The Ten Course Meal

My astral name is Levity. This was discovered in the kitchen of an old tree fort apartment I lived in with Ack, the ex-husband/ best friend. On my birthday. It was 5:30am. Ack was in a trance. Ack can speak to the spirit world. Well, he channels more than speaks to them directly. They spoke to me through him. That night I discovered I have 3 guardian angels watching over me. Sometimes I feel them. Other times I don't.

SNIFF... sniffsniffsniffsniffsniff...

Spring? Is that you?

The snow is melting on my deck. It's actually receding more than it's melting. I suspect the family of raccoons, all 5 of them, have been receiving a Chinese water torture in their undisclosed locale. I know they're there, but I don't know exactly where. My landlord knows they're there too, but he's too lazy to board them out. I'm too in love with them to not provide them a home. And they really like Chicken. To him they're like The Jets from West Side Story, a dancing gang who can snap because of their opposable thumbs; living close enough to keep tabs on them, prowlingly ready to bitch slap them if they get out of line. The Chicken Don.

There is something different about spring light. It's hazier. There's a Cybil Shepherd Vaseline lens on highrise buildings, one generation removed from veritable Communist architecture. Sometimes when I look at the cluster of bricks and blocks that make up our downtown core, I think it's quite possibly the most beautiful thing I've seen in months. Sometimes, and this doesn't happen very often, in fact I can only count the occasions on one hand, I can step outside of my house, walk down the street and feel as if I am on vacation. Everything is of course familiar, but there is more of a magical quality. I suspect it's linked to light; general gaiety and the happiness made possibly explicable by the frequency that pupils contract. Well, anuses do that when things are going well. It happened just the other day. Not the anus bit, but the sensation that I was on a trip.

Last weekend, after Saturday night's last call, my dear Fatty invited me back to his family's home. Fatty and his brother Tristan have temporarily moved back in with their parents. The arrangement is mostly good, unless one counts those times when Fatty doesn't set the timer correctly on the oven and his mother's almond cake is ruined. Not quite ruined, just slightly underdone. It just needed another 7 minutes, his mother yelled. Damned new fangled machines! Somewhere between a 4am relatively tame food fight of chocolate mousse and underdone almond cake and a not so tepid, rather successful attempt at being held upside down by Fatissimo, with a Tristan guarding my head from knocking against severely angled African sculptural work, pulling the underwear out of his ass (as I had given him a patented Wedgie™), Fatty suggested we have a dinner party. I added we should do a tasting menu. An all night amuse bouche.

We decided on Thursday. St. Patrick's Day.

I had been out with Matty the night before. Matty my ex-work comrade whom I didn't see eye to eye with for the better part of a year, but who made himself more available to the world and thus to me. Matty who sketches out in plans he makes with friends, including this friend. Matty whom just over a week ago had the worst case of halitosis I've ever experienced, who coupled it with a near drippy case of clammy hands. Matty has been into way too much coke lately. Matty has one saving grace: Vanity. You wouldn't think that vanity could save people, but in this case it did. Someone told Matty that coke ages pretty young boys. It also makes them look like skinny raccoon eyed fallout victims. Matty can't live under my deck. There's no room in the inn. Chicken would bitch slap him. The family of raccoons would ostracise him.

I can usually handle quite a bit of alcohol. I'm not prone to getting messy. The day before my period comes, I have a great thirst for the stuff, but I handle it like a Catholic school girl's first time. Not that first time! The first time the parent's liquor cabinet is rifled through and a bilic concoction of cherry brandy, lemon gin and dark rum are not only introduced to each other by first name, they altogether converge in the belly for their first and last reunion, discovering they really don't like each other very much and would like to leave the same way they came in. Well, the hurling didn't happen, but it probably wouldn't have been a bad idea.

7am Thursday morning
Woken by the alarm alerting potential containment breach of the monthly hemorrhaging cycle
A successive smacking of the lips informed me that I was the host of synthetic cotton mouth
Bedroom was slightly skewed
Physical locale: moderate to epic hangover
Oooh... back to bed.


Fatty and I wanted to make the tasting menu an all day event. I needed to pop 2 Advils. For someone very hungover, I strangely felt fantastic. That quality of light surrounded us. It felt magical.

At Gate One was the St. Lawrence Market, a wonderful indoor extravaganza with dozens of permanent stalls vending just about everything sunlight is required to create. I heard somewhere it was dangerous and foolhardy to do any food shopping on an empty stomach. We were going to have buffalo burgers and beers, but it was late in the day. It would have had us abandoning the entire thought effort. We had chicken sandwiches instead, sticking with the original plan.

Competition is fierce yet friendly at the Market. In one pedestrian intersection there are 4 different fishmongers to choose from. Everyone who goes to the Market always has their favourite vendor for specifics. I couldn't tell you the name of the fish seller, but I could draw you a map. Going through the centre doors from Front Street, 3/4 of the way down the main aisle, it's the store on the SW side of the intersection. Ask for Andrew. He was in a car accident recently. He got forced into a guard rail going 110kms the other day. His back hurts, but he's still smiling, happy to be at work. He went to Catholic school but he couldn't remember why Patrick was a saint and why we should raise a glass to him. He did tell us the difference between a male and female lobster.

If you can do this, pick up a lobster from the top, just under its massive claws and inspect its underbelly. Try not to do this while hungover because it's a hard thing to look at. There are at least a dozen alien-looking mini legs that claw at air. The delicate legged creatures are female. The big assed ones, the ones that look like they could pierce eyes and box noses, belong to the males. Some say that female flesh is sweeter, but then you have to contend with the sack of eggs. Lurch. Andrew was concerned about my hangover. His remedy was fish tea. Head, bones and scraps of flesh boiled slightly in water. Sip. Gone. Apparently. I looked over at a small pile of large salmon heads and thought one of them winked at me. I hid behind Fatty, letting go a small yelp.

