Food is a rather large part of my life. You know how people say, “men think of sex X number of times a day”? Well I don’t. Well, I do, but the number of food-related fantasies that run through my head significantly dwarfs the number of sexual fantasies I experience in the run of a day. Food is my constant obsession, and has been for many, many years.
I should explain that my obsession is about more than just eating. I love being around food, and preparing food, too. When I’m working in a job I hate, I find nothing more relaxing than to leave work and go straight to the grocery store. I’ll wander the produce section for an hour, thinking about what’s in my fridge and freezer, while I feel, smell, and taste my way along. The cheese counter alone can take up to half an hour of mine time, but these acts, this whole process of selecting and purchasing food calms and soothes me better than any therapist, or babbling brook. Then to meander home and make my dreams a reality, to sit and enjoy the results of my labour. Wow. Perfection.
Recently, though, my relationship with food has changed, and taken a turn to maturity, a turn that could very well change my life forever.
Last Spring, I left a job I hated. I spent a year going to a terrible, institutional, building to try and teach a subject I loved to 4 groups of reticent learners. Daily I tried to instil a love for literature, and film into the hearts of 120 teens. They were wonderful. They were challenging. They taught me lots. Unfortunately, the administration, bureaucracy, politics, and incompetence that seems to thrive in our education system were too much. I decided I was either going to stick things out and drink myself to death, or I was going to leave the profession. The kids and I lost out. They couldn’t leave, but I could.
I embarked on a voyage, of a quasi-spiritual basis. I was in search of (this is the clichéd part) happiness. Enlightenment. Something more. Against the better judgement of most, I dropped out of polite society. I traveled, worked when I wanted to, spent loads of time around my folks. In the midst of this journey, I found myself in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
One day, I invited myself to visit some old friends who lived in Maitland, on the Minas Basin. Patricia and John Whidden are retired school teachers who live with John’s mother in his boyhood home. Mrs. Whidden, being of noble age, is in need of constant care, and Patricia and John, with the help of extended family, are gracious enough to give it. We had a lovely afternoon of catching up. John and I drove half the countryside. He gave me his family history. Drove me to the house where he and Pat raised their family. While being full-time teachers and parents, they found time to farm as well. When John spoke of farming, his eyes lit up. Although he loved history, and was what could only be called a legendary teacher, farming held his heart. Time and health conditions had paid their toll on John, though, and he has left farming for his son, and the younger generations. We returned to the house, for supper was soon upon us and you did not keep Patricia waiting. (John and Pat are one of those wonderful couples who support each other, and love each other in a way that is consummate and beautiful. When one speaks of the other, it is with the utmost respect, and passion. A rare, and wonderful thing.)
When we entered the house, the smells of supper met us at the door, hugging us like our Grandmother would, teasing us like our high school crush. Pat was closing the oven. “Just a few more minutes for the fish, boys, you’re just in time.” she said, “I should apologize Frankie, I’m not much of a cook. Could I get you a glass of wine?” Conversation and wine flowed. It was good to be amongst friends.
After a time, we were taken to dine. The meal was to be Bass, accompanied by potatoes, beets and pickles. This meal was no supermarket purchase, though. The Bass was caught the day before by John, out of the waters that you could smell when you stepped into the dooryard. The vegetables were Pat’s, grown in her garden. The pickles, too, were homemade. The meal was, without a doubt, unrivalled that day in Hants County. The fish was flaky and tender. The vegetables were fresh, and full of flavour. The pickles, divine. But as I ate, I came to a realization. The most striking thing about the meal was not its flavour, but the fact that everything that was brought to the table was there because of the work of my hosts. They hadn’t just cooked the meal, they had created it. The plants were nurtured by Pat from seeds, and cared for until they produced. John took time out of his day to go to the water, to sit, and to wait until he could catch a fish for his table. For our table. For me. I wiped a small tear from the corner of my eye, and said yes to tea and desert.
Not long after this meal, I was dining with other friends who were also gardeners, Donna and Vernon Goodfellow. Their children are my age, and I had worked for and with Vernon at a couple of different schools in China, so we had a long history, and lots of things to catch up on. When supper came around, Donna announced that people should pick up their own, whenever they were ready, and everyone queued up. Everything was going well, until I reached the Carrot Pot.
Allow me to interrupt.
I hate cooked carrots. I think that there is nothing more awful and bland than a cooked carrot. I’ve never understood why we take these wonderfully crunchy, tasty treats, and submit them to boiling so that they can become a tasteless mush. To be honest, in the last few years, I’ve even found myself getting away from fresh carrots. My tastes seemed to be changing, for now I even find the raw ones dry, woody and tasteless. That said, my mother taught me to be polite, to eat what I was served, and to eat all of it. I scooped out a small stack of sticks, and went to my place. I ate my way through the Salmon, the rice, the Brussel sprouts, and at last, looked to the orange blight that sat on the edge of my plate (I’d been contemplating “accidentally” knocking them to the floor, but I hate waste more than carrots.) They stared at me, taunting me. In an attempt to finish them quickly, I pierced as many as I could onto my fork at once and shoved them in.
It was at this point I was reborn. The carrots were sweet and wonderful. They still, as my aunt Gail would say, had a bone in them. They seemed to transport me back to childhood. I had an un-summoned memory of my Great-Grandfather pulling a carrot out of his garden, wiping it on the wet grass and handing it to me. I could taste its earthiness, its goodness. I went for seconds of just carrots which drew notice from my Mother and Father, my long time foes in the Battle of Carrots. They exchanged curious glances.
The meal, and the evening ended, and I went home to contemplate and muse. Why were Donna and Vernon’s carrots so much better than all the others I’d eaten in the last ten, perhaps twenty years? I mean, a vegetable is a vegetable, right? Of course not. You see these carrots were different, because they were ours. They were grown here, for the sole purpose of being eaten. You see, food that’s grown far away, say in California for instances, has a long and arduous journey to make it to my plate in New Brunswick. In order to withstand the rigours of the journey, they have to be genetically engineered or cross-bred to be hard, and hardy in order to withstand 5000 miles of travel (Let’s not even begin to consider the environmental cost of such a procedure. That’s a tangent for another day.) Frequently, this hardiness is gained at a loss of flavour. The sweetest tasting produce won’t sell if it is wilted, or bruised. Vernon and Donna’s carrots only had to travel from their yard to their kitchen.
These two meals have changed me, in a way I can’t quite explain. I find myself wandering the produce section, looking for food that’s been grown as close to me as possible, a daunting task in Canada, in February. I find that I’m searching for methods to can beans, and sun-dry tomatoes. I’m spending more time looking for heirloom seeds on the internet than I am looking for recipes. I don’t want to become part of a movement, I just want to become a bigger part of the machine that feeds me, and my friends. Oh, and I want to do it better than the machine that’s currently in place. That machine has been feeding, and failing me for years. John and Pat, and Donna and Vernon didn’t. I shouldn’t, either.
frankenough 