don’t want to hear/see/taste/feel inside? Is loneliness a vacuum that fills life with all its toxic waste? I don’t know. I’ve never felt that way. I mean I think you can tell that roiling about in the muck is part of who some of us food bloggers are.

I grew up as an “only” child, spent lots of time alone, and don’t remember loneliness at all.

And then I went traveling. I was single for the first time in years and I exulted in it. I was taking off alone. I was free.

I had put a high price on wonder and got my money’s worth. There were mountains and seas and deserts and jungles. And that was just the logistics and bureaucracy. Mastering the train schedule in India and buying a ticket should fulfill requirements for graduate degrees. And then, there really were mountains and seas and deserts and jungles.

I was going to say that I pushed my boundaries in Nepal and India. But the truth is, Nepal and India pushed me, well shoved me really. I had little choice. Life and death were entwined there – right in front of you.

For example, on just one day I saw Buddhist monks chanting and praying in the biggest temple outside of Tibet - I watched Hindu attendants prepare 5 funeral pyres - I walked through the temple grounds built to honour Shiva – I walked past sadhus, holy men who live with nothing, their faces painted, their hair and eyes wild, their trident spears at their sides – I watched monkeys hunt and tease each other in the trees - and happened on a courtyard where a few families had just sacrificed a young calf– its head severed, dogs licking at the spilled blood, men dipping their fingers in it, daubing the blood carefully on their foreheads and pouring the remainder over the shrine where they’d killed the animal, two children crouched and staring in fascination at the open neck until the adults dragged the carcass off across the cobblestones – it was so real. Surreal. It pushed every boundary I knew.

I returned to the river and sat and watched the cremations start. The buildings nearby were all hospices. People died there, cremated openly, mourned openly. A shin bone rolled off a funeral pyre, the attendant picked it up with two sticks, and put it back in the flames. The breeze turned and blew smoke, ash and grief over us. A skull burst with a loud, sudden popping sound – which they said released the soul. And it was done.

I went back to Kathmandu late in the afternoon - heavy, quiet, different.

Somewhere along the road, about three months into my trip, I was carrying more baggage than I thought. The time had given me space – the distance from home had given me time to re-skin myself – I mean, to find out that I was actually me, not a confluence of me with partners.

And life and death had been in my face. Everything I took for granted came into relief.

I found myself in my hammock, overlooking the sea, on the balcony of my hut in Thailand that was costing me $8 per night (Cdn) – with a bathroom…and occasional electricity. And I was sobbing. I was more alone than I’d ever been.

And I was surprised by the feeling. Kind of bitter, kind of sweet – maybe umami…

It was official. I was lonely.

I was homesick. I needed people more than I thought. I needed my people.
Loneliness is in everyone – somewhere.
Touching it was revealing and it felt kind of good, in a strange kind of way.

You know what I did. I sent emails home to everyone telling them I loved them, then I grabbed my book and headed for the restaurant nearby that knew a thing or two about pad thai and green curry – and if they’d caught any red snapper, I’d have to hurry…and I went and read and looked at the sea as the sun set, and I started gabbing with people - all of them looking for something, even if they didn’t know it.

You know one of these days I’m going to lighten up in this blog and you’re going to be shocked.

Top: A picture of me on Bapu, somewhere outside of Jaisalmer, India, 2001.

The Re-Invigorator

My friend Naomi moved into her new apartment on Saturday - right in our neighbourhood - I could throw a stale bun over the house across the street and might just land it in her new backyard. It's wonderful to have her so close - spittin' distance, as some would say.

She helped Steve and I through our food rut on the weekend by coming over to share her first meal in her new 'hood.

We started with the crack of the cork on a bottle of Prosecco...I really think that should be a daily ritual. Really. I do. New home, new sights, new sounds, and bubbles in a glass...

And then dinner: roasted chicken and vegetables - it's the vegetables I want to share the most (but thank you chicken, you came to a glorious end) - we had: roasted potatoes and parsnips (oh the nose's odes to parsnips), zucchini grilled on the bbq, and...oh...yeah...butternut squash with carrots and ginger.

I am a NUT for any root vegetable. I lunged at the butternut squash when I saw it at the store. It is one of my favourites. So I knew it had to be part of the new home feast.

