Recipes for Trouble

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Happy lesbian /gay/ queer pride day!

My Ma used to say: You. Don’t Cook. Just. For. One. Person.

But here, in the country, alone in a cabin for the better part of the month, how I do cook.

It’s a form of creativity. It’s a relief from, or an adjunct to, the writing. It’s something to do in the evenings, after the General Store closes at 7 and the forest closes in around the cabin, a blanket of darkening green.

I did most of the cooking when The Anti Poverty Organizer was visiting. She didn’t mind (though she would have been happy with leftovers, too). The well-equipped kitchen in this cabin is a joy to work in, with its stainless steel counters, its row of beloved Le Creuset pots, its eclectic range of spices. Whoever designed this kitchen loves cooking – or loved someone who loves cooking.

My first night on my own I friend up local spot prawns that I’d bought from the genteel, dignified fish guy in Gibson’s (Beddis Fish Co. on the docks). Large, tender, and sweet, those prawns demanded very little: some minced garlic, butter, a squeeze of lemon, a handful of orange cherry tomatoes from Trout Lake Farmer’s Market in Vancouver. I ate them with rice and tossed greens from The Painter’s garden. I moaned as I ate.

Cooking for one is different. It’s a conscious gift to yourself. It’s a slow food kind of thing. You have no deadline, so you do cook more slowly, appreciating the changes in smell and texture. You listen to the radio as you chop vegetables, sometimes arguing with it (it seems CBC’s pro-war-in-Afghanistan stance is more emphatic than ever).

Yesterday I made blackberry pie, from the frozen wild berries picked last summer, that The Painter gave me. The day before, a chowder featuring wild local Sockeye.

And writing? Yes, that too.

The first few days here, I wrote in spurts, and napped in between.

I am writing memoir, again. You have to dig deep with this genre, and sleep is a refuge from the stirring and rearranging of memories. But now, in my second week here, I’m able to write most of the day, creative muscles more toned than before. The writing is soothing, disturbing, enlightening, tedious, exciting, exhausting, stimulating.

In some ways, I’m writing the same way that I’m cooking – for an audience of one. Memoir is a highly charged genre, and involves ethical questions of truth and accountability. As Irish memoirist Nuala O’Faolian put it, it’s a genre that comes alive most fully after it’s published, because people – especially those you’ve written about – will question and argue with details large and small. In that sense, it’s a very interactive genre too.

But for now I’ve put all that aside. I want everything in the open: broad strokes, a large canvas. The editing comes later.

Writing for one is different. It is restorative. It’s a tug-of-war with the self.

I feel like I’m pulling in nets, yanking on heavy ropes, hand over hand. The nets are empty, or they’re full, but it’s time to pull in.

The day I made the muffins was also the day (four days after arriving on a somewhat isolated west coast island) that I settled in. It stopped raining, just like that. The sun, wan in the morning, was due for a starring appearance in the afternoon.

I had been doubting all of my reasons for coming to this little island, but that morning I woke up and I knew I would make muffins. It was a good sign I was over the worst of it. The Anti-Poverty Organizer breathed an audible sigh of relief. I had been ranting and raving quite a bit, about the rain, about missing the big city, and all of my favourite bars and restaurants, with their well-appointed terraces. What. Was. I. Thinking?? APO wasn’t fond of my rants, never had been. And, for someone living in Vancouver, all that Toronto-love didn’t quite cut it.

I. Am. Making. Muffins. I stated with aplomb. The Anti-Poverty Organizer looked up calmly from her book. It was 6:30 a.m. Neither of us seemed able to sleep past six.

Well don’t let me stop you she said and went back to her book.

I haven’t made muffins in ages, it took a long time, and I hadn’t really consumed enough coffee. There was a certain amount of spillage. Still, the muffins were fantastic, we each had three. I completed the requisite amount of writing and then we were off for a walk.

We spent all afternoon exploring this island. We saw hollyhocks, and raspberry bushes, wild rhododendrons, crows and robins and eagles. We peered into the windows of the community centre, and tried climbing a trail to a lake, but I wimped out, even though a young Native man offered us a ride in his truck. We ended up at a beach by the main dock, and that was when the sun came out, hot white along the edges of the water, dappled everywhere else.

And that was when we saw the goat girl.

She was wearing a long green brocade dress with hiking boots. She seemed to float out of nowhere. She looked like a fairy, or a hippie. Following her, with a crooked sort of grace, was a goat, pure white, and munching on tree leaves with enormous satisfaction.

