Food Memory

Every spring my family went to visit friends out in the country and we went to the Sugar House because a lot of people made maple sugar and maple syrup from maple trees. In the spring as soon as the snow had melted they would plant little spiggets in the trees, bang, bang, bang, and then attach buckets on them. Then they would go around with horses with bigger buckets and empty the small buckets and bring all this juice, the sap, to the sugar house, they would boil all the water out and it would take hours to boil all the water off. A big bucket would make a little syrup, about 50 to 1. So that was a source of sugar. Of course we could buy sugar in the store but maple sugar is so much better. At the sugar House we would eat eggs fried in maple syrup, bacon fried in maple syrup, slices of homemade bread with thick cream and maple sugar on top. Then, of course all the kids would run around everywhere with the horses and the calf on the farm, we would ride that. That was our big spring excursion. We drove about an hour and ½ and my parents had friends who had relatives with a big Sugar House.

How not to cook with Soap

I cooked with soap once. When I was living in France with Cody’s mother and Grandmother we all went hiking one afternoon into a deep, deep valley and we got home and everyone was very, very tired. So I whipped up dinner in no time at all, I made some lamb chops, I think, except when I brought the lamb chops to the table Jenny took a bit and said YUK!!! And I said “come on Jenny don’t be fussy” but she said there’s bubble on it…I can see the bubbles and so I tasted mine and sure enough there was bubbles in it and it tasted like soap. What happened was that there was a container of cooking oil, yellow and a container of soap, also yellow. So in my hurry I took the container of soap and poured it in the pan. So the moral of the story is don’t rush while cooking.

Raw Octopus

When I was in Korea once I was invited by the people I was visiting to go to a fish restaurant to eat raw octopus. So we went to this fish octopus, a very simple with dirt floors and big tanks full of live fish. So they pulled out a live octopus from the tank, long with long tenticals and then they put in on a chopping board and went chop, chop, chop and then onto a plate and brought me the plate. And so in the plate the little bits of octopus were still wriggling. I took my chopsticks and I tried to grab one but it was sucking onto the plate, they were hard to get off. So I finally get a piece onto my chopsticks and bring it to my mouth but it was still wriggling, still wriggling and ooooohhhh I finally popped it into my mouth. It was very good and fresh and I ate the whole plate, it was quite good actually.

Favourite local foods: oysters, crab, salmon, all kinds of sea food

Spring: Asparagus,

Summer: gin and tonic……barbequed burgers

Fall: pumpkin pie

Winter: pork roast