Raison d’etre

My mother used to buy nice clothes and hardly wear them because she wanted to keep them in good condition.  Then they’d go out of style, and when we would be cleaning the closet trying to purge it of unnecessary and unworn items, we’d keep them, just in case they came back in style (and they so would too, but never quite in the same incarnation).

I don’t think my mom is alone in this sort of thinking: saving things that you really treasure past the point of their expiration date because you can’t bear the idea of them losing their lustre.  Sometimes the anticipation of enjoying something is the extent of its consumption, rather than the actual experience of it.

It’s like me and raisin bread.  

The staple bread product in our household is rye.  Only when the novelty breads like raisin are on sale do we indulge in such frivolity.  Two loaves for $3?  Is it Mardi Gras?  Now this deserves the good jam, not that fruit spread business.

The thing is, sometimes I just can’t bear to eat the last few slices of raisin bread.  If I eat them, the party will be over!  Who knows when it’ll be on sale again?  So the last few slices stay in the bag, awaiting their day of glory.  And then of course we need more bread, so the hulking new loaf of rye gets slumped on top of the already squashed raisin, and amidst all the carbo-loading of the countertop, I forget about the raisin bread for about two weeks.

And then I see them.  Through the sheen of the plastic bag, I can’t tell if they’ve gone mouldy, but I expect the worst – how can something so sweetly delicious last so long?  But  to my surprise, they are intact: no furry green colonies have taken over, and while they are a little crumpled, the slices smile brightly and shake off the melancholy of their cramped confinement.  Unfortunately for them, my reaction to their miraculous survival is far from elated.  In fact, I am rather disturbed – how can something so moist last for so long?  And still taste kind of okay?  How much of those preservatives are they adding?  Why am I actually making toast with this?  My reaction was similar to how I felt when I learned that Nicole Kidman had Botoxed her face.  Why Nicole?  You are so beautiful.  I thought actors needed to show their emotion.  Prosthetic noses can only get you so far.  I’m still mesmerized by the lushness of Moulin Rouge….

So anyway, I have resolved henceforth to make my own raisin bread.  It probably will only last two days before it gets stale and crumbly, but it’ll be wholesome and lovely and potentially formed into a braid, in a nod to my other favourite party-time bread, challah.  More importantly, I am coming to terms with the nature of enjoyment, specifically that its sweetness lies in its impermanence.  Things should be enjoyed when they are with you, and when they go, they should simply go.  Fashion trends change, and youth is all the more beautiful when it fades gracefully and with equanimous surrender.  

And most importantly, bread should not last two weeks.  Yucky.

So here, this is my hulky homemade loaf of raisin bread.  Barry is quite pleased with it.  He is going to help me slice it up and freeze it for miles of enjoyment later.

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Tot-oro

The street outside our building is a crunchy carpet of acorns, a harbinger of colder months up ahead.  

You know what I think about when I see acorns?

Totoro.

I grew up watching the movie, “My Neighbor Totoro,” which is about two girls who move to rural Japan and discover a big furry creature named Totoro, who according to their most enlightened and indulging father, is the keeper of the forest.  They proceed to be all cute while going on adventures together.  The movie was made by Hayao Miyazaki; later in adult life I learned that he is a very highly acclaimed artist, but when I was young all I knew was that I liked a delightful movie on an unlabelled VHS tape that magically appeared in our basement.

Anyway, I desperately wanted to have a Totoro in my own life; a gigantic, bumbling friend that took great joy in little things like afternoon naps and umbrellas.  I suppose over the years I have cultivated my inner Totoro: I like naps, and I’m quite fond of a red umbrella that we have.  I get very happy when the Panko breadcrumbs are on sale.  And so on.

I think I also tend to run like Totoro’s little friends.

I wonder what sort of diet Totoro eats.  If he is the forest’s keeper, I would suppose that he keeps his consumption to a minimum, so as to respect the forest’s spirit.  He would probably only eat acorns and nuts that have fallen to the ground, and keep a mostly vegan and raw diet.  In choice of diet I hope that Totoro forgives me, as I tend to eat all sorts of dainties, but otherwise our intention is similar: I try to eat just enough, not too much, and eat everything that I buy and not be wasteful.  I try to remember to be thankful that I have enough food to eat, and good food at that.  I try to keep it simple.

I think I’m going to go eat a handful of almonds, and maybe chomp on a stump of cucumber.

Sold by weight

I got a new agenda for 2013 the other week.  Yes, I realize it is still August.  Getting a new agenda is very exciting for me – the anticipation of new and wonderful possibilities!  Empty, unfilled blocks of time – what will happen, who knows!  Wooooo!!!!

