How Does Your Garden Grow?

I was out for a walk the other day, revelling in the perfection of a sunny spring day, when I noticed an elderly woman working in her yard. She turned to greet me and I said, "Beautiful day, isn't it?" She must have misheard me because she replied with, "Thank you". It was then that I realized that she had a beautiful front garden on the other side of her walkway, jam packed with perrenials coming into bloom. She must have been used to compliments on her garden, which explained her reply. "It will look much nicer in a week or two," she said. "I'll be sure to walk this way again," I said. As I picked up my pace once more, I felt a glow inside my chest. I am truly inspired by people who can create and maintain a beautiful garden. 

From my observations, you either have a green thumb or you don't. Mine is somewhat beige. My middle sister's is a bright shade of Kelly green. She only has to touch a plant and it seems to thrive. When I lived in a house with a yard I did my best to create something of a garden. I did alright with flowers, but my vegetable gardening was limited to a few containers of tomatoes, cucumbers and basil on our south facing deck. I grew some mildy successful garlic in the ground, and, with my husband's help, maintained the raspberry canes and rhubarb that were planted before we lived in the house, but that was it. Once upon a time I had tried to grow a vegetable garden, but I learned that my back didn't respond well to garden work, and I wasn't very successful in any case. Now, on my condo's small deck, I grow a few culinary herbs and some pretty, easy care flowers like geraniums, petunias, and marigolds. In summer I like to eat supper at the little table we have on the deck and enjoy the flowers. 

Even though I don't garden myself, I can see how satisfying it is to grow your own food. I belong to a veggie co-op that was started by a farmer friend. She is an excellent gardener. Both her thumbs, and probably her big toes, too, are bright green. Her daughter has inherited her love of growing food and is now making it her life's work. I feel so lucky to benefit from her hard work and her aptitude for farming. By the end of May I will be picking crunchy lettuces, mild, sweet spinach, and crisp red radishes, not to mention long ruby stalks of rhubarb.

I live in a very rich food-growing area, famous for its berries. Soon there will be luscious strawberries followed by plump raspberries (my favourite) and toothsome blueberries in abundance for sale in the many stands along the rural roads of my region. We are blessed to have a long season of weekly farmers markets with everything from fresh veggies and fruit to baked goods, canned jellies and jams, local honey, and flowers. Even though I sometimes wish I had the ability to grow my own food, I would say that I make many a local grower happy by purchasing from them. That has to count for something in the food chain.  

I have a niece who is an accomplished gardener. I asked her once if it was possible to both love gardens and loathe gardening. She said, yes, that's why she is employed by people who don't want to or can't do it themselves. When I had a yard to care for, I had a love-hate relationship with it. I wanted the results, but the ongoing work to maintain it was a challenge. On the other hand, I had a friend who loved working in the yard so much that as she aged she decided she had to set a timer for one hour so she wouldn't overdo it. Another friend was so dedicated to her garden that she got up every day in summer at 5:30 to beat the heat and work in her garden. I am a little bit ashamed that I am never going to be one of those people. If I were wealthy and had a house again, I would tend a little patch of flowers and leave the rest of the yard to the professionals. 

If you're a dedicated gardener, I salute you. I'll walk by your house and feel that glow in my chest that comes from appreciating the beauty of your work. I hope you know that. 

'til next time, 

Rebecca

The Turkey that Kept on Giving

A couple of weeks before the last Christmas my husband and I ever spent living in the Kootenays, I went to the local butcher shop and ordered their smallest, locally raised organic turkey. When I asked how small they came, the woman at the counter said about nine pounds. We had two small boys at the time. Nine pounds would be plenty.

My mom had come a few weeks prior to look after the boys while my husband and I flew to the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island to look for a place to live. My husband was being transferred there by the non-profit educational organization he worked for to start an Island branch. Our little rental house in a cozy, beautiful mountain town in the East Kootenays had been perfect for us to live in as a small family, but it was pretty tiny. We looked forward to spreading out a bit more, especially in a larger kitchen. Moving day was to be a week from Christmas day. 

On a visit with my friend Sandy, I had mentioned the fact that I had never cooked a turkey. She gave me her copy of Martha Stewart's November, 1996 edition of her magazine because it had a 'turkey 101' guide in it. I was aware of Martha Stewart, of course I was. She was everywhere, but I considered her out of my league. I wasn't rich and her recipes were. I was, however, into good food and aspirational, so I read the recipe. It actually looked do-able and delicious, as did the recipe for stuffing, so I thanked Sandy for the magazine and tucked it in my diaper bag. 

On December 24th we drove down to the butcher shop to pick up our little turkey. When the woman brought out our turkey from the back I thought she had made a mistake. "We ordered a nine pound turkey" I faltered. "This is the smallest the farmer sent us" she said. "How much does it weigh?" I gasped, eyeing the Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean-sized girth of the bird on the counter. "Nine kilograms" she said. I'm pretty sure I said, "Oh my God". Well, there was nothing for it. We'd ordered it and it was Christmas Eve, so we had to buy it. 

I went about gathering all the ingredients for our now enormous Christmas feast. We had no family coming to dinner, no friends either, since the contents of our little house was mostly in moving boxes. It was just us and our 9 kilogram bird. I studied Martha's recipe and made calculations. I was not an entirely experienced cook so I was trusting Martha to lead me to victory. On Christmas Day, I melted a whole pound of butter with an entire bottle of white wine. I soaked a four-layer large square of cheesecloth in the liquid and draped it over the turkey. Once in the oven, I started preparing all the ingredients for the stuffing. My husband kept our little boys occupied with their new toys and cleaned up after me (our kitchen usually looks like a bomb went off when I've been cooking) while I chopped endless amounts of celery and onions. The stuffing recipe alone filled an entire large roasting pan. I don't remember where I got the pan for the turkey. 

Every half hour I wrestled with the roasting pan and basted the turkey with more of the white wine and melted butter. About three hours in I removed the cheesecloth as per Martha's instructions and continued to baste the bird on the half hour. Our entire little house filled with the delicious aroma, so much so that we opened a few windows in the middle of winter. 

That the turkey was a rousing success is not the main point in my story. The fact that we ate it for lunch and dinner for the next five days after Christmas is. Sadly, we were forced to throw the last bit out. I suppose, looking back, that cooking a week's worth of meals before moving is a smart idea, just maybe not the same meal every day, twice a day.

I still cook that same turkey recipe, thirty-odd years later. It's a winner. The turkeys themselves vary in size, depending on the amount of people sitting down to dinner. I halve the stuffing recipe and it still fills a large baking dish. 

My husband loves the share the story of our first Christmas turkey. He's an expressive guy so the story is always accompanied by large hand gestures and increasing vocal volume. This post is in his honour.

