Q & A with Cook

This is obviously a summer-vacation kitchen, so what are your rules?

We use the slow-cooker up here at least 4 times a week.  That allows us to go out kayaking or biking or tramping and yet come back and have a meal ready.  This is not how I cook at home, but at home I have the highest-end appliances and incredible access to fresh foods.  In Cape Breton while much of our salad is grown in our garden, other fresh, high-end ingredients often just aren't available to us.  So we make much simpler dishes with much simpler techniques.  


Do you eat out more here?

We rarely eat out.  There just aren't that many places to have a good dinner.  But our first night here is always at Mira River Cottages. Good Swiss cooking, with a very comfort feel.  And we try to be around to order the lima bean casserole at the greek restaurant in Sydney on Tuesdays: sounds horrible but tastes sublime.  And, of course, we have to eat at Lick-A-Chick because of the name: seriously, their fried chicken is good and their hamburgers are extremely good although they take 30 minutes to cook.   That said, Cape Breton will probably change in the next few years: they are adding several high-end destination golf-courses, and know they will have to add food amenities in order to support these destination efforts.  

What is the most elegant meal you've served here?

We took Lobster Bootcamp 101 at the Culinary Institute of Canada this year and then came back home the next night and cooked mussels and lobster.  It was fabulous.  But it still didn't beat the lobster dinners we have at the beach with our neighbors during lobster season.  Some of our neighbors are lobstermen and we get the lobsters straight off the boat and then they just plop them into ocean water and cook them over coals until perfectly done.  Can't be replicated at home.  




What was your worst meal?

Several.  In fact, although I am a fairly good cook, most people up here think I am a pretty horrid cook.  The foods are just a little different than we're used to, our appliances are not at our home level, and we were not adjusted to having people come over early (5:30 pm) and eat RIGHT THEN without appetizers (not done here, eh?).  For about a year we were the house no one wanted to come to. Also, we have tried to do charcoal grilling, but after a day in our dark-old-farmhouse-damp cellar charcoal just gives up and won't light.  We don't do it here.  And then, there was even a day when all of our corkscrews quit working.  Absolutely hell.  And once you have the bad reputation as a hostess, you somehow get nervous, screw up, and make the bad expectations come through.  


If you could add one thing to this kitchen, what would it be?

Our 30 raspberry bushes would come back.  Our brussels sprouts would be edible before we leave in Autumn.   There would be no insects to eat our garden greens.  I would swap the electric cooktop for induction and get a downdraft vent.  I would be able to add a dishwasher so my whole day wasn't spent washing dishes.  We would always have wonderful, drinkable water.  And I wish the bats would return.