Eat Well

I went to visit my mother for Christmas. 

Like most of our visits of late, the length was in inverse proportion to the distance travelled. (I feel as though I spent more time with airport security.)  And, because the visit was so brief, my mom made a Herculean effort to try and recreate the features of those long ago holidays when the family was together.  There were stockings hung by the chimney with care, wrapped presents under the tree and lots of food, including a fully stocked bunker of Christmas cookies.

But, despite all of these preparations, which had to have started right after I told her in October that I would be coming, my mother outsourced the stollen.

Stollen is a German sweet bread that is prepared for the holiday. While it looks unassuming on the outside--kind of like French bread with raisins and sugar frosting--it is dense liken those pills you drop in water that expand and expand until they become a castle, or an airplane, or a Barbie-sized figure. 

For this, what was a relatively late addition to our Christmas morning menu, my mother had contracted with the local Swiss pastry shop and it was one of my Christmas Eve duties to go downtown and pick it up.  This was an assignment that I cheerfully accepted because I have a real fondness for bakeries and I am partial to Swiss bakeries most of all.

Bakeries are like magic shops in the way that a few relatively simple ingredients are transformed into something amazing.  I remember, as a young child, watching my mother make bread and the great treat it was when my grandmother came to town because she would make her wonderful rolls.  It was to a bakery that we would go after ski lessons to replace the calories accidentally burned by exercise with those made by expert, flour-covered hands and then drenched in icing.  Is there anything more delicious after a winter day spent outside than tarte au sucre (literally, "pie of sugar")?

But the real attachment to baked goods and the nostalgia for Swiss pastry is due to my grandfather.

I recall, as a child, looking forward to Friday afternoons because it meant he would come with a cardboard pastry box wrapped in string from the Select Pastry on Ste. Catherine St.

It seems like there were other items in the box, but I recall the croissants and the Black Forest Cake most of all.

It was after this introduction to the pastry arts that I recall seeing a television commercial for Pillsbury "Crescent Rolls."  The shapes may have been similar, but the experience of pulling apart a warm-from-the-oven croissant and putting soft butter on the wisps of bread it watching them melt away could never be equaled by something that came from your grocer's freezer case in an overgrown toilet paper roll.

It was not only the quality of their work, but also the idea that my grandfather had selected these "Select" pastries that made them special.  He was a difficult person to know and, as kids, we were never entirely certain that he wasn't mad at us all the time.  The pastries were a delicious contradiction.

There came a day when the pastries stopped coming.    

After that it was as though we had been set adrift in a world without pastry.  There would be times when some adult, or other, would appear with a cake or other creation, but it was never the same.  You always remember your first time and that goes for pastry as well.

It is perhaps this abrupt disruption in the supply that has fueled my life-long search for pastries as good as those my grandfather brought.  Somewhere there must be a Black Forest cake good enough to be select and, judging from my waistline, I seem intent to keep looking until I find it.

I walked into the Swiss Pastry from which my mother had ordered her stollen and, even before I noticed the counter staff who all shared a fondness for facial piercings such that it seemed to be a condition of employment, I saw a piece of Black Forest cake in the display case.

It was automatic, a process beyond thinking, I instantly recognized it as being identical in appearance to those long ago cakes selected by my grandfather.

It was like stepping into a sugar-frosted time tunnel:  I had to have a piece.

The intent of including "Eat Well" as one of the 10 tools to Live Your Life Well was not necessarily to promote holiday gluttony or even my chocolate shavings and maraschino cherry lined walk down memory lane.  The intent was to promote healthy food choices.  The information management  mantra of "garbage in, garbage out" applies to all manner of systems, including the digestive.   We know about food pyramids and calorie counting and dealing meals and yet, as I write this, I am staring at the picture of the Black Forest cake and wondering how I can "get me some of that."

But it also cannot be denied that food has many powerful associations with memory--both good and bad.  

