Next up in my effort to reclaim childhood comfort food is a dish my Engish mother learned to make at St. Olaf’s Catholic Church from Mrs. Maria Norton.
The original is made, as so many one-dish meals of its time were, with Campbells cream of mushroom soup. That was the first change I made since I love making a good cream sauce. Second, the original is topped with both Tater Tots and onion rings. I love browned onions, and I thought that would make a nice upgrade. I’m pretty sure having a non-deep-fried vegetable makes this count as healthy.
About Tater Tots. Don’t substitute something healthier. Just don’t. Eww.
Mom, of course, made this in one big baking dish, but since I still live on my own pending my husband’s move, I made individual servings. This recipe produced enough for five dinner entrées.
Tater Tot Hot Dish
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons fresh garlic
1 1/3 cup half and half
2/3 cup chicken stock
1/4 teaspoon table salt
fresh ground black pepper to taste
2 large white mushrooms finely chopped
1 large onion chopped
1 tablespoon neutral oil
~1 pound ground beef
1 package OreIda Tater Tots
Melt your butter in a medium sauce pan and saute your garlic for a minute or two over medium heat. Add the flour to form a roux and stir constantly. When the roux begins to darken, or when the aroma changes so that it smells more cooked, remove the sauce pan from heat and add the half and half and chicken stock. Return the pan to a medium high burner and stir constantly until it reaches a rolling boil while being stirred and has thickened. Add the salt, pepper, and chopped mushrooms. Stir to combine and set aside.
In a large covered saute pan, fry your onion in the neutral oil over high heat while stirring constantly until the edges begin to brown and crisp. Remove from heat and crumble your ground beef. Return the pan to medium heat and cook until the beef begins to brown.
Drain the cooked beef and onion mixture thoroughly. I know, I know. Do it anyway. You’re about to replace the lost yumminess with the mushroom garlic cream sauce. Keep them both and you’ll have a grease pot.
Add the mushroom cream sauce to the drained beef and onion and stir. Add the mixture to individual ramekins, or to an 8 inch square baking dish if you prefer. Add an orderly layer of Tater Tots to the top. Follow the directions on the Tater Tot package to finish your creation.
If you want to make this ahead for later use, just pop the assembled dishes in the freezer with tinfoil over them before the Tater Tots thaw out.
March 16th, 2020 was the last day of the Before Times for me. It was the last day I thought I was going to have an ordinary day working in NOAA’s offices before going home to my beloved Greenwood neighborhood. We got the word late in the day to pack up and take our laptops home and prepare to work remotely for at least two weeks. I hated this idea. I didn’t want to lose the enjoyment of working across from my best friend all day, or going out to lunch, or having casual hallway conversations. I didn’t like the idea of being alone all the time.
I’ll complain and moan for a while when work compels me to do something I don’t want to, but ultimately I know which side of the bread the butter is on, so I soldier up and do what needs to be done. I, my bestie, and his housemate at the time packed up our laptops at the usual time and made our standard goodbye stroll to the parking lot. They walked slow to smoke cigarettes before starting their brutal hour + commute northward. I just enjoyed the chat.
They finished their smokes and it was time to part. Some place of deep knowing inside me opened up and I would have said then that I feared, but really I knew that it was going to be much longer than two weeks before I saw them again.
I started singing. It didn’t feel voluntary.
We’ll meet again. Don’t know where; don’t know when
but I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.
Keep smiling through just like you always do
‘til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away.
Memories of our mom flooded me. She was a WWII veteran born and raised in England. She often told us that one of the things that got her through the war was Very Lynn’s recording of We’ll Meet Again written by Ross Parker and Hughie Charles. Mom and I would sing it together when I was a teenager while we danced in the living room. She showed me then the power that music has to reach us when nothing else can.
My best friend and his housemate stared at me as I came back from wherever I had gone and started crying.
“Y’ OK?”
“Yeah. Mom used to sing that. It’s from the War.”
I drove home and as I passed through the little business district I think of as ‘downtown Greenwood’ past the restaurants and bars where I spend some of the happiest hours. As I did, the song came out of me again and I felt certain that there would be a shutdown and these places would be dark and silent for an unknown amount of time. It felt like the end of the world.
