LEARNING TO STAY PRESENT

WITH MISO-BROTH FISH, FRESH CHUTNEY, AND A FRIED EGG QUESTION

I’ve begun (belatedly) doing my taxes. The first step is to go through my credit card statements, bills, and receipts for 2025.

these lovely signs of life to keep us sane in tax prep time

And that means I’ve been reminded of the shape of last year, the times I was able to walk down to Baldwin Street with Tashi for lunch or, one time, for a rare and remarkable dinner at our terrific north Thai restaurant Larb Muang. There’s the payment from the day that we went to have a pedicure, taking an Uber west along College Street to get there, getting our neglected feet tended to as we chatted, and walking part of the way home, until he ran out of energy.

While we were living each of those days, I was living in the present, and so was he. It’s only with this forced retrospective look across the weeks and months of 2025 that I am consciously remembering the sequence of events that we and he lived through. I don’t want to linger on them. They were painful.

But thinking back to the moments of pain and difficulty obscures the way in which we stayed remarkably present and in the present. Somehow I managed not to think forward to the next downhill step with dread, or back to an earlier time with yearning. Either of those paths would have taken away from the lived immediacy of each precious day, the reality of the now.

When I think back on it, there was a huge privilege in being able to live that way, not anxious about, say, medical expenses, or about anything else, because the rest of the world paled in comparison with the warmth and focus of our daily reality. At one level we were in a worst-case scenario, so there was no need to look for worries elsewhere. At another we were completely enclosed in a safe trusting human landscape that had Tashi at its centre and was peopled by a wonderful array of loved ones.

I don’t know where I’m going with these thoughts, except to point out my realisation that there are positives to extract from this painful time. The most important one I think is that it taught me how to be present, absolutely present.

The challenge now is to keep hold of those lessons, those skills. Life will throw more curve balls: we know this life ends for us all, and that the path to the end is rarely a straight clean easy one. Our job is to find a way to accept that and to appreciate what we have rather than angst-ing about possible catastrophes, or worse, yearning pointlessly for some ideal life or perfect situation. It’s interesting, the task of figuring out how to adapt to the now. There’s no single strategy of course. But there’s great motivation, because staying as present as possible, attentive and alert, feels like the juiciest way to live.

Young children do this naturally, don’t they…

the path to understanding? snow-coated garden only two weeks ago

KITCHEN EXPLORATIONS – cooking fish, fresh chopped herbs, frying eggs

The other change these days, as the weather brightens and I grow into more energy, is that I’m cooking supper less often. I’m out and about with friends one or two evenings a week for the first time in over a year.

oysters at Rodneys (the relatively large Cotuits (from Massachusetts) were a lovely surprise and the Merasheen Bays (from Newfoundland) were also new to me); two shots from the fabulous Mhel: chef Young Hoong Ji with our sake choices, and one of his brilliant small dishes, mustard greens with flavoured miso and yari ika, topped with pine nuts

All through last year there were extra people for supper many nights of the week, friends coming to spend time with Tashi and then staying on for a meal. There was a lovely casual flow, and little or no formality or anxiety about social arrangements. It was easy to be flexible. I liked the challenge of improvising meals. I just needed to make sure I had enough food around to work with, in case extras turned up. And they were always welcome; the gathering around Tashi of his community of friends was a blessing for us all. (I don’t like that over-used word, blessing, but I can’t find another.)

I am getting used to buying smaller quantities of food these days, and I’m enjoying having a less-full fridge. My choice of foods is wider. Tashi didn’t like fish or any seafood, and because he had a very acute sense of smell, fish cookery in the house was painful, a loud smell.

offerings from Footsteps Farm at Wychwood Farmers’ Market a week ago: fresh spinach by the handful, and an array of winter-stored vegetables too

Which brings me to a recent pleasure: poaching fish fillets in a mild miso broth. A thin fillet of lake trout cooks quickly and easily in an oiled skillet, but thicker pieces, say halibut from Nova Scotia, or fresh pickerel fillets, now available here in Ontario, need more time and a gentle steaming or poaching.

The other day, with two fresh pickerel fillets from Fisherfolk, I spread a little shio koji on each before they rested for half an hour to come to room temperature. I minced some ginger and stirred a heaping tablespoon, perhaps a little more, of home-made soybean/red miso (see my Miracle of Salt book or use store-bought miso) into about a cup/250 ml of warm water. It takes a little work to dissolve it completely. (Meantime I’d chopped some small leftover boiled potatoes, fried them to brown in olive oil over medium-high heat, and turned them out into a shallow serving bowl.)

the pickerel partly cooked, needing a little more time with the lid on; at the side a partial view of my favourite metal spatula

As I pictured the meal that was taking shape it was looking a little beige. There was a solution in the fridge, fresh herbs from a store in Kensington Market: a bunch each of tarragon and coriander (cilantro), as well as some small green onions (scallions). I chopped up a generous handful of the coriander, a couple of green onions, and added some of the tarragon leaves to the mix. To turn it into a fresh chutney, I added some squeezes of lemon juice, a pinch of salt, and a few drops of good soy sauce. A more meticulous cook would have minced the greens more finely…

The fish fillets were long, so I needed to use my widest cast-iron skillet. It went over medium heat, then in went a small amount of olive oil, just to coat the pan, plus the minced ginger. Once it was hot, I added the fillets skin side down for about a minute, then flipped them and cooked the flesh side on the pan for a bare half minute. I flipped them back, poured on the miso liquid, and covered the pan. After a couple of minutes I lifted the lid and spooned some of the broth over the fish, then covered it again. Less than a minute later they were done and could be transferred to a wide dish with their cooking broth.

miso-poached pickerel, fresh chutney, fried spuds, and some broccoli raab for more green

The fish was delicious and perfectly cooked. I’d tried the miso broth technique with chunks of halibut a few weeks ago, but even with that proof of concept, I was relieved it worked well with the fillets. None of this is rocket science, I know, but fish can be intimidating, rather like pastry, because it feels easy to mess it up.

I guess I’m encouraging you, and reminding myself, to take chances and try new things.

A small question about frying eggs:

My go-to morning meal is one or two fried eggs (over easy) over leftovers. (#putaneggonit is a frequent hashtag on my Instagram feed.) Until now I’ve always used olive oil (EVOO) to cook my eggs. But the other day I thought I’d try butter. I don’t love the taste of melted butter but was curious about whether there’d be a difference.

olive oil-fried eggs over leftover potatoes, with the leftover fresh chutney; and on the right butter- fried eggs with toasted hazelnut rye from Evelyns Crackers

I found that the bottom surface of the eggs was smoother and happier with the butter. Perhaps I had the heat a little lower, because I was afraid of burning it? Could that have made the difference? And so a couple of days later I tried again with butter, and again the texture of the underside of the egg was smoother and more slippery. Do you have any thoughts about this?