The Food Podcast is back!

And, a story about fudge.

The Food Podcast is back!

We’re calling it Season Two (yes, season one lasted five years).

In this episode I’m talking with Canadian cookbook author, writer, teacher and champion of home cooks Julie Van Rosendaal. We spoke last spring, just as the world was gently opening and rhubarb was popping up in Julie’s garden. It all sounds dreamy, but this chat was real. Julie is a community activist. An accidental poet. A champion of bodies, in all shapes and sizes. Her energy is infectious and her messages are evergreen. I couldn't have asked for a more joyful launch back into the world of podcasting.

And for the lunar cake mentioned in the episode, you can find the recipe here.

You can listen to the episode over here. Thanks if you do!

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In other news,

A man named Harry is painting the trim of our house. I can see his ankles through our living room window, his worn Reeboks perched on the rung of a ladder. Blue Rodeo is blasting from the paint-splattered radio that he places at the foot of his ladder. Our neighbours must find it loud, but I’m not going to say anything. Whatever it takes to scrape away decades of paint from these old windows is worth classic rock, cranked to ten.

Harry brought us a container of fudge today. His wife made it for a bake sale she hosted over the weekend. It’s real fudge, the caramel coloured kind that crumbles when sliced but is creamy in the mouth. This is the kind of confection that requires careful stirring and a wise cook at the stove works with a candy thermometer, or one  who knows instinctively by the shape of the bubbles that the mixture has reached 240F. There are many fudge possibilities, like chocolate, sea salt, peppermint, rocky road, and even potato-chip pretzel for goodness sake. But there’s something special about the original, traditional, golden fudge. 

My sister raised me on microwave fudge. I remember the day our mother walked through the front door with her arms stretched around a cumbersome cardboard box, her permed hair just peaking above the word Panasonic. We helped her to the kitchen and lowered the box onto the linoleum floor. I didn’t know she was coming home from Sears with not just a microwave, but a convection, one that could house two circular metal baking sheets the size of large pizzas. Our pine kitchen with the striped burgundy wallpaper didn’t have much counter space, but we found a spot wedged between the fridge and the little wooden window that opened into the dining room. In the bottom of the box was the Panasonic Microwave Oven Cookbook. My older sister Sally pressed it to her chest. This microwave and its accompanying book was her ticket to independence. She had had enough of her little sisters, enough of sharing precious things, enough of wondering where her favourite socks had gone. She wanted to make her own cheese sandwich in thirty seconds flat, just like her friend Didi D’Amico could do. Didi had a microwave, albeit not a convection.

We were a middle class family living in the middle of the city. We lived in a pale yellow house with blue trim and had a pale yellow Chrysler and a baby blue Pontiac station wagon in the driveway. Life wasn’t splashy. But every so often our parents would surprise us with something so fabulous we would garner attention throughout the neighbourhood. Like our circular coffee table that doubled as a fishbowl. It sat in the centre of the living room, a clear bowl filled with goldfish and shells fitted with a gentle bubbler humming through the water. Friends would come over after school just to lay on the carpet and stare at fat fish swimming in their convex home. 

Then there was the Toyota van with the shaved off nose. The engine was tucked behind the driver's seat, providing a footrest for the second row. Driving in that van felt like we were being propelled through the city in a gondola with nothing between us and the road but a windshield. 

Or the swing-set that my dad assembled when we moved in. We lived on a corner lot, providing a sweet view of the backyard from the west side of the house. Kids started to circle when the slide was installed. They descended when the gymnastics rings went in. We were an instant hit. 

And, there was that microwave. The fudge recipe was at the back of the microwave cookbook, listed without a headnote like all the recipes in the book. There was nothing about it being ‘chocolate fudge’, or that the provenance of its name was likely the result of a baker swearing, gently, when they meant to make caramel. This recipe was efficient, just like the microwave. Sally made it after school, when there weren’t any treats in the house. She made it before bed, when our parents weren't home. Sunday afternoons. Holidays. Snow days. She moved through the kitchen like a seasoned homemaker, taking down the small CorningWare, stirring butter, cocoa, vanilla and icing sugar straight into the dish. Thirty seconds on high. Whisk. Thirty more seconds. Leave to set. If you can’t wait, eat it with a spoon. Sometimes the unsifted icing sugar would leave white pebbles in the fudge. We thought they were pops of sweetness, our own addition, a new tradition. 

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