Whatcha cookin'?

Now that I am a full-fledged housefrau, I have a little more time to concoct edible delights. You know, move past the jell-o-with-whipped-cream phase into more of a home-made-brownies-with-bailey's phase of cooking.

Lately, I've been pretending that I own a little bistro. Please note that I do not aspire to actually owning a bistro. I could think of nothing more horrifying than making people pay me to eat my sometimes dubious cooking. But when I'm in the kitchen, I day dream a lot, and one of my fantasies is that I'm the owner of a funky restaurant in Kinkytown and I'm being interviewed by some idiot on the Food network about my fascinating menu.

It often goes something like this:

Idiot from Food Network: So tell us about today's exciting features!
Funky Bistro Owner (aka Me): Well, in the summer we make both a hot soup and a cold soup -
Idiot: Uh Huh! Wow! Cold soup!
FBO: - and a choice of two daily salads that change every day -
Idiot: Wow! Cuz people really love salads!
FBO: (shoots Idiot a look of annoyance) - Yes. Right. So, we have favourites that stay on the menu permanently, like our chili, and we always offer a few gluten-free options -
Idiot: Oh yeah, my sister's totally into the gluten free movement, that's becoming very popular!
FBO: (fingering a sharp skewer) It's not a movement. People have gluten intolerances that make them sick.
Idiot: True, true, but it's a great way to lose weight, isn't it! I love these foodie trends!
FBO (skewers Idiot through heart, hides him in compost pile)

Ahem.

For some reason, having these imaginary interviews and restaurant fantasies inspires me to make different stuff for dinner. I picture myself in the bistro, deciding that today's special will be Thai-inspired, so I'll take the leftover BBQ'd meat from last night, slice it up and roll the meaty goodness inside delicate rice-paper wraps, along with whatever wilty vegetables I can find in the crisper. I'll whip up some peanut sauce (which is different almost every time I make it because I can't remember the real recipe, which came from my vegetarian pal who never writes his recipes down anyway), fry up some tofu, and there we go. Or I'll do a running commentary as I blend two recipes together for a batch of soup, throwing in spices that seem to fit, running out to the garden for a handful of dill or chives and pretending it's part of the organic meadow that magically grows behind the bistro. It's weird, but it works.

Yesterday, I made the "daily salad" specials: wild rice with apple, old cheddar, celery, onion and pumpkin seeds in a honey-dijon dressing, and an improvised raw broccoli/cauliflower salad with shredded carrot, marble cheese, green onion and bacon. Tonight I'm going to make curried summer squash soup, sourced from local farmers, which will be served cold or warm and comes with a side of toasted pita bread for $2.99 a cup or $4.99 a bow- um, oops.

Jade has caught me muttering to myself on more than one occasion in the kitchen; she doesn't say anything, just looks around to see who I'm talking to, and flounces out again when there's nobody interesting in sight. I've heard her having dozens of conversations with imaginary characters

- including the infamous "Mr. Ant" - so perhaps the apple doesn't fall far from the quirky tree.

And so far, I have not skewered anyone in real life.

Just DO IT

D hates sitting still. He's one of those annoying souls who always likes to be "doing something." He doesn't care if it's something fun, or pleasurable; in fact, the more horrid the task, the more he feels as though he's "done something." Once, when I told him to please relax, he freaked out and told me that if there's one thing he hates, it's when people tell him to relax. "I don't need to relax!" he'd yelled. Which, to me, made his need to relax painfully evident, but I don't use that word around him anymore, just to be safe.

D especially hates weekend mornings where the kids watch Treehouse while I sit around with a book, my only goal being to drink an entire cup of coffee before its temperature plunges to that of an iced tea.

"C'mon, c'mon, let's DO something!" he growled at me this past Sunday. I looked up from The Tiger's Wife and blinked.

"I am doing something," I said. "I'm reading."

He did that little dance of rage he does whenever the printed word has replaced him in my hierarchy of needs, which is kind of often. "Kim, reading a book is not DOING anything. We never DO ANYTHING! I hate books!" And he stomped out of the room making as much noise as his croc-clad feet would allow. The front door clunked shut; the screen door slammed.