Until next time, 

Rebecca

You like to eat

    Other kids have fancier houses

    They go to Disneyland

    They go camping with their dads

You like to eat

    Your mother puts you in dance lessons that Grandma pays for

    You love that for a long while - the costumes, the music, the flowing grace of your arms and growing strength in your legs

    One day you are told you'd be a good teacher and that is repeated throughout your school days until you are in university and finally decide it's not for you

You like to eat and bake cakes and pies with your friends

    Your dad wants to take your good grades, your wit, and your love of reading and turn you into the Great Canadian novelist

You like to eat

    You have children and you cook and bake and cook and bake and cook and bake and cook and bake   

You teach them, too. They all like to eat, a couple of them cook almost better than you

You work in a restaurant. You work in a bakery. 

    The kids leave home

    When it is just you and your husband left you ask each other: 

What would you like to eat?

Material Girl

Until my eldest sister moved out I shared a room with my brother. We were kids number five (him) and six (me) in the family. As we lay in our bunk beds we would play a little game. We called it, "What would you rather have?" The game went something like this: 

"What would you rather have? A million dollars or all the cars you wanted for the rest of your life?" My brother was really into cars.

or: 

"What would you rather have? A big house or a lifetime supply of chips and dip?" Or toys, or banana splits, or whatever highly desired, yet rarely enjoyed, item we could dream up.

We would then discuss our options and give reasons for both choices. I can't remember what conclusions either of us made, but I remember how seriously we took the game. I remember my brother saying his dream was to have a nice big house when he grew up, with a rec room with a big TV where all his friends and his kids' friends could gather, and he would supply them with all the chips and dip they desired. I was only ten and my dreams for the future were hazy, and not quite so specific. I just knew I wanted more than we had. We went to an independent Catholic school, the only 'private' school in our town, and many of our schoolmates came from middle to upper class families who wanted their children in a private school, Catholic or not. So, most of my classmates had much more in the way of material goods than I had. I remember getting into some light trouble lying in Show and Tell. I told the class my mom had brought me a rabbit from California. My mom found out about the lie when my Grade Two teacher phoned her and asked if I could bring the rabbit to school. "Why did you tell them that?" my mom asked. I told her I was sick of everyone else having fancy and exciting things to bring to Show and Tell. My mom had not yet been to California, let alone gifted me a rabbit. 

Even if ours was not a rich, or even middle class family, we were a creative and lively one, and we all had dreams. My dream when I was a kid was to, one Christmas, be given an Easy-Bake Oven. I thought anything I saw in Saturday morning cartoon ads as otherworldly, highly desirable, and mostly unattainable, but I pined for an Easy-Bake Oven against all odds for at least two years. I don't remember making Christmas lists, I just hoped if I wished hard enough, and circled it in the Sears Christmas Wish catalogue, I would get one. I never did get one, but my closest friend got one. When I finally got to play with it with her, we baked a cake from a mix that came with it, and I suppose that was kind of exciting. That was probably also when my dream for an Easy-Bake Oven ended. Life is like that sometimes. 

From Easy-Bake Ovens I moved on to dreaming about clothes and fancy bedroom sets. I remember a black velvet outfit in the Sears catalogue that I would quite literally dream about. I didn't get that either, but my mom was very understanding about clothes and took me shopping at the start of each school year, so I could have at least one outfit that was not a hand-me-down. I dreamed of a canopy bed - the Holly Hobby one - also in the Sears catalogue. One day when I was invited to another school friend's house her grandad said he had a surprise. He had bought her a complete white bedroom set from Sears, with matching linens, just like in the catalogue. I think I was too gobsmacked to be envious. I did, however, come home from her house once and began to list in great detail, all the Barbies and Barbie stuff she had. After about ten minutes of this, my mother rolled her eyes and asked me to please stop.  

When my granny died we inherited a lot of lovely stuff that she had owned. I remember well the day when the truck arrived. I came directly home from school to help my mom unpack the many boxes of crystal glasses, dishes, and furnishings. Needless to say, I was enthralled. What extra money my parents had they spent on paintings by local artists, books, and records, not pretty dishes and rose coloured sofas. I had been once to my Granny's home in Delta. It was very elegant, very colour-coordinated. I was proud that my family now had lots of pretty things in our old house.

In the Eighties, at the height of Yuppie-dom, I began to dream of a lifestyle such as I saw on TV and in the movies I went to. The clothes! The houses and apartments! The art and decor! The antiques! Let's face it, I loved stuff. I didn't exactly have the income of a Yuppie, but I was good at faking my appearance as one from my years of haunting thrift shops for vintage clothing. I was developing a great interest and passion for art and pledged to buy one piece of art per year. As a teen making my own money, I also spent it on clothes and makeup. The wall by my bed was a collage of fashion photos cut out of magazines. After I moved away from home to go to university, I had a lot less disposable income, but I continued to hunt for designer clothes in the many consignment stores in Vancouver.  After I got married and had small children, I had even less money to spend on myself, so my collecting was streamlined to whatever vintage dishes and objects I could find at garage sales and thrift stores. I would give myself a strict budget and only buy what I really liked. My desire to be a Yuppie was outstripped by real life.

Now that I am an empty nester, I have more disposable income than I have ever had, and can pretty much buy what I like, within reason. The thing is, I no longer want to accumulate stuff. I still buy a piece of art now and then, and I love to buy gifts for other people, but my desire for stuff seems to have mostly run its course. I want different things from life now, and they aren't material things. My dreams now run to seeing my children happy and having good relationships with them, and to being able to travel to visit family and friends. I care a great deal about my health and my husband's health, and our quality of life. I like to explore new places, even ones that are near home. I do buy books, yes, that is an indulgence that seems necessary to my happiness. And just a few weeks ago I bought a pretty vintage china teapot at the closing out sale of an antique store. I just could not resist. Old habits die hard, I guess.

Did my brother get his big house and his endless chips and dip? He got a sweet, mid-century house of modest proportions in Calgary. He has three great, grown-up kids and hosts many dinner parties. I don't know about the chips and dip, but last I looked in his fridge he had five kinds of fancy cheese. That must be the adult equivalent. 

Until next time, 

Rebecca

Things I Wrote as a Kid, Part 2

Our local Arts Festival just ended on Sunday night with a wonderful concert with Ricardo Tesi and Banditaliano from Italy. Our festival is a bit of an endurance test. Ten days of music and art bookended by jam-packed weekends of the same makes for an exhilirated yet exausted family and a messy, neglected house. Never mind, after a day of recovery I spent this morning cleaning and doing laundry, while this evening I will enjoy attending my regular yoga class. Ahhhh...it almost makes me appreciate returning to regular life.

As I said in my previous post, Things I Wrote as a Kid, I have been reading my teenage diaries. One day last week it occured to me to share my entries regarding the Winnipeg Folk Festival which I attended the summer of 1987 with my sisters, Monica and Clare and Clare's husband, Brent, along with some of their many friends. I had taken the train to Winnipeg after graduating from high school (I was seventeen) and was staying with Monica and her husband Matthew and their little daughter Anna. When rereading my diary entries I felt so blessed to have such close relationships with my sisters and brothers who were so generous and kind to me, their youngest sister. We had so much fun! I will include some highlights of my trip and time spent eating and cycling my way around Winnipeg. I hope my readers enjoy them.


