With Mother’s Day approaching this Sunday, I was remembering times with my Mom and thinking of all the things I loved. I will admit here that I was most fortunate as my Mom loved being a Mom and she was able to stay home while my brother and I were small so we got lots of quality time with her. One of the things that I loved was her reading to us and one of the series of books she read was Dr. Seuss. I think I could sum up the philosophy she tried to teach us from the themes of those books, as they cover everything from how to eat to how to imagine your dreams. There is even one that talks about how to know your mother!

I knew my mother by all the things she did for us, and with us. We may not have had green eggs and ham, but I do remember being told to try foods like green peppers and finding out they weren’t so bad after all. We may not have lived on Mulberry Street, but she showed us the way so that we could see fantastical things that others might not have when we were out walking. She taught us about words and places and history like she was our very own Cat in the Hat, and with her Christmas spirit she could have made the Grinch’s heart swell just like Suzy Lou Who if he had come to our house! So when we read “Are You My Mother?” and followed the little bird who fell from the nest, I was very secure. I wasn’t like him, not knowing how to recognize my Mom – there were lots of ways I knew to distinguish her from the crowd, and I was very proud that my Mom was who she was. I am glad that even though I have never had any two-legged kids that I remembered the things she taught me.

Thanks for making me a better person, Mom. You taught me about enjoying the art of cooking, and about enjoying the flowers even on a cloudy day, and you taught me to value myself and other people for their own unique skills. You always made us remember that just like Horton said, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

So, here’s to Moms out there – you come in all shapes and sizes and you teach us all kinds of things. We may not know right away the value of it all, but please remember that someday we will see the light and think of the time when you showed us the secret of how to enjoy being a grown up.

She says:
 
Every day, we are constantly being pushed and pulled by influences in our lives and all of those influences change how our lives go and how long they last. The quality of life you have is not only about where in the world you live, but how you live. If you “super-size” your meals too often, it will shorten your life. If you eat lots of fresh veggies and whole grains you will live longer. They tell us we need more exercise don’t go to the drive-through, get out of your car and walk in! Of course, the worst thing of all to shorten your life is stress. Studies show the only way you can undo the damage stress causes is to unwind. (I can just imagine those lab rats in the studies with their feet up, eating mini tubs of Hagen Daas!)

I have a confession to make: I work too much. My stress comes from work. The worst part is, working late means there is almost no time left to cook dinner and so Martin cooks (or, I eat leftovers or salad if he is not home). This week I am proud to say that although we ate a bit later, I have managed to cook not once but twice this week! I have not done some of the work I took home to do, but I accomplished something much bigger. I am rejuvenated and ready to take on the pile on my desk in the morning! I feel as though I have bumped into an old friend I got back in the kitchen and it felt just like old times. I missed the “therapy” of de-stressing with my kitchen gadgets and recipe books, and I plan to take up my old hobby again with renewed vigour. (Do I sound too much like a born-again Foodie? It’s not like I am becoming a vegan or anything).

I have a huge pile of recipe clippings that a dear friend in Vancouver sent me, and that will be my starting point for this new project. I am even planning to have people over, so that I can expand my field of guinea pigs. (It’s a win-win situation really – if the meals go well, I get praise from a bigger circle of friends if I fail miserably, I can just move along to the next names on the list for the subsequent attempt.) After all, there is nothing like time around the dining room table to bring people down to earth and make them smile. Good food and good vibes are the best tonics for a long and happy life.

That age-old concept of balancing the priorities in one’s life is one that never stops being important. If you want to see where you’re at in your life span, check out bluezones.com. It is a cool site that has some extensive research behind it. The Vitality Compass test may look like just a publicity stunt but it is based in statistics and algorithms. I can’t really say “take it with a grain of salt” as salt is something that can shorten your life if you over-consume, but well, you know what I mean. Considering less stress and more exercise in your life is good, but nobody is saying you have to swear off the occasional tub of Hagen Daas.

