a chicory flower, such a reminder of hime, near Lake Sevan in Armenia

Once I’m faced with the need to make sure I have passport, packed bags, tickets, and knowledge of where I’m headed and how, I return to the open-eyed slightly adrenaline-fueled person I was at seventeen, when I first travelled on my own. I was ignorant of a lot, still am. But I became alert to the world outside me, tried to read its signals and understand how to be in it, how to blend into it.

In modern day travel we have reassuring backups that weren’t around even twenty years ago. There were maps, my favourite tool. But now our phones can help us navigate the geography of a new place, find the train station or our hostel, seek out a restaurant or museum. And we have tech that helps us communicate with people whose language we can’t speak or read. Even so there remain moments of vulnerability.

spice & flavours vendor and expert Luisa, at Deserteri; a great source of utsko suneli (blue fenugreek) and other essentials

I’m leaving Tbilisi today, catching a flight to Rome, where I’ll find a train to Bologna.

The day before yesterday I started thinking about my train ticket: where was it? No longer a physical ticket, it is lodged in my phone. And the same is true for tickets I have for the next legs of my travel. I was sure I had printed them out before I left Toronto. But I couldn’t find them anywhere in my luggage. Either I failed to print them or I have lost them, I thought. How stupid. I got myself into a small state of almost panic.

Then modern tech tools came to the rescue: I realised I had made links to all the train tickets for the rest of my trip (Bologna to Berlin; and then a few days later Berlin to London) in my laptop. Panic over.

All this has been a reminder that we can always feel vulnerable travelling, and that that’s a good thing. Why? Because the alternative - just cruising along heedlessly – enables us to forget the vulnerability of others, leaves us in a bubble of oblivious entitlement rather than tuned in.

a cheese kiosk in Kutaisi; stirring freshly harvested grapes in a kvevri; a restaurant sign in Tbilisi

With the ImmerseThrough group, seven lovely people, in the course of eight days we travelled a wide loop from Tbilisi to Tbilisi: first from Tbilisi west to Kutaisi and beyond, then south to the Turkish border, and from there into Armenia. After two nights in Yerevan and area we headed back northward into eastern Georgia, the region called Kakheti, that is bordered by Azerbaijan.

Mount Ararat seen from a viewpoint outside Yerevan; it is the symbol of Armenia but lies entirely inside Turkey’s border; a deer carving at wonderful Gegardt Monastery in Armenia

The evening we crossed out of Armenia and back into Georgia, we were running extremely late. A small part of our lateness could be blamed on a traffic accident that held us up for a long while. But most of it was due to our failure, Tamar’s and mine, to properly time ourselves through the day. The result was that we didn’t roll up to the place we were staying, John Wordeman’s Lost Ridge Inn near Sighnagi, until nearly 10.30 pm. We’d phoned ahead, so they had held supper for us. The food (we had pre-ordered), was delicious, welcoming, just what we needed, and so were the wines.

a streetside market in Kutaisi; bakery signage in Sighnagi

Once in my room after supper I reached for a water glass and flash! felt a sudden intense pain in my middle finger. I’d been stung by a wasp. It must have been hanging out on the glass. Yikes, pain! I ran cold water over it and got to sleep without too much delay or worry. The sting turned into a bit of a saga over the following days: burning itchiness the following night, with a lot of swelling in my knuckles, and heat. Small creatures have great powers! Now six days and a few anti-histamine pills later I have only a slight remnant itchiness and swelling.

The whole thing reminded me of an incident long ago at Drepung, a large monastery outside Lhasa. A mastiff had growled at me as I walked past it, keeping my distance. As I got further away, suddenly it ran over and bit me on the leg. The bite didn’t break the skin, though it left a very clear imprint of the dog’s teeth on my calf. And it was deeply shocking (and instilled a fear of big dogs that lasted for a decade or more). That evening when I told the story to a few other travellers, one guy suggested that perhaps the dog was a reincarnated Buddhist monk and that I’d been bitten to make me more mindful and humble. Perhaps he wasn’t entirely wrong?

migrelian khachapuri with a filled cheese and herbs on top, at Oda Winery; ceiling frescoes at the ancient cliff-side monastic complex at Vardzia, near the Turkish border

UPDATE & CODA

All that was written before I left Tbilisi. Now on my first morning in Bologna, I am about to go out exploring. But first a small story: Last night I went round the corner to a small local restaurant the bed and breakfast person had suggested to me for supper. There was a scattering of people waiting for a table. As they thinned, I fell into conversation with a couple of young women who were also waiting. They turned out to be Georgians!! here for a conference who work in Tbilisi for GYAL, a remarkable NGO that pushes for and defends human rights. We ended up sitting together for supper, sharing a bottle of wine and conversation until late. It felt like the best kind of traveller’s luck, the lovely flip side of vulnerability.

classic courtyard in old Tbilisi, a style of building called Ezo; Ketevan of Oda Winery explaining a wine; pomegranates at Dezerteri market in Tbilisi

late roses at a neighbour’s on Henry Street, the day I left town

We crossed into autumn soon after we took off. A few hours into the flight, after I’d had a short sleep, an unfamiliar lightness and detachment arrived, a feeling that I haven’t really had since before Covid. The patterns of pre-occupation and the habitual anxieties that I hadn’t fully realised I was carrying had fallen away. I felt weightless and strangely, delightfully, unmoored. It was like a special version of what I think of as “traveler’s freedom.”

Traveler’s privilege, the chance to exit one life or one place and head for another, is precious. Shaking off routines and embedded patterns of thought leaves room for new ideas and perspectives. It can be scary or disorienting too. But this time I am reveling in it.

These days traveler’s freedom can get watered down by the possibility of connecting to people all over the planet, no matter where we are, with a few taps on a keyboard. I am happy to be able to send emails and messages, but I try to avoid phone calls while I’m gone because I like the distance and lightness I get from being cut off. It helps me see with fresh eyes.

The arrival of the fat full moon last Friday was a magic time in a small way. Tamar and I had done errands in Deserteri Market (shopping for our ajika-making session with the ImmerseThrough group this week) and then walked to the Fabrika, a funky hotel and art hub created from the transformation of a Soviet-era clothing factory. The first two years we did the ImmerseThrough tour the group stayed at the Fabrika. It was not quite as comfortable as some people needed, so we now stay elsewhere. But I still have a soft spot for the place and its vibe.

quirky signage in the Old City; notice the Russian language street sign, now a rarity; and streetside found art assemblage near the Fabrika

a graffiti wall in Tbilisi, protesting Russia, the use of gas against protesters, and more

From there we took a Bolt (the Georgian version of Uber) back to the old city and then walked in the dusk up very steep lanes past balconied old houses to the ruined Ateshga, the Zoroastrian fire temple that was long ago built here, presumably by people from Iran/Persia, perhaps merchants. The Ateshga is a reminder of the layers of people and belief that underpin the history of the region. And it’s just one of the many Zoroastrian temples we know existed for centuries in the larger Persian-influenced region, from the ruins at Ani on the Turkish-Armenian border, to Baku and beyond, as well as in Yazd and other places in Iran. Most of them pre-dated the arrival of Christianity and Islam.

Over the years Tamar and I have tried a number of times to see the Ateshga, but the door has always been locked. This time our knock was answered. The temple is off the front balcony of a private house. It’s a single space, not grand, its arched brick dome long gone; it’s now protected from the elements by a fabric roof covering. I couldn’t see where the fire might have been located, the fire that is kept burning perpetually in Zoroastrian temples, though there was a deep well-like place which perhaps held the oil used for the fire?

I spent a good part of yesterday exploring the old city, photographing and admiring its textures and loveliness. Much of it is in terrible shape, needing repair and love. The overhanging balconies that make living spaces so welcoming, the multiple staircases, some of them metal spirals, are gorgeous sights, and often saddening in their state of disrepair. The big money that comes sloshing into Georgia these days doesn’t seem interested in renovation or restoration but instead in building new and shiny hotels, commercial spaces, etc. It feels tragic, this loss of history and beauty and texture.

FOOD TALK with talk of tomatoes, ground walnuts, and breakfast options

I’m not in a kitchen this week. Once we start eating out and traveling with the ImmerseThrough crew I’ll have more meals and details to talk about.

In the meantime I’d like to mention the wonder of tomatoes on this side of the world. Georgians dress tomatoes, or mixed tomato and cucumber salads, with salt and sunflower oil. The best version of sunflower oil is Kakhetian (from Kakheti in eastern Georgia), which is made from pressing sunflower seeds that have been toasted, so that the oil has a haunting light toasted flavour. Ground walnuts are another frequent ingredient in Georgian salads, finely ground. If you’re making a vinaigrette for a tomato or a cooked green bean salad, try including ground walnuts or ground hazelnuts to enrich it. Before you begin, make sure the nuts are fresh; taste them critically!

tomato and cucumber salad with a little onion , walnut-infused dressing, at Cafe Dante; walnuts for sale at Deserteri Market

This morning I had breakfast at Dante Café, a charming quirky space up a steep flight of stairs. I like sitting out on the covered balcony. I can work here or just read or let my mind drift. My breakfast was huge. It included two fried eggs, Imeretian-style khachapuri (from the Imereti region; you’ll find many recipes for it, including in the Flatbreads book), a cooked spinach “salad” with ground walnuts in the dressing, preserved plums in a sweet syrup, butter, and black tea. Oh, and some plain “puri” (bread) too. Impossible to finish it all.

Cafe Dante pleasures: Imeretian breakfast; a lovely place to work

I ate two small red cherry tomatoes from the garden yesterday, the last for this year. And I did a little pruning, cutting back the over-enthusiastic shoots on the wild rose. It’s loaded with hips that I should pick and freeze, but likely won’t get to before I leave tomorrow for Tbilisi. My to-do list is still too long.

the wild rose bush with its rosehips and rusting leaves; a close-up of the hips

I’m feeling the weight of the season, as I wrote in last week’s post. Memories of last autumn hover and linger - flashes of scenes, feelings of desolation and loss - that stop me in my tracks and bring me to tears.

This house is where we lived that time so intensely a year ago. It’s disorienting to be leaving this place of memory for a few weeks, yet it also feels right to be moving forward into travel and fresh horizons. Part of living with grief is learning to wear it with ease as life goes on. And I know that I owe it to Tashi to try to carry all this lightly, as he would.

impossibly perfect dahlias at Footsteps Farm’s display, Trinity-Bellwoods Market

A small story: Last Saturday I’d been at a Sacred Harp afternoon singing at the TRANZAC and needed to rush home. In my haste and distraction I failed to clip my bicycle pannier on properly when I left. When I got home the pannier was gone. I hadn’t noticed it fall off. I retraced my route and some minutes into it came on a young woman standing by the street holding my pannier. She had found it, had looked in and opened my Sacred Harp book with my name and phone number in the front, and had tried to phone me. Big thanks to Geraldine, my Good Samaritan. This may seem a small event, but in the moment it was mighty. Note to self: Often the universe is kind and things work out nicely; remember these in the times when they go badly.

rudbekhia in the garden still tall, and in reflection

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS with talk of tomatoes, leftover corn on the cob, plus vegetable cooking and wonderful potatoes

The pleasures of perfect tomatoes and peaches are about to come to an end. I am still eating them every chance I get. And blueberries.

perfect at any time of day

Sliced yellow tomatoes that look like peach slices at first glance are a pleasurable jolt to the eye as well as a treat. And there have been enough tomatoes that I’ve even cooked a few, despite thinking that their perfection should be tasted raw and un-messed-with.

tomato masquerading as peach, with St Albert cheese and brioche toast

The other day I needed to get supper made early before I headed out to an evening singing. There were some small zucchini and a handful of fresh tender young broccoli, so I made a vegetable “sauce” for pasta with those plus tomatoes. I started with plenty of garlic in oil over a medium heat (after popping mustard seeds in the oil and then adding fennel seeds). I added chopped broccoli and a little salt and stirred. Then the sliced zucchini and a chile pepper went in, with a dollop of sho koji liquid (now available in grocery stores) and a little water. I raised the heat to bring it to a boil and covered it with a lid. Several minutes later I added the chopped tomato. It all cooked to tender in ten to fifteen minutes, an excellent summer sauce for pasta, seasoned with plenty of grated pecorino. The leftovers were delicious next day topped with two fried eggs.

early in the process: the tomatoes just added so that it can all cook together to tenderness

A few days ago I boiled some summer potatoes that I’d bought from John and Inge at Wychwood Market. The skins are very fine and the potatoes delicious and tender-textured. John says they’ll be around for another couple of weeks. By the time I get back he’ll have a very nice winter potato called Superior. But it’s hard to beat the delicacy and good flavour of the summer ones. They cook quickly in boiling salted water (I start them in cold water, bring it to a boil, then add salt and stalks of mint) and don’t need to be peeled. I like to lift them out and into a wide bowl, then lightly press down with a large spoon to smoosh them a little flat, before adding dollops of butter and a little salt. The potato makes a wonderful succulent base for any kind of sauce (the vegetable sauce above, for example).

I’ve been using leftover grilled or boiled corn, stashed in a bag in the refrigerator, as an ingredient in vegetable dishes. It’s so handy to be able to cut the kernels from the cob and include them. As the summer potatoes were cooking I fried corn kernels in olive oil with plenty of garlic and a chopped chile, then added chopped new broccoli (I could have used chopped flat beans instead). It made an excellent sauce for the bed of potatoes.

the potato topped with the corn-broccoli combo, alongside a generous helping of tomato salad (made with thinly sliced cipollini onion and a generous drizzle of olive oil)

By the time I get home in October we’ll be well into fall vegetables. The weekend was chilly and so last night Dawnthebaker made supper for a crowd, with contributions from guests. Her starting ingredients were sitting in a box on her dining table when I dropped by for coffee yesterday morning, a foreglimpse of fall flavours.

what would you make with this box of vegetables? And the fire pit

She roasted the peppers and made a combo with chopped hazelnuts; perhaps roasted cauliflower and celery were in there too, I don’t remember. The cabbage was cut into wedges, oven roasted until touched with plenty of colour, then dressed with plenty of dill and dollops of yogurt. The little squash were sliced and roasted giving sweet nuggets to drag through the aioli… You get the idea. Vegetable heaven. We ate outside with the first fire-pit of the season reminding us of colder days to come.

in the meantime, a last glimpse of summer: fried eggs over leftovers, topped with yellow tomato

A BOOK NOTE:

I am late to the party but finally last week read Benjamin Labatut’s remarkable book (translated from the Spanish) When we Cease to Understand the World. Highly recommended. Big thanks to the Toronto Public Library, a treasure house with very kind staff.

chive flower with feeding insect

Their whiteness stands out brilliantly against the garden’s green: there’s a band of garlic chives at the deck end of the garden, and another that borders one short part of the rather overgrown flagstone path. Everything looks lush. It’s warm enough today that the cicadas are buzzing as I sit outside in the shade writing this, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, at nearly 4 in the afternoon. The difference is that when a cloud shades the sun there’s a quick feeling of coolness in the air. Yes, autumn is around the corner, whatever the cicadas’ song.