It is so easy and so wonderful: peel the squash, remove the seeds (and save them - see below) and cut into 1 1/2" chunks. Peel the carrots and cut into smaller pieces - the carrots tend to cook slower. Peel about one inch of fresh ginger and cut into slivers...Throw all this in water and boil until mashable. Get the water out, get out the masher and get to work. Add some butter if you like. And check the salt level...

The flavours and colours blend and meld into an autumn landscape in a bowl - with the ginger perfume heading up to your nose like teasing seduction - you chase it, but it's elusive, you let it be, it comes to you.

The seeds you can separate from the pulp, lightly oil them, if you like, (try canola oil instead of olive oil), and sprinkle them with salt. Put them in the oven at 275 degrees until lightly browned. You'll start to hear them pop if they've been in there too long.

And for dessert Steve baked a pear and peach crumble with the almost last crops of locally grown fruit - he also tossed in some thompson raisins and slivered almonds. It was unbelievable...mmmm leftovers...

I think the spice is back in the cooking adventure - it's so easy once you're cooking for others.

Thanks Naomi, and welcome home.

Chicken and Fruit in Curry Sauce

I was thinking about the rut I sometimes get into with cooking - when I have four or five dinners that rotate through my life and palate - and I forget some of the previous favourites.

So feeling a bit directionless gullet wise, I started digging through the cookbook collection, looking for those with broken spines.

My first entry in this collection is from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. It was a gift, and while I was nomadic, it was one of the few cookbooks not packed away, so it got a good thumbing through.

And the book started falling open at two places: the first - how to carve a turkey (which I think like pain, I keep wiping from my memory) the second - a happy rediscovery of an old standby - chicken curry. No, it's not from a real Indian cookbook, but it's got such a great twist and is so fast, it's worthy of a broken spine.

So, this book is now double jointed, partly because of how often I've made this but mostly because it's a hefty 944 pages (I guess because of a need to live up to the title).

Chicken and Fruit in Curry Sauce - adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 cup sliced onion

2 tbsp curry powder

2 cups peeled and chunked apples, bananas, papayas, or mixture (I also use raisins and mango if available)

1 cup peeled, cored and chopped tomatoes

2 boneless chicken breasts cut into 1 1/2" chunks, I use boneless chicken thighs

Heat the oil and add the onion, when softened (and not brown), add the curry powder and stir for one minute. Add the fruit, tomatoes and chicken. Cook, covered for five minutes on medium low heat. Remove the cover and raise the heat. Cook the chicken through and thicken the sauce.

Serve with basmati rice.

For four...

Enjoy.

Rituals

When I sit down to eat a meal with Steve - when the plates are full - of colour, of potential, and full of life - we kiss.

I don't know how we started this ritual or when. But I remember the first time I witnessed it.

I was in a restaurant, almost ten years ago, on a tiny island called Bequia in the Grenadines. I'd been invited to dinner by a couple from Berlin I'd been hanging out with. He was a writer. She was an artist. They always kissed before they ate. It was beautiful.

And now somehow it's our ritual.

I have come to respect rituals - more than I ever did before. Rituals seemed stuffy and disconnected, dead and meaningless.

Then age and experience hits back, hard. And I think it's my answer to finding joy when bad stuff is lurking. Marking life moments of my own choosing - it makes me stop to look at beauty.

Like...I understand people who celebrate both sunrise - I'm with them in spirit, though not often in person - and sunset. Although I've seen dolphins break the surface of the Ganges at sunrise, and I've watched the day break over the Himalayas and been running in mid-January as the sun rose to conquer the windchill in Toronto - and I've also watched the sun set in Key West, just under the Golden Gate Bridge, and slip behind the ocean's edge in Thailand. Humans always gravitate to those moments. Something in us knows they're profound - everyone is quiet, alone in themselves.

They're moments of greatness - bigger than us.

My favourite rituals are self made. They find a moment to celebrate life. They're not imposed by outside powers, not to save our souls. Just a chance to take note of stuff that counts.

Dinner is a daily ritual I love. There are no distractions. The TV is off, there are no books, no magazines, no last minute ends of chapters. Dinner is our time. The end of our day when we come together again, away from the connection with the outside world. And kiss.

I definitely had to mature into that.

We're of the generation after all, when it was a huge deal to have a "colour" tv - when tv dinners came out of the kitchen on tv trays with fold out legs (mine had a happy face). That ritual was groovy and far out...

