Bourbon, ham, what could go wrong?

This is a family recipe. It comes from dear friends, well, family, in all but biology. They live in Florida. And about 8 years ago, while I was in the middle of chemo, they invited us down for Christmas. My Mum was going down. My second Mum, Auntie Joan was going to be there. The thought of a roadtrip for Christmas, and heading somewhere warm, that wasn't a hospital, was like a banquet of riches. I was more than grateful. I was overwhelmed.

So, the oncologist shrugged her shoulders and said, "go for it." Steve got lessons on how to flush and check a PICC line from our public health nurse (that's an intravenous line that stays in your upper arm throughout the six chemo treatments - and we only had to do it once during our stay), I donned a head scarf, packed some tshirts with longer sleeves, and we headed south. I don't even remember thinking about medical insurance for the trip. Wow.

I was on steroids at the time. I took them a couple of days before, then a couple of days after a treatment. That meant I ate like a lumberjack. Maybe two lumberjacks. Okay...three. And then I discovered Bob Evans. The restaurant with meatloaf sandwich screaming from the menu. I have never, for the record, ordered a meatloaf sandwich before. We stopped somewhere on interstate 79 for lunch the first day on the road. I ordered it. It came. Meatloaf sandwich on a plate. That's it.


"I thought this came with fries," I said with a tad of aggression or annoyance, in a voice that wasn't entirely my own. The waitress jumped back almost imperceptibly. "I didn't think you'd want fries," she said. "Oh, I'll let you know if I want fries."

Steve was staring at me. And looking strangely amused. I didn't take the time to notice...I dug in. And within five minutes I called the waitress over. "I'll take the fries," I said. She brought a platter-sized portion.

We'd stopped for a big breakfast about four hours before that. But at the time I was eating double meals: two breakfasts, two lunches. I ate the sandwich. I ate the fries. People kept their hands away from me. It's one of the best kept secrets of breast cancer treatment. I gained weight. Like...10 pounds.


We arrived in St. Augustine the next day. Anne and Keith, his Mum, my Auntie Joan, my Mum welcomed us - even draped a huge Canadian flag on their garage door so we'd know which house was theirs. They encouraged us to walk along Micklers Beach, and relax. I felt embraced, at home, and Anne made this fantastic ham with a glaze that smelled of bourbon, cloves and oranges. It was perfect. And no, I didn't eat it all myself. And now I make it for almost every holiday meal I cook. It is more than bourbon, cloves and oranges. For me, this is a family recipe, cooked with love.


Bourbon glazed ham

1/2 cup dry red wine
1/2 cup bourbon
1 cup sugar
6 bruised cloves
2 tbsp grated orange peel

Preheat the oven to 350°. Bring the ham out of the fridge to warm up.

Whisk together the glaze ingredients. You can increase the amount of wine or bourbon (if you have a large ham), but I found that at the smaller quantities it kept its truth as a glaze. Sometimes it gets too liquid-y.

Skin the ham, but leave a nice layer of fat. Make a diamond pattern by scoring the fat in 45 degree parallel lines, being careful not to cut through to the meat. Then cross hatch the lines by scoring the opposite way. Poke a clove into the intersection of each line or in the middle of the diamonds. It looks beautiful.

Brush a small quantity on the ham.

Bake at about 18-20 minutes per pound. For a partially-cooked ham you're looking for an internal temperature of  155°F. If you are heating up an already cooked ham (not spiral cut), you need to reach an internal temperature of 110° to 120° - any higher and you risk drying it out.

Baste the ham a couple of times - but don't use the juices that collect at the bottom of the pan or you will make the ham too salty. In the last half hour start basting more frequently. And if you like, at the end, turn on the broiler and brown the top to your liking.

Let it rest for about 15 minutes. May you share it with those you love.

A note

I need to write about how I’m feeling – it ain’t narcissism, well mostly not – it’s about the surprise I’m feeling at how I’m feeling.

And because I now have three friends fighting cancer, all of them in their 40s, and all of them - I’m guessing here, since it’s different for everyone - trying to wrestle their emotions and bodies back into balance, to keep a grip on who they are.

I wanted to send a message from the other side of healing.

One of the most difficult feelings I felt when I was diagnosed with breast cancer was that the me that was me, was over – I grieved the loss of normal – the worry of being late somewhere, or losing my favourite scarf, or burning my toast. That was done.

I got tired of not going a week without some type of doctor’s appointment. I hated knowing the terminology that was now embedded in me, literally – a PICC line, steroids, epirubicin, WBC (white blood cells) – I hated getting tattooed for radiation treatments, I hated getting into the routine of blood tests for my oncologist, and that was beaten only by the idea of having an oncologist. And a surgeon. And a radiation oncologist. I loved my nurses but I hated having to know them by name. I grew to know my oncology nurse’s phone number by heart, not by choice.

I didn’t want to be treated like a patient. And it’s understandable that people do, especially when you lose your hair – in fact in the last half of six treatments you lose your eyebrows and eyelashes – and that’s when you really look like a cancer patient. I didn’t feel like one on the inside, but on the outside I looked like a barren landscape. I also lost my nose hair, which I’d never had a close relationship with, until it was gone and my life through winter consisted of whole boxes of Kleenex, because there was nothing to keep my nose from running. Funnily enough, my doctors treated me the most normally – because this was their normal.

I worried about Steve and I and our new life after cancer.

And I worried about the responsibility of having a new life after cancer.

I worried more about what if it came back?

I still worry about that – who wouldn’t? But last week marked the third anniversary of my surgery and I don’t know how I got here. It just happened. Life, I mean.

I still don’t feel normal enough to freak out about burnt toast, or an unmade bed, although I have mounted an unrelenting campaign for a dishwasher, because I hate washing dishes. That’s normal. And I hate meetings. That's uber normal. I have hot flashes now, that's a new kind of normal. My hair is back and once I was through my curly poodle new hair, it went back to "normal". I see my oncologist once every six months, my surgeon only once a year.

I also fell into beauty. That was one of the gifts of being ill. And it didn't fade when I was through. I see beauty everywhere. I want to devour it and coat my insides with it. And I love to share it.

And on the train coming home tonight, from my extremely busy job, with my extremely nice team, I thought…I still think about cancer probably every day…but it’s not choking me like it did. It drifts and leaves. Time is remarkable. I’m different. That’s okay.

And when I got home, I was happy to see yes, I had made the bed this morning.

So I think I do have the hope of normal. We all do.

Through the dirt and grime

Tomorrow I will feel spring. March came in like a lamb and left like a lamb chop. It spent 31 days caressing us and coaxing us into believing spring was coming. It’s here, and here early. Fire the groundhog – he was wrong.

Toronto starts bubbling as soon as the winter days get noticeably longer – by the end of January you can see just the remnants of day trying to hang on at 6pm – that’s my first trip wire. I start watching the sunset times on the weather network. I obsessively check the long-term 14-day forecast for hope – a Chinook from the west – a warm front from the Caribbean – whatever.

But it’s false labour pains – because then comes February. And it’s long. All 28 days of it. My next sign of hope comes from the birds in the morning – the sparrows that hide like spies in the bushes along the sidewalk – I’ve learned to look for their droppings on the branches, they don’t wander far. They’re brave little souls when they’re invisible. They’re heartier than most other creatures since they stay all winter. But by March they’re too busy trying to get laid to notice humans within a foot of them. They yammer and jaw and fight and hiss at one another. I’m sure it all works out in the end – a kind of effective UN for bird brains. Then come the cardinals…the red-wing blackbirds and the bluejays.

Finally out come the humans with the café tables and chairs and the pub patios fill with patrons cradling a beer in their gloved hands in the warm sun, willing the vitamin D into them.




 
And then...this usually happens...





But not tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m getting my vitamin D naturally – on the deck. Tomorrow I will open the doors and windows and send the air of the last year packing. Things are ready for cleaning. For starting over. Rebirth.

We’ve had our rough patches this winter. My in-laws tested their mortality a few ways. During one epic battle my mother-in-law had with pneumonia and compression fractures in her spine, my father-in-law had spinal surgery, and I developed walking pneumonia. And as usual when tough times come, you find out what people are made of – and Steve was heroic in his care.

