Has a recipe ever performed a healing or transformative role in your life?

The earliest recipe books did not concern themselves with soup and pastry: they provided directions for magic. Papyrus relics from Egypt, written in Greek, Egyptian, Hebrew and Aramaic attest to a range of recipes for spells and healing potions.

Later, as recipe books became more tied to culinary lore, herbal and magical remedies would often appear in the margins. Sometimes, as in my mother’s Ukrainian Catholic Women’s League cookbooks, fanciful concoctions appeared at the ends of chapters, unconsciously echoing the supernatural tone of the earliest recipes ever written.

Recipe For Happiness

From Tested Recipes, published by the Ukrainian Catholic Women’s League of St Josaphat’s Parish, 1963

The other night The Gay Schoolteacher came over for dinner. His beautiful smile faded slightly when he saw me. Blood was gushing from my finger, and my oven was erupting into flames.

I was trying out a new recipe, from Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries, which I got for Christmas. Slater is food writer for The Guardian and the author of eight books. Kitchen Diaries is an account of Slater’s activities in the kitchen, over the period of a year. As such it’s a rather prosaic account of weather, shopping and cooking: lovely at first, and with great photos, and then a bit repetitious.

The bloody gash was my fault, but the fat fire could have been blamed on the recipe. It didn’t specify the size of the pot (mine was way too small), and there was too much fat in the recipe. And then there was the fact that I was seriously in the weeds with marking, and seriously not capable of cooking a meal without courting disaster.

But back to Kitchen Diaries. I do like how casual the author is. Lunch may be a complex stew but dinner might just be cooked rainbow chard tossed with olives and lemon olive oil, eaten on sourdough toast: “A supper that fills us with joy.”

Recipe-wise, the book’s a tad frustrating since there’s no separate index for the recipes: you may be intrigued by his chickpea-squash curry and you may never find it again. (which makes me wonder if I should index the recipes in my next food memoir)!

I made Slater’s chicken stew. It was quite a bit of work for a gal with teaching, marking, research, writing, and a radio interview to do. The marinade demanded six ingredients, and the chicken needed to marinate overnight (or in my case, a scant two hours). The Gay School Teacher helped me bandage up my finger, and the fire subsided without the intervention of municipal authorities.

We were pretty happy to sit down to dinner. The stew didn’t quite deliver on flavour but texturally it was perfect for a chilly almost-spring March evening, and two old friends engaging in a conversation that has spanned more than three decades. Recipe for happiness? Yeah, I think so, with mashed potatoes, some good French wine and The Schoolteacher’s spicy chocolate cake thrown in.

How do you use recipes? What cookbooks got you through the winter? What’s your magic culinary recipe these tentative, almost-spring days?

Chicken Stew
I’ve tweaked Slater’s recipe to make it easier and more flavourful. It’s also much improved the following day.

1 can cannelini or Romano beans
A large chicken, cut into 8 pieces
25 ml olive oil
50 ml balsamic vinegar
8 plump cloves garlic, peeled
3 or 4 bay leaves
2 teaspoons herbes de Provence
1 teaspoon tarragon
Grated orange zest from 1 large orange
1/4 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon kosher salt
several grinds of black pepper
6 medium leeks, thinly sliced
2 medium sized sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped
1/2 litre chicken stock
splash of white wine or vermouth

Combine balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, bay leaves, herbs, orange zest, orange juice, salt and pepper in a large non-reactive bowl. Add chicken, making sure to coat it completely. Place in a cool place for 3-4 hours or overnight.

Set oven at 300 degrees. Brown chicken pieces until golden in a large non stick fry pan, shaking off and reserving the marinade before you do. Place chicken in a large Dutch oven. Deglaze fry pan with wine or vermouth, then add leeks and garlic. When softened, add marinade and chicken stock and let it come to a boil. Add the beans and sweet potato to the chicken then add the liquid. Cover, and place in oven for 1 to 2 hours or until chicken is cooked through. Add salt, pepper to taste. Serve over polenta or mashed potatoes.

I seem to be doing brunch a lot lately.

It’s winter, and weekend mornings do not yet lead naturally to coffee on the back porch or walks in the park. It’s February, and we need our friends, the comfort of steaming plates of eggy things, and the morning light pouring in.

My sister The TV Gal’s visit was as good an occasion as any to meet friends for brunch at my local brunch spot, Mitzi’s on College.