I often work out here; sometimes the bench on its own is beautiful

Early September is momentous because it’s the start of re-engagement with school, and that marker in the year marks all of us for life, I think. We see the sharper shadows, the shorter evenings, and we are triggered back into the anticipation of the first week of school, with its excitements and anxieties.

I’m feeling extra-heavy this year, loaded down with the weight of the times we lived through last fall. By mid-September Tashi’s brain tumour had stolen some of his words and part of his vision, though not his lightness or his humour. We had visitors most days, some of whom would be able to stay for supper. They gave an extra energy to the house. I could focus on taking care of meals and small eats, and was often part of conversations, so there was no time to brood. Dom was here a lot, almost continuously, once we got to late September, and that was a blessing for me as well as for Tashi. I was buoyed by the warmth and attentiveness of our chosen family, Tashi’s friends and Dom’s and mine too, all of them tuning in.

I’m remembering these things now, as I write, but in early September last year I hadn’t acknowledged to myself how little time we had left. I didn’t picture Tashi dying, I didn’t pre-grieve. I knew every moment was precious but hadn’t thought beyond that.

I’m amazed and grateful that I wasn’t haunted by longer-term anticipations. We just lived our way through each day and week, talking with Tash, joking, hanging out. In the morning after breakfast, when we usually had no visitors and his brother was still sleeping, Tashi and I would watch goofy shows like QI and TaskMaster.

Last night after supper (see below), I sliced a peach into sections for a quick bite of dessert before I headed out on my bicycle to a small unpretentious bar on Queen Street called Squirly to help celebrate the birthday of a dear friend of us all. Last year Tashi had been at his birthday gathering. This year, as the evening went on and more people kept arriving, I was introduced to the people I didn’t know as “Tashi’s mother.” It felt like a tender embrace.

the first tender anemone of the season

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS with potato options & loads of tomatoes & peaches

The new potatoes here are still exciting, fresh, and tasty. I boil them with their skins on, let them cool, and then chop them into approximate cubes. Then they’re a wide-open canvas to play with. I added the kernels from two grilled cobs of corn, and chopped up two red peppers that had been grilled the day before. With a dressing of olive oil, cider vinegar, fish sauce, and a sprinkling of chopped sorrel and mint, the salad tasted complex and oh so inviting. I had three guests for supper that evening.

boiled potatoes dressed with corn, peppers, herbs, etc

For the rest of the meal: There were small zucchinis that I sliced lengthwise and lightly brushed with fish sauce and olive oil before they went on the grill. I had chicken thighs from Ryan at Trinity Bellwoods market that I marinated in a paste made from ginger, garlic, and two serranos from the garden that I pounded to a paste with some salt. I cut the bones out of five of the thighs and left three on the bone, so people had a choice. (Some people really dislike eating meat directly from the bone; I prefer it that way. I sliced the deboned thighs into bite-size). And of course we also had a tomato salad, because…

grilled sliced zucchini

We’re still in tomato and peach paradise, though coming to the end of both seasons. (Peaches end first; tomatoes go almost until the first frost.) These days I’m eating peaches greedily at every and any occasion: sliced, just on their own, or with toast and good cheese, or in a bowl with buffalo yogurt, perhaps topped with a little excellent granola. I never cook peaches, because the fresh ripe ones feel too precious to mess with. Save the peach tart or cake for less-perfect fruit!

L to R: toast & St Albert cheese with sliced tomatoes for the first slice, peaches for the second; cherry tomato diversity; pasta dressed with fresh tomatoes and pounded anchovies, with green beans

The awareness that this luxurious plenty will soon be over pushes me to eat tomatoes as often as possible: sliced, on toast, with or without cheese; chopped fresh onto hot pasta (see the seductive recent post about this by Nancy Harmon Jenkins of On the Kitchen Porch); sliced or chopped, topped with thinly sliced cipollini onion, a drizzle of olive oil, and a sprinkling of salt, with fresh chopped herbs optional… Recently, in the large cast-iron skillet, I cooked a scattering of cherry tomatoes with some thinly sliced onion, then poured a whisked load of five eggs over them to make an omelet. What luxury.

Yesterday evening we had a simple supper of smoked Ontario trout, broken into shards, tomato salad as described above, and a heap of haricots verts boiled in salted water and dressed with a little sesame oil and fish sauce, plus a splash of cider vinegar and a sprinkling of salt. Perfect. And beautiful.

smoked trout, tomato salad with cipollini onion, haricots verts

A NOTE ABOUT DAMSON JAM, with a recipe

Though I thought I’d sworn off making any more jam, last week I bought a basket, a scant 3 pounds/1.3 kg of damsons from Milan of Bizjak farms. That meant I needed to process them. I’ve now got five one-cup glass jars of dark red jam. It tastes wonderful, but I was inattentive: with the plentiful rains we’ve had, I should have added no water to the fruit, or at most a small splash. Instead it got over ½ cup. And the result is thin and runny. I don’t mind. It’s a lovely liquid to drizzle onto toast or ice cream, or to use almost like a syrup to flavour a hot drink.(see the photo below). But I want to warn you about the water. The recipe for damson jam that’s in HomeBaking calls for 1 cup of water for 3 pounds of fruit. That’s too much. It worked when I tested it nearly 25 years ago. But dawnthebaker tells me that these days she adds no water at all to her damsons.

Here are the proportions and instructions:

About 3 pounds of damson plums, washed and de-stemmed

2 cups sugar (I prefer using raw sugar)

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

4 or 5 one-cup glass jam jars with lids

Wash the fruit, cut a few of the plums in half and prick a bunch of them with a fork, to encourage them to soften. Put them in a heavy pot over low heat. Splash in a touch of water, or not, as you see fit (see above). As the fruit softens it will give off liquid so that you can raise the heat a little. Once the fruit has broken down into a softened mass of fruit (after another 20 minutes or so), gradually stir in the sugar. Cook at a low boil for about 10 more minutes, then take off the heat and stir in the lemon juice. Set the jam aside to cool.

Sterilise your jam jars. I do them in the oven: First I put my clean small jam jars on a heavy baking sheet, each filled with a little water. The lids go onto the sheet too. I put the sheet in the middle of a 230F/110C oven. You may have another method for sterilising your jars and lids.

Once the jam has cooled, pick out the pits. The easiest way to place a large colander over a big bowl and pour the fruit and liquid into the colander. You can start feeling with your fingers, locating the pits one by one and discarding them onto a plate or small bowl. It may seem a daunting task but it goes quickly; you emerge with red-tinged hands. I lick mine off before washing them, lovely tartness on the tongue.

Put the jam back in the pot and heat to a simmer. Take the baking sheet of jam jars out of the oven and leave the jars on the sheet (to catch drips). I transfer the hot jam to a mixing bowl with a spout that means I can pour the hot jam directly into the jars. You can instead use a ladle or a (sterilised) funnel to fill your jars. Top each jar with a lid and a ring and leave out to cool and seal. If you have a little jam left over, pour it into a clean jar and refrigerate it. Use this one first, before opening any of the others.

Once the jam has cooled, label the jars. Store them in a cool place.

yes, my latest damson jam is thin, but I’m still happy to eat it! here with aged cheese and toast

sedum is lovely pale bloom, in the Annex

The garlic chive flowers, the basil, the phlox, are alive with feeding insects. The wild rose is jewelled with brilliant orange-red hips. My Thai chile plant, a perennial I planted in June and plan to bring indoors for the winter (optimistically), is producing loads of tiny prik ee noo chiles.

rose hips; small Thai chiles; garlic chive flower with insect (bee?)

Last weekend, with the moon just coming off full, I cycled with dawnthebaker to a casual birthday party near Budapest Beach. People brought contributions to the festivities, including take-out sushi, a huge tomato salad, some cheese and bread, wine other drinks, tablecloths to lay on the flat rocks by the beach. We were all happy to be out on a beautiful evening in a lovely spot.

this looks edited or photoshopped, but is not…just lucky magic

A set of storm centres, with gusting winds, hail, and torrential rain, surged across the Toronto region late on Wednesday afternoon, leaving devastation of all kinds, from damaged crops to downed trees and smashed cars, along with serious flooding. It was a sobering reminder of nature’s power. I’d been out on my bicycle visiting a friend and luckily made it home about half an hour before the intense action began, hurrying as I saw dark clouds massing and felt early raindrops giving warning.

After the first downpour, there was a pause, a slight brightening. Then came a pounding of hail. Incredible. Deep torrents of water rushed down the street. The wind swirled the trees in the back garden, bowing them over and then swooshing them upright again. The huge maple that fills my view to the west swayed and rippled against the sky. It lost no branches, though there were leaves flying around. But up the street one of the large mature chestnut trees lost a huge lower branch. It fell across the street, blocking it completely and smashing onto my partner’s parked car.

clearing the branch, before nightfall

Many of the other beautifully-treed streets in the centre of the city were also blocked by fallen branches. The impressive thing was how quickly the city sprang into action: there was a crew with a chainsaw cutting up the fallen branch on our street less than an hour after the end of the storm, clearing the road (and leaving the damaged car looking a bit pathetic).

farewell to Tashi’s boots

On Saturday I did a difficult thing: I took Tashi’s leather boots, boots made for walking in cold and snow, size thirteen (too large for anyone else I know), to the Salvation Army. They’ve been in residence on a shelf in the front hall for two years, a reminder of him, a reminder of loss. Perhaps it was the arrival of September that pushed me to finally donate them. It was very hard to see them go. I just had to say to myself, Let them be lived in by someone who needs them.

And now, since writing about the boots, I’ve found myself looking in my photos for shots of Tashi in January of 2023 and 2024, when he had work and plans and was living well, all while knowing that his brain tumour would get active again. He didn’t talk about it, he just went on with life. How valiant and graceful that was, and how wise. There he is, alive and alert and lovely, in the photos. Remembering the way he lived through all of it is like a command to channel my good energy, whatever handicaps arrive due to age, infirmity, bad luck. Complaining is tedious and worrying is a big waste of time.

goldenrod is beautiful, and attracts birds and bees, so I’m happy to have some in the garden

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS: with talk of grilled corn and zucchini, fried rice…

We had beloved visitors from out of town for a couple of nights this week. The first night I made a large pot of brown jasmine rice. The rest of the meal was cooked on the charcoal grill. We had pork loin cut in half lengthwise and marinated with pomegranate molasses and fish sauce for a good half hour or more. Small zucchinis sliced lengthwise, brushed with a little olive oil and fish sauce, grilled quickly, and so did cobs of local corn with the last layer of husk still on them to keep them moist as they cooked. Three beautiful smooth whole eggplants from Footsteps Farm, pricked with a fork, came off the grill beautifully softened. They were easy to scoop out of their skins and mash together in a bowl with a little pomegranate molasses and some tahini, as well as salt. The only other prep needed after the grilling was to slice the pork. I still had a small jar of red ajika from Georgia, so that went out too, as a condiment.

grilled pork, zucchini, corn, rice, and the soft pile of baba ghanouj at bottom right

The next night six of us had planned to eat out, but the storm (see above) kept us home. Luckily there was a lot of leftover rice from the previous night’s meal, and a few cooked potatoes in the fridge, plus I had a small bag of flat beans from the farmers market; all that made fried rice the best option to anchor the meal. I got the rice started by heating oil in my large wok, adding some green curry paste, and some garlic, and once it had softened, adding chopped flat beans and some of the cooked potatoes, chopped small. Then I set the wok aside while I figured out the rest of the meal.

There was fresh fish: a lake trout fillet plus two pieces of sockeye salmon from Fisherfolk. I cooked each in my large cast-iron skillet. The trout cooked in oil flavoured with mustard seed and nigella, in which I had softened some thinly sliced cipollini onion. I used sliced white onion and fennel seed for the sockeye, and poured over miso thinned with water, before covering the pan for a few minutes so the fish could steam cook.

Once the fish was cooked and set out, I could reheat the wok and stir-fry the rice with the flavourings already in the pan. While I was doing that, a large bag of fine green beans, true haricots verts, slender and delicious, from Wychwood farmers’ market, cooked up quickly in a little boiling salted water. I dressed them with sesame oil, a splash of soy sauce, and a dash of aged pear vinegar. Meantime our friends’ son Neil chopped up a heap of ripe tomatoes that we drizzled with good olive oil, sprinkled with salt, and decorated with some chopped herbs from the rain-washed garden.

It’s always a pleasure to be able come up with a good meal at the last minute, while staying relaxed. All it takes is a little pause and focus at the start to figure out the order of operations! We could say that about a lot of situations, I guess.

bounty!

AND BOOKS:

My friend Judy gave me a charming book by Daniel Hahn called Catching Fire: A Translation Diary, a treat for anyone who is interested in the mystery and challenge of language and translation. Highly recommended.

And I’ve reconnected with Qiu Xiaolong’s Detective Chen series, set in Shanghai, and full of food details, local life, and political realities of the past and present. I’ve just finished Shanghai Redemption. There are still a few more of them that I haven’t read. As always I’m very grateful to the Toronto Public Library, indebted!

lovely gnarly heirloom tomatoes at Wychwood Farmers Market today, grown by Green & Bloom

anenomes with a foraging bee; in the garden at Friends’ House where we sang last Saturday

At the next full moon I should be in Tbilisi. I’ve just finished writing a note to thtravellers who will be joining me in there in late September for eleven days of food and culture-focused travel in Georgia and Armenia. At odd intervals this past week I’ve found myself travelling in my mind’s-eye, anticipating the pleasure of seeing friends and familiar places again.

The last ten days have been wonderfully intense, with my son Dom and family visiting from Vancouver, and a lot of singing. Last weekend was the annual Central Ontario Sacred Harp Convention - a full weekend of singing with others who had come from near and far. We had about 100 singers over the weekend; more than 75 each day, from 7 states and 3 provinces.

One of the features of Sacred Harp Conventions and One-day Singings is that there is always food served at midday, a practice known as “dinner on the grounds.” The host community of singers is responsible for providing good eats for everyone who shows up. It’s a point of pride for us to provide generously each year, in potluck fashion. Without facilities for refrigeration or for last minute reheating, etc. it takes a bit of ingenuity. This year there were loads of salads of every description, lentils, lots of cheese, piles of sandwiches and wraps of all kinds, cold cuts, watermelon pickles, tender green beans, and loads more. On the sweets end there were many peach pies and custard pies, plus chocolate cake, butter cake, butter tarts, cheesecake, cookies, fresh fruit…you get the idea.

the feast laid out at the Detweiler Meeting House, where we sang on Sunday

The exhilaration of singing with others is very special. I imagine that playing in an orchestra or other group music-making gives a similar buzz. The harmonies and overlapping vibrations bring the body alive. With singing there are also the life-giving sensations in the mouth and lungs as the body works consciously to breathe and sing. And with shape-note there’s the satisfying integration of eyes and brain and hand that happens when you’re (sight-) reading the music and the words and keeping time. At the end of each day of singing I was high with the pleasure of it all.

