Food

Food was (and is) enormously important to our family. Well, I suppose food is important to everyone--take it away and you die. But food, while a necessity, is also far more, as we all know. Witness the revolution in food-as-entertainment over the last few years. Celebrity chefs, The Food Network, diets, cookbooks, locovoria, exotica, herbology, grow-your-own (food, that is), etc. Food is an integral part of life, culture, family, history, etc. In a crazy world, at least we can hang onto the food.

Of course, like so many things, our relationship with food is complex--good and bad and everything in between. We have become consumed (no pun intended--well, maybe just a little) by food in some form or another--food makes us fat or thin, healthy or sick, beautiful or not. It is our go-to drug when we are upset, happy, depressed, joyful. It is our reward--Pavlov tricked dogs with it, Skinner sent rats in circles for it--and our punishment if we don't treat it right. We eat too much of the wrong stuff and not enough of the right stuff. We squander carbon to get strawberries in January and pour on the poison to get pretty produce. As Joni Mitchell said, "Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees, please."

Food gives us those Proustian moments when we smell cinnamon or baking bread or tea-and-madelaines and are transported back to grandma's (or auntie's or la mere's) kitchen. Favourite foods evoke experience--time machines of taste and scent. And yet, and yet, we are killing ourselves with food instead of nourishing our lives. While we make ourselves sick with it, we also look to it to give us health and protect us from disease. No wonder we have such a complicated relationship with it.

For me, when faced with something so complex, so complicated, I adopt the Scarlett O'Hara strategy (no, not the one where she swears she'll never be hungry again, although come to think of it, I've been living that one all my life). No, I, like Scarlett, vow to think about it tomorrow--in short, don't worry, be happy, as Bobby McFerrin warbled years ago. (Hmmm, Bobby McFerrin and Scarlett O'Hara in one paragraph--you never know where an unruly metaphor will take a person.)

When we were saddled with small children and a small paycheck, putting food on the table demanded time and effort. Early on, we discovered that any processing was best done by ourselves--it was cheaper. Armed with Recipes for a Small Planet, we knew even then that such food was healthier for our bodies, our souls, the planet and our bank account (such that it was).

Cooking from scratch established a pattern early in our family life--food was something that took time to prepare, so we learned patience (more or less). Our boys also learned to hang out in the kitchen and snitch bits of vegetables, fruit, cheese, etc. as I slaved away as prep cook. Any carving of birds or roasts became a race between their guerilla-like filching and the dinner table. Rapping knuckles with the blunt edges of knives had no effect, nor did scolding or throwing of wobblies. The annoying habit continues to this day--when we gather for family dinners, there is always a flock of male vultures snatching tidbits. While this vexes me enormously, I have learned to accept it for what it is--a gathering at the family hearth and an opportunity to bug the shit out of mom for old time's sake.

I remember the first Thanksgiving turkey I ever cooked--Jack and I were living in Edmonton--he was going to school (this was before Herbert and the kids). We'd invited some expat Saskatonians to share the feast. For some bizarre reason (there must have been one--who could conjure up such a lame idea on her own?), I put a sheet of foil between the bird and the pan. I know, I know--what was I thinking? Not much, apparently.

Of course the foil baked onto the pan and stuck like, well, welded aluminum. It took ages for me to pick the bits off the bird and the bottom of the pan. Even so, we were biting down on teeth-shuddering metal slivers throughout the meal. The gravy was particularly deadly--lille foil sea-mines just waiting to shiver our fillings.

But we survived, and I got a lot better at cooking, mostly because I like to eat. I love food and have come to love cooking and cookbooks, The Food Network, sexy kitchens, gadgets, doo-dads, weird and wonderful ingredients, ethnic cuisines, and more. When we travel, I am invariably drawn to grocery stores, and not the cute tourist markets, but the supermercados where real folks shop. I will come home with all sorts of salsas, sauces, spices, mixes and produce, if I can smuggle it in. And, of course, cookbooks. There's no such thing as too many cookbooks (unlike too many cooks). Jack disagrees with this, for he is the one who must construct the shelf-space to house them.

