Recipes for Trouble

It’s 7:28 on a morning that is shrilly cold. You’re standing at a subway station, not sure why you’re doing this. You’ve only been here four minutes and your butt, already, is frozen.

OK you know why. You need to get out of the city. Your life, lately, is measured out in coffee spoons and lecture halls. It’s ages since you’ve seen a horizon, or even a stand of trees.

A car pulls up, it’s the trip leader, The Scrabble Player, who also happens to be your friend. Her face is open with a wide adventurous smile. There are two of you, cadging a ride with her, and she is plainly gleeful that you are there.

And soon you arrive, in a crude sort of lodge, people gathering from different directions, you wonder what the hell you will talk about with them.

But The Scrabble Player has brought homemade Trail Mix Cinnamon Buns, a huge tupperware container of them, and that sets the tone. She always brings food, even if she’s meeting you in a bar, she’s insanely hospitable that way.

And then you are outside, in the white curved landscape, your feet are attached to two long skinny boards and at first it feels like you are in some weird arduous dream and wearing strange cumbersome slippers and then a rhythm fills you, and you are fully awake, and you are sliding and even gliding and one of the men you are skiiing with describes it as dancing in the snow.

Trail Mix Cinnamon Buns

INGREDIENTS

* 1 teaspoon white sugar
* 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
* 1/2 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
* 1/2 cup milk
* 1/4 cup white sugar
* 1/4 cup butter
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 2 eggs, beaten
* 4 cups all-purpose flour
* 3/4 cup butter
* 3/4 cup brown sugar
* 1 cup trail mix, divided
* 3/4 cup brown sugar
* 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
* 1/4 cup melted butter

DIRECTIONS

1. In a small bowl, dissolve 1 teaspoon sugar and yeast in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes. Warm the milk in a small saucepan until it bubbles, then remove from heat. Mix in 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup butter and salt; stir until melted. Let cool until lukewarm.
2. In a large bowl, combine the yeast mixture, milk mixture, eggs and 1 1/2 cup flour; stir well to combine. Stir in the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, beating well after each addition. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes.
3. Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 1 hour.
4. While dough is rising, melt 3/4 cup butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir in 3/4 cup brown sugar, whisking until smooth. Pour into greased 9×13 inch baking pan. Sprinkle bottom of pan with 1/2 cup trail mix; set aside. Melt remaining butter; set aside. Combine remaining 3/4 cup brown sugar, 1/2 trail mix, and cinnamon; set aside.
5. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface, roll into an 18×14 inch rectangle. Brush with 2 tablespoons melted butter, leaving 1/2 inch border uncovered; sprinkle with brown sugar cinnamon mixture. Starting at long side, tightly roll up, pinching seam to seal. Brush with remaining 2 tablespoons butter. With serrated knife, cut into 15 pieces; place cut side down, in prepared pan. Cover and let rise for 1 hour or until doubled in volume. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
6. Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes, until golden brown. Let cool in pan for 3 minutes, then invert onto serving platter. Scrape remaining filling from the pan onto the rolls.

I’m prepared for all things except emergencies.

When a blackout hit Toronto last week, in minus 20 weather, I felt pretty good about at least having tea lights on hand. They looked kind of sweet arranged around my living room. Flashlight, but no batteries. Tea lights aplenty, but no candles.

Still, with heat still emanating from the radiators, I had pleasant thoughts about days gone by, and old-fashioned things like going to bed early because of no TV and internet (my computer wasn’t charged, either).

I filled up a hot water bottle (there was still hot running water for some reason) and went to bed figuring I’d be woken up at 2 a.m. by lights and TV flicking on.

Woke up to watery morning light and freezing cold.

That’s when I started to freak out. Made some phonecalls. Found out the whole western half of the city was without power - 250, 000 people affected! - and that it might be like that til 10 that evening. Subways closed down. Even my corner Starbucks was closed!

