POETRY MONTH DAY # 13 — THE CHEESE STANDS ALONE

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Lucky 13, is today's date. Almost half-way through the month. How's everyone doing?

Like many of us, I turn to food for comfort during trying times, and I can tell I'm succeeding in the comfort department by how not comfortable my jeans are getting! Yesterday, after reading several of my friend Jane Byers' blog posts on the meals she's been creating thanks to the Whitewater Cooks series of cookbooks, I was moved to make the Christmas Breakfast Strata from the latest in the series, Whitewater Cooks More Beautiful Food, a delicious concoction of sautéed vegetables, eggs, milk, and three different kinds of cheese combined with  torn-up croissants. Being the carnivore I am, I un-vegetarianed it by adding strips of Black Forest ham. It's touted as a Christmas dish because you make it a day ahead so it's ready to pop in the oven first thing in the morning when you might be otherwise occupied. Today, it's an Easter Monday Breakfast Strata!

A poem in a dish! 

Ted, looking forward to digging in. On another note, do you think we need haircuts?

Today, NaPoWriMo suggests we "write a non-apology for the things you’ve stolen. Maybe it’s something as small as your sister’s hairbrush (or maybe it was your sister’s boyfriend!) Regardless, I hope this sly prompt generates some provocative verse for you." 

In keeping with the Christmas theme born at breakfast, I think I'll go here:


The Cheese Stands Alone

It is true that I ate the silky blue cheese
my sister gave you for Christmas
from the tony specialty cheeses store.

I thought it was something
you didn't particularly like
and as it turned out, I particularly did.

I didn't eat it all at once, however,
so you might have noticed
the white paper it was wrapped in

shrinking from a fat little package
to a flat, crumpled envelope
over the course of the week.

I expect it would have gone well
with the Prosecco we uncorked
on New Year's Eve,

the smooth, sharp wedges
brought to room temperature
and smeared on a snap of cracker

a contrast to the champagne's
fruity spray of bubbles,
but we'll never know.

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MOTHER'S DAY 2018 TURNS INTO A GOURMET DELIGHT

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Mother's Day. For years whenever any of us called Mom on "her day" the first thing she said was, "God couldn't be everywhere..." which was a nod to the sampler my grandmother (Mom's mom) had in a frame that said, "God couldn't be everywhere so He made mothers", an aphorism said to be either a Jewish proverb or a quotation by Rudyard Kipling, at least according to Google. For decades I thought it was Nana's! 

When I became a mother myself I used to love the cute cards that came home, first from Daycare, then for a few years at least, from school. 

One year I got the following poem written by Jesse Lee (this post is mostly food- and Mom-related, but this is a poetry blog so I have to stuff some poetry in here somehow) when he was about six. 

I love you when you're cooking

I love you at the sink

I wish that you'd wear something

something that is pink

I should point out that the "I wish that you'd wear something" line does not in any way indicate him having had a mother who cooked naked. Nor did I wear a lot of pink. I think he was going for the rhythm/rhyme thing.

The day before this year's event, over morning coffee, I got out my new Whitewater Cooks book, a Christmas gift from Mom, as it happens, but then I went off to Mexico so I hardly had a chance to look at it, never mind try making anything from it. 

This was the first Mother's Day in recent memory we didn't take Mom out for a walk and something to eat. Walking is getting harder for her so this year we decided my sisters would bring her to Ootischenia and I'd make brunch. After a delightful browse through the new book, I chose a couple of recipes that fairly begged to be prepped in advance and refrigerated for a few hours if not over night. My kind of event cooking.

In honour of the book having been a Christmas present I decided to try the Christmas Breakfast Strata that involved the ripping apart of half a dozen croissants and putting half in a casserole dish... 

followed by sautéing some vegetables and pouring a spiced-up cream and eggs brew over the veggies and croissants...

then adding a bunch of cheese and the rest of the bread. 

I also made a chicken recipe from the book but couldn't lay my hands on any tamarind paste at the last minute so it was the tamarind-yoghurt chicken with spices but without the tamarind. Still pretty darned good.

Lemon pie for dessert. 

Once again, I managed to find a card that worked.

The consensus was that the sentiment was correct!

Mother's Day 2018

And how did all that taste? The chicken was absolutely delicious. The Christmas Breakfast Strata proved a hit with everyone and we agreed it's a keeper, especially when you want an easy dish for a special day. It's not particularly low in calories; so sue me. Next time I'll add even more vegetables than the 2 cups that were called for. And I might even cut back a little on the cheese; but not the gruyere—its flavour shone. 

Thumbs—and weight—up!

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