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.

Slaw Days of Summer

It’s been kind of a remarkable summer.

Last August, for the first time, we spent some precious dollars renting a cottage for a week, only to have the weather turn into a not-so-impressive impression of October. With no heat source in the cottage, and after a few days of using the oven, and boiling big pots of water on the stove to put on the table, we surrendered on Tuesday night and headed home Wednesday, having made it in the lake once.

The view from my friend Cheryl's farm.
That first row of trees is where the coyotes live. The moon is the setting Blue Moon.

This summer, I’ve been in Ontario’s beautiful lakes far more often than I have the right to expect. Thanks to my generous friends sharing their space with me and letting me breathe – smelling the overwhelming scent of pine needles on the forest floor…hearing coyotes chatter the night of the Blue Moon, then wolves the next, and loons the night after…and tasting summer food – coleslaw, bbq corn, gazpacho, and marinated flank steak on the grill.

I had s’mores for the first time (yes, that took more than 50 years), and got pulled around a lake on a big, fat tube, for the first time; laughing so hard I was pretty sure my bladder and I would part ways. And I laid on a dock one night and watched shooting stars carve their way across the Milky Way.

Sunset at Bitter Lake, which, by the way, is next to Tedious Lake. Seriously.

I noticed last night we turn on our lamps a little earlier. The cicadas are still around but slowing, now crickets have picked up their chorus – they’re a late summer thing, the sunflowers are in full blush, and the corn is piled up at the farmers’ markets. A sense of mild panic is running through me as I face facts – summer is coming to an end. Because, that is what it does.

I thought I’d share some discovered recipes I’ve tested enough this summer to say with confidence, yup…good food. And if you think about where you serve it, like outside preferably, it transforms into good food karma - meals married to setting – amplifying both the taste and the experience.

Even the s’mores. Though, I have to say s'mores have more to do with setting than taste…it’s a mixture I think could be seriously improved. Smore karma needed.

The karma is up to you. Set the table outside. Or make this stuff and take it to a park and set out a blanket and dishes and napkins and wine, and just breathe. Enjoy the moment. Because all good things come to an end…but so do bad things. And living well is the best revenge anyway, right?

This coleslaw recipe is excellent. It comes from Bobby Flay and the Food Network and is called Bobby’s Creamy Coleslaw. I can eat the bowl myself.

1 head of green cabbage, shredded
2 large carrots, shredded
¾ cup of mayonnaise
2 tbsp sour cream, I used thickened yogurt – and when I don’t have time to thicken it, so be it.
2 tbsp grated Spanish onion, I used red onion
2 tbsp sugar, or to taste – so says the recipe…I found 1 tbsp sufficient
2 tbsp white vinegar
1 tbsp dry mustard
2 tsp celery salt (go ahead and buy some, it’s brilliant, and some say essential, to potato salad)
Salt and pepper

Mix together the shredded cabbage and carrots in a bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, yogurt, onion, sugar, vinegar, mustard, celery salt, and salt/pepper. Spoon carefully over the vegetables. Mix. Check for your desired dressing-to-vegetable ratio and add more if you like - but remember, less is more. The important thing is to let it sit in the fridge for a bit - the tastes really mature over time - you know, like us.

I usually only shred half a cabbage to make this, so whatever portion of the dressing I don’t use goes in the fridge. I’ve doused salad, other vegetables, leftover chicken with it. It stands up to everything. And remember summer isn’t over yet. It’s not. It's not. It's not. Mature eh?

So here's to summer 2015 - and I send my love out to Karen, Jain, Andy, Carol, Kathilee, Cheryl, for being with us and/or hosting us, and Denise for letting us give Bitter Lake another chance.

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?

Basil Pesto

Yesterday I spent the day in the kitchen - my cocoon of warmth and beautiful smells and comfort.

I was prepping for a dinner party for people who hadn’t been to our kitchen, who hadn’t sat at our family table – people I wanted to bring into our home and enjoy a meal.

Oblivious to the news, I had checked the twitter headlines in the morning…a teacher shot somewhere like Connecticut…oh…you know…sadly, it’s the States…I got on with what I had to do.

