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Hangry.

~ wellfedemily ~ 19 Comments

My birthday was a whole week ago now, and because I’ve decided I’ll be 28 for five to 10 more years there was little urgency to celebrate. The only thing I really wanted to do was drive to Hope for pie, because there is a place there that serves very good pie, and because when I get an idea in my head I can be a bit of a beast.

So we hopped in the car and we drove an hour and a half to Hope and the rain was torrential and occasionally turned to hail and Nick kept asking aloud where he had gone so wrong in his life and I didn’t care, because I had my Snuggie and a mix CD full of all the delightfully crappy music I like.

We stopped at a thrift store for a break from the rain along the way and bought a new stein for our collection, and when we got to Hope there was plenty of parking at the restaurant and they had all the kinds of pie.

For the past while, food has not been exciting. There was the lull of the end of winter and early spring; sometimes you can have too many yams, and sometimes the radishes seem like they will never arrive. There was so much rain. And my appetite had left me.

Then somewhere in the middle of that lull, I unexpectedly acquired a fetus. We have dubbed it Space Dinosaur in the hope that it turns out to be an actual extraterrestrial raptor (if it can’t be a dinosaur for whatever reason, I would also be happy with a panda). The tragedy of this event has been an utter disinterest in any food that is not canned peaches, York peppermint patties, or grilled cheese sandwiches. Until very recently, I could go all day on just a few bites of fruit and a Chai latte.

What has begun to replace that disinterest is a feeling I can only describe as “hangry.”

Midway through a meal I feel stuffed, but at the same time my stomach churns furiously, insisting that I am still hungry and that I need to put in more food, even when the urge to purge becomes violent. It happens without warning; I will go all morning or afternoon long without any desire to consume anything but ginger tea and then all of a sudden a malevolent pang will instantly rearrange my priorities and moments later I will find myself desperate, shaking the vending machine for another bag of chips, or chewing out the clerk at the bagel shop for giving me the smallest possible bagel on purpose. I am hangry then.

And I was hangry in Hope. After a reasonable breakfast of waffles and blueberries, hours passed without fussing and then we got to where I wanted to go and my grilled cheese sandwich came and I ate until I could eat no longer, and yet my stomach howled for more. I hoovered a huge slice of cherry pie and two scoops of ice cream, and I could have thrown up but still the knot in my gut suggested starvation. It was a fabulous piece of pie. Well worth the trip. And I demanded that Space Dinosaur get its shit together because we love and are satisfied by pie and this was unacceptable.

So there you go. Food was gone but is now back, even if in a modified capacity. I’ll try not to bore you with the details. Nick is relieved. Just in time for the season’s first radishes and, with any luck, a summer full of very good pie.

Today I went downtown to try and get a spot on a new Food Network show.

~ wellfedemily ~ 8 Comments

For the past few weeks on Food Network Canada, they’ve been advertising a new show called Recipe to Riches. There was an open casting call, but you could apply ahead of time for a spot, and I got one. They liked my recipe for tamale pie, and I was invited to come in for 7:30 a.m. I picked an outfit and made the dish twice, once for practice and the second time for the show. I brought Nick, and my parents came too.

I spent most of the morning in two waiting rooms, the first for pre-registered applicants, and the second for plating, mic-fitting, and the final queue. There I got to chat with a lot of really interesting people, some who’d flown from the Island or from other western provinces just for the audition. Their dishes ranged from brownies to tomato tarts to chicken pot pie, and each was nervous and excited and just really glad to be there. Always a lady, I forgot I was wearing a dress and mooned them all twice when I bent over. Thankfully, it was a full-bum-underwear kind of day.

After three and a half hours, my dish was heated and I got to plate. It smelled good, but I was nervous about the spiciness of the dish; I began to worry that there was something wrong with my tongue, because I like everything with so much zing. It was too late to fret heavily over it, and I was asked to talk about my dish on camera. I assembled my dish and was given directions, and then waited a little bit more. It was my first time auditioning for something, and I wasn’t sure what to do. People kept saying “just be yourself,” probably because they don’t know how annoying I can be.

I talked to someone in the hallway before the set, and she told me they were only going to see 80 people that day, despite the large number of applicants and walk-ins. I felt special.

I helped wheel the cart carrying my dish down to the set and was shown where to stand. I was given my cue, and when they called me I presented my dish to the three judges, one of whom was Laura Calder who’s cooking show I like. She said she liked my shoes. I felt special. She liked my dish, and the other judges liked it as well, but it was too spicy and they thought it would be more marketable as a vegetarian dish. “Refine the spice and try again next year,” they told me, and I was disappointed (oh, delusions of grandeur – why always so seductive?!) but their feedback was useful and I will come back next year, wiser and with an even better recipe. I am grateful that they called me to try out this year, and had fun just being there.