Mitzi’s, a venerable woman-owned institution with (now) three outlets in the west end of Toronto, has always been a go-to place for a queer-friendly delicious and innovative brunch.

I’d say this joint still has a few wrinkles to work out. I’ve been three times and while the food is tasty, the service and the prices are not. Arriving, you stand at the door waiting to be seated, whilst ignored by staff chatting in the back. You seat yourself, worried you’ll be ousted. (A sign saying Seat Yourself would do the trick). If you arrive during peak hours you’ll be waiting in line or in the limited wait room seating. You’ll ask if you can leave your cel number and go for a coffee and you’ll be told quite authoritatively that that is not an option.

But this time we knew to seat ourselves and chose a table in front bathed in sunlight. I had poached eggs on cornbread with spicy sauce, sour cream, homefries and sourdough toast. Barely warm, verging on cold. I don’t do cold eggs and certainly not for $13.75. The server cheerfully took them away and returned the plate only slightly less cold than before. I gave up on heat and joined the much more important conversation swirling around the table: our debrief of the previous night’s party. Eggs were a little underpoached, the sauce delicious, and the combo of cornbread and potatoes a little too sweet for my liking despite the addition of seasoned sour cream.

It was a glorious unseasonably warm day, so TV Gal and I ditched our plans for a theatre matinee and joined the Librarian and The Hair Dude for a stroll at The Beach.

TV Gal took a million photos like she always does. Hair Dude and Librarian cuddled on a bench as we poked around on the rocks. People held their faces up to the sun, like pilgrims awaiting a blessing: the beginning of the end of the long, long journey through winter.

There’s all kinds of art to be found in New York.

There is music, soaring out of the subway tunnels: African song; jazz sax; four part gospel harmonies; my niece The Red Headed Busker, singing her own pop melodies and hip hop inflected urban hymns.

There are art galleries, for sure, with their uneven gestures and brusque avantgardisms; there are store windows on Madison Avenue, glowing smugly; there is performance art - queer, sarcastic, ironic, joyful.

And, there is dessert.

The Dessert Chef (Shuna Lydon) and I have corresponded unevenly over a couple of years; I follow her blog, Eggbeater, and have tasted her sublime desserts at (now defunct) Sens in San Francisco, and we did a reading together in The Bay Area. She recently moved back to her hometown, New York. A couple of Facebook messages later, and The Red Headed Busker, The Butch Performance Artist and myself were meeting up for brunch at 10 Downing in The Village where Shuna is pastry chef.

This too was a kind of performance art. The Pastry Chef came out and gave a short monologue, just for us, about dessert, Karen Finley, and the rigours of working in kitchens. As usual, she was sweetly secretive about what exactly we’d be eating for dessert.

Red Headed Busker and I shared a tasty smoked salmon eggs benny with mustard hollandaise on brioche. The Performance Artist told us about her brilliant ongoing research-performance piece The Homo Bonobo Project. A basket of Shuna’s ‘baked goods’ - with her crazy-delicious citrus marmalade - appeared on the table.

As the pale winter sun streamed in we kept talking: about the changes in Greenwich Village and beyond; about the life of an artist, and about how you just keep doing the work, day after day, with or without funding. The Performance Artist bemoaned the loss of independent and queer culture in an increasingly corporatized and gentrified Manhattan. She’s rebuilding community with a series of cabaret evenings she’s hosting and performing at called The Bulldyke Chronicles, at Dixon Place. The Busker listened raptly: different genre and audience, same concerns.

Suddenly, two dessert creations appeared before us. The first was a cheesecake made with lebneh, a strained yogurt cheese, with a crisp crust reminiscent of, but way more exciting than, graham cracker, sided with roasted almonds and that thrilling marmalade. It reminded me of the cheesecake my ma makes at Easter, and the migrations - cultural and geographical - that had brought those light, resonant flavours and memories together.

These desserts are the sum of their parts. The other, Butterscotch Pot de Creme, came with dulche de leche, and brown-sugar-cumin roasted pecans. Soft and crunchy, sweet and salty; deeply sensuous.

By then, The Busker had to go perform in the subway. The Performance Artist and I groaned and moaned our way through these sweet/savory narratives, aka dessert. The afternoon was starting to wane and there was still art to be seen, and made. Performance Artist hopped on her bike and rode off into the narrow streets of the Village. I headed up towards the galleries in Chelsea and then changed my mind, went shopping instead. I was too full - of dessert, creativity, and inspiration - to ingest anymore art that day.

