The Glue of my Childhood

When I was a kid, things were different.

We didn’t have all kinds of packaged foods for lunch. It was simple sandwiches. Peanut butter was the most common filling.

I know what you’re thinking. “Here she goes. Next thing she’ll be telling us she walked uphill to school both ways.” But seriously, 40 years ago, a peanut allergy was rare and peanut butter was a food that fit in everyone’s budget.

I was a Skippy kid. Back then Skippy was a popular brand. It was the one with the peanut on top. We had Kraft, and Jif, and a few brands that were unsweetened, but that was about it.

I remember a brand whose jar had the jelly already in it too. It looked cool with its stripes but my mom convinced my brother and I that it was better to choose your own jam each time.

It could be said that nostalgia makes foods taste better, but the foods of my childhood feed my soul. The comfort of sticky peanut butter and jam, or banana slices between soft fresh bread, is like a warm blanket. And the exact nature of that sandwich is a very personal thing.

The finer points of a PB and J could be discussed in the lunchroom for days on end. Which kind of jam was your favourite? What kind of bread? And, of course, what kind of peanut butter? Smooth or crunchy?

I like smooth peanut butter, with raspberry jam on sourdough for a sandwich, and crunchy with bananas on brown toast.

You can’t buy Skippy in B.C. anymore. I have to stock up when we go to the U.S. in the summer (Walmart sells a one-kilogram tub for people like me). Here at home I use the Dark-Roasted Jif now, and the natural stuff for baking.

Which one is your favourite?

You can buy many more kinds of nut spreads now, too. There are cashew and almond butters galore, and even hemp butter. I wonder if the rise of nut allergies helped inspire these innovations.

The world is a smaller place now and lunch boxes show that from their contents. Sandwiches are less common as more ethnic foods have become familiar. You can eat anything from soup to nuts, as the saying goes, and even the nuts can be a new variety.

Nutella is now a popular condiment, perhaps more common for breakfast than lunch but just as dear to the hearts of European folks as our peanut butter is to us.

Did you hear about the riots in France when a grocery chain put Nutella on sale? The news video showed people pushing and shouting their way to the display to stock up.

I don’t want to see peanut butter riots, but I do hope my soul food doesn’t disappear into the annals of history. I wonder if the inflation of food prices will bring nut butters back into the fold? I know it will be staying on our grocery list.

Good old sticky peanut butter really was the glue of my childhood. It helped hold me together as I grew into an adult, and that feeling on the roof of my mouth as I eat it now has the same value as a cozy hug.

Excuse me now while I go put the toaster on. I have a hankering.

Who knew we could all bake so much?

My social media feed has gone from various memes of silly behaviour and random family updates with the odd video of dishes that have melted cheese and bacon… to a stream of cinnamon buns, cookies, sourdough, cakes, doughnuts… well, and then about 4 pm it’s virtual happy hour but that’s another story altogether. Who knew so many people liked to bake things from scratch?

I know many of us are getting tired of being cooped up at home, not able to go out for coffee or go to the gym. The routines for most people of being at school or work most days have evaporated. It was a fun holiday for the first few days, but now that our bottoms are numb from days of binge-watching all of Netflix and Disney+, we feel like we need to accomplish something. Anything.

I wistfully pondered the concept of buying a Masterclass membership to follow Gordon Ramsay on his journey to teach me sauces, pasta making and all other manners of cooking a beautiful meal. But then the reality of keeping the money to pay the bills that will come while I’m still not using those skills to make any more money came crashing down around me. Besides, I don’t need the added pressure of him yelling at me.

However, this is no time to wallow, we need to keep our spirits up. So, here’s a few fun baking friends I found out there who can help us stay positive. Perhaps I ought to have tempered these links with home workouts, so we don’t all end up looking like couch potatoes? Nah; for now I’ll stick with walking the dog more often.

 Bread Ahead Bakery in London rose to the occasion quickly (pun intended). They started hosting live cooking demos on Instagram, featuring many of the classic recipes from their Baking School cookbook. Very educational if you’re into bread products. The videos only stay up in IG Stories for 24 hours but they are replaying them through April, and you can get the ingredients on their website. You can also buy a copy of their full book, or the e-book they created for these recipes.