There’s a short Memorial on the Sunday at each Convention, where we remember those who are ill and those dear to us who have died in the past year. Last Sunday at the singing, with some hesitation, I added Tashi’s name to the list. Though Christianity helps many people, it is not for me. And so it felt strangely alienating at first to hear Tashi’s name read in the middle of a list, nakedly out there with no shared context except that every name was of someone who had died. But when I pictured the same feeling of hurt and love in other people as they heard their lost precious person’s name read out, it shifted things for me.

the skyscape yesterday afternoon

We carry the load of grief alone, yes, but also with others, and that’s part of life. The saying of a name brings those we’ve lost freshly into being as loved real individuals, if only for a moment. And somehow the sharing of grief becomes a balm, a form of care for ourselves and for others.

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS celebrating tomatoes, tomatoes; plus a recipe for olive oil cake with peaches and hazelnuts

Tomatoes! There’s a bit of a competition for me if I want a snack or a treat: do I opt for slices of tomato on toast, or with cheese, or with sardines?

a huge homegrown tomato from my friend Sarah; and plenty of sliced tomato, with sardines - a perfect lunch

The other day I had a pound of ground lamb and a few small zucchinis. They were very easy to transform into a sauce for egg noodles, assisted by some chopped fresh tomato. What a lush easy-to-eat treat with terrific textures (I love the bite of cooked zucchini, the slight resistance of egg noodles, the melt of lightly cooked tomato).

the lamb-sauced egg noodles, with green beans on the side

I came across some beautiful flat beans at the Trinity-Bellwoods Farmers Market the other day. I sliced a large white onion finely and softened it in hot olive oil flavoured with some mustard seed and nigella, in my large cast-iron skillet. In went the beans, chopped crosswise in ½-inch/1 cm lengths. I cut the kernels off 2 or 3 cobs of grilled corn left over from the previous day (such a handy ingredient, for both its flavour and its texture), and added those, along with perhaps a half cup or more of hot water to help the beans cook. I used a splash of fish sauce plus a little salt for seasoning. (You could always add some minced anchovy to the dish; or for vegetarians use say sauce instead of fish sauce as part of your seasoning.) I added a chopped tomato plus several halved cherry tomatoes for colour and acidity. The dish simmered gently for a little longer, until the beans were tender, before I put it out in a large serving bowl with some chopped sorrel leaves on top for a tart note (you could instead sprinkle on sumac). Leftovers from the fridge were delicious this morning, topped with two fried eggs plus a few yellow cherry tomatoes.

a perfect breakfast or any time pleasure: eggs and tomatoes over leftover mixed vegetables

OLIVE OIL CAKE, A CASUAL RECIPE:

This year for my sweet contribution to the table at the Saturday singing I decided I’d improvise a different version of olive oil cake, using my recipe in The Miracle of Salt as a starting point. I had fresh peaches, toasted hazelnuts, and lemon zest as my flavourings (instead of the preserved lemons and slated nuts of the original recipe). I chopped two unpeeled peaches into small chunks (you could use plums or nectarines instead), processed a handful of hazelnuts to about ½ cup of coarse powder, and sliced thin pieces of zest from a large lemon then chopped it finely. I mixed the peach and zest together in a bowl with half the nuts before I started assembling the cake; the rest of the nuts you’ll find below in the recipe. I thought I’d try to incorporate some of the peach mixture into the cake and then later, while it was baking, add a little of it on top.

I lightly greased a small loaf pan (8 by 4 inches/20 by 10 cm), and lined the bottom with parchment paper. The oven was preheated to 350F/175C.

The rest is easy. In one bowl mix the dry ingredients together well:

1 cup/about 130 grams whole grain flour or substitute all-purpose (I used a wheat variety called Maris Widgeon this time)

1 cup/200 grams turbinado sugar (plus a little extra for sprinkling on top)

¼ cup ground toasted hazelnuts (or walnuts or almonds)

2 teaspoons baking powder

Pinch of fine sea salt

In another bowl whisk together the wet ingredients:

½ cup plain full-fat yogurt

3 large eggs

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and use a spatula to stir and fold them in until they’re fully mixed. Add ½ cup/120 ml extra-virgin olive oil and stir to blend it in completely. You’ll have doubts about it the first time you try, but it will work.

Stir in about ½ to 3/4 cup of the peach mixture.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and place the pan in the centre of the preheated oven. You’ll need to bake it for about 50 minutes, or perhaps as long as an hour. Once the top of the cake is looking a little firm, at about the 40-minute mark, drizzle a line of the peach mixture along the centre of the loaf, sprinkle on a tablespoon or so of sugar, and then place it back in the oven to finish baking. Test for doneness by inserting a fine skewer into the centre of the cake; it should come out clean with no batter sticking to it.

The cake needs to rest until completely cool. You can lift it out of the pan to slice it, or just slice it in the pan. It’s moist and lush-tasting. Another tribute to peaches!

summer treasure: close-up of someone else’s shopping at the Trinity-Bellwoods Farmers Market

the last of my lilies, in spectacular form

Today a friend came by on her bicycle to sit in the garden and chat for a couple of hours. We don’t see each other often, but when we do, the decades-long tapestry of overlapping friends and events that we have together is a pleasurable source of memories to dip into. We also talked about the stresses our grown children feel and the awfulness of many things in the world. I wonder if, a generation ago, people who were then our present age felt the same way. Perhaps. Are we fogies? Likely!

The wear and tear of life, the scars both physical and emotional, the griefs and the causes for joy, aren’t very visible to others. We walk past people on the street, sit opposite them in a streetcar, queue with them at the grocery store check-out, exchange a few words with them in passing, but we can only imagine their inner lives. I’m so glad to have novels, and stories from friends, to give me a sense of the possible shape of things for others

I’m back to thinking about time as the present, despite the pull of remembrance. The others are less real: time past disappears into patchily remembered strands and images and scars; time future hovers, but with no lived reality.

I’m not sure why I’m in this place… I guess it’s partly Dawnthebaker telling me a few days ago that she’d had a very vivid dream of Tashi. And also my sense that he’s around, because I find myself occasionally saying something to him, while knowing very well that he’s not here. If I speak to him, it makes him solid for a moment, as I imagine his reply.

I think this is a kind of simplistic magical-realism way to keep a sense of coherence in this loss. I can think about and picture the presence of other dear people who have died. But I don’t usually bring them so immediately to mind that I have a conversation with them. I just picture them appreciatively. Certain street corners can remind me of a person, or can start me thinking about a long-ago event.

I’m grateful for this capacity to live a kind of imaginative continuum of time and space, while staying anchored in the present. I can wrap remembrance of events, emotions, and people around me like a warming blanket. Do you do this at all? It’s a way of taking refuge. And it’s a version of the technique, when I’m in an uncomfortable place, let’s say unavoidably cold and wet on cross-country skis and far from shelter, of picturing myself elsewhere in warmth and comfort, say drinking a hot drink and drying off. It’s a balm to the mind and the body, if only for a moment.

a hot day pleasure to dream of: Dawnthebaker’s semifreddo sandwich

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS with talk of market plenty, floury potatoes, and crabapple jelly

This post is loaded with food, and no wonder, with the markets overflowing with ripe local produce of all kinds. Corn, zucchini, eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, peaches, nectarines… One way to revel in it all, and to justify generous shopping, is to have people over for supper, preferably a casual supper, so the bounty can be shared relaxedly.

Yesterday a crowd of us were at Dawnthebaker’s place for supper. My contributions included a large wooden bowl of green and yellow beans dressed in a version of Georgian style. Instead of walnuts I used Ontario hazelnuts, whizzed to fine crumbs, and then pounded in a mortar with fresh (homegrown) garlic and salt. I stirred the paste into a mix of lemon juice, olive oil, and chopped tarragon, then poured it onto the hot beans.

I don’t top and tail the beans…

Dawn pan-cooked brined spiced chicken thighs and served them, with their pan juices, over fresh chopped tomatoes, a brilliant combo. She also made a salad of finely shredded raw zucchini with tiny shrimp. Carole, another baker (@motherdough) made green-tinted japapeno cornbread. A friend fried up huge zucchini flowers stuffed with ricotta and parmesan…

It all felt like a market celebration.

Last Tuesday at Trinity Bellwoods Market I bought some new potatoes, white ones, from Footsteps Farm. I washed them and then cooked them in a little salted water, still their fine skins. They cooked quickly. After I drained them I pushed down on one with the back of a large spoon to check their firmness and it yielded; it smushed softly into a floury potato tenderness. I usually have firm potatoes, not floury ones like these. It was time to experiment.

I put them in a wide bowl, gently crushed them all with my large spoon, and added a dollop of butter. I chopped the zucchini slices that had just come off the charcoal grill and added them to the potatoes, along with chopped herbs from the garden (sorrel, parsley, basil, mint). There were three or four cobs of grilled corn in the fridge, left over from a few days earlier; I cut off the kernels and added them to the bowl. After a splash of cider vinegar, and a dollop of olive oil, some salt and a few grinds of black pepper, and a mixing together, we had a tender unexpected potato and vegetable dish. The little hits of sweetness and flavour from the corn were bright notes.

the potato-zucchini etc combo, with grilled lamb and white currant sauce (for the lamb)

The leftovers were delicious the next day. I sliced a beautiful cipollini onion finely and softened it in olive oil over medium heat, then tossed in the leftovers. They were almost better than the first day’s version, with that touch of onion…

garden herbs are such a lively addition to many dishes…

I have a new appreciation of floury potatoes, or at least this variety. Paul of Footsteps Farm told me that Dakota Golds are best picked early and small; he’ll have them for only another ten days or so.

Last week I wrote about the crabapple tree’s abundance nudging me into acknowledging that I should gather some of the apples. A couple of days later I collected some from the ground, but most were high up on branches, some of them right outside my office windows on the second floor. Tempting! I climbed out a window onto the small roof above the front door and managed to pick some handfuls of apples from there. Most of the tree’s bounty is going to feed the birds, the squirrels, a small rabbit who hangs around, and the occasional human who walks by and picks one to taste (they’re surprisingly sweet for crabapples). The birds are mostly robins, the young ones, now fledged but still a bit stupid and slow with palely speckled breasts. They hang around the front steps and barely notice when a someone walks up. Perhaps they’re drunk on the fruit.

the bunny, on my neighbour’s walk, with a few scattered crabapples

I weighed my small harvest (about 1.5 kilos, or 3.3 pounds), washed the apples (leaving the stems on), put them in a large pot, added 4 cups of water (they were just covered), and brought it to a boil. They cooked at a medium boil until softened enough that I could mash them with the back of a large slotted metal spoon (about 20 minutes).

I put my largest colander, lined with a tea towel, over a big bowl and then poured in the fruit and liquid. It sat draining and cooling for a while. Once it had cooled, I confess I massaged it, squeezing and twisting the fruit in the towel to get as much liquid as possible (while remembering that my mother would ask us to please not squeeze the jelly bag, because that would make the jelly cloudy). The debris went onto the compost pile.

gathered apples; and cooking in the tall pot

I put five one-cup jars half full of water, and their lids, on a small sheet pan in a 250 F oven.

In the end I had 4 cups of tart red crabapple juice. It went back into the pot. Various recipes I had looked at called for a cup of sugar per cup of liquid. That seemed like too much to me. I settled for a scant 3 ½ cups of sugar, that I stirred in as it came to a low boil over medium heat. I didn’t have a lemon handy so I added about ¼ teaspoon citric acid instead.

The liquid cooked at a low boil for about ten minutes, maybe as long as fifteen, before it seemed ready to set. (I used the cold metal lid in the freezer technique to test for setting.) I took the tray of jars out of the oven, emptied each one of its water, and filled them with the hot jelly. There was a little extra, which went into a small jar for immediate use. The hot lids went on and there they were, my jars of crabapple jelly.

The tree is still loaded, and the ground too is bright with scattered apples. I should make another batch…

the open half jar of jelly; delish with cheese, with bread, with grilled meat…

AND A BOOK NOTE

After being happily hostage to the four volumes of On the Calculation of Volume that are now available in English, I have moved on. I’d read a mention of Nobel Laureate Laszlo Krasznahorkai in Margaret Atwood’s memoir. I knew nothing about him, so went looking for his work in the Toronto Public Library. And now I am on the last few pages of his most recent novel Herscht 07769. It took me about 35 pages to get into it, but then I was mesmerised. Whew. Amazing.

bees harvesting, on coneflowers in my garden

Last Thursday evening I pedaled under a dull sky to the first evening of Diffusion, a four evening festival of experimental short films. A dear friend had told me about it. We watched them in the courtyard of 401 Richmond, a four story industrial building that was transformed decades ago into a creative hub, with studios and arts spaces of many kinds. The courtyard was packed with people sitting on chairs and benches, the projection was digital and clear, and the audience – mostly people in the 25 to 45 age range – was attentive. I was taken out of my immediate preoccupations by the need to focus on each film (I especially liked Kalil Haddad’s My Secret Boyfriend Died in a Mass Shooting).

the scene just before the start, in the 401 Richmond courtyard

As I pedaled home in the dark and then ate scavenged leftovers from the fridge, unheated, from their containers, I felt as if I’d retrieved an earlier self, who didn’t hesitate to stay out late and juggle many commitments. It felt good, a re-stretching of my wings. I’ve been living quite a structured life these last couple of years, very focused on maintaining equilibrium in the household and in my larger circle as Tashi lived through his hard last eighteen months. That was a rich intense time. I relive moments of it in my mind’s eye almost every day.

