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27 April 2004 - A Few of My Favourite (Sickly) Things... Even when I'm sick, simply being in my kitchen seems to make me feel well again. Maybe it's because it is warm and comfortable in there. Perhaps it's because the adorable Jasmine-cat will tend to curl up in her little basket-bed under the kitchen table while I'm in there, mucking around. Most likely, it is due to the fact that I still, after all these years, associate home-made food with comfort, my mom and her taking care of me when I've been sick. As a youngster I had many of the standard childhood infirmities -- chicken pox, various flu's and colds, allergies, broken bones, accidents, bee stings (more allergies!), leeches on my feet from the lake -- I could go on, but I won't. Anyway, through all of these times, my mom was there. And not long after I'd had a cool hand brush across my forehead and been tucked under some warm covers along came The Tray. And The Tray was always the conveyor-belt of some sort of curing, comforting, warming or cooling substance. Tea. Hot Cocoa (with tiny marshmallows!). Cookies. Oatmeal. Orange Juice. Soup (my mom makes the ultimate cream-of-broccoli soup). Peanut butter sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Ginger Ale (with a bendy straw, of course!). Grilled cheese and canned seafood chowder (and the grilled cheese has to be made on WHITE bread). Home baked bread. Ice cream (Rocky Road or vanilla only, please!). Toast...Toast-Sticks (toast, with peanut butter, cut into strips...a "Fidler Specialty" made famous by my grandfather). The list goes on. These types of delicacies were brought to me; in bed or on the couch in the living room, and even more than a few times to a hospital bed -- on a tray, with the nicest plates and glasses in the kitchen. They were on cotton placemats with linen napkins and shiny cutlery (the cutlery that sits in my own kitchen drawer today, in fact). The food was always hot (or cold, depending on it's preferred state) and along with it came a glass of ice water and probably a book or magazine she'd found on her way home that she knew I wanted, as well as an assortment of tylenol's, cold pills and vitamin C (my parents' cure-all)...and for a long time cough syrup, mixed in with a little hot water, in a tiny apéritif glass. These memories have as much to do with my love of food and of cooking as anything. Which is why, even though I felt like warmed up squeegies yesterday I still managed to put together (thanks to Clotilde's phyllo-inspiration) a Salmon with Spinach and Feta Cheese Strudel and a delicious Apple Buckle for dinner and dessert, respectively. (I do feel much better today, thanks!)
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