My sister, who was visiting for the weekend, rolled her eyes. She's really good at rolling her eyes. I shrugged and took a slurp of my coffee. The kids remained blissfully absorbed in the acid-trip antics of Toopy & Binoo. D would find something to do, and hopefully leave us in peace for another hour. We got about three and a half minutes before the front door clunked open again.

The cupboard where we hang all our keys jangled violently; D stomped back in the room and ordered the kids to get their shoes on and turn off the TV. They were going to the park, dammit! Well, he didn't actually say "dammit" but his eyes were blazing and his nostrils were flared and I'm pretty sure he wanted to say "Dammit!" or "By God!" or "By Crackie!" or something equally commanding. Instead, he glared at my sister and I and said, "We're going to the park. You two can sit here all day. But we're DOING SOMETHING."

The kids wailed and complained and eventually got suited up and hauled out the door. I looked at my sister. We did a simultaneous eye roll, which is something siblings who have lived with a demanding and unreasonable parent learn to do very well.

Long story short, my sister and I were supposed to go to the cottage and visit my aunt whilst D entertained the kids by DOING SOMETHING. Instead, we fell asleep, waking only when D's car pulled up in the driveway. I won't print what he said to me, but I ended up promising him that we would DO SOMETHING together as a family later that night.

I thought he'd punish us with an evening of hoeing sweet corn or digging trenches. That the SOMETHING turned out to be biking down the 6th Concession hill and swimming at the public beach was a happy surprise. The water was beautiful, the beach practically deserted. The kids were gung-ho and the sandbar was shallow enough for them to navigate by themselves. I sighed with happiness as I stripped off my shorts and shoes and squished Dylan's arms into his "wife-jacket." Sometimes my husband DID SOMETHING right.

And then D took off his shorts.

I heard my sister's sharp intake of breath; I turned to see him heading for the water with Jade in tow. I wondered for a minute why he was wearing a pair of my black panties. And then I knew: he was punishing us by wearing the dreaded speedo. In public.

"Oh my God," whispered my sister. "I don't know where to look." We stood there, frozen in the sand by the sight of my husband's daring attire.

D has been teasing me about purchasing and wearing a speedo for as long as we've been dating. "Don't you think I would look sexy?" he'd ask. "Really Kim, don't you want to see me in a speedo? I bet you do."

When he actually produced one a few summers ago, I was convinced he was joking, just taking the piss out of his naive wife. He'd dangle it in front of me from time to time, but he never wore it outside the house. I figured a boy from Bruce county would never, ever wear a speedo in public anyway. Would he?

The answer to that question bobbed around the waves of the 6th. D splashed, swam, played with the kids, and hung out (not literally) on the beach, unperturbed that his manly bits were snuggled in a very small piece of material in an area in which he "might know someone."

Since he's usually pretty shy about this type of thing, I was pretty shocked. D's expression wavered somewhere between nonchalant and smug. Even when he glanced down the beach and saw another guy playing with his dogs and said, "Oh man. I know that guy from work," he didn't rush to put his board shorts back on. He was the master of his domain, and he'd definitely DONE SOMETHING that weekend: reduced his wife to speechless wonder, having humbled her with a banana hammock.

"Don't get lost in the maze, Mummy..."

After 17 years, I resigned from my job.

Yeah, that sentence makes it sound profound, like I've decided to strike out on my own and tackle writing, mummyhood and the art of jam making while waving a triumphant middle finger to THE MAN. But it really isn't that romantic. Just a case of office politics, "business decisions" and a month-long shower in corporate crap.

I've had a pretty sweet deal: working from home with a team that was smart and well-regarded, in a job I liked and was good at. Then came the news: our work from home arrangement was being terminated. Crap.

The reasons management decided to cut our work from home programme still haven't been made transparent, but suffice it to say that I was the only one with a 2 hour commute, so the message to me was loud and clear. Ciao baby, and thanks for all the fish.

