TAKING A PAUSE TO RENEW...

Here it is the third week in November (my apologies for being dilatory; it's twelve days since I last wrote here) and we’re still in the season of mists and sunshine, a slippage of weather that makes it feel like late October. But the days are short: here in Toronto we have less than nine and a half hours of daylight right now.

And so I am leaving, for a few short weeks, to Southeast Asia, where it’s starting to be winter, but of a different kind. Daytime temperatures are around 30 Centigrade (about 84 F) and can be higher - Chiang Mai’s forecast is in the mid-thirties for some reason, highly unusual for this time of year - and in the night it drops to the low twenties or so. As I was packing, a rather approximate activity compared to my careful abstemious packing for my book tour trips, I was reminded of summer, for light-weight cotton skirts, pants, tops, all folded down into nothing. I am checking one bag, a lumpy backpack, so there’s lots of leeway for the “why not this too?” kind of packing. I added a couple of sweaters, then took one back out. No need for overkill! I’ve got a shawl for layering and emergency shelter, socks for the plane, and books. Nothing more needed.

Except perhaps the key card that lets me into the lobby of the apartment building in Chiang Mai. hmm... Somehow it’s gone missing. I’ve got the keys to my apartment, but not the card. I’m hoping that someone is around when I get to Chiang Mai, late on Wednesday evening (with the time change and date line, I’m losing most of November 21), to let me in. And then I hope to veg out for a few days. 

Jetlag is like the flu: it’s important to get naps in, drink fluids, have books to read, and to remember that any thinking I think I’m doing is in fact unreliable and muddied.

So don’t expect much from me here, or on Facebook etc, for the next few days. I’ll try to get restored quickly, by eating fresh fruit, going for khao tom (pork rice soup) at my favorite street stall (I wrote about it in Lucky Peach in their third issue), and walking a lot. A friend said to me recently that what I need after the sometimes exhilarating intensities of book tour with the BURMA book is days to be bored...That “boredom” is a kind of fruitful emptiness that leaves space for new thoughts and ideas. Right now it feels like an enticing prospect.

I’ve loved being out and about with the BURMA book. I’ve met so many interesting people, been asked intelligent unusual questions, had great conversations. But now it’s time to retrench, consolidate, pull in my horns and recharge.

I can’t think of a better place to do that than Chiang Mai. I’m so grateful to have it as a “bolt hole”. And to have friends there who will keep me on track, call me on things, engage in discussions, challenge me....

Bring it on!

And happy thanksgiving to all who celebrate it this week. I hope you are in good company, eating interesting things, kicking back from your regular routines and responsibilities, and feeling grateful for all that you have.

POSTSCRIPT: How amazing to read about Obama’s trip to Burma this week. His speech at the University in Rangoon was terrific, cautioning about all that there is still do to, but also congratulating the government and people for the recent changes in the country. Here’s the link: http://www.paramuspost.com/article.php/20121119162947827#.UKqnAjvC018.facebook Who would have thought a year ago that he’d be coming to Burma for a visit and then going on to Cambodia to give Hun Sen a piece of his mind, holding up Burma as an example of progressive movement toward democracy? Astonishing! 

MOMENTS TO ENGAGE, MOMENTS TO DISCONNECT

As we shift into the cooler days of September, the students are arriving at the University of Toronto (just up the street) and streaming around in flotillas, some bewildered-looking, others trying to be cool... There are cars pulled up to the curb by the various residences, harried or puzzled-looking parents and spacey-looking kids unloading crates and bundles of possessions, while frosh leaders in coloured T-shirts call out info and try to direct traffic.

This annual renewal of optimism and fresh-start enthusiasm is a wonderful sight to see. I feel so lucky to live near the university, so that I am immersed in it every time I step outside. The buzz will continue for three weeks, as the new students get their feet wet so to speak. Soon they'll become accustomed to it all, cool, maybe even jaded!

I've had a great transition this week, from working on last recipe tests and retests, to actually sending the re-dos in to Judith the copy editor. Now to fill the last holes in the Glossary. There's Buddhism for example, a large topic, you'll agree. I want to give a sense of what it's about, and make a place for it in the Burma context, all while trying not to sound trite or glib. hmm And then there are the technique questions: how much to put in about deep-frying? or cooking in a double-boiler? for example.

