15. Happy Birthday Nonna.

On my grandmother's 70th birthday her children, my mother and her siblings, got together to buy her a pair of diamond and ruby earrings. Though I imagine she reacted to the gift the way that my own mother does, by saying that she didn't need anything, and that they shouldn't have spent any money on her, she loved those earrings.

On my last trip to visit her I remember her wearing them every day. My mother told me that even just before she died in the hospital, when she was suffering a great amount of pain, she would ask about them. The doctor would comment on them, on how much they glittered, and my grandmother would preen like a schoolgirl at the compliment.

After she died my mother brought them home with her and turned them into pendants for necklaces. One for me and one for my sister.

Every time I put it on I take an extra moment to look at it in the mirror - it really does glitter more than any other jewellery I own. When I receive a compliment for it, I remember to stop and pose and let myself feel like a schoolgirl.

There is something so special about this necklace to me. That it belonged to my grandmother, of course, and that it reminds me of her. But mostly that it made her feel beautiful.

She was that, and so much more.

I miss her.

Happy Birthday Nonna.

14.

Matt and I share one thing with our friends Ananda and Mario: We love to eat.

I mean, we really love to eat.

A lot.

And since we like to really eat great food, we're constantly exploring authentic traditional practices and ways to incorporate them in our own preparation and cooking.

Our hobby dovetails perfectly with my idea of trying to squeeze as much information out of my parents as I possibly can. My mom is somewhat used to this. Whenever she is cooking I look over her shoulder and ask questions, taste, and generally try to learn as much as possible. She's game. My step-father, on the other hand, is pretty much an untapped wealth of information. Since Ananda and Mario have joined Matt and I in trying to put away as much good, local food as possible this summer, I thought I'd ask Albino to teach us to make sausages. He was a trooper and we had a great evening together.

Step 1.
Start with pork butt (upper portion of the shoulder). We bought 15 kilos from Columbus Meat Market.



Step 2.
Remove the soft fat from the meat, leaving the hard fat. The names explain the difference. The soft fat is, quite literally, softer and lumpier, and very difficult to digest. The hard fat is whiter and much harder and looks like a solid separate layer of fat underneath the skin and on top of the muscle. Trust me, you want this stuff.



Step 3.
Use those muscles and grind the meat.



Step 4.
Prepare your spices. We used coarsely ground pepper and coarse sea salt in all of the sausages and fennel in half of them. Pretty much any dried spice can be added: red pepper flakes, paprika, whatever catches your fancy.



Step 5.
Mix for an interminable amount of time. Use your hands and keep going long after you think you should stop. Obviously commercial sausage makers can't mix by hand, but since we were only working with 15 kilos of meat, we could. This is the secret to fully developed flavours.



Step 6.
Taste. Yes, really! How else are you going to know if you have the right amount of spice?



Step 7.
Soak the casings for about 1/2 hour and then rinse them in fresh water. This will give them elasticity and make them easier to handle. Thread them onto the sausage stuffer component of the meat grinder and then run the meat through again.



Step 8.
Twist the sausage to make links - otherwise you'll end up with the mother of all sausages!



Step 9.
Taste test.



The whole shebang including clean-up took us less than three hours, and each couple ended up with about 70 sausages at a cost of less than 50 cents/sausage. We vacuum packed ours and put them in our extra freezer. Enough sausages for a year!

13.

Last week I told my mom that Matt and I had some beautiful halibut fillets in the freezer. She had a hankering for halibut so suggested I trade her for some parmigiano reggiano cheese she had. We worked out that I would owe her one fillet and $5. I went home with the cheese and promised her that I would bring the fish the next time I saw her. Then, she called me and told me that she had gone strawberry picking and had picked me a bunch of strawberries for my freezer. She wasn't sure what my cost was, but it would be added to the cost of the cheese. So I owed her one halibut fillet, $5, plus some extra cash. This morning I was going to Columbus Meat Market so I called her to see if she would need anything. She asked for a kilo of ground pork. Now I owe her one halibut fillet, one kilo of ground pork and an unknown amount of cash, and she owes me some strawberries.

I have no idea how we got here. I do know that she does this not only with me but also with my sister and my sister-in-law.

So is my mother running her own black market? Is she the capo of some mafia food ring? Does she watch the market runs on parmigiano in order to pounce when the getting is good?

I have no idea.
I'm just getting my strawberries, and getting out. Quick.

12. Thursday night dinner.

Wheelhouse Seafoods on Hastings has the best seafood we have found anywhere in Vancouver. The seafood is consistently high quality, local, sustainably harvested and fairly priced. The last time I was there, buying mussels, I picked up a can of tuna. Now, I don't usually buy canned tuna. With the abundance of fresh seafood here why pick up something canned? Especially since my mom cans fresh sockeye salmon. But something about the can twigged my memory.

My grandmother used to make something called salamino di tonno. It's a cold dish made with canned tuna or salmon, Parmesan cheese, parsley, garlic, lemon, and eggs, rolled to look like a salame. After being boiled and chilled it is sliced and served with lemon and olive oil. Delicious!

After that a memory of my Zia Luisa's vitello con salsa di tonno followed right on its footsteps. The tuna Wheelhouse sells is Estavan solid white B.C. albacore tuna, sustainably (hook & line) caught. Hmmmm, I thought, how could I go wrong?

Tonight Matt and I both worked late, so I put together a quick Provencal type salad. I used the tuna, greens from our garden,fresh little nugget potatoes, olives, capers, tomatoes, string beans and eggs and we enjoyed it with a glass of dry Merridale "Cyser" cider. Yum. This tuna was truly delicious, nothing like the regular stuff you find in big box grocery stores.

Charlie would most definitely approve.