You can listen to a wonderful rendition of this song by a choral group from England called the D-Day Darlings here:
The second thing that Mom said got her through the war was knowing that then Princess Elizabeth was serving in the military just like she was.
On April 5th, 2020, Queen Elizabeth II made an unprecedented speech about the pandemic. The whole video is worth watching, especially if you are an American who doesn’t understand the value that Her Majesty brings to her people. If you are short on time, though, you can jump ahead to minute four. She makes reference to We’ll Meet Again in encouraging everyone listening to remember that better days are ahead and that we will overcome this problem.
It felt like she was speaking directly to me; or that someone was.
Act II - Sunset Harping and Fae Wiedenhoeft
Inspired by viral videos of musicians in Rome under severe lockdown orders singing and playing instruments from their balconies (sometimes collaboratively with other balconies!) I decided that one small thing I could do was play harp from my own balcony. No one would hear, of course, because it overlooks noisy Greenwood Avenue. My favourite time of day to be here at my condo is sunset. I have a pretty good view of the Olympic mountains to the west and there are times when the sky is breathtaking. I decided that would be the time of day I would play music. It would give me an anchor, and by following the sunset later and later in the day I would keep myself oriented toward the world beyond my four walls.
I had the idea of doing a Facebook live broadcast of these sunset shows, so on March 21st, 2020 the first episode of Sunset Harping happened. I continued to produce half-hour episodes about four times a week and gathered a surprisingly large and loyal following. The show did what I intended. It gave me a relief from feeling alone and it gave all of us an anchor in each day to stop, breathe, and assess.
By early July, there were some temporary reductions in Covid restrictions, which allowed me to invite guests to be on the show with me. One of them was my friend Fae Weidenhoeft. She is a fabulous singer songwriter who I met when she started taking Gaelic classes in the Zero to Gaelic program and singing in the choir. Fae is a blazing talent and a fabulous human and I was delighted to have her with me on the balcony. Over dinner we discussed what we would do on the show and she brought up We’ll Meet Again. It was one of the songs she wanted to perform on the show and she knew it was special to me, but not why, so I told her.
We started the show off with that number with her on ukulele and singing lead. I had worked out a harmony for some parts, but the song has far too many sudden changes of sharps and flats for a lever harp, so I didn’t play. It was an absolutely magical moment. You can see it here:
Act III - A new instrument and a neglected set of skills
My music career has been thoroughly and happily devoted to the music of the Gaelic-speaking people of Scotland, Ireland, and Nova Scotia. My original education, however, was in classical music at Cornish College of the Arts. It took a while before I really found my feet and started to excel, but I managed it. By the time I graduated, I put together a program for my senior recital that included a very respectable collection of mainstream, challenging pedal harp pieces.
Traditional music by and large, doesn’t call for huge range and full chromatic capability of a classical harp, but is better served by the smaller, portable, more resonant, and less expensive lever harp. I have two artist quality lever harps. One was made for me in Scotland, and the other right here in Seattle. They are wonderful, fulfilling instruments that are perfectly suited for what I have done with them. No complaints there.
Although I had completed my degree in classical music, I never owned my own classical harp. I rented a small one from my teacher and regretfully returned it shortly after finishing my degree. I was soon off and running into the world of traditional music, and my investments belonged in instruments that would serve me there.
In 2011, the World Harp Congress was held in Vancouver BC, and my friend Alys Howe with whom I preformed in a harp duo, got us booked to do a concert of music from Scotland and Cape Breton. It was great fun. While I was there, I also spent a bit of time in the vendors hall looking at all the instruments including the classical harps. A spark of interest grew in me.
It took a decade for that spark to grow into action, but in February of 2021, when I was due to receive my inheritance from my parents, I placed an order for a new Lyon and Healy pedal harp. It arrived near the end of June and it was time for me to dust off a stack of music I hadn’t played in 30 years or more. Although my hands could play all the right strings, on a classical harp you have to move seven pedals at the base of the instrument, each of which has three positions, to get all the sharps and flats. That skill was a bit rusty. Like really rusty.