As this stage relinquishes its grip, I am trying to get ready for the next, which is the check-the-copy-edited ms crunch. It will start in about a week. I'll have three weeks or so to get it done. In the middle of that I'm heading to Glen's Fall's New York to give a talk (on September 29, at the Crandall Public Library, if any of you live nearish-by and are interested). I need to pull my talk together, as well as images, slides they'll be, and mostly about rice, that great staple and social organiser. To grow rice with irrigation requires, when there is little or no mechanisation, a strong social organisation. People have to maintain ditches and terraces and work co-operatively. Bali is a great example of rice landscape, both physical landscapes and the social landscapes that underpin it all.

I had supper with three remarkable women on Saturday night, a last-minute assembling of a visitor, a returning friend, and two of us who've been here the whole time. We sat out in the warm night air and ate and drank and talked and laughed...losing complete track of the time. And then, amazingly, another version of the same scenario happened the next afternoon. I was at lunch at a friend's place, four women again, all of us in food in some way, with long knowledge of each other but not necessarily close friendship. And again, in the humid warm air, we ate well and drank wine and were present to each other.

I love those sorts of meals that become ships or train compartments, worlds unto themselves. And now I go back to each of them in my mind's eye and do what I like to do with old perfume bottles: lift out the stopper and have a transporting sniff, or equivalent, that takes me right back.

Labour Day is for not-work, but I spent it retesting recipes; this time my success rate was 100%, a nice change! I am particularly pleased with the steamed savory rice crepes, and a tapioca pudding with coconut cream custard on top; both of them took many tries. Tashi was great about eating sample, but it was a little gruelling, even with a guinea pig taster! Neither of them is difficult to make. The problem for me is figuring out proportions and technique, and now it's done.

I kept the computer turned off all Labour Day, for a total of thirty-six hours, until this morning in fact. It was interesting to realise how much time I put in here at the screen, looking at messages and responding, looking at Tweets and clicking on the links they throw up, etc etc. It's all part of the environment these days that is so distracting; I wrote at length about it last week.

The result of my lovely long encounters with friends together with my thirty-six hours without email or other computer connection, is that I now know I want to take a computer and internet holiday once a week, at a minimum. It will help keep my head clear I think, able to work steadily at one idea. Today my Glossary task was Buddhism and also a scattering of new entries I am discovering I need in the Glossary. I love the feeling of productivity when I can sit and engage with a task unstintingly. But then that's what life is all about, that's when we feel at our most alive: when we're deeply engaged and committed.

NEWS OF EVENTS UPCOMING AND CAT TALES

A quick note, here on this third day of November, sunny and bright and cold! to say that I'll be talking and cooking in London Ontario this weekend. There's a writers' conference and a lot of events and workshops, all to benefit Wellspring, the remarkable and helpful cancer support organization. Here's the link to the website about all the events: http://www.writersforwellspring.ca/Writers_for_Wellspring/home.html . I hope that if you're in the area you can make it.

I'm feeling a little out of rhythm, for this morning I took Silky- a beautiful ten year old tabby we have as a housemate for the year while her family is in NYC -to the vet for a check-up. She has a longstanding large fleshy lump under her jaw, which doesn't seem to bother her at all. A friend was over for supper on Monday and was appalled that I hadn't had it checked. Well, I said, her family said it was just a fat deposit. "That's not good enough, it needs to be looked at!" was the reply.

And indeed she was right. The vet said it looks like cancer and in any case should come off. So Silky's there being anaesthetized and cut open right now. I hope she recovers, but I doubt she'll be feeling warm and fuzzy and forgiving of me anytime soon!

There was a thick white layer of frost on the grass this morning as I ran through campus, and a smell of cold in the air, that smell that blocks out all the delicate scents of autumn and tells us that we're headed for cold and snow soon. It's beautiful though, morning frost on the ground, with brighter green showing where it has melted, and under trees, where the air has been kept a little warmer (or is it just that the dew doesn't set there, so there's nothing to freeze white?).

