According to cultural theorist Mikhael Bakhtin, a carnival allows the rules and norms of a culture to be suspended, temporarily. What’s ugly is beautiful, what’s down is up.

Bakhtin created the term carnivalesque to describe art that does just that. Stories that glorify and give dignity to the non-normal, or what Bakhtin called (in a non-critical way), the grotesque.

Those stories get rarer and rarer these days. But we do still have Halloween, Mardi Gras, and the summer fair, or as we call it here in Toronto. “The Ex.”

The Ex’s best expression of the carnivalesque is, in my mind, the food. People go to the Ex to eat junk food, and eat a lot of it. Stuffing your face, proudly, is the temporary normal.

Thus, we began our sojourn at Canada’s largest fair with mini-donuts. Tiny, cakey and cinnamon-sugar dusted, they prepared our palates for the grease-fest to come.

The Ex was once an agricultural fair. It began in 1879 and some classic Victorian buildings from that era still stand. It soon became a site of militaristic and nationalistic propaganda. Historical pageants whipped up fervour for war (the costly and polluting CNE airshow now takes on that role), and exhibits of newly invented automobiles, radios and televisions boasted a nation’s progress.

But the fun fair, or the midway, was where the real carnival was. Freak shows, wax works, and burlesque were once its mainstays.

As I munched on my second food item (chicken on a stick), I mused upon the traces of the freak show that remain. The inexplicably popular booth where you pay $10 to have someone guess your weight and age; the Super Dogs show where highly trained canines do rediculous things. And, of course, the food hall.

Food is now the main freak of the Exhibition. From foot long hot dogs to deep fried mac ‘n cheese, food maintains its staunch, starchy allegiance to the grotesque.

Which is where I foundered. Instead of pickle-on-a-stick, poutine with bacon, candied apple or hot waffle ice cream sandwich, I went all ethnic and had a delicious pork adobe skewer with rice noodles and egg roll. It was lovely but it filled me up and prevented me from eating anything more than a few licks of my buddy’s soft ice cream.

We watched food shows and mop demos, a bluegrass band, and crazy antics on ice. We strolled the midway as the sun was setting, and went home in a street car full of exhausted, jubilant kids and their near-comatose parents, as the neon lights of the ferris wheel filled the night sky.

This time of year, the colours at a farmers’ market are over-the-top vibrant, like the slutty girl in highschool with her blue eyeshadow and tight red top.

The Edmonton Farmers’ Market is a rich melange of organic farmers, Mennonite and Ukrainian or Polish farmers, and craftspeople. These plaid-shirted organic farmer girls had an especially charming booth.

Let there be cabbage rolls, mushroom soup, sorrel soup, and lots and lots of salad.

So. What. Will. You. Eat. asks my neighbour rather anxiously as she drives me to the Remote Island’s ferry on my way to a 3-day kayaking excursion.

She knows how I am about food. How I arrive on this island with a small suitcase of food supplies then head into town the next day to top it off with fresh shrimp and artisan cheese.

Will. You. Eat. Dried. Food. From. Pouches. she continues. She thinks it’s like spaceship travel.

No, and, Hell no.

First of all, I am kayaking with G and J, a lovely couple I’ve known for years. We agree on many things but perhaps most importantly we are in accord that the deep hatches of kayaks, not to mention their pointy noses, can and must hold all manner of delicious food.

The three days unfold, a gift to all our senses. The waters of Sechelt Inlet welcome us with glassy stillness as we pull out. Blue hills and green mountains unfold like one of those children’s pop-up books. Crossing the inlet to our marine campground, we encounter swelling waves in a sudden wind. I am momentarily terrified.

J shows me how to brace my legs against the inside of the kayak. I keep paddling, and the steady push-pull movement of doing so calms me and finally, brings me to shore.

It’s my night to cook. After we set up camp I lead my good-natured friends on a short walk through shallow water to a rocky outcropping with a view of the other side of the point we’re on. We eat Saltspring Island goat cheese with truffles, and Saturna Island wine (from plastic pink teacups no less).

Back at the camp kitchen that J has outfitted with her usual elegance I make a quick stew of sidestripe shrimp with cherry tomatoes, onions, corn fresh from the cob, garlic, oregano and lemon, basmati rice to go with. It’s nothing fancy (you could do it yourself with all manner of variation) except that the shrimp are fresh, plump, and juicy as fruit.

My friends shiver with delight and I’m proud to feed these folk who have hosted me so often in their oceanside home.

Dinner the next day is J’s creation: two vegetarian curries from the Hollyhock cookbook, naan bread on the side. How could they possibly be so delicious, these curries?

