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Ugh, Oysters.

Direct from some seabed, somewhere nearby.

I love fresh oysters and I have no idea why. The thought of them really isn’t particularly exciting, really. And yet, somehow, they are amazing.

My oyster journey started more than 20 years ago, when I was having a bite to eat with a friend of mine. He is older than I, and I trust his food suggestions without question.

A tray of fresh oysters went by and I grimaced. He looked at me and asked, “You don’t like oysters?”. I replied I had never had one, but the idea was somewhat challenging. He responded by ordering a dozen malpeques. I figured that if John said they were good, I wasn’t going to die.

And here’s what happened. I had one – with a touch of a vinegar mignonette. I was totally unprepared for how much I enjoyed it. I remember thinking quite a few things, most notably, “huh, I have been missing out.”

This order of Kusshi Oysters that I had with my dinner last week was delightful, but my wife still won’t try one, no matter how much I try to encourage her to give it a shot.

The oyster lesson has stuck with me – my mom always wanted us to at least try dishes that were presented to us as children. She made some pretty strange (to a kid) dishes. Some were great, others less so. This is something I do with my children. I always ask them to at least try it. Sometimes they’re right and they hate it. Sometimes the plate is clean before I can get another word in. Things haven’t changed much since I was a kid.

So far, no one in my family has taken me up on my conviction about how great oysters are. Even my brother and sister aren’t interested. Time will tell, but I expect that at some time in the near future someone in the family will admit that I was right, and they are really good.

While I’m at it, I would also like a pony, now that we’re wishing for crazy things.

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That was a while ago.

It was a while ago. And even then it really wasn’t that good.

I was asked by one of the utilities here in British Columbia to take a few photos of some of their properties. I made a fairly large loop (about 600km) and ended up driving down the Fraser Canyon on my homeward leg.

My grandparents lived in Salmon Arm, BC and we would regularly drive the 7 hours and visit them. Before 1986 when they built a new highway, the only reasonable way up was the road beside the Fraser River. Several times a year we would all pile into our car (1977 Chevrolet Impala – quite the machine) and we would make the trek. Once, and only once as I recall, we stopped here for breakfast, as my dad always wanted to get on the road early. It was a Smitty’s Pancake House in Yale, BC.

In the first decade of my life I probably traveled this road 30 times. In the following three decades I have been up it three times, as I recall. Wait. Maybe four times. Regardless, it has been a while.

Things have changed, obviously. This location has, sadly, closed and the town which always felt somewhat bustling is now very quiet. The food here was really not very good, and I expect that there were a number of factors that involved the closing, but ‘great food, I’ll miss it’ was probably not something that people said much of.

That said, though, I remember being here once, probably when I was about 8 years old. And I remember it like it was yesterday, almost 40 years later. Even bad meals can do that to you.

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Mid-Year

Mid-year. Thankfully it’s looking more summer-like

June is always rainy in Vancouver. Well, not always but often enough so I can say it always rains in June. It isn’t currently raining, but it will, soon.

The weather for the rest of the week is looking pretty good, thankfully.

It’s about this time of year (and again in Mid-December) when things kinda fall off the rails, food-wise. We were going to go to Italy this summer, but that is off the table, obviously. So we’ll go to the lake, instead. We leave early July and in the next two weeks it’s going to be a major challenge to get through the days, as everyone is looking for a few days off.

I’m not sure how it is that everyone can just go and go and go and then barely deal, but that’s how it works in our household.

Of course, it is an excellent opportunity to eat up all the frozen things we have, as well as revisit some family favourites. Meals for the next two weeks aren’t about ‘interesting’, they’re about ‘easy’ and ‘surviving’.

Come mid-July we’ll be (hopefully) energized again.

Man, I need a vacation, somehow more this year than most.

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Tea Biscuits

Just add some milk and hey-presto, just like mom used to make.

My wife has a blue recipe book. In it are all her family recipes – well, not all of them, but a bunch of them, including several of her mom’s family recipes.

Many are written out by hand. Some in my wife’s hand; some in my sister-in-law’s hand; some in my mother-in-law’s lovely writing. The binding is shot. There is a large oil stain that starts at Whiskey Chicken and goes clear through to Pumpkin Chiffon Pie. Just in case you’re wondering, the recipes aren’t in alphabetical order.

I see a sticker from an Australian Navel orange; a little illustration on the Ginger Cake recipe… Some of my mom’s recipes… Heck, my Cranberry Sauce is in there. Hadn’t seen that before.

And then there is the Tea Biscuits recipe. Right above Plain or Fruit Muffins and right across the page from a piece of paper with a fresh pasta recipe on it a note about Cornmeal Muffins and 9 Grain Bread.

The tea biscuits are epic. Super easy to make – without question the most used recipe in this book.

There is more to the book, though. The recipes in here represent a big part of my wife’s childhood… And now that I think about it, a bunch of me growing up, too – with her and enjoying a bunch of these meals together.

