Recipes for Trouble

Almost all food is regrettable, if you are a woman.

I know that’s a bit of a generalization, but I really don’t know a single lady who doesn’t in some way loathe her body.

Some of us break the loathing down into manageable pieces, as in: I can’t stand my breasts, belly and ass. But then, for form’s sake we’ll add in some trivial body part that we do like. I always mention my feet, which I adore, as they are entirely symmetrical and tidy and relatively small.

Sometimes, if we are foodies, or gourmets, or simply love pastry, the regret is foisted upon us, like a kind of citizen’s food police, or a Homeland Security of eating.

This happened once when I was coming back from a Polish bakery on East Hastings Street in Vancouver. It’s not like I had made a special trip to this bakery; I’m sure I was returning home from my indentured labour job as a sessional instructor at Simon Fraser University. I still had a whole hour left on my transfer (the one and only great thing about Vancouver transit is that one bus ticket buys you two hours of unlimited travel, more if you crumple the transfer and flash it quickly and artfully).

I decided to do a pit stop at the Polish bakery, and heal my exhaustion and low self-esteem with torte. I had recently been in Ukraine, land of my parents’ birth, and I had partaken of all manner of exotic and glamorous tortes there. The torte display at the Polish bakery would serve as a kind of corrective to the low-grade sense of loss and displacement I had felt ever since I’d returned.

It was probably pay day, because I bought not one, but three slices of three different kinds of torte, and the dour Polish lady behind the counter reverently placed them in three small white individual cardboard boxes, like they were fancy pieces of jewellery.

Trying to reduce my carbon footprint, I turned down the kind offer of a plastic bag, which meant that I ended up back on the by-then rather crowded Hastings bus with three small square white boxes balanced precariously on my lap. Still, I felt pretty good about myself. I’d just been paid about $120 for about 160 hours of work, and I’d spent a good chunk of it on enormous slices of Ambassador Torte, Black Forest Cake and Dobosch Torte, which I hadn’t eaten since I was a kid.

A dyke I knew got on at Commercial Drive. That’s the thing about Commercial Drive, you’re always going to run into a dyke you slept with, or hadn’t slept with and wished you had, or had slept with and were no longer speaking to. This woman, tall, sporty, Nordic, with some kind of Scandinavian accent, smiled when she saw me and made her way over to my seat. We’ll call her Gretchen.

What’s. In. The. Boxes. Gretchen asked aimiably.

Torte. I mumbled. You know, cake.

All of it? All three boxes?

Uh. Yeah. I looked around, hoping no one else was listening.

What will you do with all that cake?

Eat. It. I whispered.

All by yourself?

I nodded, shamefully.

At home?

I desperately wished I could tell Gretchen that I had hungry mouths to feed; that I was hosting an elegant tea party; that somehow, the eating of these cakes would contribute to the greater social good. But three hours of teaching Women and Popular Culture had pretty much cleaned me out of my repertoire of funny and untrue stories.

Wow. said Gretchen, shaking her head. You. Really. Love. To. Eat.

And that was really regrettable, because of course it was hard to enjoy the torte after that. I did eat my three slices of cake, every last crumb, once I got home, but I did it as more of a political act. As though I’m someone who really loves her body, and could care less about what people think, and yet, regrettably, it seems that I do.

Who doesn’t love broccoli?

OK there’s the name, for starters. It’s frilly and diminutive; perhaps its parents wanted to call it “Brock” but changed their minds once they saw the crooked arms and poufy extremities (even more adorable is “broccolini”, broccolli’s smaller cousin, but that’s another story). In fact, broccoli, from the Italian brocco, which means shoot or stalk, is a diminutive of that word (thus, little stalk).

Broccoli is in season now, but you don’t see many food writers or bloggers extolling its virtues. Seduced by corn, tomatoes and summer squash, the plain-Jim broccoli is ignored until winter, when its fair (or foul) weather friends come calling.

Me, I always go for the underdog.