A friend, Erin, who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the same time as I was, and then re-diagnosed last year with tumours in the brain, found out in the winter the doctors had no more tricks to pull. She went into palliative care in the new year. She died March 5^th. She was 50.

Every year we met the weekend after Thanksgiving at the cottage of a mutual friend, our Marney. All women from all over life. And we set goals, which I’ve written about before.  

Erin’s goal was a roll over from the year before – a full head of hair. Marney was with Erin throughout the last days – taking her food, feeding her, playing music, talking, laughing – honoring her friendship with a woman she has known for more than 25 years. She reported in her email when Erin died that she looked beautiful – she achieved her goal – a full head of hair.

I’ve been working on what makes me tick. That’s been hard. Because sometimes that machinery is buried deep under calluses of life, of denial and survival. I’ve loved the work. It’s settled my jittery soul. I remember my goal when I started was quiet confidence – a far off dream of something I think I could conceive…but not really. My work life has thrown some tests of that hard, personal work my way, and didn’t break me. And that makes me feel like I’ve cleaned house. And that I’m not done.

I said that quietly…and with confidence.

I knew this would be a year of loss – I’m nursing a 17-year-old cat with kidney failure who is right now giving me the “I ignore evil cat owners” look by keeping her back to me, her head erect and ears turned a little backward to listen for me. That’s because I just injected her with a bag of saline. The things we do for love. She doesn’t see it that way. So there may be more loss – that is part of it all.

But I also feel a great sense of hope. Of grabbing the reins. Of owning whatever path I’m on. I’ve stumbled around sometimes wondering why I haven’t felt an epiphany with my recovery – that I’ve just gotten on with it. That I missed something. But I think I’m blind to the signs. This has been no whiz bang lightning flash epiphany – I think this is one of those slow burning epiphanies. I think I prefer it – because I trust it more.

That is the great gift of spring – the warmth of the sun on your face, the crocuses blooming against a south wall, the rising excitement in your stomach, the need to believe.

life cycle

Fall is here. In breathtaking strokes of colour, streaked by a sun that is harsh as it lowers itself in the sky. The haze that burns the sky white in summer is blown out. The blue through to space is clean and pure and ready for winter.

I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the fall but Canada.

It was the mark of fall – the rocky outcrop, Lake Joseph, the Muskoka chairs, the wine, the beer, the caesars, the snacks and handful of women who trek up to the cottage the weekend after Thanksgiving every year to laugh, drink, laugh, eat, and laugh. And eat.

The cottage itself is a testament to another time. It sits on stilts over the water, blending the land and lake. Its glory is fading. The porch off the living room faces east. In the morning, we were sitting nursing cups of coffee in the cold, the water looked like a basket weaver’s work – diagonal lines crossing through each other in perfect sequence. Looking to the east, as the sun was pulling up over the tree line, the water let go its heat and mist rose…and I'm not kidding, a loon cried out far away. Slowly the other women followed the light and pulled chairs into the sun and our day was begun.

We have been going up there every year of this decade at least…and it marks our lives each year. Our host and her former husband had wild parties up there but after their break up the weekend became a way to connect with her women friends.

We come from all walks of life. There are a few tv people, a couple of teachers, a medical administrator, an adventure company owner, an executive with a non profit, an outdoor educator/guide, and we’re deep into or on the cusp of middle age. We are smart and funny - even without the wine.

Most of us only see each other for this weekend – and every year there’s something new – a marriage, a baby, a career change, travel, illness, recovery, discovery.

However, the price of admission - apart from closing up the cottage for the owners on the Sunday - is our host makes us set goals for the coming year. And we have to answer for them next year.

The goals are as varied as we are in personality. One of my favourites this year was Kathleen who wants to find her inner princess. To treat herself well…so some are about self improvement, others want to play the ukulele, one woman wants to find a way to help homeless animals, and Marney is registered for the Ironman Canada triathlon for her 50th birthday, and Erin just wants her hair back.

She looked at me saying, “I want my hair to look like that. It’s not fair,” she said. I flinched inside – it hurt. And it’s true. My hair is back in full swing and gradually growing down to my shoulders and there’s no way to change the fairness of that. Whatever the future holds.

We talked about our year – we toasted Erin who wants her hair back…she is battling recurrent cancer with everything she’s got. And holding her own thank you very much. We toasted her for just being here, when at the beginning of the year we all wondered what 2009 held for her. Jennie lost an employee/friend in a horrific accident while he was on the job. It was also unfair. She sobbed through the telling with such genuine affection for him and guilt for what happened - and she said that he lived by his own rules, he knew who he was…all that at 26. So many live so long never able to say that. Living by your own rules, your own standards…that is quite an achievement in a young life. Carol jumped back into the freelance world after her job collapsed from under her and she’s stitching together her living – single, mortgage holder, making it work. These are strong, remarkable women.

I personally hate goal setting. I’ve always resisted it – I don’t like the set up for disappointment. I’ve done it over and over and over, and don’t get any better at it. I’m already pretty good at beating myself up so I don’t need another missed goal to point out my flaws.

Actually, to be honest, on these cottage weekends, I have always achieved my goals – but that’s because I’ve managed to set my goal posts so wide I couldn’t miss (well couldn’t miss anything other than the point of the exercise, of course).

Although the gods have a sense of humour: six years ago I set my goal low – as always – it was to have a date. One. In the next year. The following October the women’s weekend was two weeks after my wedding. Total overachiever. Total. Yes.

So last year I went practical. I set the goal of writing up the collection of recipes that we have cooked over the years. Because the food has been remarkable. And of course I didn’t get it done. I put out an APB to the women a few weeks ago asking them to at least help me remember all the dishes – and many came to my rescue…but it wasn’t done.

The morning we drove up I came up with a perfect roundtable logic of success…while I had set my goal to create the cookbook, my actual clandestine goal was to fail at the goal…since I always achieve my goal, I wanted to see what this failure thing was all about…or so went my explanation that night. The goal keeper looked back at her notes from last year and said, “No you didn’t fail. You said you’d start collecting the recipes. And you've started.” So I failed at failing. Or something.

We were fourteen at table on Saturday night. It was cold – even for this normally cold weekend, the thermometer couldn’t really rouse itself into double digits. So the fireplace in the big, old dining room was lit, the huge table set (it can sit 14 comfortably).

Wendy and I got to work in the kitchen. This seems to be the year to try a Julia Child recipe. So that's what we did. Coq au vin – and browning enough chicken for 14 does not make for a happy smoke detector. That picture of us is just after we smoked out the entire kitchen.

But Julia is a classic for a reason - that chicken stew was pretty damned delicious. We served it with salad and boiled new potatoes in parsley butter.

Now I found the recipe in a book I am totally enjoying, American Food Writing, by Molly O’Neill. It has everything – essays on food by Thomas Jefferson to Walt Whitman to David Sedaris. And recipes for the likes of ketchup, peach leather (from 1867), or cranberry sauce (from 1901), even Thomas Jefferson's ice cream. And of course at the end of a piece by Julia Child about the making of her tv show, Molly reproduced the Julia’s Coq au Vin recipe.

It was perfect. The weekend and the food - warming to the soul, deep and personal. That’s goal enough I think.


Coq au Vin – a la Julia Child -

We doubled these amounts to serve 14, browning the chicken in two pans, much to the consternation of the smoke detector.

3-4 oz chunk of lean bacon
2 tb butter
2 ½ to 3 lbs. cut up frying chicken (we used boneless thighs, but I've made it before with bone in and most people swear by the extra flavour the bones impart)
½ tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper

¼ cup cognac

3 cups young, full-bodied red wine (burgundy, Beaujolais, chianti)
1-2 cups brown chicken stock
½ tbsp tomato paste
2 cloves mashed garlic
¼ tsp thyme
1 bay leaf

12 to 24 brown-braised onions
½ lb. sautéed mushrooms

3 tb flour
2 tb softened butter
a saucer
a rubber spatula
a wire whip

Remove the rind and cut the bacon into lardons (rectangles ¼ inch and 1 inch long). Simmer for 10 minutes in 2 quarts of water. Rinse in cold water. Dry.

Sauté the bacon slowly in hot butter until it is very lightly browned. Remove to a side dish.