And then of course there is the kayaking, in all of its meditative monotony and unspeakable beauty, the Robinson Crusoe-esque solitude of our campground, and seals that cavort before us like circus performers.

Besides the food and the kayaking, it’s the sunrises that impress me the most, a reminder of both the strength and fragility of this planet we’re on, and its delicate daily movements in the universe.

Neither body nor soul went hungry.

I’ve been thinking about neighbourliness. It’s a cumbersome word for what goes on on this island.

My first day here, J, gruff yet kind-hearted neighbour from across the way, appears on the porch as P and I drink wine, recovering from the trip from Vancouver. He never drops by, but he saw the lights on and came over to check. People keep an eye on things here, quietly.

As the light starts to fade and the cedars breathe out their mysterious evening perfume, J lowers himself into a deck chair with the reluctance of the very shy. In his low, halting voice he fills us in on island doings in the past year, who’s moved away, how the winter went, and the latest gossip on the melancholic dude who runs the General Store, the only commercial establishment on the island.

I mention wanting to be able to eat outdoors this summer (there is barely any patio furniture here). He asks us if we have eggs.

The next day, a table arrives for the deck, and local free-range eggs have been placed in my fridge.

It’s been like that all month long, the length of time I am staying here on Remote West Coast Island.

While I’m out walking, G. my next door neighbour brings over her unimaginably tasty garden lettuce, carefully washed and layered in paper towels. As doors remain unlocked here, she leaves them on the kitchen counter. (We ate them last night, dressed only with kosher salt, a splash of balsamic, two splashes of olive oil. They tasted alive, like no storebought greens ever will).

I walk over with fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies to pass onto her grandsons visiting this weekend.

When 13 year old B was visiting me with her mom, G gifted B with some prints she’s had made, beautiful images of orangutans.

Beloved books with little yellow post-it notes attached get passed from hand to hand.

I call it the eternal potlatch.

This is a large-ish island with a small population. You have to know how to be alone (those long, dark, rainy winters!) and you have to know how to get along. The combination of those two factors, a kind of bitter and a kind of sweet, make being here a uniquely civil and oddly joyous experience. After three years of coming here, I finally get how special this place is.

I never know if I’ll be able to come back, if my academic or research schedule will permit it, if the place will be available next year, if I’ll have the chutzpah to lug books and laptop and clothes and food to a remote island for a month, just to write (and what if I don’t write, or the writing is not good enough to justify the large effort on its behalf?)

But I will carry the shape and spirit of these days and this island inside me for many months after I leave. And that, I’m starting to realize, is the real reason I’m here.

It’s been a week of beautiful activism and courageous resistance. As a counterforce to media images of supposed violent protest, here are some pictures of folks of all ages and sexual orientations demonstrating against the G20 and then, after the largest single mass arrest in Canadian history, protesting police brutality.

An image of innocence, before the police violence that swept the city. Could a garage sale be advertised like this now?

There were young activists everywhere at the peaceful G20 protests, like these two, with their earnest expressions and homemade signs.

A marching band from Montreal had us dancing in the streets – while the cops amassed further up the block.

I wonder if these two got arrested….

Flash-forward three days: 900 people (like the ones you see pictured above) are in jail without charges, have endured taunting, inadequare food and water, and have been denied access to legal support. Mayor David Miller, after condoning this flagrant abuse of civil liberties at an early morning press conference, appears at a Pride flagraising talking about the city’s diversity and tolerance. Pinkwash! Notice the protest signs in the background.

The Lesbian Billionaires appear at the queer flagraising to cheer on police brutality and corporate domination.

More pinkwashing: The next day, a cop guards Toronto’s queer community centre from queer protesters while the Chief of Police is feted by wealthy gays and lesbians inside.

Queers, shut out of the cops’ cocktail party, get into the centre through a side door, shouting “Shame” and “This is What Hypocrisy Looks Like.”

The next day, this protest was on the front page of the Toronto Star.

The Chief of Police cancelled his plans to appear at the Pride Parade.

This is what democracy looks like, these days.

These June evenings are soft-focus, green and slightly breezy, with an azure sky that can make your heart ache.

Amid the branches framing my back porch are cherries, dark and juicy and mysterious.

Last weekend a gaggle of grownups and children came over bearing cherry dishes. The Librarian’s lamb with cherry-rosemary sauce. Strategy Guy’s cherry-stuffed chicken. My own cherry-olive-avocado bruschetta.

And no desserts (or so it seemed). Everyone had tried extra-hard to avoid any cherry cliches.

Two little girls climbed the cherry tree. At first, the moms hovered anxiously, but then fell into a darkly gothic yet satisfying conversation about their kids’ early years (I called it, “Tales From the Crib”).

As night descended, the little girls climbed higher and higher, plucking cherry after cherry and eating every second one.