Finding ways to carry that richness forward while shifting my patterns and loosening my sense of responsibility is an exhilarating prospect. I know Tashi would be pleased to see me lifting my gaze to new possibilities. It’s about finding lightness, even when there are burdens and responsibilities. And then staying light!

a wild combo, on Augusta in Kensington Market

Speaking of responsibilities: I’ve written here about harvesting summer, making jam or other versions of storing summer bounty. And now the crabapple tree, a large forty-plus year-old tree by the sidewalk in front of my house, is loaded with fruit. The apples are smaller than usual, and bountiful, most of them a rainbow of warm colours ranging from patches of rich red-purple to a deep cherry-pink to pink-gold. I had been assuming that I wouldn’t be making crabapple jelly this year. But the tree’s load is giving me a strong nudge. (I need to spread a sheet on the ground to help catch the fruit, for otherwise gathering it from the sidewalk and from the low “forest” of lilies of the valley in the front yard is a discouraging preliminary task.) As I sit outside on the front step writing this there’s an occasional thud as an apple hits the ground or bounces off the step.

close-up of the tree, taken from my second-story window

I’m also hearing forceful conversations in Mandarin from the work crew next door. My neighbour’s place had a fire last summer that started on a back deck. The smoke and water damage meant the building had to be gutted and rebuilt from the inside. The crew that has been working on the rebuild is Spanish-speaking, mostly guys from Mexico, who play music and sing along with it when work is going well. It’s been fun to have a little Spanish around. But today’s workforce, new to me, is a different crew, Mandarin-speakers who are working up high to replace the gutters along the rebuilt roofline. As I write this they’re sitting outside having their lunch. I can catch the odd word, but otherwise I’m just hearing the hard “r’s of Mandarin and the rise and fall of their sometimes argumentative conversation. It’s a form of travel while at home…

Another option would be to be aggravated by the noise of their work and their talking. But it’s going to happen, it has to happen, so there’s no point in reacting against it. Instead – apologies if this is too Pollyanna-ish - it feels more juicy to find ways of enjoying what’s going on

more Pollyanna: I goofed and broke one egg; but they were still a treat…

Speaking of enjoyment, I had lunch the other day at Pho Hung, the excellent Vietnamese restaurant on Spadina that recently celebrated its fortieth anniversary (they gave away hundreds of bowls of pho that day, I was told). I was lucky to stumble on the restaurant long ago, and I’ve learned a lot from the owner and his wife. (She taught me some basic Vietnamese before the trip I took to Saigon and the Mekong Delta in monsoon season 1998, when I was doing research for Hot Sour Salty Sweet.) He is now in his eighties and is still around, but mostly the management is done, and done well, by the next generation.

Ozoz Sokoh (@kitchenbutterfly) of Weekend Wednesdays was already at the restaurant when I got there. She was up for ordering anything I chose, so we shared my faves: canh chua (sour soup) with eel and banh xeo, plus rice to accompany the canh. I love the layers of repetition and memory in a well-loved restaurant. At Pho Hung I am always reminded of meals I’ve eaten there with other people, some of them far away (hello Jodi), some long gone. All those echoes add depth to the now.

canh chua on the left; banh xeo on the right

KTCHEN EXPLORATIONS – tomatoes, peaches with smoked trout, grilled sliced zucchini & eggplant

At last we’re in full tomato season. The luxury!

The cherry tomato plants in my garden (three in tall pots and two in the ground) have been yielding ripe fruits for several weeks. I grab them quickly as I see them, to stay ahead of the squirrels. It’s a daily routine. Though my biggest tomato love is for the larger fruit, I don’t try to grow full sized tomatoes, for the squirrel risk and the amount at stake is so much greater.

Last night I roughly chopped three heirloom tomatoes from Soznicki’s one of the farmers at Wychwood Market. I picked basil from the two plants I have this year, washed and dried it and then mashed it in my shallow stone mortar until it was bruised and broken. I stirred it into a little olive oil (a gift from a friend), added some processed garlic scapes (put up in a jar a few weeks ago), and then poured the dressing onto the tomatoes. That plus a little salt… heaven. I’m going to eat the leftovers today once I finish this post.

The rest of the meal was a repeat of something I made last week: slices of eggplant and zucchini, lightly coated with a little olive oil and a splash of fish sauce, and then grilled over charcoal. I chopped them up and put them out just like that, with a sprinkle of salt. The texture as you bite into the grilled vegetable is a great pleasure. And there was also grilled corn.

grilled eggplant and zucchini with a little herb-laden olive oil

In my house things repeat frequently during the season. I love the repetition, because too soon the season will be over. There’s no point pre-mourning the end! I fend off thoughts of the end by going overboard while the season lasts.

peaches, smoked trout, tarragon, with the sliced onion to one side, so people could choose their onion intensity

A few days ago we had a seductive salad: smoked lake trout broken into small shreds, with chopped peach, thinly sliced white onion, and tarragon. Peaches and nectarines are another “eat them while they last” category. And so we do, at all times of day.

peaches, buffalo yogurt, a generous dash of under-sweetened black currant jam…

I hope there’s plenty of seasonal bounty where you are, and that you’re able to dive into it with pleasure.

sumac fattening and beautiful at a farm near Orillia

The day after the full moon I pushed a spade into the still-soft garden soil to loosen it, then was able to pull out a garlic. I repeated that harvesting until I ‘d pulled all the garlic easily out of the ground, about 15 bulbs altogether. The plants have already given me scapes: now here’s the small mother lode. I’m especially grateful for this harvest, given how late I planted the garlic (late December, or perhaps even early January, in a brief moment when the ground had unfrozen).

freshly pulled up

I rinsed the dirt off the garlic in the fountain, then laid the bulbs and their stalks out to dry in the sunshine for a couple of days. Treasure.

out drying…

Saturday August 1, was my brother’s birthday. He died in April 1973, so long ago that it’s unimaginable. I think of him often these days. Somehow the loss of Tashi has brought my brother forward. I used to catch glimpses and echoes of him in Tashi’s physical presence, his ease with people, his openness, his sense of play.

The pile-up of loss comes to me in waves sometimes. I know I need to develop the muscle to carry this reality of love and loss. I also realise now that I really didn’t know about grief in my early twenties, didn’t take the time to acknowledge my pain at losing my brother. That was partly my youth and ignorance. But it was also because I was aware, even though she kept it inside, that my mother’s anguish was so great that I couldn’t somehow go there.

valiant lilies in my garden, flourishing despite neglect

Now I have more insight into my mother’s grief and have become a member of the host of grieving mothers. I am grateful that Tashi’s brother Dom and I talk often. We describe to each other the way Tashi is on our minds, and how he reverberates for us during our days and nights. I didn’t have those kinds of conversations with my mother after my brother died. Another difference is that my brother’s death was a sudden shock, not a long-anticipated awfulness. (He died in a sailing accident off Vancouver Island.)

Raw shock makes grieving more complicated in lots of ways. There’s the fierce urge to reject the reality: “no it can’t be true” and the constant reimagining of the tape in which the terrible thing did NOT happen, as if it were possible to reverse time. A death from cancer or other disease, fended off but always known to be inevitable, is quite different. It’s a long slow lesson in loss, even before the end.

All of it is heavy, all of it is life in the raw.

Yesterday I went north out of town to a one-day Sacred Harp singing that was held in a barn near Orillia. It was a wonderful singing, with a pause for lunch and then an early supper. There was a large farm pond a short walk away, so I took a moment to have a quick swim in the early afternoon, my first swim in fresh water since last year. Heaven, truly.

outside the barn at our singing

I had a ride to and from the singing with a kind friend who did all the driving both ways. Perhaps because of the emotions loosened by singing, and because he was on my mind on his birthday, I talked to her about my brother as she drove us back to Toronto in the early evening. It wasn’t a plan. It just happened. Stories and events interwove themselves in my telling, bringing a whole era back to life.

Recounting past events and their cross-connections gives me insights and helps me inhabit the complicated realities of life. I think it’s the same for others. But was I being like the Ancient Mariner, talking the ear off a captive audience?

at Biidaasige Park, the huge new park at the mouth of the Don River, is this piece by Lisa Hirmer, called Lodestar. It’s a reminder of layers of human and pre-human history and an acknowledgement of all that lies buried beneath the land we stand on

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS: tonnato sauce, white currant attempt, retrieving tired carrots, rendering pork fat

My friend Dawnthebaker has taken to making tonnato sauce, a terrific flavouring for many kinds of salad/combinations of ingredients. I asked her for instructions. She describes it as a great non-recipe recipe. She makes a one-yolk mayonnaise with olive oil, then uses a blender or processor to whizz some rinsed off tuna, a few anchovies, and some capers. She adds the mayonnaise to make a smooth sauce, tastes it, and adds a little lemon juice and some water, to get the consistency she wants, a kind of thin creaminess. Yesterday evening we had it as a dressing for a salad of fresh chopped tomatoes and lightly cooked fine green beans. Perfection.

Last week I had houseguests, good friends from Montreal: Lesley Chesterman of Lick my Plate, and her partner Jean Aubry of Du vin dans l’encrier. For supper we started with a chilled roasted red pepper gazpacho made by our friend Haralds, and moved on to charcoal-grilled lamb marinated in pomegranate molasses and salt and served sliced; potato salad dressed with a vinaigrette loaded with herbs and scape-pesto; grilled corn on the cob; and a side-sauce of cooked white currants. We ended with cheeses that Lesley and Jean had brought from Montreal, and with a delicious tart that Lesley had assembled and baked here (with tart dough and fillings she had brought with her).

The pleasure of sitting out in the garden eating our meal under a clear darkening blue sky with the fat moon rising was like a distillation of summer. As the temperature cooled we moved inside for our cheese and for slices of Lesley’s tart.

The white currant sauce I mentioned above was an experiment in tart-sour-acid that didn’t land perfectly. I’d cooked the berries with a little sugar and with slivered garlic and minced green cayenne chile. I stirred in salt and a sprinkling of powdered coriander seed. I had imagined the currant sauce would be delicious with the grilled lamb. It was, but the tannic edge to the berries was a too forceful. (It was also a challenge to the wine.) I should have sweetened the mix more and perhaps cooked it longer. I topped it with chopped tarragon leaves. Tart fruit rewards experiment and play, even if it doesn’t always work perfectly. It can be such a fresh addition to the savory part of the meal.

white currant sauce with garlic and chile; needs more tweaking!

I came across some neglected small carrots early last week. They were soft and unappealing. I washed them, chopped them, and simmered them until soft in a little salted water left over from cooking green beans. I used a small skillet to pop some mustard seed in olive oil along with nigella seed, a pinch of fennel seed, and some minced garlic. I put the carrots with their small amount of water plus the contents of the skillet in the processor and reduced it all to a slightly coarse paste. A squeeze of lemon, a dash of pimenton, a sprinkle of chopped mint, a little splash of more oil, and I had a delicious side-salad/condiment to round out a simple supper. Using up tired vegetables takes a few moments of thought. The rewards are not just flavour, but also the absence of regret!

getting close to done: rendering pork fat last week

A similar satisfaction comes when I remember to render fat that’s been trimmed from, say, pork chops or roast. It’s a simple matter to chop the fat small and add it to a cast-iron skillet over low heat, with a little water. As the pan heats the fat starts releasing; the water prevents the solid pieces from sticking to the pan early on. Eventually they shrink into tasty little morsels that you can crisp up a little, after you’ve poured off the liquid fat into a small jar (label the jar!). Salt the cracklings and then add them to a potato salad at the last minute, or to another vegetable dish, or use them to top flatbreads.

the night after full moon last Thursday…onward

bellflowers in a garden near Wychwood farmer’s market

One day recently a neighbour whom I hadn’t seen in a long while came by unexpectedly, bringing me a huge brown paper bag full of garlic scapes from her country garden. She was not at ease when I came out to greet her. I realised that she was very stressed and that coming by had taken great determination. She had not been in touch when Tashi died last November. Her son had been around, lovely man, but somehow the pressure and the awfulness of our loss had kept her away. I knew she felt terrible about Tashi’s death and I could see that she was burdened by all of it. She handed me the bag of garlic scapes and we chatted for a few minutes in a fragile way. We hugged, and I thanked her, then she turned and walked back home.

Later, as I trimmed and chopped the scapes, then processed them with olive oil and a little salt, I kept thinking about her and the many other people who get stuck worrying about what to say or how to be with other people’s loss. There’s no “right answer” of course. We can’t be sure that expressions of sympathy will land well. But the human connection that happens when we take the chance to embrace someone else’s sorrow is important. It’s life-giving. We need to try to move forward into it, in whatever way we are able. In this case my neighbour’s courage, and the garlic scapes, gave her a path across her intense anxiety into connection.

Speaking of connection, this week I saw a large show of artist David Blackwood’s etchings, full of feeling, history, and stunning Newfoundland scenes and stories. The sense of the past living on in the present is very strong in his work. And it’s beautiful.

a David Blackwood print from 1975

In a very different way, the work of Korean conceptual artist Kimsooja, is intensely moving. Her show at MOCA (on for a few more weeks) is called Dimensions of a Needle. Large cloth bundles (bottari in Korean) are set on the floor next to linen screens woven from hemp she grew, or under hanging lengths of found fabric. The work is about relationship rather than making new. There was a calm rightness to it all.

Kimsooja’s work at MOCA

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS, with talk of improvisation, black currant syrup, black currant jam, garlic scape “pesto” and more

This week I bought some of the first zucchinis of the season, sliced them lengthwise, and brushed on a little fish sauce and olive oil. The slices grilled over charcoal, along with two fresh onions. Chopped up, and combined with about eight to ten anchovies chopped small, and coarsely grated parmigiano Reggiano, as well as a little olive oil, the zucchini and onion made a wonderful dressing for beautiful loops of pappardelle. I love the flexibility and flavour that anchovies give when I’m making vegetable-forward meals.

grilled zucchini & onion; dressed pappardelle with a side of broccolini

You may have advice for me about garlic scapes. I know some people process them with oil and then freeze the mash in small batches. That seems like a good plan for those who are organised and keep track of what’s in their freezer. I am better if I can see the things I have stored, so instead of freezing the processed scapes I jammed the green mass into several glass jars and put those in the fridge. Yes, my fridge tends to be over-full. But usually I do see what’s there, sooner or later, which then reminds me to use what I’ve stored. Also, those jars are so bright green and hopeful looking. They’ll be a pleasure in the dark days of January, if we don’t eat them all in November-December. You can toss spoonfuls of their fresh greenness into soup; use the paste to make a pesto with pine nuts or other nuts; toss it into beans/dal or stews for a hit of fresh garlic life...

This is the season of plenty, with pressure to preserve and put by all the produce that overflows the farmers’ market and our gardens.

Last weekend I found myself with a surfeit of black currants, a nice problem to have. My bush has been picked over, but the season has just started north of Toronto. I learned a week ago that Jens and Ayse of Marvellous Edibles would have black currants at the Brickworks Farmers Market. I wrote to ask if I could order 2 to 3 pounds of them, because a friend had said he could go and pick them up for me. It all worked well, except that Ayse’s guess about quantity ended up being very generous, which is how I found myself with 2500 grams/5 pounds of black currants to process, twice as much as I had expected.