It’a the same way I feel when I walk into the Bulk Barn.  The Bulk Barn is an emporium of delights, which is to say that it a store that sells bulk dry goods.  I don’t go there often, but I anticipate a visit by making a list of desired items, which is checked and rechecked and remade a few times to ensure a fruitful and triumphant experience.  And when I am there, I make sure I slowly troll down every aisle and eyeball every bin, in case there is something that tickles my fancy.  From clodhoppers to organic red quinoa, they have it all.  With all that selection, the possibilities are endless.  For instance, say you wanted to make cookies.  You could buy all the raw ingredients for the dough, or you can buy a cookie dough mix.  They could be made with wheat flour or gluten-free.  You could add almonds or pecans, dried cranberries or raisins.  Or some sort of chocolate: chocolate chips (jumbo/regular/mini), chocolate chunks, dark/milk/white chocolate…on and on.

Many years ago my friend gave me a gift certificate for the Bulk Barn on my birthday.  Best.  Gift.  Ever.  It was wonderful affirmation that she really understood me.  Sigh.

September tends to have a more tangible feeling of freshness and newness than January.  Perhaps it’s all the years spent going to school that have ingrained this perspective into me, but I look forward to the prospect of something new, of blank pages being filled.  I think sometimes we tend to chase newness a little too much because we don’t want to deal with the old or just have pathetically short attention spans, but sometimes it is nice to press the reset button.

I need to go to Bulk Barn again soon.  The bag of chickpea flour is getting low, and I would like to experiment with arrowroot powder in some bread.  I look forward to being inspired, by piles of dry foodstuffs, no less.

Lemon-on-on

So apparently gluten-free foods are super sexy right now.

It seems that more and more people are being diagnosed (by themselves and otherwise) as having celiac disease/wheat intolerance.  Perhaps it is due to our changing environment (damn those pesticides/preservatives/anything deemed unnatural/the government/plastic water bottles/slash punctuation marks), or perhaps it is simply greater awareness of intestinal discomfort.  Regardless, the amount of gluten-free products being introduced to the grocery shelves is on the rise.

I am so very lucky to be able to eat more or less everything, but I really enjoy the challenge of gluten-free baking, hence my kitchen is an emporium (i.e. messy disaster) of gluten-free flours.  Moreover, the prospect of diversifying the planet’s crops is quite exciting: if less wheat is grown that means more room for millet/buckwheat/chickpeas/etc., and less chance of wiping out acres of crops with one type of mould.  Whoop whoop!

And so in my efforts to promote gastro- and agro-diversification, underwritten with the familiarity of saccharine comfort, I made gluten-free vegan lemon squares.  

YAY!

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I just magically made up the recipe too, and it worked on the first try, which is a huge boon to my self-esteem.

It probably worked out because I was wearing a yellow shirt to pay homage to the lemon and listening to Lauryn Hill (L is for lemon).

Hopefully the people at the farmer’s market like them too!

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Woooooooo!!!!

Mind the potato

When I first moved out on my own, meals often consisted of one or two ingredients: dinner would be a giant bowl of steamed broccoli streaked with grated cheese, or a plate of spaghettini tossed in pesto.  While this style of eating might initially appear bereft (and have a whiff of the pathetic), it was a purposeful choice: I wanted to break free from the shackles of the meat+potatoes+salad mould (or more accurately, the rice+veg/meat shared dishes mould) and redefine how a meal could be.  Of course, later I would read MFK Fisher’s The Gastronomical Me and discover that she underwent a similar reevaluation of dining conventions during her twenties – and in a far more eloquent demeanour than mine.  Still, it was a thoroughly enjoyable time in my life, to discover a manner of eating that truly made me happy.  

I still enjoy shuffling down dots of rice while plucking at steamed fish and leafy bok choy from the communal plate, or seeing the steak linking arms with the potatoes and salad – nothing reminds more of Home than sitting in front of a rounded meal.  However, there is a calming and reassuring simplicity to eating a meal of solitary feature.  Gastronomic singularity gives the palate and the mind the opportunity to understand the importance and depth of a food.  These days it is difficult to avoid the incessant buzzing of stimulation to our senses, but I think if we pay enough attention, the potato has a lot to say.

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A lunch last week: boiled potato, thickly sliced and drizzled with olive oil, dressed with stray hairs of dill, and made gritty with sea salt and cracked pepper.  Eaten warm, it was lovely indeed.