Travelling to Revelstoke
I'm a little tired from the goodbye party Toni and the girls gave me last night. (They made posters of sheep for me; they made popcorn balls with Nibs as feet and eyes (sheep, a theme due to their nickname for me, 'Baa') and raspberry punch and pretzels. They made me a hilarious collage and an Ann Taylor portfolio with all my favourite pictures from magazines. Val gave me some fake Lauren perfume - cheap but a pretty fair copy. It was a really nice night). 
We started the morning with cantaloupe and me crying on Stephen's shoulder. I will miss him and Pauline (my brother and sister closest in age to me) Pauline and Steve gave me a bit more money for the trip, too. Then we packed up the Beluga (our fond name for the car). We had to use bungee cords to keep the lid of the trunk down because of my bike box. Chaos!
We rambled through the Slocan Valley (I don't know the sequence of towns) and through Silverton. We stopped at the Silverton Lookout. It was so quiet. You turn your back on the highway and look down into the lake below and across to the mountains. Nobody lives anywhere below but if I had the choice I would live right down on the cliffs. We had coffee in Silverton too and Mom madly (well not quite madly) ran around putting up museum and arts council posters. Then we stopped and ate at Nakusp on the beach. Bagels and cream cheese and pickles, tomatoes, cukes and sprouts! We didn't swim, though. We crossed the Ferry to Blanket Creek to swim. It is a small lake off the river and is quite warm. It's almost like a large bowl in that it becomes very deep in the middle. So, I couldn't stay out of the water. We got to Revelstoke and napped until 5:30 at our motel, The Swiss Chalet (tacky but clean). We ate in the motel restaurant and I had Weiner Schnitzel, which is breaded pork. It's not too exciting but with a squeeze of lemon it becomes quite good. We also had homemade chocolate cake which was excellent. We went for a long walk in the 105 degree air! The sun went down, though, as we headed back to first pack my bike in its box and then go to bed. I fell asleep around 11:45 I think. Mom had to watch the Journal Art and Music News. 
I woke up at 3:15 and had an invigorating shower and washed my hair! I felt so much better. We drove to the station and waited one hour for the late train. Eventually its whistle was finally heard. I boarded and got ready mentally for the trip. I had to sit in the smoking section until Calgary! But! Behind and across from me were two lovely Kiwis - very quiet but sweet. Right across from me was a really great Aussie named Tom. We met quickly and from then on we talked and talked! He bought me a coffee but a little while later I bought him a tea. He told me about all the food he'd eaten in all the places he'd been. His favourite, I gather, is Asia. We discussed art and everything else (Cabbages and Kings!) It was really neat to meet someone who could talk my ear off. He even seemed to enjoy talking to me. He's a dentist and is 29 but handsome (I like the 'but') and someone I could respect highly. 
The stops have been short until now. We didn't even get to walk around Lake Louise or Banff where Tom got off. The Rockies weren't as impressive as I'd imagined. They looked so old and grey. There were, however, a few majestic mountains yet even these looked ready to crumble...(I feel differently about the Rocky Mountains now.)

Monica, Clare, Matthew and Anna met me at the station. We got back to (Monica and Matthew's) funky apartment and I had a bath. Beautiful! I felt revived and sat down and had some breky (scrambled eggs and some banana bread). Then, I went to sleep for 5 and a half hours. When I got up Clare French-braided my hair...

June 29th
Got up about 8 a.m. because Anna was making a bit of noise. Matt made me breakfast and then I played with Anna who was really cute with me. Monica went to work and so Matthew and I took a drive. We brought Mon's lunch to her work and she introduced me for about 2 seconds to everyone _ I really like Alam. He is a tall, black man from Eritria who talks like, "Oh, so thees ees Moneeca's sistah."...we went to the Provincial Museum and saw the 'Non-Such'. It was neat but there is no way I would cross the Atlantic Ocean in it! We came home and relaxed and then Monica bugged me about being spoiled at home so I rebelliously did the dishes to prove her wrong. I may not do anything at home but I am able to. Clare and Brent came and got me after supper. It was really good to see Brent. He brought me a huge bag of tacky souvenirs (and some very useful ones such as a bicycle road map, a hat, and some postcards) One thing he stapled on tied with many other things such as buttons, matches, and pins was a really ugly and heavy bottle opener. Attached to it was a note, "Also good for beating off men." It was really funny...We then drove all around the city and went to a place called Osborne Village where the trendies hang out and had ice cream. I had one scoop of pistacio and one of fudge torte. Yummy! 

June 30th (Actually July 1st 3:40 a.m.) 
I am hyped on coffee! Tonight I went to the Bluenote (a dark cafe that has good music and long-haired waiters) with Matthew, John Cook and Alan Cox. They had the best coffee I've ever had and I must have had 4 cups! Ack!!!...Clare and I went to see 'Roxanne' again and generally let everyone around us know that Nelson was our hometown and that I 'appeared' in the movie. Then we walked home with Monica and my feet got sore from my new sandals and I had to be carried across the railroad tracks because I had taken the sandals off!

July 8th
Clare, Jen and Brent came to pick me up and we headed out to Bird's Hill Park for the first installment of the four day Winnipeg Folk Festival. When we got there this gospel blues band with four rather heavy-set black women singing such favourites as 'Amazing Grace' and 'Lord lift us up where we belong'. Mmmm. Then we heard a Montreal-based band called Latin-something-or-other. We danced to them and had fun. Then! Ladysmith Black Mombazo came on! They are about a 10 piece singing group from South Africa. They sing in Zulu and English and have wonderful choreography! They were a marvel to watch - so happy and bouncy. I really enjoyed them. It rained hard, though. Then it was off to Robin's Doughnuts and then Cousin's cafe for coffee and Sleepytime Tea respectively. Mom is sending me money! Yeah!

July 12th
We went to the Folk Festival yesterday - in fact CBC is broadcasting live at the Folk Fest. It was incredible! I was very impressed. We heard real folk, rock, Celtic rock, everything! We went from workshop to workshop, food stand to food stand! The best part I think was the night concert. Maria Muldaur, a Celtic rock band (Capercaillie), and David Lindley provoked us to dance crazily and sing along to songs such as 'You-oo--oo--oo send me" and "I love freedom" (we slyly added 'maxi pads' after each 'I love freedom') We ached from all our dancing. We got cold and put on sweaters, pants, anoraks - only to take them off again when we jumped and flailed our arms and yelled and hollered. It was such a high. At one workshop - the Afro-Calypso one, we imitated everyone we knew. It was hilarious - one can only get away with such craziness at Folk Fests! At the end we decided to stand at the back - way behind the thousands so we could leave a bit early to avoid traffic. Back there the music was bouncing off every food stand and fence and coming back to us in a very strange rhythm. 

