On Life As A Picky Foodie

Somewhere along the way, I lost my sense of direction.  The map I had drawn got washed along with my favourite flea market jeans.  I was sixteen and couldn’t remember where I was supposed to turn to get where I wanted to go.

The first time I revealed to someone I loved and trusted that I wanted to be a writer, I took what was, for me, a huge leap of faith.  It was a deep and scary revelation that took all of my courage.  Their response broke my heart:

“Why would you want to do that?” they said with a chuckle that felt like a smack across my cheek, “you can’t make a living at it, and besides, who would be interested in anything YOU have to say?”

Though I am no longer in contact with this person, their words shut me down for years.  Unable to get past the question about who my audience would be, I froze – I didn’t have the answer and couldn’t muster the guts to find out.  Because what if they were right and nobody read my words?  I couldn’t bear the thought of pouring my soul onto the page and having it be rejected.  

Though I was able to get that person out of my life, their words continued to haunt me.  To this day, when I’m struggling with my writing, I can hear that familiar voice telling me I’m not good enough.  With time, I have learned to recognize it for what it is.  And now, after years of hiding and procrastinating, I have finally decided to take that leap once more. 

The kitchen is my sanctuary.  It’s where I go when I’m sad or angry or frustrated.  It’s my safe place.  Somehow, I seem to have more courage in the kitchen.  Because here’s the thing: I am a terrible baker.  My cakes, gluten-free and vegan, come out crumbly or hard, too gummy or not sweet enough.  Sometimes – believe it or not – my cakes come out all of the above, and it takes a certain talent to make a cake that is both crumbly and gummy!

I guess with cake as with fiction, it’s about accepting that your first draft will probably be terrible.  In fact, it’s supposed to be terrible.  Not that that’s easy to admit to yourself or pleasant to hear or acknowledge.  But only by doing something over and over, by ripping it to shreds and really analysing what needs to be improved can you get good.  Like writing.  Or baking.

Recently I have been spending a lot of time on Jennifer Perillo’s blog.  When I saw this cake, although, as I say, my baking leaves a lot to be desired, I decided I had to attempt it -- Picky Foodie style of course.

The result? 

I’m pretty sure I will bake better cakes in the future.  But I’ve definitely done worse.  It wasn’t too gummy or too crumbly and it wasn’t too hard.  Amazingly, it stayed together quite well in that you can pick up a piece and comfortably take a bite without losing half of it along the way.  It could possibly have been a little sweeter -- the kind of cake you could have for breakfast or for dessert -- and I suspect it will complement DW’s afternoon tea really well.

Best of all?  I love the feeling of having another draft under my belt and my baking seems to have really improved in that my raspberry cake was at least edible.  I’m going to make this one again, try for better, keep working towards that elusive perfect Picky Foodie cake.

Calorie-wise, at least, I think writing will be easier than baking.  So there’s another reason to give this fiction thing another shot.  In the mean time, however, I think I’ll go brew some rosehip and hibiscus tea and cut myself another little piece.  

Raspberry Cake
(adapted from Jennifer Perillo’s Raspberry Olive Oil Cake)

Makes one 10-inch cake

2 cups Bob’s Red Mill gluten free All Purpose flour
¼ cup coconut sugar
1 T maple syrup
2 t baking powder
¼ t coarse salt
2 T ground flax seeds briefly soaked in 2 T water
1 T melted coconut oil (and a little more to grease the pan)
2 t vanilla extract
½ cup coconut milk
2 c frozen raspberries
1 mashed banana

Preheat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit / 175 Centigrade

Sift together the dry ingredients.

Whisk together the wet ingredients, leaving out the raspberries.

Combine the two and then fold in the raspberries.

Grease a 10 inch round cake pan with a little coconut oil and then pour in the batter.  Bake for 45 minutes.  Allow to cool slightly and then remove the cake from within the cake pan but keep the bottom. 

Once the cake has cooled down completely, indulge in a piece and wait for the muse to find you.

This week, New York passed a law legalizing gay marriage.

Like most people I know and love, I am overjoyed.  But I also have a personal reason to celebrate.

When I was growing up, gay was weird, scary, a name the meaner kids hurled at you to indicate there was something wrong with you.

My father is gay.