But broccoli’s actually more like Clark Kent, a mild-mannered, self-effacing superhero.

It’s high in vitamin C and fiber and has many potent anti-cancer properties that work to boost the immune system.It ’s also a good source of Protein, Vitamin E Thiamin, Riboflavin, Pantothenic Acid, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus and Selenium, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin B6, Folate, Potassium and Manganese. Broccoli leaves are edible, too, and contain way more betacarotene than the florets. Broccoli’s also full of Vitamin K, a little known super-vitamin that helps blood coagulate and strengthens the bones.

I ate broccoli a lot when I was a low-income artist and sessional instructor. I was on a tight food budget. I’d go into a shop and think about what I could make for, like, four dollars. Stir-fry. Chili. Minestrone soup. My good friend broccoli agreed with every dish.

And then, I sold my soul to the devil and got myself a decent job. (Academic by Day, Artist by Night, I call myself, but even that’s stretching it). Broccoli went by the wayside as I spent the big bucks on heirloom tomatoes, stripey and orangy beets, or enormous mushrooms with fancy names. Oh, and then there was my dalliance with frozen foods at the height of the semester: dreadful mushy organic cannelloni, or bland vegetarian burritos.

Breaking my wrist as well as encountering some of serious back pain this past year brought me to my senses.

Broccoli, I’m back.

Lately I’ve been eating a lot of the quinoa salad I created, recipe below. But I’m needing some new approaches. Do you love the unsung hero broccoli as much as I do? How do you cook it? What deliciously healthful, plain or exotic, complex or simple dishes have you created in homage?

Tabouleh a la Broccoli

1 cup uncooked quinoa (you could substitute bulgur if quinoa is too hard to find)
About 2 cups chopped broccoli
A handful or 2 of finely chopped parsley
1 block of firm tofu
1/2 cup sliced olives
1 clove garlic
2 glugs of seasoned rice vinegar
1 small glug of olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Cook quinoa for about 15 minutes in 2 cups salted water, until tender yet firm. You can either steam the broccoli separately or throw it in with the quinoa at the seven minute mark or so (you don’t want the broc to be too soft). (If using bulgur, you don’t have to cook it, just steam according to directions).

Meanwhile, chop the parsely, slice the olives (I use pre-sliced! shhh!), smash the garlic. Throw it in a bowl.

About the tofu: I like to chop it into chunks, arrange it on a baking tray, and pour soya sauce and a bit of veg broth over all. Roast at 350 degrees for about ten minutes or until lightly browned and un-soft.

Throw in the tofu, the quinoa, the broccoli, and pour the vinegar and olive oil over all. Toss, chill, and eat. Stores well for a week or so in the fridge. Great with chicken. Great on its own.

I admit, some of my posts have been a little bleak lately.

The end of August, blurring with the beginning of the academic year makes me cranky. As do neighbourhood propane explosions and the epidemic of cancer.

So last Friday I hopped on a Go Bus, paid $8.50, and ended up in the lovely little town of Uxbridge where a woman named Elizabeth picked me up and took me to Willo’ Wind Farm. I was staying there for a couple of nights in order to get some more writing done on my new manuscript, but I have to say that this trip also gave me back a sense of hope I’ve been needing for awhile.

Snuggled amid gentle rolling hills, this is a small, multi-purpose farm devoted to organic farming. Chickens, hens, roosters and geese stroll around companionably, while a pig snores volubely in a pile of hay.

We found they live longer when they’re allowed out of the pens, explains Elizabeth as she serves me a breakfast of farm fresh eggs my first morning there. They always come back, she adds, with a smile. Farming and hosting a bed and breakfast is more than a commercial exercise for these folks. People from the city need the smells, and the memories, of a farm, she tells me, her blue eyes glowing.

Indeed, though I’ve told her I’m a city person through and through, I can’t help but be reminded of my mother’s village in Ukraine, where geese rule the roads and small handcrafted cottages abut onto fields of potatoes, presided over by weather worn matriarchs wielding hoes.