I'm slowly getting prepared for my trip (I leave for Chiang Mai on Wednesday). I'm assembling my camera paraphernalia, such as it is, and also my travelling clothes, lightweight comfortable layers of easy-to-wash garments. I've ordered some US dollars, in perfect condition, for in Burma, where I'm hoping to spend three weeks, nothing less than perfect bills are accepted. It's not sensible, just paranoid and superstitious; not the people's doing, but the rule of the government-run central bank. And of course there are no ATM machines or credit card facilities, so if you don't have enough money, there's nothing to do but spend less or leave. It's a reminder of what travel used to be like, and the constraints can be fine, until they corner you, and then you remember what constraints people are living with every day in Burma and elsewhere, and you stop complaining and feeling sorry for yourself.

We don't even know what freedom feels like, we have so much of it. Only when we run into constraints can we take stock of how few of them there actually are for most of us.

The people who are out of work and pissed off in the US and voted against Obama, thinking that somehow the Republicans, the party of big money, will take better care of them. How crazy is that? Why would a person lower on the economic ladder think health care was a bad thing? I just don't get it.

And with that last snarky comment, this scrappy blogpost is done! I'll be more coherent next time, and will hopefully have good news about Silky, too.

WINDS AND COLOUR, FALLING IN THE FALL!

The big winds of autumn came blowing through this week, whisking leaves off branches... The weather people gave us warning about the winds, so the morning before they swept in, I went for my run with an extra awareness that the glowing colours in the trees, the aureole of light that seems to radiate from them, are temporary and that I should make my farewells. As the wind picked up there were swirls of colour against the sky, tumbles of lovely gold and fawn and pink and orange and a kind of raspberry red from some kind of bush... It was all dazzling, a kind of fireworks of autumn in full daylight.

But we have not been completely bared: The ivy that covers the coachhouse out back is very sheltered and its large leaves turn a gorgeous colour, graduating from green to pink and pinksh yellow in the subtlest way. The leaves shimmer in the breeze, undulating in little unsynchronized waves of colour. And that's the lovely uplifting backdrop to life these days, for the leafed wall fills the view out the back windows of the house.

But outside things aren't as warm as that glowing colour. I ran in a windbreaker and fingerless wool gloves this morning, and long pants, and that was perfect. I did a long loop then stopped in at Kensington Market to buy a pumpkin (the view of the young people in the house is that we have a social responsibility to have a pumpkin for Hallowe'en, hand out treats, and generally participate - and I can't disagree). For $5.99 I got a huge slightly eccentric and knobby one that i could hold in my arms, just. So I lumbered on home with it, pausing at a couple of places to rest my arms. Next step of course is carving... I like to make two or even three faces on a pumpkin, with different expressions, and it's best if different people do different faces, for fun.

At this time of year Oaxaca has the Dia de los Muertes and in Fance it's the Toussaint holiday, All Saints' on November 1 and All Souls on November 2. So it's a time for thinking about those who have left us, and to appreciate the days years, minutes, hours that we have to engage with life and with each other.

I had a small personal jolt of that kind of reminder to enjoy life. A fall, but a lot harder than the fall of a leaf! It was just yesterday, as I was whooshing on my bike down a lane through the university. I caught a front tire on the edge of the curb, and over I went, sideways. Yikes! that's what jeans are for, I discovered. The denim ripped at the knee, but not a lot, and all I have (I did an inventory in the bathtub) is a burned/scraped patch below my knee and some bulging bruises, goose eggs I would call them, on a forearm, the other leg, one thigh. That's real luck. I could have broken a wrist or who knows what?

Yes, yes, "Ride with more care!" I hear you saying. But part of me loves the exhilaration of rushing along and nipping in and out and pushing myself and the limits of what I can do. It's a real adrenalin high.

And soon I'll be putting the bike to bed in the basement, for I'm heading to Thailand, and Burma too i hope, before the middle of November. So not only am I saying farewell to the leaves and the brilliant glow of autumn, but also to friends and family, for awhile.

This moment before leaving, when the "to-do" list gets long, can sometimes be a little anxious, heart-squeezing. But this time I've realised that it's up to me what I worry about. So if there's something I'm anxious about, I am trying to make sure that either I do it, or else I let it go with a "so what?" or some other letting-go phrase. It's working pretty well so far, this technique!