So, there you go. I tried something new today, and if nothing but a new dish comes out of it I still think it was worthwhile. So, stay tuned. I’m going to get right to work on a less fiery, more vegetably tamale pie, and then I’m going to tell you all about it. And, of course, I’ll try again for a spot next year. In the meantime, if you’ve got suggestions for the new version of the dish, let me know. And good luck to you if you’re planning to attend the Toronto or Montreal auditions! I want to know if you go, and how it went!

And for now, don’t worry. I’m not sulking or crying or being unpleasant except for the comfort eating. If you need me, I’ll be sitting around in my footie pajamas watching cooking shows with the cat.

Thank you again. And now I need your happy thoughts for someone else.

~ wellfedemily ~ 12 Comments

Finally, a glass of wine. It’s been one of those days.

It started late, with a groggy phone call and the realization that the results were in for the Canadian Food Blog Awards, and that somehow this blog had won the People’s Choice category. I made plans to write a thank you/Meatless Monday post in the evening, and then we threw ourselves into action. I have the week off, and Nick took the day off work to get some blood tests he’d been putting off since November (Too busy! Always so busy!) and to check in with his adviser at UBC. I had a meeting with a designer related to some work stuff, and at some point I’d have to make stock and test a soup recipe for Meatless Monday and maybe tidy this perpetually messy apartment and do some laundry. It all seemed doable, and around 4:30 we’d done everything we needed to do errand-wise and I had a bag of groceries in hand that would form the basis for dinner.

And then the doctor called, because Nick’s glucose levels were alarmingly high. And he was told to get himself to the emergency room RIGHT NOW and fortunately we live five minutes from Vancouver General. When we got there, they processed him quickly, which was suspicious because that never happens in Emergency unless it’s, like, an emergency.

These past few weeks I have been my own number-one priority, and Nick has been excellent support during this month of talking about me. With work so busy, and wanting to get into grad school, and blog contests and writing contests and recipe contests, I have been self-absorbed beyond what is ordinarily reasonable. And Nick hasn’t felt well, but he assumed that he probably had some seasonal thing and that he was just worn out, the last months of 2010 having drained him – they were frantic. And I assumed that he knew what he was talking about, and figured we probably both just needed fewer glasses of wine and more exercise and to go to bed on time.

There are several really good reasons why we are writers, not doctors.

At 6:30 he was on a bed in the ER wearing a blue gown and ankle socks, having just given up his second batch of blood for the day. The doctor spoke slowly and simply, and said that there would be tests, and that we would be there awhile. There was talk of Nick being monitored overnight, and then a nurse gave him a tuna sandwich and a cup of pink yogurt and his levels were still high but closer to not-terrifying. We waited, played hangman, and tried to ignore the ominous sounds in the hallway and the constant swish of cotton pants and squeaking of rubber soles and gurney wheels. I told several hilarious jokes and Nick’s dad drove all the way in from Surrey.

Nick is mostly fine, and will survive. They let him go home for the night, and he is sleeping. We ate a small, healthy dinner, and tomorrow he will make an appointment with an endocrinologist and pick up his prescription and in a little while we will know what is wrong.

What timing, I keep thinking, and I’m glad that he finally set some time aside for the blood tests, and that they caught whatever it was before something devastating happened. In the grand scheme of things, he will be okay – please think happy thoughts for him, as I kind of like him and have just gotten used to having him around.

I am also relieved to have put my own madness into perspective. If all my dreams don’t come true in the first week of February 2011, there will still be lots of time. And in the meantime, it’s flattering and humbling to have this collection of recipes, stories, and bad photos passed around and voted for. If I did not have such stubby T-Rex arms I would hug each of you at once.

Thank you for your support and happy thoughts and witty comments and enthusiastic offers of blog linkage. I have secretly loved all the attention.

And I promise, tomorrow we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Thank you very much.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

Hello!

Before we get too far away from last Saturday (and the end of the voting for Best Canadian Food Blog), I just wanted to take a moment and say thank you.

Thank you for voting for this blog, and for sharing it on Facebook or Twitter or via email, and for asking your friends to share it and vote. And thank you for your comments and emails – such kind words, and it’s awesome to feel this sense of warmth and community around food and writing and the occasional cat photo. It was nice to have the blog nominated, but it’s even nicer to know that there are wonderful people like you somewhere who’ll take a few moments here and there to spend a little time with me.

