Leaving for Europe

Not the best start to a translatlantic flight -- exhausted from a trip to Saskatoon. This taken at the Ottawa Airport (Maple leaf lounge). Im not usre whether it was tiredness or having to endure the Grey cup.

We are staying at the Dominican, Brussels. We found it after a lengthy walk from the train station. It has a bit of a monastery, gothic feel to the place.

I'm not sure that this photo does it justice. It feels much more sinsiter in a way. We have a window set in our room with a bay that looks down on the diners below. The background music is Palestrina, or some other monastic chanting, and most of the corridors are stone, or dark and menancing. I'll try and take more photos tomorrow, if I get hold of the camera. For now, here's a picture of one of the lights in the corridor. there is a matching blood red design on the beige carpet beneath.

One red canoe

My birthday gift from DAG.
Suddenly I found myself in the possession of a red canoe. Something I have wanted for about 30 years, ever since HG made me paddle around the dark side of the island at Kashwakamak at 9pm on a cold October evening.


So then what do you do? You have to take it for a spin -- I mean a maiden voyage
Its heavy so you can't carry it too far on top of your head -- it needs to be in water

DAG and I practised carrying it around to the back of the house. that was quite far enough. I have now bought it a set of wheels so that we can walk it down to the end of the street.



But it works best in water. Meech Lake for instance where we saw five loons in one canoe trip.
We have had beautiful beaver tail paddles for at least 10 years waiting for the time when we'd have our own canoe.


Meech lake is not a big lake
But big enough that you can feel like you've left everyone behind for a while, even when a Trailhead expedition has bee organized for the same day.

Aside from the loons there was a chipmunk that decided to eat each lunch of wild raspeberries on HG's leg (couldn't get to the camera) and dragonflies that also took a fancy to sunning themselves on HGs yellow T-shirt.


Check out the locals

Not just a load of old lentils

I think lentils are one of those things that you either love or you hate. I used to think lentil-hate was hard wired, a genetic trait that could not be influenced by environment. It was one of those foods associated with hippies, granola crunchers, and hard core macrobiotic types. I actually have a book by Rose Elliot with the same title as this post. Everything I ever cooked from that book turned out brown and heavy (Sorry Rose).

I have always thought that lentils, particularly the orange ones of my childhood were interesting. On bored days I would be given the task of doing "the seperations" -- picking by hand the odd lentils that had fallen into the rice jar, or vice-versa. Only later did I discover that this was a Montessori age appropriate task (my Mum was an infant school teacher -- did she know?). I forget what my Mother used the lentils for, maybe soup, she would never have made Indian food except out of a vespa dried packet.

Over the past few years I have had a few lentil converts, thanks to the dhal recipe below. I often serve Indian food for dinner when we have guests, especially meat eating guests who can tolerate a bit of spice. The dhal has elicited many quotes, of which a give you a few:
"It really tastes much better than it looks" (CC)
"Well -- I quite like it actually" (MD)
"Now I understand why E always insists on gettting dhal" (MEL)

It originated from a Sainsbury cookbook by filmmaker Ismail Merchant (circa 1992) but has been modified over the years. I never stick faithfully to the recipe.

Lemon Lentils

2 tablespoons oil
1 large onion
2 cinnamon sticks
250g red lentils
1 tsp chopped ginger
500ml vegetable stock
500ml hot water (I add half of this to start off and then more as needed)
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1/2 lemon
2 garlic cloves
pinch cayenne peper -- to taste or piece of fresh chilli
2 bay leaves crumbled
fresh coriander (MEL -- this is totally optional)

Heat oil in a deep saucepan over medium heat and cook 1/2 onion until soft. Add cinnamon sticks, lentils and ginger and cook for 10 minutes until colour of lentils has become more translucent.
Add stock, hot water and chilli powder. Season with salt, bring to the boil an dboil rapidly for about 10 minutes. Squeeze the juice from the lemon and add to the pan with the squeezed lemon skin. Cook for about an hour, stirring frequently until the lentils have broken down and the mixture is creamy.
While the lentils are cooking, make the terka -- chop the remaining onion, heat a little oil in a skillet and cook the onion, garlic, cayenne pepper or chilli and bay leaves until onion is just brown.
To serve empty dhal into serving dish, drizzle the terka over the top and add chopped coriander, unless you are MEL.

That's it for lentils -- except to mention a wonderful one-man play from the Talking Heads series by Alan Bennett bed among the lentils one of six monologues of wonderfully closely observed character studies. I am suprised, but quite encouraged, that they are now part of the GCSE English literature syllabus. Although they are quite short, the honesty and detail of the writing makes them almost painful to read, especially if like me you grew up in the UK of Bennett's mind. There may not be any overt link between the play and the recipe (except for lentils), but like bed among the lentils lemon lentils and the other recipes in Ismail's bookserved to bring a little bit of India into British homes.

Pedantic

31 minutes; 5.16K; 5408 steps

Thanksgiving

It took me a few years to figure out thanksgiving after we moved to Canada. But now I definitely get it. No-longer kids make strenous efforts to get home, you invite people for dinner who are far away from home (and might not "get" thanksgiving either). Days are spent fretting about what to make for dinner, with text messages back and forth either begging for nut roast, or begging not to have nut roast. You spend hours chopping veggies, baking and cooking, so that finally there are no more pots to use in the kitchen. The dishwasher chooses to break down just prior to the weekend and the dishwasher repair man refuses to visit until after the weekend is over. And through it all, and despite all the effort, everyone is so pleased to be together that the weekend and thanksgiving dinner are way beyond fun.

