What this means for this blog is…quick food ideas. I finish pretty late, which means I’m going to be home after Omar comes home himself, meaning the speedier I can make dinner, the less I have to listen to him complain about how hungry he is. Kidding! Not really!
]]>So I wrote, but only to relieve myself. It was a cathartic release, a way to express inner turmoil. I have pages and pages of journal posts that I probably never want to go back to, but are there nonetheless to remind me of the past month.
My dad is doing better now. He spent three weeks in ICU, struggling to regain his strength due to a pretty nasty bout of pneumonia. He’s now in the new ward in the hospital, a beautiful building with lots of light and unique floor plan. He’s going to be there for a while yet, but it’s okay, just as long as he gets better in the end.
It’s been a pretty trying month. I chose to stay with my mom and dad in Toronto, away from my home and husband in Montreal. I don’t regret that decision for a minute, but it was definitely one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my life. I missed my house, my routine, and just being with Omar. My mom told me everyday that I should get back, that I didn’t have to stay. I wanted to stay.
Every day, my mom and I went to the hospital from the morning, waiting until our coffee was ready and lunch was prepared and then heading out. At the hospital, we sat on the side, both of us in our respective hardback hospital chairs, sometimes reading, sometimes sleeping, sometimes just thinking. Whenever my dad would wake up, one of us would immediately take on the task of wiping his face, rubbing his feet, or exercising his muscles, while the other simply interacted with him, asking him questions, telling him news of the outside world. Excitement in the hospital would come in the form of good test scores or a 5-minute dialogue with the doctor.
But then 1 o’clock would hit and both my mom and I would look at each other with a smile on our faces. It was lunch time. We had decided from the beginning to make soup daily for lunch, as our ultimate comfort food in a time where both of us craved comfort. And so, we took our thermos of soup and headed down to the cafeteria where we would grab cranberry juice and a Greek salad, consisting of lettuce, tomatoes, feta cheese, red onions and black olives, along with sun-dried tomato and oregano vinaigrette. On the days when we really felt like eating, we would add a hot side, fries or onion rings or whatever it was they were serving that day (that was always an immediate regret). And we would eat and talk and reminisce and share memories and perspectives. It was the bright spot for the both of us, where everything else was put on hold and we were happy for those short moments of sharing a meal together.
No, I can’t regret staying that month. I would’ve missed that companionship with my mother and being her support when my father could not. But now, alhamdulillah, my father is up and speaking again, so my role is over. They are each other’s companions, after all.
]]>My father, who was already sick with tongue and skin cancer, has developed a pretty bad strain of pneumonia. He had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance, when he collapsed on the couch because he couldn’t breathe, more than a week ago. Upon arrival at the hospital, his heart stopped for a few long seconds and he was he was promptly resuscitated by the paramedics. It was one of the scariest and longest days of my life.
While I sit here and snack and write, my dad lies there, attached to a ventilator to help him breathe, unable to do anything but look at us, and make very light hand and head movements. Things are not very good for him right now. This once powerful, intelligent, articulate man has been rendered helpless to even the minimal requirements of life.
We’re praying for him to pull through. We ache for him to speak with us again, to reprimand us and tell us what we’re doing wrong and why. I’m praying to get my dad back.
]]>At least they’re all finished. Never again. Do not send your cute little girls after me, because it will not work.
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In my parent’s house, not drinking coffee was not an option. Much as they tried to discourage us from drinking it when we were children, as soon as we became adolescents, all bets were off. We were free to drink what we wanted, and at that point, there really wasn’t much opposition from my parents. My brother became our family barista, mixing up different flavours of coffee, often to the point where we would take one sip, and everyone would say, “What did you put in it this time? Black pepper?”, to which he would smile to himself and say, “Among other things.”
While coffee time was known to be just after breakfast, there was another, less official, less formal coffee time in our house. It was second cup time, when my mom would make only a cup or two of coffee and try to hide it from everyone by drinking it while she was making dinner. Because I (sometimes) helped her, I began to join her in this second cup, using it as an opportunity to have some of our most heartfelt, private conversations.
Now in my own place, I find myself drinking a lot more coffee than the two I would have at my parents’, to make up for the lack of conversation accompanying the drink. I’m trying to cut down that number to just one, the morning coffee that I will not give up. I’ve been doing well so far, sometimes having green tea in the evenings for something hot to drink to pass the time.
