Gooey tarts, cookies, squares and sweaty palms

For some reason today, I am thinking about Christmas concerts as a child.  I suppose it is probably because on Sunday we are going to a Christmas concert downtown with my parents. But today I am thinking of those simplier ones we use to do, with friends from class or Sunday school, all knees and elbows and piping voices, sweaty palms getting on stages and grins with gaps where teeth should be.

When I was small I remember going to Sunday school every Sunday.  In what perhaps was a foreshadowing of my crazy need to be on time, I remember getting perfect attendance at Sunday school for five years running!  Imagine what I was like as a child!  I remember the worn linoleum floors of the Sunday school hall, the rubbed metal of the tracks which ran around the ceiling and from which hung faded rose coloured curtains which could be pulled to create separate “classrooms” for teaching.  I remember a great friend Carolyn in my class, led by Mrs Dorington.  Carolyn was learning to play the accordion. Can you imagine how marvelous that was and is, particularly now looking back, that this slight, little girl with bangs and braces was learning to play an accordion almost half the size she was.  I remember being fascinated by it and even then not seeing anything peculiar or laugh-inducing in the fact that she was learning it.  Only that she could manipulate bellows and keys and pegs all at the same time with her little stubby fingers.  I remember the endless rehearsals for the Christmas concert and then performance night, families coming in from the snow, sitting in rows steaming with coats and gloves and mittens strung by a string through the sleeves of your coat from one side to the other.  And the singing, loud, clear, off key likely, looking out at the church, warmed by the kid next to you, itchy in new wool pants, thinking about the desserts to be served downstairs afterward.

I still marvel that all those women provided so much food for so many occasions.  I am not sure if you ever experienced a church supper or a church social but if nothing else it was always served up, the entire even, on long folding tables, covered in paper tablecloths, tapped underneath with masking tape.  To this day I associate particular foods with church suppers, salmon sandwiches cut in triangles, jellied moulds, coffee served in enormous silver cylinders with spouts at the end like a pool with a drain, pickles in glass trays, devilled eggs with slashes of paprika strewn across the tops.  At church suppers, the women would have prepared vast mounds of roast turkey on platters, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, coleslaw made by the vat, pickles and pickled beets.  And each woman would have baked a pie of varying fruits and styles.  They would all be cut up, placed on mismatched crockery plates, loaded as an assortment on large plastic trays and then delivered to the tables so you could select your own piece de resistance to end the meal.  Sticky mints, occasionally covered in lint, in glass bowls, bowls of clementines and trays of sugar cookies with coloured sprinkles, homemade butter tarts, and squares of every kind.  It really was food in abundance, food for celebrating and rejoicing.  Hmm, makes me think it is time to get baking for Christmas!

Web dreams

Today I have been thinking lots about my website for the cookbook.  I have absolutely no idea how to build a website so I have done some research today and found a company called Square Space.  From what I can see already it is a service that offers templates, design, layout and editing capabilities for neophytes like me as well as managing all the domain registrations and infrastructure.  I have no experience with html and I mean absolutely none, so hopefully this will be easy enough that even a beginner like me can figure out how to build it.  

I would like to launch the website in the next little while to coincide with the release of the cookbook.  Apparently I can link my blog and the Facebook page to the website.  It also offers a community space which has got me thinking about whether readers would like to post some of their own stories of feeding their guy, or share photos of the delicious meal they just made, or swap recipes. It would be a great way for everyone to learn and share.  I am not sure if anyone would like it or not but it could be an idea.  As much as I see using InDesign as daunting, doing the website will be even scarier.  If I make mistakes it will be out there for everyone to see immediately, oh, the joys of the World Wide Web!!!!  I certainly have lots of pictures of my own food and snaps of food from around the world during my holidays that I could share so if the job is to create a great big picture book, I’m the one to do it.  Out to dinner tonight with friends so no cooking for me and no transcribing of recipes either. With every sweet there seems to be some sour!  Friends, family and love first, work on the book second!

Heigh ho, heigh ho, still so much work to go!