I had the idea to use We’ll Meet Again as a kind of study piece. I pulled out the sheet music that Fae had given me a copy of and spent an evening working out what all the pedal changes would be to get all the right sharps and flats at the right times. It turns out there were quite a lot, so it has been a great exercise.
It has also given me a way to take ownership of the importance of the song in my life. Mom taught me how to find hope in dark times through her love of that song. Queen Elizabeth told me that things would get better again, and I believed her because she touched the place that song holds in my heart. Fae wanted to know why that song mattered to me, because I mattered to her.
Now I can play We’ll Meet Again whenever I need to remember those things.
Since about the second month of the pandemic I’ve been delving deeper and deeper into Japanese cuisine. Mostly that has been learning new recipes from JustOneCookbook.com but in addition to that, I have been learning more about my favourite dish, sukiyaki. I wrote a piece about my connection to that dish and more broadly to Japanese culture here: Gagne Family Sukiyaki: This is going to be complicated
So, why am I writing about this again? I want to show how my sukiyaki making has evolved over the last few months as I have learned more about the tradition. I will rush to note that nothing I learned about making this dish as a child was wrong and the results are the same level of deliciousness. The two main differences are 1) using more traditional Japanese ingredients and fewer substitutes and 2) using a traditional iron cooking pot. My mother didn’t have easy access to a specialty Asian / Japanese grocer as I do now, so I don’t blame her one bit. Also, my Dad would have never eaten tofu.
Here is where you can get yourself a tetsu nabe - a cast iron cooking pot. I have a 28 ounce one, which feeds me when I’m starving. If you were including other dishes, then that size would likely feed two.
I make this sauce in double batches and keep it on hand. It’s never going to go bad, and I make this dish a couple times per month in the fall and winter, so it gets used up quickly.
You can buy instant dashi powder, but I prefer to make my own following the instructions by Nami Chen on JustOneCookbook.com How to make dashi
Ingredients
1 tablespoon neutral flavour oil
1 finely chopped shallot
1/2 pound beef cut for sukiyaki
3 scant pinches aji-no-moto (don’t believe the anti-Asian propaganda about MSG)
2 green onions
2 napa cabbage leaves
1/2 cup shirataki noodles (nearly 0 net carbs!)
Shimeji and / or enoki mushrooms
2 stalks of celery
braised tofu
bean sprouts
Prepare your sauce and ingredients in advance. Use a culinary torch to braise the tofu.
Heat the oil in the iron pot and being to sauté the shallot. After a few minutes, add the beef to brown it. Sprinkle with aji-no-moto. When all the pink is gone, remove the pot from heat.
Pile the beef up in the center and arrange the other ingredients around it, leaving the bean sprouts out for now.
Add sauce until is it about a half inch from the lip of the pot. Return to heat and bring to a rolling bubble. Place the cedar lid on the pot and reduce heat to low. Simmer covered for 8 minutes.
Add the bean sprouts to the top and cover for an additional 2 minutes.
Serve immediately.with a spoon and chopsticks.
Photos
There is no substitute for the beef. You just have to find an asian grocer who prepares it.
Cooking with Flame
I have grown attached to cooking with a flame, so I bought a Japanese butane burner unit like the ones used in every hotpot restaurant in the world. The accompanying instructions tell you to never use it indoors, but that is really just for insurance purposes. What you have to do is not use it in an enclosed space like a tent or camper and also not use it for extended periods of time. Butane burns much cleaner than propane, so as long as you have significant ventilation, you’re fine. The risk is that if you are in an enclosed space and the oxygen supply starts to get used up, then the butane flame will stop producing carbon dioxide, which you can handle, and start producing carbon monoxide which will kill you in minutes. I keep mine on top of my electric range with the hood vent running and do not have any concerns. Here is the model I have. It has the best safety rating.
The love of my life is Doug Barr. He was born and raised in Victoria, British Columbia, and I in the Seattle area. We met on 7 April 2001 at the Scottish Cultural Centre in Vancouver BC, where a very famous Scottish Gaelic singer, Cathy-Ann MacPhee, was performing. We had our first date in Seattle the next weekend and on it went.