Ironically, when you’re cooking on deadline, surrounded by piles of vegetables and meat and spices and herbs, you don’t tend to eat yourself. I finally sat down for a bite at about 2pm.

That’s when I pulled out the computer to catch up on what the world was up to…that’s when I discovered the world had shuddered to a stop – that a very, very disturbed young man had ended his life by taking the lives of so many others, in a little place called Newtown, and with the added shock and horror that he took little ones, and those who care for them every day, with him.

With all the other shootings that have happened my shoulders have slumped in despair and I’ve said nothing will change…this won’t change anything.

But I’ve had it. Enough. Effect change people – I would like to see a cultural turn of mind away from the gun…and I wonder if it can happen.

One of my favourite journalism people Al Tompkins at the Poynter Institute has some interesting stats for journalists who are covering this tragedy. But they’re good for everyone to absorb – it gives us all some context.

In the New Yorker Jill Lepore wrote, "There is no solace to be found, not in the crushing, aching sympathy felt by everyone on hearing the story, not in the candlelit vigils, not in the agony of the President, who, during a press conference, winced, and was nearly overcome. This is the face of a nation undone."

It will take some time to wrestle our souls and minds into understanding the horrible nexus where an obsessive gun culture meets mental illness that fuels horrible, horrible anger.

~

I will write about what we ate last night – a lovely recipe for tagine (yes, another) and a beautiful lasagna, I’ve written about before. But not now.

Now I need to write about something basic – a backbone to cooking that is magical.

Basil Pesto – adapted from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen

I love Mollie’s book – it was my first cookbook when all this food thing started – I particularly love Mollie’s drawings.

The first time I made this I didn’t have a food processor. I crushed everything in a bowl pretending to be the mortar, and the bottom of a glass pretending to be the pestle (yup it’s pronounced pessel). It was excruciating.

It was the reason I bought a food processor. The first recipe I made in it was the pesto. I put in the ingredients, I pressed 'on'. After a few seconds I pressed 'off'. I just stood there looking at it in the bowl, I pressed 'stunned'.

I lost that food processor in a breakup with a boyfriend. And with the loss of the appliance went my memory of this recipe. Because I wasn’t going back to the bowl mortar and glass pestle.The pesto had to wait.

Well, thanks to my credit card company I scored another food processor on reward points a couple of weeks ago.

And then in need of a vegetarian dish for last night, karma created the perfect reason to make pesto again. So the first recipe I made in my new processor was, once again, pesto.

This makes 2 1/2 – 3 cups (although when I cut it in half yesterday I yielded only one cup of pesto – which was fine as that’s what I needed)

3 cups of packed fresh basil leaves (no stems)
3-4 garlic cloves
¼ - ½ tsp salt
¾ cup grated parmesan cheese (no, the fresh kind…)
¼ cup pulverized (I used pine nuts, but I think any nut would do)
½ cup olive oil

These are optional add-ons:
½ cup packed fresh parsley
¼ cup melted butter
freshly-ground black pepper

So, given my new love of the food processor…pull out either your food processor or even your blender – you can make basil smoothies later.

This is so easy it’s stupid.

Put the ingredients in the bowl with the steel blade fitted, put on the lid, hit 'on'…and let it whirr away until you have a uniform paste.(I stopped it a few seconds in to push down the stuff that had crawled up the sides of the bowl.)

The smell and look of this magical mixture will blow your senses. You can mix with cooked pasta – to taste. (Be careful with pesto – I find it’s one of those beautiful ingredients that can become too much too fast…so consider yourself warned.)

Or you can freeze it - put some in an ice cube tray - then you'll have portion sizes ready to go rather than a big green block.

 If you make this, please let me know. Share it with your family and friends – food is a form of love. And most of all people – peace.

Lobster Rolling Into Another Year

We all seemed so tired as 2012 came to a close. Just so tired. It wasn’t one specific thing. I’m not sure what exactly led to the sense of exhaustion. But as I racked up the good and the bad points, devouring our way out of 2012 seemed the best revenge.

It was an interesting year…the team I was on won a media award…and I learned tons technically...and I finally became a Canadian citizen……and I quit my job (phew…that was hard)…and we helped one of our Moms clean up, sell up, and move out of her house…and I went to Italy to help one of my graces celebrate her half-century mark…and suddenly the twilight of the year was here.   