I still have the first cookbook I ever bought--The Four Roses Flour Guide to Good Cooking--twenty-fourth edition, published in Winnipeg by Lake of the Woods Milling Company, Limited. The spiral binding is bent, the cover long gone. Pages are torn, missing, dog-eared, ragged. They are smeared, bleared (sorry, Gerard Manley Hopkins) with chocolate (Basic Brownies page), egg white (Lemon Meringue Pie page), soy sauce (Sweet'n'Sour Sauce page), grease--likely butter (Prize Butter Tarts page) and all forms of gunk and goo. Pages have fallen out and are shoved back in willy-nilly. The book is held together with a big bulldog clip. It's irreplaceable.

Over the years, a family develops a repertoire of food--holiday treats, everyday meals, snacks, party treats, camping food--favourites of all kinds. Some pretenders to the favourite throne never quite make it, but hang in there, like Prince Charles, ever hopeful of making the top tier. Others enjoy a brief moment in the sun, only to fade away (where, oh where is Princess Fergie now, you ask? Still shilling for Weight Watchers?). Some, yeomanlike, keep their heads down, do the work and stay their humble course--the Prince Edwards of food. And some achieve legendary status and staying power--remembered fondly always--the Queen Mums of cuisine.

It takes time to build such a portfolio. Claimants come and go, some stay, others disappear, but there is always a dependable cadre to call upon. As you can guess, I am fascinated by the relationship between food and family, culture, memory. I recall a New Year's Eve party at our house--our friends, a pretty diverse group, were sitting around a crowded kitchen table (why, oh why do people always congregate in the kitchen?) swapping stories about memorable family dishes--what our grannies, babas, kokums, omas, abuelas, madar bozorgs and mormors made for those special dinners.

You could see it on people's faces--their eyes shone as they recalled the dishes--reciting the ingredients, invoking the gods of hearth and home. I wish I had taped the conversation--it was memorable, it was magic. There we were, a microcosm of the planet's cultures, remembering how food made by tender hands made us feel like we belonged somewhere special.

As I said, food was important. Our boys grew up liking all food--they were the most unfussy of eaters. In fact, they were very good eaters--a while ago, in a fit of boredom, Jack and I attempted to calculate just how much food money the foursome cost us over the years. As the amount quickly grew to dizzying proportions, we abandoned the project. If we had poured millions of dollars down their gullets, we didn't want to know about it. As our friend Rollie's old dad used to say (Rollie grew up in a farm family of seven children), "You can't begrudge the bastards food!"

Three of our four boys have worked at some time in the food industry. Primero was a chef. Tercero and Cuarto worked in restaurants in various capacities--server, food-runner, prep cook, dishwasher, etc. This comes in handy at family potlucks. I don't believe many engineering students make risotto with homemade stock (ya gotta roast the bones first, says Tercero, then simmer for at least eight hours). Cuarto's chocolate cheesecake is so rich it must be shaved rather than sliced or it will induce coma. Segundo's Tom Yum soup says it all. And we always look forward, with salivating mouths, to what Primero decides to throw together.

All families have their food portfolios. This includes recipes--usually from cookbooks with the gummed up important pages. But it is more than this--each recipe is also a history of meals anticipated, planned, prepared and shared. Each recipe will have famous successes, infamous failures, odd substitutions, interesting variations. The food portfolio is an unfolding story of a family's nourishment--physical, cultural, spiritual, historical. It is a work in progress, always-already (thank you, Mr. Derrida) being written and re-written. For we only stop eating when we die, and when we stop eating, we will die. Even then, someone will inherit the cookbooks. I still have my eye on my mother-in-law's pristine (how did she keep it so?) copy of The Four Roses Flour Guide to Good Cooking. Not one stained or missing page, no bulldog clip holding it together. My sister-in-law now has it. If she doesn't go first, I may have to steal it.

Here is our portfolio--you will have to provide your own grease stains.

TO BE CONTINUED