October 2001, Whistler. See the bunny ears?
One thing that you have to know about Doug is that the literal meanings of words are very important to him. We have never been ‘boyfriends’ because we are definitely not boys anymore. I adopted the alternative title for myself of Potential Pre-Husband.
When I met Doug, he was working for the Royal Bank of Canada. He held several positions there, and the last was the worst. It involved early morning shifts on the weekends, which were the only times we had together. One particular Sunday morning - and I mean morning - I helped with us getting up an dressed and drove him to work. We both smoked at the time, (we’ve quit - SHUSH!) and so were having a cigarette in the parking lot before he went inside.
He put his hand on my shoulder and said softly “Thank you for getting me here this morning.”
I said “That’s what Potential Pre-Husbands are for!”
“That’s a really long title.” he said.
“You’re the one who doesn’t like ‘boyfriend’.” I quipped.
“I think of you as my fiancé.” he said.
“I WILL!” I answered.
And we were theoretically engaged. We didn’t speak of it again for years. After all, legal marriage wasn’t available to us and neither of us have any interest in empty gestures.
Then, on July 20th, 2005, Canada legalised same-sex marriage nation-wide. Our close friends Geoff and Joe who are American decided to have a wedding ceremony in Vancouver, though it wouldn’t have any force back in the States. They arranged a lovely ceremony on the upper deck of a harbour cruise boat, and afterward, we headed out into English Bay to enjoy the annual fireworks competition overhead and pretend it was for our friends.
Enjoying the views and each other we strolled the decks. The muzak was light jazz, which neither of us like and Doug turned to me and said “Tell me at our reception we’re not going to have...” I didn’t let him finish “No. No light jazz.” And that was the second time we talked about our wedding.
In the intervening ten years before the United States got around to recognizing our fundamental right to marry, many things happened. Doug decided to give post-secondary education a try for the first time. As someone with ADHD which remained undiagnosed until his mid-30s, it had never seemed a realistic goal before. I released my first solo CD which is a mountain of hard work.
Then, in 2013, I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes. Doug got me through the initial shock, lifestyle changes, and self-education. When things were calm again, on a certain Sunday before I drove home to Seattle, we had dinner out and I broached the subject.
“Honey, I’m OK, we’re OK, and we’ve got this now. But, if true disaster befell me, you wouldn’t be able to take me in because of that border. In the eyes of the law, we’re just friends.” I said.
“We should start fighting about the guest list.” he answered and went back to enjoying his hot pot. It was getting cold, and the man is nothing if not practical.
I was one of the founding Board members of Slighe nan Gaidheal, Washington’s Scottish Gaelic Language and Cultural Society and had served continuously since its beginning in 1997. Our terms were three years long, and so when I was up for reelection in 2012, I had announced that it would be the last term I sought. I had all these things I wanted to do in my life that weren’t making any progress and part of the reason was the 10+ hours of volunteer work for the society every week.
Right on cue, I retired from the Board of Slighe nan Gaidheal and marriage became legal for us in the United States in 2015. I supposed that’s really where the journey to our handfasting, and on to our wedding began.
Forming a cross-border family is trickier than you might imagine. Deciding where each part of the process will happen is fraught with politics. It’s even more complicated when the marrying parties are of different religions, with one of them having been raised by evangelical atheists.
Rev. Judith Laxer ties the knot
But we managed it in the end. We were handfasted (formal betrothal in my religion) in Seattle on 2 October 2019, and cast the spell together which said “let all things be put in motion so we are ready to marry on 3 October 2020.”
Of course, we naively thought it would happen as planned at the Scottish Cultural Centre in Vancouver BC where we first met. But no.
The “all things put in motion” apparently included providing extensive material assistance to a parent transitioning into care, an extremely dramatic real estate deal to close my mother’s estate after 20 damn years, a global pandemic, a closed border, and re-planning the wedding four times as rules changed.
I guess the moral of this story is that people in love can endure incredible trials to finally make to their Happily Ever After day. (we know, it won’t all be happy - SHUSH!) Believe in Love, and in each other, and anything is possible.