I’ve always believed that love stories should be written about friends.
The sweetness of their casual love,
the juiciness of their gossip
the thrill of sharing a meal.

There’s no ceremony, no legal process
no champagne
when someone enters your life and becomes
a lifelong friend.

But there is often celebration.

And meals. Lots of meals.
Babies, children, cats.
Books, films, music videos.

Friends are an archive
a witness
a board of experts
a think tank
a Greek chorus.

an inspiration

a comedy routine.

a home away from home.

Seven years ago, almost to the day, a secretive group of pampered, aristocratic, well-fed elites visited Vancouver. They were there to see if British Columbia had what it takes - unlimited and exorbitant funds, disdain for the poor and a willingness to create a legacy of oppression and injustice - to host the 2010 Winter Olympics.

They were delegates of the International Olympic Committee, the non-transparent body that, through TV rights, corporate sponsorship, bid fees, corruption and extortion, makes billions (tax free) from each Olympics.

I had just founded a ragtag group of artists and activists to protest Vancouver’s Olympic bid: “Billionaires for the Olympics”. We pulled out our fox furs and leopard skin coats, gilded our ski poles, dusted off our champagne glasses. One of us had a white limousine (he used it for his performance art pieces), someone else made a torch that featured billion dollar bills going up in smoke. In our very first action, we closed down an Olympic Parade on Granville Island. We handed out flyers detailing the monetary, social and environmental cost of this 17-day party:

This [Olympic Bid] comes on the heels of massive cutbacks to the social safety net by the BC Liberals. If there is not enough money ofr education, senior citizens and legal aid (to name a few) why is there money for the 2010 Olympics?

In the intervening weeks and months we made many appearances. People joined us - other actors and performers - wielding cigars and fancy hats and monopoly money. We got some good press, but reporters were frustrated that we wouldn’t give real names, always just Ivanka Strumpet, Max Profit, and Mike McMoney. Onlookers looked, and then looked again - were we the obscene subtext of the Games or were we protesters? We were both - mixing up the message, helping people to read between the lines.

I’ve never had so much fun protesting something. There was joy and passion and creativity among us. My brother Roman, a street musician living in the Downtown Eastside, had died just a year earlier. I was doing it for him, I was doing it for us.

Our only regret was that more artists didn’t join us. I guess they couldn’t have foreseen that 90% of arts funding in BC would be cut in 2009, just months before an Olympics for which the government was happy to blow $7 billion. They couldn’t have known (or could they?) that every single artist appearing in the Arts Olympiad would be required to sign a muzzle agreement, saying that “The artist shall at all times refrain from making any negative or derogatory remarks respecting VANOC, the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Olympic movement generally, Bell Canada and/or any other sponsor associated with VANOC”.’

In 2007, long after I’d moved away from Vancouver, Billionaires for the Olympics was revived, and appeared at the unveiling of the ugly Olympic Clock that (dis)graces downtown Vancouver. In their press release, they quoted their own Max Profit “I think it’s great that we’re helping you spend all that money,” said Profit. “That money was in danger of going toward social housing and feeding lazy bums! If they don’t like it, let them eat snow!”

In the end, the Billionaires “won.”

Welcome to todays’ opening ceremonies, a spectacle that costs $1000 to attend and that’s just for the cheap seats. Welcome to the streets of Vancouver, where peacable activists get interrogated and harrassed, to a Downtown Eastside where housing for the homeless has never been so inadequate (while upwards of $115 million was spent housing elite athletes), to a highway to Whistler that decimated forests and wetlands, cost over $600 million, and even cost one First Nations elder her life.

If you didn’t or wouldn’t or couldn’t join our protests seven years ago, then protest now. Make your presence known at today’s march in Vancouver. You might even want to gather some friends, don a tuxedo or a ballgown, and chant, “Luge, Not Legal Aid!”

“TAKE BACK OUR CITY” PROTEST MARCH AGAINST THE OLYMPICS
Fri Feb 12 3PM
MEET AT VANCOUVER ART GALLERY, MARCH TO BC PLACE

It’s funny what stands out when you’re traveling. You plan a great meal and it’s the walk to the restaurant you remember. You see great art but somebody’s poetry muttered on a street corner is what touches your soul.