And, for me, the noise filled a hole.

It was just Mum and I for dinner. I was the only person I knew whose parents had split. My brother died in a car accident when I was seven and our relatives were all in England. So when I look back on it, it was a time of being lost and trying to find a place where we belonged. A time of looking for ritual without knowing it.

Auntie Joan is my second Mum; my Mum's best friend. She'd invite us over to her part of town on weekends. There were lots of people, lots of love, there was lots of noise, tons of great food. Out came the linen, the silverware, the silver serving dishes.

We were all terribly polite and considerate. Please and thank you's every which way. No one would think of rising from the table before everyone was finished. And the conversation and laughter flowed like wine. I craved a large family, I thrived here, and I wanted to fit in.

Rituals connect us, sometimes willingly, sometimes not.

My friends have talked about dinner rituals - Andy comes from a family of ten children - their dinners sounded more like blood sport for seconds. Another friend was the only girl with older brothers - she had to get them seconds and then clean up. Ugh.

Others, whose family stories were just bloody entrails of cruelty and dislike, disappointment and indignity, often suffered - but sometimes they remade their rituals and their "families", gathering friends around them.

Some of my male friends talk about the time they initiated their manhood, when they were given the carving knife and faced down the Thanksgiving turkey - with an even balance between victory and defeat.

My friend Kathilee who grew up on the Prairies, made it a rule that her young daughter can leave food on her plate, but not food that died for her - which I love.

Even the rituals away from the table can be meaningful - like pizza-and-movie-Fridays.

From all of this, there is meaning greater than the meal itself. Like cooking, the food is greater than the sum of its ingredients.

When I started thinking about this, I realized I equated rituals with what I didn't have - they were defined by big families, lots of children, legacy and connection. And that I'd never get it.

Not long ago I realized rituals are what we make them. And I also realized people who seem to have it all sometimes miss out on the opportunity that belonging brings. They never think about it.

I can find joy where I choose to. Even if it's setting the table just for me - candles, a wine glass, a full up colourful dinner full of potential and life...

Dinner is a celebration of sustenance - my choice to manifest joy.

It turns out I belong and had always done so.

,,,

Yesterday in a newish daily ritual we walked in the nearby ravine (accompanied by the steady roar of a highway that punctuates the valley's eastern edge) - and for the first time in the 30 years I've lived in Toronto I turned and looked straight into the eyes of a doe. And a few metres on, the eyes of her still-spotted fawn. Cyclists blasted past us determined to get in shape, cars whizzed behind us on the highway's offramp at Bloor Street. We just stopped. And we stared at her, and she at us, until she decided the greenery was far more interesting. The last I saw of her, her white back end was disappearing into the branches for dinner.

,,,

I have a confession to make

Right after publishing my post on how we should all care about what we eat and in so doing, care about each other (group hug anyone?) Steve and I had to run out on errands…and we ended up grabbing some industrial fast-food burgers for dinner…at 8:30 at night…Steve’s “double original” was splayed out on the wax paper ready for dressing in the time it took me to walk over to the serviettes and ketchup across the way...

ugh…precooked efficiency.

Reminds me of my favourite saying from television: there's landmark television, and there's landfill television...

And those were landfill burgers.

So in retribution for stepping in the muck of hypocrisy -

1. We cooked a beautiful roast beef dinner on Saturday - roast potatoes, fresh steamed leeks with bechamel sauce, carrots and rutabaga mashed, and roasted parsnips and brussel sprouts...
2. Sunday we followed up with a roasted chicken from our favourite market that sells meats from the Mennonite farms in southwestern Ontario - in Steve's rub of course.
3. And finally, in my favourite example of a closed loop, I'm now in the stock market - every glorious roasted chicken carcass is the path to glorious chicken stock. I slowly simmered the pot and let the house fill with warmth and the smell of Thanksgiving. It was a moment of rich abundance - a bull market for chicken stock.

So now I think my righteous path will lead me to something clean and bright tasting - vegetarian chili. This is a recipe via Barb, the incredible apple painter of my previous post who found it in a tv magazine many, many moons ago.

