Culinary Bogeyman

Some events of my childhood have had a profound impact on my life. Interestingly, most of them seemed insignificant at the time and for many years, their powerful message revealed to me only as I reached adulthood.

I must have been around 12 years old when I was served a plate of mashed acorn squash for the first time. It was one of my father's favorites, his mother's recipe, and mom had prepared it for lunch at his explicit request. While I do not clearly remember my age at the time, the weather that day or what I was wearing, I distinctly remember my instinctive odium at the sight of the gooey orange mass on my plate. I desperately looked about for starchy salvation but there was none to be had: not a single slice of bread or a measly cracker within reach to help steady my stomach. Resigned, I took up the fork and attacked the dubious substance.

It was gross. Disgusting. Foul, nauseating, nasty, repugnant, revolting, vile. How could it not be, with a name like squash? We turned this veggie's name into a verb that means "to mash into a pulp." Doesn't that sound tasty, huh? I pushed back my plate defiantly. This was not tolerated behavior in our house. While we were allowed to dislike some things, refusing an entire meal was a suicidal affront but, just like a kamikaze, I was ready to die for the cause. Father spotted my movement and very slowly lowered his fork with the terrifying deliberateness of the executioner slipping the noose around the prisoner’s neck. “You are going to eat that.” Not a question; a statement, with the soft tone, the dangerous tone. “No,” I surprisingly hear myself squeak. “It turns my stomach.” Ominous silence. Seizing the opening, I hopefully add, “I don’t mind skipping lunch.” Big mistake. “You are going to sit there until you are done eating what’s on your plate. What you are looking at is your next meal, whether it is lunch, supper or breakfast tomorrow morning.” I turned towards mom and gave her a martyred look, my last chance for appeal. Sympathy briefly flashed across her eyes but she remained silent.

I don’t know how long I sat there, stubbornly, but the food was definitely long cold by the time dad returned. He wanted to offer a deal. I knew I had mom to thank for that. “Eat half and you can go.” I knew this was non-negotiable and I also knew it was the best I would get. I nodded my agreement. Taking up my fork, I started flattening the orange goo into a large rounded patty. When I knew I could delay no more, I took a knife and started dividing it into two parts. I say two parts and not two halves because, in a desperately foolish spur-of-the-moment decision, I chose to cheat. I let the knife drift sideways ever so slightly, trying to keep the difference subtle enough to be unnoticeable by a cursory glance but significant enough to save me a mouthful or two. Dad did not say anything and I was silently congratulating myself on my ruse as I once more lifted the fork to attack the smaller portion. “Tsk tsk!” He interrupted me, smirking. “You divided, I choose.”

Looking back, a number of life lessons can be derived from that moment. The French proverb “Tel est pris qui croyait prendre” (lit. translation: He is taken who thought he could take) comes to mind. I’ve adapted it to match my personal experience and turned it into “It is unwise to think that you can outwit your father at age 12.” (but you can at age 14! More on that in a future entry.) It’s not a far stretch from that point to “Crime doesn’t pay.” Another key information was the realization that my father would never, ever look at anything cursorily. From that day forward, whenever asked to divide anything into parts, I have always made it a point (sometimes to obsessive excess) to do my absolute best to make them equal.

* * *

I have just recently started to draft a “goal list.” Some are very silly, some ambitious, some are short term and some will take a lifetime to complete. I have items in a number of categories and one of them is cooking. One of the goals I wrote down under that header reads:

Once a year, taste again a food that was previously disliked.

I strongly believe that a fear is only truly overcome if faced directly and repeatedly, when necessary. I dread the acorn squash. It is my very own culinary bogeyman. I immediately thought of it when I came up with this particular goal. I have decided that the squash will have to go first. It is the only way to take back the power that it stole from me, so many years ago.

Like a flower

I had a very odd French teacher in my second year of Cegep. She reminded me of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When she talked about literature, her face was glowing with passion. She was very interesting to listen to. But when she was speaking about academic tasks, she was bitter and nasty. It seemed to me like she had accepted a teaching job but hated it. Sometimes, when she forgot she was teaching, we saw the real her. I was glad for those pleasant interludes because in her Mr. Hyde form, she was absolutely vicious.

After studying Beaudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal" for a couple weeks, she gave us an assignment. All she wanted is for it to be about some important themes covered by Beaudelaire. The actual form was up to us, be it essay or short story. She did, however, want us to have our project "pre-approved" by her. I thought about it for a little while and went to her to get my project approved. "I want to do a dialogue between Boredom and Death, in verse." She raised an eyebrow dubiously. "In verse?" I nodded. "100 verses minimum," she said, with her most malefic smile. I welcomed the challenge. "You got it."

I worked hard on the poem. The night before the due date, it wasn't done. Some parts were clunky and I really didn't want to submit it until I was proud of it. The next day, when all the papers were handed in, she immediately noticed that I hadn't submitted anything. An ugly, victorious rictus spread across her face. "And where is your paper, Nathalie?" Her voice was like poison diluted in honey. Everyone was silent, staring at me expectantly. "It's not ready. You can't rush inspiration. Like a flower, it has to blossom in its own time and not a second before." The class exploded in laughter. The teacher waited for the noise to die down, so that her words would be understood by all. Any semblance of affability was gone from her voice. That low rumble spoke of raw rage. "That'll cost you 10 points a day." I nodded. The usual penalty was 5.

That happened on a Friday. Which meant that the minimum penalty I would incur was 30 points since my next chance to see her was only on Monday. I did turn it in on Monday and I was very pleased with my work.

I ended up with a 68. 98 minus the penalty of 30. It seems like it was Dr. Jekyll who graded it, the lady that loves literature, not the vicious monster. She read it in front of the class and asked me for permission to make a copy of it so she could distribute it among her other classes in the future. Never in my life did 68 taste so sweet.

---

Inspiration seems to be coming back to me slowly. After a dry spell that has lasted for years, I'm getting ideas that I think I should put down on paper. It's still a fragile bud of a flower though, and I must purposefully pace myself, for fear of drowning it in my eagerness to make it grow faster.

Vulpine sapience

Some days I feel that I'm in the twilight zone. Situations come up that are so strange, so surreal that I wonder if I'm not part of the world's most twisted Dalí, or a character in a Magritte titled "Ceci n'est pas une vie."

Yesterday, for example, as I was coming out the parking lot at work, I saw a fox. In broad daylight. I had to wait for the fox to finish crossing the street before I could turn. This is a metropolis, not a small town in the country. Of course, there are parks and small wooded areas. It's not impossible to imagine that some animals live in them. It's just this specific circumstance that had an otherworldly feel to it. It was so dreamlike, the way the fox jauntily loped across the concrete street, in the middle of an industrial district. I swear, it looked at me in the eye, too. I laughed. I'm not superstitious but I couldn't help it. The idea crossed my mind that this was an omen of sorts and I immediately thought of Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince.

The fox, in the book, embodies wisdom. It has several profound messages for the little prince. "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye" or "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed." I love the character. The fox proves to be the ultimate friend at the end of the story, the kind of unconditionally accepting, utterly selfless friend everyone would like to have.

What message did my fox have for me, I wonder?