It takes a couple of minutes. Realization (and subsequent comprehension) of self and space, that is. It always does, no matter where you are, or in what situation you find yourself (I swear, I could be on day 143 of capture by Mongolian extremist militant Scientologists and I’d still get this) to remember where you are upon waking up from at least an hour’s worth of reasonable sleep.
This paticular time, I emerged from beneath the cucoon of a leather jacket thrown over my head to find myself looking out the window of a locomotive as it traversed a bridge spanning the Quebec and New Brunswick border, just as dawn broke in early October. Black, fast-moving water; wisps of cold and impenetrable mist; stark contrasts of dawn brightness against the serrated edge of pine-lined mountains, and a familiar tinge of orange kissing the edges of tree-lined streets in a photojournalist’s wet dream.
My train car is full of people waking up. Stiff, dreary, but full of anticipation, they come to life grumpy, and begin looking eagerly for food. I, on the other hand, am preoccupied with the fact that my seat is strangely still comfortable, even after a full-day’s worth of shifting and scrunching. Note to self: write VIA Canada to complement them on their upholstery.
If you like this kind of thing, crossing the steel-blue Miramichi river on a trestle bridge, as the late autumn sun cuts knife-edge ridges into lemon and strawberry leaves, is just your kind of gig. Still ponds of ferrous-tinted water; complete with abandoned beaver lodges and stalwart, silver-grey sentinels formed of dead deciduous trees spin past my window, reminding me of where in the world I am.
I think that I am born to travel. Not in the sense that I like being in new places, but more that I enjoy the process. Every time that I step on to a plane, a bus, a train - even into a taxi in some far-flung backwater, I sense - love - the smell of travel. As someone who is generally going nowhere, I am keenly aware of the people around me who are going _somewhere_; to family, to home, to new and exciting adventures; to attend a wedding, a funeral, a birthday party, a reunion...
But this particular piece of writing is about food, not personal issues.
So.
I don’t cook for myself alone. That is, when I am at home by myself, I revert to take-out pizza and peanut butter sandwiches (toasted English muffins, slabs of cold butter and my mother’s raspberry jam are also a mainstay) for sustinance. Carrot sticks, crisp apples with a wedge of old cheddar, and the occasional glass of whole milk or cranberry juice fill out the daily menu. I am also partial to egg noodles boiled in cheap-o chicken bullion. If I’m particularly worried about my health, I’ll add a few frozen peas. Sometimes a little diced carrot.
Don’t get me wrong; I do try and get the four food groups in, but Nutella, ju-jubes, Doritos and breakfast cereal don’t seem to show up anywhere in the Food Guide. To be honest, I have to force myself to eat alone, for the most part.
Give me an excuse to cook for someone, though, and I’ll pull out all the stops. A crystal bowl full of grill-roasted aubergine hummus, spiked with paprika toasted pita spears. An ice-lined tray of Malpeque Oysters kissed with lime leads into cognac and rosemary baked capon. Then a baking dish filled with thin slices of Yukon Gold potato, scallions, minced shallots, fresh thyme, grated 12-year -old gouda and a heart-stopping dose of Chardonnay and heavy cream. Chiffonade a little Italian parsley, and sprinkle. Crisp fennel, red onion and maroc salad with toasted black sesame seeds and a cider vinegrette follows.
Then, a thin slice of brandy-soaked cheescake with a white chocolate crust and a drizzle of apricot coulis accompanies a thick, heady ounce of espresso in a tiny pewter cup. The finish is a dram of Niagara Valley Vidal icewine, chilled in the freezer for a good hour, and eboulient with tropical aromas as foreign to Canada as a machete. You have to wait a few minutes; swirl it around and let the room’s oxygen do it’s magic; but patience is not only a virtue, it has myriad rewards.
You will never find a more direct way to a woman’s heart.
Food on the road presents a unique challenge, mainly because eating alone in a restaurant is so desperately sad. If you get a few glasses of wine in you though, it is possible to fantasize a celebrity existence, and coo over the steak tartare whilst at the same time turning your nose up at the limp, acidic spinach salad. A fuzzy debit card transaction later, and you have a costly but hopefuly decent story to relate, and enough minerals in your bloodstream to make it through another day without passing out.