Although, my sister did tell me that drinking decaf when I got the cravings for another coffee would do the trick, so I tried that a couple of times. The first time, I wasn’t paying attention when I drank it. The second time, I became very uninterested in it, so I thought that I just didn’t need another coffee anymore. The third time, I realized something– decaf tastes like bad coffee, plain and simple. It’s just not good. Some people say they can’t tell the difference, that it’s the exact same thing. But those people aren’t coffee lovers. They’re the imitators, the ones that carry around a cup of coffee just so they look important. “Oh, I can’t live without my coffee” or “Don’t you just love the smell of coffee in the morning?” they’d say. That’s how you know they’re the imitators–it’s not about the smell, which, of course, is lovely, rather it’s about needing to have it on your tongue, in your mouth, in your blood, every single day. Trying to replace that with decaf, well, I would prefer to have no coffee at all, thank you very much, than having terrible decaffeinated coffee, no less.
]]>Me? I love them. When else can you go on cheesy trips, without being embarrassed about it? Oh yea, when you have kids of your own. Okay, well if you don’t have kids, then taking field trips are actually a lot of fun.
And being a sub, I got to go to a cabane à sucre yesterday. Just North of downtown Montreal, only 45 minutes away, there were a few all in a row. The one we went to was called “La Villa du Sirop”.
They greeted us with some Québecois folk songs and a play, which included a reenactment of how the Aboriginals discovered maple syrup, by boiling sap. They were using this big old pot as a joke, but my mom actually has 4 like these and bigger still sitting in their basement.
And then we were off to see the inner workings of how they make maple syrup. They don’t actually use spouts and buckets anymore, but they left some around to show us.
Finally, it was time to eat! Most of the traditional Québecois foods contain pork and pork products, like pork rinds, ham with maple syrup, pork sausages with maple syrup, and beans with lard. But I still managed to find some good foods to eat, like eggs with maple syrup (yum!), fried potatoes, boiled potatoes, pickles, and of course, pancakes with maple syrup. I was too hungry to take any pictures of the food, but I did manage to remember at the very last piece of pancake. Meh, mine are better.
And just when we were about to leave, they surprised us with a little treat, maple taffy, or as they call it “la tire”. It’s hot maple syrup that gets poured onto ice and then rolled onto a popsicle stick. It’s chewy and melty and oh so delicious.
I was disappointed by a couple of things. First, they didn’t show us the forest and how it’s all a “mess of tubes”, as they describe it, because of how they extract the sap from the trees. I had thought that that’s the whole point of the trip, but alas, it wasn’t in their schedule. Second, they had no gift shop. Here I was, with freshly withdrawn cash in my wallet, only to find nothing to buy. I had to look very hard to find a bottle of maple syrup and a couple of maple fudge leaves. I think there’s more maple syrup products at the gift shop right across the street.
Other than that, I had a lot of fun, and it was definitely not something Omar and I would’ve done by ourselves. Sometimes, it’s okay being a teacher.
]]>Sometimes, it’s okay to get a little help. At $10 a piece, a rotisserie chicken is cheap and totally hits the spot. And yes, eating with your hands is perfectly acceptable.
While we’re at it, let’s get lazy about dessert too. Blackberries and strawberries, anyone?
He is my love and my very favourite kitchen gadget, the Mighty Microplane.
He excels mainly at ginger, parmesan cheese, garlic, and lemon zest, although I’m sure he could do more if you only let him.
I can’t go back to life without him.
]]>And every once in a while, my dad would give in to my begging and I would see a smile sneak past his face. He knew very well what he was doing when he bought that big bushel of tomatoes. He knew that when we got home, my mom would be surprised, then annoyed, and then just confused. What would she do with all those tomatoes?
But my mom was resourceful. She knew what to do with all those tomatoes. She froze them, dried them, pickled them, and stuck them into every meal. They were in our eggs in the morning, in our sandwiches at lunch, and in our soup, salad, and main course at dinner. I have to give her credit–she even cleverly stuck them into our meals without our noticing it.
Now my daydreams take on a similar path as that of my parents. I sit on the bus and I dream about Omar taking our little kids to the market to buy big barrels of strawberries and tomatoes. I imagine how they would take delight in surprising me with their purchases and how we would together experiment with making different flavours of jams and freezing the rest. I think of the bonds created when parents and children share something as basic as food. I dream about creating good memories for life in my kids, of family and food.
]]>I’ve recently stumbled upon scallops. I always knew they were delicious, but not that they were so good for you. They contain no fat, minimal calories, and are loaded with minerals and vitamins, like vitamin B12 which is great for your cardiovascular health.
The challenge? Taking this:
and transforming it into a tasting of scallops in many different sauces and flavour combinations:
Yum!
Recipe: Trio Tasting of Scallops
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