I had planned to make cassis syrup, the base of crème de cassis, the recipe for which is in Jane Grigson’s wonderful Fruit book. With this much fruit, I needed to make a double recipe. I still had fruit left over for a little jam. (Black currants are so full of pectin that even with much less sugar than most recipes call for the jam tends to set well.) The syrup recipe calls for soaking a kilo of fruit in a litre of red wine for a good 48 hours. Then the mixture gets processed to a mash (I did it in batches in my food processor) before being placed in a large bowl lined with “old sheeting” advises Jane Grigson. I used a large tea towel. It’s a strenuous process, wringing the fruit juice out of the fruit. I did it in two batches. By the time I had wrung out all the juice my hands were tired and they looked like a Lady Macbeth-themed bloodbath. (The tea towel I used is permanently dyed a kind of dull purple-grey.)

black currants soaking; detail of pressing the mashed soaked black currants

The next step is to pour the juice into a wide pan, add a measured amount of sugar, and cook gently, at less than a simmer, for a good two to three hours, stirring it occasionally, until it thickens a little. I lost track at one point and let it come to a low boil, a no-no. The result was that I had a frothy scum rise to the surface. I kept skimming it off, hoping I hadn’t wrecked the syrup. The froth became a half-cup of not-quite jam, delicious. And the syrup did eventually thicken and is now in labelled bottles, three one-litre bottles and several smaller jars. Whew.

The result of all this effort will remind me of summer in the winter months, and of the wisdom of our fore-mothers who showed us the way.

As I write this I’m sitting in my small back garden with the trickling sound of the fountain keeping me company. The fountain has had its troubles recently: it sprang a leak, which we were unable to patch successfully. What to do? I needed a waterproof container. A friend suggested that I look for a stock tank, a category of thing I hadn’t heard of: containers used for watering (farm) animals. They come in many sizes. (I’m told that they’ve now become go-to items for many city people. They’re being used as cold water plunge pools or children’s wading pools, for example.)

I had imagined figuring how to use our small pump to make a fountain-ish flow somehow in a new container. Instead, for now our solution is to set the old fountain in the new basin. The arrangement is somewhat inelegant but at least it gives us the sound of running water. The old leaky wall-side fountain is resting atop some pieces of wood placed on the bottom of the tank. Tank and old fountain are both full of water to the same level, so it all works. I’m grateful.

Imperfection is a fact of life that I am happy to accept. Rather than buying new or making perfect, I prefer to make do and improvise. I hate throwing things out. “Is there not some way to make this work?” is kind of an underlying question to me, in many contexts.

improvised grilled eggplant, mashed and dressed with a little pomegranate molasses, plus fresh tarragon; then served with local corn, green beans, and lake trout

Perhaps that’s why I like improvising when I cook. It’s a kind of ongoing creative problem-solving that usually feels interesting, and of course occasionally becomes a bit fraught and exciting.

mother nature is amazing

RESOURCES - FERMENTATION

Last week, Monday to Friday, I attended the Desi Cultures conference, three hours a day on Zoom, all about fermentation, from history to politics, with a focus on the mountain regions of India. It was fascinating and very generous, with the bonus that the recordings of the speakers (two per day) and ensuing discussions are stored online, together with links to related materials. What a treasure trove that Desi cultures library is. And it will only get richer.

I don’t know how people who didn’t register for the conference can get access. Perhaps it will be possible to become a member, or to buy a reader’s ticket to the library. Check with Desi Cultures on Instagram to inquire. Highly recommended altogether, both speakers and discussions. I especially loved hearing presentations by many people whose excellent work I hadn’t known about, including Professor Dolly Kikon, Vasun Ramasamy, Dr Kurush Dalal, and Dr Hissay Lepcha.

liveliness in the garden despite the smoky air

Yet even with these stark reminders we roll on heedlessly. Our government signs deals to build pipelines and refine oil, we participate in making weapons for genocidal foreign powers, and we wring our hands when the air is bad. What could possibly explain this picture except wilful blindness?

My birthday fell midweek, on the first day of yellow light and warnings of toxic pollution. The night before I had a happy collection of friends over for casual supper. We sat outside talking and eating in the soft warm evening air, feeling the ease that comes of long acquaintance and shared memories. I took the occasional photo and realised as I did that (subconsciously?) I was taking shots for Tashi. He wasn’t with us, but somehow taking the photos made possible, even for a moment, the feeling that he could have been.

That sense of Tashi’s presence, or immanence, lasted all week. His brother Dom was visiting from Vancouver, with my fab daughter-in-law and granddaughter, a wonderful treat of full relaxed days. We all had this feeling of Tashi being somehow with us, not in a woo-woo way, but just very present.

At a big party late yesterday evening , a lovely young man whom I haven’t seen for a couple of years spoke to me about Tashi, expressing his sorrow and sympathy. As we hugged he apologised for causing pain by raising the subject of Tashi’s loss. “No, no, I told him, I’m always glad to talk about him, to think about him.”

This is a living fabric that we weave every day as we live on, and part of it is made of the threads of those we’ve lost. They’re still around in conversation and in many other ways. And that is very precious. We love them and we carry them forward with us.

in a friend’s garden a few days ago

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS: with talk of fruit in many guises - summer pudding, and gooseberry fool with a recipe

The morning of my birthday Dawnthebaker created a surprise party for me: she invited a bunch of friends to morning coffee at her place down the street from me. It was the first day of the apocalyptic smoky air, so we stayed indoors. There was cold coffee, hot coffee, an assortment of pastries made that morning by Patti of Robinson Bread, and a magnificent summer pudding Dawn had made. I’ve written about summer pudding before, a brilliant summer dessert that requires no cooking and that celebrates fresh tart fruits: two or three of raspberries, red currants, blueberries, sour cherries, white currants.

the summer pudding; yes I blew out the candle

Dawn had used slices of her whole grain brioche loaf (trimmed of crusts) to line a bowl, then filled it with sour cherries, raspberries, and blueberries and placed a plate on top with a weight, to press it down overnight. She turned it out during the party, stuck a candle in the gorgeous red dome, and voila, a fabulous birthday delight we could all share.

a generous helping!

Still on the season’s fruit and on birthday related treats: I was given a precious load of gooseberries early last week, a birthday present from my friend Jennifer McLagan, who has a gooseberry bush (and currant bushes too). We share a love of tart fruit. She’d picked the gooseberries that morning before walking to meet me for coffee and conversation at Found. Gorgeous treasure.

My grandparents homesteaded for 50 years in northern British Columbia. We’d visit every couple of years, traveling out by train to Jasper, where we changed for the Prince Rupert-bound train. We’d get out in Telkwa, a small village/town about eight miles from my grandparents’ farm. At some point on each visit it would be time for my brother and me to pick gooseberries. We’d each sit on a low stool, a heavy glove on our left hand, and pick into a pot. You need the glove to protect yourself from the long sharp thorns. Perhaps because it protects itself with thorns and intense tartness, the gooseberry has not become a big commercial crop. But it is adored by those who love its green acidity. I think it’s especially people from northern climes, where sweet tender fruits don’t flourish, who have learned to love gooseberries, rhubarb, and other acid-tart fruits.

Each year my grandmother would make gooseberry fool with some of the fruit; the rest went into jam. As I understand it, a classic fool is made from heavy cream and cooked pureed fruit, sweetened to the cook’s taste. My grandmother used cream from her Jersey cow, rich and wonderful.

topped and tailed and ready to be trasnformed

I was sitting on the front step topping and tailing the gooseberries when Dom and family arrived around noon. The fruit went into a wide heavy pot with a small splash of water and about ¼ cup of sugar. Once it came to a boil I left it simmering until the berries were very soft but not yet a mush. I set them aside until the next evening, when I was expecting a crowd for my birthday-eve supper. My only other prep was to send Dom out to buy heavy cream.

birthday eve feast: first corn of the year, a lttle grilled chicken, first local tomatoes, beans

Once people had eaten their fill of grilled spiced chicken thighs, corn cobs cooked in their husks on the charcoal grill, green beans dressed with vinaigrette, and tomato salad, it was time to whip the cream. I added a little sugar to it and whisked it by hand until it had thickened, then poured it into a wide shallow ceramic bowl. I added the cooked gooseberries and swirled them a little, but didn’t blend them in.

Until this week I hadn’t tasted gooseberry fool since my last visit to my grandparents, the summer I turned nineteen. The idea of my grandmother’s gooseberry fool, the memory of it, has haunted me from time to time, so it was a piece of magic to make my version. Mine was cruder and less smooth than my grandmother’s, because the berries weren’t crushed, and made from boughten cream, but it was extra-special because it included berries grown by a dear friend and given as a gift.

gooseberries cooked to softness

Here are the proportions I used. You may want to add extra sugar, and you may want to puree the gooseberries. Another extra: if you have elderflower cordial, add a little to the gooseberries once they’ve cooked. It will give a lovely scent. (Or if you have elderflowers, immerse a couple of umbels in the gooseberries as they cook, to perfume them.)

1 pound/500 grams gooseberries, topped and tailed

A small splash (1 to 2 tablespoons) water

Scant ½ cup sugar, or more to taste

2 cups/ heavy (35 to 45%) cream, chilled

Cook the gooseberries, water, and ¼ cup or more sugar over medium heat until they come to a boil, then lower heat and simmer until they are well softened. Taste and stir in more sugar if you wish. Puree if you wish.

Shortly before you wish to serve, add a little sugar to the cream. Whip the cream until it is very thickened but not stiffened (with a hand whisk it takes about ten minutes; it’s much easier with a machine). Place the cream in a wide shallow bowl. Drizzle on the fruit in a swirl, give just one stir, so fruit and cream aren’t fully blended together, and serve immediately into small bowls.

newly opened phlox blooming white, aromatic in the evening, with Jackmanii clematis behind

Though our evenings are still long and soft, glowing to the northwest well after nine as the sky darkens to deep blue, we can already feel that we’re heading back to the darker side of the year. This yin and yang at an annual scale, and then our daily pattern of light and dark, are fundamental rhythms, as essential and familiar as our heartbeat or the ins and outs of our breath.

Within those reliable alternations we create many patterns over our lifetimes as we learn and grow: We pursue education and strive at work in many forms, we meet new people and engage with old friends, we cook familiar dishes and explore ingredients and possibilities we hadn’t known of until recently, we read books and enlarge and enrich our idea of the world. There’s a resilience in this process of dynamic adaptation. It gives us a few tools for dealing with change and loss, but we’re not really prepared for shocking change and catastrophic loss.

the day lilies are like an honour guard, crowding against anyone walking along the path

I’ve been pre-occupied for a long time by thoughts about grief and the stress of change and loss. We face these things in our personal lives and now we’re looking at them in a world-wide context. We’ve been warned for years about the coming environmental catastrophe. But now it’s staring us in the face. Each year recently we’ve seen catastrophic climate-change evidence: heat waves, floods, huge fires and smoke-laden air, water shortages. Change and loss are knocking at the door. When patterns shift course, we’re forced to adapt, and it’s often painful. Our institutions are not very adaptable, nor is our built environment. The least well-off among us are the most vulnerable.

As the US-dominated old order crashes and burns, we don’t know what will come next. I hope things will improve for many as the global south finds more autonomy. But meantime the senile Caligula (Francesca Albanese’s label), using the US military and US-dominated financial institutions, is capable of wreaking even more havoc.

It’s like being on an airplane in a violent storm. We are shaken, lifted, dropped suddenly. Will we come through it safely? It feels increasingly unlikely. There’s no certainty.

in a crowded streetcar earlier in the week I saw this woman, with her injury boot (maybe a snapped achilles?) and her flashy fashionable boot on the other foot. Nearby there was a nearly 90 year old woman with a cane who needed help, a tall man with a walker who was very shaky on his feet, and a disabled older woman who needed help getting on and off. It was a reminder that injury and disability, the “not-normal” happens to all of us

With no control over the larger picture, I try to take solace and find my footing in the immediate, as I often do here on Substack. That means engaging with the details of daily life, from random encounters on the street to conversations with friends, from the beauties of the garden as it grows, blooms, and dies back, to small details in my kitchen explorations. I’m grateful to have enough curiosity about things large and small that every day feels fresh.

a perfect lunch last week: toasted rye from Dawnthebaker (Evelyn’s Crackers) with butter and sardines, eaten in the shade

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS with talk of currants red and black; potato salad made with stir-fried vegetables; sesame-dressed vegetables

In the last two weeks I’ve picked the red currants from my small bush, in two or three passes. I found myself eating them in hand, like that, gorgeous colour and lively flavour. I tried eating them with an old raw milk cheddar from Quebec – wonderful. So then I tried them with Mountain Oak, an aged gouda from Ontario – also an excellent match.

red currants with Mountain Oak; and the spectacular combo of mango sorbet with red currants

The black currants need even more careful picking than the red ones. The delicately stemmed little clusters have six to eight berries each, of which the first two or three are perfectly ripe, then come two or three reddish halfway ripe ones, then one or two translucent berries, pale ivory with veining that makes them look like miniature gooseberry cousins. It can’t be profitable to pick a bush over three or four times. So how to commercial growers manage? Fresh berries are labour, however you look at it. But what a reward! I will do another pick tomorrow.

black currants up close: leaf, stem cluster in all stages of ripeness; a picked bowlful. If you’re making cucumber pickles, a leaf or two in the jar will keep your cucumbers crunchy

Meantime I combined the first two picks of black currants in a small pot with a splash of water and a little sugar and simmered them until they burst and thickened. Each mouthful is tart and funky and wonderful. I keep the jar in the fridge and take a taste every once in a while, on its own or smeared on a little toast.

The chiles on one plant (I’ve lost the label so I can’t tell you the kind – too small for cayennes) are ready, green and rather small. They have good heat. I’ve been mincing one or two to include in cooked vegetables. The other day I stir-fried snow peas from the farmers market, after pulling off their strings and chopping them crosswise. They went into the wok after I’d softened some sliced onions in hot oil flavoured with mustard seed and fennel. A minced green chile went in too. And then the whole combo got turned out of the wok into a mass of cooked peeled and coarsely chopped new potatoes. I added torn basil leaves and chopped garlic scapes, uncooked, They give a good crunch and a green garlic hit of flavour too. A generous splash of cider vinegar and an extra glug of olive oil, plus an adjustment of salt, and the dish was done. Leftovers were a perfect bed for my fried eggs the next morning.

potato “salad” dressed with stir-fried snow peas etc

eggs over leftover potatoes, with a little leftover lettuce too

Another recent pleasure has been a a sesame-dressed vegetable dish that you can serve like a fresh pickle. My friend Gord, whose cucumber recipe guided the Japanese pickled cucumber recipe in my Miracle of Salt book, brought over one version of it. And later I made another, which I’ve kept in the fridge for a few days, bringing it out as a side-dish/extra flavor with our evening meal. It’s a variant of the sesame seed flavoured dishes called goma-ae in Japan. Proportions are to taste. I used a combination of asparagus and broccolini. Gord had used spinach and asparagus. I’d like to try young carrots next, perhaps paired with broccolini or even with barely blanched radicchio.

sesame-dressed veg (Gord’s version) as a side with egg noodles topped with a sauce of slow-simmered mixed mushrooms

I chopped the broccolini into one-inch lengths, and the asparagus about the same. I brought a small pot of salted water to a boil and dropped in the thicker broccolini stems, and almost a minute later the florets. After another forty five seconds or so I scooped them all out with a spider and set them in a bowl to cool. Most advice is to add ice cubes to cool the veg and stop the cooking. I think that spoils the flavour. I repeated the parboiling with asparagus, starting with the thicker ends and adding the tips a little later. Again about a minute or a little more was all that was needed.