This is now my quick dinner if we have nothing in the cupboard and don't feel like making a fuss. And if you put on some music and start chopping away...you're done in no time and the kitchen fills with the wonderful scent of cumin and peppers and tomatoes and onion...(why isn't that a room freshener scent? huh? fried onions? I'd buy a house in a millisecond if it had garlic or onions wafting through the air - if you could buy a house for the price of a bag of onions, that is.)

Barb's Vegetarian Chili

Sautee an assortment of chopped vegetables (onion, green pepper, zucchini, carrots, celery )

Add large can tomatoes and its liquid
2 tbsp. of tomato paste to thicken
A bit of brown sugar and salt to lift flatness
Can of kidney beans and (sometimes) chick peas
Some frozen corn
Season with cumin, chili powder and a few pinches of cayenne
Serve with shredded cheddar and sour cream

I thicken yogourt (in a sieve lined with paper towel - I know, I know I keep meaning to buy cheesecloth) and then fold in fresh herbs and/or garlic and let it sit for a bit...and serve that on the side.

Enjoy...

Back to School

The part about September that I like so much is that it feels like a new beginning.

I think Labour Day should be a kind of New Year's Eve. It's a time for new starts.

I was one of those geeks who actually got excited about the first day of school.

It was the only time I actually planned and laid out my clothes the night before. I remember my new desk, brand new exercise books, textbooks that didn't have swear words inked on the page edges yet (back in the days when you didn't have to share), a fresh supply of pens, virgin erasers, and getting to smell newly-sharpened pencils as I lifted the desk lid (really aging myself).

For a few minutes it was as neat as the instruments on a surgical tray. Of course it never lasted long.

As much as I got along well in school, the only remarks I remember on my very respectable report card, was that "she could be neater".

Details, details... Perfection is elusive.

Steve's sister Barb did this painting of an apple. It's not a photo. I'm not kidding.

Barb starts back at school herself tomorrow - a classical artist with natural talent who has never stopped training herself throughout her life. She pays the rent with animation jobs mostly, and now is adding more digital skills to her repertoire. It's not just talent, it's hard work. Striving for more, for perfection. It's a difficult, painful way to happiness...but what beauty we get to see along the way...

The Essential Intangibles

I fell in love with food when I learned more about love.

That’s not to say I was in love, I was just learning quickly what love was and more specifically, what love wasn’t.

Which, if you’re counting, means I came to cooking late – because if I know anything about myself, it’s this: I’m a late bloomer, in cooking and love.

I remember seeing the film Like Water for Chocolate – many years ago. One line has come to my mind on an almost daily basis since. I’m paraphrasing, but it drives how I cook: Cook with love, it will show up in the food.

It’s no secret that food is so often equated with love – in healthy and unhealthy ways. In the truest sense both nourish us; both affect all our senses. To share those senses with others, stops the world from turning so fast – connects us and pauses us.

Mum was happy to let me cook if I wanted to. She worked full time, when most Mums didn’t. I remember how tired she was – bus into downtown Montreal at 7am, bus out that got her home at 6pm.

But on weekends, after we’d been shopping, she’d let me shake the chicken in the shake ‘n bake plastic bag, or make the spaghetti sauce, or blend the milk into the tomato soup, or bake a cake (from a box), and ice it (from a can) or my favourite – get the mixer out and whip up a batch of whip ‘n chill - Strawberry rocked, for anyone who remembers.

(By the way it’s food like that that occasionally makes me feel eating organic is a waste of time for anyone that grew up in the age of plastics. I figure eating processed foods “just like the astronauts”, altered our body chemistry for good, but not for the better…however even if it’s too late, organic still tastes better)…

Anyway, while we were having tea and biscuits at the kitchen table, Mum would try to teach me how to jitterbug, hand in hand, jiggling and jumping like fools.

In case you get the wrong idea, we also ate lots and lots of fruit and veggies, because my Mum instilled a love of them – I still haven’t met a vegetable I don’t like.

I’ve had an incredible ride so far (along with some big bumps) – fulfilling my dreams when I was young to travel and get paid for it. I managed to work my way into work that took me round the world and home again.

It opened my eyes to incredible beauty and incredible suffering – which, along with experience, built the framework for what love means to me.

Now whenever I try something – I’m notorious for trying out recipes I’ve never made on my unsuspecting friends - I hear that voice in my head – cook with love…And I'm not kidding, not once…not even once, has that injunction failed the meal.

