My Halloween Howlers

Candy?  Check.  Pumpkin?  Check.  I’m all ready for Halloween.  As a new immigrant to Canada 30-odd years ago, determined to “become Canadian,” I embraced this new and exotic celebration but didn’t always get it quite right.
Soon after arriving I was invited to attend a Halloween party.  What fun!  I looked in my closet to see what I could use as the basis for a costume and my eyes immediately fell on my traditional English duffel coat.  Perfect.  I would be Paddington Bear.  But what I’d overlooked was that this classic British children’s story was almost unknown this side of the pond.  I spent most of the evening explaining who I was to everyone I met.

You really would’ve thought I’d learn from this experience.  But no, a few years later I did it again, this time dressing up as Noddy.  “Are you an elf?” the children who came to the door asked.  I was crushed.  What kind of deprived upbringing had these poor Canadian children had?

When we moved to Azerbaijan, I was determined to share this important part of North American culture with the local students who visited me once a week to practice their conversational English.  All went well as I described the dressing up, candy and pumpkins.  My mistake was to try and explain some of the ancient beliefs behind the celebration.  As I started to talk about spirits rising and walking the earth I could see them eyeing each other nervously and shifting in their seats.  What kind of voodoo was this crazy Kanadka promoting?

Despite my best efforts it seems I really haven’t MASTERED Halloween.  How well have you adapted to celebrations in your new country?

Friends and food

Where do you keep your recipes?  When I first went overseas I had a motley collection of pages torn out of magazines and handwritten scraps of paper which I tucked inside a 1937 cookbook I’d inherited from my mother.  That old recipe book stood me in good stead as I learned to cook in a country where convenience food was almost non-existent.  In many ways it helped me change the way I cook forever, but in time I grew weary of sorting through all the bits of paper and decided to create my own cookbook of family favourites.

It took time to type them all into my computer, but once that was done I could print them out and put them in a 3 ring binder.  Every time we moved countries I’d ditch the binder (one less thing to pack) and print them out again when I arrived in my new location.  Along the way of course I picked up lots of new recipes from the people I met. These ones were special and I would usually name them for the people who gave them to me.  So I have Olga’s Beans, a wonderful stew of beans, dried fruits and caramelized onions, Milli’s Chicken and Rice, her Louisiana speciality and Angele’s Lemon Meringue Pie, an out-of-this world confection and just as easy to make as a can or packet mix.  My latest version of the 3 ring binder is even decorated with many of their photos.

Today is World Blog Action Day and the topic is food, hence this post.  However I’d also like to use this opportunity to ask you to contribute YOUR recipes to a project I’m involved with which is the Families in Global Transition Cookbook Project.  Proceeds from the sale of the book will help to provide scholarships to their annual conference for students, volunteers and non-profits.  And if you want to know which recipe I contributed, you’ll have to buy a copy