While they cool you can toast sesame seeds (about ¼ cup) in a dry skillet over medium heat until aromatic and turning colour. Keep shaking the pan so they don’t burn. Place them in a suribachi (Japanese mortar) or another mortar and grind them. It doesn’t matter if some of them remain whole, but you want most of them broken. Turn them out into a bowl, add about one tablespoon soy sauce and one teaspoon of sugar. Stir and then taste. You may want a little more soy or sugar. I like to add a generous squeeze of lemon juice or lime juice. You could include a little miso… Pour the sesame dressing over the vegetables and stir well to coat them. Let stand for an hour or more. Refrigerate if the wait will be any longer. Serve at room temperature.

summer in Toronto, with shady places to sit and read or sip a lemonade; this is Sonndr, at the corner of Dundas West and Shaw

Jackmanii clematis climbing and hanging

The return of summer, even this year’s cooler version of early summer, has transported me back to late June last year, with its dread and sorrow, and its oceans of love. These surges of feeling take over, raising my heart rate, and thickening my throat. I try to breathe into them rather than fighting them. That steadying breath feels like the key to moving forward and retrieving equilibrium.

nasturtium colour and leaf detail

I visualise Tashi’s lightness in my mind’s eye and use those imaginings to try to shed the heaviness of my feelings. From an early age he gave thoughtful advice; somehow he continues to help keep me on track.

With the World Cup on screens all over town, the daily cityscape feels a little muted. But in my small garden life goes on vigorously. I’ve trimmed the wisteria back, the first of many efforts to keep it managed, and have also pruned the waving prickly fronds of the wild rose, now that its tender white petalled blossoms have dropped off, leaving their small green hips to fatten up. The honeysuckle is still in full bloom, invasively draping itself over the fence into the neighbours‘ yard.

the garden after rain, seen from the second floor

I harvested some elderflowers this week for making cordial and have just done a first pick of my red currants…You’ll find the instructions for my version of elderflower cordial below, in Kitchen Explorations.

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS with goji leaves, fresh peas, and elderflower cordial

The farmers’ markets here continue to educate me. Last week I bought fresh goji leaves (leaves from the plant that later in the summer produces goji berries, aka wolfberries) from Lily at Trinity Bellwoods market. She told me that her mother uses them in pork soup, and that they should be cooked with plenty of fat and never eaten raw. I haven’t yet used them in pork soup or pork congee, but two days ago I fried them quickly with some spicing (nigella and fennel seeds) and a few cherry tomatoes, then ate them as a base for my morning fried eggs. They were delicious, slightly sweet greens with an edge of bitter.

fried goji leaves, topped with eggs

The word on goji leaves is that they are loaded with minerals including calcium, magnesium, zinc, iron; in Chinese medicine they are cooling to the body and calming to the mind. I’m going to try drying the rest of my goji leaves to use for making goji tea.

I’d bought a small quantity of new peas at the market on Tuesday and that evening asked the young friends I had over for supper if they could shuck them. Yes, they said, but in fact they didn’t know what I meant. They’d never eaten fresh peas. The beauty and fresh flavour of new peas were a revelation. Perhaps worth the work!

I’d made another batch of new potatoes dressed with cooked greens. The peas were a beautiful dribbled onto the spuds.

Last week I wrote about the elderflowers frothing on my small tree. Several friends mentioned elderflower cordial and that gave me the necessary nudge to try making it. I used the recipe I’d asked for from Jeremy Cherfas of “Eat this Podcast” as a guide, and adjusted it a little after reading through various other recipes online; the River Café recipe was particularly helpful.

the elderflower tree from above; close-up of gathered umbrels; debris after 24 soak

ELDERFLOWER CORDIAL

Making elderflower cordial is a 24-hour process that requires very little work. Even the gathering of the elderflowers is a matter of minutes, once you have a tree in flower nearby. Use scissors or secaturs to snip off the umbels, as the wide flat-topped elderflowers are called. Choose fresh-looking flowers that are just coming into bloom and avoid tired ones that are starting to shed. I had a large pot I dropped the flowers into as I cut them.

ingredients:

25 to 30 elderflower umbels

2 (preferably organic unwaxed) lemons

1.5 litres boiling water

About 900 grams raw sugar

(optional) heaping teaspoon citric acid

I trimmed off the stalks close to the flowers, rinsed the flowers quickly in cool water, and placed them in a wide bowl.

instructions:

Use a sharp knife to shave the zest off two well-washed unwaxed lemons and add the zest to the elderflowers. Cut the pith off the lemons and discard it, then slice the lemons, discarding the pits, and add the slices to the bowl. Boil water and add 1.5 litres (6 cups) of boiling water to the bowl of flowers and lemon. Cover with a lid and set aside to steep for about 24 hours.

Strain the liquid through a coarse tea towel of muslin into a pot. Add 850-900 grams/2 pounds of raw sugar and the citric acid if you wish. Stir to dissolve the sugar as you bring the mixture to a gentle boil over medium heat. Simmer for about 5 minutes.

Meantime sterilise 2 or 3 jars and lids. Pour the hot liquid through a funnel into the jars and top with the lids. You should have about 2 litres. Serve over ice, diluted with water, or use in cocktails.

the bunny (or perhaps there are several who all look alike) is still around, very tame and eating well; seen here on the front walk by my bicycle

elderflowers galore

The elderflowers are almost fully out in layers of frothy white on the small tree we planted three years ago. And there’s a cascade of honeysuckle flowers along the side fence of the back garden. They attract the bees and other nectar drinkers, among them, yesterday, a stunning tiger swallowtail butterfly. I sat with on the shady side of the garden and watched the butterfly open its wings wide, in gorgeous display, as it fed on the honeysuckle blossoms.

honeysuckle with butterfly at the upper middle

Meantime the black currants are fattening and their green is starting to darken to black. The same for the red currant bush, with its load of slightly smaller berries. The currants are a reminder that my being here, rather than traveling on my way to the Oxford Food Symposium, has a positive side: I’ll be around next week, when the currants should be fully ripe. It’s a small unexpected compensation for my disappointment.

As you can probably tell, I’m working at finding the positive in my changed landscape, rather than mourning the loss of my trip to the Symposium (and my plan to visit Shetland and Orkney). I’ve been remembering my first time in those far-northern places. It was November 1974. The North Sea oil had not yet started flowing, but work was going on to lay the undersea pipelines to the platforms. I stayed at a bed and breakfast in Lerwick where we were served unbelievably hearty breakfasts of fried bread, bacon, eggs, and perhaps potatoes too, I’m not sure. I just remember how welcome and warming all the bacon-fat was, for outside the air was damp and the wind penetrating. One of the other people staying was the guy in charge of laying that pipeline, so he had stories to tell. The Shetland I saw in those short chilly days (sunset was before 4 pm) was peaceful. Folk talked about how they expected they’d have to lock their doors once the oil started flowing...

And back to the present day in the garden: another small pleasure is the little bunny who has started to visit. He’s cautious but persistent, a persistence that I’m sure is related to the tender leaf lettuce growing near the garlic. He also nibbles other leaves, but I’m not sure exactly which ones.

curving garlic scape, with some mustard leaves on the left

The two short rows of garlic I planted very late last year are now producing scapes, decorative curved green stems that carry tiny garlic seeds in a small pale capsule. They’re a gift to the cook, a harvestable bounty. I love snapping them off, the stem green and strong and firm enough to break crisply. (And you need to break them off so that the plant puts its energy into making a big garlic bulb you can harvest later, rather than into the seeds.) I don’t have a huge number of garlic plants (there’s one scape per plant), so I tend to chop the scapes and include them in stir-fried dishes or curries, for their fresh green garlic flavour and texture. At farmers markets they’re now available by the handful; try using them as a base for pesto.

The cool weather and the generous rain we’ve had recently mean that there’s still asparagus in the markets and everything else (cucumbers, potatoes, tomatoes, etc) is a little late. I’m not complaining. I’m grateful for the high-pressure weather system that is now giving us bright skies and relatively cool temperatures (lows of 16 and highs of 23). It’s invigorating, an invitation to cycle or walk or work in the garden, or to just sit out in the shade with a book listening to the birds.

evening sky at solstice

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS: rescuing new potatoes from over-cooking, exploring agretti, and simple fish cookery

I bought my first new potatoes last week, a delicious very tender-skinned variety called Georgia, from John and Inge at Wychwood Market. They were freshly dug, with the fine clay dirt still on them. I put them in a wide pot and washed them rubbing them together vigorously and rinsing them off in three or four changes of water, until it ran clear. They went onto the heat with a little cold salted water and some fresh mint. Once the water boiled I covered the pot and lowered the heat.

But then I got started working on somethiing else, and of course left the potatoes cooking too long, so they were overly tender. Oops! No chance of firm lovely new spud texture here. And there was another issue: A bite of one small potato taught me that all my scrubbing had failed to clean them fully. The skins were so papery that the fine clay did not wash off completely. I had to strip off all the papery peel.

With the potatoes so soft, a hot cooked dressing seemed like a good idea, so into hot olive oil I tossed mustard seeds and nigella and then some fennel seeds, as well as a chopped green cayenne chile with seeds stripped out. Then in went a sliced red onion, followed, once it had softened, by chopped dandelion and mustard leaves from the garden. I used a little fish sauce as well as salt to season, then pressed the potatoes to crush them lightly. I added the cooked greens, plus a splash of cider vinegar, and tossed them all together. Chopped mint leaves went on at the last minute.

The leftover potatoes were a perfect base for my breakfast of eggs over leftovers the next morning.

One of the less common vegetables in the market these last two weeks is agretti, an Italian green (Soda inermisi) that looks like fine fronds with thin leaves like supple everygreen needles, that can be stripped off the slightly tough stems (and then scatter everywhere). Agretti has a lightly salty mineraly taste. (It was traditionally used in Italy and other places in the Mediterranean to make soda ash, used in glass-making). It’s been a new discovery for me.

You can eat agretti raw but I like it lightly cooked. A few days ago I added it to mushrooms late in the cooking. I’d loosely followed the method I learned from a cook in Azerbaijan to make the mushrooms (you’ll find the recipe in my Taste of Persia book). Start with a little olive oil in a skillet, add the chopped mushrooms and saute them briefly, then add some water and let them simmer. They release flavour into the broth. When there’s still some broth left, as it concentrates down, you add butter to enrich it. You can also include some dry wine and perhaps a splash of soy sauce for part of your seasoning. About a minute before I took the mushrooms off the heat I added a handful of agretti stripped from its stems. I loved the fine green needles in the dark mushrooms.

mushrooms cooked with agretti

I’ve also included agretti along with chopped garlic scape and some asparagus in a simple fried rice, made with leftover brown jasmine. It adds a little sparkle.

And finally, more on cooking fish. I cooked a lake trout fillet with a lot of sliced red onion, frying the onion gently until very soft, before adding the trout, which I’d smeared with a little shio koji. I do it skin side down for about 2 minutes on medum-high with the lid on so it steam-cooks a little, then turn it over for about a minute, and it’s done.

trout fillet with onions

The previous night I’d had some fresh halibut, a big treat. I stirred some home-made red miso into warm water, and started by adding sliced ginger to the pan in a little oil. The halibut went in skin side down. I poured the miso broth over and covered the pan to et it cook for about three minutes or so. Then I flipped it over for another short two minutes, before turning it out. The ginger-inflected miso was a wonderful complement to the fish, and didn’t overpower it.

halibut coated in the miso sauce with pieces of ginger; and gorgeous new local cucumbers

There’s loveliness everywhere, if we have eyes to look.

a shot of an asphalt truck in the neighbourhood, with a glimpse of the Cecil Street synagogue (now a community centre) behind, taken yesterday

and here’s the moon, halfway to full, a couple of nights ago, peeking through the huge maple tree that frames my view to the west

the rose in delicate blossom; the back wall of green ivy with clematis in vivid bloom

Toronto is filled with FIFA visitors, with streets closed, downtown sidewalks crowded, and café and bar patios packed. The games showing live on all the screens around town are a chance for everyone to forget the horrors of world news and their personal precarities, if only for a brief ninety minutes plus stoppage time.

At the pop-up flower market today at a park downtown there were brilliant colours everywhere, and a feeling of light joy as the crowd circulated, many of people already clutching two or three brown-paper wrapped bouquets.

Some complications here mean that I can’t go to the Oxford Food Symposium next month. It’s a hard truth that has weighed me down all week. It felt strange at first to feel more actively burdened by that setback than by my grief about Tashi’s death. But I’ve realised that the first sense of loss (when an expectation is confounded or a plan cancelled) can be very painful until the reality is integrated into an updated sense of the future. The disconnect between expectation and reality is an intense hurt that recedes once the mental landscape is rewired and adjusted.

Today things have shifted. Everything feels easier and less heavy as I start to picture different scenarios for the summer and fall.

shifting views in the the garden

I’m led, perhaps inevitably, to the truth of the Buddha’s insight that pain is caused by attachment (because attachment almost inevitably leads to loss or to disappointed expectation). The advice is to cultivate detachment, a calm frame of mind, unexcited by attachment and passion.

But surely it’s possible to love and be attached, whether to living beings or the status quo or future plans, and then to learn how to navigate the inevitable losses and disappointments that follow. Surely it’s possible, with luck and effort, to learn to ride the waves of life (not that I’ve ever surfed, but it’s a helpful metaphor here I think), with their unexpected thrills and highs and their sometimes crashing-down depths. Most people keep paddling in tough life situations and try to ride things out. Sometimes that feels impossible, for sure. But we seem to be hard-wired to try.

I was reminded yesterday evening of how much trauma and suffering many people undergo, and how much tenacity they need to survive. I was at a gathering to celebrate our friend Robina Aryubwal, who has now earned a Masters Degree from York University, after living for eight years as a refugee in Pakistan, and then finally arriving in Canada ten years ago with her parents and younger siblings. She talked about her childhood dream of getting an education, and how that was interrupted and frustrated by the Taliban and her family’s subsequent flight from Afghanistan into Pakistan. She never gave up. And nor did her family.