One of the to-do's was to tidy up the immersethrough.com website. I'm doing two culinary tours this coming winter, from January 23 to 29 and then from January 30 to February 4 2011. For more info, please have a look at the Chiang Mai page of the website. I used to dread engaging with the tech in technology, but now I find I'm enjoying it. I could never have dreamed ten years ago that I'd feel this way. Robyn Ekckhardt persuaded me to tweet, so I'm now doing that as well, (@naomiduguid). And that's why I was talking about Twitter and e-technology generally, as a kind of hamster wheel in my last post, or the one before...

But if you're reading this you are probably way ahead of me with all this technology, not appalled by it at all, and using your i-phone or Blackbeerry fluently. I caught myself thinking this morning, during my run, that I should perhaps break down, spend the money, and engage with the I-phone. I could text and send photos and feel light about it? Would I? What do you do?

Right now I'm about to head north to say farewell to people in Grey County. There's a contra dance this evening at the Glenelg Township Hall, a lovely stone building with thick walls and wide window embrasures. It's important at these events to wear layers, so I can peel down to a sleeveless T-shirt as the room gets hot with the dancing. And then I'll have a long drive back to the city in the dark -more whooshing along, but less exhilarating than on a bicycle - so that I can wake up here in the morning, look out, and be warmed again by the glowing colours of the ivy out back.

Hope your Hallowe'en is pleasurable and that November looks promising in every way.

NEW HORIZONS AT THANKSGIVING AS THE SUN TAKES LEAVE

How can it be Friday already? The Thanksgiving holiday last Monday put all my internal orientation out of wack - and friends have said the same thing. So suddenly we're butting up agains the end of another week and yikes!! the to-do list is still pretty full to overflowing.

But the holiday was truly wonderful, so no complaining allowed, I say to myslef. We had fabulously good weather, I got out for a long bike ride and explore in Scarborough, the leaves brilliant and the sky an intense blue, then Monday went into cooking mode. I made bread for the first time in two years, baking it off on Sunday, but Monday there was time to enrich some leftover dough with butter, flatten it, and press chopped pears with sugar on top for a Baker's Fruit Tart. The other end of dough earned its keep under sliced potatoes, slat, and minced shallots, as a version of pletzel. The small Berkshite pork roast melted its fat nicely to cook the roast potatoes to a kind of dreamy perfection... And most amazing of all, the pumpkin pie effort was a huge success.

I wanted to give proportions and method, while it's still in my head: Cut top and bottom ends off 2 or 3 small pie pumpkins, so they sit up, but are still fleshy at each end. Bake at 400 for about 90 minutes, or longer, on a baking sheet. Let cool, then scrape out seeds and set aside, and scrape out flesh. Mash flesh as wellas you can with a slotted spoon, and set aside.

(Wash seeds thoroughly, discarding all stringy bits and flesh, and finsih the job by putting them in a sieve and rinsing them off well, then bake on a sheet in that 400 oven until just touched with colour. These were the best pepitas I have ever had. They've been a great snack for passers-by all week.)

You will need a blender for the next step: Use the proportion of 2 cups pumpkin flesh to 1 cup 10% cream; 3/4 cup sugar (I used organic cane sugar that was light brown); 1/2 teaspoon salt or so; generous teaspoon cinnamon; 1/4 teaspoon cloves; scant teaspoon dried ginger; 1/3 nutmeg clove grated. Put them all in the blender and liquify. You may have to stop and stir a little in between, but eventually you will have a smooth thick liquid. Set aside in a bowl and repeat with another batch.

Whisk six eggs (three per each batch of 2 cups pumpkin) and stir into the mixture just before using. I then got a little anxious so I stirred in, this will maybe make you laugh, about 3 tablespoons pastry flour: why? I had an obscure idea about thickening it I guess. No harm done, as it turns out.

This will give enough to fill three pies, and maybe some small tartlets too. I made a double recipe of pate sucree (6 eggs, 1/2 pound butter; sugar, salt, and a blend of pastry flour and all-purpose), prebaked it for 10 minutes at 375degrees, pricked and also weighted down with dried limas on a sheet of foil. After it had cooled, I poured in pumpkin liquid leaving more than 1/4 inch clearance, and baked it at 350 until firm. For tart pans I used one small thick (Calphalon) baking sheet (11 by 15 inches or so) and one pie plate. I had some pumpkin liquid left over for steaming the next day, and a little bit of remnant pastry that became a small batch of sablees, dusted with sugar and cinnamon.

