He gets into the car after school and hands me a piece of paper that says “Scottish Ceilidh tomorrow” and then says, “I’m giving you this but I don’t want you to come because it’ll be embarrassing.”  I asked him to qualify that statement and the explanation I think I got was that he would be embarrassed dancing in front of me, not that he would be embarrassed by me being there.  While I’ve resigned myself that my little boy is looking ahead to his teenage years, a period in his life where I will regularly but inadvertently embarrass him, I love that my Canadian (and Irish/French/Latvian/Spanish) boy wants to dance a ceilidh at all.  A proud parent moment for sure, even though I think he was just being nice to me.

I contemplate this recent memory while at Toad Hall, watching the Moira River take its time drifting by me as the woodpeckers, finches and chickadees flutter around the feeders.  The biggest stress I have while I’m here is to make sure the little red squirrel gets his share of peanuts because the blue jays intimidate him terribly. They’re twice his size and he appears to be aware of his vulnerability; they won’t eat him but something else will.  It’s a low winter sun that pales the blue sky making everything look crispy and the metallic call of the blue jays compliments the scene just nicely.  I know that if I stick my hand out through the window I will hear a delicate crunch.

The pellet stove keeps us warm during the day while we’re sweatered and slippered, and at night we’ll light a fire.  I don’t know what that little mouse who keeps running down the side of the mantle will do when it gets hot in there.  Maybe he’ll do the smart thing and get out some sticks and mini-marshmallows and sing campfire songs to the young ones.  He’s really cute and lucky that he lives here and not at our place in Toronto where the cats are.  Our Siamese would love to tear him limb from limb and eat everything but his head.

No personal guilt with that thought but never fear, GV always has guilt and, dear readers, today I will not disappoint.  Since we have no cable TV, T wisely planned our entertainment for this weekend by renting a bunch of food moves, including the magnificent Babette’s Feast and the delightfully quirky Tampopo.  These are not vegetarian movies and I feel guilty for watching them.  Not only are they both very meaty (what food movies aren’t?) but a grisly turtle death takes place right on film in Tampopo. Temporarily upsetting, the movie still made us hungry, inspiring an Asian-food weekend.

We wanted ramen.  Fresh, not three-for-a-dollar.  Delicate carrot spears, bok choy, thinly sliced boiled egg, bean sprouts, snow peas, pepper and marinated tofu graced the noodles in a deeply satisfying vegetable broth.  It was flavoured with Asian Five-Spice, Lee Kum Kee (Hong Kong Original!) stir-fry sauce, soy sauce and fresh chives.  We forgot to pick up fresh ginger to add to it and left out the garlic by accident (as hard as it is to believe), but it was still satisfying.  One difficulty with being out in the country is that we couldn’t find any fresh noodles, so we used dried ones.  Nevertheless, the delicious broth made up for the slightly starchy noodles that were still, thankfully, slurp-worthy.

Part of the joy of watching Tampopo is the slurping of noodles and then the drinking of broth right from the bowl.  It was encouraging for Tampopo to see her customers lift up their bowls at the end of their meal; she knew then her soup was a success.  The movie touches on this east/west cultural difference in the hilarious scene where young Japanese women being groomed for western culture were being taught to eat their ramen without making any noise.

Slurping anything defies North American dinner-table etiquette (is there even such a thing?), but there’s something downright honest about soup-slurping.   It’s also useful:  sucking them into the mouth cools the noodles down.  Last night around our dinner table we ate with chopsticks and slurped our noodles, drinking lustily from the bowls lifted up to our mouths with our hands.  Chinese daughter smiled her sparkly smile, no doubt feeling a little homesick at the scene around her.

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Before I forget, we also rented Dead Snow (Ein! Zwei! Die!).  It’s a Norwegian zombie movie and if you’re into the genre it’s not to be missed.  Young and attractive group of twenty-somethings go out to a remote cabin and get attacked by Nazi soldier zombies.  It’s both frightening and hilarious, the cinematography breathtaking.  We watched it after we ate and I would recommend you do the same since it’s damned gory, as any self-respecting movies of this genre would be.  The zombie genre, that is, not the Norwegian.  Sweet dreams.