tucking in

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Haskap

Four large lush bushes occupy various spots in my backyard. I planted these shrubs about eight to ten years ago as worked to fill my garden beds with as many fruit-bearing plants as could reasonably live adapted to this crazy northern climate zone.

Lonicera caerulea is also known in some parts of the world as honeysuckle or honeyberry, but in Canada we tend to refer to this bush and it’s fruit as a haskap.

My haskap bushes started to bear ripe fruit this past week and I’ve been eagerly plucking as many as I can before the robins eat more than their fair share. I don’t mind, but I do like to have a few of the tart-sweet berries before they all become bird food.

I don’t know much about the haskap itself. For a few years a nearby university known for their horticultural work breeding plants that were slightly more adapted to surviving the long winters seemed to be mentioned frequently around greenhouses as I and my fellow local gardeners bought and planted each a few of the adapted shrubs. The work of that same university is responsible for the breed of my backyard apple tree which is now at least fourteen seasons growing in it’s current spot and has easily produced tens of thousands of apples. This is not a climate where anything that hasn’t been winter hardened will grow much past September, and only the best adapted of trees and shrubs survive our minus forty winters. The haskap, on the other hand, seems to thrive in these parts.

The haskap is a little more subtle than my apple tree though.

My metre-wide bushes usually produce only a cup or two of the elongated blue-purple treats, right around this time of the year, and by the time we graze our fill there is rarely anything left behind but scraps for the most persistent of the local avian population.

I have a few varieties of berries in my backyard, yet these haskap are the ones that draw the most curiosity from visitors… but only those lucky enough to stop by during the short couple weeks when their colourful, oblong orbs dangle ready to be tasted.

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Smoked Chops

When I was younger our summers always meant smoked pork chops.

I didn’t appreciate it much at the time, but my father had access to bulk buy cases of delicious, thick chops direct from the local processing facility. He did this once per year, ensuring that in our chest freezer lived a cardboard box containing about forty of these special treats, setting our family up for seven or eight really great summer meals.

Then I moved away, went to University, lived my life, started a family, and…

It turns out that these specific smoked meats are not as common in the local grocery store as my easy access to these delectable slabs of not-quite-pork chops seemed to be in my youth.

It also turns out that my wife had a similar experience growing up. Her family also caught the summer vibes of a slab of smoked pork. Her youth was also one of barbecued pink meats and camp meals made from this exclusive, elusive delicacy.

The ties that bind us, eh?

What’s up with smoked pork chops anyways, you ask?

Well, imagine a regular pork chop, but infused with a subtle smoky flavour resembling bacon, edging towards the succulent tenderness of a slice of ham, and all grilled over the hot flame of a barbecue or to a tasty crisp finish in a cast iron pan. Moist. Aromatic. A piece of meat nudged towards the perfection one imagines from a great barbecue, but heated and ready to be eated in less than fifteen minutes.

For some reason we were lamenting our inability to find these chops locally in recent a family conversation. Then last week it was my wife’s birthday. Not thinking anyone remembered that first convo, well, it turned out I was wrong… in a good way. Her folks showed up and (jokey gift kind of people that they are) cracked open a cooler full of smoked chops.

It turns out that if nostalgia could set off the smoke detector as it cooks in a thin layer of hot oil, my nostalgia would be shaped like a pork chop.

It was as good as I remembered. And I appreciate it now.

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New York Deli

After my weekend foray into a batch of sourdough made with locally sourced rye flour, I got to thinking (and actually mentioned) a fabulous rye-bread pastrami sandwich that I shared with my wife back in 2016 in a world famous deli in the lower east side of Manhattan.

As promised, I dug through my old photos and discovered this mouth-watering gem.

for whatever one photo is worth:

In 2016 I won the lottery.

Sadly it wasn’t a cash prize. Instead, my name got picked from a big pool of runners who had submitted their entries to run as international participants in the annual New York City Marathon.

On a sunny Sunday morning in early November (literally hours before that infamous national US election) I ran forty-two point two kilometers through five boroughs of New York, starting in Staten Island, through Brooklyn, into Queens, over to Manhattan, and then a quick sweep through the Bronx before heading back to Manhattan to cross the line in the middle of Central Park.

My wife cheered me in and helped me hobble back to the hotel where I crashed over a bowl of carbs and a bottle of water.

The next day I was sore, tired, and hungry.

We walked, spent some time riding the subway, and checked out some museums at a much more leisurely pace than I’d done the day prior.

By lunch, we’d made our way to the lower east side, and towards one of my bucket list lunch spots: Katz’s Delicatessen.

As you walk in the door they hand you an orange paper ticket that tracks your order. I ordered at a packed, shoulder-to-shoulder counter nearly the length of the building, and the guy sliced my lunch there in front of me handing me a small sample to taste before I brought it all back to a table.

We shared a sandwich with each other, pushed through some fries and a pile of dill pickles, and chugged a cold beer to boot. We shared the table with a quartet of other marathoners who we chatted with and cheered before heading on our way stuffed and satisfied.

It was a memorable trip by all accounts. Not only did I run a marathon, but we saw a show on Broadway, met up with friends at the fountain in Columbus Circle, high-fived a famous actress at a nut cart in Central Park, attended a live taping of the Late Show, and stumbled upon multiple epic bridges, towers, landmarks and sights on foot… all before fleeing the country on the morning of their election.

Yet somehow among all of that, one tasty pastrami sandwich held it’s own in my memory.

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The Mustard Files: Spicy Spring Dijon

I’m a bit of sucker for interesting mustards.

In fact, it used to be I’d make a special trip to the local farmers market each spring to stock my pantry with a few variety of jars of flavoured mustards that would almost always last the year …but not much longer.

The sad part is that I’m the only one in my house who loves the yellow sauce, so I’m always buying and creating mustards for an audience of one.

Creating? You ask.

Why yes, if you can call starting with a store-bought mustard and experimenting with adding your own spices and seasonings to it to enhance the mustard experience, then of course creating.

Often I’ll spin up a little bowl of spicy mustard or curry mustard or garlic mustard to accompany a plate of bratwurst or a pan-cooked chop of some kind.

And tonight was no exception.

Recipe

30ml dijon-style mustard
4 pinches of curry powder
2 pinches of ground cumin
2 pinches of cayenne pepper
1 pinch ground ginger

This particular blend turned into a medium-spicy mix that reminded me of a trip to Berlin and eating sausages on a busy street corner from a paper tray in the rain.

Appropriate then that I served it with some local sausage and looked out the window at the evening’s downpour.