While being in isolation during this pandemic, I have been doing a lot of cooking, and lately my focus has been on Japanese cuisine. My godmother was a second generation Japanese American named Kimiko Sakai. She and her husband Toshio lived in a beautiful house overlooking a large pond on Bainbridge Island along with Uncle Tosh’s mother, Botchan. I went to their house very often as a child when Mom would go visit, so I had plenty of Japanese food there. Mom also picked up a few dishes from Kim and made them for us at home. I don’t remember learning how to make sushi rice or sukiyaki because it was just by osmosis. In the midst of the second month of cooking for myself all the time and being alone, I started to crave comfort food and for me that meant fish and chips and Japanese food - the love of my two mothers.
I’m super careful about trimming
You can’t live on three dishes, though, so I started picking favourites from our frequent visits to Japanese restaurants to try at home. I soon discovered my new favourite food blogger, Nami Chen from justonecookbook.com. Her YouTube videos are absolutely great and she is as charming as a fresh pot of houjicha! The marinade in this recipe is the same as hers. I tried several, but this one is the best. The techniques, however are gleaned from multiple different sources and I think they are easier and give an excellent result. This recipe can be made gluten free by substituting gluten free soy sauce.
Chicken Karaage
all ingredients are per person
1 chicken thigh
salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon soy sauce (substitute gluten free if desired)
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon sake
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1 tablespoon ginger paste
1-2 tablespoons potato starch
oil for frying
Japanese mayonnaise
Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces trimming away excess fat. Keep any small scraps you trim off to form a nugget later. I love the nugget! When all the other pieces are done, chop the scraps to the consistency of ground chicken, sprinkle with flour (or some of your potato starch to keep things gluten free) a smoosh into a ball.
Sprinkle the chicken pieces with salt and pepper and set aside while you prepare the marinade.
Combine the sesame oil, sake, soy sauce, garlic, and ginger and pour over the chicken. Mix and put in your refrigerator for anywhere from 30 minutes to overnight.
When you’re ready to get frying, place 1-2 tablespoons of potato starch per chicken thigh into a large freezer bag with the chicken pieces. Seal the bag with lots of air inside and shake it baby, shake it. You want the pieces all to be thoroughly coated with potato starch.
Here’s the magic part: because you use potato starch, the coating is basically potato chips.
If you don’t have a deep fryer (go get one) you will need a heavy duty pan and a candy thermometer. Put about four inches of cooking oil that has a very high smoke point in the pot and heat it up to between 350F and 365F. I like to use a ratchet old pair of wooden chopsticks to place the pieces into the oil so that I can hold them there until they really get bubbling. That way, they are unlikely to stick.
Cook in small batches for between 3 and 3.5 minutes each depending on the size of your pieces. Place on a rack to drain, or alternatively a piece of cooking parchment.
Serve with Japanese mayonnaise for dipping. My favourite is Kewpie brand, which is gluten free by default.
I am a medium. I haven’t always known this about myself, but as I have gotten older it has become more and more apparent. When I was about 27, near my first Saturn return, through a complicated and very interesting series of events I met a man named Mischa Duvan, who was at the time the senior and only shaman of the Ulchi Tribe in Siberia. He told me that I would work with the dying and the dead later in life, but that I should not attempt to at my age.
That was nearly half a lifetime ago, so as I approach my second Saturn return, I can’t be surprised that I see and get messages from dead folks more often. It usually happens when I’m doing something else, like giving a Tarot reading or having a deep magical counseling session. It’s not something I initiate, but once it starts, it tortures me until I understand and pass on the message I’m being given. That torture takes the form of a crushing and unexplainable sadness that I must assume is the easiest of my buttons for someone on the other side of the Veil to push.