I guess, on balance, that makes for a good year.

But it was hard, and trying, and testing and sparkling…

We have created a ritual. When we’re in town for new year's eve, we get together with friends to cook and enjoy a feast – a feast of many dishes…and small portions…and many hours of lounging. And laughing.

Everyone was very busy this year…so I decided, with more time than anyone on my hands, to get it together and get us into 2013 happy and full.

We started with lobster rolls.

I’ve never had lobster rolls. Seriously.

I’ve been lucky enough to eat lobster twice, the best way possible – full food karma – on the Atlantic coast.

The first time was in Lubec, Maine. I. Love. Maine.  

 

We were there to tell the story of a dedicated, passionate team of whale researchers who were getting to know, and save, the most endangered whale in the world – the northern right whale.

At the time, there were about 300 whales left in the north Atlantic. They had gained the name right whale from the days of whale hunting…they moved so slowly they were the “right” whale to hunt.

Moira (Moe) Brown, a fellow Canadian, and her gang have made huge strides in protecting them.

When I reconnected with Moe in the fall (I’m so happy to have relinked), she told me the population is around 500, averaging about 22 calves per year for the last decade…and most of that, I think, is because Moe and her team and have worked tirelessly for decades now to keep the slow, lumbering animals out of harm’s way – even convincing the governments to move the shipping lanes so that the gentle beasts don’t get run over…

On our last night in Lubec the research team bought a pile of lobsters for dinner (we paid for ours). 

They cooked them in a pit in the backyard – with seaweed, and stuff and more stuff…I’m not sure what…as we had also bought a pile of wine and the recipe dimmed into the twilight and night. But the lobsters…were…sooo…good. We made tables out of doors and all plonked ourselves down for a seafood feast.

Then we all went over to Campobello Island, where FranklinDelano Roosevelt spent many summers, and walked, well…weaved along, the raised boardwalk through a bog to a big wooden platform – and under a perfectly clear sky, wrapped in sweaters. We laid on the platform on our backs and looked up at the stars. One of the researchers had brought his telescope…and he set it up…and we all marvelled at the crab nebula. An appropriately crustaceous end to a lovely evening.

We were back on the east coast the next year meeting up with Gary Dedrick to explore the disappearing fish from the sea banks off Nova Scotia. Gary was a fifth generation fisherman if I remember correctly, and all his brothers but one were fishermen. 

He was a passionate defender and advocate of how to responsibly maintain the fish stocks – taking us through the docks, the various fishing methods (he was not fond of draggers), the fish plants where many women prepped and iced the fish…An entire way of life was disappearing as fishermen were sunk by few fish, big debt, and absolute misery.

We spent time with Gary, who is on the fisheries sector council, as he advocated for his fellow fisherman - turning defending his livelihood and everyone else's, into his livelihood. And with us he had to put up with having a camera in his face as we followed him around on his journeys for a week and a half...with us babbling constantly about how he should just ignore us...act natural...

Right.

He patiently explained to us landlubbers how the fishing industry worked…how he stitched together a living between long lining, lobster season, and swordfish season. 

So again on our last night, the Dedricks and friends invited us for supper, in their backyard. 

The lobster was a complete surprise for us, our host/producer had hinted at a lobster obsession. She is of small stature …but, man, could she pack away lobsters like a longshoreman. It was impressive. 

The Dedricks watched us eat. And they took video and pictures. Gary said, “Don’t look at the camera. Just pretend we’re not here…” They guffawed…”yeah just act natural.”

Gary also taught us that night that if you snap the lobster’s tail fan off, you can pull the meat out with a fork in one, big piece…And while that was almost 20 years ago,  I pulled out that very trick the night I made lobster rolls. 

Lobster rolls are really easy. It’s lobster meat mixed with a beautifully-flavoured mayonnaise sauce. Then it’s all stuffed into a hot dog bun. Traditionally…

…but this was New Year’s Eve.