The rectangular tart and the pie were both spectacular, tasted of pumpkin, subtle and good, not just of the spices or other additives. I was delighted. I am ready to do it again, in fact. Maybe for Hallowe'en??

The leaves on the huge maple tree out back are a blend of red and green, lovely, and changing colour moment to moment it seems. We're racing toward winter as the sun heads south. And we're squirreling away food, at least I have been: I collected black walnuts, taking them from the squirrels, you might say, from under a tree on my daily run and from under another on my bike ride last Sunday. What to do with them? Any ideas? They stain hands of course, but what about an eating idea? or should I just crack them open and enjoy them one by one with friends?

ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS IN A GUST OF WIND

It happened overnight, the end of summer. Suddenly we were being blown and chilled tempestuously, by winds that gusted and shifted, sending clouds racing and people hurryng to find their wool sweaters and their windbreakers. That was last Friday night, after a week of hot heavy days. I had a restless sleep, and so did many others, I gather. I've been leaving my door open all summer, the door from my top-floor bedroom out onto a small balcony. It's given me a sleeping-outside feeling, free and airy, on the hot nights we've had since June. But sometime in the middle of the night what felt like howling gales through the door drove me up out of my bed to close it, with a sigh of regret and relief, both: regret of course at the end of the soft warmth of summer, and relief once the chilly winds were shut out by the firmly closed door.

Saturday morning's early bicycle ride to the Brickworks Market was windy and blowy, and at the market people who had looked out and seen sun, but not read the paper or looked at the weather forecast online, were shivering in T-shirts - brrrr! - as they bought their bread and meat and end-of-summer tomatoes and plums, and tried to warm themselves with hot coffee. I was in three layers topped by a scarf wrapped round and round my neck, and still I was barely warm enough. But the balancing pleasure to all that cold was realising that it was time to start baking, so in went a skillet cake, this one topped with chopped peaches, chopped but not peeled. (That cake has already vanished, and a second, made last night, is well on its way too.)

Saturday evening after supper and cake with mint tea, with the winds calmed back down, I went for a walk with friends through the University of Toronto campus. It was beautiful, but empty of people, a stage-set just before the curtain rises.

And sure enough, on Sunday morning before eight, as I ran through campus, there were the first signs of renewed life. A woman walking toward me near one of the residences carrying an armload of clothing smiled at me in the sunshine as she said, with delight, "What a beautiful first day at university! She's so lucky!" She told me they'd driven in early from the Niagara peninsula to move her daughter into residence, then she carried on down the path, followed by her daughter and others, each of them loaded with "stuff". As I ran on under the intensely blue clear sky I could hear the leaves rustling, that sound that starts in early autumn as the leaves dry out in the cold. How does it happen overnight? I thought, that suddenly the leaves are getting ready to fall rather than working on photosynthesis and making life?

Once more the reminders pour in, that change is a constant, with the scales weighted on both sides, life and death, endings and beginnings of all kinds. At this time of year, as summer warmth and life is dying, a different kind of life is starting afresh for so many...

it is the start of a new year this week, not just Rosh Hoshana in the Jewish calendar, but the new year for all of us who live with or near schools or universities or live with people who are engaged with education. There's that feeling of hope and sense of optimism and promise in the air, in the voices of the students, on the faces of parents and teachers and students alike. Our four-year-old friend E is headed into junior kindergarten, wriggling with anticipation. Our friend N is starting her first year at university, delighted to be done with high school. And so it goes, in thousands of households.

For me it's a thrill every year, it's each time a fresh pleasure, to watch the new year begin.

Meanwhile in the garden my tomato plants are yielding less and less (some of them because of blight as well as shorter chillier days), though the mint and basil is still vigorous, and I tell myself each day that I must plant some salad greens (should have done it several weeks ago in fact). I found the seed packages today, mixed salad greens and leaf lettuce, and they'll go in tomorrow. With any luck there will be time before the snow falls in any serious way to pick some tender lettuce. I hope so!

FULL MOON AND OTHER GOLD LIGHTING OUR WAY

We've just passed through a momentous milestone, the period known in France as the Toussaint holiday (because November 1 is All Sants, and November 2 All Souls' Day in the Christian church). In North America Hallowe'en tends to grab all the attention, the night before All Saints, and in Mexico and area it's the Day of the Dead that is foremost. All these are connected to this magical tipping point, the time when we are halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter Solstice.