If you have kids, you might want to look up the hashtag #KitchenBuddies . Jamie Oliver’s son Buddy started doing IG videos as well, and together he and his dad are encouraging families to cook. Jamie has also done some posts offering recipes with what you have on hand, like pasta made in just a few minutes with only flour and water. I offer a link to his recipes online which is quite extensive.

If you want something more formal, I stumbled upon a resource through a site I’ve mentioned before that is rich with foodie info. The Kitchn’s Cooking School offers 20 lessons, starting with knife skills. They include links to recipes that help you practice what each lesson teaches, and different skill levels for you to choose. It dates back to 2014 but all the information is timeless.

Want something more decadent? How about something called Millionaire’s Shortbread ! I first had this in Scotland, and being a fan of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander tales, I was overjoyed when it was included in the Outlander Kitchen batch of recipes (and what a good batch it is, too – I can vouch for many of them personally). This one takes a bit of time as one layer has to set, but we’ve got plenty of that these days, don’t we?

In case you’re put off by the pressure of having to cook more, already cooking all meals and not being able to eat out at the moment, well then how about a cocktail? David Lebovitz, our foodie friend in Paris, has just launched a cocktail book and to celebrate he;s been offering recipes as part of his virtual happy hour, live on Instagram. There is also information on his website.

However you are managing, I do hope you’re taking time to enjoy meals at home. Pull out those dishes and table linens that you never have time to find. Make hot chocolate from scratch for the kids. Have a nightcap if there is a bottle of something suitable in your liquor cupboard. When we get back to the crazy pace of what we called normal, we can look back on this and say, “Wasn’t it great when we had all that time to share?”

 

 

 

 

 

A Taste of Nostalgia

Yesterday I had a little afternoon snack, and as I took my first bite I was inadvertently thrown back in time to my childhood. Suddenly I wasn’t eating a delightful nibble of pâté and crackers… I was in my school lunchroom, eating what was then known to me as a meatspread sandwich. It was completely humbling.

As a child I really disliked meatspread. Little did I know then that it was a grocery store version of what I would covet as an adult, under the name of goose liver pâté.  It was an inexpensive sandwich filling, a change-up from canned tuna or egg salad. My mom did her best to make it appealing: she put it on fresh French bread and added sliced sweet pickles.

The problem was, in those days “French bread” was in the shape of a fat baguette but it was still soft bread. The meat spread was rather firm stuff, and by the time it got distributed across a slice of bread, there could be squished places or even worse, holes, where the pickle juice would seep through and give the  sandwich a soggy spot by lunchtime.

I ate my meatspread sandwiches anyway. They were certainly my least favourite, but I was a growing girl who was perpetually hungry so I wasn’t going to not eat. I saw other kids that had lunches with less appealing ingredients than meat spread, in my opinion. I was lucky my mom was a good cook, and a crafty packer of a bag lunch. (Her best trick was to take a piece of Chocolate Wacky Cake and pull the bottom half away, sticking it on top of the icing. Then you didn’t lose any icing when you unwrapped it from the waxed paper!)

I had a rueful smile yesterday as the memory of pickles and meatspread washed over me. It didn’t taste that bad at all, on one of my sourdough crackers. But then, I’m a much wiser foodie now, aren’t I?

A Tisket, A Tasket, A Biscuit in a Basket

I know, I’m sorry – I didn’t post anything all weekend, not even on Monday. In my defense, I was busy being a gourmand – in the garden planting and pruning during the day and at a table enjoying food and drink with friends at night. There simply was no time left to catalog it all. But I took pictures, so here I am catching up.

We love brunch. Everything about this blended meal appeals to us, and so we work it into our schedule whenever we can. Since we work on many Sundays, it’s a particularly joyous treat when we do get the time to lounge over all the flavours. Brunch is a foodie’s meal.

