Adventures at home

While travelling I am often asked what is typical Canadian food and I always have a hard time thinking of what to say. Pemmican (a mixture of dried meat and berries), bannock (similar to fried biscuits), caribou stew or bison burgers are probably the most native to Canada, but not things my family usually eats. I thought I would describe a meal we had with some family friends not too long ago to give another attempt at an answer.

Before we left the house I took a picture of the desserts my mom had prepared. On the left is a blueberry torte with a meringue topping, next to it is an apple crisp, then there is a rhubarb torte and in the front some of my mom's popular toffee-chocolate-almond crunchies (or oatmeal cookies). I think we also brought a mango spinach salad because it is quite popular. When we sat down I remember thinking there was an awful lot of food for supper. There was a roasted turkey with mashed potatoes, carrots and gravy, a potatoe salad (similar to the Spanish Russian salad), a tossed salad and then in true Saskatchewan style a jelly salad.

Thank goodness that is not how we eat everyday. Supper is usually the biggest meal of the day and is eaten around 6pm. A typical spread at my parents house usually consists of a casserole type dish (i.e. Spaghetti squash & sauce), two vegetable dishes (a tossed salad and boiled peas) and dessert (a cookie or a piece of cake). Not everyone eats like us and instead of saying my mom likes to cook it would be best to say that she likes to try new recipes. Like yesterday for example she was preparing some Habanero jelly because it was a new recipe she found in her Canadian Living magazine.

Sometimes I try to help, but last week when I made a cheese cake I broke the egg beater. Really it would be better to say I melted it because it started to smoke while wrestling with the cream cheese.

I am including a photo of the cook, but this time in one of her fixing up the house projects. This one was trying to replace the broken tracks on the top drawer of my old desk. After several detective trips to various hardware stores and a lot of imagination we thought we had it solved by fitting in metal tracks used for hanging shelves, but the result proved to be a very tight fit and the creation of a new safety deposit compartment. In the photo you see my mom trying to open the drawer. After I gave up my mother pursued and fitted one side with a small piece of wood, so for now it works. I guess my childhood furniture is a little out of date and I need to work on my manual skills.