The powers that be were professional enough to allow me to keep my job until the end of August, which is more than they technically needed to, but the atmosphere had become so unhealthy that I knew I couldn't hang on that long. Hurt feelings and a bruised ego didn't help matters much, either. And when I summoned up my courage and voiced my opinions on the whole scenario to my bosses, it did nothing to improve an already unpleasant situation. It got harder and harder to breathe every time I logged in to work, so I gave my two weeks' notice and got the hell outta Dodge.

I took Jade to work with me on Friday, because I figured she should experience the place to which I've devoted the last 17 years of my professional life. I wanted her to know what my office looked like, meet the people who had been my friends and colleagues for so long, and get a taste of what Mummy did all day.

Jade received her security card necklace, eyed it with interest and announced, "Now I'm pretty just like Daddy!" (D wears a security card every day), making the security guard - one of my favourite faces in the office - grin.

As I guided my daughter down the labrynthine path to my department, she studied the neutral fabric walls, the stained carpets, the photos and posters and whiteboards that adorned the cubicles. She said hi to people I didn't even know, and waved her security card at them in case they doubted her right to be there.

When we finally reached the hotel office where I usually set up camp for my monthly visits, Jade's mouth dropped open. My crazy colleagues, following a time-honoured tradition on our team, had decorated my office both with photos of things I hated (gnarly man-feet, feet with rotting toenails) and things I loved (Second Cup logos, the dancing spiderman gif) plus balloons and streamers. I noticed two tiny potted roses, which I instantly knew were a quiet tribute to my little lost daughter; I lit up when I saw photos of my friends and I at office Christmas parties, my wedding, Hallowe'en contests. Jade was enchanted; my vision started to blur. They were sending me off with a heartfelt bang.

After Jade had visited my colleagues and the cafeteria, and done a few downward facing dogs in the aisle, I took her back through the cubes to the front door, where my sister was waiting. "Don't get lost in the maze, Mumma," my daughter warned me. Probably the best advice I'd get all day.

Back at my desk, I cracked open the boxes of doughnuts I'd brought from the Lucknow bakery and took a big breath. Bring it on, I thought, and sent an email to friends to let them know my corporate wake had begun.

The doughnuts began to disappear, and I said goodbye to people I'd worked with for almost two decades, answered questions (No, I wasn't going to take up farming; yes, I would be back to sell my jam), laughed at kooky memories, gave and received hugs, wiped tears and held back my own. I hate crying; I especially hate crying in the office. Tears just seem so incongruous with cubicles. So I sucked it up and laughed and joked instead.

My team had a final pita lunch together, which was equal bits hilarious and soggy. We talked about all the office episodes our little group had collected over the years: fibre pills, exploding juice cans, Second Cup runs, broken noses and first impressions. Our tradition of getting Pita Pit lunches to celebrate all things big and small seemed fitting, but when my friends brought out gifts and cards the tone of our little party changed. Goodbyes suck.

I wish I could say I got through the rest of the day without a sniffle, that I walked out of there with my head held high. But I didn't. A few careless remarks from my boss and two zero-hour embraces from beloved colleagues broke my resolve; the tears welled up, and I stumbled out of the maze and through the jaws of death one last time with red eyes and a heavy heart.

So here I am, on my second day of freedom, contemplating the months ahead and sighing over the years behind me. I'm giving myself permission to grieve, feel pissed off and a bit lonely. I'm also allowing myself to roll on the floor with the kids until 9 p.m., hang laundry in my underwear, drink coffee on the deck with the chipmunk and garden in my bare feet. I plan to laugh, swim, pick sweetcorn, build sandcastles and drink a lot of wine. I'm going to write and get jamming. I'm going to be happy, eventually.

And, if I'm honest with myself, I may just owe the company a great debt. I was too loyal to leave on my own, to nervous to jump off the edge into unemployment. When they asked me to resign, they also handed me an oyster. Whether I find any pearls inside is up to me.

The skinny on dipping

Every year, around this time of summer, I like to try and coerce my husband to take off all his clothes and do something outrageous.