Long ago I spent the Toussaint weekend in Paris. I was seventeen, a time when everything feels clear and memories get sharply etched. My memory of that time is of older women dressed in black walking to church, a dull grey sky with occasional drizzle, Notre Dame and other churches grey with chill and stone and centuries of prayer and incense, and a feeling of claustrophobia (all that belief, all that black-garbed sorrow) together with exhilaration (I'm here, in Paris, and isn't the stained glass amazing, and the gothic stone and the sense of timelessness!?!). So the Toussaint always resonates for me, forward and back, and becomes a time to remember the dead and treasure the living and all the possibilities in life.

Yesterday afternoon, just as the moon came full (at 2 in the afternoon here in Toronto, I was told), a friend was telling me that this was a particularly powerful full moon, given that it falls at Pagan New Year. Aha! It can be no accident that northern European christians celebrate the saints and the souls at the same time of year as their pagan ancestors (and modern pagan descendents too of course) celebrate the time when the veil between the worlds of the living and of the dead is at its most transparent... WIth the full moon overseeing it all this time, let's hope we're well launched into a productive fruitful year.

(And this same full moon marks the Thai festival of Loi Kratong, when everyone makes a small raft of banana leaves, places a flower or other beautiful thing on it, and a lit candle, and floats it down the river in the evening; the idea is that all one's bad thoughts and bad deeds and bad luck get carried away, a lovely idea... almost as lovely as the sight of all those little barks and their flickering fragile candles bobbing their way downstream and out of sight.)

Last night at Robert Lepage's Stravinsky production (of the Nightingale and other stories), there was another huge full moon hanging in the sky, with the members of the orchestra on stage below, and then in place of the pit, a huge volume of water, a giant pool, sent little reflecting ripples of light across the ceiling. It was fabulous, the music, the staging, but still nothing human-made can compete with that magic of a fat autumn moon in the sky, the scuttering sound of dry leaves blown by the wind, and the sharp clarity of chilly autumn air.

I find myself wanting to swallow it all so I can hold it in my mind's eye and not lose it. One way to do that is to keep an eye open for landscapes or sights that are especially wonderful, like the glimpse as I drove to Grey County last Friday of a line of trees on a green grassy slope casting a golden "shadow" on the grass, made of the golden leaves that had fallen from the trees in the last couple of days.

Another is to cook and eat the treasures of the season. The best this week has been a pumpkin soup made of organic small pumpkins bought from Potz, a version of the Silky Coconut Pumpkin Soup in Hot Sour Salty Sweet, with chicken stock and coconut milk as a base. It was great the first day, but predictably my favorite has been as leftovers, the soup used to poach a farm-fresh egg. The soup is golden anyway, but then the colours get richer as the egg yolk adds another deeper golden note to the mix...

And up there in Grey County, apart from general loveliness, there was a really good visit with my Aunt Libby; an intense sauna in the forest, including a walk through the trees just in my bathing suit, so warmed from the bones outward was I; then a feast with Jon and Lillian; then a truly wonderful session of shape-note singing; followed by a long easy drive home through the dark to Toronto and a welcoming house.

On another topic, but so connected to my feelings of happiness about my time in Grey County, I read a short essay this week by Todd May, at http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/happy-ending/?th&emc=th about the way in which limits give things value. He's saying specifically that the fact that we die, all of us eventually, gives life more meaning and makes it more seriously treasured. I think that's right. Each sensation, each relationship, each good moment (and a lot of bad ones too) are precious because life is finite, time is short, and it's up to us to give shape and meaning to the time we have.

And if indeed we've just passed through Pagan New Year, it seems a fine thing to head into the dark of winter with a sense that it's up to us to light our own way in the world.

THANKSGIVING LIGHT AND WARMTH

On with the heavy wool socks, or at least some kind of socks! The chill in the air this last week has been, well, chilling! I've brought in the curry leaf plants, at last, though have yet to bring in the ficus or the hibiscus. They're toughening even as I write!

Today is Thanksgiving Day here in Canada, and the whole weekend has been one for giving thanks, filled with the treat and privilege of spending time with friends and family.

