Recipes and reminiscences

It's a cold (-15C), grey day in Grey County. We've had two feet (60 centimetres) of snow come down in the past week. Larry's had to blow out the driveway three times. Trump is unhinged, with the ICE thugs killing U.S. citizens on a regular basis. Then the administration lies about the circumstances. Plus Trump is threatening Canada and calling our Prime Minister a governor. Sigh.

On a much more benign and sane note, I've gotten back into baking. Nothing fancy. But tasty, practical goodies. Yesterday, I made a big batch of ginger snaps from my late friend Pat Inett's recipe.

The precisely printed card she wrote out for me triggered so many memories.

Pat made gigantic trays of Christmas treats every year for her friends and family. Yummy mincemeat tarts, brownies, squares of all sugary types, and ginger snaps.

She was just as generous with her time and patience. We worked together at the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food. She was a rock, and I'll never forget how she always supported me in whatever I was up to.

Seeing her handwritten instructions made me think of all the recipes I've had over the years, and how I go back to some of them again and again. I'm old school, and have a lot of my recipes in hard copy, fastened into a couple of binders. Plus about a dozen books I've had since Noah was a pup.

I tend to be a messy cook, so a lot of my go-tos are quite spattered. Ingredients get spilled, splashed and otherwise thrown over the surface of the best ones.

Like this szechuan orange-ginger chicken recipe I have from the old days in Toronto (30+ years ago). It's from the Lighthearted Cookbook by Anne Lindsay.

I used to make this at least once a week, usually in the summer time. In those days, Rob and I would eat at about 8:30 p.m. or so, because of his 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. shift at the Post. It's a corker. And easy. Which has always been a must for me.

The winner of the most abused recipe has to be my instructions for Pad Thai. Which my other late friend Karen Heiber wrote out for me after we travelled together through India, Nepal and Thailand.

We were in our twenties and fearless. From the crowded streets of Delhi to the peaks of the Annapurna range in Nepal to the beaches of Thailand, we packed a lot into a few weeks. Pad Thai was the cheapest and most filling meal on the menus, so we ate a LOT of it.

Karen died of breast cancer far too young at the age of 53 in 2014.

We had lost touch over the years, but every time I make her fantastic

Pad Thai, I think of her. Especially the last instruction: to serve the dish accompanied by the Eagles, which we heard blasting on pirated cassettes in every restaurant we visited in Thailand.

Here's to old friends, beat-up recipes and precious memories. Until next week.

Gratuitous cat photo courtesy of Hobbes and Wilma, who are waiting patiently under the kitchen table in case something edible drops from the sky.