Way back when, on a trip to California, I shamed him into wiggling out of his clothes and jumping into the crashing surf on Venice Beach, clad only in his trusty tighty whities. He still has nightmares about it today: "What if LAPD flew over us in a helicopter and arrested me for public indecency?" "What if those people down the beach from us could, you know, see it?"

When we first moved to Someday, I convinced him to go skinny dipping at Emmerton beach on a muggy July night. I had to use all my powers of persuasion and eye-rolling to get him to strip it all off and dash into the water. We were newlyweds, we didn't have kids, and I could still get him to do things that were a bit edgy. And I always stripped down first.

Several summers ago, we got caught outside in a beautiful warm rain in the back meadow. He was on the tractor and I was gathering flowers. I noticed that the barn downspout had turned into a waterfall; I stripped off my clothes and stood underneath it, laughing. "Come on!!!" I yelled at him. He just shook his head, grinning like a sheepish kid, and stayed on the tractor, despite my coaxing, cajoling and harrassment. I could tell he wanted to; he just lacked a little nerve. That winter, he confided that he would always regret not having jumped down and joined me. Humph.

He made up for his reticence the year I was pregnant with Dylan; we were in the thick of a big summer rainstorm, complete with thunder and lightning. My sister and I were hiding in the house. D had come in just before the storm hit, all sweaty from mowing the lawn.

"I gotta take a shower." he said.
"A shower? Just run outside," I suggested.
"What? In a storm? You're nuts. Plus your sister will see me."
"Oh, don't be such a baby," I said. "Just go and do it. It'll be fun! I dare ya."

After a moment's hesitation, he actually started taking off his clothes. He solemnly handed me his glasses, said, "If I get hit by lightning, it's your fault," and dashed out into the storm, wearing only his orange crocs. It was quite a sight. I felt a surge of pride...and terror, as the thunder crashed and my beloved husband's shapely behind disappeared out of sight of the house.

He eventually made it back in one soggy piece, dripping and exhilarated. I dutifully waited in the shanty with a towel and congratulations. There's just something about being naked outside that makes you feel alive, and I was glad he was finally getting on board.

I'm afraid my children have inherited my penchant for nudity, as their favourite time of day is that fifteen minute interval between tooth brushing and bedtime where they are allowed to shed their clothes and run around shrieking "Naked naked NUDIE!!!" Or maybe it's just the natural tendency of a toddler to want to be unencumbered by the annoying contraints of diapers, underwear, and other assorted bits of bodily confinement. I can't say I blame them.

We shared a moment of naked solidarity the other day when it was so hot I wanted to lock myself in the freezer. I don't do well in the heat, and neither does my son. We both end up red-faced and sweaty with the temper of a rabid pitbull when the thermometer goes anywhere above 75 degrees, so inheriting our cousins' kiddie pool last summer was a godsend. After a gruelling bike ride to the cottage and back, we stripped Jade and Dyl down and let them soak in the nice, cool water. After enduring sensitive comments from my husband ("Gee Kimmmy, are ya hot? Look kids, it's sweaty Kim!"), I proceeded to tear off my clothes and wade into the pool with the kids, much to their squealing delight. I think D was somewhere between horrified and turned on, but I was in the zone: naked, cool, and surrounded by happy kidlets.

It may be a long hot summer, but at least some of us will be naked enough to enjoy it.

A spoonful of dusk helps the medicine go down

For various reasons, my heart and soul have been pretty weary lately. Last night I was listlessly doing dishes, my hands busy while my head was mired in melancholy. A breeze blew in the kitchen window and ruffled my hair, a gentle hand telling me to stop what I was doing and go outside. So I did.

I snatched one of the kids' blankets off the floor, wrapped it around myself and plunked down in my favourite green lawn chair. It was dusk. The sun had barely set, and the sky painted itself in purple and navy above the treeline. Stars winked at me. Bats swooped down like burnt falling stars, crickets sang, leaves whispered. Somewhere below the hill, a dog barked as a motobike buzzed down the road. Somewhere beyond the cornfield, near the river, coyotes began to yip and whine their night song; somewhere in the falling darkness, every bitter thought floated out of my head.