The "dead bird" meal today was fun, the turkey from Gerald, free-range and healthy at 13 pounds, cooked at 450 degrees F. (down to 425 F for the last hour) so it was done and beautiful in just over 2 hours. I didn't stuff it, just shoved some wedges of onion inside, and a handful of chives and garlic chives from the garden. The outside i rubbed with olive oil, some coarse sea salt, and some tarragon, also from the garden. I tied the legs together with string, and also flipped the end of the wings, so that they were braced against the body; that way I could use the wings to hold the flap of skin closed at the neck end, sealing in moisture. High temperature roasting (see Barbara Kafka's classic book Roasting, edited by wonderful Ann Bramson) keeps the bird moist and makes great crisp skin, especially if you start with a healthy bird, not one of those faked grocery-store over-breasted pre-basted aberrations.

We put small sort-of-peeled spuds around the bird, and the neck went into the pan too, so our friend Dina who is a bones person, had her neck to gnaw on. There were other potatoes, boiled to firmly done, then stripped and chopped, then cooked in flavoured oil, Indian style, with mustard seed, fennel, nigella, a little turmeric, onion, garlic, minced ginger,,, delish. And I stir-fried a rainbow of peppers, cut into strips, and seasoned with Sichuan pepper and not much else. Beautiful. Sides included a tart cranberry sauce flavored like Georgian tkemali. Desserts were from Dina: a cranberry studded cake, perfect, a new creation by her; and an open-faced flat pastry topped with sliced Courtland apple. What could be better?

Saturday when I went up to Grey County for an overnight airing, I stopped in to give my aunt a hug, and lots of her family, my cousins, too. They were in the middle of cooking a gigantic bird - twenty-seven pounds! yikes! which had been in the oven for hours by then. I didn't stay for supper, for I was headed on farther, to see Lillian and Jon. At their house in the forest there was a mostly vegetarian feast , with borek (the Serbian version, layers of phyllo with egg and cottage cheese between, lush! made by Jon's mother) and potato and mushroom pie by Lillian, and salad, some sausage made by neighbours and grilled over an open fire by Jon, and then an apple tart and some chocolate cake too, for dessert. Lots of warming foods for a very chilly night.

But I ate so much that I was awake in the night, digesting I think, or maybe it was the excellent coffee? I went out in the brilliant light of the half-moon, and walked on forest paths near the house, in the magical light-and-shadow. Bed was welcoming when I returned to it, creeping into the silent house. Suddenly sleep returned and I drifted happily through until morning sunshine on brightly yellowing leaves.

And it's lovely to think that the brilliant leaves at this time of year are kind of a farewell wave, but also a promise of the new life and warmth that will come, in due course, and after we've become truly impatient, yes yes, I know! but will come. Nature's promise to us all. We need glorious memories of all that warm colour to cling to as we head into the cold and dark!

KEEPING GOOD ENERGY IN HARSH WINDS

I'm a couple of days late posting this week. I have that familiar autumn feeling of days slipping by me, either because they're so beautiful that I need to be out and about in the air, or so gloomy that they feel short and dark. There's always an excuse!

But once again I'm starting a post with harsh news, this time of the harshest: David Dewees, a fabulous man, and wonderful teacher, a good and reliable and remarkable friend to many, died on Saturday, in the prime of life. My kids' old high school, Jarvis is grieving, and so are many who passed through there in the last six years. The change in the landscape of emotion and expectation is shocking and the prospect ahead bleak-looking. This is the kind of life-lesson and life experience we hate to see our kids and loved ones suffer through. There are no short-cuts to getting through this, no "quick and easy".

I guess for people who are deeply religious, there's a way to invest suffering with "meaning" and thus explain it or rationalise it. I find that approach completely unacceptable, though I admit it gives some people comfort. As those of you who have been reading this blog for awhile know already, I take a different route through this question: pain and suffering and death all remind us that we are alive and that our job is to engage with life as fully as we can. For me that means trying to tune in to others and to connect with them, be in the present with them. It also means treasuring friends and staying alert to them.

I'm not saying to ignore pain, not at all. Live it and feel it and breathe into it, get familiar with it: that's our task. Our power to reflect on it and to empathise with others who suffer or have suffered, or will suffer, is what makes us fully human. All of us experience pain and sorrow at some time, and when we do we are linked to the rest of humanity and become more fully human, somehow. It's humbling, to find how hard it is to live through the pain of loss, humbling when we realise that everyone has faced a similar burden, or is bound to at some time.