"I do not think that good food can come from a bad kitchen," wrote MFK Fisher in Serve it Forth. I'm a believer.

Of her first kitchen in France (which measured 3x5 feet) the venerable food writer said, “All the noises flowed in and out of the window of the tiny kitchen, gay and sombre and mysterious and always real, and I may be too sentimental in thinking that they helped me cook some good dishes – but I doubt it.”

It got me thinking about the intangibles of cooking. How I like to cook. I like to have time. I love cooking in the afternoon as the sun nuzzles its way briefly between our houses through the bay window, I love having music playing (I’m a jazz fan, Steve is not), I love having the door open, the neighbours checking in, the birds singing, and I still dance on occasion – it all adds up to putting joy in the pot.

And it makes me think about food and what it means. And that’s what I want. That’s what this journey is about for me. I care about how we feed ourselves, and hopefully, feed how we care for each other.

I'd love to know your favourite music whilst you cook - or your favourite setting - your favourite intangibles, so to speak...Image of MFK Fisher cooking in her kitchen at Bareacres.

Simple Spice of Life - it's in the rub

Or: how to keep thin making wayyyy-too-much-trouble potato chips

I can feel summer waning here, the warmth I'm capturing is from the patches of sun on the back deck, but the air is astringent and belies the truth. The geese are starting to sound off as they fly by, the monarch butterflies have fluttered into town on their impossible journey to Mexico. It's reminding me that comfort foods are soon to insulate my stomach (and frankly other parts too). So I thought I'd share Steve's spicy rub - how you use it is up to you - set your own limits. And if you follow it up with Steve's chip recipe, you'll discover true slow food that's truly incredible.

Steve's Rub

1 part chili powder
1 part brown sugar
1 part black pepper
2 parts kosher salt
Healthy dose of paprika

Feel free to make up a whole whack of this and keep it in a container in the cupboard.

Way-too-much-trouble, Guilt Diminisher Potato Chips

Preheat oven to 275 degrees fahrenheit. Here's the best part...one good sized potato will make you the equivalent of one bag of potato chips (how bad can that be?). Steve slices a russet potato very thin on a mandolin (you really need a mandolin to do this). He rinses the slices to get as much starch off as he can, dries them with a clean towel and then gives them a thin coat of olive oil.

Out comes the famous (or soon to be) spice rub. He lays the potato slices on a cookie tray, sprinkles just one side and not too heavily with the rub.

Then he pops them in the oven preheated to 275 degrees...any higher than that and they burn too quickly.

After about 10-15 mins he flips them over and over to keep them from burning. As he's flipping, he pulls out the ones that are done. And I eat them - it isn't pretty.

I promise they taste unlike any potato chip you'll ever buy. We promised ourselves (har har) we'll never buy potato chips, so if we only eat Steve's when Steve has an evening free to carefully coax these things through the oven, then we're guilt free as we munch.

By the way, if you play with the proportions, like ease up the salt, this makes an unbelievable rub for chicken (especially beercan chicken) and for pork tenderloin...like I said, the spice of life for the free spirit. Chips a'Joy.

Five Foods to Eat Before You Die

Playa Avellana, Costa Rica, it'll make sense at the end.

Fine. The oven mitt is thrown.

Melissa Kronenthal, aka The Traveller's Lunchbox, set the challenge: create a list of food bloggers' top picks for things you've eaten and think that everyone should eat at least once before they die.

I was amazed by my answers. I thought I'd get all sophisticated and snotty - truffle omelettes, souffle this, lobster that - but my body trampled my ego shut and hurried on its way to simpler foods.

It's true.

I mean, who, or should it be what, makes better fries than a chip truck? I remember being on a shoot out on Quebec's Gaspe Peninsula. We were heading home on a two-laned highway that spread off one way into rocky, undulating farmland, the other to a grassy crest that hinted at the light that comes only from the open sea. The road was more crowded with roadkill than cars. Yet every mile or so was an isolated chip truck. It was very weird. I was beginning to wonder if they were mirages.

I almost squared the wheels of the rental car as I slammed the brakes and the car onto the shoulder as the next one came into view. And we nearly peed our pants laughing when we discovered our team in the car behind us had been honking, flashing their lights, trying to get us to stop at a chip truck, any chip truck. Just arretez-vous, s'il vous plait.