July 13th
I got up at 11 and started a bath about 12 but Monica and Clare came home for lunch so I postponed my hot, peaceful solitude to dine with my beloved siblings. We ate cream of mushroom soup after dessert, of course! (brown sugar cake with whipped cream) I was still tired so I sat down to watch TV, but I looked around and the house was a mess so I cleaned the kitchen, put out laundry, and cleaned my room. I have discovered that when I do things in the house Matthew buys me a cold pop when he goes out to get the paper. Silent and sweet - that's our Matt - well, not too silent. When he gets going about history he can tell you lots of interesting things not at all silently! I danced with Anna while Monica started a letter. I then gave Anna a bath and dressed her, shirt coordinating with socks, of course! 

July 16th
I got up at 9:00 so I wouldn't waste the day...I was going to go downtown with Cathy but Pat Pyrz dropped by. We had a huge talk session which lasted until supper, through supper, all the way (while riding our bikes) to Assiniboine Park where it ceased for 1 and 1/2 hours because we watched Shakespeare in the Park. Pat's brother Gene was in it - Two Gentlemen from Verona. It was hilarious! The talk session lasted on the bike ride to the Impressions Cafe where all the wanna-be-folkies and some actually real folkies hang out, and it sustained until 12:30 p.m. between Pat, Monica, me, and neighbour Robin. Then Pat took me to a little eatery where we talked until about 2! Ack! Every subject from travel to glue-on bikinis was covered. What a day! I'm worn out!

Little Anna and me - taken by Brent at my parents' house

And that is where the diary of my summer in Winnipeg ends. After considering many options for the fall of 1987 including attending Lakehead University with Clare and Brent I decided I was homesick for my mountains and went back home to attend my local college. And so began another series of adventures, and another diary.

Note: all of this may seem shallow and silly considering all the sad and sobering things that are happening in the world these days, but I do find that when I am feeling weighed down by sadness a good antidote is to write about something that made or makes me happy. Something innocent, something free.

The Weight-ing Game

I have worried over my weight since I was seventeen. Up until then I was a willowy thing, long of limb and lean as a rake and whatever calories I had eaten, whether they were from candy or lentils, were easily burned off by my daily activity. In September of my last year of high school a boy with whom I had often been cycling during the summer told me I was getting chubby. His words made me indignant on the surface - how dare he? - and devastated underneath. I was certainly not chubby, but I had noticed my curves were getting curvier and my pants a wee bit tighter around the waist. "You're a nice medium sized girl" said my mother. "You have a problem with sugar, don't you?" said my sister. I did. Butterhorns and ice cream were my downfall. The summer after high school I went to stay with my sister in dead-flat Winnipeg and gained twelve pounds. Her friends liked to take me out to restaurants for cheesecake and fries with gravy.

After I returned home from the 'Peg all the weight came off in two weeks. It was that easy back then. All I had to do was redecorate and paint my bedroom and start climbing the unavoidable hills of Nelson again. It hasn't been that easy to shed pounds in years and it is getting progressively harder to stay lean. I can easily gain two pounds in a celebratory weekend (birthday cake, wine, a meal with a rich sauce), and losing a pound takes a ten kilometer run and an hour and a half of high intensity yoga class. 

Until I was about thirty-five my weight went up and down depending on how much exercise I was managing to get and with my four pregnancies. After thirty-five, however, the weight climbed and stayed no matter how much exercise I got. By the age of forty I realised that if I kept up my level of yearly weight gain I would be greatly overweight by the time I was fifty and I knew that would not be healthy. Something had to be done. I was not about to go on a diet of broccoli and quinoa. I'd been there and done that in my early thirties and become so thin and obsessive about whatever I put in my mouth that my husband had begun to question both the hours I spent cooking two versions of every meal - one for myself and one for my family - and my extreme self denial at the dinner table. Other people began to comment on the bones protruding from my shoulders and hips. My fourth pregnancy ended my broccoli and quinoa diet. I craved bread and milk in the middle of the night, but I remained thin throughout my pregnancy and afterwards, too, thanks to the great calorie-burning effect of breastfeeding. Once I stopped breastfeeding I began to notice a difference in my metabolism, but I continued to eat my own good baking. Running kept the weight off until I ended up sidelined with a foot injury. So, there I was at forty, worried about the future. I appealed to a wise friend and she suggested a course of action. I would eat a good breakfast, a large lunch as my main meal and taper off for the rest of the day and finish with a small, low-carb supper. The method worked. I lost ten pounds and kept it off for two years at least. I think it was over Christmas of the third year that I veered off the narrow rails of my proven method and the pounds began to creep back on. I lost weight over the summer, only to put it back on again over the winter.

I was out for a walk the other night with my seventeen year old daughter and my son who is home for the summer from university. We were talking about diet and exercise and I heard myself say, "You know, I don't know anymore if I'm fat or if I'm thin." 

"You are thin, Mom," said my son. My heart lifted. "I mean, for someone who has had four kids, you are doing well."

Hm. Okay. 

"What do you mean?" asked my daughter the health and fitness junkie. 

"I mean, " said I, "that compared with a lot of women I see I feel thin, but compared with many others and with what the media portrays as the ideal weight for women my age, I feel fat. It is confusing." 

I think the truth about my statement is that I am not sure what I should be aiming for at this stage of my life regarding my size and shape. I want to stay the same size so I don't have to buy all new clothing. I want to stay thin enough to maintain a good energy level and to be able to keep up the running. I am back on track with the small suppers and the several glasses of water a day. I have a goal of running 20 kilometers by my birthday in September, so I am running well and often. Still, I am not yet losing much of that winter weight, although I can tell by the way my pants are fitting that some of it is turning to muscle. Perhaps the answer lies in that evil substance: sugar. I do not want to obsess over everything that I eat, but is that what it takes? I want to enjoy food without feeling like I am failing every time I eat a piece of cake. Some days I am overwhelmed at my wonderful discipline. Some days I cannot seem to get through the afternoon without chocolate.

Once upon a time I was a nice medium sized girl - although she looks pretty tiny to me now. Perhaps I have to be content now with being a nice, healthy medium sized woman. Perhaps this self-image thing is really a matter of realistic perspective. The air-brushed magazine images be damned. 

The Reluctant Gourmet Rides Again

Just over a year has passed since our foodie group first gathered at the home of two of our members. Marilee, a music teacher and something of a bon vivant, and Stefan, a professional chef, invited five couples plus one special out-of-town guest to their home for a New Year's Eve six course meal. Each couple was responsible for a course, so our hosts specifically invited those of their friends they knew may be up to the challenge of producing a course worthy of any gourmand. I was exceedingly nervous at the prospect, so went the safer route and signed up to bring the soup. In my everyday life I create a lot of soup.

I had made my carrot ginger soup many times, but I laboured over the pot during every step, as if my future life in this town depended on its success. After the soup was pureed and I had added the sherry but omitted the cream, wrongly believing that a vegan soup would somehow impress this crowd, I took a final taste and pronounced it good.