One of the moms, The PhD Candidate, brought an orzo cherry salad that garnered rave reviews. The Gay Retiree appeared with his boyfriend and an exquisite cherry pie, purchased at a country store.

We ate that pie up, with huge mounds of ice cream.

The little girls went home with cherry stains on their faces, proud of their heroic but necessary feat.

What are you doing/cooking/eating with your cherries this season?

Orzo Cherry Salad

Ingredients:
2 cups Orzo
1 1/2 cups dried cranberries
About 10 fresh cherries

Dressing:
1 cup oil
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp. honey
1 tbsp. curry powder
3/4 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. Dijon mustard

Cook Orzo until al dente, according to directions on package.
While Orzo is cooking, combine all dressing ingredients and shake or stir well.
Drain Orzo completely and transfer to bowl.
While Orzo is still hot, add the dressing. Be generous and make sure Orzo is completely coated. Add dried cranberries and stir. Serve hot or cold. Just before serving, cut in cherry halves and stir in or leave on top as garnish.

There’s been quite a bit of potlucking around here. Summer, my birthday, and a fresh lively wave of queer activism seem to bring out the culinary best in everyone.

First, there was a tapas potluck at The Diasporic Filmmaker’s place, in a charming courtyard with a random lattice work of tree branches above, on one of the hottest days of spring. The Librarian outdid herself with smoked trout canapes, tomato-olive-anchovy bruschetta, and little radicchio leaves filled with beet, goat cheese and chopped walnuts. I made a sweet and sour roasted vegetable dish (recipe below). There was an exquisite tuna tapenade and an insouciant red bowl of fresh figs.

On the way there I had stopped off at Bill’s Lobsters, buying an extravagant two pounds of tiger prawns (it was actually quite reasonable). I fried those prawns in garlic and olive oil, squeezed lemon on top and threw on some basil. As the light fell and candles got lit, faces softened and tongues loosened. Emboldened by Prosecco, our jokes got sexier. I passed around the prawns as a kind of coda to the meal. People protested they could eat no more. But as the night deepened the shadows and made candles flicker, we did.

Issues, affects, opinions and heartfelt passions are simmering in the gaybourhood. You’ve probably heard, but Pride Toronto, the bloated, corporate-driven organization that now organizes Toronto’s Pride Day, has chosen to ban Queers Against Israeli Apartheid from the Pride Parade. An entire community has risen up in protest.

What does this have to do with potlucks or food? Well, the newly organized Lesbian Revengers are mixing it up with grassroots politics, potluck picnics on grassy terrain, and a retro, tongue-in-cheek, pomo, intergenerational approach to organizing. Their motto: “Fight the Right While Also Hooking Up.”

A picnic last Sunday proved the point. Over caprese salad, marinated asparagus spears, samosas, spelt bread, Camembert, and more Prosecco, a group of twenty-two lesbians and queers discussed the current issues. Some had marched in the first Pride Parade in Toronto. Others had been involved in anti-racist, Latin American solidarity, and pro-Palestinian organizing, making the links all these years.

” I remember fighting for space in the first Dyke March in the 1970’s in Vancouver…” said one fifty-something woman, as petals from a blossoming tree fell on her head. Someone else had living memory of the bathhouse raids. A young woman spoke poignantly of how we need to seize this moment in a thoughtful, considered way, otherwise, “Next year it’ll be TD/Canada Trust Pride.”

The sun, hidden from us for days, emerged, caressing bare legs and arms. White petals rained down in a sudden gust of wind.

Sweet and Sour Carrots and Zuchinni With Mint

2 medium zuchinni
2 medium carrots
6 tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 tblspns wine vinegar
A few sprigs of mint plus extra to serve
Sea salt & freshly ground pepper

Slice carrots and zucchini lengthwise into finger-sized pieces. Toss in a bowl with half the olive oil. Place on a cookie sheet and roast at 200 degrees for about 15 – 20 minutes, until slightly browned and caramelized (on a day when it’s too hot to turn on the oven, just throw them onto the grill until cooked but not charred).

After removing the veg from the oven, tip the olive oil into a saucepan. Add vinegar, mint, salt and pepper and the remaining olive oil. Place over high heat and let bubble for a minute or two until slightly reduced. Pour over vegetables. Serve warm or room temperature, extra mint sprinkled over top.

We arrived on a dark, stormy afternoon, to spectacular waves slamming against dark rocks.

Small trips are what we can do right now. My mother steels herself against the small discomforts of travelling and takes pleasure in everything else.

The beauty of the Pacific Rim is wild and pervasive. Expressive waves, the air itself like water, fluid, constantly changing.