Wow things are starting to really speed up for me now.  I feel like everything is moving so fast!  I have been working at transcribing recipes, but not nearly as quickly as I would like.  I have been sketching out advertising and marketing ideas in my notebook and realizing how much work I have to do there.  I have been stealing time to start compiling a list of news outlets and newspapers to whom to send press releases once the cookbook is complete; it is completely boring, repetitive and tedious, all things that I deplore!  I have been working with Lesley to arrange the photo shoot for the cookbook cover, trying to figure out what food to stage and how, what waivers I need to check, and arranging models.  Read friends, family, acquaintances, basically anyone I can cajole or convince that being on a unknown cookbook cover for free is a good idea.  Seriously would you give up a Saturday for the pleasure of standing around having your picture taken, pretending to enjoy food you are not allowed to eat??  A true test of my skills as a sales person!  Lots to do and with Christmas coming I feel like I have to get so much done in the next two weeks, especially since we have set the date for the photo shoot for January 8, 2011.   It will be here before I know and the last thing I want is to have a photographer and no one to photograph or no food ready for the shoot.  And thinking about sales strategies, do you think we could all convince Oprah or Ellen to endorse the cookbook on their show?!?

On the flip side, I spent a bit of time on Sunday reviewing the statistics on the audience for this blog and honestly you blew me away.  First, welcome to everyone.  There were far more readers than I expected.  And did you know, as you comfortably read this entry, that you are part of a community of readers following this blog from all over Europe including France, Germany, Netherlands and the UK, Russia, Indonesia, Australia, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates as well as the United States and Canada to name only a few of the places people live who are following along.  I was so overwhelmed and touched that so many people are interested, I wanted to say thank you.  And thank you for the new pressure to try and have something interesting each day to say from my seemingly routine and all together normal life!  But it is just great and we passed the 300 member mark last week of the number of fans of Feeding your guy cookbook on Facebook, heading quickly to my goal of 500 fans by the new year!  It is so exciting and rewarding to me that so many people are interested and it really helps on days when I am doubting myself to know I have so many people from so many places supporting me along the way.  I put a rice pudding recipe in the cookbook at the request of my dear friend Laurie; it is surreal to think that people in far away Indonesia or exotic United Arab Emirates might enjoy a bowl of it as well! Tonight more transcribing for me, one step at a time on this journey!  See you all tomorrow!

Nibbles, cheeses and flops oh my!

Pretty great weekend and as I sit down here now to write, the snow falling outside the window behind me, feels like the perfect time to tell you about it.  We have a fantastic time going to our Christmas parties, both held a friend’s places and both full of great friends, food and drink.  So of course I am going to tell you about the food or at least my food highlights!  I sampled some amazing cheeses this weekend.  I don’t know if you are like me or not but I adore cheese, every kind from mild to strong, soft to hard.  I sampled a hard, crumbly, almost parchment coloured Spanish cheese, a great French blue cheese, a dark smoked Cheddar, a Gouda with garlic, a red marbled cheese and my perennial favourite at their place a Guinness cheddar.  If you have never had go out and treat yourself.  It is a cheddar cheese surrounded and enveloped in dark, thick Guinness with a dark rind on it.  It tastes of aged cheddar with the earthiness of Guinness.  Absolutely amazing!  I also discovered the joy of espresso with a shot of sambuca in the coffee.  A rich taste that offsets nicely the light, dry biscotti we were eating with the coffee.  Overall it was a great way to slow and enjoy friends and since every where we went it was appetizers and finger foods, I could keep eating and not bother to count how many I had had.  When you only put six or seven chocolate covered almonds in your hand to eat, if you have two or three handfuls it somehow doesn’t seem like as many chocolates!

I also tried out a new soup recipe I am working on with friends on Saturday night.  Bit of  a flop actually.  I made a sweet potato and roasted red pepper soup but when we tried it is was kind of bland.  Needed something, so I am still tinkering with it.  Does it need nutmeg or cinnamon to make it sweeter or should I try cayenne as was suggested and make it fiery?  Or perhaps they simply don’t go together and it was just a flop.  Happens!  Actually, happens too frequently but I like flops just as much as successes.  It is all fun. 

Snow is coming down outside and this weather almost always make me think of comfort food.  Comfort food, comfort for us when we are feeling low, food to feed to your guy when he needs comfort, food to feed your kids to give them comfortable memories when they are adults.  Food, ah glorious food, what more can I say?  I think I will run, experiment with some left over soup, perfect on a snowy day, and heat up a left over stuffed pepper for dinner.  Left over night around this house! 

Let the parties begin!

I know I say this a lot but I love this time of day.  My guy is still sleeping in the room next door, the house is quiet and the day hasn’t started.  Everything still holds the promise of what is to come.  I go to bed earlier than my guy, almost always, so I love early mornings like this because I get to discover what he has been up to while I was sleeping.  I can follow his trail like a detective!  The empty mug with rings of tea stains, the empty bowl with salty kernels on the bottom and this morning a mess of freshly wrapped gifts under the tree.  The portable phone is sitting on the table; I know he was talking on the phone last night while he was wrapping.  Even when he isn’t around I can still feel connected to what he has been doing.  I hope it is the same when he comes in to a freshly baked banana loaf or Christmas cards written waiting for his signature.  We are in for a great weekend, two days of Christmas parties with friends.  It has been crazy at work for the last while, I am sure you remember all my whining and complaining, but now, this morning in the quiet I am looking down the pipe at two wonderful days of Christmas parties with dear friends, with plenty of food, wine and laughter.