Dry the chicken thoroughly. Brown it in the hot fat.

Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Return the bacon to the casserole with the chicken. Cover and cook slowly for 10 minutes, turning the chicken once.

Uncover, and pour in the cognac. Ignite the cognac with a match. Shake the casserole back and forth for several seconds until the flames subside.

Pour the wine into the casserole. Add just enough stock to cover the chicken. Stir in the tomato paste, garlic, and herbs. Bring to the simmer. Cover and simmer slowly for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the chicken is tender and its juices run a clear yellow when the meat is pricked with a fork. Remove the chicken to a side dish.

While the chicken is cooking, prepare the onions and mushrooms.

Simmer the chicken cooking liquid in the casserole for a minute or two, skimming off fat. Then raise heat and boil rapidly, reducing the liquid to about 2 ¼ cups. Correct seasoning. Remove from heat, and discard bay leaf.

Blend the butter and flour together into a smooth paste (beurre manie). Beat the paste into the hot liquid with a wire whip. Bring to the simmer, stirring, and simmer for a minute or two. The sauce should be thick enough to coat a spoon lightly.

Arrange the chicken in the casserole, place the mushrooms and onions around it, and baste with the sauce. If the dish is not to be served immediately, film the top of the sauce with stock or dot with small pieces of butter. Set aside uncovered. It can wait indefinitely.

Shortly before serving, bring to the simmer, basting the chicken with the sauce. Cover and simmer slowly for 4 to 5 minutes, until the chicken is hot through.

Serve from the casserole, or arrange on a hot platter. Decorate with sprigs of parsley.

My cooking chops

I’m normal. Favourite word. Bar none. Ever.
Not normal as in boring, flat, suburban. I’m normal - In the medical sense. It's a good thing.

Hello again.

I feel kind of slow-roasted. That feeling where I've slowed down (some of that is mental), eased back, tenderized myself, allowed myself to caramelize and brought out the sweetness...slow roasted the best in myself.

I've got myself back. I've held it together and now look back at my adventure through chemo and radiation (which, I must admit, is not so much like being slow roasted, as it is like being zapped in a microwave)...and realize how shit scary it was.

So now when they check me out and get bored and start talking about the disaster to their stock portfolio, I grin and go along for the ride...I'm so boring, I'm normal! Best word in the English language.

So life reasserts itself. I work. I run again. I eat. And I talk about food a lot. Hence I run.
Unless the windchill is crushing us senseless. Winter is professional this year. Snow and bitter cold. Our mothers have both had to have professionals come and clear ice and snow from their rooftops. And Steve is intently figuring out how to spend the winters in a place where windchill is a problem only in the beer fridge.

I have been finding my cooking chops again.

At the back of the freezer the other day I excavated a lamb leg. It was clearly on the edge of extinction. And I thought about a recipe I saw Jamie Oliver do on "Jamie at Home" that cooked the lamb (it was a shoulder in that case) for four hours – and it looked so incredible when it came out, I needed a napkin.

Now in the case of the lamb leg in my freezer, it wasn’t destined to inspire poetry. It looked like something prehistoric found by archeologists in the Andes. I was dealing with a sorry looking piece of meat – what else could I do but cook the hell out of it? And then perhaps it too would regain a sense of normality or at least at the risk of inspiring poetry - fulfill its destiny.

I had to try and remember the recipe – because I just haven’t the guts to spend the 40 bucks on Jamie's book yet, but I will. What I did have was the four hours it takes to bake it in the oven…I thought.

That day Steve had kindly taken to cleaning our oven – which we consider our civic duty to our local fire department. The oven is small and our organic chickens we roast in there weekly are particularly adept at spitting all over it until there’s more smoke than air in the apartment. So, I came up with this recipe at 5pm and Steve stepped up his rinsing and wiping…which was at 5:30pm…We ate...late.

However, a couple of hours of bad Saturday night television later (and if you grew up in the 70s, the lamb would have been done in the middle of Love Boat and before Fantasy Island yuk) when it came out of the oven, it was everything I could do not to eat it with my hands right off the bone, probably like one of those prehistoric frozen beings found in the Andes…it was a glorious end for a piece of meat that was otherwise doomed to freezer burn.

So here goes a sort-of slow-roasted lamb rescue. Adapted from the James...

1 lamb leg or shoulder (mine was about 2lbs bone in)

1 bunch fresh rosemary

1 head of garlic

olive oil

crunchy salt

freshly-ground pepper

The key here is to get the oven as hot as you can to start. So, 500 degrees F.

While that’s heating up, score the fat on the roast into a diamond pattern (run your knife through diagonally in one direction and then turn it and run your knife in the opposite direction).

Pour some olive oil in the bottom of a roasting pan and then pile a layer of fresh rosemary– I used what I had on the counter that had been living its last glory days.

Throw half to ¾ of the garlic cloves unpeeled on the bottom of the pan.

Place the roast, fat side up, on the rosemary and garlic.

Pour olive oil on the roast and rub it into the crevices of the fat and meat.

Sprinkle the roast with the salt and pepper.

Top with the remaining rosemary and garlic bulbs.

Wrap the whole thing tightly in tin foil…I used a couple of layers to make sure it was sealed.

Place in the middle of the oven.

Turn the heat down to 325 degrees F.

Leave for four hours.

Now when it comes out you’ll be able to pull the meat off the bone with a fork. I’m not kidding. It’s just beautiful.

Pull the meat off and set aside on a platter that you can keep warm.

Remove the rosemary spears and discard. Take out the garlic and set aside.

Pour off the fat from the roasting pan, all but one tablespoon. Don’t lose any of the good brown bits that are chock full of flavour. Squeeze the garlic from the garlic bulbs and mash them into the pan.

Put the roasting pan on the stove, if you can, and add 1 tbsp of flour. Stir the flour and oil together to thicken – let cook a little to lose the flour flavour, then add 1 cup of chicken stock. Stir with a wooden spoon and let it boil for about five minutes or so. Add a bunch of fresh mint that you’ve finely chopped (leaves only) and about 2 tbsp of red wine vinegar. Bring back to a boil briefly.

When ready to serve you can pour it directly over your platter, or place in a warm jug and let people help themselves. Bringing lamb back from oblivion to its normal destiny...Good to be back...Enjoy.

simply simple

I feel I’ve entered my indulgence era. So I indulge.

In the last few weeks I’ve succumbed to whims I’ve never had before – my eyebrows have been waxed…I bought new makeup…and last week I skipped out of work during lunch for a quick mani/pedi…this just isn’t me, or wasn’t.

And I enjoyed every indulgent second as others worked on me like a beautification project – cleaning up the ragged edges that winter and disease had done to me. And like spring rain and its partner warm sunshine, I was cleaned from the inside out.

On a beautiful, soft night we had dear friends over, who were happy to be fed. And I set myself the challenge for how simply I could feed them and yet still feel the full force of full flavour.

I came up with burgers and 3 salads. Okay not so simple in the aggregate, but as individuals? Stellar examples of their kind. The classic: Potato Salad, the comfort: Roasted Beet Salad, the tart: Arugula and Baby Spinach with lemon dressing.

Steve picked up grass-fed ground beef from our favourite food store that supports the Mennonite and Amish farmers to the southwest of us. We say, “thank you cow” after the first bite, because it is not your basic ground meat. It has turned me back into a burger biter after many years of hiatus.

So how to complement that? Bbq’d burgers need, demand, lust for, partnership with potato salad.

And having scoured my books, I suddenly remembered that Cook’s Illustrated had an article on the perfect potato salad. The All-American Potato Salad is part of their Summer Grilling & Entertaining special edition – but also from their 2004 collection. Rebecca Hays performed a heroic duty and dug through all the ugly versions of potato salad.

And there I was last week, on the subway, riveted by her inner musings and debates: russet versus Yukon gold, including garlic or not, pickles, dry mustard or prepared - now in high school, if science had been about potato salad, I might have taken a different path…

I’m a food geek. Almost missed my stop because someone in a test kitchen somewhere was writing about one of my favourite foods and dissecting and rebuilding it into a classic – yeah…food geek.

So I used her journey as my guide. This served four and we have leftovers for dinner tonight.

