I do breakfast

MOM This hard-working woman from Gaspésie who gave birth to me. She died fairly young in a terrible car crash. By some miracle, my three young kids who were in the car with her came out of it unscathed. In the morgue, I saw her body and had to identify her horribly disfigured face that was once beautiful. At the funeral, an aunt revealed a secret about my mother, and I finally understood why she had lived her whole life with a broken soul. As a young adult, the church and her family forbade her to marry the young Protestant she was passionately in love with. Misery ate away at her heart, troubled her mind and ravaged her body with eczema, which often laid siege to her hands. DAD This man of a few words, sadder than the autumn. He was crazy in love with my mom, and she didn’t love him back. Every night after dinner, Dad would sit in his large armchair. He’d open the turntable and listen to Mario Lanza sing “O sole mio.” All I have to do is think of Dad and I can see big tears rolling down his cheeks. Mom would yell; Dad would sob. It was a total mystery to me how babies were created. WRITING In my youth, writing quickly became my ultimate consolation. In the small house in Caplan, I’d take a few steps down to the basement, pull on a string and the light would flow. I’d compose small sentences on the back of old calendars Mom kept for us. Words that rhymed with others, a four-line stanza, a short poem. I was discovering beauty and the power of words. READING My refuge and my greatest hobby! As a young college student, I read profusely about world history and the great classics, including the fantastic mythology of Ancient Greece and anything else that I’d come across that was modern. I craved the poets: Baudelaire, Verlaine and Alfred de Vigny. Later, I devoted myself to recipe books and all the guides that revealed the art of succeeding in business. When I eventually reconnected with reading for the simple pleasure of it, I threw myself into biographies and went back to poetry and novels. I still have the habit of reading only one book at a time, and I never hesitate to drop a mediocre, disappointing or useless volume. WORDS Elaborate words are like human beings, like gold nuggets to string together in lines. When I write, I always try to avoid rambling sentences, absurd adverbs, lazy words or rotten turnips. COFFEE Whether I’m sitting at my kitchen table, at the office attending a meeting, at the restaurant with friends or lying down on my red couch with a book, you’ll always notice a cup of coffee near me. It’s as certain as the sunrise tomorrow! I take it with milk or cream and no sugar. This latter omission comes from my time as a restaurateur, when I didn’t have time to prepare anything fancy. I savour this exquisite liquid in immoderate measure– at least six to eight times a day. SUCCESS My professional life really started with the primal need to survive and feed my kids. If I operated a restaurant, we’d at least have something to eat. Success appeared in 1987, in a small 29-seat diner. I drew a wonderful, smiling sun. “A real logo,” like the wise ones say. A sun that now illuminates more than 125 franchised restaurants across this vast country. GLASSES I always loved creating my necklaces, bracelets and broaches. I did it because my budget didn’t allow me to buy any, but also because I was creative and had the time to do it. I love dressing up in a lot of extravagant colours and to style my outfit in a single colour, from my socks and shirt to the occasional bandana, a watch and my pants. I dare to wear colour because it keeps me alive. You might even compare my wardrobe to a big set of 24 coloured pencils. I love glasses and I have some in almost every colour; retro frames I have found at flea markets. LOVE The great unknown! I may have caught the eye of a few handsome men, but at 20, life had already broken me. With not a single breath of love between the two spouses, just like my poor mother. Once divorced, I no longer looked for love, but set my sights on success. I never had time for love while I worked to make my sun shine in more and more Canadian cities. Now an old lady, I’m looking for a handsome poet who might recite a few agreeable lines before I fall asleep. PROVIDENCE I’ve always believed in “help from above,” or more specifically, in a divine providence that guides me with a wise, steady and loving hand. Still today, riper than an apple in applesauce, I live, write and constantly try to ennoble each of my lines by offering a prayer and a word of thanks to the Great Manitou. AGING Damned aging makes me think of the terrifying boogeyman of my childhood! It can undermine us and hound us through fear. “GETTING OLD IS A REAL PAIN IN THE BUTT,” said the renowned French writer Bernard Pivot, whom I dreamed of meeting. “Getting old is depressing,” he said. “It’s unbearable, it’s painful, it’s horrible, it’s dreadful, it's deadly! But I preferred “a real pain in the butt” because it’s strong yet it doesn’t sound sad. Aging is a real pain in the butt because we don’t know when it started and we know even less when it will end.” Cora ♥️    