Started worrying about the elderly Ukrainian lady across the street. Irrationally, i grabbed some Lentil Soup with Kale and Sausage out of the freezer and began to suit up to go over there when I realized I’d probably just scare her, this early and anyways, the soup was useless unless I carefully sat it over one of my tea light for about seven hours.

At 9:30 a.m., my power came back on. I could have wept with relief. I turned on the stove and made espresso. A homemade latte never tasted so good. But wait - the old lady - was she even still alive?

I knocked on her backdoor, heavily, officiously. There was a ghost moving behind the frosted glass. She opened the door, dressed in a white nightgown and a kerchief on her head. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement. She waved my soup away brusquely, and then welcomed me in.

Over embroidery pattern mugs of Nescafe, shakily set down on the plastic tablecoth, she told me how she’d padded down to the basement when the lights went out, and, even with hands trembling from Parkinson’s, found a flashlight, loaded it with batteries, and then found her stash of candles too. All her East European lady friends phoned one another on their rotary phones. Early that morning, her son phoned from Mississauga, offering to pick her up, but she gave him the brush-off.

Reminded. Me. Of. The. War. she said. But. Dat. Was. Worse.

In the dim kitchen, light filtered by lace curtains, the characters in The Last Supper looking down on us, she told me about the four years she spent as a slave labourer under the German Occupation, working on a remote farm. Had to learn German, and milk cows, just like that. I was scared, cow was scared, she said with a thin smile.

She served me some cake, too. Showed me photos of her family, most of them dead or lost in the war. It felt so familiar: the stories, the girlish bitterness in her voice, so like my Baba’s kitchen, my Baba’s stories. She told me she’d survived breast cancer, too. All that trauma and grief, stowed away, like a box in the basement, it only gets opened in emergencies.

It. Was. Spooky. she finally admitted, of the blackout. Very. Spooky.

She took my soup, finally. I knew she’d enjoy it.

But really, it was she who fed me, that day.

A month of contrasts.

Brilliant light, deep shadows.

The shadows are full, honest, difficult.

In January, I forgive myself of a million things. A million shards of light, a million mistakes, a million ways to be a better person.

January. I took down my Christmas tree (and wondered: why is no one is ever, ever around when you take the damn thing down?).

A relief, to say goodbye to that tinny, tinselly, fraught season. But I miss the lights.

So, I kept the mirror ball decoration out.

It makes me smile every morning, when, for about five minutes, it turns my living room into a disco.

With Israel’s carnage in Gaza exploding nightly, hotly, tragically on my TV screen, I went out in the cold to a demonstration.

I didn’t really want to. I would have preferred to stay home and do research, or write.

I was glad I went.

There was beauty and joy and sorrow at that event. There were 15,000 protestors framed by the harsh graphic beauty of the Royal Ontario Museum, designed by Daniel Liebeskind. Bold graphics and graphic images everywhere: the orange placards emblazoned with the name “Gaza”; a woman in a Palestinian scarf bearing a tiny stretcher holding a bloodied doll.

More than 800 Palestinians, most of them innocent civilians, have been killed to date, thousands more injured. The Canadian government has steadfastly maintained its blind, American-carbon-copy support of Israel. Canadian news media have been generally toeing the government line. It’s a complicated story but it’s possible to tell it fairly. As Rick Salutin wrote, in a recent article in rabble.ca: “Israel has blocked all access to and from Gaza for a year and a half - land, sea and air - tightening the noose recently, so disease and malnutrition are pervasive and no economy really exists. Surely this, too, is an act of war, directed at civilians…”

There were all ages and all races at the demonstration: but a predominance of young people, I’d say. We chanted the old phrase, A People United Shall Never Be Defeated. I watched a kid, maybe twelve years old, mouth those powerful words.

A small, sad group of Israeli counter-protesters waved flags from behind a barricade.

My brother sent me images of a similar demonstration on the streets of Kyiv, Ukraine, where he is now living. People are uniting in protest all over the world.

Wherever you are, however you can, join them.