Cross Border Classic Potato Salad
3 russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 tbsp white vinegar
½ cup celery, finely chopped
2 tbsp red onion, finely chopped
2 tbsp sweet pickle relish (this is a new one on me…the recipe calls for 3 tbsp, but I found it too much - I would normally use dill pickles and a little pickle juice)
½ cup mayonnaise (use the real thing, not salad dressing)
¾ tsp dry mustard
¾ tsp celery seed (she swears this makes all the difference, but I couldn’t find any in three stores…and I thought Toronto was cosmopolitan even in its approach to suburban fare like potato salad!)
2 tbsp minced parsley
¼ tsp black pepper
(I didn’t go for the optional two hard-boiled eggs)
2 tbsp chopped fresh dill (not part of the recipe, but I had it on the counter)

Put the potatoes in a saucepan and cover with cold water by an inch (2cm). Bring them to a gentle boil and then simmer until tender. Strain them, carefully put them in a bowl, and drizzle the vinegar over them. Let them cool.

Meanwhile, combine the other ingredients for the dressing.

Once the potatoes are cool, spoon the dressing onto the potatoes and carefully mix together (don’t be rough, the potatoes might not like it). Spoon it one at a time until you’ve reached the right balance of dressing to potato for you. I didn’t use all the dressing I made.

Roasted beet and mint salad

3-4 beets
2 tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped
1 tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped
½ red onion, diced
dressing, recipe to follow

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Scrub the beets clean.

Cut off the greens from the beets – leaving about 1 inch (2cm) of stems off the top. If you have the leaves, you can cook them in the same way you would use swiss chard, if you don't leave them on the counter for a week, like I did.

Wrap each beet in foil. Place on a cookie sheet and roast in the oven for one hour.

Pull them out (if you’re not sure if they’re done, stick a sharp knife into one to see if it’s tender.)

Once cool, peel them and cut them into whatever size, shape you’d like.

Toss with the mint, parsley and onion.

We debated what kind of dressing to put on this…and I wanted the taste to be simple. So I mixed some apple cider vinegar, a little dry mustard, and whisked in some olive oil. Dip a piece of beet into the dressing to see if you like the combo. Pour over the salad and allow to sit for a while.

Arugula and Baby Spinach

Carefully clean the arugula and spinach leaves.
Combine with spring onion, small tomatoes (like Campari), red pepper, and cucumber.
Dressing – Juice 1/2 a lemon into a bowl, watch for seeds. Zest a little of the lemon into the bowl. Add about ½ tsp of sugar. Stir to combine. Slowly drizzle in olive oil as you whisk with the other hand. Grab a piece of arugula and dip it in the dressing – it should bite a bit but feel very fresh, without being too tart.

And how did we close the circle? End the feast? The first of the local strawberry harvest are hitting our markets now…so I washed the strawberries, put them in one bowl. Then I whipped some cream, and put that in a matching bowl. Take your fingers, grad a berry, dip…Simply simple.

peaks at the past

I bought mascara the other day. It was a peak experience.
My eyes, the brow above, and the billiard ball above that, have been hair challenged - and have won the fight. My head is now filled with a new kind of hair - soft and fine like a newborn's.
And so I am, in a way.

Sometimes life shows you what's what.

In a moment of doubt, in a moment when life shakes off your yellowing veneer, you look back on the path you've been on and see it more clearly than you thought possible.

The stuff you'd rather not remember, the parts of you you're not so crazy about, the parts that warm you through with light and love too - no one's immune from that spectrum - it's in all of us.

When your face is held to the prism of your life you really do hope for the best don't you? You don't want to say the line Shirley Valentine gulped out to the camera, "I've led such a little life." - I saw that movie just when I should - as I entered adulthood - and it scared the shit out of me. I remember turning thirty and clinking glasses with a friend daring each other to make it the best decade of our lives so far...

and it was...

and I plan to beat it.

I traveled. And traveled.

I stood on mountains, and under oceans, in jungles and in deserts.

I gave in to my need to write and fell in love with the writer.

I forgave myself my faults – and continue to everyday.

I fell in love. And listened to my instinct, my rock, when it said firmly and quietly, “Yes.”

Which means I married him.

And I’m now in the legion of people who have survived cancer. So far.

Talk about your peak experiences.

In my moments of doubt, when the concept of cancer being in my body at the age of 44 scares me blind, I look back at what I’ve done. And I smile with relief. It’s been hard and amazing and I’m not done yet. I’d be so depressed if what I looked back on was so little…although maybe it would kick me right in the ambition.

I’m more sensitive to beauty, peace, and wanting to do what I want to do. My ambitions have changed. I’m not going to climb Everest – but I’m going to try and convince Steve we have to stand at Everest base camp. I’ve been to Annapurna’s base camp – and it was a peak experience. And so…I’m not done yet.

That said, my perceptions are alive to now. I couldn’t be happier than to be through this valley as spring gushes up around us. And this week we had local asparagus. Life is sweet.

on the moon in winter

My body is one treatment away from the end of chemo. This weekend marks the precarious bridge between the treatment a week ago and the final one on Valentines Day. This weekend my immune system will be at its ebb – the neutrophils fighting to come back, any germs that harbour in me, fighting to take possession of their host, me.

It’s my reality - a surreal balancing act.

I can’t feel it – I just know it’s happening. I’ve lived in a bubble since the last treatment, staying far from humans and our parasites and germs which hitch rides on us all. That too is surreal – staying in contact through the web – feeling like I’m on the moon.

The race between my plummeting white blood cells and the germs has shown itself a little. I have thrush for example. It’s a yeast infection of the tongue – how delightful. It is also ironic. The fungus coats your tongue in a blanket – putting an insulation layer between you and food. Between you and flavour. That’s not just ironic. That’s just cruel.

Living without flavour is something I would hate. Now that I’m doing it and know it’s temporary – it’s a little bit bearable.

But something’s happened. I find myself more aware of taste – hunting carefully for it with every bite. Attuning my senses as I can.

Just last week I saw a science program about taste – and they told the story of a wine taster here in Canada who fell, bumped her noggin while curling, went to a wine tasting two days later only to discover after the first swig that there was nothing there. She couldn’t taste it. With rising panic she tasted a second red. Nothing. That was 7 years ago or so…She never got it back. She was lost.

I feel myself hitting back. In defiance I reach out for the strongest tastes I can muster. At a restaurant two weeks ago I pulled back the waiter as he was leaving with our order to add anchovies to my Caesar salad. Anchovies! Anchovies? Me? Me, who would walk around the block as a kid to avoid the smell of a fishmonger’s? And I could taste them. I may never do it again, but they kicked ass.

I made one of our favourite side dishes last week – basmati rice with caramelized onions and greens folded in, fresh ginger and garlic, red pepper, a little shaved carrot - I salted it. Then I salted it. By the time we forked it in our mouths, our kidneys were begging for relief and a bucket of water.

But I could taste it. Even I could tell I’d used a backhoe’s worth of salt. It kicked ass - and not in a good way.

And what’s saving my soul right now? My precious nose – while my tongue is subjugated to the tyranny of this white, furry blanket – my nose is in hyperdrive. Ever on the hunt for the most expressive smell it can find that’s beautiful.

It dives for every pot – we made stock on the weekend – I spray myself liberally with my perfume and drink in the smell like I’m dehydrated sensually – I absent-mindedly bought a bar of soap near the cash at the drug store the other night, olive oil soap with lavender…the smell of lavender…while at other times reminds me of lace and grandma’s, has come to smell of beauty and the earth, and sweetness mixed with spice – I found myself in the bathroom yesterday, grabbing at the pretty block of plain brown paper and just inhaling the essence of wild fields and sun and warmth.

Just standing in my bathroom, in the basement of this old house, at the end of Canadian January, transported sensually to France. To windblown fields, where lavender grows defiantly where it likes, where my hand tugs gently up the stem as I walk along in the sun, and flies to my nose to gulp down the essence quickly before it evaporates.

Existentialism in the bathroom. I think that's where most people find it, isn't it?

And in the kitchen.