To make my point, I will cite an extreme example.  My family heritage is Scottish and so I have virtually no standing to write about food.  A thrifty people, we are known for extracting the maximum value out of all of our possessions.  One such strategy was through the creation of dishes that would use otherwise unusable parts of our livestock.  The most famous such dish is haggis.

By just about any measure, haggis is a disgusting idea.  And that's a determination based solely on the finished product.  The mind boggles at the number of possible iterations that must have been tried before settling on the final recipe.  Nothing ever good comes from the sentence, "Taste this and tell me what you think."

Having said that, I will admit to having a fondness for haggis that is driven solely by memory.

My father loved butcher shop items--"special cuts"--that would not immediately come to mind on a visit to the corner store.  He liked things like beef tongue and something called "blood pudding."  I can remember being dispatched to the coldest part of the basement to turn over the tongue that was pickling in a spooky brine between the inner and outer doors.  These "treasures" would be served up to us kids as though we were the most luckiest people in the world, but I am here to tell you that tongue is tongue, no matter how you slice it.

So it was with some trepidation that I responded to the prospect of having haggis.  I was 16 and being permitted to attend an annual event for persons of Scottish heritage.  It was a fancy dress affair featuring a band, a formal dinner and a late night snack.  I was even to be "fixed up" for the event.  Through a colleague of my father's, a date was brought in from out of town.  (Apparently, none of the locals would have anything to do with me.)

It was an event my father looked forward to every year.  He had been president of the sponsoring organization as had my uncle and my grandfather.

It was not something I had been looking forward to because I have never been very socially "ept"  and the prospect of getting dressed up and spending the evening with someone I didn't know was paralytic in its effect.

To detail the events of the evening would be to tread ground covered more skillfully by more talented writers.  It is sufficient to say that cliches were honored, many many cliches.

More than half a lifetime later, I no longer remember the woman's name who was forced to put up with me, but I do remember the pomp and the circumstance surrounding the event and I remember the smart-aleky remarks made by my father's friends concerning me and my prospects with my "date" (she was that far out of my league).  It was the first time that I can recall not being treated like an appendage, like a child, something to be "seen and not heard."  It was kind of a secular confirmation.

Instead of having to go to class and practice reading religious texts, I went to a fabulous party, featuring manners and practices with which I was only marginally familiar.  (I mean, really, how do you keep track of all of those forks?)  

At one point in the evening, around midnight as I recall, the haggis is "presented" like an honored guest.  It is ceremonially cut to a round of applause, kind of like at a bris and then is served to everyone.

Talk about an awkward situation:  your at a formal dinner, seated at a table with people you don't know and with a date who is doing her level best to put up with you and they serve you haggis!  What do you do?  WHAT DO YOU DO?

Women learn a host of ways for handling such situations, but men have only two choices:  we storm out, or we suck it up.  My plate was served and I had to go with either "A" or "B."

As a Canadian, I really only had one choice.  I mean, after all, somebody worked hard to make the dish and it would be rude not to try it.  (We are a polite people.)

And you know what, like the evening, it wasn't that bad.  Not my first choice of how to spend a Friday night, but I am glad that I did it.  

It was shortly after the haggis that my date and I became separated.  I don't remember the circumstances, but I do recall that I was alone for the rest of the evening.  Perhaps she had to leave early the next morning to go back to Toronto, or perhaps the haggis was a deal-breaker.

Facts lose potency over time, what lingers is the association and, to this day, I have a positive association with haggis.  That is not to say that I have had it since, but I can honestly say "it's not that bad" and, in part, be referring to the food.

So eating well is good for your mental health.  That is not to advocate for cold water sandwiches and mineral water diets, but to give yourself permission to live a life that will permit you to develop a broad portfolio of associations with food.  As with most things, moderation is key.

I brought that piece of Black Forest cake home to my mother's house and enjoyed the opportunity to remember my grandfather and a different time in my life.

That was enough and worth every dollar.  There were not enough meals left in my visit for me to actually sample the cake before I left, but it was as tangible a holiday treat as anything else and one of my favorite memories from my trip.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director