When I was a kid my mother would occasionally buy lobsters, cooking them at home on very special occasions. They were live, having what I had imagined as their last conversation in the refrigerator. I wondered if they were philosophical in nature. I could never wonder too long as I wasn't allowed to play with my food. My mostly sweet, docile mother had an alter ego that took care, precision and a bit of sadism which she sprinkled liberally on these creatures often called the cockroaches of the sea. Death came by jamming a swift chopstick into their nether regions. 4'11", she. After watching that a couple of times I could take or leave lobsters, really.

Andrew was telling us about a free service his operation offered: steaming. Well! This changed matters entirely. I did not want to do my own killing for dinner, but if someone else did it...

Fatty named our one course, our chosen 2 pounder: Frisky McFriskerson. Andrew also helped us choose Malpeque oysters. He could tell how good an oyster was just by shaking it. It's not a perfect science, but 11 out of 12 ain't bad.

There was a momentary concern when it came to buying a small piece of beef tenderloin from the butcher's. Whitehouse Meats, my meat vendor of choice, had pre-prepared bacon wrapped filet mignon ready for the barbeque. The plan was to bash the crap out of this meat to make it resemble uncooked beef paper, liberally seasoned with white truffle oil, Celtic sea salt and cracked black pepper. Having a strip of smoked bacon around it would cause a bit of gastric disagreement more upsetting than the bad mix of previously mentioned alcohols.

The Comrade: We need to eat this raw. Do you think you could you cut us off a fresh piece?

Which he did. Luckily Fatty never named the piece of tenderloin. At the same time a woman meat vendor came over to invite us to the annual St. Lawrence Market customer appreciation party. All the vendors come together once a year supplying food and drink to people who love to eat. The sales pitch included free coffee and dancing. April 7th. Fatty's my date.

We made a small pitstop at the LCBO, the finest liquor retailer in the world, in my opinion. Trade sometimes astounds me. In one location I can buy vodka from Russia (the staple Stoli), taste free samples of wine from Chile (yummy Carmen chardonnay which we stuck in our basket), buy beer from England (Bombardier), Austria (Stiegl) and South Africa (Tusker) and drink the best prosecco from Italy. And I don't even need a passport!

As it was St. Patrick's Day, Fatty thought it appropriate to have a pint at one of our old haunts, C'est What. This is a sublevel bar which has a little smoking room for those who don't mind having a nicotine headache. Otherwise, there are plenty of tables to chat over decent pub food. Fatty and I know most of the staff that work there, which is a blessing and a curse. Blessings, friends. Curse when you have to make a 10 course tasting menu and the very sexy bartender has just poured us a second round on the house. Reinvigorating the kind of drunk I'd experienced the night before, I remembered I still had to drive home. Slow and easy wins the race.

We got back to my place around 6:30, organised our purchases and cracked a beer. And then another.

The plan was for each of us to create 4 or 5 separate "tastes". Some were preplanned, others were on the fly.

The Menu:


[Fatty worked very hard on this. Please click for an enlargement.]

Translation
1. An excuse to do a shooter that one can chew.
2. Beaten beef that I used a rubber mallet (with bits of imbedded drywall residue) to produce proper results with. Please try this at home.
3. The bread and cheese portion of the evening.
4. A recipe stolen from my buddy Mike at work.
5. Stuff I had around the kitchen, made cute because they were in little packages.
6. Fatty ripped this dish from his buddy Jeff. Pork is the closest flesh to humans. I don't tend to eat it, but I suffered the pork in this pasta.
7. Jesus... fresh figs, proscuitto (again with the pig's flesh!) and roquefort blue cheese. In your mouth at the same time. This is what life is all about.
8. Salad. More than likely out of guilt. But very tasty.
9. Our poor dead named lobster which revealed more casing than edible bits. Nobody wanted any of its brains.
10. Dessert.

There was so much food that we had to call in victims. Ack was on his way. He always likes to help.

Fatty: Do mind if I invite my buddy Jeff over?
The Comrade: No! [ripping the phone out of Fatty's hand] I'd love to meet the World's Greatest Dad.

This is what Fatty calls Jeff behind his back. The World's Greatest Dad just happens to be married to the World's Biggest Bitch. How does that happen?

The Comrade: Jeff? You seem like a helpful man. You want to help, right?
Jeff: Yes!
The Comrade: Well, we have all of this food and we can't possibly eat it all ourselves... so, you'll have to come over.


The entire affair of cooking and eating lasted 9 hours. It was painful, gaseous and glorious. Fatty had to crap 3 times to create more room. All of us at one time or another had called uncle. But we did it. All 10 courses were made and eaten. And it was such a good time that we've decided to make it a weekly event. Maybe not as extravagant next time. Maybe there would be a theme. Ack suggested foods that ketchup could nicely accompany. Figures. Fatty suggested everyone bring one ingredient to create a pasta. I liked that idea. Each person would bring one thing to put in a pot; all of us would contribute and be fed by it. More friends could be involved.

I have said quite often that light cannot exist without the dark. My whole life I've been light, or stayed in the light. Levity. Most of the past few weeks had been in willing darkness, admittedly. I looked around my open kitchen at 2 of my best friends and a new friend, smiling to myself. In that instant they were like my guardian angels, personified, brought together with earthly pleasures, holding our stomachs from too much food and just enough laughter... which is never too much.