He says:

I love to cook and I love to eat, but contrary to popular belief I don’t have to cook all the meals.

I am glad to get invited or let someone else cook for me. I am a very good critic, as I don’t always give my opinion about every meal. The down side is that being a chef and with Kristin a sommelier, people tend to never invite us for dinner.

My mom used to get stressed out when I was coming over for dinner until I told her that she cooked for me for 19 years and never doubted herself, so why should she start now. Stress is a killer and unfortunately we are all put through some stress on a daily basis, so trying to eat well and exercise regularly is a great way to delay the inevitable. We are all going to die one day, so why not try to die with a stomach full of good things? I don’t eat rice cakes, tofu or drink Soya milk I just eat butter, cream and chocolate in a normal amount and just doing that keeps my stress low. Recently I went to a restaurant in town which should remain nameless but it starts with "R". They served me a Caesar salad that was so bland that it made me crave for a good one for the last few weeks. Well last night Kristin prepared a great Caesar salad the way it is meant to be - bold and full of tasty bits.

People ask me why I don’t go out much. Well I am so often disappointed that I think, “Why should I go out when I can get it at home better and faster and I can get naked just a few minutes later! Now that’s a de-stresser. What can I say? I’m French.

She says:

We talked last week about the idea of food snobs and how the youth of today might be spoiled with all the exotic fusion fare and specialty artisanal products. It seemed that perhaps we were just experiencing an evolution. That got me to thinking about the difference between hip underground discoveries and mainstream trends, and how the two often connect. But does that mean that every little cult following has to grow up to become a mass marketed item that most times loses its cool?

Perhaps the poster child of this phenomenon is Starbucks Coffee houses. First they were the Pacific Northwest star, creating a cult around coffee that although it did have a mainstream effect was very much a “club” sort of feel. Of course there are many folks who like to stick to the neighbourhood places, and if nothing else you could argue that is just good competition. In the beginning though, Starbucks still had some unique qualities too – like the music they played. They used the power of a bigger organization to develop their own label and produced CDs that had a unique feel. Born was an underground trend that created another buzz besides the coffee. However, as the popularity increased and the Starbucks locations expanded to almost every corner, the music like everything else has become more mainstream and less unique. Enter the concept of pleasing everyone all the time… or is it catering to the lowest common denominator?

I suppose that you can take solace in knowing that there are these big box concepts now in many industries and in a way, they allow the very little places to continue to exist just by being so mundane. As long as there are people like you and I who want some variety in life, who want to be excited and surprised at least once in a while, well then there will be little corner coffee shops who still play unheard-of music and have local art on the walls. Maybe the place we go to will be bought out by Starbucks but in its place around the corner a new one will spring up. It’s just like the forces of Nature that bring the swallows back to Capistrano it is the way of the world.

As we get older we tend to wax nostalgic and pine for things the way they were. Perhaps this kind of thing is a lesson to us: we shouldn’t look back but rather look forward. Don’t pine for the old coffee shop that “grew up” – look for the new one that has opened and support their efforts to be cool and unique. Maybe if we can remember not to grow old but to keep some of the youthful magic that allows us to enjoy quirky things, then some of those little places wouldn’t have to grow up… or maybe that is just too idealistic.

He says:

Living on the Westside, our favorite place is the Matterhorn Bakery. They serve a good quality cup of coffee and their pastries are very simple and very tasty.

Last year, we went to USA and happened to see one of those Super Wal-Marts like they are building on The Westside so we stopped and visited that giant store just like we would visit the ZOO. Well actually it was very much like the ZOO. We saw some big things, ugly things and even things that should be in the jungle. We came out of that store blown away by the sheer size of it but mostly by all the crap they are trying to sell us by naming it gourmet or artisan. Let’s make something absolutely clear: there is nothing gourmet or artisan about a store that mass produces food. They are a good store for toilet paper because not many small shops specialize in only selling TP.