Pleasant and pretty (free coffee and biscotti! Free box lunches and wine on the flight!) Porter Airlines brings me gently into Newark; trains and subway slide me into Manhattan. I walk two blocks to catch the Q Train, asking directions along the way. A middle-aged white dude walks me there. In that short time I find out he’s a former pro skateboarder and he prefers “my” sport, hockey, to “his”, baseball. At one point he gestures grandly ahead and says with awe: The. Empire. State. Building.I follow his gaze and there it is, looming above 33rd Street, self-important, retro.

I’m in New York, visiting my niece The Redheaded Busker. She needs some lovin’ up after an illness in December and a grisly encounter with American healthcare. She’s a little skinnier than I like to see her, grey shadows under her eyes. But still with the dazzling smile.

I dump my stuff at her Brooklyn apartment and then we’re off, back into the subways. As we sit on an outdoor bench waiting for the Q Train she points at the tracks flanked by graffitti and crumbling brick and says, I. Love. This. In the summer it’s full off birds.

That day I see a video installation by Omer Fast at The Whitney Museum that plays hard and fast with the protocols of racism, as well as work from Biennials past, glowing iconic pieces by Jasper Johns, Matthew Barney, Barbra Kruger. The Whitney has and continue to be, my alternative art school, a place that has always taken on gender and race by showcasing artists who dare confront taboos.

We walk streets lined with haute fashion and haute art, eat salmon ceviche, talk. It’s all wonderful. But what stands out from that day is a shoe repair shop deep in the bowels of Lexington & 63rd subway, where The Redhead Busker stows her amp between performances. I go with her to pick it up and am proudly introduced as her aunt (full disclosure: we’re not blood relations but I’ve know her most of her life). I shake hands all round, am warmly welcomed to New York.

While I’m waiting for The Busker as she meets and greets, I decide to have a shoeshine. I climb up into the tall chair and a young Latino man spends ten minutes buffing and polishing, putting his heart and soul into it. By the time he’s done my dull brown boots look like patent leather. He smiles shyly but firmly refuses my money, and The Busker tells me not to force the issue: It’s. A. Gift. Because. You’re. My. Aunt. she says.

Later, as we head home I say to her: I. Feel. Like. We. Scammed. Them. I mean, we’re. not really related. The Busker looks genuinely puzzled. She scans my face to see if I really mean it.

But. Marus. she says emphatically It. Wasn’t. A. Scam. We. Are. Family.

This week I wondered, what are you supposed to do with this feeling art can give you? What if it follows you, to the office, to the classroom? What if it exceeds the space of a page, or a room?

I read a novel this week, A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore, that exceeded its rectangular papery space each time I picked it up.

“Regret - operatic, oceanic, fathomless - seemed to stretch before her in every direction. No matter which path she took regret would stain her feet and scratch her arms and rain down on her, lightlessly and lifelong…”

This book made me want to write, made me thirst for the river of words that could, if there was time for it, come out of my pen.

I went to an art gallery this week, for the first time in months, saw a show of Micheal Snow’s recent work. One piece, “Condensation - A Love Story” was a projection of a kind of time-lapse of weather in a Nova Scotian cove. Sun flew across field and ocean and then receded into a curtain of fog and rain; light remerged, and revealed the cliffs to have different colours before rain shrouded them again. I felt moved by a natural world so enduring and fine.

I saw a Play, Cloud 9, by Caryl Churchill, that failed to move me despite enormous resources and a cast of highly experienced and talented actors. I saw a one-woman show, Everything I’ve Got by my friend Jess Dobkin, and got to enter into a magical world of unicorns, vaginas, clown cars, and lavish artistic imagining.

Seen any good or bad art lately? How did it make you feel?

Days in the city have been marked by pale, blank skies, temperate weather and a damp chill. A new semester begins, and the hallways of my workplace are feverish with students. No marking yet, so there are tiny bits of time to cook, or read a novel, between writing and festival submissions and the day-to-day admin of a part-time artist’s life.

There is good food in this city, and people to share it with. Izakaya (Japanese tapas) at the freshly-minted Guu on a chilly night with The Librarian. A room full of noise (the wait staff shout greetings and orders in unison), and eager smiling people at long wooden tables. We adore the BC tuna sashimi, the grilled black cod with miso and white wine sauce, and the grilled oysters with spinach, garlic mayonnaise and cheese. A few days later, hole-in-the-wall Mexican with The Tennis Player: pozole soup, enchiladas with mole sauce, and a colourful melange of Christmas and Mexican decorations.

And a tuna salad sandwich, shared with The Queer Organizer as we take a pause from skiiing in the hills near Mansfield, in the fresh, astringent air, is as delicious as anything I’ve eaten all week.