I looked up about a half-dozen recipes for this – and made up my own concoction in the end. And bear in mind I made this for 8, but it was an appetizer/first course, so the portions were smaller…adjust amounts accordingly if you’re planning this as a main course.

Lobster Rolls

4 lobster tails – can be frozen if necessary

1/2 cup melted butter

pinch of paprika

salt and pepper

1 lb fresh wild shrimp

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped, a little set aside

olive oil, enough to coat shrimp

1 cup mayonnaise (depending on how mayonnaise-y you want it)

2 tbsp lemon juice and some lemon rind

a small splodge of mustard (optional)

1 celery stalk, finely chopped

1 green onion, finely chopped

1 tbsp or so of capers, roughly chopped

parsley, finely chopped (optional)

8 buns – split open, toasted if desired

I bought lobster tails and broiled them. I decided to broil them after watching how. I split the tail shells down the middle with a pair of kitchen shears (not as easy as it sounds, and there are many spiky bits that the lobster keeps for its last revenge). I pulled open the shell a bit, poured the melted butter on the meat, and sprinkled it with paprika, salt and pepper and broiled them until they were opaque. About 10 minutes. I watched them very, very carefully because one minute too much and the meat would have been tough.

Remove the meat from the tails and roughly chop into bite size pieces. Set aside.

Now that the broiler is off…turn the oven on to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Wash the shrimp, and let them drain well.

Chop garlic (2 cloves or so to your taste) and set a little bit aside (you can cook the shrimp with most of the garlic and add the remaining raw garlic you’ve set aside after the shrimp come out of the oven.)

Toss the shrimp in olive oil, chopped garlic and salt and pepper. Lay them out in a single layer on a tray. Put them in the oven. They too should only take 8-10 minutes at the most. Keep a close eye and pull them out halfway to turn them over.

Toss them with the remaining raw garlic and set aside.

At this point, you can put the seafood in containers and refrigerate until you’re ready to mix with the mayonnaise and serve. I don’t know that I would let it sit too long in the mayonnaise…but maybe I’m just being paranoid.

So…the mayonnaise – this can be a bit of a creative jaunt.

Put the mayonnaise in a mixing bowl.

Add the lemon juice and rind. Mix thoroughly. Add the mustard, celery, green onion, capers and mix.

The key is that this concoction gets to sit in the fridge for a few hours to mature.

When you’re ready to serve, mix the mayonnaise sauce with the lobster and shrimp meat. I shelled the shrimp before putting them in the mixture. (By the way, the shells from both would be a good source for fish stock – if you are partial to that kind of thing).

Toast the bread buns if you desire, then line them with lettuce or greens and spoon the seafood mixture into the crevice. Serve…

And dream of the ocean. May we all get a taste of the ocean in 2013...

Random Sundown

In the midst of this winter, I was trying to remember twilight...in my childhood. In the summer. The heat dissipates. Air is thick. My body stills. The window open, the sky slips off the edge from violet blue heading to black. The air soft, velvety, tired from the day’s sharp and heavy humidity. I can smell grass that’s just been cut by someone’s dad after dinner. I hear a sprinkler. A mosquito buzzes over my ear, close, its bass hum making me twitch. I can hear people chatting quietly, laughing occasionally, ice cubes clinking against glass in the distance. A gate squeaking open and closed, the latch clicks…porch lights come on.

~

People are drawn to sundown…we gather. Primal. Watching the end of day, watching the source of our life slip over the edge – a collective release of optimism, or is it hope, that we will be fine to wait for its return. We treat sunset reverently. We stand facing the same way – joined, but alone. I’ve seen the sun set into oceans around the world, but had never seen the green flash until last year. We arrived at Anna Maria Island for a week in April. We arrived late afternoon – with plenty of time to walk to the beautiful beach. No haze on the horizon – a clear prospect for the sun to drop cleanly off stage. At its last possible moment, it winked a brilliant green light, like a magnesium flare…and we looked at each other and said at the same time – did you see it? There’s almost no twilight. Sun sets. People turn. Night comes.