Off we went with our soup and wine, my husband and I, dressed elegantly but comfortably enough to sit through six courses of food and drink. Concerned that my soup would become cold I put it on the burner of our hosts' stove top where over the course of the next hour and a half - some of the guests were late in arriving, particularly the ones responsible for the appetizer - my soup simmered away, awaiting consumption. When my course was up, my husband and I served the soup and I waited in grave anticipation for the reactions of the seasoned guests, one of whom had recently flown from London to Copenhagen just to eat at a particular restaurant due to its reputation. Although everyone said the soup was good 'and just the sort of thing we should have had on the ferry today coming back from Victoria to the Mainland in the freezing damp', as one guest declared, I knew after one taste that the hour and a half of simmering had done it no good and had made it slightly bitter. 'Oh well,' I said to myself, 'Live and learn.'

After our New Year's Eve dinner party the idea of a seasonal supper club was born, and since then, most of us have gathered three more times, taking turns making different courses and hosting the event at our homes. I have made dessert and salad, and my results have been mildly successful but improving each time. As the least experienced, albeit passionate foodie, the gourmet learning curve has been somewhat vertically inclined. At least my husband has taken it upon himself to research and take care of the wine pairings, which has taken the pressure off me a bit. I believe that Julia Child's husband Paul took that task upon himself most willingly as well, not that I am putting us in that same category. I have no interest in deboning a duck or of making anything with the word 'aspic' in it, however much I respect the great Julia.

This past Saturday it was our turn to host, and therefore, to make the main course. After several emailed communications, our eight guests all signed up for their particular course, and I began to prepare mentally and physically for the big event. A week before I had woken up in a cold sweat, having dreamed that four of our guests had not bothered to show up, and in being kept waiting too long for my entree, Tim had lowered his head onto the table and moaned to his wife, Sue, "I want to go home!" In retrospect, I am grateful for that dream because it woke me up quite literally to the fact that stressing over hosting a dinner party was not only silly, it was downright counterproductive. The idea was to have fun and learn something in the process, so I pulled up my socks and spent the week working hard to enjoy the upcoming event to the fullest.

Not all of our members are still with us, so our table, which with the added leaf sits ten adults fairly comfortably, would do. Having recently inherited a good number of elegant dishes and linens from both sides of my parents' families, I decided that our table would be a thing of beauty. My eldest daughter was eager to help with the setting and design of the table, and my younger daughter got busy on the internet looking up a variety of ways to set the table depending on the number of courses and the available cutlery. We found one that suited both our meal and our stock of tableware and she copied the diagram onto a post-it-note. Elder daughter found our collection of seashells and with four glass candle holders, made a lovely still life centerpiece that ran the length of the table. With my Granny's damask napkins and a mix of old and new wine and water glasses, we finished the settings and were satisfied.

At 6:30 our guests began to arrive, and my husband served them my favourite cocktail, the fruity and delicious Pomegranate Martini. Our first course was an appetizer, a tart made in a crispy shell of filo pastry containing thin slices of pear, pecans and the chef's own Castle Blue cheese, which she sells to cheese lovers near and far: delicious and not too filling. Next came the soup, a hearty, rich and deeply flavoured oxtail soup with orzo. Next came a beautiful and unusual palate cleansing salad made from tender butter lettuce with slices of tart green apple, roasted walnuts, and the chef's own homemade pink saurkraut, tangy but gently flavoured, offering just the right amount of acidity to complement the rich olive oil dressing.

I had planned for months to make a delicious and satisfying entree enticingly called Chicken Asiago, but by Saturday morning was still unsure as to how to plate it, and with what on the side? The recipe suggested serving the dish with pasta and sprinkling everything with fresh basil, so I decided on spaghettini. With no fresh basil to be found anywhere, I remembered my stash of homemade pesto in the freezer and knew what I would do. Each half breast of chicken, coated in asiago cheese, breadcrumbs and finely chopped Italian parsley, and then browned in olive oil, was dressed with my homemade tomato sauce enhanced with the fresh Rosemary from the plant still thriving under the eaves on our sundeck. Slices of fresh mozzarella were then placed on top and the chicken finished its cooking in the oven. I had learned from an Italian friend that the best way to cook a lot of pasta was to pre-cook it, then just before serving, flash boil it again and drain. I did so, and found the pasta much less starchy the second time, and easy to mix with the pesto and a bit of extra olive oil. We plated the wonderfully aromatic chicken with a lovely little twist of pesto spaghettini and placed a garnish of Italian parsley on top. (I had been able to practice plating my course for my kids, who had eaten earlier.) As we served our course, and poured glasses of Italian Merlot, we heard encouraging exclamations from our guests, and Stefan, who sat beside me said quietly after he was finished eating my entree, "That was very good".

After a slight delay due to my daughter coming into the kitchen and turning off the oven - ack! - Stefan presented the most amazing and beautiful dessert: ricotta souffles and blood orange salad with triangles of vanilla semifreddo drizzled in crisp dark chocolate and garnished with a half moon of dragon fruit and served atop swirls of fruit and white dessert sauces. The perfect combination of textures, colours and flavours, and the lightness of the dessert proved, once again, what it takes to make a professional chef.

And then there was the cheese course which made use of the wonderful baguettes from our new local Magpie's Bakery, which we had forgotten to serve with my course. "We didn't need the bread," said our local cheesemaker, Debra. "Bread is for mopping up the sauce when there is too much of it. You had just the right amount of sauce on your chicken." I do not think I could have been any happier at that moment. "I'm learning," I said. Four types of Debra's wonderful cheese, honey from her own hives and rose jelly made from her roses, were handed around the table along with another glass each of Marsala. The clock read 11:45.

Along with course after course of  food and wine went laughter and discussions on subjects ranging from 'Vancouver restaurants, eat your heart out!' to Lance Armstrong and the definition of 'hero'. In one of several group emails the next day, Marilee summed up the evening nicely: "Thank you to (my husband and I) for hosting and to the social gods for making it all come together with laughter and good stories. These kind of evenings cannot be really anticipated...sometimes all the best intentions still don't produce the momentum of fun and camaraderie that we were blessed with last nite."

Still basking in the glow of my first attempt at hosting our foodie group, I have taken a precious organic chicken out of the freezer and plan to make my family a special meal this weekend. We might even use the good dishes again. I hope my grandmothers would approve.

The photo above was taken just before the guests arrived. Wishing you a wonderful weekend.

P.S. We have a new post up at Stella's. Something hearty and healthy for this time of year.

Cooking Therapy

I remember the exact moment when I realized that cooking was integral to my sense of well-being as a parent, as a wife, and as a person. We had just moved after Christmas that year from our comfortable home on a side street of Courtenay's historic downtown district to a draughty summer cabin with a tiny kitchen at an outdoor education center on northern Vancouver Island. We made the best of our situation, which was temporary while we made improvements to another more suitable cabin for our family, and with most of our belongings in storage, got through that first winter, sometimes surprisingly, with our sanity intact. I did not have to do much cooking for the first year. All of the center's staff were on a meal plan which meant we were welcome to any of the stores in the center's kitchen in the off season, and we ate with everyone else, including the other families who lived there, and all the students and staff, during the spring, summer and early fall.