I’ve been making salads, too. A Waldorf-ish quinoa-apple salad; retro mushroom and spinach; a beet-fennel-carrot slaw. I cook wholesomely and earnestly, in this first month of a new decade: sweet potato and chickpea curry; pasta puttanesca. Tomorrow I will make minestrone soup, and later go to an Indian Harvest Dinner for which the Diasporic Filmmaker has requested perogies. I will walk through Trinity-Bellwoods Park to the Czech deli on Queen Street to purchase them, and then I’ll fry them up with onions and serve them with sour cream.

A good week of food and friends, in a troubled world.

The hospital’s on a barren, windswept city corner, abrupt, austere, final.

The entrance is bare bones. It greets you uncertainly: there’s no reception, just someone behind glass who quickly turns away from you when you arrive, and buzzes you in. Nowhere to ask anything, not that you know what to ask. Not even a gift shop to soften the transition from the world of the living to the world of the ill and dying.

She looks oddly beautiful, even though she’s lost weight, even though she is ninety-four and about to commence, as a someone once described it, her ‘last immigration.’

She is the last of a generation, the generation that came here on wagon carts and ships and trains, wearing numbers, or sheepskin coats, boxy suits, fedoras, or tattoos. She is the last of our archive, not that any of them ever told us much beyond how terrible it was there and how bad it was here. Much of her story will die with her. And by story I also mean recipes: her torte, her perogy dough, her mushroom sauce.

We thought there was more time, to ask the questions, to write the answers and recipes down.

We sit and talk, the daughter and I. She sleeps, mostly, her mouth open. She sleeps more and more, the daughter says. The daughter is here every day, all day. When the mother awakes, the daughter leans over her and they exchange radiant smiles. The daughter is already heartbroken, I can see this.

I am introduced, a relation, or, an intruder from an alien planet, the planet of the healthy and the living. She strains toward me, and she kisses me on the cheek. Somehow, she knows I am family and she knows to kiss me goodbye.

Back on the street, on the corner of Church and Bloor, I gasp for air, over and over and over. I will take the subway home. I will make pasta for dinner. I will watch TV, hours of it.

The next day, I will visit a friend and her new baby. The baby sleeps more and more, says the new mom. When the baby awakes, it makes eye contact, appraises me steadily, its mouth a tiny, delicate O.

Three Christmases in three cities. Three weeks, five beds, twenty people to buy small and large gifts for. Two turkey dinners, three Sviat Vechir (Ukrainian Christmas Eve) feasts. One tasting menu, one high tea (thanks, Blue Eyed Stranger!).

My shortbread, my mother’s rugaleh, Marika’s pampushky (sweet yeast buns with plum jam), Lida’s star-shaped cookies, The Anti-Poverty Organizers’s ginger cake with poached pears. A cheese fondue, a chocolate fondue. The Swimmer’s excellent appetizers, The Feminist Lawyer’s cream of spinach soup with Stilton. The Bird Watcher’s homemade baguette. Chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate.

I’m borrowing a page from The Vintage Queen, who has decided, in her lovely blog Proper Tension, to choose a different activity every month to do for thirty days.

I’ve been in a salad rut for awhile. Piles of greens, walnuts, and what ever fruit is lying around. Not bad, but salad can be so much more.

Thus the 30-day salad challenge was born.

I’m inspired by Mark Bittman’s (The Minimalist) 101 simple salads list, as well as by a newly acquired cookbook, Feast of Greens, and all of the ideas people are giving me.

Three days in, here’s where I’ve been:

Day 1: Steam a chopped up head of broccoli. Cool in ice water, then toss with 1-2 cloves crushed garlic, 2 tablespoons balsamic, 5 tablespoons olive oil. Add in a few slivered sundried tomatoes and some pine nuts or slivered almonds. (adapted from Field of Greens). Banal, comforting, healthful.

Day 2: Grate carrots, toast some sunflower seeds, and toss with blueberries, olive oil, lemon juice and plenty of black pepper. Sweet, sour, crunchy, soft. (Mark Bittman). This one’s a keeper - but it doesn’t keep. Eat it all in one serving.

Day 3: (I ate this, but didn’t make it. Does that count?) Fruit compote, a salad of reconstituted apricots, prunes, apples, pears, in a simple syrup spiced with cinnamon. A Ukrainian Christmas Eve tradition.

What salads are you eating in this month of resolutions, detox, renewal, and new beginnings?