My eyes are part of the conspiracy – I ache for beauty – at a time when my own feels so buried, a field of fuzz on my head, not enough eyelash to hit with a mascara wand, eyebrows once so defiantly bold that now look like a smudge – at a time of year when tree limbs are asleep and unconscious of the wind and the windchill, when the soil is rocked solid by ice, where the beautiful grays and browns and purples are the sum of the spectrum – the time of year when I start dreaming of magnolia and daffodils, crocuses and those first winter snowdrops that will poke above the soil not long from now – I look for beauty in people’s eyes and smiles, in red sofas, in fur hats, in dappled sunlight, in caramelized onions.

And I stare.

My meals need colour…this isn’t an appetite issue (I’ve gained five kilos and am over-sufficiently spongy). This is my sensual appetite struggling through this winter to supersede biology.

It’s a gift. Seeing, tasting and smelling like I’m parched. It’s a gift.

another graceful offering

As Karen is to being alive, Carol is our spiritual hunter - ever in search of peace of mind. She's methodical, organized (actually most of the graces in my life are highly organized, I've learned lots from them), fiercely loyal, caring and huggy.

She organized the cooking night that pulled together five women who would put oodles of food in my freezer.

She not only invited the graces to bring recipes, but she made one of her own and served us dinner, all on a Tuesday night.

My job was to sit in a chair, scoff appetizers, throw wine down my gullet and offer pithy critiques of the whole jumbled process. They said that's what I do best....hmmm.

Carol's dinner choice was interesting. It was Chicken Sausage with White Beans and Rosemary, from a book called On Rice by Rick Rodgers (wasn't he a country singer? he shoulda been...maybe that's where the bean recipe comes from, home on the range).

Rodgers writes in his book that this is a Tuscan version of the worldwide pairing of beans and rice - I have a limit to my beans and rice intake, since my various trips to Central and South America. I have done my fair share...

This recipe sounded pretty white - and pretty bland. But it was incredibly comforting. So I share it here - although I might raise the octane on some of the flavourings at will - and don't skimp on the salt. Taste carefully at the end.

Chicken Sausage with White Beans and Rosemary, from On Rice

1 lb hot or sweet chicken sausage or turkey Italian sausage
1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium red pepper, seeded and chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary or 1-1/2 tsp dried rosemary
2 cans (15 ounces each) white kidney beans
1/4 tsp of salt (I'd add and taste...because I suspect this might be low for some people)
1/4 tsp of freshly ground black pepper

Pierce the sausage with a fork. Place in a medium saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer. Simmer uncovered, until the sausage is firm, about 8 minutes. Transfer to a plate to cool. Slice the sausage into 1/2" rounds and set aside. (I might grill these next time, to see if that offers a different hit of flavour.)

In a flame proof casserole or Dutch oven heat the oil. Add the onion, garlic and red pepper. Cook for about 4 minutes, stirring often.

Stir in the broth, wine and rosemary. Bring to a simmer for five minutes, uncovered. Add beans and sausage rounds, simmer for 10 minutes until beans are hot. Add salt and pepper.

Serve with rice. Place rice in bottom of bowl and spoon meat and beans over top, and serve.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

insulation essentials

Karen finds grace everywhere. Of all the graces in my life, Karen lives by the ethos of experience - try it, push it, live it. She wants to travel everywhere - she wants to try every food - she wants to live every experience she can. She is the most alive of us.

Even her hair is long and wild and crazy. We traveled briefly together in Nepal and the Nepalese loved to touch her hair. They called it happy hair - and that happiness permeates her.

And she finds grace in kitsch - before she went through her paring down phase, she had the coolest collection of snowglobes. She now lives out of town unfortunately - she teaches some unwittingly lucky students at a college up north.

She's donated recipes before to foodnut - her stellar magic nuts which are now a classic in my kitchen - and her less than helpful recipe for homemade cheez whiz that was meant for her recipe cheesy broccoli casserole meant to be eaten with tongue firmly in cheek.

She came into town to help in the cooking marathon to feed my freezer. Here is what she donated to the cause:

"This Mac & Cheese recipe comes from the Best of Bridge books, both "Grand Slam" and "The Best of the Best". Voila...Karenxo"

Gourmet Macaroni & Cheese

2 1/2 cups macaroni (625 ml)
1/4 cup butter (60 ml)
1/4 cup flour (60 ml)
2 cups milk (500 ml)
1 tsp. salt (5 ml)
1 tsp. sugar (5 ml)
1/2 lb. processed cheese, cubed (250 g)
(Velveeta works... yes Nicky there is processed cheese in it... it's good though right?)
2/3 cup sour cream (150 ml)(fat free
is fine)
1 1/3 cups cottage cheese (325 ml)
2 cups grated old cheddar cheese (500 ml)
1 1/2 cups soft breadcrumbs (375 ml)
2 Tbsp. butter (30 ml)
paprika

Instructions:
Cook and drain macaroni and place in a 2 1/2 quart (2.5 L) greased casserole. Melt butter over medium heat; stir in flour; mix well. Add milk and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until sauce thickens. Add salt, sugar and cheese. Mix well. Mix sour cream and cottage cheese into sauce. Pour over macaroni. Mix well. Sprinkle cheddar cheese and crumbs over top. Dot with butter and sprinkle with paprika. May be frozen at this point. Bake at 350F (180C) for 45-50 minutes. Serves 6.

spanish chicken in my kitchen

There are moments in life that stop you cold - not including January in Canada.
Moments when grace fills your life, and if you're lucky you can feel it.
I'm surrounded by grace - women and men whose spirits anchor me in place - whose support cradles me - whose generosity inspires me.

When Charlie Rose asked Ruth Reichl what elevates a good cook into a great cook - you could sense he was looking for an answer like technique, experience, the love of risk. She said generosity.

And I was thrilled - because that is what cooking is to me - a place to let my heart out and let it nourish others. I felt if we ever met, I'd be understood.

The graces in my life got together and cooked for me a while ago. Five women, one kitchen, five recipes, one freezer.

Nic worked on one counter making her famous mushroom soup. Jain slaved at the stove over shepherd's pie. Karen got to the oven early to bake macaroni and cheese. Carol, being the host, had already made vegetarian chili. And the recipe I'll share today came with Naomi - who has made chicken marbella many times - and a few times for Steve and I.

It is a classic that comes from, once again, the Silver Palate Cookbook - it was in fact the first entree they offered their customers.

When Naomi wrote me the recipe she added, "I just wing-ed it (as it were) because instead of 4 chickens, I used 6 legs-plus-thighs.. Also, I deleted the olives (for the sake of Sir Steve)... And I didn’t puree the garlic, I used one of those hardware-grater thingees..."

It seems a versatile dish - with sweetness and saltiness in balance. It can be an appetizer or main - and while they recommend you serve it at room temperature, there are some climates and times when hot is where it's at. And having just put the plastic over the bedroom window to cut the draft - I know it's January again. We froze the chicken in individual portions (in the freezer, not on the window sill, if you're wondering), thawed it carefully and warmed it in the oven.

For you, with grace - Chicken Marbella, adapted from The Silver Palate Cookbook.

1⁄2 cup olive oil
1⁄2 cup red wine vinegar
1 cup pitted prunes
1⁄2 cup pitted Spanish green olives
1⁄2 cup capers with a bit of juice
6 bay leaves
1 head of garlic, peeled and finely puréed
1⁄4 cup dried oregano
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4 chickens (2 1⁄2 pounds each), quartered
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup dry white wine
1⁄4 cup fresh Italian (flat-leaf) parsley or fresh cilantro, finely chopped

1. Combine the olive oil, vinegar, prunes, olives, capers and juice, bay leaves, garlic, oregano, and salt and pepper in a large bowl. Add the chicken and stir to coat. Cover the bowl and refrigerate overnight. (The marinating is essential, don't skimp on the time.)

2. Preheat the oven to 350°F.

3. Arrange the chicken in a single layer in one or two large, shallow baking pans and spoon the marinade over it evenly. Sprinkle the chicken pieces with the brown sugar and pour the white wine around them.

4. Bake, basting frequently with the pan juices, until the thigh pieces yield clear yellow (rather than pink) juice when pricked with a fork, 50 minutes to 1 hour.

5. With a slotted spoon, transfer the chicken, prunes, olives, and capers to a serving platter. Moisten with a few spoonfuls of the pan juices and sprinkle generously with the parsley or cilantro. Pass the remaining pan juices in a sauceboat.