We had three children, aged 13 months, three years, and four and a half years when we moved to the center where my husband was employed as the program director. As most parents will agree, mealtimes with little ones are not always easy. More often than not, one or more of the children must have their meal served a little bit differently than the others, certain foods have to be disguised, and the environment for eating must be relatively calm. Such was not the case in the eating hall of the center. The meals were served buffet style, and we would take our children up to the tables and try to help them select a well rounded plate of food, depending on what was served that particular day. At first, the meals were novel: grilled Ahi tuna, assemble-your-own stirfry, bean burritos, salads - all healthy offerings. Our children were not particularly picky eaters, but more often than not, they would fill their plates with baby corn and rice, then eat distractedly, waiting impatiently for an opportunity to run around with the other children. And, more often than not, we went home and made a peanut butter sandwich to round out their meal. While we were adjusting to our new and very different life I was grateful for the meal plan, but as time went on I became increasingly dissatisfied and could not put my finger on 'why' until we had moved into our renovated cabin in the spring and life was beginning to take on a more regular day to day pattern.

I think I felt rather more like a shepherd than a mother, herding my children into the eating hall at prescribed meal times, to eat prescribed food which someone else chose for them, and it was then that I realized how important the act of cooking for my family was to me. Before these meals in the hall I would feel listless and unproductive, waiting around for someone else to feed my children while we sat around a table which was not ours, noon after noon, night after night. It took some convincing, but we were eventually allowed to opt out of the meal plan entirely, and a few other families soon followed suit. I once again felt that sense of well-being in making a weekly meal plan - we had to, living a forty minute drive from the nearest grocery store - shopping at my usual stores, involving the kids in the process as well, scheduling my days around marinating, simmering, sauteeing, and baking. Our independence from the rest of the community at mealtimes was integral to our ability to stay at the center for five happy years. Our family grew around our table, talking to each other over fairly standard family fare like spaghetti and meatballs, homemade soups and breads, stir fries, and apple crisp with ice cream for dessert. Sure, I could no longer go into the center's kitchen and help myself to a substantial chunk of Asiago cheese in the off season, but my family appreciated my efforts and their results as they do to this day, and they all learned about cooking in the process. Our eldest son would often get up in the morning and announce that he was making pancakes for breakfast, and I always had helpers for every baking project.

Now, ten years on, my repertoire in the kitchen has expanded exponentially, as have my children's taste buds and skill in the kitchen. I own two solidly packed shelves of cook books, and while I would certainly not call myself a full-fledged foodie, I do turn to cooking for comfort and for joy, as does my eldest daughter. Some days when I am feeling disjointed, a bit down or in doubt, I cook a great meal. I honestly find cooking up a roasted chicken with sweet onion and lemon gravy, whipping up a pot of buttermilk mashed potatoes, and a citrus beet salad great therapy. I put on some music and an apron, and with my chef's knife and my wooden spoon I chop and stir my way into a sense of satisfaction so deep in my soul as to soothe whatever has disturbed it. When I put the meal on the table, and we all gather around to enjoy the food together, my day's therapy is complete...especially when someone else does the dishes and I get to put my feet up with another glass of wine.

I found the above illustration on Google Images. When I clicked on it, it was called 'Cooking Therapy' then dash 'Ishiki' dash 'children's illustrator'. That's the best I can do for crediting the image, which I really like!
And speaking of cooking, Stella's Virtual Cafe is embracing winter and serving up comfort food, with a new post coming later this week. Cheers!

Into the Light we Go

When something like the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre happens, I am left reeling with thoughts of sadness for the children robbed of a future, and for all the families affected. As President Obama said in his sensitive speech following the news of so much slaughter of the innocent, "These neighbourhoods are our neighbourhoods, these children are our children." I could not help but put myself in the place of those parents who have lost their little ones, and all those connected to the adults who were also killed on that day in Newtown Connecticut.

I could say so much more about this senseless act, but I will not. Not today. Today I will focus on the good that I experienced in going for a day trip to Vancouver last weekend to see our son at his workplace and do some Christmas shopping. The fact of how blessed I was to have all my family together and intact has not escaped me, and the knowledge that we will all be together for Christmas is cause for even more happiness and gratitude.

We have had a rainy December at this end of the Fraser Valley. The clouds tend to rest against our high and close mountains and some weeks it feels as though I have been weighted down by a large and somewhat heavily brimmed grey felt hat. My husband, being on holiday for the past couple of weeks, had been checking the weather for a good day to go to Vancouver. Originally, we had wanted to avoid the city on a weekend, but Saturday looked like the best day weather-wise, so we planned out our day carefully and left early.

As we headed west, we drove gradually into the light.

As we approached the newly twinned Port Mann Bridge, her 'sails' rose up into the clear blue sky, reflecting the snowy peaks in the distance. Vancouver enjoys three local ski hills in its North Shore mountains: Grouse Mountain, Cypress Mountain, and Mount Seymour. Our family spent two wonderful winters Nordic skiing at Cypress Mountain, before horses, orchestra rehearsals and soccer took over our lives.

It's challenging to take photos from a moving vehicle.
This was taken while crossing the bridge.

We parked in our usual downtown spot, and walked over to the Vancouver Christmas Market. I've been an admirer of the 'new' Vancouver Public Library since it was built, so I had to take a photo of it gleaming on such a beautiful day.

 And then it was on to the market, where our son Ian is working for the month of December. The market is as authentically German in style as possible for the organizers to make it. It is set up in the lobby and the courtyard of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Vendors occupy decorated pine huts, offering everything from hot fresh pretzels and bratwurst, to spiced apple cider with or without a warming dram of alcohol, wooden toys and decorations. For those of us who are attracted by the woodsy charm of a traditional German/Bavarian Christmas, the market is a purely enjoyable experience.

The market was hopping that day, so good photo ops were few. However, we made the rounds with Ian, who met us a couple of hours before his shift at this hut here, serving traditional Swiss raclette and other delicacies made by our local cheese maker, Debra Amrein-Boyes, who operates the famous Farmhouse Cheese. 

I chose hot coffee over hot apple cider, but we did try it last year, and chose to purchase one of these souvenir mugs, which we put in our youngest's stocking to remind her of the happy day she spent with us at the market.

Of course, no German market would be complete without a hot polka band. This is the only shot I managed to get of the band, who were great and so much fun to listen to.

We all had a grand time at the market, Galen and Emma enjoying it for the first time. The day was clear and mainly sunny, but also cold, and after we'd had enough of the market, we moved on to the shopping malls to thaw and split up into pairs for some gift buying for each other. Then we said goodbye to Ian, happy that we would all be together again soon.

This song seems so fitting for my present state of mind.

Wishing you and yours a safe and joyful Holiday Season.

