Tuesday 1 January 2013

The Joys of Cooking, Feeding, and Eating

I never learned to cook as a child.  My mother stopped working outside the home after I was born and dedicated herself to looking after me, later adding my younger and disabled brother, and taking care of our small-town maritime home.

My mom comes from a large and disparate family of Ukrainian, Roma, and Irish descent.  People of modest means, as a rule, and the ability to transform the simplest and most humble ingredients.   But also people with an appreciation for the basics - cabbage and potatoes, plain and inexpensive cuts of fish (I am a maritime girl!) and meat. I was never a big meat eater - in fact, I didn't touch red meat or pork for over 20 years and have only recently started to delve back into a broader menu - but i remember always being excited when the corned beef and cabbage was on the stove.  The fall-apart, melt-in-your-mouth textures and perfectly balanced tastes still bring back wonderful memories.

But, I was a very picky eater, bookish and uninterested in kitchen work. My view on the kitchen was much like my attitude towards my dad's failed efforts to teach me how to change a flat tire: "Why should I do that?  Other people will do it for me."  A practical (and let's face it - spoiled) child, I was.  My dad says "You always did march to the beat of your own drummer."  I was, and remain, stupidly independent, and even more stupidly stubborn.  I think now that if people had just let me alone and not tried so hard to interest me, I would have shown an interest in the kitchen much earlier. (As an aside, my views on cars have similarly developed.  Go figure.)

But, that's all speculation.  The truth is that I lived on peanut butter sandwiches, Lipton chicken noodle soup, and mainly vegetables (I would monitor jealously the amount of veg that others took at dinner time) for years.  I gained a lot of weight during my university days (the Freshman Forty!) due to a lethal combination of a sudden cessation of a very active lifestyle, and a diet of beer and pizza.  I expanded my horizons to include tuna sandwiches on moving to Ottawa, and went through a period of eating nothing but steamed broccoli while working for Greenpeace (I kid you not).

I didn't really start to appreciate the wonders of food until I met my (now-former) spouse - a man who had been the last-born, among a very large family, and who was essentially left to his own devices from a young age.  Two years into our relationship, one day, I just started to cook.  I don't remember it, much, other than feeling a bit shamed that he did ALL the cooking.   And, as per usual, in my zero-to-sixty way, I took to it.  I devoured cookbooks and experimented and played and shopped and admired and tasted my way to being pretty comfortable in the kitchen.  We didn't cook together due to my whirling-dervish-anything-goes-fake-it-till-you-make-it-study-a-concept-via-several-recipes-get-the-gist-figure-it-out-and-make-a huge-mess-while-you're-at-it ways (compared to his slavish devotion to a recipe and meticulous list-making and cleaning while you go ways...)  His way pretty much worked without exception.  Mine was always either a great success, or a spectacular failure.  But nevertheless for almost 15 years we ate very well; I am forever thankful to him for introducing me to a world of flavours and joy that a nice Uke/Roma/Irish/Scot/German girl from the St John River Valley might otherwise have missed.

I find it tough these days to find the time to really devote to the kitchen.  My style of cooking is relaxed,  experimental and curious, and consumes a lot of time.  It's playtime.  And as i mentioned, sometimes it is entirely unsuccessful.  I hate to be rushed at the best of times, and so currently it is a real challenge to find the time.  But when i do, it is a joy.  Days when my current beau and I putter together side by side, experimenting and cooperating and judging (in a positive way) and helping each other's efforts.  Like the day we took 2kg of home-sun-dried tomatoes and two litres of home pressed olive oil i had bought at a farmers' market during our trip to Italy and we turned them into jars of sun-dried tomatoes to give as gifts, mixing them with fresh Ottawa farmer's market herbs and garlic and preserved lemons from our trip to l'Isle d'Orleans.  (Incidentally these are so delicious his almost-9-year-old daughter asks for them at almost every meal!) Days like today, a solo New Year's Day, where I get to experiment with cuts of meat that are a mystery to me but looked good in the store yesterday.  It's been hours of puttering, under the watchful (well, occasionally watchful and mostly sleepy) eyes of my dog and one of my cats.  It's been experimentation as I did my research, found the basic recipes, and manipulated them to suit my tastes and what happened to be in my fridge (no powdered mustard or powdered garlic for the dry rub? No problem!  Grainy dijon and three cloves of fresh garlic and it's a wet rub!  Don't want to open a nice red wine for the sauce? No problem! There's port in the fridge and some dijon will round it out so it isn't too sweet.  Darnit.  Threw out the last thyme sprigs... alright, rosemary it is!  No beef stock? OK. Chicken will do!)

At the end of the day, the creation of interesting and appealing tastes for the people I love, along with the fun of what is, really, at the end of the day, just a big chemistry experiment, is a joy.  I revel in that feeling of inspiration when seeing something beautiful or interesting, whether at a regular grocery store, or a specialty store, or a farmers' market, or reading a magazine or cookbook.  I get to be a kid again; I get to do some intellectual analysis (ok... this works... WHY does it work?  Why DOESN'T something work?  How can I fix this?); and, the best of all: I get to make my loved ones smile.  I get the option of being fancy, creative, artsy; or simple and homely.  I get to be inspired by my loved ones - their likes and dislikes.  And no matter how it turns out: it's fun and it's relaxing and always a learning experience.  And hey, sometimes: it's delicious! (If it's not - well, hell, there's always take-out.  :))

What could be more rewarding than that?


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