I accidentally hacked a bit of my thumb off on Sunday morning, but it’s healing up quickly and I should have a new recipe for you soon. In the meantime, I look forward to continuing to write here, and to whatever the future might bring.

Love,

Emily

Winter in the garden.

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

We’ve neglected our garden over the past couple of months, as snow fell in November and it rains a lot here and it’s dark when we get home from work so there’s never an opportune time to check in with it and see how things are going, and if anything there is still growing. We planted some turnips and kholrabi just as summer was ending, which according to the seed packets ought to have been ready for harvest three months ago, but our chances to go back were few and far between.

Also, I wanted to plant garlic, which takes nine months to grow.

Odd to see it now, after so many months, looking so spindly and decayed. Approaching our little plot, I was certain that everything would be dead by now.

For the most part, our plot is full of weeds and rot. But on closer inspection, that wasn’t all there was.

Our little turnips, which we’d given up on, had grown to the size of golf balls, pink and purple and white. We thought we hadn’t planted them deep enough – we hadn’t – and assumed when we last visited that they probably wouldn’t grow. Because we took a whole lot of chard out of there at the same time, we elected to leave them in place on the off chance that they’d survive a little longer – I planned to go back for them and harvest the greens.

A few carrots survived the cold and the snow and the rain and the rot – I pulled them out from beside the kholrabi, which didn’t make it.

I thought about turning them into something on the stove or in the oven, but the joy of eating something so red and earthy practically fresh from the ground (I brought them home and washed them first) in January was too good to pass up. I ate a few of them whole, still wet from the tap. It was like Christmas, but without the bloat.

We pulled some weeds and cleared a spot for the garlic, and we might have actually dug deep enough for it to grow properly.

Then we planted a row of individual cloves of the stuff. A worm showed up to say hello.

And then Nick buried them all, and we skipped home gleefully. Well, at least I did.

So there you go. The soil is soft, and the garden is still alive, and there are happy little worms there prepping the ground for us for spring. And in the meantime? This.

How is it New Year’s Eve again?

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

It’s December 31 again, and I distinctly remember digging through my photo archives this same time last year to find a photo where we looked cool and I didn’t look fat, and I spent most of the day fretting over what I was going to wear because we were going to a bar with a dress code and it was cold and all my dresses make me look slutty. It was a fretful day, and at the end we did our best to hold on until midnight and left immediately after, rushing the hell out of that downtown club because what each of us really wanted all along was to be comfortable, to be able to talk to each other, and to not have to pay inflated bar prices for cheap rum and watery Coke.

Tonight we’re going to a smaller party, at our friend Paul’s apartment. Paul is getting oysters and carving some of the salmon he caught this year into thin strips of perfect sashimi. Grace will be there, and Laraine – the whole team from our clam-digging expedition this past September. Paul’s girlfriend will be there, and who knows who else. It will be small, relatively quiet, and there will be so much food. And wine, which we’ve already paid for, and which we can drink without first buying over-priced tickets. And I won’t have to wait all night long to hear that one song I like, only to have the fifteen-year-old DJ mash it up lamely with that one song I really don’t like.

I’m glad that we get to celebrate the new year with the people we spent the best parts of the past year with. It will be an appropriate conclusion to 2010, which was notable because largely absent from it was the tumult of previous years, which for the past many have been filled with hasty moves to new apartments, panicking over debt and employment and graduation, and getting engaged and then married and then adjusting to being married so quickly. We hit our stride this year, both finding ourselves in jobs we really like, going on vacation, paying down that always present debt, and settling into an apartment that is mostly pretty awesome. And we got Molly Waffles, who we treat like a child, which we do not feel the least bit weird about.

It’s been a good year, and I have no complaints. And I am looking forward to this evening, and to the food. And to tomorrow, and all the days after it, and all the meals that will go with them. The photos in this post are from a party Grace hosted a few weeks ago, an oyster feast filled with lusty foods and sparkling wines and Rhianna songs; I expect this evening will proceed in much the same way, with sharp implements and soft shellfish and sriracha and dancing in slipper-socks on a makeshift dance floor in the living room and too much wine (and too many incriminating photos).

Happy New Year. I hope that the next 365 days are filled with wonder and opportunity and quiet moments in amidst the madness, and that you get to do something you really love. Writing here is the thing that I really love, and I hope you’ll continue to visit, and to every so often say hello. I wish you all the best in 2011!