This is a story I learned through the crooked branches of our genealogical tree. Ancestors Charles-Louis and Philomena Van Zandweghe crossed the ocean from Belgium to begin a new life at the turn of the 20th century. With their half-dozen children, two of Charles-Louis’ brothers and a group of friends made up of priests, a baker, a carpenter, a butcher, a notary and linen weavers, they settled in the village of Caplan, in the Gaspé wilds. The call of adventure, the chance to own farmland and the quest for a better life were enough for the Belgians to venture to this foreign land. The place became known unofficially as “Little Belgium” and later took on its present-day name, Saint-Alphonse-de-Caplan. That is where the heroine of my story was born, on October 1, 1884, some 15 years before the Belgians set foot in the province of Quebec. I can hardly imagine the psyche of this young girl, condemned to live a dirt poor life on an arid earth that the settlers at that time had nicknamed “The Ordeal.” Her thoughts, her beliefs and her outlook were forged in a village where logging was the main activity. She hung around lumbermen, farmers, children who attended a one-room schoolhouse, a teacher and probably a priest. During her formative teenage years, I suppose the young girl developed her own identity, ideas and feelings. I would trade in all my wisdom to the devil to discover how she became such an admirable young woman. Unfortunately I have little information about her life to recount. What I do know is that her life took a turn when the Belgians arrived. For better or worse, dear readers, it’s up to you to decide. One beautiful Sunday morning, a smartly dressed man caught the attention of my heroine standing on the church steps. It was obvious that this stranger wasn’t a local. The young woman inquired and learned from the church official that a liner had just docked in Bonaventure. “Another shipload of Belgians!” she exclaimed. Wanting to make a good impression the next time she saw the stranger, she made herself a pretty pleated skirt with a bolero from the dress of a great aunt who’d passed. She waited anxiously for Sunday to arrive. A short while later, they were married on September 8, 1913. The beautiful bride was 29 and her handsome George, a year younger. For the sake of this story, let’s call the husband “Big George,” the one who never got his hands dirty. My leading lady quickly understood that her man preferred to show off his expensive clothes rather than weed the garden by hand. Big George hated manual labour. He always had a good excuse to get out of tilling the land, hauling firewood, feeding the animals, etc. He enjoyed going to the village, drinking gin at the general store, mailing a letter or taking over two hours to find himself a prettier, younger fish to fry and play with. All Big George was good for was helping to increase the population of the immigrant town, which was in desperate need of strong, able arms. Convinced he was doing his fair share of efforts, he got his wife pregnant eight times in 12 years: four boys and four girls to feed. It became necessary to extend the kitchen table, quadruple the size of the garden, bleed three pigs a summer, salt seven to eight barrels of cod and purchase a second horse, two new cows, brood hens, a few dogs, a metal bathtub and sensibly priced fabric to dress the kids. My heroine often cried in silence, especially when Big George had been drinking and made sexual advances that were no longer welcome. Rain or shine, she would avoid him at all costs. She cooked, sewed, did the laundry, cleaned the house and went out after dinner to weed her garden. I can picture her tired body, deformed, her arched back, her chapped hands, her cracked fingers uprooting the weeds while praying to God that the earth would feed her flock of children. Alone in her garden at dusk, she’d confide her feelings to the scarecrow. With everything she had sown, she’d tell herself, the kids would at least eat well and there’d be enough left over for canning. At the end of September, the poor exhausted mother had to be taken to the apothecary in the neighbouring village. She’d fallen while carrying a huge bucket of boiling water for Big George’s bath. Her arms, abdomen and legs were scalded, causing her great pain. She needed ointment. While she sat on a stool waiting, she overheard a few men talking about the gold mines in Timmins, Ontario. Many able-bodied men, both young and old, were headed there to make good money. The conversation didn’t fall on deaf ears. This hard-working woman decided her four sons would become miners and her four daughters would help her open a restaurant for the mines’ workers. A few days later, the woman confided her plan to the parish priest. She’d leave for Ontario with her sons who were old enough to work at the mines. She and her daughters would open and run a restaurant to feed the miners. “Make fishermen, farmers or priests of them instead!” replied the man in the neatly ironed black cloak. “God needs middlemen down here to save