How we eat now

for me, growing up in edmonton in the '70s and '80s, food was a source of aspiration - aspiration to adulthood, to wealth, to sophistication. my image of being a self-realized grown-up was precise. the city was toronto, the season was winter, and the partner was mark. i saw myself coming home from an exciting day as an academic (i had no idea what graduate school actually involved, how infrequently you'd actually leave the house, but never mind) to a 1920s apartment building with thick white paint peeling off the door, which opens to billows of steam: mark is making pasta. the sound of cello and the aroma of tomatoes, garlic and basil envelop me in a reassuring cloud of insulating cosmopolitanism.

while waiting for high school to end and this magical adult moment to arrive, i would visit the food floor at woodward's on breaks from selling men's shoes on main. the woodward's food floor is the first place i saw a delicatessen-style counter. they are commonplace now, whether genuine or merchandising tricks flogging saputo as local, repackaging maple leaf to look artisanal, but in 1983 the woodward's food floor was where white people learned to browse exotic cheeses. i embarrassed myself mightily by asking for "gorGONzola," but i forgot all about that when i cooked it with real mushrooms (real mushrooms!) in a four-cheese sauce. i served it over fresh pasta, another revelation (it was the '80s); the recipe came from the silver palate cookbook before julee rosso and sheila lukins, those indefatigable manhattan purveyors of whimsy and excess ('fly to another city for lunch!,' 'use a round of stilton for a striking centrepiece!,' 'for your next tailgate party, hire a hot air balloon!') parted ways. my mother's 40th birthday was that year, i believe, and we took her to avanti, a white-tile nouveau italian restaurant with crisp cobalt trim.

i thought i would eat like that forever. truth be told, i did pretty well in graduate school, something about living within walking distance of an organic grocery and downstairs from a landlord who liked to try out his recipes - croque en bouche, saffron-scented pilaf, four-course tuscan feasts - on a willing party. but cooking with a full-time job seemed beyond me. by the end of the 90s, mo and i had descended into a four-dish rotation with seasonal variations: lentil soup, stir-fried vegetables with tofu, shepherd's pie, beef stew in the winter; caesar salad, hamburgers, green salad with apples and cheese, steaks in the summer.

one day, i reached my limit. i simply couldn't face another lentil soup, so i set out to expand our range of foods. i learned my way through categories like root vegetables, pork chops, grains. turns out i do like butternut squash, don't like acorn squash, and now i know how to make a beet palatable, something i thought improbable. (best use of a beet: raw, in a salad with granny smith apples, mild feta and fresh mint under a lemony white balsamic vinaigrette.)

we've done well enough that a typical weekday meal here now involves 2 or 3 different vegetables alongside an interesting protein dish. turkey scallopini in mustard cream served over brown rice and sauteed spinach is a staple chez nous. we eat red peppers almost daily. last wednesday we had moroccan chicken (gourmet magazine cookbook), pomegranate-glazed carrots (fine cooking #101), asparagus spears in orange-tamari marinade sprinkled with candied ginger (something i made up) along with a simple nutted couscous. we also like to roast things, as in tuesday's dinner: portobello "chick'n" lumps (from the frozen food section), matchsticked parsnips and carrots with thyme butter, sweet potatoes with rosemary and garlic, tricolor peppers finished with feta and balsamic. it's a simple meal - it all goes in the oven - but thrills the eyes and mouth. it's more than i thought you could ask of a tuesday.

this is how you can live when you don't have children - and perhaps when you do, though i can't fathom how you'd manage it. i have become so habituated to this style of cooking and eating that i have forgotten how to do things differently. as a result, i feel quite panicky about not being able to cook post-surgery. i'm trying to store up some things ahead of time - chicken with pumpkin seeds, carrot ginger soup (good for nausea, i'm thinking), spinach bechamel lasagna, black bean soup, lentils - but with cookbooks tacitly subtitled either "make it tonight with what's just off the vine" or "how to devote 18 hours to a ganache," i'm finding it hard to think of things you'd make in advance and cook from ... the freezer.

i suppose i'll think of it as just another constraint - like cooking without leeks-onions-scallions-shallots, or figuring out how to use all the broccoli and bananas we get from our grocery delivery service each week. i enjoy the challenge of cooking-with-constraints and have long thought that a better version of iron chef would be teflon mama: "you have 45 minutes to feed four hungry people. the fridge/freezer contains two kinds of mustard, half a jar of pickles, a few sun-dried tomatoes, a cup of milk, two tablespoons of raspberry jam, three wizened carrots and a chicken breast. go!"

suggestions would be welcome.