He never came out to me.  Instead, I found out by accident, when reading a book – one of those teenage coming-of-age novels where the parents are divorced and the protagonist is trying desperately to figure out where she fits in.  The father in the book had a best friend who was always coming over – just like my Dad – and, much like my father’s buddy, the best friend was an excellent cook.  At the end of the story, the girl’s dad admits that Greg is more than just a friend…

I couldn’t just come out and ask him though.  My father wasn’t that kind of person.

Two years passed.  I studied every reaction, made note of anything that could hint at some kind of clear-cut answer.  Was that hug they shared a little too close?  Why was the best friend using his spoon to give my Dad a taste of his dinner?  As a child, I loved the Harriet the Spy series, and now I had a chance to use those skills for my own research. Sadly, Harriet ends up losing all her friends and as he felt me watching him, my father became increasingly uncomfortable.  Our relationship became fraught, difficult.  He blamed my adolescence but I know now that it was to do with the secret I was making it more and more difficult for him to keep.

(even today, as I write these words, I still feel a chill running up my spine)

Secrets were popular when I was growing up.  Around me everyone had secrets:  secret lovers in other cities, secret children with former flames or personal assistants.  Somehow, though, sexuality was different. 

“I wouldn’t talk like that,” a kid in my seventh grade class retorted when I told him to shut up, “if MY father was like yours.”

The rumour mill in my hometown is a Monster.  Created by bored housewives and perpetuated by their husbands and best friends, it has a life of its own.  Constantly starving for new prey, this Beast feeds off the weak, the deceived, the deceptions. 

My father, forbade me from telling anyone.  I was completely alone bar the one person I confided in.  When someone else hinted at it, I attacked my confidante thinking she had betrayed my trust.

Then there was the day I read a story in Time magazine, written by a girl my age who had sewn a square on the AIDS quilt in memory of her father.  It was a tiny sidebar, a barely noticeable post scriptum, but it changed my life. There were two of us!   

Growing up in a small community was hard for someone like me.  From day 1, I was an outsider – having moved at age six, there was only my mother, my father, my brother and I, when almost everyone else seemed to be related.  I didn’t fit in.  And then there was our family secret.  It took me a long time to find out that everyone knew because nobody talked about it.

The problem with secrets is that the people keeping them are always the last to know when it’s not longer a secret.  You are afraid of every word that comes out of your mouth, of even accidentally alluding to what you know you shouldn’t. You become obsessed with the one thing that’s off-limits. Everything sounds like it could be a tip-off.  

It’s so clear now how deeply this secret affected me and the course of life. 

Secrets are the opposite of healthy.  They sit like a knot in your stomach, clamping down on your digestive system and your ability to openly love. 

My first period, which I got while on vacation with my dad. The time(s) when my boyfriends were older than his. The tasteless meals, the charred BBQs, the people I met, the Thanksgiving when he wore a blue shirt with white stars and red and white striped suspenders. The words he uses when referring to my mother or women in general.  His obsession with cars and expressions like "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink." All of these things are about him, what kind of person he is, what kind of father he is. If you know my father, you know what I'm talking about. But none of this has to do with his sexual preference. And it's about time people realized it.

So I rejoiced this week for New York City.  Because allowing people to get married – regardless of gender, age, class, sexual preference -- is the right thing to do.  But also because I hope and pray that no one ever again needs to grow up with the burden of keeping the kinds of secrets I did, not for their parents, not for themselves.

I leave you with this celebratory green smoothie.

Pride Green Smoothie

Ingredients:
-  1 cup frozen raspberries
-  3/4 cup frozen blueberries
-  1 frozen banana
-  1 handful spicy rocket (arugula)
-  ¼ cup water or more (you need enough so the blender can do its job but this mixture needs to remain thick like ice cream so add 1 T at a time)
-  1 t cacao nibs and coconut flakes (to sprinkle on top, optional)

Instructions:
Blend greens and the water until completely broken down.  Then add the frozen fruit and blend until a thick ice cream like texture forms – you want to do this as fast as possible to ensure it will remain as cold as possible.
Sprinkle cacao nibs and coconut flakes if using.

Go outside, put your feet up, sit in the sun and enjoy with a small spoon, sloooooowly.