Gold showered soup

One summer during university, I took a summer job at a private, fishing club in the country.  Built in the early 1900s, it was a large, four storey lodge, complete with massive stone fireplaces and a wrap around veranda overlooking the gardens, lawns and ponds on the property.  The men who joined the club fished for rainbow, brown and brook trout in the stocked ponds and I worked in the lodge serving wine at meals and cleaning the fish caught that day.  It was an idyllic oasis from another time, not much in touch with modernity or the rapid pace of day to day life, but rather an escape from life, a chance to slow down and step back.  Even for us staff, we lived on site, either in the rafters of the main lodge, small, squeaky rooms hidden on the upper floor accessed through a back servant’s staircase or in Goldie Lodge, a whitewashed, green-trimmed lodge above a garage, hidden among trees, walking distance from the lodge past a fish pond, bedrooms running off a main hallway, with a kitchen and sitting area.  To be honest, it was a wonderful summer job, a chance to get to know new friends, enjoy nights sitting in that living room talking, laughing, complaining about guests, never realizing entirely what a unique and unrepeatable experience we were having.  

I learned a lot about fish that summer.  How to clean one, prepare and fillet a trout.  I watched the chef prepare them, quickly, lightly, to preserve the fresh flaky taste of the freshly caught fish on the plate.  I learned how to mix a brine to smoke the trout.  I learned to gauge how many apple wood pucks to put in the smoker to give the flesh a particular taste, how much brown sugar to add to the brine, when to increase the spices when the fish were muddy in the mid-summer heat.  

I learned that pansies taste peppery when added to a summer salad, that flakes of gold on Scotch broth make the serving more elegant, that being able to make a brown sauce is just as important as being able to make a white one.  I watched the chef that summer and learned.  I watched how wholesome food, when served with flair, becomes gourmet.  I learned that sandwiches, a plate of cookies, a bowl of homemade soup and a pot of tea served on a veranda in the July sun is a repast.  I tasted food I have never had, wild boar sausage, pickled tongue sandwiches, veal chop.  I feel in love with variety but also with the pace with which the food was served.  Meals always began with cocktails in the lounges or on the veranda.  Wine accompanied dinner.  Starters were savoured, mains enjoyed and dessert something to insist upon having.  

I suppose I was younger but we rarely felt tired; we certainly worked hard and special events at the club were even larger undertakings and more work for us.  But there was a tranquility about the club, a dream like quality that took us somewhere else, where time slowed, conversation was encouraged, silence was treasured, the swish of the fly in the air over the still pond something upon which to be mediated and meals, good food, good wine, something to respected, something for which it was important to slow down.  Even now, I always insist that my guy and I sit down at the table for our meals, even when it is lowly soup or Kraft dinner or sandwiches.  I take it from my mother’s table.  She insisted we eat together.  Working at the trout club, this notion was reinforced.  We staff became friends because we ate together.  The club members and their guests became closer as they ate together.  More and more, as I work on this cookbook and think about my experiences with food, I am realizing that the centre act of cooking and preparing food is to create community, communities in families, among friends and strangers, in private homes and in restaurants.  In the pace of my current life, it is in sharing a meal perhaps the one moment when I consciously make time to connect.  

Ah the humble potato

Can I tell you how much I love potatoes?  Too much Irish blood flowing through my veins.  So in the spirit of the fun I had with pomegranates, here are some interesting facts concerning the simple potato. For instance, did you know that the potato was first cultivated at around 800 BC? And I kid you not, but these are true statements about potatoes and some of the folklore that surrounds them!

~ Potatoes are more nutritious when eaten with the skin on.

~ Potatoes were the first vegetable grown in space in 1995.

~ Europeans consume twice as many potatoes as Americans per year.

~ Potatoes are second only to milk as the most consumed food in America.

~ Treat facial blemishes by washing your face daily with cool potato juice.

~ Treat frostbite or sunburn by applying raw grated potato to the affected area.

~ Treat a toothache by carrying a potato in your pocket.

~ Treat a sore throat by placing a slice of baked potato in a stocking and applying to the throat.

~ Treat aches and pains by rubbing boiled potato water (cooled) to the affected area.

Ah the versatile potato, my perennial favourite!