~

As the day fades into evening my husband’s mother fades too. Her brain on Alzheimer’s mode, she gets lost. Her instincts tell her she’s not safe, like an animal looking for shelter. This is when she has most of her falls. When her bones crack, and her breathing is short. She is losing this battle. Every day is a new wonder of yesterday’s facts – why she’s in the hospital. What hospital she’s in. Why she can’t move her arm. Why she can’t go home. The experts debate the drugs: they help her brain, they make her fall…which is the lesser of the evils. The specialists call it sundowning – but it's not...it's shadow raising...it should be about shadows…not sunset.

~

The day was just about over when we finally pulled into Agra. A long drive from Jaipur. The dust, the dung, the frenetic, and frankly, suicidal, tendencies of our driver frazzled us. It was the end of day Thursday – and we were there for 24 hours to see the town’s virtue – the Taj Mahal. As we checked in, the hotel owner warned us to get over there pronto as the government had just changed the rules – the building built for love was now closed on Fridays. That, I thought, was pretty much my karma when it came to love. We grabbed a taxi. As the building appeared in the distance beneath the Mughal arch, my breath reflexively drew itself in. The Taj Mahal is spectacular, a tribute to beauty – even swarmed by barefooted tourists, wedding couples, families. Its symmetry gives you some peace, except the sky used that moment to open. We were drowned in torrential rain – not drips, buckets. A second karmic tribute to my love life. We ran for it. Taking shelter in the actual mausoleum, staring back along the gardens as the rain washed the tourists away. And once it faded and moved on, we crept back out and wandered gently back along the gardens. My third karmic signal of love. The sky to the west was a deep metallic grey, with a severe straight edge just hovering above the horizon. And an equally severe and beautiful glow of pink was growing behind it as the sun met the opening before hitting the horizon. We spun around to look at the Taj Mahal. And as we did the sun burst below the cloud line, deep on the edge of the earth, and for the final minutes of that day, it lit the white marble to a stunning pink and peach, warming the sky…and lighting us up. I’ll never forget – it gave me hope that love comes even if it’s before sunset – and it can be spectacular. It did. And it is.

~

Twilight, long and slow. Beautiful in winter. As the northern hemisphere bends itself towards the sun come spring…the colours of the fading daylight bring me the same sense of calm they did as a child. But also a sense of sadness – a profoundly deep sense of time I feel in my cells. Mere moments of time I wish I could lock away somewhere. The sun moves beyond the reach of my window as it creeps further and further over my head. Longer days, sunsets, and the trailing spectrum of blues that lead us through night. It is, and will be, long after me. I close the blinds to the night. I turn the porch light on.

Miss Nicky No Happy

My camel's name was Bapu.

He was smaller than the other two standing nearby. And I was taller than both my travelling companions - John, a Kiwi friend whom I met on a bus that ended up in a crash a few weeks before, and Ramdan, our intrepid guide into the desert. But you don't go there as a fashionista.

I was in Rajasthan, India - and further, I was in Jaisalmer on the far western border of India, maybe 50 km from the Pakistan border. What one does in Jaisalmer, apart from dreaming you're in a fairy tale, is go on a camel safari. That's what one does.

So that's how I found myself early on a Monday morning standing between the jeep that got me to the edge of the desert and Bapu. We were driving our own camels, so with a quick lesson they plopped me up in the saddle, and the three of us headed off...into the desert...overnight...with two men...one I barely knew (who had temper tantrums merely buying Indian train tickets), the other I didn't know at all but relied on for everything...did I really do that?

Yes. I enjoyed it.

For the first hour.

Then my conditioning in the car culture set in. That back and forth sway of my dear Bapu, while interesting for women (not so much for men according to John), wears quickly on the lazy, coddled, Western spinal column.

We stopped for lunch under a tree in a small oasis...and hid from the heat of the day with naps on the ground. Camels too.

When we set off we saw women heading our way with water vessels on their heads...wearing the astounding saris they're known for in this region - a region of flat greyness, desert desolation. The women's saris are a defiant contrast - fuschia, saffron, neon pink...astounding.

They were coming from a village of low level flat huts a few kilometers away - getting water for the evening. They refused to look at us.

I lived a life, and they lived another. We were women...but not related by anything but gender.

We entered the dunes near sunset. Ramdan led us to a spot where a lone bush huddled against the western breeze that had whipped up and threw a veil of sand at us, usually when one of us opened our mouths to say something.