Tofino has become something of a foodie destination, allowing my mother and I to engage in our shared gustatory interests. We had fish tacos and homemade rhubarb ice cream at Soba, lamb ragout on homemade noodles at Spotted Bear.

We tried the chowder and the salmon at Wickanninish Inn: they underwhelmed, but the view, from a semi-circular restaurant on a point of land was unbelievable.

At night, I fell asleep to the sound of crashing waves.

Funny what happens when you don’t have time to consult Chowhound. Things work out, somehow.

I had worked night and day to carve out time to get to Eugene for the Console-ing Passions Conference. I had to rely on local knowledge, and the culinary sensibilities of fellow-academics.

The first evening of the conference, I joined forces with two charming profs from Canada. We were in a bar. We needed to eat. Jetlagged and hungry, I approached an older, inebriated man, whose wobbly finger pointed us in the direction of Excelsior. Not bad for a random rec from an aimiable drunk. Local greens, homemade pasta, great wine. We talked about TV all evening long.

The next night, Puget Sound oysters with champagne mignonette, at Marché, in the company of the Brainy Femme Fatale, the Butch Theorist and the Mysterious Montrealer. Femme Fatale had, in fact, consulted Chowhound and, like me when I take on this role, felt responsible for our gustatory happiness. No worries. They had me at “Rhubarb-Vanilla Cocktail.” More spring-themed originality in the cornmeal cake with rhubarb compote and creme fraiche ice cream, shared four ways. We fought over the last succulent bite.

The following day, sublime green papaya salad with grilled chicken with The Sage Film Critic at a Thai restaurant situated on a freeway. Conversation about second wave feminist film and video. Bites of tangy salty-sweet deliciousness.

I couldn’t find a bad bite of food in Eugene.

It was a good lesson. Sometimes, you just need to let go.

Granola, like the music of Bruce Cockburn and the seductive subliminal possibilities of The Vegetarian Epicure Cookbook, was my ticket out. Out of the suburbs, out of childhood, out of normativity.

Granola. It was so hard to get, when you lived on Featherston Drive in Ottawa in 1975. I had to smuggle it past the border cops (my ma, my siblings), eat it on the sly. As I got bolder, I felt less ashamed about pleasuring myself: I made my own. Granola: metaphor and metonym. It prepared me for the more unruly and unsanctioned pleasures soon to be provided by the neon lights, feminist collectives, lesbian bars, and art communities of 1980s Toronto.

In Eugene Oregon for the Console-ing Passions Conference on Television, Audio, Video, New Media, and Feminism this past week, I had a granola-flashback. It lasted four days and began with breakfast, of course. The B&B I stayed, Secret Garden Inn, makes their own granola, and eating that textural, tasty and no-too-sweet concoction strengthened me for the long hours of social and scholarly labour ahead.

Sarah Palin showed up in Eugene during my visit, and was greeted by protesters including the feminist group Code Pink. Palin snidely claimed to be a granola-eater too, as well as a consumer of fresh-killed organic food.

Her presence in this hippie-ish university town underscored the heartbreaking contradictions of this nation for which I have so much affection and history (progressive fellow scholars, artists, feminists) and whose official national project is so fraught with contempt for low-income and racialized people. A perusal of The New York Times reveals a death-row convict who will be killed by firing squad, new legislation in Arizona making it a crime for immigrants to not have their papers on them (seriously, wouldn’t a red star sewn on all their clothes be easier?) and a plethora of corporate-owned charter schools, the new educational normal. Oh, America.

Granola flashback #2: I popped into Eugene’s Saturday Market, a veritable museum of tie-dye, candlemaking and stoneware pottery. Youths and older ladies in hemp-ish gowns danced to fiddle music. A man with a grey beard sold me an exquisite pot of artisan sweet-chili goatcheese, pride and satisfaction in his every gesture.

Later, dropping into an organic food store for airplane snack supplies, I saw the biggest display of granola ever. Granola of every stripe, raw, cooked, with or without gluten, everyday and fancy.

I left Eugene in the wee hours of the following morning, a baggie of Secret Garden granola and a hand-written recipe thoughtfully slipped into my room.

Secret Garden B&B Granola Recipe

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup honey
3 tspn cinnamon
1/2 tspn nutmeg
4 cups oats
1/2 cup chopped almonds (or other nuts or seeds)

Mix sugar, honey and spices in a small pot and place over low heat until honey is melted.

Combine oats and almonds in a large bowl. Pour sweet mixture over top and mix until combined with wooden spoon.

Place mixture on 2 baking trays and place in preheated oven, stirring frequently, for 15-20 mins.

Remove from oven and add 1/2 cup coconut shaving and 1/2 cup chopped dried fruit if desired.