16 pieces, 10 or more portions

Note from Silver Palate: "To serve Chicken Marbella cold, cool to room temperature in the cooking juices before transferring the pieces to a serving platter. If the chicken has been covered and refrigerated, reheat it in the juices, then allow it to come to room temperature before serving. Spoon some of the reserved juice over the chicken."

Code Red - food emergency

When the cover came off the plate, I realized it wasn’t there to enhance anticipation. It was to prevent retching.

It’s been a long time since I was forced to eat institutionalized food – so these words came out before I’d picked up my knife and fork:

It’s a slice of Alpo. Warmed up.

Waxed in gravy that had separated in brown globs inside diluted, gelatinous corn starch.

A blob of fake mashed potato.

And four spears of broccoli that seemed offended.

They called it meatloaf.

And I ate it….

Life gets smaller when you’re sick.

Have you noticed that? If you have the flu and you’re curled up in bed in a fetal position, your life shrink wraps around you. The farther away the news, the people, events, the less important. Your obsessions change from say, the currency market in Hong Kong, or women’s rights in Afghanistan, to orange juice.

Not from concentrate.

I noticed that on Saturday. For the second time in my life I had to go to emergency…the first time I was four, enjoying my favourite post-grocery shopping treat of the week: french fries and Coke with my bof. (Okay we didn’t shop for food as much as spin ourselves sick on the railings of the grocery cart corral.) She and I started wrassling and I twisted my arm in the back of the chair, screamed, then whimpered heroically all the way to the hospital – where they made us wait so long, I was fine by the time they x-rayed it. I remember coming home bummed because I was castless. Casts on the arm were cool…they indicated adventure. To a four year old.

This time the emergency room and I got intimate because I developed a fever – and on chemo (I’m 2/3 of the way through) – that’s a no-no. I didn’t want to be a patient. I’ll tolerate outpatient. Not patient. I think it makes me feel too vulnerable. I hate feeling vulnerable. No wait. I hate being out of control – think of the back of the gown alone – it just screams: here is a specimen.

So, chemo attacks any rapidly-dividing cells – unfortunately including my white blood cells which fight infection. They become what Rumsfeld or Cheney would call medical collateral damage. Doing harm to do good.

They had pounded into me that if my temperature hit 38 degrees Celsius (100 F) I wasn’t to call or wait or anything. Just get to ER. So we did. And there I stayed – four days until my immune system showed it could behave itself.

I may have dreaded the idea, but I was grateful to be there.

But what gives hospitals the right to twist that gratitude by admitting you and then serving you Alpo and calling it meatloaf?

Or chicken noodle casserole? Sunday night.

Or pork goulash? Monday night (I ordered the vegetables alone).

All meals whose ingredients have more in common with a lab than the soil.

Food that's beyond life support. That gave up trying. That never had a chance.

We joked about it in our room. There were three of us.

While I was there one of my penmates heard that she had won a bed at the particular palliative care centre she wanted to die in. She almost cried with joy. Life had shrink-wrapped around her tight.

She looked a little older than I. Not much. After two rounds of chemo, she told them to stop. Her skin was just starting to tinge yellow – that stealthy, creeping sign.

She obsessed about the tiniest, molecular-sized things. Her clock was angled incorrectly. She stopped a nurse to have him turn the waste basket the other way. Her bed pads were wrong. The curtain was too far along. Her light had to be on. She didn't read. She didn't have a tv. And she stayed awake all night, like an owl. Waiting.

She had been there since before fall had turned to winter.

Her friends and family visited every day, bringing her what she wanted – a submarine sandwich one night (the night I had the Alpo, which was just unfair) – a cheeseburger and onion rings from their teenaged hangout joint the next night.

I laid there listening from behind the curtain that I shrouded around myself trying not to let in what this third-floor ward meant. Steve and I walked around one morning only to come across a priest, holding his book in front, leaning on the wall, looking at the floor, his sacrament collar dangling, as he waited to deliver last rites. And even over the incredible din of the overwhelmed nurses' station, you could hear the weeping from somewhere. We turned back. Down another hall, another family with young kids gathered around another bed, the husband saying it was going from hour to hour. His wife is, if she still is, 43.

That, my dears, is too close. I like the world of denial much better. We walked over to the cardiology floor…

So, knowing I was escaping to come home, knowing I’d be able to sink and drown the smell of the hospital in a perfumed bath, knowing that I’d feel the weight and security of my down duvet, and knowing that I could make my own dinner with ingredients that were loved and respected, not institutionalized/brutalized and processed into the “shape” of short back ribs, no bones! (yes, my first night there)…I found myself wandering through my cookbook collection and free-floating recipes to find the most fundamental recipe I could offer – that represents love, respect, comfort and life.

Here it is – for you.

My Mum’s Yorkshire Puddings

vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups milk (Mum uses 1 or 2%)

Heat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Take a 12- cup muffin tin and pour enough vegetable oil (canola is my Mum's preference) into each cup to coat the bottom (she uses about 1 tsp per)
Put the tin in the oven to heat up.

Meanwhile, whip together the eggs. Then add the flour, salt and milk. Beat until smooth.

Carefully remove the tin from the oven and again, carefully pour the mixture into each cup filling about 1/2 to 2/3 full. If the oil doesn't sizzle, it's not hot enough.

Put them back in the oven for approximately 15-25 minutes. They should puff up and turn a beautiful golden colour.

Remove from oven and put into a serving dish - and take to your table groaning with roast beef and horseradish and vegetables and gravy.

Do what we always did as kids, when you get one or two or three on your plate, pour gravy into the well that formed in the centre. And devour.

If there are any left over, and if you like cold leftovers, these are beautiful with jam the next morning.

Yorkshire puddings - fundamental. From my Mum's big, loving (and non-shrink wrapped) heart to yours.

no gain, no pain

I started walking home from work again. Or at least an hour of the way home. For exercise, you understand. I'm no martyr.

I'm almost halfway through chemo now, sitting here with my laptop and mug of tea, and able to tell you, that, apart from getting used to the weirdness of having a head more akin to a billiard ball, than a head, so far so good. I'm working full time, and once I'm through the first few days, after the first few waves of nausea are beaten back by drugs, after the Sunday I spend sleeping on the couch, I'm back on track.

So here's the kicker - the week after chemo I feel like I'm eating for Canada. It's not hard for me to have two breakfasts, two sandwiches for lunch, potato chips on demand, fruit, carrot sticks to balance the front part out, sweets, chocolate, double helpings for dinner...

...and so, until this week I was avoiding the subway in fear of germs, but now...I gotta tell you I'm in more fear of cellulite.

Surprised the hell out of me. Lordy - I'd do a logger proud at the table. Or I'd scare him back to the woods.

So some of my graces - you know I always thought I had three graces in my life, but I've discovered my life is full of graces - got together on Tuesday night and we drank wine, we ate dinner, and they cooked freezable meals for me. I'm going to share their recipes if they let me...one of them you'd already know - Wild Mushroom Soup

I now have piles of macaroni & cheese, shepherd's pie, vegetarian chile, and chicken marbella sitting in the freezer, in individual containers - ready to be thawed, heated and consumed...now if I could only remember that order while in my ravenous state.

The other kicker is how strong flavours really entice me - none of this bland, wishy washy stuff - give me flavour. Not heat. Flavour. Heat, bad on the mouth and stomach now. Flavour good on the tongue and palate now.

In this state it's not hard to live in cookbooks. I read them, devour them, live through them.

And having indulged in a beautiful cookbook called Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet by two Canadians who live to travel, cook, then write about it -

huh...note to self...interesting dream job where the kitchen reno would be a write-off...

I was transfixed by the possibility of learning how to make cold spring rolls - the Vietnamese ones. I remember eating them for the first time in a Vietnamese restaurant in Montreal - I was with a group of friends the day after a wedding, the small kitchen restaurant kept rolling these rolls out the door, and I just kept rolling them down my gullet. I was intrigued by the texture of the wrapper, the blend of the vegetables and the fresh kick of the fresh mint. Oh and the dipping sauce.

So when Alford and Duguid wrote that it was entirely within my power to make them in my own small kitchen - I was up at the corner grocer in a flash.