He told us to go look at the sunset. And he made us tea. Chai. A tiny fire (with wood he'd brought), a small pot and in went milk, cardamom pods, tea, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, sugar, boiled and served in tin cups.

I walked my tea over to the highest dune and looked at the sun. It was masked by sand in the atmosphere, kind of greenish yellow in the sky. Food and place karma matched once again.

John and I played on the dunes. I did front flips off the steep edges, and landed at the bottom - it was like playing in snow.

Eventually we headed back to Ramdan who had made us a simple dinner of rice and spinach and curry something...don't know, don't care...it was delicious.

Then he fed our camels and bedded them down.

He also laid down a thin blanket of foam under us to lay on. I had brought my sleeping bag liner - it wouldn't get very cold overnight - and sat next to John as the day turned to grey, pink dusk.

That's when I noticed a beetle. I picked it up and threw it away from me. It was about an inch long, lots of legs...you know. Then there was another. And another. And another. And soon there were hundreds...heading, it seemed, toward any body heat they could find. It was like they'd taken elevators up through the sand to the surface as soon as the sun had been beaten for the day.

All of them scurrying toward us.

"I don't suppose this is a good time to tell you I have arachnophobia," said John in a slightly squeaky voice.

"No, John, it isn't," I said while my brain raced for a solution. There simply wasn't one. I was here. There was nothing for miles.

"We're going to have to figure out a way to accept that these things ARE GOING TO CRAWL ON US overnight." I was trying to convince myself more than him.

Ramdan thought we were babies, I'm sure. He leapt over to our side and picked a few beetles off our sleeping bags and hurled them an unimpressive distance (unimpressive to the beetles for sure, 'cause they just got back in the traffic jam heading toward us).

I think it was Carrie Fisher who wrote: Bad reality. Great anecdote.

It was dark now.

I was just sitting there. In my sleeping bag. Knees up to my chin. Willing my eyes to open wider and see further.

Suddenly I felt someone jump. Ramdan yelled for a flashlight. I handed mine over.

A beam of light slashed around where we were sitting.

John jumped up and away from me too. I don't know which direction he'd gone, it was that dark. But he was near Ramdan. They were yelling. At the same time.

Which got me nervous.

I stood up. On the mattress. Not sure what to do.

I was only catching words here and there...but prominent among them was the word snake.

Ah...snakes.

Perfect. This was just going swimmingly.

I said something to the effect, "JohnJohnJohnJohnJohnJohnJohnJohnJohnJohnJohnJohn," and when he noticed, he stopped yammering long enough to say, "Yeah?"

"It's a snake?"

"Yeah."

"John?"

"Yeah?"

"WHERE is the snake?"

Just then the flashlight's beam caught a flash of silvery gray on the sand, heading under the bush behind me. And I tripped ever so speed of lightly toward the two men about 10 feet away.

Ramdan took charge now, grabbing a branch and beating the poor beast to death.

I was so upset. Even though it was definitely poisonous (we found out when we got back the next day). I went and had a closer look. I had had no intention of leaving such a huge footprint on this trip.

Ramdan had felt the snake climbing inside his wrap that he slept in.

I was now standing in the desert. I couldn't sit down, let alone lay down. And all before midnight.

"Miss Nicky no happy?" Ramdan asked.

"No Ramdan. Miss Nicky no happy."

"We move?"

"Yes Ramdan. We move."

We helped him gather stuff up. We climbed back onto our beasts of burden which Ramdan had tethered together, and he led us out of the dunes to the edge of what now felt like civilization.

We recamped. This time I noticed I had the camels at my feet, Ramdan to my left, John to my right and our luggage I lined up along our heads...the snakes were going to have to work their way through the camels and the two men to get to me. Ha.

We settled down. We saw three more camel trains soon after, decamping from the dunes. Away from the snakes and wind and biting sand.

I laid down uneasily. And just looked up to the sky. To the east it brightened. This is what I'd come for. A full moon was rising.

The camels snorted and shifted on their bellies, the wind calmed. And I drifted off...smiling.
Bad reality I kept saying...great anecdote...