SOLSTICE THOUGHTS ABOUT OTHERS IN THE WORLD

The solstice has come and we’re now headed back into the light. It was hard to take in that realisty during the storm of freezing rain on Saturday night and Sunday. But by today, when the sun came out and we saw blue sky I felt a YES! things are already brighter.

Tomorrow is Christmas; it’s already come in many parts of the world. I’ve been baking today (after shopping for oysters etc for tomorrow) and the house is filled with warm smells of spices and baking loaves and cookies. But nearby there’s no baking going on, nor any cooking at all. I was reminded forcefully of that todqy by a guy who makes the pates and other charcuterie at Sanagan’s, my local butcher. I asked if he was cooking, or being cooked for, for Christmas. “There’s no cooking” he said. “We have no power.” He lives in the eastern suburbs of Toronto, the area hardest hit by the ice storm and its aftermath: downed trees, downed power lines and telephone lines, pumping stations and microwave towers out of commission, and so on.

Many are staying with friends, taken in for a meal or a bath or to sleep. But others may be without friends or without the means to call for help. And so the have and have-not divide is being expressed in new and painful ways here in the “first world” that is Toronto.

It’s sobering.

Meantime in South Sudan there is murder and desolating violence going on… And in the central African Republic, and along Burma’s border areas… How and why do we carry on in personal happiness and satisfaction when others are suffering?

I think it’s about survival. Most of us cannot live with a daily acknowledgement of the suffering of others. We wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning; it would drive us literally crazy.

But others, rare others, manage to take action. They include the extraordinary brave and imaginative wmen of Pussy Riot, as well as countless un-famous incividuals who toil in the trenches to make things better where they are.

I’ve just read a remarkable novel, a difficult book in its story and truths, and also an astonishing one. It’s by Anthony Marra and is set in Chechnya. I avoid scary movies and violent movies, but somehow I couldn’t put the book down. It spoke truth to me. The title is A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. And in it people struggle to be present to others, to help when help is painful to give and to receive, and when all effort seems hopeless.

A must-read.

I try to read a book of intensity and range at Christmas, fiction or non-fiction. And to have time alone. My first experience of a Christmas like that was in my mid-twenties. I had been included in another family’s Christmas, warm and welcoming, the previous year. It was right after my mother had died. I was grateful, but the whole experience was somehow alienating, as if I was trying to pretend that I was really warmed by the warmth of others.

And so the following year I had a Christmas Day on my own, a walk and a long good read (Paul Goodman’s book Growing Up Absurd). I needed to be face to face with my aloneness.

And now? Well now I wrap my family of friends around me for part of the holidays and for a good part of the year. But I treasure the time I have alone, often lonely, while travelling or just being wherever I am. And in those moments I try to look the despair of the world in the eye. It seems so important to acknowledge it and give it respect. And to think about how, in whatever way large or small, we can each try to make things better for others.

So that’s my wish for this solstice season, that we consider the pain in the world, that we give it our attention for a while, and then try to commit to some action to help with it, whatever we can manage.

LOOKING FORWARD TO NEW HORIZONS & BIDDING FAREWELL TO 2012

It’s been more than two weeks since I flew back from Southeast Asia to Toronto, and that same amount of time since I posted a blogpost. Disgraceful, you might well say. I enjoy writing here, thinking on the page, so to speak. So what is it that’s caused this lacuna? I ask myself.

There are the obvious reasons: jetlag and disorientation after the flights from Rangoon via Bangkok etc, and the busy-ness of seeing friends after a travel gap, with the added intensity and expectations that come during the Christmas season.

But it felt like there was more to it. I think I was more wrecked by the whirlwind of book tour than I was prepared to acknowledge. I’m not complaining, especially not after having had the chance to recharge in Chiang Mai, but somehow the deep tiredness, more emotional than physical, continued long after and left me empty of initiative for ideas. I displaced my energies into baking and cooking and seeing friends, but could never quite feel the deep juiciness that I love to feel when I sit down to write here.

And now at last that richer energy is back, as of two or three days ago. I rejoice.

On this last day of the year that marks a dozen years since 2000, that’s been a leap-year/election year and a year that for me was all about the BURMA book, I’m feeling mighty grateful to be alive and in good health, with projects to look forward to and friends to rejoice with.

The holidays have been multi-layered. In our house we don’t have any particular holiday ritual. The only rule is that no-one gets imposed upon, in fact basically the only rule is that there are no rules. It makes things very relaxed, somewhat shapeless, and very pleasurable. 