Funny how meals can imprint themselves like that on us. I remember some fantastic meals I have had like they were yesterday. But I also remember meals that were as pedestrian as they come. Usually the memory is because of something other than the meal, but that cornmeal muffin recipe I referenced above is from my mom. I haven’t thought about it for probably 30 or more years. But I remember how they taste like it was yesterday. Sometimes the mind is a strange place.

  • 2 cups flour
  • 3 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1/3 cup shortening or butter
  • 2/3 cup grated cheese.
  • 1 cup milk

Oven to 450 degrees. Mix everything together. Add the milk until it makes a sticky dough – don’t over-mix. Dump on to a floured countertop, roll to about 3/4 inch thick. Cut out rounds with a drinking glass. Assemble on a greased baking sheet. 12-15 minutes.

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Pistachios

Don’t forget to collect the shells and put them where they belong. No, not there. Yes, there.

Here in Betty’s kitchen there is always something to snack on. It’s pretty dangerous, but when we come to visit, we are allowed to not eat all the pistachios, apparently. I struggle to keep my hands out of the bowl, though.

If I were a younger man, I would be reaching for the muffins in another bowl, but I can resist those these days.

It’s hard being in someone else’s kitchen, especially if you want to cook. I have known my mother-in-law for 25 years and she has always had this kitchen. It underwent a fairly big renovation a few years back but the mixing bowls are still in the same place they have been for ever. And yet, I struggle to remember where they are.

I’m out of place here. The coffee is different, the ingredients are different and in different spots (see above). The Drawer of Requirement is still the same, though. Every kitchen has one of those.

But we have created epic meals here over the years, she and I (and my wife, other family members). I have had a lot of fun and there is a ton of history here, at least for me and I’m sure everyone else in the family.

So I can tolerate (barely, but that’s my inner-snob talking) my mother-in-law’s choice of coffee, and the fact that when she renovated her kitchen she didn’t put in a heated floor so the tile in the wintertime feels like you’re wandering around on 18-inch square blocks of ice. I can also overlook the fact that she has never had a toaster and she uses a toaster-oven to toast bread, which takes forever and regularly sets off the smoke alarms. Don’t get me started on her dull knives or the fact that her non-stick pans are ‘still good’ more than a decade after they stopped being non-stick.

I can tolerate all that (not that it’s much, really – and let’s be honest here – she is perfectly happy with the kitchen the way it is)

It’s easy to tolerate because of that bowl of pistachios. The one that is always on the counter, saying, “welcome”, and “dig in” and “lower right corner, next to the baking pans. How long have I known you? How many hours have you spent in this place?”

Always with a lot of love, that’s for sure.

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Some things are universal

Watermelon is a hit with just about everyone.

I’m sure there are people who don’t like watermelon. Just like there are some people who don’t like coffee or tomatoes. They’re strange and probably untrustworthy, but what can you do?

However, for the rest of us, there are some universals. Watermelon is a universal. Put out a plate with kids and it vanishes in a cacophony of slurps and drips. If the older, non-seedless version of watermelon is involved, expect seeds to be spat at each other. Or flicked.

All bad behaviour is forgiven, though. Because it’s kids eating fruit. Raw. And here’s the kicker – I was listening to a radio show on the most nutritious fruit. Obviously guava came first, but second? Watermelon. The interviewer commented to the scientist that he thought watermelon was like flavoured water. The scientist agreed and was as surprised anyone how well it fared.

So, not only is it kids voluntarily eating fruit. It’s kids voluntarily eating really nutritious fruit. The perfect situation. Too bad it seems to happen so rarely. One always hopes that soon the kids will be banging back shucked oysters or eating a quinoa salad without any complaint, but while one is hoping for that, one might as well buy a lottery ticket and ask Santa for a Pony.

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I can’t remember what I was going to say

Wedding dress in Edinburgh, 2007

I had this brilliant post all laid out in my mind. This dress photo was going to be an analogy to what I was trying to say, and darn it, I can’t remember what I was going to say. I don’t think I was going to be talking about ‘always a bridesmaid’, because I generally don’t go for those analogies – it makes me look rather clueless and goodness knows we don’t need any more of that.

Maybe it was about the idea that things always look better when they’re behind glass. Print a photo. Put it in a frame behind glass and it takes on a certain gravitas that is noteworthy and amazing. It’s so simple and yet so effective.

Further to that, there is also something about things being just out of reach. Maybe I wanted to talk about how we often feel that recipe is just a little too hard, or where the hell do you get yeast flakes, anyway? Aside from Amazon, of course. Maybe the challenge of creating a meal – any meal – is overshadowed by the issues that surround it. Some personal, some systemic (time, ingredients, lack of an industrial deep fryer…)

I cook because in some cases I feel like I can’t not cook. It’s one of the few aspects of my life where I can’t not do it. But that doesn’t mean it comes easily to me. It doesn’t mean that I can conjure up things to eat out of thin air. I’m the worst for that. My wife is far better than I (in all aspects, but specifically here) when it comes to pulling together meals.