I like progress as much as the next guy, but I am very disappointed that a Super Wal-Mart was the best thing that the city of Westbank could find! I wonder how much thought was put into how many small shops will close because of Wal-Mart opening in Westbank. Trendy or not, I will keep supporting the small local food establishments and keep Wal-Mart for TP!

Good luck to all the small shops in town, and if you run into trouble, just call your local mayor, she would love to hear from you.

She says:

I read an article this week in the New York Times that mentioned university students are now checking out the quality of the cafeteria as another way to decide which campus to attend. I know I am getting older when I read that and remember that my favourite cafeteria food at university was the cinnamon buns for 99 cents! Are the young adults of today becoming food snobs?

It must be said that not all educational institutions in the article had the budget to explore serving “low carbon meals using local and organic food” or “whole Maine lobster, New York strip and rib-eye steaks cooked how you want them”. I will also mention I don’t think it’s at all bad that students get to eat quality food and a variety of it. Perhaps this culinary education is just an extension of the expectations for today’s youth. They need to know about restaurant quality food because that will likely be a part of how they advance in their careers and even their life. Committing a faux pas at a “wine and dine” type interview could be the career-limiting move that used to come from wearing the wrong suit or telling the wrong joke.

Now I must ask the burning question however: will this movement to food awareness mean that the pendulum will swing and the propensity for being overweight and out of shape will become a thing of the past for future North American adults? One could always hope, don’t you think? Maybe we could carry things a step further and require a part of the curriculum to deal with supporting local growers, so as to sustain a better community close to home? I guess that is probably getting a bit too far from the centre line … after all, you can ban trans fats in New York restaurants where LuluLemon has lobbying power to show off their clothing in a suitable percentage of shapely bodies, but you are not going to make that happen nationwide.

The nostalgic part of me will be sad to see the dying out of such student stand-bys as no-bake cookies and toaster oven pizza, but I suppose it is for a good cause. As I read over my ramblings it occurs to me that this whole topic is a bit absurd when there are places in the world where children don’t have anything to eat at all, or any education beyond what the world throws at them. I will take solace in hoping that the everlasting quality of youth, that insatiable curiosity and desire to question, will go beyond the niceties we are talking about this week and delve into more serious issues. If we nourish their brains they have the best potential to extend their questions beyond “Can we have chocolate pumpkin muffins?” And if us old fogies who run the halls of wisdom make them think the way scholars of old did, we won’t always answer their questions the way the one quoted above was answered in a university dining hall: “Please expect to see them every Monday morning.”

He says:

Coming from Quebec, the system was a bit different for me. When I was in high school, there was a cafeteria serving meals prepared by the students in the culinary program. It was a great system, as the culinary students learned to create great meals, and the other students benefited in buying their creations. I tasted “Coq au Vin” for the first time when I was in grade 10.

We also had a private dining room restaurant operated by the students in the hospitality department and the other cooks that were not working at the cafeteria. The only down side with this one was that it was mostly for teachers, so not many students would venture inside at lunch hour mostly because they did not want to have lunch face to face with their math or science teachers. My daughter goes to private school in Vancouver where they don’t have a cafeteria that serves meals so all students either “brown bag it” or go out to the local restaurants to eat. Peer pressure has its advantages Chloae has developed a taste for Sushi and Indian food, of which she was not a big fan before going to that school. So they do learn something at school after all.

You know brown bagging it is fine as long as you take some time to think about buying good ingredients to make good quality food. Wraps, paninis, bagels, baguettes or even foccacia beats the commercial white sliced bread that I was subject to from my wonderful mom.

You know, if you cook good quality dinners then leftovers can be taken to school often if you make a few extra portions. The best way to have your children eat good food is to train them as early as possible to appreciate good quality meals, so they don’t settle for the vending machines.

I also think that most obesity issues from our youth today is totally related to bad eating habits perpetuated from home to school – not enough control on the children while they are away from home. If they have already learned to eat good food on a regular basis, they can survive anywhere when they finally leave the nest.