Peace on Earth. Good will towards men.

Rebecca

Easter Traditions, Then and Now

I remember once sitting in the living room with my parents sometime over the Easter weekend while we listened to the entire recording of Handel's Messiah. I'm not sure if that was a yearly tradition or not, but it left an impression on me. Now I like to turn on CBC Radio while I am cooking breakfast on Easter morning and tune in to The Messiah with all the other people listening across the country. It's a good, unifying feeling of joy and celebration while maple flavoured bacon sizzles in the pan and the scrambled eggs cook up light and fluffy. We have bacon and eggs every Easter morning, and my family looks forward to the meal, but it is the beautiful braided Easter bread that is the crowning glory of the white clothed breakfast table.

Every year, For as long as I can remember, my mother has made her family-favourite Easter bread. My mom is an excellent bread maker and I have good memories of sitting in the kitchen watching her knead the dough - thump thump thump - as she turned the dough over and over with her capable hands on the yellow formica topped kitchen table. She generally made a large batch of sweet dough and after decorating the braided bread with white icing and brightly coloured jelly beans, would deliver a few loaves to close friends. We still had plenty left over for Easter breakfast, though, and it was always a big treat sliced and slathered with sweet and slightly salty butter. 

When my boys were little I asked my mom for her Easter bread recipe. She gave me the original booklet from which she had first learned the method; the booklet had probably come free of charge with a bag of Robin Hood flour. Every year since, I have made Mom's Easter bread, and it has become an essential part of the Easter celebrations in our house. I make two loaves and they are both gobbled up in as many days. Easter bread is not terribly filling and being white bread, it becomes stale fairly quickly. Fortunately, it never lasts long enough in our house for staleness to be a worry.

The first rising (I love punching down the dough)

Ian insited on putting his copy of Ben Hur in this photo
of the braided dough ready for baking

Golden baked loaves. They smell sooo heavenly.

Iced and decorated for Easter morning

I made our Easter bread today, and this evening, our youngest is decorating eggs. When I was growing up, Holy Saturday was the day for egg decorating. I, the youngest would do my best not to smudge the colours on my eggs, while my sisters, especially my sister Pauline created objet d'art with theirs. A local shop also sponsored an Easter colouring contest each year, and Pauline often won First Prize. I could only gaze in wonder at what she could accomplish with a set of pencil crayons. We had a beatiful collection of eggs which decorated the sideboard or the table for the Easter season.  My girls have made some beautiful creations over the years, and my eldest brought home one she had made by tying a piece of patterned silk around an egg before boiling it for several minutes in vinegar water in her cooking class this week. The pattern transferred itself onto the egg throughout the process which made for a very pretty result.

The egg on the left was boiled tied in patterned silk, while the
other was decorated with felt tipped pen by my youngest daughter

On Saturday night, our family would attend the Easter Vigil at our Cathedral. With the lights dimmed and the scent of incense sitting heavily in the air, I would generally fall asleep on my dad and sometimes he even carried me all the way home. Easter morning, we children rose and sought out our stash of chocolate and jelly beans. We always had a large, flat Peter Rabbit, and my brother and I would attack the ears first. We even had a type of Easter treasure hunt once. We had clues that we had to follow in order to reach the hiding spot of our cache of treats.

As a family now, we attend whichever Easter mass works for us because my husband is usually very busy during any holiday period at the hotel where he is employed. He even used to dress up as the Easter Bunny on Easter morning and hand out chocolate eggs to all the children staying at the hotel for the holiday. This year we opted to go to mass early Sunday morning, when our eldest girl will be singing in the choir. For several years I hid plastic eggs filled with little chocolate eggs and other candies in our downstairs for my own children. Each of our four kids was assigned a colour of plastic egg. They had to find only their colour. Eventually, they got too old for that (or my skills at hiding just could not keep up to their skill at finding) and for the past few years I have simply filled a basket or similar container with brightly coloured Easter grass to make a nest for their treats. I make one for their dad, too, so he doesn't feel left out.

We always get together with friends for an Easter supper, generally of baked ham, scallopped potatoes, salads and of course, luscious desserts and wine. This year, with the weather being so beautiful we will shake things up a bit. We are going out to our friends' farm where we will gather with some other families and go for a long walk followed by an Easter Tea (which our host says will be supper disguised as something easier). We often shared our Easter supper with friends when I was growing up, too, if I remember correctly. Easter was always the most important celebration in the year and many of the traditions I grew up with I have carried on with my own children. Taking the rich and meaningful moments of our childhoods and adapting them to our own families is what tradition is all about. And barring that, we make our own.

A joyful and very happy Easter to all!

The Reluctant but Enthusiastic Gourmet

Someone once said, "Restaurants are to the 80's what theatre was to the 60's." Actually, it was a character in the Nora Ephron, Rob Reiner movie When Harry Met Sally, and judging by all the restaurant scenes in the film, his comment must have been true. The 80's were also a great decade for film, so my kids tell me, and, strange, imaginative child that I was, I think I spent half my time back then trying to emulate the scenes, characters and clothing from Hannah and her Sisters, Out of Africa, or select John Hughes movies.

When I was a teenager, a few of my friends and I would save up our spending money and go out for a fancy French meal at Justine's, an establishment no longer open in my hometown. Justine's was an airy, peach and white downtown restaurant with glass block dividers and live jazz. We would dress up in our finest 80's fashions and, I'm sure, impress and/or amuse the adult regulars with our yuppies-in-training ways. Until I found out it was raw meat, I always ordered steak tartare as my appetizer, and generally an entree with chicken or scallops. Eating out at Justine's was the epitome of elegance to we small-town kids looking for a bigger life, and the atmosphere caused us to sit up straight and use our best table manners and hushed voices.

And then there were the dinner parties. My childhood friend Molly's mother, Panny was, and I'm sure still is a phenomenal cook and she and Molly's dad had newly purchased the former Anglican manse which had a large dining room. With Panny's help Molly hosted a few dinner parties, with each of us guests supplying a dish. I remember making Greek salad. How exotic it seemed back then. Molly's mother cooked from books with names like The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and later, opened a great little restaurant, The Wild Onion, with her sister Vicky. My own family was into good eating as well, though generally of a slightly humbler variety - one of our commonly consulted cookbooks was called More-with-Less.