From time to time, Willo’Wind hosts weekend retreats for teens, whose philosophy is inspired by the Catholic Worker Movement. The kids are asked to leave their I-Pods, MP3 players and cellphones on the school bus, and made to think about food, where it comes from, who has it and who doesn’t, as they walk through the farm. Elizabeth quotes one kid who said The. Only. Walking. I. Usually. Do. Is. From. The. Car. To.The. Mall.

I suspect there’s a not-so-hidden agenda in this incredibly affordable and welcoming place - hospitality and generosity, laced through the food and the ambience, are bound to make guests more aware of the relationship of food to market and table, and its potent mixture of hard work and love. As I write, I see Elizabeth and her son Adrian through the window, picking vegetables under a gold, lingering sun. Just like Ukraine, where long summer nights meant longer hours, keeping ahead of the weeds and bringing the harvest in.

Elizabeth encourages me to walk through hers and the neighbouring farm, and so, between bouts of writing, I do. Hovering rain clouds paint the sky with watercolour wash one evening; the next afternoon sees wide, expressive blue skies and billowing cumulus overseeing whispering cornfields and groomed shady paths bordered by apple trees. The onerous, clashing agendas of my coming semester - pedagogy; writing; filmmaking; community - begin to find some harmony in my mind.

On my last morning at Willo’Wind I’m fed homemade scones still warm from the oven. Elizabeth shows me a book she’s reading, Silences, by Tillie Olsen. We zoom out of the farm and back to Uxbridge, where I drop by the Uxbridge farmer’s market before catching the bus home.

Adrian and his friends stand proudly behind their leeks, carrots, beets, kale, chard, beans, potatoes and pickled eggs. I notice they’re the only organic booth at the market and realize what a brave, necessary and hopeful enterprise this is.

There was an environmental disaster in north Toronto on the weekend. 12,000 people were evacuated from their homes due to an explosion at a propane plant.

Except that I never heard the words ‘environmental’ or ‘disaster’. I heard ‘evacuation’. I heard the kindly patronizing voices of police and Salvation Army workers.

I heard about a lady in her seventies who woke up to a huge blast outside her window, and shattered glass on her bed.

The poem below, by Ukrainian poet Oksana Zabuzhko may have been inspired by the after-effects of Chernobyl, but it resonates for me in a time of extreme environmental hazard and change.

What does this have to do with food? Does it make it more or less important to buy local organic food? Does it make a difference? How do we make change?

Letter From the Summer House
Translated by Douglas Smith

Dear_______,
The land’s rusty again.
Acid rain: our blackened cucumber wines
Jut from the earth like scorched wire.
And I’m not sure about the orchard this year.
It nees a good cleaning up,
But I’m scared of those trees. When I walk
Among them, it feels like I’m going to step
On some carcass rotting in the tall grass,
Something crawling with worms, something smiling
Sickly in the hot sun.
And I get nervous over the sounds:
The day before yesterday, in the thicket, meowing,
The monotonous creaking of a tree,
The suppressed cackling of geese - all constantly
Straining for the same note. Do you remember
The dry elm, the one lightning turned
Into a giant charred bone last summer?
Sometimes I thing it lords
Over the whole garden, infecting everything with rabid madness.
How do mad trees act?
Maybe they run amok like derailed streetcars. Anyway,
I keep an axe by the bed, just in case.
At least the butterflies are mating: we’ll have
Caterpillars soon. Oh yes, the neighbour’s daughter
Gave birth - a boy, a bit overdue. He had hair and teeth
Already, and could be a mutant,
Because yesterday, only nine days old, he shouted,
“Turn off the sky!”, and hasn’t said a word since.
Otherwise, he’s a healthy baby.
So, there it is. If you can get away
For the weekend, bring me something to read,
Preferably in the language I don’t know.
The ones I call mine are exhausted.

Kisses, love, O.

I found this poem via a lovely blog - listed in my blogroll - sworn to lucidity