our souls.” The wife and mother didn’t reply. She thanked the priest for his sound advice and said goodbye. As for Big George and his new prince consort attire, the older he got, the more he hated Saint-Alphonse-de-Caplan. When his wife suggested he visit his clergymen cousins who lived in Rhode Island, he quickly seized the opportunity to jump ship and escape “The Ordeal.” Very few people noticed the quiet departure of the woman and her eight children. They made their way to Montreal first, and then boarded a train bound for Timmins. When she reached her destination, my heroine was buzzing with enthusiasm. Two days after their arrival, she laid eyes on a large, abandoned house, not far from the mining facilities. At the notary’s, she shrewdly weighed her purse’s contents and offered half the requested amount. The boys started at the mine and the girls helped their mother in the kitchen and waited tables. The business immediately flourished thanks to the mother’s culinary talents and the “special favours” that some of the accommodating waitresses provided to the best male customers in the rooms above the restaurant. And so, after so much misery, that’s how my heroine improved her circumstances. I’ve often wanted to tell this story before, but hesitated each time. I was ashamed that a woman in my family had relied upon “special favours” to earn her bread. She died in Kapuskasing, Ontario, on July 5, 1967, shortly after I turned 20. Her name was also Cora. She was my father’s mother. And my enterprising grandmother. Cora ❤

In the Laurentians where I’ve lived for over 32 years, the intense summer heat followed by the cool fall nights have reddened the edges of the mountains. Right now, we are living in an art gallery as grand as the Louvre in Paris. But I know that at the beginning of November, massacred pumpkins will perish in silence in front of almost every house, giant spiders will weave silk ladders to climb down from the gutters and golden snakes will slither out from beneath our porches, teeth chattering. The weather will grow even colder, winter will cover the ground with its white blanket and, very shortly, I’ll be thinking of preparing for holiday feasts. I can already picture it: a large white apron worn over my immaculate chef’s white jacket, sleeves rolled up; a net covering my hair; comfortable shoes; baroque music playing in the background; and a thermos of steaming hot coffee. I take my position at the large kitchen table. The time to bake my spinach puffs is finally here! I place an enormous bowl for mixing the phyllo dough ingredients on the table. I’ve been making this recipe for 50 years and, without measuring a single ingredient, I already know that the kneaded dough will give me 5 large round sheets 15 inches in diameter and 1½ inches high. This will make about 20 delicious spinach puffs per baking sheet. In the large bowl, I put some white flour, Crisco all-vegetable shortening, beaten eggs, a pinch of salt and some Seven Up to bind the mixture as I knead the dough by hand. The more my expert hands get busy in the bowl, the more the dough becomes soft and yielding. I divide it in 25 small balls the size of an orange and flatten them out with the rolling pin to the size of a 9-inch plate. I brush each small sheet of dough with a thick coat of melted butter and roll them back into a ball. I let them rest for a moment while I take out a pot and quickly blanch 25 bags of store-bought spinach. I then drain the water and carefully wring out the moisture from the greens. In a large saucepan, I brown the spinach with a little butter, green onions and a generous amount of dill. When the mixture has cooled, I add in lots of coarsely grated feta. I’m already on my third coffee when it’s time for the most laborious part of the recipe. I have to take the 25 small, buttered dough balls and roll each one out again to the size of the large baking sheets. I place a thin round sheet of dough on a greased baking sheet and baste it with butter. Then I layer a second and third buttery sheet of dough. Next, I spread one-fifth of the spinach-feta mixture evenly over the top. This is covered with two more generously buttered sheets. The last sheet, however, has to have a lavish coating of butter. Since this is homemade phyllo dough, using real butter is essential. Before I place the baking sheets in the oven, I cut the dough into 2-inch squares. As soon as they come out of the oven, I cut them again to ensure they maintain their shape. I’ve always used round baking sheets, so some of the pieces end up uneven. I still remember the days when my teenage kids would hang around in the kitchen, enticed by the intoxicating smell of the freshly baked puff pastries. Under the pretext of taking the uneven pieces, they would clear a third of the baking sheet before the puffs even had time to cool down. Spinach puffs can easily be frozen before or after baking once they cool. I have to quickly place them in the freezer if I want to have any left for the holidays! Bless my hard-working hands, because almost everyone loves my spinach puffs! Cora ❤