Dusk had the power to do what exercise, wine, talking, writing, crying and sulking could not: it made me remember that I was part of a greater world, a small cog in a vast universe. My disappointment and hurt wouldn't break me, just as they wouldn't make more than a tiny ripple in the overall stream of my life. That's all this was: a ripple, a few circles made by a stone that would soon drift away. I would survive, and I would smile, and I would be happy again.

A spoonful of dusk helped me swallow a bitter pill.

Girly Grrrrrl Weekend

Although I am not rabid about it, I enjoy the occasional foray into the cut-and-paste, anal-retentive world of scrapbooking. My friends whisked me away a few weekends ago on a scrapbooking retreat outside of Guelph, and frankly, it rocked.

There's something immensely satisfying about indulging in creative, tactile work. I think cutting colourful paper, tracing designs and squishing paste and stickers and sparkles on stuff triggers my body's cellular memory of similar kindergarten activities. And any road that leads back to memories of cookies and floor-naps is a good one.

Even better, the B&B where we had our scrapbooking fiesta offers delicious meals, snacks, an all-hours coffee machine and all the coca-cola I could possibly drink. When my eyes started to get buggy from staring at photos and paper patterns, I poured a glass of wine, sought out my frilly bedroom and read my book until I felt like having a nap. I stayed up late, slept in, gossiped and chatted, met new women and listened to their stories, met their families through photos and shared my own.

Pepole don't often take time to sit and look through the photos they've collected over the years. Not so the Lowry clan; my Mother in Law has collected an awe-inspiring number of photos, wedding invitations, birth and death notices, locks of hair, etc. They're all stuck inside old fashioned photo books, the kind with the plastic peels on them, and D and I look at them fairly often. Early in our marriage, D told me "You're in charge of keeping our photos." And I've taken that role seriously ever since, snapping tons of photos over the years, printing them off en masse and making sure family and friends get copies of special moments.

Scrapping is my way of allowing myself the time to peruse through our gianormous collection of photos and give myself over to memories: Jade's first bath and the way she turned purple with rage; her wee newborn diaper; my Dad holding her like she was going to break in his arms; my sister's look of serene joy with Jade in her arms; my mother-in-law combing Jade's hair into a tiny coxcomb; Dwain passed out facedown on the kitchen table with baby Jade fast asleep beside him. I admit, this was a Jade-centric weekend. Dylan will have his own book eventually, but I'm still working on Jady's first year. It was sweet to look through all her baby moments and think back to the sheer joy and the sheer terror of being the mother of a newborn.

All of us at the retreat take the time to look at other people's pages and admire them, although no one hangs over your shoulder. I find that being stuck in a room with several women can either be a profoundly refreshing experience, or a soul-draining one. Put the right mix of ladies together, and you have the potential for bonding and support. Put too much estrogen and a bunch of chafing personalities in close confines, and things can get catty reeeeeaal quick. Thankfully, our group was of the non-feline variety. I learned about a woman's travels to Africa, and her heart-warming adoption story; I listened to my friends tell funny stories about work, kids and clothes. And of course I added my own two cents worth of gossip and tales, which is half the fun.

I look forward to that day when I can plunk Jade's scrapbook into her lap and say, "Here. I made this for you." I'm thinking it will go in her memory box, to be openend on her 16th birthday. But we'll probably sneak a lot of peeks into it before then.

I came back to Someday farm feeling refreshed and happy.

Garlified

I come from a long line of garlic lovers. My Babushka lived to be 96, and I'm convinced it was due to her daily consumption of garlic. She grew it herself, threw it into almost every dish she cooked, and even put it in her ear during one well-intentioned but unfortunate ear-ache incident (apparently it works, but it's preferable to stick a whole clove in your ear rather than chopping it up and shoving it into your ear canal).

