Cakeology

Chocolate quinoa cake

The first piece of chocolate quinoa cake I ate was at a fancy restaurant where main course portions were the size of Canada’s largest coins – loonies and toonies. Lunch arrived prettily set on a silent white plate with scribbles of coulis of some sort. You know the stuff – pureed parsnip essence or a reduction of Brussels sprout hearts and maybe a shake of smoked paprika. Way off on the northern hemisphere of the plate a single perfect candied walnut emerged from its shell, like a sailor adrift in the arctic ocean, considering his options as the icy sea begins to crush his vessel. Because food tells a story and the chef wants you to listen to what the food has to say. That kind of place.

Fried, gravied, stewed and jelloed

The food of my people was fried, gravied, stewed and jelloed. Don’t get me wrong. I liked it all, especially deep fried halibut.

For the love of pineapple

“Leftovers in the dining room,” the email announces.

All 200 employees scurry down the stairs to the dining hall to scoop up remains of the catered lunch left behind by the visiting big wigs.

I pick through an enormous bowl of fruit salad and scoop lumps of pineapple, a couple of blackberries, a spoonful of blueberries, some raspberry mush into a container. I take every juicy chunk of pineapple and leave the tepid scalloped potatoes and cold ham with curling edges to those who seek comfort in stodge. I turn my back on the date squares and chocolate macaroons and return to my desk coddling a plastic container brimming with bright, wet fruit.

Worth the risk

All day, I sat in a windowless meeting room in the basement of a hotel in Halifax, Nova Scotia and listened to very important people talk about very important things. Immediately before the meeting my bowels had erupted, protesting as they often do to the change in input when I travel. I also forgot my acid reflux meds at home in Ottawa. And so the day began.

Do you reside or live?

French Canadian woman looks down on symbol of English oppression – the Bank of Montréal.

Reside as a word to describe where you live sounds forensic to me, like something you’d read in a police report. “The victim, a 59 year old female with two gold fillings, resides at 123 Dull Street, in Ottawa East. It rings of resignation and victim-hood.

Montréalers do not reside, baby, they live, Live, LIVE! Don’t bore me with that old joie de vivre bullshit. Montréalers are way past that borrowed colonial French cliché. They’re on a whole different planet of life.

Dilly beans

I thought someone had bled into my salad, and was on the verge of sending it back when I noticed the drops were congealed into tears. Glossy among the shredded California greens (so 1990’s) and underneath the teepee of skewered and charred pink shrimp and salmon coloured salmon, they were flames licking my protein.

Dopey me

I squint
reject sense
decide – yes

Fletcherized fire
on the tip of my tongue
milk chocolate bright
like sunlight sprayed
on a silver car

I dive in saliva pools
I am a hot high
beam at midnight
overdriving I can’t
stop

Later
guilt creeps
swells like a
compost bag
bulging with coffee
grounds and sheared
corn cobs and ragged
lettuce bottoms
it seeps

Ripped apart
dopamine gone
I vow now
to diet.

(Inspired by the Dictionary.com word of the day “Fletcherize”.)