Brunch was invented by an Englishman in the late 19th century. Believe it or not, Guy Beringer first publicized the idea in an essay defending the case for weary social butterflies suffering from a successful Saturday party. A traditional English breakfast which started with heavy meat pies and other rich proteins was too drastic, so brunch allowed people to ease into a meal, and the day. The idea was to start with “tea pastries”, and perhaps even have a bit of hair of the dog with a cocktail. If brunch was a real thing, he proposed, people wouldn’t be judged harshly for proceeding this way. Interestingly, the concept didn’t catch on in North America for more than thirty years.

Even when we do have a big work day ahead, we have been known to salvage a component of a brunch meal to raise our spirits. Even without a Caesar or a glass of bubbly, a bit of brunch works wonders to make me feel spoiled even on a work day.

Last weekend was hectic with yard projects and deck building so there was no time to waste. Saturday we went all out, and Sunday we dragged our tired selves out of bed to get back at it. My hubbie decided we deserved a treat and so he whipped up some biscuits with the first of the fresh herbs in the back garden. Thanks to Ina Garten’s fantastic biscuit recipe and some of our chili grape jelly, I got to feel spoiled if only for a mere half hour.

Pulling a warm biscuit out of the basket was a highlight of my day.

I might not have had a hangover on Sunday morning but my sore muscles were grateful for the chance to ease into the day. Mr. Beringer was so right:

“Brunch is cheerful, sociable and inciting. It is talk-compelling,” Beringer wrote. “It makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings.”

 

Order Your Lunch by Number

Have you ever been to a neighbourhood Asian restaurant for lunch? I bet you’ve at least seen one in a movie… they are not necessarily small, but simple in decor. The menus are voluminous, going on for page after page of delicacy. Much of the English is often translated a bit funny, which makes you wonder what food ingredient they really mean in the description of dishes. If you’re lucky, there are pictures. If not, you have to look at what others are having and point. The best thing to do is just order by number, because you are often not sure of the name.

sometimes it’s a bit baffling, with so many choices. And just what do they mean by “bean curd skin”??

When I lived in Calgary I first went to a Vietnamese place on the edge of downtown on the recommendation of a friend. (This was long before Trip Advisor.)  I learned what a vermicelli bowl was (delicious!) and the difference between spring rolls and salad rolls (30 years ago, who knew that?!)    I discovered Vietnamese coffee here and thought I had found nirvana. But all of that happened over time, as I got used to the place and what the dishes were all about.

Despite trying  a number of  tasty items, my favourite quickly became a number 66. It was a bowl of vermicelli noodles with julienned carrots, cucumbers and green onions, along with some bean sprouts, grilled chicken slices or beef on a skewer, and pork belly, and a spring roll chopped into pieces. It was served with a little bowl of vinaigrette, a couple of lime wedges and a few sprigs of Thai basil.

I learned that the best way to attack this dish was to combine everything:

• tear up the basil leaves and toss them in the bowl
• pour the vinaigrette over the noodles
• squeeze the lime over the meat
• add a well-distributed amount of sriracha over the whole mess
• mix well with your chopsticks

The result was mouthfuls of refreshing, bold flavours with the exciting textures of veggies, meat and noodles and all of the possible tastes (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and even umami). It was a masterpiece in a bowl.

For ten years this was a cherished meal. I couldn’t even tell you the name of the place; we just used to say, “Want to go for a number 66?” We had to change our slang when they renovated – it became a 55, but that and some new paint on the walls was all that changed. Then I moved away.

Thankfully, Kelowna has a few Vietnamese neighbourhood restaurants. I really like Pho Soc Trang. It’s amazingly similar, even being on the second floor like my old haunt in Calgary. The recipe is not exactly the same, but pretty close – it’s a number 61 here. They don’t serve the fresh Thai basil and lime, but the complex textures and flavours are still the best way to chase away the blues, or a cold, or even just clear the cobwebs in my head after a busy week.

My next step is to de-mystify “pho”, the now trendy Vietnamese noodle soup. I’ve had it a few times and would like to master how to enjoy it.

Isn’t it funny how something so unfamiliar can become a cozy friend? All it takes is a bit of trust and a sense of adventure. Go figure.