2 decades of food and drink

Photo: Contributed

Martin and Kristin have mint tea in the Sahara

This weekend, Martin and I celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary.

In reflecting upon that time, we have reminisced over many adventures shared in all the years of living together, not to mention all the memorable meals we have enjoyed. 

If you will allow me a little indulgence, I shall share some of our favourites with you:

We met because of food. Both of us worked for a movie-catering company, and although you could say it was simple statistics that threw us together, I like to think it was our passion for food that lit the fire we have now. (But we were the only single people in the company and with no time to meet anyone else, that did point us in the right direction.) 

I think my favourite crazy memory of movie-crew cooking was the night we made sushi for 125 people. There was rice everywhere, but we managed to make a platter that was the size of a small dining room table, three levels high.

They ate every single piece, along with the six salads, 200 gyoza, and 260 custard tarts we made from scratch. Those were the good old days.

Once the movie business slowed in Vancouver, we moved on to other projects. That left more time for cooking at home, and we loved to entertain friends.

The year our South African pals came for Christmas was the year Martin started smoking meat; he cooked the turkey outside in December. It snowed just enough as he cooked to really impress our guests.

We moved to Banff, and there wasn’t much of a kitchen in our tiny apartment, but we had a few spectacular meals at the four diamond Banffshire restaurant in the Banff Springs, where we worked.

Martin led the team of young cooks that hosted a gargantuan buffet spread daily, and I took up my sommelier studies while managing the smaller food and beverage outlets. It was fun to be part of such a huge hospitality family.

We moved to Quebec to work at another Fairmont hotel, and I experienced many of the local specialties. I was treated to sugar pie and tourtière and “poor man’s pudding” (a concoction that is part cake, part sauce and all comfort).

We had cheeses galore, and pork in every way imaginable. I have never been so cold or eaten so much rich food. Quebec was all about the extremes.

In the Okanagan, everything came together. I had great experiences working with the wineries, and have enjoyed working on my own, too.

As The Chef Instead, Martin can cook with his guests watching and learning, and we have so many lovely local specialties he can feature. My garden grows whether I like it or not, so ideas abound for new meals. 

We often sit at the table and reminisce over past meals from our travels, or times we have shared with friends. Barbecues while watching fireworks in Vancouver, snacks at the Borough Market in London, doughnuts in New York… we have been very fortunate.

We celebrated our anniversary early, since summer holidays are virtually impossible in our work (except during a pandemic – who knew?) 

We made plenty of memories last fall on our trip to Africa:

• Breakfast of fresh pastries on a rooftop in Marrakech
• Midday snack of almonds and raisins with mint tea in the Sahara after dismounting our camels
• Sunset patio dinner of local Atlantic seafood with dear friends. 

All these moments were fitting memories for a platinum anniversary. On the day itself, we will be quietly contemplating how fortunate we have been to share so much – and planning more memories for the next
20 years… starting with what’s for dinner next week.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.