memories

Change in Schedule – Dear Pegasus and Dragon

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Dear Pegasus and Dragon,

Your mum and I had a plan. It was a good plan. Until Dragon went to school we’d have your schedule be 11pm sleeptime and 11am wake up. This meant we had more time with you and the grandparents after dinner.

It worked really well and we were getting mentally prepared to change it when the pandemic and first lockdown hit. We decided that since mum was mostly homeschooling Dragon that we’d keep going.

Now that Dragon is going to be going to full time digital school next week (Yikes) we’ll be switching your schedule to 8pm bedtime and 8am wakeup time.

I’m kinda terrified about how it’s going to work. Worried that we’ve messed up your internal clock or something. Hopefully everything will be okay, but I definitely expect it to be a hard first few weeks.

As much as this past year or so has been terribly scary and more than a little frustrating, I’ve enjoyed the extra time we’ve had together. I’m not sure you’ll remember much from this year but between the homeschooling activities and the extra time at night to snuggle, I’m not going to forget.

This feels like a big change for us, but if we do it right you won’t remember it.

Love you both,

Papa (Éric)

Canning

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Hello My Imaginary Friends,

When my Mom decided to do something, she threw herself into it with recklessness and hyper-fixation. She never neglected what she had to do, but everything else went away for a little while.

This meant giant cleaning sprees, massive meals, epic videogame marathons, and obscene amounts of canning. Every couple of years, she’d go into full canning mode and make jams, fruit butters, pickles, and picked beets. One year, she made a crab-apple and rose-hip butter that was one step away from the consistency and sweetness of solid honey. She and I have never been able to recreate whatever accident caused the deliciousness.

The smells were fantastic, the tastes were usually good, and the frantic energy was exhilarating. I threw out the last can of pickled beets last year after it had been in one cupboard or another for nearly twenty years.

I have a wonderful memory of peeling beets in the sink of my childhood home. ABBA was playing loudly on her old boombox, the smell of vinegar and pickling spices filled the air, and my hands were purple/red from the beets. One little squeeze and the beet would whoosh out into the sink; a satisfying and squishy sensation.

At some point last year, we were gifted or bought a jar of peach jam. I started making home made rolls for snacks instead of English muffins and we started devouring the jam. When we finished it, we had no farmers markets, church bazaars, or friends gifting jam; so I decided to give in and make some.

I bought all the supplies and decided I’d do just the jam. Then I thought of making salsa. So I made peach jam (which is delicious) and peach salsa (also delicious). It was a frantic 4 hours of trying to figure out what the heck I was doing. The peaches froze in our fridge so blanching caused some swearing, but overall it went well.

A lot of my Mom is in me. I feel the same hyper-fixation with many things. I try to use it when it’s helpful and tame it when it’s not, but it’s always a struggle. Probably why I hadn’t started canning until now. I’ve already thought of a dozen recipes I can make and I’m going to try and limit myself to one per week maximum.

Canning was fun, but made me sad. I wish my Mom was here to sit on a chair in the kitchen and order me around. Maybe that’s the real reason I waited so long; it didn’t feel right to do it without her.

Be kind and be safe,

Éric

Glass slipper

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The taking of this picture was quite cool – we had to ask permission of the Cast Members if we could step out of line to line up a perfect shot of the glass slipper from the middle of the aisle, and we got to step closer than most regular photographers. I felt quite special. Great memory for my birthday.

Coffee is a Comfort Food

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The earliest memory I have of coffee is my mother saying, “Don’t bother me until I’ve had my coffee and cigarette.” The dark brown sludge of instant coffee mixed with powdered milk was bitter, thick, and beyond disgusting.

We all have memories associated with our favourite food. I read an emotional article The Case for Bad Coffee; it’s a good and emotional read. I can’t criticize anything in it; it’s an emotional piece about the writer’s relationship with coffee. I would object to associating Starbucks with good coffee, or all diners with bad coffee. The two aren’t that far apart.

My Coffee Story

Something happened when I was eight: my mom got a job. She started working full time at a women’s shelter. A lot changed because of that job. We moved into a house, she became more confident, we started buying bagged milk, she bought a drip coffee machine, she quit smoking, and she started buying flavoured coffee.

That’s when I started taking notice. The smells of Amaretto, French Vanilla, Caramel, Irish Cream, and Chocolate floated in the house instead of the burnt rubber smell of her old instant coffee.

I can’t tell you when I started drinking coffee. I know it was sometime in high school but the exact date or year is lost to my terrible memory. I do know that the flavoured coffee was mostly for holidays and special occasions and she bought Timmies for everyday drinking.

The smell of flavoured coffee transports me back to our little house and Christmas in Northern Ontario, sipping Irish Cream coffee with the smell of holiday cooking and the howls of winter outside. There was a figurative, as well as a literal, warmth to discussing everything and anything at the breakfast table over a cinnamon coffee. I still have the cheesy Santa head mugs we drank from. I haven’t had the heart to unpack them since she died.

winter morning coffee

When I moved out on my own the first thing I bought was a coffee maker. It was tiny and made one large cup. I used it for ramen almost as often as I did for coffee. I used that machine until my third year university when I needed to pull all-nighters. I fondly remember making a large pot of coffee and working from 10pm to 8am on a 2000 word essay.

Caffeine fueled my university. My video editing job was Caramelo from Second Cup, my convenient store job was Vanilla Hazelnut Van Houtte’s, tour guiding was German Chocolate cake from Timothies, and late night classes were an extra-large triple-triple from Timmies.

They were never as good as the weekends when I went to visit my Mom and we had her coffee and watched a movie, chatted, or just argued.

When I graduated, I tried to get into Starbucks or exotic coffees. They were always bitter and over-roasted (I didn’t know that at the time, I just knew it wasn’t right). I tried to be “grown-up” and drink espresso or cappuccinos but my heart always yearned for the warmth of flavoured coffee.

Heart VS Stomach

My heart yearned for the warmth of flavoured coffee, but my stomach took that way too literally. Acid reflux was the result.

Most (some exceptions like Second Cup) flavoured coffees are made from low quality beans. Low quality beans are exceptionally bitter and acidic compared to other beans. The flavour masks the taste of both of these properties.

Unfortunately due to my stomach problems, I can no longer drink flavoured coffee without multiple uncomfortable issues. (I’ll spare you the details.)

Heart Wins!

I couldn’t find any place that made flavoured coffee with high, or even medium, quality beans. I was reduced to drinking unflavoured coffee.

Although my stomach was happy I missed the days of yummy flavours.

That’s when I got the crazy idea of making my own coffee. With the help of the internet, I started roasting in a hot air popper and loving the coffee.

I looked online for coffee flavouring. I found a lot of syrups (mostly made with corn syrup and tasting of red dye #5) and a few coffee flavourings that cost over $100 a bottle.

I wondered whether coffee flavouring and candy flavouring might be interchangeable. I found a random message board comment saying something like, “I don’t see why not?” and proceeded to run several days’ worth of experiments. (There’s a secret to when you need to flavour the beans.)

That’s when I decided to sell gourmet flavoured coffee.

JenEric Coffee

I now have delicious coffee I can drink and that reminds me of my mom. I think she’d have particularly liked the Mint Chocolate Chip and the Butter Rum.

Coffee is a food that is associated with a lot of social activities and a lot of interpersonal interchanges. It’s natural that a person would associate the coffee they drink with the people who are around or the events. It’s one of the things that makes coffee special and it’s one of the reasons I love it.

 

Enjoy what you love!

Éric