When I was a child I did a fair amount of baking, but I didn't start cooking until I'd pretty much left home. When in university I lived with my sister, Clare who taught me how to make soup from scratch and other budget-friendly meals. My last year I lived with a pack of roomates and we were each responsible for our own meals. I lived on veggie burgers and stirfry. And vietnamese salad rolls from the canteen in the UBC arts lounge. When I got married a year later, I could throw together a meal of sorts, but I was far from being an artist in the kitchen. For a wedding gift, Clare bought us a subscription to Canadian Living magazine, which was perfect as a teaching tool for me. My husband had become a decent 'cook for one' from his ten years as a bachelor, but when it came to cooking for a family I was more the natural in the kitchen. Plus, I was keen. I love food, and I love good food more, so I was eager to learn all I could. Still, there were never what I would call gourmet meals issuing forth from my kitchen. We had children straight away and so it was healthy family cooking, trial by fire. Over the years, I became a fairly good children's cook. To this day, other people's children tell their parents what a good cook I am, and how they like eating at our house. While I appreciate their praise very much, I am humbled by it. I know Michelin, the organization that grants restaurants the highly valued 'Michelin Stars' would never grant me so much as a a twinkle. But I don't mind that. To me, that's what restaurants like Justine's are, and were, for - to give we family cooks a break from spaghetti and home-made pizza - and give us a taste of something fresh and exciting, which in turn will enhance our own home cooking and dare us to try something new.

In this town of few restaurants of any real quality there exist a surpising number of skilled culinary artists, and many of the best meals to be had here are cooked and eaten in the home. Our friend Marilee's husband Stefan is a fine chef who happens to run the kitchen in one of the area's major prisons (one of the largest employers here), and last weekend, they gathered twelve of their friends together for a New Year's Eve meal to remember. A week beforehand an email was sent to all the guests with the information that Stefan would be making Saltimbocca with local pork scallopini (to prevent the usual outcry against veal) with prosciutto and sage, and parsnip gratin with wilted pea sprouts.  Each couple was asked to choose a side dish or dessert to prepare. At the fashionable hour of 8:30 pm the guests began to arrive and gather in the beautifully transformed dining/ living room of Marilee and Stefan's home. The menu consisted of small and beautifully plated servings of the following courses:

mini crab cakes with dill mayonnaise

mixed greens with walnuts, goat cheese and orange sections

carrot ginger soup (my contribution)

Saltimbocca and parsnip gratin

meyer lemon granitee served in frozen blood orange halves and garnished with pomegranate seeds and candied lemon zest

triple chocolate dessert: white chocolate mousse, chocolate cassis pate and a hazelnut ice cream macaroon garnished with a champagne sauce and sugared rose petals.

And of course there were endless bottles of wine passed around during the meal.

At precisely 11:58 pm pink champagne was served and we toasted the new year in high spirits, to say the least. The platter of 'Lady Jane', 'Castle Blue' and 'Cranberry Caerphilly' cheeses was then brought in with a bottle of port and most of us found a bit more room for them. It was during the dessert course when I looked up from my incredibly delectable chocolate pate and said to its creator, the local cheesemaker seated opposite, "I'm wondering how I got here!" And she said,

"Well, you must have done something good this year!"

The conversation flowed as quickly and as richly as the incredible meal deserved and soon it was time to organize rides home with sober drivers. I am not much of a drinker, so I had enjoyed my usual small amount of wine and could drive my husband and I safely home to our house across town. In fact, when we were toasting the new year, Marilee asked us to proclaim our resolutions. I don't tend to make resolutions, so I made a joke instead: "I'm not going to drink anymore!" to which there were resounding 'boos'. "I'm not going to drink any less either!" which brought forth cheers and laughter from the crowd before I admitted the joke was a favourite line from a movie.

Meryl Streep's character in Postcards from the Edge says another favourite movie line of mine: "I don't want life to imitate art, I want life to be art!" Every once in a while I will reflect on an event in my life and think it has come pretty close to being art, or at least come close to being a scene in a good film.

If my dreaming, sixteen year old self could have looked forward into New Year's Eve, 2011 she would have thought the future looked promising indeed.

Fruitcake Redeemed

Fruitcake has a bad reputation, earned in large part, by the traditional Christmas fruitcake which begins to pop up in supermarkets and department store catalogues this time of year. That seasonal brick of bizarre ingredients: gloopy cherries in unlikely shades of day-glo green and lollipop red, gelatinous candied citron peel and ancient nuts (if any) bound together with a syrupy-sweet blend of mysterious ingredients, the traditional Christmas fruitcake can be loved only by World War II survivors for whom anything was a step up from Spam and powdered potatoes. A fan of this type of fruitcake, like everyone else who claims to hate fruitcake, I am not in the least, but I do love what I like to call 'real' fruitcake.

I first discovered 'real' fruitcake at the age of sixteen, when our family friend Catherine, who was trained as a pastry chef, gave my parents a cake as part of a Christmas basket of home-baked treats. The cake was dark, very dark, with a thick layer of marzipan frosting, and it exuded a fragrance so deep, so rich, as could only be achieved by many months' soaking in brandy. No dye-injected maraschino cherries here, only dried fruits and fresh nuts cured to a wondrous flavour which married well with the sweet almond paste - delicious, and meant to be consumed in small quantities.

Many years later, I read an article in Martha Stewart Living about fruitcakes. The article claimed to be able to change virtually every fruitcake hater's mind about this ancient dessert which in its basic form dates from seventh century Persia, and included several recipes with names like 'Chocolate Panforte' full of dried cherries and hazelnuts, 'The Dowager Duchess Fruitcake' spiked with sherry, and the 'Fruit and Stout Cake' doused weekly with 1/4 cup of Guinness (I presume the baker consumes what's left in the bottle?). The food editors' favourite fruitcake was from an Australian family recipe called 'The Backhouse Family Fruitcake.' I decided to try that one. It was delicious, and each November since, around the American Thanksgiving and the beginning of the Advent Season, I have made the Backhouse Family Fruitcake. My husband cannot imagine Christmas without a slice of this fruitcake and a glass of port, and I have come to enjoy the making and then weekly tending of what he likes to call 'the booze cake.'*

I begin by locating my battered copy of Martha Stewart Living, December 2000.

I purchase my ingredients and set aside a morning for baking.

I cut the dried pineapple, apricots, dates, and cherries with scissors, chop the almonds and brazil nuts, and mix them all together in a large bowl.

A rich batter flavoured with vanilla and rum will bind the nuts and fruit together, deliciously I might add.

The cakes are ready for the oven.

They bake for an hour and a half turning golden brown and aromatic.

After the cakes cool, I wrap them in muslin and douse them in rum. Each week I will bathe them in more rum.

As they soak up the alcohol, the nuts and fruit cure to a slice-able state, and later in December, when we are putting up and decorating the Christmas tree, we will test the first cake and enjoy a slice with a glass of port. At least my husband and I will...the kids still won't touch the stuff. "Fruitcake? Hmm... no thanks."
That's alright, all the more for us. I'm willing to bet I could change their mind about fruitcake with some chocolate panforte, which I also plan to make this year.

*My husband borrowed the phrase from our nephew Christopher who used to call Panettone, the Italian Christmas cake, 'booze cake' when he was little. It was a favourite of his.

* * *

In other news...I was thrilled last week to receive, compliments of Lucille from Useful or Beautiful, her giveaway prize of a Nelson Ball Clock. Here, I give her a blogger's extra-large thank-you. The clock is admired by the residents of our house, as well as its visitors. I know we will enjoy passing the time with it for years to come.

Happy Weekend!