But the kids do need to be fed. And so do we, for that matter. Some sort of ‘healthy’ food. Regularly. Several times a day, in fact.

It’s hard to do, but the fact that it might appear to be behind some glass and unattainable is just a ruse. We can all do this, maybe not at the same level but that’s hardly the point. We all gotta eat, and we all have to play the hand we have been dealt.

Like every wedding it’s a lot more fun for the attendees than it is for the ones being married. Those dresses aren’t that comfortable, anyway. Better to have fun than to play by all the rules.

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Guess I should talk about the title of this blog

Not that it’s that earth-shattering. I live in Canada and dontcrowdthepan.com was already taken. But the link to the .com version of the title doesn’t get you anywhere. Maybe it’ll come up at some point. Maybe not. I’m not going to spend too much time worrying about the .com aspect of the site.

The saying comes from the idea that if you’re browning a piece of food in a pan and if you pack in too many pieces of food too close together (crowd the pan) then you won’t get good browning on the food. I’m not sure what the rationale is for this – scientifically – but it’s true. Happens to me all the time.

There is a bit more to it than that, though. I really struggle with getting good browning on my food when I’m cooking it. Maybe I’m too impatient. Maybe I pack in too many pieces of food in the pan. Maybe the pan isn’t hot enough. Maybe it just isn’t a priority.

It’s a simple thing to remember, but really hard to do in practice.

No one ever complains, either. If I don’t crowd the pan it’s for my benefit, not for my family. As long as I can get something on the table – that’s the priority.

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Salt. Simple and yet, so complicated

Maldon salt, my favourite type.

So my mom (hi mom) never cooked with salt. As in, for my entire childhood all of the food I ate was basically unsalted. We had a salt shaker on the table but it was one of those things that was made in the 1920s and in all likelihood the holes weren’t big enough to allow safe passage of most salt crystals. I don’t recall it ever being an issue. I don’t think my mom was trying to keep us from the evil of salt, it’s just that she never grew up with it herself, and she’s rather sensitive to it. It just wasn’t a priority.

In high school my P.E. teacher was joking around one day, talking about sitting in front of the TV, dipping vegetables into a bowl of salt and eating them. I remember going home and trying it out. I was amazed – it tasted incredible, right up until I overdid it. Story of my life, really.

My wife is a huge salt fan – for the last 25 years, everything in my kitchen has taken on new life with a sprinkle of salt. In the ensuing years my mom has let up a bit as well. She has some salt near her stove which she (judiciously) uses here and there.

I can overdo it, though. I remember making dinner for my folks and it was one of those situations where the sum total of all the salty ingredients (feta cheese, olives..) along with my sprinkling of too much of the salty stuff made for a meal that had me reaching for several glasses of water soon afterwards. Even I thought I overdid it on that one. Live and learn.

Mom ate it without comment. That’s love for you. But I knew enough not to repeat that episode. And I did, right up until I didn’t and over salted a steak I was cooking for them a while later. Again, no comment from mom. Still amazes me.

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Ginger, and my childhood obsession with it.

From the basement of my parents’ house. I think it contained brass rivets by the time I found it

My mother is going to kill me for this.

Well, she’s actually more forgiving than that, thank goodness. One of my major fears is that in writing about my food habits, I’m going to paint her as a poor parent. She certainly had her strengths and weaknesses. We all do. One of her lesser strengths was her cooking.

Her organizational abilities have saved me in the kitchen countless (and I mean countless) times.

But on to ginger, because of course that’s where I’m obviously going.

Lots to unpack. Let’s start with the box in the photo above. It sat in my childhood home on a shelf, filled with brass rivets, I believe. It was there when my folks bought the house in 1974 and I grabbed it when I finally developed a sense of style and I needed something to photograph with my new camera. This was the first thing I photographed on 4×5 film. I did it in black-and-white and in colour, but the BW is not nearly as interesting.

I’m delaying the obvious. Ginger and I have a strange relationship. I never really gave it much thought until one day while eating a stir fry for dinner, I bit into a solid disc of ginger. Rather than grate it or chop it or do anything that would make the ginger smaller, my mom sliced it into rounds and put it into the stirfry as you would drop cordwood on a campfire.

I remember my eyes watering and my mouth being set on fire. I also remember being told that I should watch out for the ginger and that, “prizes will be awarded” – my mom’s way of reminding all of us that there might be unmarked hazards in our dinners.

I didn’t start to use ginger again until a long time after that. I avoided it like the plague. Unlike cilantro, which I grew to love tolerate, I had to unlearn the lesson I learned with ginger.

It also occurred to me many years later, that kids do really seem to have a heightened sense of taste, and that some flavours are a lot more prevalent than others in their young mouths.

Ginger snaps were the first thing I managed to enjoy again. And, of course, the gingerbread my mother made was always welcome. Candied ginger is still on the list of ‘what kind of culinary monster came up with that?’ My mother eats it like popcorn. She does seem to love the flavour.

Ginger, the root, is used regularly in our home now. peeled with a spoon and grated on the finest Microplane grater money can buy.

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