Let’s talk picnics, shall we?

I’ve been picnic-ing since my birthday in May. That picnic was luxurious: croissant, olives, baguette, duck pate and a selection of rich, fancy cheeses from La Fromagerie, the snobby cheese place in my ‘hood. Me, my sister, and The Girlfriend. It was friendly, silly…and delicious.

I know, I know, it’s poured rain ever since, but really, folks, you have to seize the moment.

On a gentle, warm Monday summer evening this week, The Girlfriend and I headed to High Park, picnic knapsack in hand. The park felt intimate, with just a few frisbeeing, fishing, jogging, dogwalking and picnic-ing souls. We parked our plaid blankets by Grenadier Pond and feasted on the following menu:

Watermelon feta salad
Churrasco chicken
Sundried Tomato Pasta Salad
Greens with lemon, olive oil and sea salt
Strongbow cider and Creemore beer
Blueberries and raspberries for dessert

It was all yummy (although I’d forgotten how salty the churrasco chicken is, how it needs something bland, like bread or potatoes, alongside). But the watermelon salad (recipe below) stole the salad show, I must say. And the cider matched the chicken perfectly.

The hues of the water changed subtly from jade to dark green. The ducks took little delicate swims. Dorky men in golfshirts and shorts appeared at the edges of the pond for solitary bouts of fishing. The Girlfriend and I leaned into each other, nibbled on berries and talked about sweet, funny things.

We ended the night with incredible house-made ice cream from Ed’s Real Scoop (2224 Queen St. E), at the other end of town, in The Beach (we have a long distance relationship, The Girlfriend and I). Spicy chocolate and blood orange: quite the sexy sexy combo.

Been on any picnics lately?

Watermelon Salad

This salad is fast, pretty, refreshing and different, and goes well with grilled chicken or alongside a grain-based salad. Make it at the last minute and prepare only as much as you need: it doesn’t keep well.

1/4 medium-sized watermelon
1/4 red onion, diced finely (I used green onions, which also works)
1 stalk celery, 1/4 inch dice
1 T finely chopped parsley
1 T finely chopped basil or mint (optional)
1/2 pitted kalamata olives (I used a jar of sliced, to save time - just as good)
1 t extra virgin olive oil
1/2 c crumbled feta

Cube or melon ball the watermelon; reserve.
In a medium bowl, combine everything else. Drain watermelon (it will continue to produce juice) and toss gently with ingredients in bowl.

Serves 4

It’s 9 a.m. on a glorious July morning. My 81-and-a-half-year-old mother taps her foot impatiently.

I try my best to ignore her. I’m inhaling coffee and adjusting to my new environment. After one month on a remote island and three days in the Comox Valley, I’m jangled to find myself in Edmonton. It’s relatively quiet in my ma’s condo but even so, I find the traffic and construction sounds disturbing. And then there’s the audio track of my mother’s impatient sighs.

It’s Saturday. It’s Market Day.

I gulp back the last of my coffee, grab my knapsack, my sunglasses and my chapeau. That wide Alberta sky can deliver serious rays. My ma herds me to the bus, and then, just as quickly, herds me off. Are. You. Sure. I ask. This ain’t where we used to go to market years ago: a sad, dusty indoor place that’s been around since the 60’s. Yes. I’m. Sure. she says haughtily and disappears into a crowd.

This is a delightful surprise: a sizeable outdoor Edmonton Farmer’s Market spanning two city blocks.

I speed up, trying to track my Ma’s white hairdo in the crowd. She’s already bought rhubarb, poppyseed roll and cherries by the time I catch up. She’s excited about the cherries: We’ll. Make. Cherry. Perogies. she says. I manage to score some organic garlic scapes and kale from a charming vegan couple who host the only organic booth at the market. Local raspberries, and honey face cream from Coal Lake Honey Farm start to weigh down my bags.

Oddly, there’s a Sobey’s Supermarket next to the outdoor market. My ma concludes her high-speed shopping by roaming the fancy aisles, which span both groceries and a kind of upscale cafeteria, She’s got a routine. Now. We. Have. Lunch. she says firmly. She spoons herself some mushroom soup from a steaming cauldron and heads, with great dignity and determination, to a cafe table.

I know those soups. They’re salty and greasy. My Ma slurps hers with enormous satisfaction. She has high blood pressure, and most of the time she eats pretty healthy. But sometimes the lady needs a break.

I slip out and grab shrimp ceviche from a Mexican takeout trailer I noticed at the market. I sneak it back in and join my ma. It’s delicious, tangy and spicy. My mother shakes her head in mock-exasperation as I finish my illicit nosh. She’s had a bit of an outing, got her shopping done, had a visit with me. She looks happy, satisfied.

As we head back on the bus, I wonder how the coming week - the length of my visit - will go. There are spaces as large as frozen fields between us, differences impossible to bridge. There’s no way I can understand what it has meant for her to have her body ravaged by cancer. What it’s like to eat only pureed foods; to wheeze constantly; to speak through a tube in your throat.