How to eat in cozumel (for nat)

1. go to del sur and order a couple of bacon, cheese and plum empanadas. the owner, rene, will cook them for you while you wait, and marvel. how many ways are there to crimp an empanada? at least 13. throw in a dulce de leche empanada for dessert.
   
2. don't lose heart when the rainstorm means you can't barbecue the steaks. redirect the pecans and pomegranate for the salad toward an ersatz persian chicken dish. no butter/oil in the kitchenette? good thing the coffee cream is so thick you have to serve it with a spoon.
3. cross the street from your hotel and give sabores a try. the owner serves lunch in her own living room from lunes to viernes. first, she brings you a big jug of jimaica juice. then, hot chips with a couple of hot salsas. soup is next - say, carrot cream. by the time your chicken tacos in mole sauce come, you wonder how you'll do them justice, but the mole's thick chocolate smoke makes it easy. no, really, you really can't have dessert.
4. buy gelato/helado in the middle of the afternoon. after all, you didn't have dessert with lunch.
5. go to kinta. order one of everything. mahi mahi in guajillo sauce? yes please. red snapper and cream cheese rolled in panko and deep fried? crunchy on the outside, dreamy on the inside. potatoes smashed with truffle oil and garlic, served under mayan pulled pork? scallops and prawns skewered with fresh local chilis and served with a cranberry-pineapple salsa? three-milk bread pudding with banana ice cream and mexican chocolate? well, you get the idea.
6. look for the biggest plate you've got. nope, that won't do. bigger than a dinner plate. a serving plate: yeah, that's the ticket. pile it high with shrimp, fish and conch steeped in lime juice and onion. fan a perfect avocado on top, serve it beachside, and call it an appetizer on the menu.
   
7. ask for guacamole with everything.
8. go back to del sur and try the chorizo and cheese combo. add a quince empanada for dessert. if you must, say they're for your housebound parents.
9. get up early enough that zermatt's bakery is not sold out of the buns con queso crema, or the damp whole wheat biscuits, or the cuernitos. have an espresso on the patio.
   
10. take a pineapple to the beach.
    

Food love

i've had a lovely saturday night puttering around the kitchen. it probably started this morning when i made us a breakfast of steel cut oats with tart cherries and almonds, but my endeavours picked up steam after i made a to-do list that went onto page 4. i looked at all the work i have to do in the next three weeks and walked right out of my study and into the kitchen, where i stewed some cranberries for turkey sandwiches during the week, made applesauce with cinnamon sticks and cloves, whipped up a batch of granola for my friend olga, whose kitchen is being renovated, and baked a batch of carrot-nut muffins for mo.

my friend lisa's lovely new blog, threshold of greatness, says that food is love. i agree, though it hasn't always served me well. since christmas, mo and i have been trying to eat better. we don't use the "diet" word, but we have been watching portion sizes and trying to stay away from the cheese popcorn, and the junior mints, and the licorice, and the trail mix, and the late-night bowl of cereal, and the melty-toasties, and the granola bars, and the halloween candy, and the row(s) of cookies, and the one-kilo bag of dried mangoes, and the treacherous members of the cracker family, forever luring you in with their multigrain healthiness, only to hit you with a sandbag of sat fat once you're committed.

we're each down about ten pounds since the beginning of january, and feeling healthier. it's fun to go clothes shopping in our own closets. just as the nutritionists promised, i feel empowered to make good choices: peckish after working out today, i bypassed the Big Cupboard o' Carbs and went straight to the fridge for a trio of organic carrots. i have more energy when breakfast is an egg-white omelet with spinach instead of a bowl of raisin bran. everything i cooked today was healthy.

it's nice to be reminded that food isn't love, that there are nonfat ways of demonstrating care, but sometimes i miss the illicit thrill of hot buttered toast.

Breakfast

this is a guest post by my most recent overnight guest, the incomparable ms laura, queen of the ten-year-olds (l'il man):

i'm writing this post about what me and heather -- sorry, heather and i -- ate for breakfast. we ate a very nutritious smoothie. well, aunty heather had her smoothie and coffee. coming up next, we will be eating burritos. and, if we're still thirsty, we will finish up the smoothie. ingredients for our delicious, nutritious smoothie:

one banana
six strawberries
about one cup of yogurt
and a half cup of cranberry juice.

now, try this at home, kids!