This year we ate a huge meal with friends, family-style, on Chrstmas evening, beginning with PEI oysters and some extraordinary shrimp, moving on to a Berkshire pork rib roast with brilliant crackling, as well as several Burmese salads (the grapefruit salad was especially delish with the pork), and then following up with a choice of sweets that included mince tarts and pumpkin pie, as well as home-made chestnut ice cream. Are you having indigestion reading this list? I am.  

And all week we’ve been snacking on various biscotti, made from my recipes in HomeBaking. Cooking was part of my way of dealing with patchy tiredness from jetlag. I made jars of mincemeat a week ago, using homemade candied peel, suet, currants, sultanas, chopped apple, lemon and orange zest and juice, and a good splash of brandy. Some went into the mince tarts, some has gone as presents, but I have to confess that there’s one open jar in the fridge that I dip into every once in a while - with a clean spoon, I swear - to take a lovely rich and intense mouthful. It’s like an over-the-top version of the classic scoop-a-finger-into-the-peanut butter jar, and to me way more tempting and delicious.

So it is that most of us emerge into 2013 having to loosen our belts and opt for those less-fitted garments that allow us to breath easily. The wonderful sereendipitous ski that I had in the city a few days ago, up ravines etc, after our huge snowfall last Wednesday-Thursday, was not enough to work off all this indulgence, nor was the fabulous dancing we all did last night. 

But so what? It’s not worth worrying about weight and tight clothing. Life is too short to focus on such trivial “first world problems”. I prefer to turn my imagination to wider less me-centred horizons, those which beckon endlessly, and remind me that the world is an infinitely fascinating place, where people of all kinds face intractable problems and conflicts and try to do so with courage and dignity. 

So I’ll close with a wish. Sorry if it seems preachy or pretentious, for it’s heartfelt: May this coming year bring more justice and more peace: more negotiation and less conflict, more respect and less arrogance, to us all.

PIES ON PI DAY

Yesterday was “Pi Day”, that is, for all the non-geeks, the date (in AMerican style) that reads 3.14. The Greek letter pi is the symbol for the magic constant that helps us express the formulae for the area and circumference of a circle. And its first digits are 3.14. The sequence goes on to infinity. WIth its next couple of digits it reads 3.1415. Now that of course is a date sequence we’ll reach in three years.

Yikes! Where did the time go that we’re already nearing 2015. Incredible.

Anyhow, "Pi Day” is marked by various people on-line and elsewhere, talked about, celebrated. And yesterday for the first time I thought, I can do this, I can make a pie for pi day.

Long ago, before starting work on HomeBaking in 2000, I was cautious of pie, in fact I’d never made one. I thought it was specialised, only for those with “the touch” for pastry, which I assumed I didn’t have. But in working on the book I discovered that like all baking fears this one was not interesting, and should be discarded. And how lovely, to lose a fear and gain the confidence to embark on a silly delicious Pi Day project with no worries!

I made a large batch of cream cheese and butter pastry (a cup/half pound of each, creamed together), but I didn’t have enough cream cheese so I added 1 egg yolk; and I used whole wheat pastry flour and all-purpose, a cup of each, as well as a dash of sugar and some salt. The pastry went into the frig while I thought about filling options.

In the end the pastry extended to three pie shells and two tartlets. The first filling I tried was a version of Jane Grigson’s Lemon Tart (in her fruit book) which is an intensely flavoured lemon custard topped with slices of candied lemon. Delish and of course beautiful too. It made enough for two tartlets as well. The next filling was easier. I went back to Sean Smith’s Acadian grandmother’s cranberry pie, very simple: You combine 1 pound frozen cranberries with 1 pound (2 cups) sugar. I used a blend of white and sucanat sugar. Pour them into a pricked unbaked pastry shell (it should be strong, so a cream cheese crust or pate sucree are the best options) and bake at 375 for about thirty minutes. Beautiful, simple, delicious. And finally the third orphaned-feeling crust lined a pie plate that I filled with a (small) pile of chopped apple (I should have had one or two more), a few stray cranberries, and flavoured with some cinnamon and sugar and a little maple syrup. Partway through baking I added a “guelon” as they call it in the Swiss Jura, an egg whisked with heavy cream and flavoured, thus time with a little more maple syrup and cinnamon.

When you bake pies on PI Day (or any other time, it’s true) you feel rich – food and treats for whoever comes by are ready and waiting, made by hand, by you, with care.

Of course the other thing on pi day is to bake round things, pies or otherwise. All my pies were in round pans…

And now less than twenty-four hours later, the cranberry is all gone, ditto the lemon tartlets and a good part of the apple-cranberry pie. hmmm