She’ll never get the queer details of my life, what it means for me to have a lover that i can’t really talk about, someone who fills me with an intense joy that I have to hide from her. What it’s like to constantly edit those queer details: in the classroom, in the lunchroom; in her very own kitchen. What effect that’s had on my intimate relationships: sometimes, it just didn’t seem worth the trouble it would cause.

But for now there is soup to be made. I have bought local hothouse tomatoes, cucumber, peppers. When we get home, I will make my mother a fragrant gazpacho.

Sometimes, it’s the food and not the words that bridges the gap.

Gazpacho Soup

Ingredients:

2 1/2 pounds vine-ripened tomatoes, chopped
1 medium green bell pepper, chopped
1 medium red bell pepper, chopped
1 small fresh jalapeño chili, or to taste, seeded and chopped (wear rubber gloves)
1 small onion, chopped
1 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded, and chopped
3 large garlic cloves, minced and mashed to a paste with 3/4 teaspoon salt
enough white bread, crusts removed and bread torn into pieces, to measure 2 cups (about 4 slices)
3 tablespoons red-wine vinegar, or to taste
3 tablespoons olive oil
ice water for thinning soup
croutons (optional)

In a blender purée chopped tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapeño, onion, and cucumber, garlic paste, bread, vinegar, oil, and salt and pepper to taste. The soup will taste better if it’s chilled for a few hours.

Thin soup with ice water and serve topped with croutons.

Now that the sun is here to stay, and the beach is a swath of cool relief from hot days, visitors are arriving on this island. There are the summer people and the weekend people, and there are my friends.

Before they come, they ask what to bring. Bedding? Booze? Camping supplies? Just bring ingredients and a recipe for one meal I say.

I meet friends at the ferry and watch covertly as tension disappears from their faces. It happens sometime between the end of the ferry ride and the middle of walking up the second hill. They arrive at this shady cabin and unload their food supplies. They always bring more than a meal: The Performance Artist, exceedingly generous in her foodways, immediately set out appetizers: dark seedy crackers and gouda cheese. She confided that she had, on her way to the ferry, hopped a cab to a fancy Vancouver food store, Urban Fare, to buy morels and gnocchi for her meal. You. Are. Way. Out. Of. My. League. I said to her.

It’s fun to see what people bring and how they cook. It gives them a way to participate, gives me a break from my sometimes rigid old world hostessing agenda.

Performance Artist cooked up a delicious cream sauce for the morels – sans recipe – making it up as she went along. She cooks the ways she makes art, spontaneously, loosely. She created a new salad by gathering the salmonberries that are everywhere on the island, and sprinkling them onto mixed greens with slivered almonds (you could do this with raspberries too).

We took a trip into Gibson’s to check out the Fiddlehead Farmer’s Market: garlic scapes and arugula got added to our meals. But the highlight was really the Salvation Army thrift store, full of four dollar vintage gems.

The Anthropologist arrived a day after Performance Artist left. She never cooks, she says, so the imperative to bring a meal threw her for a loop. She was intimidated, perhaps even scared. She went online.

That night for dinner we had butter chicken that came out of a plastic bag. It had been ordered from a student-run company that brings meals to your door. She brought naan bread, too, and I found some lime pickle in the fridge. It was smooth and tasty comfort food.

In between meals we walked the trails, light streaming through branches, foxglove swaying like vertical prayer banners, birds declaiming their raucous speech. Both of my friends are moms and their relief at being away for just a couple of days was palpable.

These summer days, fleeting and lovely.

Have you ever cooked or baked with salmonberries?

Community pride

family pride
campy pride

older lady pride

dyke pride

dressing up queer pride

bi pride

lesbian pride

sexy strong beautiful pride

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.

It all began with lobsters.

It was my birthday weekend. I had to have lobsters.

As usual, this was a recipe for trouble. While The New Girlfriend stood in a supermarket lineup waiting for a “barcode problem” to be resolved and our future dinner wriggled in its bag, (how do you barcode a lobster?)I was at home, looking dolefully at the hammer and pliers and realizing: a) I had once again neglected to purchase lobster implements, b) I only had a medium-size soup pot on hand, c) Five people would be eating 5 lobsters, and d) Each live lobster would have to be murdered individually.

Can. You. Please. Make. Me. A. Cocktail. I said to my sister, visiting for the weekend and she complied, if warily.

I put the potatoes in to bake. I minced garlic for garlic butter. I waited for the lobsters to arrive and the proverbial claws to hit the fan.

The New Girlfriend was pleasant enough when she returned, despite the long trip foraging for crustaceans, but stated unequivocally that she would not be involved in the carnage. The Queer Organizer arrived with her new girlfriend, The Experimental Filmmaker, and both quickly got out of the kitchen and onto the deck, where appetizers awaited: as far from the doomed lobsters as possible.

