tucking in

Posted on episode 203

Potluck Impossible

As the sun sets this evening I’ll be partaking in a strange and magical event that has become rare elusive these past eighteen months: a small housewarming party.

A dozen or so (fully vaccinated) friends and I are converging on the newest abode of one of them to sit and chat and eat and chat some more.

And as per usual, the most daunting part of the occasion is spending my Saturday afternoon trying to figure out what kind of dish I should bring along for shares with everyone.

The time honoured tradition of a potluck-style party has stumped many who have planned attendance at gatherings of any size. Bringing a sharable dish to someone else’s event is seemingly simple, but cooking for a crowd can open up a whole host of contemplations and considerations.

I mean, lately I’d bake up a big loaf of sourdough to accompany some other contribution. But not only did I put this off and run short on time, I had put it aside as an option this time because the hostess has lately taken up her own sourdough habit after I re-invorgated her access to a starter.

So, what to bring?

Inevitably, some folks will show up with something tasty and simple, like a deli plate or a vegetable platter, and maybe a bottle of wine tucked under their arm. These are staples and great additions, but one always risks being the second or third one to show up with an “oh… another cheese ball!”

At least one person is bound to have stopped on their way over for a takeaway solution, like a bucket of fried chicken from the drive-thru or a tray of spring rolls from the local dim sum. This is always a hit, and I would never complain while always eating my share of these offerings, but deep down I feel like it would be a bit too much of a shortcut to match my desire to cook or prepare something personal.

The option that I do envy is the person with their special dish.

THE dish.

That thing they always bring to parties. The plate or bowl that never fails to appear in their potluck parade. Their speciality. You know the one.

I don’t have one of those.

I want one of those.

I want that go-to. I want to have a potluck platter with which I always show up at parties.

I want a plate that I unveil to knowing nods, a tray that is cleared before the night is over or a bowl that is scraped clean as people argue politely over the last morsel. I want to bring the kind of thing for which people ask me the recipe and to which I smirk and say, “I’ll send it to you” but never do because it’s THE thing I bring and don’t want to spoil it for myself.

It can’t be too spicy. Many people like heat, but it frightens just as many others away.

And the serving-size commitment level needs to be low, allowing guests to try a bite and then go back for a second or third helping. Forcing a full slice or a portion that takes over a quarter of one’s plate turns potential samplers into skeptics.

This hypothetical dish of mine also needs to be some kind of side that can hold its own across different food themes. We’ve all encountered that one dish that is inexplicably out of place among everything else, the one that tastes great but somehow just doesn’t quite belong.

I want to have one of those recipes to which I always turn when the invite comes through, something that I know I can pull together in a couple hours and do my part for any party.

It might not be an impossible potluck search, but I haven’t found that dish yet. My dish.

Not yet.

So tonight, yet again, I’ll probably just bring a…

Posted on episode 186

Raspberries I Have Loved

It’s probably something to do with the unusual heat, but all my berries are coming ready about two weeks earlier than usual this year.

Our fridge is already full of saskatoon berries (some of which are destined for a fate of pie later this morning) and over the last couple days I’ve spent nearly an hour in the thorny brambles of my raspberry bushes plucking the tasty red berries from their hiding spots.

Weeks, literally weeks, after we moved into our house over sixteen years ago, I dug a small hole into the newly graded soil of our backyard and planted a root-ball of a raspberry cultivar.

All those years later, after ups and downs, good seasons and bad, incidents with wafting herbicides, a sad pruning mistake by my wife many years ago, and many attempts to train and constrain the patch, I have a plot of land that’s roughly, consistently, five square meters in size and densely packed with raspberry plants.

We pick and eat them fresh. We pluck pail-fulls that become pies or other pastry deserts. We drop them into cereal or on ice cream. We share them with th neighbours. We live for a short month on the bounty of garden raspberries that for a brief moment seems endless and plentiful.

Until it’s suddenly gone.

Gone, and we are stuck buying expensive little plastic clamshells of never-quite-the-same farm berries usually imported from California or Mexico, achingly dulled by their long trek to the Canadian prairies.

That trip from the backyard is so much shorter, so much fresher. And always a summer treat, even if it is a couple weeks ahead of schedule this year.

Posted on episode 185

Saskatoon Berries Bonanza

According to thecanadianencyclopedia.ca “Saskatoon takes its name from a Cree word for the sweet, fleshy fruits, which were of prime importance to Aboriginal people and early settlers. On the prairies, saskatoons were a major ingredient in pemmican.“

In my small suburban yard, I have four saskatoon bushes, bushes that thrive as native shrubbery is wont to do, and bushes that each year fill our summers with weeks of fresh fruit literally off our doorstep.

We are in the heart of those few short weeks right now.

Out both my front and back door, these ten-foot tall berry trees are draped abundantly with blueberry-sized purple orbs of sweet, nutty, berry goodness.

We gather as many as we can, even as they slowly ripen through late July and early August, dropping them into our breakfasts, harvesting a handful as a snack, overflowing baking bowls for muffins and pies, and generally eating as much as we can for the too-short season.

If you ever find yourself visiting the prairies of Canada and looking to sample a food that many Canadians feel is a food that defines us locally, go ahead and try the poutine, enjoy fried handful of dough that we like to call “beaver tails” and don’t let anyone tell you that maple syrup is the one true Canuck cuisine.

Instead, set your heart on a slice of saskatoon berry pie, sample a bit of saskatoon preserve on your morning sourdough toast, or just go for a walk in the woods and pick a handful of these local sweet treats from the mid-forest foliage of trees that grow wild everywhere.

I’d save you some, but I don’t think they’ll last.

Posted on

Haskap

Four large lush bushes occupy various spots in my backyard. I planted these shrubs about eight to ten years ago as worked to fill my garden beds with as many fruit-bearing plants as could reasonably live adapted to this crazy northern climate zone.

Lonicera caerulea is also known in some parts of the world as honeysuckle or honeyberry, but in Canada we tend to refer to this bush and it’s fruit as a haskap.

My haskap bushes started to bear ripe fruit this past week and I’ve been eagerly plucking as many as I can before the robins eat more than their fair share. I don’t mind, but I do like to have a few of the tart-sweet berries before they all become bird food.

I don’t know much about the haskap itself. For a few years a nearby university known for their horticultural work breeding plants that were slightly more adapted to surviving the long winters seemed to be mentioned frequently around greenhouses as I and my fellow local gardeners bought and planted each a few of the adapted shrubs. The work of that same university is responsible for the breed of my backyard apple tree which is now at least fourteen seasons growing in it’s current spot and has easily produced tens of thousands of apples. This is not a climate where anything that hasn’t been winter hardened will grow much past September, and only the best adapted of trees and shrubs survive our minus forty winters. The haskap, on the other hand, seems to thrive in these parts.

The haskap is a little more subtle than my apple tree though.

My metre-wide bushes usually produce only a cup or two of the elongated blue-purple treats, right around this time of the year, and by the time we graze our fill there is rarely anything left behind but scraps for the most persistent of the local avian population.

I have a few varieties of berries in my backyard, yet these haskap are the ones that draw the most curiosity from visitors… but only those lucky enough to stop by during the short couple weeks when their colourful, oblong orbs dangle ready to be tasted.