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Should I have made the pie?

I didn’t make it, but it was fantastic all the same. Maybe because I didn’t make it…

Yes.

Now that is out of the way, now that we are done with the dinner, I think some musing on Thanksgiving are in order. Not the existential commentary on what we’re thankful for (healthfamilykidslife) but more musing on the zeitgeist of producing a turkey dinner and just how much suffering has to go into the creation of it.

In Canada we generally have two yearly occasions for turkey: Thanksgiving and Christmas. It feels like I have had more than my share of turkeys and several of those I have made myself. In fact, one Thanksgiving about 15 years ago we had 3 turkey dinners in 3 days – none of which I had to cook. Thereafter it was known as the tri-turkey weekend and we promised ourselves (that is, my wife and I) we would never do it again. Mae West might have been on to something but when it comes to turkey you can have too much. The Thanksgiving following the tri-turkey weekend we spent at a beach apartment in Tofino on Vancouver Island – one of the most amazing places on this planet. It remains one of the most magical Thanksgivings we have ever had. Oh, I boiled up some crab for dinner that year. It was epic.

This year my folks could finally come for dinner and we had them over along with my nephew who is studying nearby. They joined my family – my older daughter was back from university for the weekend. Plus the dog, of course. Her counter-surfing is shameless but rather impressive in its effectiveness.

I digress. We did the turkey in the oven following the recipe out of The Best Recipe cookbook. Ditto on the gravy and the stuffing. The brussels sprouts were a recipe from Nightingale Restaurant here in Vancouver (roasted, with concord grapes) and the squash was from the cookbook Nopi, by Yotam Ottolenghi. Mashed potatoes were done by the spud-master himself, my father. My kids snickered (actually snickered. It was audible) when I suggested I could mash the potatoes. Apparently there were plans in place to stage a coup if I reached for the potato masher. That’s the thanks you get for being in the kitchen all day. Cranberry sauce was the recipe from The Silver Palate Cookbook.

Everything was… Perfect. Well, the bird was cooked about an hour too early but a large metal mixing bowl and a beach towel took care of that issue. It rested. For quite some time. I also scorched the bread for the stuffing (I don’t stuff the bird – you get a better tasting turkey when it isn’t stuffed). That required a bit of fancy footwork, but we avoided catastrophe. (Lucky). Besides, what were the guests going to do? Not pay the bill? Put a negative review on Yelp? Feel free.

It got me thinking, as these things sometimes do, about festive meals gone by and how they seem to have an importance much more than what one might find at a non-festive meal. It isn’t Christmas time yet, so I don’t want to get too carried away about how challenging Christmas can be, but for Thanksgiving (and we’re talking Canadian Thanksgiving – a lite version of the American holiday, for sure) it’s rather interesting.

How important is authenticity? What I mean by that is how important is it for things to be from scratch and to be from the hand of the chef? My mother often talks about how great it would be to order everything from Whole Foods and have it delivered, ready to eat. But then in her defence she has done more than her fair share of turkey dinners and many of the early ones for her involved intoxicated family members arguing vehemently over the design of the flag (the Maple Leaf, that is) or whether or not the Prime Minister was a communist.

Can you imagine trying to put the dinner on the table in that household? And would you get any thanks for it afterwards? I somehow doubt it. Any food item would suffice in those circumstances.

Thankfully sober heads prevail these days and I can cook with relative abandon.

This year’s choice of pie, though, got me thinking. What happened is that Rosa, who cuts my wife’s hair and who has excellent taste in fine food, suggested that a local chain restaurant not known to me for their pumpkin pies had fantastic pumpkin pie. Worthy of buying and serving to guests and close family, no less.

And it was excellent. The turkey was fabulous as well, even if it wasn’t organic. Still cost $85, though.

But to what end must one go for the perfect mashed potatoes? Or the perfect brussels sprouts? (full disclosure, I like brussels but they do need to be roasted to near-oblivion and a good dose of bacon never hurt).

If it is about the family and if I’m fairly certain the reviews will be good regardless of the level of ingredients then perhaps it’s not out of the question to buy the pie once in a while. Or to just bake the damn brussels and be done with them.

But I draw the line at a processed turkey, pre-stuffed and cooked from frozen. That’s heresy. My mother-in-law had one a couple of years ago. I don’t know what got into her. Perhaps she has tired of the unending work involved in getting a Thanksgiving dinner on the table. She is 80, after all.

And now I must grudgingly admit that the turkey was amazing. Must have been the hand of the chef. It’s the only possible explaination.

S

c

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Food as a proxy.

Bananas, Cuba. Where everything is a proxy for something else.

I was chatting with an old friend over a beer last night. He works with the Government of Canada in the Foreign Service office. Well, everyone was repatriated so he’s now home. Living with his folks, because his house is rented out to a very nice family who expected he wouldn’t be needing it for another couple of years. His wife and daughter are also with his folks. Good thing it’s a big house. It’s my understanding that as wonderful as that situation might be in an abstract form, it sets up many opportunities for interpersonal friction.

Our conversation was wide-ranging, as they always seem to be, but he did comment on something that has me thinking: He brought up the notion of food being a proxy, as he had been spending a fair amount of time in the kitchen, cooking for his own family and his parents.

A proxy is, according to dictionary.com:

proxy [prok-see]

noun, plural prox·ies.

  1. the agency, function, or power of a person authorized to act as the deputy or substitute for another.
  2. the person so authorized; substitute; agent.
  3. a written authorization empowering another person to vote or act for the signer, as at a meeting of stockholders.
  4. an ally or confederate who can be relied upon to speak or act in one’s behalf.

I saw these definitions and I thought, “Oh boy, where to start?”