Thanksgiving doesn't happen in the UK, but when I was growing up we did have harvest festival at church. We had to bring baskets of produce from our gardens (and increasingly as the years went by, cans from our cupboards), which we carried in a crocodile from the school at the back of the graveyard, round the corner to the church. The church was always decorated to the hilt with michelmas daises, lashed in the umbrella stands, something that the vicar of the time, Rev Clift, particularly disliked. We would stagger up the aisles with our loaded baskets and hand them over to him at the steps to the sancturary where he would place them all around the altar.

I was musing this year about the difference between Canada's thanksgiving and the US and thanks to the yarn harlot found out that the first North American Thanksgiving was celebrated when explorer (and pirate) Martin Frobisher stood on Baffin Island in 1578 and gave thanks for safely crossing the Atlantic. Similarly the French settlers, having crossed the ocean and arrived in Canada with explorer Samuel de Champlain, held huge feasts of thanks. Apparently they formed 'The Order of Good Cheer' and shared their food with their Indian neighbours.

I always thought that thanksgiving was instigated by the pilgrim fathers after they had survived a year of hardship in the New World and had been taught how to grow squash, corn and beans, something I romanticised after having survived our first year in Canada. However, apparently the history is not as simple as it seems, and although the traditions that began with the Mayflower were carried North when the loyalists fled during the American revolution, there are other threads that are important to remember.

As the years go by family stories are retold and embelished. It is ARGs birthday at this time of year, and many times she has celebrated her birthday at Thanksgiving dinner, with pumpkin pie in lieu of birthday cake. This time we decided to have a birthday dinner on Saturday night, followed by Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday night -- just to stretch out the overeating. But we remembered as we do every year that before I "got" thanksgiving I just used to ignore it. So, once when she was 10 or so, and her Aunt asked ARG what she wanted for her birthday, she embarrassed us to no end by saying that she just wanted to go and eat turkey at their house. It worked I guess -- after that I made sure to cook Thanksgiving dinner. And bit by bit, over the years, I began to understand the importance of celebrating Thanksgiving and gathering around to be thankful for good food, good families and good friends.

Sagas of my blender

I have a blender -- a beautiful Cuisinart model in black rubber and stainless steel that matches the food processor, dishwasher and other appliances. I look at my blender from time to time, and feel asssured. Finally, I have arrived at a place in my life where I can have an expensive toy in my kitchen. It's a luxury, a real power toy. I don't play with it often, but when I do, it delivers velvety soups and creamy dresssings that no other food processor or blender can match.

I'm fairly possesive about my blender. I really don't like other people to touch it, but sometimes I try to play nicely and let them have a go. Christmas day for instance. ARG was home, and having announced some time ago that she had never tasted lobster, it seemed to be the perfect special occasion to make lobster bisque. It also seemed to be a friendly Mummy kind of thing to do to let my girl play with the blender. I did say, "don't put too much of that bisque in at once", but no sooner were the words out of my mouth than bloop, the lid blew off and boiling soup rained down over the counter top. Her Daddy rushed to save her from the nasty machine and bad mother, but not having been allowed to play with the power toy himself, unscrewed the base and let the remains of the bisque flow out over the counter and on to the floor where the dog's tongue was waiting.

This weekend I gave my man a second chance with the blender. He was lurking in the kitchen, waiting for dinner to make itself. Again, it seemed a friendly thing to do to let him have control of the machine. I set him making the Duma dressing from Get it Ripe. It requires chopping an onion and throwing it into the blender along with oil, vinegar, nutritional yeast and some herbs, a real macho kind of recipe. HG complained that the blender was leaving lumps, and it sounded a bit rough at high speed, but I didn't think much about it until we sat down to eat the salad. A few mouthfuls in I found myself chewing on a hard lump. It had a bit of give, but refused to break down as I chewed on. Fishing it out of my mouth I found a small flat piece of grey silicone. Somehow, HG had managed to blend the gasket that fits between the blades and the glass jug. How can the gasket have ended up inside the glass jug? HG has a theory that the blender pulled it in because the jug wasn't screwed together tightly. I have my own theories on the matter, starting with no-one understands the sheer power and beauty of my blender.

Stories from my grown-up life

Somehow I imagined that one day I would grow up. I used to look at women who were the same age I am today, or even younger, and imagine that I too would somehow be transformed into a sophisticated competent career women, elegantly dressed, balancing home and work without a ruffle of my carefully lacquered hair.

I thought it would happen without any effort on my part. At some point I would just realize that I had arrived and taken my place in the world of grown ups. Half a century later and I still don't know what that means. Somehow I have become a wife, a mother, a career woman (whatever that means) without ever having grown up. I joke about what I might do with my life when I do finally grow up.

Dom and Amy both talk about feeling grown up when they have had to take responsibility for other peoples lives, even though that meant putting themselves in a place of opposition with their peers. But both of them want to retain that feeling of freedom and exploration, that seems an antithesis to being a 'grown-up".

We said farewell to my research fellow at the end of August, who claimed she was moving on to her grown up life. Good luck with that Allison. Let me know when you've figured out what that is; bottle it and send me some to sprinkle on my muesli.