Mmmmm, raisin pie, oh my!  I grew up eating raisin pie and it was one of my mother’s favourites, along with apple too.  I remember shopping with my mom and sister in Halifax and Ottawa as a child, in the days before malls where one could buy clothes, shoes, and household items from small retail shops that you had to GO OUTSIDE to get into. Imagine that?

My mother was a fast walker and she’d always put her arm out behind her, low and taught without turning her head so we could clutch her gloved hands when crossing the street or other equally dangerous times.  We knew when the hand shot out she meant business. Better grab that pale blue cotton glove or risk being left behind in the throng of other left-behind-orphans who roamed the streets, looking for that hand. She was all business when shopping, and wouldn’t let our full bladders stand in her way.  She’d stick us in narrow alleyways between shops to pee (go in there!), because before malls there were no washrooms, evidently.

(I apologize for the digression here, but this calls to mind Beijing when we were visiting one of the most interesting hutongs, the day we had that awesome veggie hotpot meal.  I had to use the facilities that our tiny restaurant didn’t offer.  Just down the street was a public washroom that some of the local residents use as their primary bathroom [this I found out later].  I walked into the tiny building. There were three stalls:  one to the left of me, one beside it and the other facing me.  The dividers were about three feet high and two of the three ‘stalls’ were occupied by older ladies who were talking to each other while doing their business.  This wasn’t the kind of conversation people have through walls because there were no doors.  The third stall was empty.  It was between the two women and it was, as is typical in China (and around the world – its design may be primitive but is much more germ-free than western washrooms with toilets), a hole in the ground between two checkerplates for feet.  It wasn’t the hole in the ground that was the issue because, like I said, they were common in China; it was because these two women were there, doing their business in full view of one another.  I just couldn’t do it.  The language barrier would’ve killed me! 🙂

Back to my mom and sister, shopping in Halifax. After the business of shopping when we’d bought whatever it was we’d set out to buy, we’d always stop for raisin or apple pie and ice cream in a restaurant.  It was part of the whole event. The pie would be oh-so-fresh and the vanilla ice cream would only last long enough to melt slightly where it made contact with the warm crust, while retaining its cold freshness everywhere else.  I don’t think there is any better combination of hot and cold food in the whole universe.  It wasn’t until a couple of years before my mother passed away that I realized she hadn’t eaten raisin pie in a very long time, because the chef in her retirement residence made a raisin pie just for her, just because he bothered to ask her what she wanted him to make. Wasn’t that a nice thing to do for an old lady?  These memories came flooding back to me last weekend.

Saturday was a blustery day.  We were at the cottage and stopped in the Belleville farmer’s market to purchase some fall fare when we came across ‘Jack’s’ stand, while Jack was in the middle of a conversation with a young kid.  They were discussing those aviator-style winter hats with all the flaps that fold and snap down to keep the various parts of your head warm and toasty in the coldest of winters, “when January come, when I nestle inside…”  Jack’s thick Jamaican accent only underscored that his sentiment can be appreciated by all Canadians as we head into winter.  His pie, which was excellent of course, was warmed to perfection in the oven and eaten with a scoop of vanilla ice cream that would have made my mother happy.  Thanks for the memories Jack.

We hadn’t been to the house since the first weekend of October, before China changed our lives in so many ways.  Our first fall visit and it was as lovely as we knew it would be.  The trees had lost most of their leaves so that the river was clear and vast, and Sugar Island on the other side was no longer a wall of greenery, but textured and deep and clear.  The dock was pulled up and the boat upside down on the bank, nestled in for the winter, just like Jack in January.  Within minutes of turning on our electronic pellet stove the house warmed up quickly, but was nicely topped off by a log fire in the living room.  Ahhh, nothing quite like being out in the country with the smell of wood burning and crunchy fall leaves on the ground.  T woke up Saturday morning and took Mia for a walk and just when he thought he saw a pheasant out of the corner of his eye, he realized that it was the white tail of a deer fleeing, one that matched the one standing not ten feet in front of him.  There were deer on our lawn, so quiet that Mia, our dog who hates any animal larger than a cat didn’t even notice!  That such a large animal can so graciously leap over fences and run off into the woods WITHOUT MAKING A SOUND is something to behold.  We had a family of five deer living on our property in Harrowsmith, but it’s been eight years since we’ve had that experience. This kind of thing is what life’s all about, n’est ce pas?  Not just the deer, but the little red squirrel that our family of blue jays frightens away from the peanuts we leave out, the nuthatches and chickadees that eat our sunflower seeds, the garter snakes, toads, vultures, hawks and blue herons, and even the big eared mice that sit shaking in our canoe when we’re not using it, and finally, the little salamander that visited our front steps on the day we headed back to Toronto.  We moved him out of the way just in case he got stepped on like the little toad we crushed by accident last summer.  Lucky salamander, poor toad.

Back to food.  We’re having a bean conflict that we’re trying to resolve.  We eat beans almost daily which is a good thing.  Poor son is slightly embarrassed by the chants of his friends “beans, beans are good for your heart, the more you eat, the more you….”.  We tell him that doesn’t happen if you eat them regularly, which we do (and that only his friends are f**ters).  We tend to use canned beans just for practical reasons but in the last couple of years we’ve been concerned with the bisphenol A that lines virtually all cans (with the exception of Eden brand), and a lot of plastics that we drink and eat out of, which is why we no longer heat food in anything plastic.  A Globe and Mail article highlights a recent Harvard University study that shows BPA levels rose sharply on the days that the study participants ate canned vegetable soup for lunch, and would drop on the days that they didn’t.  This is a small study, but research has shown over the years that BPA may cause hormonal imbalances, thyroid issues, obesity and possibly cancer.

What to do, what to do?  It makes sense that we should buy dried beans, soak’em and cook’em but we all know how much work that is (isn’t that right Delightful Ms. S?  You remember the Baked Bean Marathon of ’86?)   I still have the bean crock Ms. S gave me, which currently holds spent batteries headed for the recycle bin.  I think it’s about time that it’s put to proper use again, don’t you?  BPA-be-gone we say, as we welcome our next challenge!  As we delve into the fine art of soaking beans, we’re entertaining the thought of, dare we say it, canning them? Will they be crunchy (ewww)?  Can we duplicate the oh-so-creamy flavour of canned refried beans with soaked kidneys?  Will the garbanzos behave so the hummus remains perfectly unchanged? Can the navy beans navigate our tasty tomato sauce?

We shall face these challenges with……panache!  If not, with aplomb!  We will conquer the dried BPA-free bean, and make it our own.

Stay tuned!