They take some practice. So don't try these as your guests are walking in the door. Unless you're prepared to order pizza.

Rice Paper Roll-Ups with Shrimp and Herbs
- adapted from Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's Hot Sour Salty Sweet

I think the key to these is to prep everything, have it ready to assemble and then go...the other key is what the authors suggest: do it with friends.

12 medium shrimp - I made these with only vegetables, and I imagine you could use anything you fancy...pork strips? chicken?
3-4 oz dried rice vermicelli, soak in warm water for 20 mins and drain
15 rice papers (about 8" in diameter - I used 5" - Use 8", better)
1 1/2 cups bean sprouts, blanched in boiling water for 3o seconds and drained
3/4 cup of grated carrot tossed with 1 tbsp of rice vinegar and 1 tsp sugar
1/2 cup of mint leaves
30 chives, or the greens from scallions that you've cut thinly into slivers
1/2 cup coriander leaves, but I substituted parsley, because there is little I don't like in the fine world of herbs, but coriander is it.

Boil water in a large saucepan. Cook the shrimp until firm to the touch, 1-3 minutes. Lift out immediately and cool on a plate. Shell and devein them and split them lengthwise.

Use the same boiling water to cook the vermicelli, just for two minutes until they're soft. Drain and rinse with cold water.

Place a bowl of warm water nearby - large enough to hold the diameter of the rice wrappers. Wet a tea towel and lay it on the counter or workspace you'll be using. Pull all your ingredients in front of you.

Start by putting one rice paper in the bowl of warm water for 30 seconds until soft. Lift it out gently and lay it on the wet tea towel.

The recipe calls for 1 tbsp of the noodles to be laid on the bottom one third of the wrapper, then the same of the bean sprouts.

I then laid the carrot mixture and herbs on that, then the mint, and started rolling, I added slivers of red pepper since I wasn't using shrimp, and the parsley. Once you have it rolled over once or twice, fold over each edge toward the middle and then keep rolling up. Moisten the edge with water.

Place seam side down on a platter which you keep covered with a second moistened tea towel.

You should really serve these immediately, but apparently they'll keep under the towel and plastic wrap for a couple of hours. We didn't give them the chance.

I love how they suggest serving them: "To eat, place a leaf of lettuce in your palm and lay a roll-up on it. Wrap the lettuce leaf round one end of the roll-up as if you were wrapping a cone in a napkin. Use a small spoon to drizzle on the sauce as you eat, mouthful by mouthful."

Speaking of which, I made up their recipe of "Vietnamese Must-Have Table Sauce" which is wicked easy and delicious. It's a combo of lime juice, fish sauce, water, rice vinegar, sugar, garlic and bird chile...

I'm anxious to dig into some more of these recipes - in fact we're starting to plan our new year's eve annual tasting dinner and this book is a great contender as the anchor of that dinner...upon which our transition into a new year, with new hope, rests...No pressure.

cocktail party for one

Nausea is not for the faint of heart.
And sometimes I really think my heart is faint, I mean quite wussie.

I am just about one week out from my first infusion of chemo cocktail (I'm taking to calling these cocktail parties - and there are six of them in total - the last of which is on St. Valentine's Day).

These last days have been a mixture of feeling sick, but not sick enough to, you know - feeling sprightly and able to vacuum (what evolutionary principle is at work there?) - and spending the entire day under a quilt, on the couch, waking up only long enough to see Barefoot Contessa bbq'ing pizza in the Hamptons, then suddenly Giada slivering up zucchini before her night at the symphony, while I shift the cats' bodies aside to see the screen.

Steve likes to call my tv viewing preferences the Stirrin' and Nailin' Channels - which is entirely true. But I don't care I keep saying, I'm sick. The ultimate argument topper. I get the remote whenever I want.

But something started happening yesterday - I started feeling almost normal again.

I roasted vegetables.

Steve said he'd pick up vegetables on his way home, to have with our leftover roast chicken. But I couldn't wait. I felt good enough after making it through five hours of a workday, so I dug through our baskets, our crispers, to see what lurked there - out came potatoes, carrots and some leeks.

They were tired, grasping for their last bit of glory, their balance of life tipping closer to the compost bin than the roasting pan. But for all their faded colour and limpness, they were headed for as much glory as I could impart.

I sharpened my knife, smiled a grin for me, and started carving. I felt so at home again.

By the time Steve came in to shelter himself from the dark and the wind and the threatening blowing snowflakes, the house was filled with the deliciousness, warmth, security.

Sure. Cook with love. You know I believe that. But it's sorely tested by nausea.

The nose knows and is linked by a superhighway of senses to the stomach. I can't stand the smell of frying bacon right now (and it's the one smell that vegetarians have told me could convert them into omnivores). On the other hand, I love the taste of smoked anything - cheese, sausage. I also lusted through two oranges the other day, and then devoured pasta that I smothered in fried garlic, olive oil and fresh parsley.

In this world of nausea that teases me, the way through it is lust for food. I eat. That is glorious.

Power

We raised $26.5 million.

Well, okay we weren't alone.

And we weren't all human.

But we all got what it was about...

Thanks to everyone who gave.

And you still can if you want to - just click on the run for the cure link in the sidebar.

kick it in the butt

I just registered for the Run for the Cure on September 30th, so here's a shameless request for support...

Help transform me from a breast cancer patient into a breast cancer survivor.

It's perfect. I'll have recovered enough from the surgery to do it. And I won't have started chemo yet.

So for all my foodblogging friends out there - let's show them what we're made of.

You can click here above and follow the donate to a participant...in this case meeeeee: Nicola Pulling, for the Toronto run...

There's plenty of information on the website about where the money goes - it funds researchers, like my surgeon...

Come...let's kick this bastard in the ass.

my talisman

I've been home 7 days today.

I have flowers and emails and visits and care and love in abundance - and you never know where it's going to come from. Today it came in a tiny package in the mail.

The kindness of strangers overwhelms me.

A few weeks ago, my aunt and uncle picked up John and his wife Violet, and off they went to France for the weekend. Actually they went to Dieppe.

They went because August 19th was the 65th Anniversary of the Battle of Dieppe, also known as a catastrophe.

Of the 6,000 troops that landed at Dieppe, almost 5,000 of them were Canadian.

It was a ferocious battle that went wrong from the start. And by the time they made landfall, later than they expected, in full daylight at dawn, the Germans were waiting for them. It lasted ten hours.

The official death count was 1,380. 913 of them were Canadians. Two thousand more of them were taken prisoner. And only 60 Canadians made it back to England.

Two years later, the Canadians landed at Juno Beach on June 6th, 1944. And on September 1st, it was the Canadians who liberated Dieppe.

John, who was in 3 Commando of the British forces, was at Dieppe.

A few years ago I stopped over in Paris on my way home from my trip through Asia. I made my way up to Normandy because my Aunt and Uncle were there - and I met John then. My family was with him to commemorate D-Day - because, as you might have guessed, he was a survivor of those battles as well.

Well into his 80s now, he wanted to be in Dieppe this year to honor the 17 remaining Canadian commandos who had made it back to the site of that battle.

They stood as tall as they could in their 4-score years - at attention - some slightly bent - medals on their chests - hands at their brow in salute, still living the memory.



A few days later, after they were home, my Aunt took round some photos of their trip.

They were talking about Dieppe and Canada - and John asked about my Aunt's connection to Canada. She explained that my Mum and I have lived in Canada for a long time.

And she told him I was battling my own battle against breast cancer at the moment.

He asked her if I was English. She explained I was born in Kent and moved to Canada as a baby (not alone of course, my sense of independence kicked in long after the boat landed).

He nodded.

He got up and formally presented to my Aunt a small case. Inside was a pin in the form of a tiny stiletto.

He told her he was presenting it to me.

It is the Commando Badge of Courage.

It arrived safely on Canadian shores today.

And I am wearing it where my left breast used to be.

My first battle is over - a clean, straight, knife line - no pain meds - one night in hospital.

The thing about crossing to the other riverbank is that you miss the journey. September 5th I slept my way there. It's a journey my surgeon knows too well. She ferried four of us over that day.

So, this is the other side of the river, where my doctor promised me a whole lot more life. This side is still forested. I do see a path. I just can't see the end of it - although I suppose none of us can.