It’s been illuminating this week to think of short-term disappointments and setbacks as grief-inducing losses, losses that generate feelings that are echoes - call them younger cousins - of the enormous grief we feel at the death of someone we love. That deep grief surfaces unpredictably, a reminder of love. It did the other day when I was given a card listing the names of all the people who had donated to the CJC (the Community Justice Collective in Toronto) in honour of Tashi, as we’d suggested in his obituary. The names brought tears and a surge of grief and gratitude.

grief and gratitude: poppies in Toronto this week

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS – with talk of Thai salads and cheese rehab as strategies for leftovers

Last Wednesday I was expecting three or four extras for supper. We had some beautiful lamb chops in the freezer that I moved into the fridge in the morning to defrost. And I put a batch of sticky rice to soak, a mix of white and black rices that then turns a gorgeous purple after soaking and steaming.

steamed sticky rice waiting to be grabbed by hand

I also had leftover grilled pork sausage from the night before that could be transformed into a Thai salad. The strategy is a simple and useful one whenever you have leftover meat or fish. You need shallots, fish sauce, a few Thai chiles or substitute heat sources, the juice of 1 or 2 limes (or substitute lemons), and a splash of rice vinegar. I like to slice the shallots thinly, mince the chile(s) and then put them in a small bowl with the sauce: roughly equal amounts of fish sauce and acid (the citrus plus vinegar). After 20 minutes or more the shallots have taken up the sauce so that when you add them to your sliced sausage or other meat (you could also use age-tofu), they flavour everything beautifully. Top with chopped coriander leaves (cilantro) or mint leaves or rau ram, or a mix. (The other evening I had fresh coriander leaves from Footsteps Farm.)

Because the sausage salad needed some balancing crunch, I made a second small tasty salad-ish dish of chopped cucumber dressed with sesame oil,, a splash of soy sauce, and a splash of rice vinegar, all topped with chopped mint from the garden. The salads were great scooped up with small handfuls of sticky rice.

The lamb chops were marinated in pomegranate molasses, plus a little fish sauce and salt, and then charcoal grilled. And of course we had a huge pile of asparagus, simply dressed with olive oil and fresh lemon. We ended up eating the asparagus and the small lamb chops in hand too. Summer evenings with friends don’t get any better than that.

The day before I had found myself with a neglected bunch of asparagus, not in good enough shape to be eaten straight. How to use it best?

I trimmed off the tired stems, leaving shorter pieces, which I cut into roughly 1-inch lengths. In the end I resorted to an easy stand-by: Italian egg noodles. I began by cooking chopped red onion in a skillet with olive oil scented with a little fennel seed. Once it had softened I added the asparagus. After a brief sautee I added a little water, raised the heat, and covered the skillet. A few minutes later the asparagus was done. It went onto the just-cooked pasta and I tossed them together, along an extra drizzle of olive oil. Then I added some grated and finely chopped parmesan.

Like the asparagus, the cheese was a salvage/rescue operation. I had an end of parmesan in the fridge that should have been used earlier. It was too hard to grate comfortably, but it yielded to a cleaver. I sliced it and then chopped into ever-smaller pieces with the cleaver, so that they were fine enough to melt when tossed onto the asparagus pasta. It was a win all round.

I’m always thrilled when these clematis unfurl

Today the first peonies arrived. The ants have been climbing over the buds for a week and now their work is done.

peonies of subtle white tinged with pink, on a bush that was in the bedraggled garden when I first bought the house in 1984… I moved the bush from one side of the garden to the other in 1988, but otherwise have done nothing with it except speak encouragingly to it from time to time

I saw the moon late Saturday night as I went to bed, a white orb impaled on the spike of the CN tower. It had a pearly white luminescence, perhaps because the air was super-clear, swept clean by cooling north winds.

my sheets dried quickly in the fresh dryness brought in by the north wind

In the bright sharp daylight, which has continued this week, the tall trees’ intense new green feels clearly etched, heightened, against brilliant blue skies.

That sense of extra definition, extra clarity, reminds me of the first time I got eyeglasses for my short-sightedness. I was ten years old and in grade six. I’d sometimes have to walk up toward the blackboard to read it more easily. It was a normal thing to me. I had no idea of how the world looked to other people. It was only when I was wearing my new glasses, as we were driving home from the opticians, that I saw with the extra clarity that 20-20 vision gives: the veining on the leaves in the trees amazed me.

The habit of not seeing well stayed with me somehow, despite my glasses. If I looked attentively at something I could see it clearly. But perhaps living with my mild short-sightedness for several years had dulled my visual expectations. I never developed an attentiveness to fine details. I tend to notice people’s feelings or their style or energy, rather than the specifics of their appearance. I still find it easier to recognise someone I see on the street by the way they walk or the way they carry themselves than by their facial features.

It makes me wonder about the many ways in which we tune in to other people, or fail to tune in.

seeing the larger scene in Grange Park; noticing the details of the fluffed out blossoms on the chestnut trees

I meant to post here at the full moon, but now it’s already Friday. My excuse for this delay is that I had wonderful distracting visitors for nearly a week, all people I love dearly. Tashi’s older brother Dom was here from Vancouver with his spouse F and their child, my four- year-old grand-daughter A. She’s terrific. I loved being out in the garden with her, finding flowers for her to pick and weeds to pull, and I loved watching her play on her own with blocks or small toys, keeping herself company. Sometimes she’d boss people around as she organised us into games whose rules only she had a grasp of…

The arrival in the house of this unselfconscious source of energy, confidence, and imagination was a full-moon tonic for everyone. There was laughter, and there were meltdowns, there was a whirlwind game of hide and seek, there were excursions to the playground in Grange Park…

Tashi with Amira in late 2022

And we felt ripples and waves of sorrow at Tashi’s absence, pain and deep regret that he was not with us to rejoice at A’s growing capacity for engaging with the world.

pale columbines, self-seeded, in the back garden this week

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS - more on eggs with salad greens

I wrote briefly last week about the pleasure of a breakfast of fried eggs on leftover salad.

eggs over leftover salad

That combo gave me a taste for leafiness; now I want it every morning. Today, with no leftover salad to work with, I picked tender leaves from the small lettuce plants in the back garden, rinsed them well, shook out the water, then dropped them into a bowl. While my eggs fried gently in a cast-iron skillet, I added lightly buttered toast (from Dawnthebaker’s bread) torn into pieces to the lettuce, along with a sprinkle of salt, a drizzle of EVOO, and short splash of cider vinegar. As I tossed them all together I realised I’d just made a simple variant of bread salad. There is nothing new under the sun, truly.

here it is, the bread salad hidden by the eggs

I slid the fried eggs onto the salad and propped another piece of toast and a stick of Comte against the side of the bowl. The salad was barely dressed. The pieces of toast were there to absorb its juices and any yolk that ran once I’d broken into the eggs. Each bite gave me sweet egg, and the light tart edge of vinaigrette to balance it, all buffered by the toast. Perfection.

Notice that I’m back talking about tart-acid as an essential element.

I used half of the second piece of toast to wipe the bowl thoroughly and topped the other half with the slice of Comte. Those bites of tart intense salty cheese on toast were the perfect finish.

Welcome to my late-spring version of an ideal breakfast (“late-spring” because once it gets hot the lettuce leaves won’t be as tender and perfect; I’m imagining summer tomatoes in their place).

If you like a hit of sweet at breakfast you could skip the cheese and perhaps instead have a lick of jam on the last piece of toast.

two aspects of late spring in Toronto: a gorgeous spirea bush in bloom near the University of Toronto; a cyclist in Kensington Market taking a break by the painted wall of a building owned by the admirable Kensington Land Trust

gleaming green leaves after Saturday’s rain, and flowers finally out, three weeks late

But the irises in the back, usually very prolific, are astonishingly bare. The leaves look healthy but we’ll have very few tall bloom-laden stems this year. That’s probably because I failed to thin them last fall, though I’d intended to because they were jammed tight and needed lifting. The autumn was all about Tashi and inside necessities, not about gardening. I managed to get the garlic planted extremely late, and to spread some manure onto the vegetable patch, but little else.

This spring I’ve already planted another rhubarb (I love it), some lettuce starts and nasturtiums, several tarragon plants, plus chervil seeds. I pulled loads of weeds on Sunday, the ground soft and the job easier after our rainy Saturday. Things are starting to look a little more organised. But I still have a few cherry tomato plants, assorted chile plants, some basil, and other odds and ends to put in. The (self-seeded) columbines are in flower all over the place; I need to find the space to insert my new starts between all the existing life.

columbine coming into bloom by the black currant bush; Star of Bethlehem near the day lilies

I have trouble finding the ruthlessness necessary to take hold of messy areas in the garden. The result is a crowded lively green space, with untidy edges, that gets increasingly overgrown as summer progresses. (My grandmother, a wonderful gardener, who made her garden in far northern British Columbia a colourful inviting paradise, would find my reluctance to move plants around incomprehensible. If she walked into my back garden today she’d think the whole thing needed to be taken in hand and she’d immediately start to “clean it up”.)

The garden is a continuing lesson in uncertainty. The level of unpredictability each year is pretty high. It would be so even if I were a methodical or orderly gardener. But I’m not: I make the occasional note to myself about plans, or where I planted something, but then forget the notebook exists or cannot find it.

how does one wisteria vine produce two different colours of flower?

This week both white and purple wisteria blooms hang decoratively from the vine on the fence. The currant bushes look like they’ll plenty of fruit this summer, but the small elderflower tree, now in its third year, is looking less than vigorous. I had hoped to have plenty of blossom that I could pick to make elderflower cordial (see the wonderful instructions in Elisabeth Luard’s substack here), but that’s looking unlikely.

Fragility and uncertainty are everywhere. There’s an awareness out in the wider world that we can’t take anything for granted or assume continuity. The garden delivers similar messages: the fragile elderflower bush, the irises not producing their usual forest of blooms, a clematis that’s struggling where once it thrived. Some of this reflects the neglect and distraction of last year. Some is the variability of nature: a heavy-snow long winter and a cold spring.

I can’t disentangle the causes, so I just need to accept and adapt. Those are words that also help me chart my course with the weight of this grief. I’m convinced that I mustn’t fight it. I need instead to find ways of living with it, breathing it in.

I don’t want to lose my grief. It’s very precious, shaped by my love for Tashi. I hope I’ll eventually be able to integrate it completely, so it becomes part of me, a weight that I carry with confident muscle. That possibility feels remote right now, with grief still a powerful wave that can tear me open or flatten me with dread.

a fading tulip streetside on my walk with friends this week

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS: mango & smoked trout, grilled asparagus, fried eggs over green salad

As you know I’m especially interested in tart-acid-sour, that spectrum of flavours that give life and sparkle, and often depth too, to our food. With a beautiful version of smoked trout available at Wychwood Market, and good mangoes available, I’ve been combining the two. (It’s a mild echo of a Cambodian dish of green mango with smoked trout; there’s a recipe for it in Hot Sour Salty Sweet:.)

I break up the trout into small bite-sized pieces, peel and chop one or two mangoes (ripe but still with some acidity), and finely slice a shallot or two. I like to immerse the shallot pieces in fresh lemon or lime juice with a splash of fish sauce before I assemble the dish; that way they bring extra acidity and seasoning to every mouthful. I toss it all together, salt it lightly, then grate on black pepper and top it with finely chopped sorrel and mint. (They’re both in my garden; you could use different herbs of course.) Put it out as an appetizer, or as one of many dishes in a meal of intense flavours. It’s an excellent dish for a potluck.

We’re still in full asparagus season here; we eat it every day, greedily. Although I usually do the simple thing of laying it in a skillet of boiling salted water and cooking it until barely done (then dressing it in a simple combo of lemon juice and olive oil), the grill is another great option, if you’ve already grilling another element of the meal. As I do with many other fresh vegetables, I toss the asparagus in a light mixture of olive oil and fish sauce before it goes onto the grill. Highly recommended.

frying eggs (one pullet, one full-sized); eggs over salad, with my favourite chopsticks, bought in Lhasa forty years ago

And finally, another thread in my ongoing thoughts about eggs. With piles of tender greens available in this long cool spring we’ve been having, green salads are another daily treat in my house. We sometimes have leftovers of dressed salad, or washed, dried, but unused greens. Both are great candidates for my breakfast of fried eggs on leftovers. The only question is what utensil to use for eating the combination. I prefer to eat salad with chopsticks. Usually I eat my eggs over rice, or over other leftovers, with a spoon or spoon and fork, Thai-style. I’ve tried both options with the egg and salad meal... neither is ideal, but in the end I prefer the chopsticks (by a narrow margin). Let me know if you try it. And if you have a clear utensils preference, which option you find best.

Graffiti Alley off Queen Street has many vignettes. I was there the other day after an easy supper with a dear friend at the Jamaican restaurant on Portland called Chubby’s

These two sides of our lived experience coexist: the death of those we mourn and the expectation of new life and growth. How do we manage to hold conflicting thoughts at the same time? How do we live in incompatible realities simultaneously? It’s contradictory and extraordinary. And sometimes it takes a huge effort of will.

At one moment I can feel a familiar spring thrill as I pick my first rhubarb of the year from the small clump in my back garden, and then in the next minute suddenly feel walloped and aching as I flash on images of Tashi as a child in the same garden.

the greening back garden, two days ago

Life cycles, moon cycles, seasonal changes in the garden: all these help me remember that new growth keeps coming even as petals fall from the apple tree and the compost pile rots. I can regret the fading tulips and apple blossom as I rejoice at the buds on the columbine. I’m impatient for the lilies of the valley to bloom and scent the air, (they’re now two weeks late) and for my wisteria to be draped in trailing blooms.

view north toward the city, from partway along the spit

A bike ride yesterday, on the sunny warm holiday Monday (Victoria Day in Canada), was a reviving tonic. We pedalled down to the lake and out the long spit of Tommy Thompson Park, with its lively assorted bird life and views of the city back across the water. We stood at the point looking out at the lake and noticed small brown-headed black birds poked around in the grass and dirt; we learned later they were cowbirds. As we cycled back, a cormorant, black and prehistoric-looking, flew over us with a long piece of grass straw trailing from its beak. Red-wing blackbirds perched decoratively on tall rushes. There was movement everywhere, and bird voices, screeching, trilling, honking. On the grass slope beside a large pond alive with the chant of spring frogs were sleeping swans, their rounded glowing-white shapes like alabaster sheep.

crabapple tree still blooming; its petals by the lilies of the valley (not yet in bloom!)

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS: with talk of haddock, halibut, dandelions, onions…

I’ve been cooking fish more frequently these days, once or twice a week, and loving it. My only rule is to make sure it’s not over-cooked (err on the side of under-done is how I think of it). I have two fish stories to tell you. Both of them also involve dandelions, for ‘tis the season!