Mostly though, sitting on a red vinyl-covered stool at a stained Arborite counter, your boots dripping brown slush and your coat still on against the draft from the door out to the gas pumps, a hot chicken sandwich with a side of gravy-smothered fries and a pile of boiled grey-green canned peas will do the trick, and at least keep your stool solid. And more often that not, a just-shy-of-crazy trucker will regaile you with stories of past loves, wretched weather, tax burdens and brushes with the law. Food is about who you share it with, after all.
On a similar sojourn east to New Brunswick, this time in a car in late December, I pulled into a diner between La Haute-Cote_Nord and Riviere-du-Loup, somewhere along the desolate stretch of highway 20 that streaks you through the province of Quebec, hugging the edge of the icy, windblown south coast of the St. Lawrence River valley, looking for breakfast. This is a place where snowmobiles are more common at gas stations than cars, and losing lottery tickets, empty Tim Horton’s cups and spent diapers make up the bulk of the Wednesday morning garbage pick-up.
“Auberge du Riviere” seemed a hostel of local cuisine; perhaps a vignette of road-kill fricassee. The coffee, served up gently in styrofoam, was weak and cold. Two eggs, over-hard, limp streaky bacon, and rubbery white toast slathered in oleo was, however, a revelation. This is _real_ food. Some Acadian dude is slaving away over a griddle, just trying to make it to five o’clock, when he can hit the depanneur for a twelve-pack of beer and go home to watch the hockey game. End of day, the staff will take stock of what’s left in the freezer, sniff the aging milk cartons, count the float, shoo the last of the sad old men out into the dark, snowy night, and lock up.
I’ve had road food in a bunch of places. In Barbados, it’s a flying fish sandwich; usually a department store white bread bun with a whole, split and deep-fried flying fish slapped inside and slathered with expired mayonnaise, sold from a makeshift stand along with a mickey of Bajan rum a half mile from the entrance to the Hilton Resort for about 2 bucks. Filling, comforting, and excruciatingly fresh, but after two or three days of consistent ingestion, you develop a kind of gag reflex. Might be the rum chaser.
In the Canadian east (that is, the largely forgotten and misunderstood Maritime provinces) one finds a culinary host of artery-clogging sundries along the pothole-ridden roads. "Poutine" is a classic Quebequois immigrant, and is usually “crinckle cut” french fries with production-based gravy and tasteless processed cheese curds. If you put pepper (pre-ground, stale, and shaken out of a sketchy rice-filled diner-style vessel) on it, it actually transforms into a kind of time capsule; one that recalls cherished moments of TV dinners and limp, oil-soaked popcorn eaten at the local Cinema out of a flat-top box during “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.
The "Halifax Donair" is another semi-edible denizen of the east. This item is the brainchild of Greek and Lebanese immigrants to the area, and has the same kind of culinary cultural awareness that "Chicken Balls" do for immigrant Szechuan entrepreneurs. A cylindrical "loaf" of meat product about the size and shape of an elongated beer keg turns slowly on an upright spit in front of orange glowing heating elements. Donairs are created by shaving slices of semi-charred, dry meat product onto a pita bread, and covering them with diced tomato, onion, and "donair sauce" which looks like semen, and has a sweet and tangy edge to it. Be prepared to launder your shirt after attempting to wrestle with one of these.
Texas is another institute of road food. Outside of Dallas, you can, for about three bucks, get a behemoth of barbeque; a paper plate weighed down with pulled pork, sauced with smoke-fired chipoltle. No lettuce or carrot sticks to be found here.; just meat, lovingly slow-cooked. I hate Texas, and everything it stands for, but give me a feed of El Paso - grilled meat and I can almost see myself as a citizen.
And I can’t help but be totally confused by the lack of couiture in Central America. I mean really; these people live in a veggie cornucopia, and a land with _two_ tropical coasts teeming with edible delictibles. What do you get as road food there? Panama, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua; it’s all about “Cassado”. This is basically beans (soaked and boiled to within an inch of their lives) and rice (same grain; different cooks) alongside limp lettuce and half-green tomato slices , accompanied by (always stunningly fresh; I’ll give ‘em that) fried fish.
Here’s my menu for a roadside pull-over in Belize:
Pescado frito served with a slice of lemon and a fork, and a big 'ol mango.
(more food observations to come)
k
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