The last time it happened was on the 19th anniversary of our mother’s death on October 26, 2019. I had been feeling that nagging, causeless sorrow for a few weeks, but it had not risen to the point where I would notice it above the general noise of my fear-prone mind. I and my fiancé were very busy assisting his mother with the sale of her home of 45 years and her transition into a retirement community so I was quite distracted. The winning offer came in on that anniversary day, so the three of us went out to dinner to celebrate. It was such a great load off all our minds and erased so much uncertainty that we were all feeing good. Future mum-in-law has some mobility issues, so I dropped her and her son off at the front door and went to park the car. The instant I was alone, the weight of sadness that descended was absolutely crippling. I remembered that it was our mother’s death anniversary and the penny dropped. She wanted me to know something. I made it into the restaurant and back with other people, I could hold it at bay for a while.
After dinner and returning to her soon-to-no-longer-be home, I excused myself and retired to the basement semi-suite that we use when visiting. I made it to the bottom of the stairs before collapsing in sobs. My man put his mum to bed and came downstairs to find me there. He was of course tremendously concerned and asked what he could do. I told him to stay with me, since his presence is like a control rod in the reactor of my stability-challenged spirit. He logged on to his computer and I curled up on the couch and started playing solitaire on my phone. A few minutes later, a seemingly random thought crossed my mind: ‘I wish I could go home.’ In my idiolect, ‘home’ means our mother’s hometown of Cleethorpes, England. We spent summers there growing up, and I always feel closest to her when I visit.
I had no sooner thought the thought when a surge of energy when through me from head to foot like a bolt of lightning and I saw a picture of my aunt Betty in her home in Cleethorpes. I gasped, dropped the phone, and clamped my hands over my face and started to shake violently.
My man asked if he should phone an ambulance. As soon as I could speak again, I said no. I told him that Mom wants me to go to Cleethorpes. He answered “tell everyone I said hi.” That’s someone you marry.
Mom has never come through to me in all the years since she died, so I took it seriously. I had gotten the message, so within a few minutes the cloud of sorrow was gone without a trace and I went back to as normal as I get and started looking for ways to make a trip back home.
The right opportunity arose and I was able to tack on a short trip to the UK to the end of a business trip to the East coast. I saw most of the family, met a new cousin, and looked in on our eldest god daughter and her partner in Glasgow. I headed home, feeling a little bit foolish, honestly. No huge drama. No big revelations. No spectral appearances. Just a lot of great fish and chips and some much needed family time.
Then COVID-19 happened. Borders started to close. Our wedding plans are thrown into uncertainty. My late-eighties aunt is in lockdown, and like me, many of my closest relations are old enough to be in the at-risk category. I got an e-mail from Betty’s eldest daughter this morning sharing that she is fine, though quite bored being in lockdown, since she has run out of tasks to do around the house.
When the severity of the consequences of the situation became clear, I got on my knees in front of my ancestor altar and prayed to our mother and thanked her for telling me to go while I had the chance. Mother knows best.
In May of 1998, I met a guy who for some inexplicable reason was interested in being more than friends with me, so we were more than friends. He will always occupy a special place in my memory because he was the very first man that gave me the gift of intimacy more than once. I was 32.
We were quite poorly suited, but I was oblivious to that. Someone had been cast in the role of Boyfriend and that was a huge check mark on my list.
Time, however, had no issue with showing both of us the flaws in our current situation and I was then back into my Mum's orbit for council. The following is the last thing Catherine Bolan ever wrote to me. I keep it folded up in a heart-shaped box with a heart-shaped stone on top.
There is nothing for you to be afraid of. You have achieved such a lot through work and perseverance, that it is impossible to conceive that you should be afraid of failure of any kind. This situation you are in is not the beginning or the end of anything. Don't take things at face value. There's very little in life that is as it appears. Q & A; that's what you need and you need it now, for your own peace of mind. Do not put it off.
Still working on the complete fulfillment of this advice, Mum, and I will never give up. You are still my shining star, and by the way, I did actually find the One True Love of my Life. You would have loved him.
Next up in my effort to reclaim childhood comfort food is a dish my Engish mother learned to make at St. Olaf’s Catholic Church from Mrs. Maria Norton.
Tater Tot Hot Dish
In a large covered saute pan, fry your onion in the neutral oil over high heat while stirring constantly until the edges begin to brown and crisp. Remove from heat and crumble your ground beef. Return the pan to medium heat and cook until the beef begins to brown.