Last week I took two haddock fillets out of the freezer. What to do with them? I’d bought several new onions, round and white and crisp, at the farmer’s market, as well as a sheaf of cultivated dandelion leaves. Once the haddock was fully thawed, I sliced an onion, chopped some ginger, and washed and chopped the dandelion.

sliced fresh onion, with ginger

I started olive oil in the cast-iron skillet, and when it was hot, tossed in mustard seed. Once it started popping I lowered the heat and added nigella seed and the minced ginger. I lowered the heat a little more and added the onion. I stirred it as it softened quickly. In went the chopped dandelion, with a splash of fish sauce and a sprinkle of salt. Once the greens had wilted, I pushed them aside a little and laid the haddock fillets onto the pan. They cooked for about a minute on each side, with the lid on, and they were done. I served them in a bit of a jumble with the dandelion and onion, with a wedge of lemon alongside. The onion’s sweetness worked beautifully with the dandelion, a combination to remember.

haddock cooked with dandelion and fresh onion

The other fish story, from yesterday evening, is about cooking halibut, such a wonderful fish. I’ve cooked halibut in a cast-iron skillet in a couple of different ways, including simmering it in a light diluted-miso liquid. This week, inspired by Nancy Jenkins recent Substack post about Raie au beurre noir (Skate in Brown butter), I finished the halibut in a quick brown butter sauce.

I’d started by spreading some shio koji on top of each of the two pieces. Half an hour later I heated a drizzle of olive oil in a cast-iron skillet over medium heat and added a pinch each of mustard seeds, nigella, cumin, and turmeric powder. Once the mustard seed had popped I lowered the heat a little and tossed in a handful of chopped garlic chives from the garden. They wilted quickly, helped by a small splash of fish sauce and a sprinkle of salt. Then onto them went my two halibut fillets. I put on the lid and let them cook skin side down for a couple of minutes, then flipped them over, put the lid back on, and let them cook another two minutes. Flipped back, they had a final minute or so of cooking with the lid on. I lifted them out onto a wide plate, then added about 3 tablespoons of butter to the pan. As it melted slowly I stirred in a generous splash of apple cider vinegar. Following Nancy’s suggestion in her recipe, I scraped the bottom to make sure the sauce had picked up any bits left by the halibut. The sauce thickened and started to darken a little in colour as I stirred it occasionally, for about two minutes (Nancy warns against letting it get too dark). Then I poured it over the fillets.

the halibut, sauced and ready to serve

I love the finish and the flavour this simple sauce gave the fish. Alongside it we had freshly cooked local asparagus along with small potatoes boiled in salted water, then peeled and lightly crushed/flattened. A neighbour had given me some dandelions pulled from his place in the country. After I’d chopped chopped off the earth-caked roots and given the leaves a thorough washing in at least four changes of water, (the dirt clings unless you swish them around vigorously in a basin of water), they were ready to be chopped and then cooked in olive oil with a little garlic and cumin, plus salt and fish sauce. Once they’d wilted I added them to the potatoes. I topped them with chopped sorrel and mint from the garden plus a sprinkling of salt and a drizzle of olive oil.

halibut, dandelion-dressed potatoes, asparagus, eaten out in the garden in soft warm air; spring rejoicing

I should add that for the most wonderful fish explorations by others, if you have an opportunity, head to Mhel, a restaurant on Havelock near Bloor.

and on the subject of rhubarb, here’s my first handful of rhubarb from the garden, chopped, and then cooked, sweetened with a little maple syrup, and ready to be eaten (I ate it all).

cherry blossom close-up; more jazzy than the delicate crabapple blossoms

I’ve written here recently about feeling flattened and at a low ebb. The shift in my universe with the loss of Tashi has made the whole world feel unreliable. I’ve been sticking fairly close to home, not traveling far afield physically or emotionally, not feeling confident.

The unthinking trust in ourselves that many of us learn as children, if we’re lucky, can vanish when we’re shocked by trauma or overtaken by grief. There’s a kind of shutting-down of reflexes, a narrowing of the horizon, a weighty focus inward rather than outward. You may have experienced versions of this state.

I’m still learning about all this. And now I’m seeing it partly in retrospect, for things are starting to shift.

cherry petal “snow” beneath the trees; a glimpse of other visitors

Early last week, I went on a walk with friends in High Park to see the cherry blossoms on a very grey and overcast day. In the flat light the trees radiated a glowing energy, a kind of steady brilliance. They looked more startling and beautiful than I’d ever seen them. There was an unreality to their loveliness, their shining glowing whiteness, that stopped me in my tracks. It felt other-worldly, a touch of grace. Perhaps that respite on Tuesday is what gave me the confidence and energy to drive myself out of town on Friday.

on our way to the cherry trees we walked past the pond, with its ducks and merganzers, its bulrushes and beautiful light

On Saturday there was an all-day Sacred Harp singing event scheduled at the Dettweiler Meeting House, more than an hour’s drive west of Toronto. I had thought I’d get a ride out that morning in someone else’s car. And then a more muscled ambitious me started to imagine a different option. What if I drove myself out of town the day before to stay with my friends Karen and Nick? It would give me a chance to see them and to have an easy drive to the Saturday singing on small roads.

This stirring of fresh confidence was exciting. And so was my excursion. It was like a reawakening. My friends have a complex of bird feeders behind their house and have become avid bird-watchers. In the early morning I sat on their back step for well over an hour watching the birds and listening to them: effortless liquidy sounds, throat-clearing squawks, breathy whistles… and lots more. It was entrancing. I could see the silhouettes of the birds as they moved around farther away, flitting, darting up tree trunks, looping through the air. Those that came to the bird feeders were easy to admire in detail, the woodpeckers, showy cardinals, elegant red-breasted grosbeak, big-bodied blue jays, and more….

My drive to Dettweiler through farmland and small towns went smoothly. And the singing was, as always, a deep pleasure. Occasionally I found myself in tears, stirred the emotion of singing with others. I returned home invigorated, joyful, and full of energy.

What had made my little excursion special? First there was the arrival of enough imagination and confidence, so that I could picture myself doing the trip. But after that? I think it was watching the birds attentively, with no thought other than noticing and appreciating each moment.

delicate willow blossoms

Is this like tree-washing? Was it Mother Nature refreshing my eyes and spirits? I don’t think it was exactly that. It was instead an experience that actively pulled me into the life in front of me, in all its beautiful movement and sound. This kind of transport can happen with art or music, or with animals or children, or with plants in a garden.

ferns unfurling beside High Park

The important elements, I think, the necessary conditions, include an unrushed length of time and an open or receptive mind that is thirsting to be transported. In my dulled state I’d been unaware of my thirst, so this re-awakening is a wonderful surprise.

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS – rhubarb tkhemali sauce; endive-mushroom lusciousness; asparagus!

Rhubarb is now in season. My small clump out back is nearly ready for a first pick, and there’s lots available at the farmers markets in Toronto. Rhubarb is an excellent substitute for other tart fruits, for example in the dazzling Georgian savory sauce called tkhemali, which is usually made with tart plums. (There’s a tkhemali recipe in my Taste of Persia cookbook.)

Last week we had a couple of guests for supper. I’d chopped up some rhubarb and simmered it with a little water until it was tender. I’d added only a little sugar to take the extreme edge off its sourness. We had lamb chops to grill, a green salad, and rice. I added minced garlic to the cooked rhubarb, along with a little salt, some blue fenugreek powder (now available at Kalustyan’s in NYC and by mail order), ground coriander seed, and some powdered dried red chile. The combination of spices and herbs instantly transformed the rhubarb into tkhemali, like magic. It was perfect with the lamb.

the radishes at the markets are dazzling at this time of year; Sosnicki’s stand at Wychwood Market

On Sunday a bunch of us gathered around a table for food and wine and conversation. Among the dishes (contributed by various people, and made with locally grown meat and produce) were a muhammara made with hazelnuts instead of walnuts (see Sami Tamimi’s recipe here on Substack); charcoal-grilled marinated lamb chops, sliced; seared duck breasts, sliced; a huge green salad; a pile of asparagus spears, both white and green, with a gribiche sauce alongside; and a beige-looking dish of endives, mushrooms, and rice. It was all delicious and fun.

Perhaps surprisingly, several people told me that they’d loved the plain-jane-looking casserole most of all. What’s it called? someone asked. “Monique’s casserole” was all I could tell them. Maybe you’ve run into a version of it somewhere? Please let me know.

It’s a simple enough dish to make, with casual proportions. A Swiss friend named Monique showed it to me long ago. You need plenty of Belgian endives, separated into whole leaves; coarsely chopped mushrooms; and some raw rice; as well as butter, salt, pepper, and some good cream. The idea is to use a heavy pot and fill it with layers of the ingredients until it’s packed full. Then the lid goes on tightly and it bakes in a 300F to 350 F oven for about an hour, or until the rice is cooked through and the endives are collapsed and soft. At that point you stir in a generous amount of cream before serving it hot.

More specifically, once you have laid down a first layer of endive leaves and sprinkled on a handful of chopped mushrooms and a generous sprinkling of rice, you add dots of butter and a little pepper and salt. Then you repeat the layers, as many as you have room for, ending with a top layer of endive. I tend to sprinkle on a little water for luck, but usually the rice cooks simply in the water given up by the endive leaves. (If you want to use brown rice as we did last night, then you need to soak it for a couple of hours ahead and also add a generous half cup or so of water to the pot.)

grilled asparagus; and simply blanched asparagus, with lake trout, leeks, and smashed spuds

Speaking of simple, is there anything better than fresh local asparagus? I add it to a skillet of boiling salted water and lift it out when barely tender. It continues to cook for a few minutes after, as I dress it with good olive oil and generous squeezes of lemon, plus a sprinkle of salt. Perfection. Another option is to oil it lightly, sprinkle on a little fish sauce or salt, and then grill it over medium heat. You’ll need tongs. During this asparagus season I expect I’ll be eating it almost every day. With gusto!

And a note: I’m fed up with the whole idea of Mothers Day. Let’s abolish it. Every day is mother’s day, really. The sentimentality and tokenism (plus the commercial cashing-in) that hang around the day are aggravating. Plus the words “Mothers Day” are a painful reminder for anyone who has lost a mother, or for any mother who has lost a child. I’m for full abolition.

the lovely bare bones of early spring landscapes soon vanish under new growth; this is beside High Park

front garden down the street

This week brought us a brilliant full moon on May 1, a day to remember the labour movement and the work of humans of all ages all around the world.

after the farmer’s work comes the miller’s and the baker’s; mill and baking tools at Evelyn’s Crackers, Dawnthebaker’s bakery

Saturday I was awake early, in time to see the just-past-full moon, tinged with gold-pink, sliding down the western horizon. Heart-stopping.

The week before last I was home almost every day because Tashi’s older brother Dom was here and friends were coming by to visit. It was a treat to have a flow of people and conversation, embraces, talk of Tashi, and tears too.

I’ve realised in the days since Dom left that I’ve slipped back into the patterns I had last summer and fall, when Tashi’s friends, all our friends, were frequently here to see him. There’d be one or two or three or more extras for supper, or stopping by in the afternoon. I was always home. It was the place to be, where time with Tashi and others was precious, imperative. In those weeks it was hard to leave the house, except for necessities. And even then…

they look to me like they’re calling for help

The week of Dom’s visit somehow put me back into that pattern and that mindset. I felt an urgency about being here and present. Once Dom left, the feeling stayed. It was difficult to get myself out, except for pre-booked things (such as a wonderful pair of films at the Hot-Docs festival on Monday evening and another on Thursday evening). Dawnthebaker helped me break my cooking-supper mode by suggesting we go out on Tuesday night to a family-run Vietnamese restaurant on St Clair West called Tan Dinh Quan. And the next day we drove out of town to eat a leisurely late lunch at Fat Rabbit, a terrific restaurant in St Catherines.

at Fat Rabbit: lamb ribs, and on the right a brilliant version of beef tartar

All of which is to say that I’ve not been house-bound, in fact. But I am still mentally tied to home. It’s fascinating and a little worrying to see how easily I’ve fallen back into feeling I need to stay home.

In other eras I’ve been very prepared to walk out the door at any time of day. Now I’ve lost that unthinking lightness. I want to retrieve it. And I’m grateful to all my friends, who encourage me to come out and play, to break pattern, to loosen my tightened sinews.

The tightenedness is a ghostly holdover from last summer and fall, as Tashi was failing. I can still go out easily if I’m needed somewhere: an appointment to keep, a commitment to a friend. In other words, obligation will pull me out. But otherwise an unthinking sense of obligation tethers me here.

moon shadows on my balcony Friday night

I would like to feel less encumbered by dread. I can call it a holdover from the intense times of last year, but it feels active and powerful, not a mere echo. This is grief, grief that is very tangible and that has undeniable physical consequences.

As I try to find the words to describe all this, I am forced to look the situation in the eye. I have to admit that perhaps part of me fears unconsciously that if I let go of the sense of urgency I will lose touch with Tashi. I know perfectly well that he’s dead and gone. But his echo is everywhere. I think it’s difficult for me to leave the house lightly because I am physically still so tuned to listening for him.

I don’t want to try to shove these feelings in a cupboard. I want to live with them, acknowledge them, breathe with them. Surely they’ll eventually give me energy to move forward into new possibilities…

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS with rice disgrace and black bean sauce stir-fry

I had another kitchen first this week, not a good one. I burned a pot of rice, an insult to rice farmers and to the kitchen gods.

It happened from inattention. In the middle of the afternoon last Thursday I thought I’d get a pot of rice made. For some days there’d been no rice leftovers in the fridge for me to top with fried eggs in the morning. I was going out for supper, but I planned to put the cooked rice in the fridge, ready for the next day.

full-moon bonus, a double-yolk egg, still cooking, with some spinach, for my morning meal

It’s foolish to start cooking rice and then leave the kitchen and get immersed in a book. I forgot all about the rice until I smelled toasted grain. Yikes! The small pot of brown basmati was burned underneath and dried out. I rescued the rice in the centre but had to throw out the scorched grains that were stuck onto the bottom of the pot and up the sides (wishing I had a pig or chickens to give them to). I put the salvaged rice in a glass container in the fridge (and left the pot to soak overnight).

The rice was going to need massaging in some way to be edible. What to do?

The next evening, with a large duck breast in the fridge, I made a quick stir-fry of sliced duck and chopped dandelion, with minced garlic and home-made black bean sauce. (I keep a big jar of it in the fridge, made from the recipe in The Miracle of Salt.) I added a little water to lengthen the sauce, so there’d be plenty of liquid for the rescued rice to soak up. But I thought the rice needed more help than that to be edible, so I threw some chopped small greenhouse cucumbers into a hot wok, then lowered the heat and added the rice and a generous splash of water. I hoped that the fresh crunch of the barely cooked cucumber would enliven the rice, and that the added water would soften it enough…

one of the quickest easiest dishes to make: stir-fried duck and chopped dandelion greens with black bean sauce; and the rescued rice looking a bit sad

The duck was delicious; the rice was passable. And the eternal truth is that you must never leave the kitchen for more than a minute or two when there’s a pot of rice finding its way to done.

forced rhubarb, glowing pink, in the raw, and gently cooked for an early taste of spring