Best not to think of the pure lard the chips must have been doused in. But a large, hairy, masculine arm handed them through the window, covered in grease and salt, oozing through the paper bag - chips from paradise...on a grassy hill, the wind blowing off the ocean, playing the grass like an instrument, the sky clear blue through to space, the clouds bleached and fluffed - how could I resist them?

Taste and setting - good food karma...

Okay. The five foods...

1. Fig bruschetta, unbelievable layers of flavour. Toasted bruschetta rubbed with garlic, spread with a mixture of blue cheese (I use stilton), marscapone, and chopped parsley. On top, a quarter of a fresh fig braised in balsamic vinegar and sugar in a pan, which is then thrown under the grill to get the cheese going. If you try this, get them out of the oven and stand back - beware of stampede. Hats off to the creator: Donna Hay and eternal thanks to my friends Lauren and Mark who discovered this gem and are among my favourite cooks.

2. In keeping with the stilton theme: fresh mussels in a white wine, shallots, cream, garlic, stilton cheese concoction - this was born at a local pub up the street from me. I asked the owner how to make it. The freshest of bread for dipping is essential. Throw the cheese in right at the end in chunks and just let it barely start melting before serving. Again, stand back. Fair warning.

3. Linguine with tomatoes and basil. Ingredients nature intended to blend. This one is also courtesy of the above-mentioned Lauren, via the Silver Palate Cookbook. The pasta is cooked and doused with a bowl of chopped, beautiful tomatoes, shredded basil leaves, chopped garlic, and a pound of brie (without the rind and ripped with your hands into small pieces) all of which has been marinating for a few hours in very good olive oil. The heat from the pasta oozes the cheese into its most fragrant self - you can just imagine.

4. Any fruit that comes right off the tree. My husband remembers eating pomegranates off a tree in California and I remember grabbing oranges off trees in Portugal. Nothing in the world like that. The fruit bursts in the mouth, the juice explodes in multiples of flavours getting more intense, then settling as it goes down your throat.

5. A tuna sandwich? Not just any tuna sandwich. This is also one of those good foods where setting adds to the flavour - we discovered this at a beach restaurant in Costa Rica, which I hesitate to recommend, but I'm sure you'd respect. Playa Avellana is an undiscovered, unspoilt beach south of the touristy, overstimulated, teenaged, party-animal-filled town of Tamarindo. Avellana is known mostly to surfers (duuude) and those who have invested in property nearby. And sitting like a jewel in a nation of uninspired food and few inspired restaurants, is Lola's. They only serve lunch, the menu is all excellent, but the ahi sandwich is how all self-respecting tuna want to go. It's a lightly-grilled ahi steak, laid out on a ciabatta bun layered with mixed greens, olive and sundried tomato tapenade, and garlic aioli. When we returned to the region a week later, we walked 14kilometres along the shoreline to get another sandwich.

...and on the side? What else? Chips...The fries came standing in a beautiful white cup, with small dishes of ketchup and mayonnaise on the side for dipping. No chip truck in sight, but plenty of ocean, wind, and clear skies. Now that's good food karma, not bikini karma, but food karma.

Come share your thoughts...

Go nuts.

A Foodnut Nut Recipe

I refer to my friends as the graces - both because of who they are and what they bring to my life. Karen is one of them and all the more so the night she brought these over as an appetizer. She's a wonderful cook, instinctive and imaginative and modest about it.

When these magic nuts hit the table, they disappeared. The cayenne gives it a kick that's just perfect against the sugar. Keep an eye on them in the oven - I've incinerated almonds into carbon samples - fascinating but dangerous.

Magic Nuts

2 egg whites
4 cups nuts (you choose, I love almonds)
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 325 F. Whisk egg whites until foamy. Stir in nuts until coated. Combine sugar with cinnamon, cayenne and salt. Pour over nuts and toss until coated. Spread evenly on greased cookie sheet and bake 20-25 minutes.

When they are done they usually stick together. Breaking them apart is the fun part.

Life Stuff Happens in the Kitchen

Our kitchen is at the centre of our home. I mean it.

It’s midway from the front to the back of the house – first living room, then kitchen, then bedroom. Kitchen: biggish. Big enough for a table and in a pinch I’ve sat 12 for dinner. Imagine a subway car at rush hour full of friends - eating.