I feel very fumbling and inelegant writing this, when I think of the extraordinary clarity and elegant ease with which Karen Connelly writes, and especially when she talks about the imperative she feels (and acts on!) to live fully, in the moment. I went to a book launch at the Gladstone for her new book BURMESE LESSONS two evenings ago. It was a great event, packed, and with a short video showing striking images by Anne Bayin. Yesterday I opened the book and whoosh, I fell down the rabbit hole, headlong, as happens with some wonderful books, a rare treat. I'm now more than halfway through it, not wanting it to end. Her clarity of vision when looking out at individual people or looking in at her own motivations and reactions, is remarkable, as is her language. Stunning. And it's a good story, as well as a valuable introduction to the beauty and pain that is life in Burma.

The gusting winds today, the trees already swept bare of leaves in some places, and the increasingly slanting light, announce October and Thanksgiving (here in Canada) and the slide down to the winter solstice. I'm not ready. Are we ever?? The garden still needs to be pulled up (I hold out hope for a few more tomatoes from my beleagered plants, and the mint is still green, but the shiso leaves are gone and the seeds eaten by little families of sparrows) and winter clothes need finding and airing. Yikes!

And on the good news front, a follow-up: Last week I wrote about our dear friend with mysterious and acute abdominal pain. Well he ended up responding to antibiotics, so he didn't have surgery, and it now looks likely that it was appendicitis after all (though the GI people could never find his appendix on the CT scan or the ultrasound!). These days, they say that good medical practice is to not operate if an inflamed appendix responds to antibiotics. I wonder though, does this mean it could flare up at any time? They say not, but...

In any case, what a relief to have him back, starving of course, because he'd been kept on an IV drip and not allowed to have even a drink of water down his throat for four days. In the last week we've had consciously fuller meals, trying to fatten him up a little: roast chicken one night, with roasted sliced potatoes all round; grilled pork and beef with friends over on the weekend; mountains of salad and stir-fried green beans (we need another name since they are yellow and purple-black, as well as green); more Simplest Apple Pie; another skillet cake; a massive chocolate cake with a sheeny-shiny chocolate ganache icing, the cake made as an experiment by the sufferer himself, and eaten by all. I can't say he looks any less bare-bones, but he has colour in his cheeks and best of all, good energy!

ENGAGING WITH GREEN TOMATOES & TOMATILLOS

Thanksgiving weekend was spectacular, soft and warm, the leaves glowing on the trees.  Meant to dig up the last of the potatoes at the farm, but instead got distracted by working in the woods, taking photos with our new digital camera, so that now I feel comfortable with it.  I've got a long way to go.  I also did some line editing of Jeff's novel.  It's so engaging, the world of characters and events that he has created.  Next step is to print it, photocopy it, and hand it in.  And then we'll find out if there's an editor who likes it and wants to publish it.  I'm confident.  

Meantime Jeff can't wait to start writing a second novel.  Amazing.

I don't intend to make this about food, at least not about recipes, but I do want to pass on how delish green tomatoes can be when stir-fried.  I heated peanut oil in the wok (could have used olive oil, but because of the spices opted for peanut), tossed in mustard seed until it popped, then nigella, and fenugreek, then some chopped onion, minced ginger, and a chile from the garden.  When the onion had softened I added the chopped green tomatoes and stir-fried them.  I added a splash of water at some point, covered them and steamed them briefly.  I seasoned them with salt and a dash of soy for depth.  They were tender in about ten minutes, and ended up a cross between a vegetable side and a condiment.   Next day I had the leftovers on rice, with a fried egg on top.  What could be bad?

On a related green acidic vegetable: Fabulous Potz, at Food 4 Life in Kensington Market, told me he cooks tomatillos under the broiler, a good idea if you don't want to grill.  I usually poke them several times with a fork and cook them in a pot with a splash of water.  Once they've softened, a little salt, some chopped coriander leaf, and if you want, chopped onion or a chile...  Again, like the green tomatoes, they are a treat on rice or as a side with grilled meat, or a base for a fried egg, always my default option!