My father's favourite appetizer is a slice of raw garlic on top of a slice of summer sausage on top of a cracker. My sister and I tend to avoid kissing him goodbye after visits involving this snack. My mother was another famous garlic-lover; she's the one who taught me the sacred trick of mashing a clove all around the bowl before you make caeser salad dressing, and jamming little slices of it into your roast before you cook it. One of our favourite things to eat was artichokes - she'd chop up raw garlic and douse it in melted butter, and we'd swish the artichoke leaves in the golden liquid and run them through our teeth. My sister and I used to challenge each other to drink a glass of milk afterwards; milk never tastes as foul as after a spoonful or two of garlic butter.

As for myself, I used to be addicted to roasted garlic smeared over crusty bread when I was just out of university and learning to enjoy food that didn't come in a can. It was all the rage in restaurants in the 90's. And I started getting spoiled: the great dried lumps of Chinese store garlic paled in comparison to my Baba's sweeter, smaller version; I would beg some from her whenever I'd visit and go home with my precious cargo. It was almost too good to share.

If you haven't grown up with it, garlic can be something of an oddity. I can remember being shocked when making spaghetti sauce at a friend's place; when I asked him for garlic, he handed me garlic powder. He'd never even seen a bulb of garlic before. After my shock wore off, I gave him a lecture and sent him to the grocery store; I credit myself for creating a life-long love of the stuff after that first meal.

Sadly, D has a love/hate relationship with the stinky bulbs of goodness. He is of the garlic-powder generation, and while he enjoys all my garlic-infused sauces, marinades and roasts, his body can't seem to process the stuff. It oozes out of his pores, no matter how long the garlic's simmered in a pot of pasta sauce or soaked in a beef stew. God forbid I ever serve it to him raw; I think his head would explode.

So, for the sake of marital harmony, I rarely make anything with raw garlic these days. Until last night.

Last night I was glancing through my mother's old cookbooks for inspiration. I had one eye on Jade as she devoured her grape/crackers/cheese snack while watching Toopy and Binou, and one eye on Mom's tattered, splattered pasta cookbook when a recipe for pesto lept out at me. I checked the ingredient list: I had pine nuts. A bunch of basil. A hunk of parmesan. And of course I had garlic. Tally ho!

After a quick rummage through the fridge, and a brief tussle with the Magic Bullet, I had my pesto. I sauteed mushrooms in wine and butter, threw in some steamed asparagus and chopped up leftover chicken breast. I gooped all the pesto on top and stirred it in. I tossed the sauce, which smelled like happiness, with some spagettini, topped it with fresh parmesan, and JOY!!! Supper was served.

While my daughter ate plain noodles, asparagus and chicken and eyed me warily ("Why you eating grass, Mama?"), I tucked in to my masterpiece. The first bowl was heavenly. The basil and parsley tasted of spring, the olive oil mingled richly with the fresh parmesan. And the garlic....it had bite and spice and flavour galore. Why didn't I use raw garlic more often? I could live to be 96 too! I was going to make a caeser salad tomorrow for breakfast!

Halfway through the second bowl, I began to feel that slightly queasy, sweaty, self-loathing feeling I like to refer to as garlified. My body hadn't had raw garlic in quite some time; now it was waking up and telling me so. I drank two glasses of water and packed away the leftovers unceremoniously in the fridge.

Strangely, my husband ate his garlicky pasta without a word of complaint. Then again he did top it with more chicken and a handful of the salad I'd made; perhaps this downplayed the effects. At any rate, I brushed, flossed and even mouthwashed that night to no avail. Every exhalation turned into a cloud of noxious nastiness that seemed to hang over my head. After a fitful sleep, I woke up feeling like our septic tank had leaked into my mouth. Even hanging my mouth open in the shower didn't help much.

So the pesto was delicious, but the aftermath - the garlic hangover - is too gross to repeat anytime soon. And the irony that my husband is suffering no ill effects at all is just plain annoying.

I'm sure that somewhere in the afterlife, my mother is rolling her eyes Baba is shaking her head at her daft granddaughter. And somewhere, a garlic bulb is laughing.