New Girlfriend got very busy fitting the lobsters into the fridge so they wouldn’t die.

Uh. I. Think. They’re. On. Death. Row. I reminded her. She ignored me, which she has been doing more of lately, or at least when my humour gets a little too dry or macabre.

I stood helplessly in the kitchen. The Filmmaker came in and said she’d stay in the room with me while I cooked the damn things. I laughed, in what I hoped was a bitter and tragic manner.

Finally, it was my little sister who saved the day. I’ll. Do. It. she said. I’d never seen such steely resolve in her before. Shoulders squared, jaw set, she opened a bag. Into the boiling water went the first lobster, but not before clinging to the edge of the pot. I heard a scream. I think it was me. The New Girlfriend and I held each other, suddenly sentimental. My sister sipped calmly on her gin and tonic, munched on an appetizer, and then pulled the cooked lobster out of the water. In and out they went.

Meanwhile, The Filmmaker found instructions in Joy of Cooking on How to Eat a Lobster Without Implements, written in 1940. As we began to eat, she read aloud. It sounded extremely complicated, rather like an anatomy class.

Eventually, everyone just used the hammer and pliers. It all got quite primitive, delicious, and fun.

Friends and family and food. Things coming together, the world turning on its axis, and love, so necessary, complicated, and ever-changing, at the centre of it all.

It’s not always a picnic, being sisters. All that history. Memories we can’t agree on, recollections that don’t match, completely different ways of being in the world despite the identical DNA.

My sister is visiting me for my birthday weekend. Fourteen years between us, pretty much an entire generation. She remembers me organizing her birthday parties: treasure hunts and other games, in an era before paint ball. She remembers so much that I don’t, and vice-versa. A road trip with a motel and wood-panelled walls; some crazy party I took her to, I recall none of it! But we’re saying things with our memories, putting together a story that makes sense. How I wanted to show her a certain possible world of creativity: in art, in relationships, in food. How she noticed and remembered so much, and then wrote her own script.

I take her to my workplace, show her Kensington Market with all of its food smells, booming reggae music, glittering colourful vintage stores. She takes photos constantly, the lens of the camera her way of negotiating the unfamiliar, and also a way of finding and preserving beauty in the world. Her photos (check out her flicker site) are quirky, lovely: they make me see things I hadn’t even thought of noticing, small, glittering moments in a messy urban world.

The day ends in a simple, easy meal. She’s no foodie, this one, but she does enjoy food and that’s good enough for me. We make guacamole and mango-tomato salsa together, sipping gin and tonics as we go. My lover arrives and they settle in to a conversation about being the youngest in a large family. Great to have siblings organizing birthday parties, but sometimes, they agree, there was just a little too much mothering going on.

I’ve had to learn to be less protective of her, have learnt to take care of myself instead.

Dinner is
grilled chili-lime chicken, potato salad and tossed greens. We eat out on the deck for the first time of the season, drink vinho verde. I start to relax for the first time in days. I’m turning fifty. This is what it feels like. This is where I am.

All photos except one by Lydia.

The long weekend was both long and short.

Long because my ma was in hospital in B.C. and I couldn’t get to her and bring her the carrot juice, pureed soup and cappucino I knew she’d need.

Short because I spent most of it with someone I like, and the hours ran sweetly into one another, like a long sip of good wine.

Long because it rained most of the weekend and the evenings came with a sharp, autumnal wind.

Long because we stretched it out:

With a leisurely later afternoon lunch (slunch?) at Terroni on Queen St West. I was feeling flush, what with a recent labour dispute settlement, and treated Someone I Like to a meal: veal sandwich and a beer, as it turned out. I. Did. Not . See. That. Coming. I said in mock-shock. I didn’t even know Terroni’s, famed for its traditional southern Italian food, had sandwiches on the menu!

Me, I ordered the chickpea farina-tuna- green salad, which was OK, and a softly amazing housemade gnocchi with tomato sauce and ricotta, a lovely pinot noir along side. My lunch companion sighed over the sandwich and I have to admit, after a bite of it, I appreciated its smoky, gamy flavours.

Long because we saw a few movies at the Inside Out Festival, and those movies were lengthy, and challenging. I did enjoy an intense, dark German lesbian drama, Vivere (Taxi Driver - meets- Lost In Translation). No lipstick, no romance, just a lot of driving and regrettable romance. Bring It On!

Long because this spring is long, with chilly weather and blowsy, blooming trees and shrubs, wherever you look. A sudden pool of fragrant air, and then it’s gone, you keep walking, wanting more.

You sit in a cafe on College Street, late in the evening, and hover over tea, and raspberry-rhubarb pie, holding the hand of someone you like.

Long and short, good and sad, piquant, swift moments embedded in a continuuim of grey clouds, hours, rain, and days.