The goat’s name was Leela. The girl had won the goat in a bet, she told us. Forgot she’d won until the next day, when the goat was delivered to her door. She seemed quite good-natured about it all. The goat follows her everywhere she goes.

It made our day, I have no idea why. Later, as we delivered some muffins to our lovely neighbours, we told the story of the goat girl and they laughed in wry recognition.

It’s the kind of island where you can befriend a goat and no one bats an eye. The sort of place where people offer you rides as you pant up a hill, or leave small gifts of garden produce on your porch while you’re out. You have to wave or say hi to everyone, and they have to wave or say hi back, that’s just the way it is. There’s a General Store where everyone goes once or twice a day, and you can get damn good nachos and a decent glass of BC wine. The ferry always comes late (never early) and the bus never quite meets the ferry.

You get used to staring at water, or gazing at mountains, and you learn not to mind.

Cornmeal Strawberry Muffins

I really can’t remember which blog I lifted this recipe from, so if someone reads this and wants credit, let me know! It’s a good recipe, requiring no fine-tuning and what I like is that the muffins are not too sweet….

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
1 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup sliced fresh strawberries

In a medium bowl combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

In another bowl beat eggs, stir in milk, butter and strawberries.

Make well in the dry ingredients, add the egg mixture all at once and stir until just combined.

Spoon into greased or paper lined muffin tins and bake at 375 degrees F. for 20 minutes. Makes a dozen muffins.

I’m in a bottle-green world, surrounded on all sides by the ladylike branches of cedars, with their slightly tilted wrists draped in green fronds; the fey posturing of ferns, raising their serrated arms in mock-alarm along the forest floor; the superior, elder stance of the Douglas fir.

A thousand or more shades of green: through the windows, looming over the skylights. And rain, endless, weeping, tapping, ticking, licking, sizzling rain.

I’d forgotten about the rain. I’d neglected to account for its power over me.

Will I write? Will I research? This precious month of creative time is already trickling away in a ceaseless stream of rain.

There is a novel, perhaps, its body slowly emerging from the pages of my writing book, the keyboard of my computer. There is another memoir, too.

It’s raining, I can write.

It’s raining, I can’t write; I must bake, or cook, or clean.

It seems there will be time enough for all versions of creativity. One General Store, no internet, no pub, no movie house (what was I thinking? Was I thinking I’d do nothing but write?)

How desperate I’ve been, these past eight months, to write. I started a writing group, with five fine, talented women: we drink wine, eat cheese, talk gently, insistently about how much we want, need, to write. (We called our group, Write or Die).

And I do write, but each word seems to emerge singly, awkwardly; each thought opposes the other; there is no cohesive narrative, not yet.

The cooking, in any case, goes well. Cheese and roasted vegetable quesadillas for lunch; grilled chicken, potato salad and braised chard for dinner.The reading goes well. A delicious novel to read, Away, by Amy Bloom. Long, wandering conversations with Anti-Poverty Organizer, who has joined me for this first, chill, rainy week. I read her my small clumsy paragraphs, my angular sentences. It helps, to have an audience, even for this early stage.

I am here on this small island for a month. I have invited friends to visit. Taking a cue from The Feminist Lawyer’s 50th birthday sojourn two years ago, I require of my guests only that they bring ingredients and a recipe for a single dinner. Tonight, the Anti-Poverty Organizer makes Moroccan Lentil Stew.

The rain has stopped for a time. Artie Shaw plays on the sound system. The sky, what I can see of it, is pure white. Anti-Poverty Organizer has gone out, to wander the trails, to give me space to write.

And so I do.

Moroccan Lentil Stew

1 cup green lentils
6 cups cold water
1 tbspn olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 small carrot
1 tbspn fresh ginger
1 potato
½ cup red wine
1 green pepper
1 tspn cumin seed
½ tspn ground coriander
1/8 tspn. Turmeric
4 cloves garlic, minced
8 oz. canned tomatoes
6 sundried tomatoes

Sort & rinse lentils and place in soup pot with cold water. Bring to boil, then reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in medium saucepan; add onions, ½ tspn salt & a few pinches cayenne. Cook over medium heat until onions are soft, 7-8 mins., then add vegetables, another ½ tspn. Salt, and the rest of the spices. Cook for 5 mins. , then stir in garlic and ginger. Add sautéed veg mixture and tomatoes to the stewing lentils. Cover and cook for 30 minutes. Serve with crusty bread and salad. Serves 6.