For sure, this was the easy part. This was no Dieppe - in fact I'd prefer to think of it as D-Day, but I don't know how the battle will fare now.

They say a talisman is something you hold to be a charm that will avert evil and bring good fortune - I've never really had one before.

I do now. I'm averting evil, embracing fortune with all my might.

A tiny stiletto - touched by a commando who survived those bloody beaches of Dieppe and D-Day - touched by a human who knows fear and has shared his courage with me...

A talisman of kindness.

The top photo is from the wiki page on Dieppe.
The Calgary tank is from here.

with even mind

I reached a new state last week - one I've never known, it's colourful, it's peaceful - it's aware of fear but is more aware of joy - mostly it's a place of certainty, although I'm not sure of what.

I've reached the state of equanimity.

Getting hit with a diagnosis of breast cancer was like being thrust through a portal to a place I didn't want to know, never wanted to visit, let alone live.

As those first few days passed, I found myself begging and pleading to know how to get through the fear and anxiety. If I could conquer it, control it, I would be helping myself, no, in fact I'd be leading myself beyond this frontier of diagnosis. I couldn't go back. Life wasn't that way anymore. There was no way back. I had to move forward - but I didn't know where.

So bearing the dent of the two-by-four that the diagnosis slammed into my forehead - like a passport - I felt my way forward. No path, no directions, no map.

Strangely, bits and pieces of the path dropped in front of me. Just when I thought I was stepping off into mid-air, there would be another piece.

This is my path.

First piece - my Steve.

Then there's my friends and family.

~

So in the beginning, I felt what I felt when I felt it.

People layered me in survival stories - the grandmother who had advanced breast cancer in her 40s and lived to 93, the mother of three who had stage III, lymph-node-positive cancer who is thriving now.

Of course others just told me stories of whole families felled by death. I learned to look at them dumb with wonder. And then found myself bursting with laughter when I re-told the stories later. There's a whole blog to come about the stupidest things people said to me.

One colleague told me her aunt had it and lost six years of her life. She didn't remember anything - not even her niece's wedding. And yet she has beaten it (she made it through the crucial five year mark). My jaw dropped.

I went home, grabbed Steve by the arms, looked into his eyes like my life depended on it and told him, "There is no way this is going to own me. This isn't all of me. It's a small part. I can't live with the feeling of being hunted for the next five years. I am not going to give up feeling what's going on right now. I am not going to lose the present. Don't let me lose sight of that."

"I promise," Steve said.

The next day I bought a charm bracelet in support of the Run for the Cure.

~

Over the years I've dabbled in meditation. I have never taken a course. I only ever taught myself about quietness of mind - and like everyone I'd sit, close my eyes and my mind would start up a full discussion about how great it was to be in a quiet mind...and how not quiet my mind was...and then I'd sigh, forgive myself, and start over.

I did it now.

I even bought books - Meditation for Beginners - and found Meditation for Dummies, I'm not kidding, at the library.

It's working.

~

I have been seeing a psychotherapist for a few months, by chance, dealing with anxiety stuff, trying to understand where it comes from, trying to gain some balance between my heart and mind and soul about what I want in life and how I got here. Jan helped me look through childhood wounds (as first my Dad left, then my brother ran away, then died in a car accident) to see how I've coped since and how I haven't.

She asked one day what I saw inside - what the pain looked like. And I described a slit, ragged, stony, and through it I could see blindingly bright flowing lava. It moved so fast it took my breath away. I told her the lava wasn't the problem...that lava was the core of me, the essence of me, the truest part of me. But the slit...she asked...it's a wound I said.

And to the edge of the wound, on her knees looking in was a little girl. Me...of course, the girl of those years. When Jan asked me what I would say to that little girl if I could - I blurted out without hesitation, "Oh little one. You're fine. You're wonderful. And I love you so much. Unconditionally." And I cried.

Jan buys big, big tissue boxes.

That was a few months back.

I still, not exactly talk to the little girl, but am "present" with her - reassuring her, helping her feel safer. There is such love in that and forgiveness.

During that first week of coming to grips, I went to bed one night. I rolled on my side and said to her through the air, "Hey little one." She looked up at me. "You were so resilient through all that stuff. I need you now. I need your strength. I need you to help me."

She held out her hand - without hesitation. I grabbed it. She smiled and came to me. She just walked into my arms for a hug - and has been near me ever since. She plays, she dances, she reads, she sleeps, she sits in my lap and lets me hold my arms around her.

We, she and I, seem to have come full circle.

~

My Mum has been wondrous. She's been here. She survived colon cancer at 46. She's 80. So she gets my irritation at people's fear. My irritation at their bone-headed observations. She gets my need to laugh. As always her core of iron inspires me.

~

Two weeks after my diagnosis to the day - a friend went for her own biopsy. It came back positive. We're now cancer patients together. I was unnerved. I felt icky. Her cancer is larger and more aggressive. I couldn't put my finger on it - but I felt guilty for being luckier. It was hard to take. They have whipped her into the system. She will be through her surgery this week, while I'm about to go in and talk about my surgical plan.

I brought it up with Steve. He said, "You have been given the gift of perspective. And you have someone who truly understands what you're going through."

I felt a great weight lift.

~

The same day I heard about my friend I had results back from my MRI and ultrasound tests - my other breast is behaving itself. And the MRI didn't show up any surprises. The twinges of aches, the thought that with every passing minute the cancer is getting a tougher and tougher grip on the rest of my body - my doctor told me is totally normal to feel - but I'm fine. There is no sign of it outside the breast.

I felt another great weight lift.

~

Everywhere I turn, people tell me how lucky I am to have the surgeon I have. Even my co-diagnosed friend, who ironically works in the breast cancer field, told me during her diagnosis process she called her favourite contacts to find out who she should see here - and one name came back at her, my surgeon. Another colleague of mine had her. A nurse who didn't work for her, but respects her enormously, told me how lucky I was...and the surgeon's senior fellow told me how she's been through thousands of operations with her, and she's unbelievable.

I'm in good hands. Another weight...gone.

~

Now...the knowledge. I couldn't face the research. And yet, I'm a researcher/producer by trade. My day job is to find and research stories - and I've spent years digging passionately into science and medicine. But my body and brain went on strike when I went near the books my surgeon gave me. My stomach tightened. I turned the books over so I couldn't see them, then buried them under home decorating and food magazines.

Out of sight...out of mind...Not so much.

Steve was going to read up on it for me - a need-to-know basis only.

Then last week I dug into Wellspring's website - a cancer care support centre. Then I went to the Dragons Abreast team website. Then to the Canadian Cancer Society's website. Then the National Cancer Institute's website - both the patient's info and then the health professionals' info. Then onward to the primary research articles and by midnight I was perusing the journals on PubMed to see what they're finding out about various chemo treatments.

I was on the couch, laptopped and square eyed, and I laughed as I said to Steve, "I'm back."

He asked me what I meant. I told him I was researching. He smiled at me, with his whole face, eyes twinkling. "I'm glad. That's what I've been waiting to hear."

It was instinctive not to research until I was ready. And something just told me I was ready.

I tore through another book this weekend - The Breast Cancer Survivor Manual.

~

Then I found out last week - my friends are harnessing their energy and creating a team for the Run for the Cure on September 30th. How can I repay their love?

~

My place of joy has rooted itself. I have love, inside and out. I'm happy. By the end of the third week I gripped Steve's arm again and said, "Is it right that I feel normal again? Am I denying something? Do I have my head in the sand? I feel normal."

And he reassured me that all this emotional work is paying off in huge dividends, bigger than I knew possible.

Any news, good or bad will be what it is.

And I know I'm feeling normal, my black humour is in full swing.

~

These are the disparate pieces that led me here. As I said, I wanted to reach a state of equanimity. And after a few days I thought I'd better look it up to be sure it means what I think it means.

Main Entry: equa·nim·i·ty Pronunciation: "E-kw&-'ni-m&-tE, "e-kw&- Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural -ties
Etymology: Latin aequanimitas, from aequo animo with even mind
1 : evenness of mind especially under stress

Hahm Sah - I am That.

And I'm here.

Now if I could only trust that that's what this is.