I was reading a recent column by David Leite on The Morning News, (a favourite daily indulgence), and he made a great point: kitchens say something about you and your wellbeing, whether itty and bitty or humungous and gargantuan.
I've noticed MagazineArticleBigBeautifulKitchens have more to say about being well-to-do than wellbeing. Have you noticed the larger the kitchen the fewer meals coming out of it? The photospreads of perfect, pristine kitchens so big the other end is in doubt, the ones you could never imagine grocery bags in. No soul.

Leite was writing about inviting Justin Spring to his kitchen. That's because Spring's New York kitchen is 45 sq. feet - which makes him the ideal author of The Itty Bitty Kitchen Book and a master at roasting in a toaster oven. Much of the book is about cleanliness, storage, and tidiness. But he also stuffs in an entire section on claustrophobia and how to handle panic attacks (all this in a room that contains knives, glass, and flaming hot appliances). I get the feeling he’s neither kidding nor inexperienced. The ittybittyness is a badge of honor.

Anyway, while nervously waiting for Mr. Spring to critique his weeny kitchen, Leite went deeper into his own cupboards. He was writing about the kitchen as the place "where the gestalt of a family is dissected and laid bare."

You know. Life Stuff.
I’ve been in my little place for just over 4 years. I love it. It has character, charm, length, windows.

It also has no insulation which makes winter not so charming, a bathroom in the basement, and in the kitchen a huge bay window inexplicably overlooking a brick wall less than four feet away.

But it has such a good soul. You know what I mean? You must know people who can ping that kind of radar; who feel a place instantly. I’m the daughter of one. My mother loves my apartment and my kitchen. Her karma is never, ever off. And my weird irrational side trusts her instinct.

For example, she called me one Friday afternoon a few months back to ask how my bestest, oldest friend in the world is doing. I had just talked to b.o.f. a few days before - everything was peachy. But Mum’s karma had pinged that morning she said. “Something is wrong and I thought it was J.,” she said.

Of course, I called J. aka b.o.f., “No, everything’s fine,” she reported.

Monday night I was out at the drug store buying painkillers for my husband because his fate had collided with that of a black squirrel, under his bike tire. Steve was on his way to his first day on a gig at a nearby studio, the squirrel presumably on his way to the tree on the other side. They met somewhere in the middle.

The squirrel got off better than Steve. The xrays showed a clean line break in his right elbow - 6 weeks of work gone before he’d even started.

While I was out on my mission of mercy, the phone rang. It was J.
Her father died over the weekend. She had found him that morning. I called her back, I sat at the kitchen table and we talked for a bit. We’ve both had complicated, challenging relationships with the men who sired us. And now he was in the past tense for J.

So that’s my mother. The one with the third eye, great intuition.

So you can understand my relief that my mother loves our apartment – despite the bathroom being a long, steep set of stairs down into the basement.

Our home has goodness in it. My friends are my family. And I like feeding them – so the kitchen is the heart of our home.

Leite wrote the kitchen is a place, “where relational dramas unfold...ground zero for life's vortex." And my mind flew back over the last tumultuous years that flowed through that room. Big dinners, big food. I had seduced there, been seduced there, and cried 'til I slept, and laughed ‘til I cried there.

It was the place where I had my first picture taken with both my parents - at my kitchen table - I was 40. That table is a loan from b.o.f. and her husband. Photos of my friends and family grace one wall, my trip of a lifetime around Asia on my own graces another. I’m surrounded by pictures of love and adventure – the spices of life.

One night, over bread, brie and red wine, the One Who Got Away ripped out my heart and soul – and later that night, and deeper into a bottle of scotch than I have ever been before or since, I was consoled by friends who came and held me while I keened and wailed and raged.

And then two cautious, fragile years later I fell in love harder than I knew possible over a dinner the Genuine Article (the Steve) served to me in my kitchen.

It was a dinner of curried shrimp, homemade na'an bread, and raita to honor my love of India and Indian food - which he hates and from which his own kitchen took weeks to recover.

My kitchen, became our kitchen, the centre of our home, the place with goodness in it. Welcome to my blog on food, love and life, on life, love and food.

Picture: Me and J circa 1968 - notice the très cool candy cigarettes they sold to children then?