Thankfully, it was a lighthearted conversation we were having, but his thesis was that in cooking for his family (and especially his parents) and in making food that they were obliged to eat, it set up a power dynamic that caught him off guard.

On the one hand, it’s dinner. We all have to eat.

On the other hand if you’re cooking for another, what is the message that the food is replacing?

Man, now I’m in way over my head. There are two issues here. One is what is the food acting as a proxy for in terms of inter-personal relationships? The other issue is what the food is saying? Or what the creation of the food is saying.

I’m staying with the first one for this post.

Thinking about myself, because that’s what I do so well… There are a few people in my life where food has played a major part. And in every one it has been (as far as I can tell) positive. No one used food as a weapon. No one used it as an improper tool to control a young, foolish boy. (Well, except when it was something like profiteroles or a nice piece of perfectly cooked salmon and then it was decidedly Pavlovian, but let’s agree that was done in the name of science and just move on.)

For me, food really isn’t used as a proxy, as far as I can think. It is used to communicate. I’ll deal with that in a later post.

But as a proxy? I don’t think so. But I can see how you could use it as such – there was an anecdote I read about years ago: A young woman was returning from her studies in Canada to her European home at Christmastime – I can’t remember specifically where it was. As she stepped out of the taxi in front of her childhood home, both of her parents greeted her with their own, individual, versions of the same dish. Jetlagged and exhausted, not to mention freezing, they insisted she try both versions then and there on the front porch… …and then decide which of the two was better. Can you imagine being welcomed home by that?

The food was acting as a proxy in that story, for sure. But I shudder to imagine what role it was actually playing. I prefer my food to be a proxy for just how much I enjoy my family and how much I appreciate them. There is no better way to show how you feel about someone than by cooking them a meal they will love.

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Of all the best laid plans…

My goodness, they grow up quickly. Now she’s 17.

What do you do if you’re out of ideas? When your kids eat an endless supply of junk food that appears, seemingly, out of nowhere? When you just don’t have the ability or the energy to do something about it?

Or when you’re out of ideas for helping kids with anxiety, or with migraine headaches. Or both. Or Math homework. Because the parent in you wants to tell them to just get a good night’s sleep and eat some healthy food. Hey, it might not solve everything but it’s a start. Generally comments like that are not welcome in conversations with teenagers. Who knew?

Breakfast used to be pretty good. We had a system down. Mondays were this, Tuesdays, that. Wednesdays were these great egg sandwiches I would do with English muffins. But then my wife started fasting in the mornings, and the kids can barely get themselves out of bed on time, and it has descended into something really not worth doing. And a certain someone (not me, my goodness, no) was grazing on the English muffins so when I reached for them they were unavailable. It’s hard to cook when you don’t have all the ingredients.

One kid leaves the house, always late, always hungry. The other leaves the house on time but with not nearly enough food to keep her going through the day. And now that no one is going anywhere in a hurry due to COVID, it’s even more chaotic.

Then they come home and have a huge snack, or eat when they arise – some time in the mid-afternoon – and they aren’t hungry for dinner.

They’re getting to the age where they can’t be punished. Heck, they’re well past that age. I’m totally out of ideas. I want to say, “here, eat! It’ll cure what ails you.”

But to no avail. Oh well. What is it they say about ‘fighting the good fight?’ Is that a timely thing to say or think? I hope so. Gotta be something in that box that Pandora opened.

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Mystery Coffee

I think I got it right – not really sure.

A few years ago a friend of mine sent me a stock photo request for a cortado coffee. I had no idea what one was. As it turns out, it’s a Spanish coffee, where the milk ‘cuts’ the espresso. So a 50-50 mix of coffee and espresso. I had never heard of one before. Apparently they’re consumed in glasses, rather than cups, and apparently they have steamed milk but not froth or foam.

I didn’t make the sale on the stock request, even though I shot what I thought were some rather nice photos. I even used some film.

But I ended up making and consuming a fair number of these drinks. I have never really seen one except in photos in a search engine. Still don’t know if what I’m doing is right. I’m sure there are a bunch of baristas out there who roll their eyes at such abominations as this.

But it’s my narrative now, and this is my cortado. It’s more like a 2:1 mix of milk and espresso, and I do a bit of latte art on the top, such as it is. The Rorschach test on the top of this drink is either a puppy or a tornado. It’s hard to tell.

I’m rather partial to them now. My afternoon go-to coffee drink, especially in the summer.

Not as strong as a macchiato and with more substance so you can enjoy it longer. That’s the only problem with straight espresso. It’s over before it starts.

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Where does this food come from, anyway?

Grain elevator, Dorothy, Alberta.

The grain elevator in Dorothy is pretty darn cool. Check out those hills in the distance! I was driving by with my brother-in-law a few years back and we just had to pull over to take a photo. As far as I know, it’s still there and in OK shape.

But it brings up a question – one I can’t answer here given my lack of time to write, but one that I’ll pose anyway – how many of us actually know where our food comes from? In this case the grain was taken from the fields right nearby and then stored until the train showed up. Then (I believe) it was brought by truck to the elevator and the conveyor in the elevator would bring the grain up and fill the railcars. At least that’s my understanding. This elevator isn’t for storage – it’s for loading rail cars.

Then it would get moved off to market. There are all kinds of other themes here, too – transport, pooling of product, monocultures, organic farming (or the lack thereof)… The fact that it’s near-impossible to grow just a little bit of wheat and deal with it in any profitable way given the way the modern food markets work…

I took the photo for a number of reasons – namely that it was a really interesting view and I’m always worried that these vestiges will pass quietly away before they can be documented. I didn’t really take any time to think of the actual use of it until I wrote this post. Form following function, but beautiful nonetheless.

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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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