a peek inside the fishbowl

Confession: sometimes when I need to pick something up at Ikea I time my visit to coincide with lunch. Last time I was there I tried their new vegetarian hot dog, but usually I order their Swedish Gravadlax. I know it’s always ALL ABOUT THE MEATBALLS at Ikea, but at $5.99 this cold salmon plate is a great deal. And it’s so good. And healthy!

As you can see, there’s the cold-smoked salmon, baby greens, a wedge of lemon, some Swedish crisps, and a small container of mustard-dill sauce.

The smoked salmon is very good but if I’m truly honest with myself, it’s the sauce that got me hook, line, and sinker. I LOVE THIS SAUCE. I have to physically restrain myself from licking the plate afterward, which is funny, because I always thought I hated dill. Oh, I like dill pickles and dill-flavoured potato chips well enough, but I haven’t eaten fresh dill since I was a kid. I have a vivid recollection of the meal that did it for me: a dill sauce that was so thick with dill it was like eating grass. And that was it for me and dill until IKEA came along and patched up our relationship.

At Christmas, I was the lucky recipient of an AeroGarden countertop hydroponic gardening unit, which came with six pods: two different kinds of basil, parsley, thyme, mint (the mint never germinated), and DILL. I can easily incorporate all of the other herbs into my cuisine, but dill is a little more challenging. And of all the herbs, dill is the one that is doing the best. In fact, “best” might be an understatement. It’s the schoolyard bully of the herb garden:

You are already seeing my dilemma here. What can a gal do with so much dill? I could freeze it, I suppose, or dry it, but I’ve read that dill loses a lot of flavour when it’s dried so I had to find a recipe that uses a bunch of dill and doesn’t taste like grass sauce. And that, my friends, is when I remembered Ikea’s delicious and dare I say, addictive, mustard dill sauce. So I did a bit of searching and found this recipe. It is very very close to the one they serve at Ikea.

I have made it twice so far. The second time I used half as much olive oil, which I preferred.

I made myself a giant plate of mixed greens and smoked salmon for lunch today and drizzled the mustard dill sauce over the whole thing. It was, in a word, delicious. This one is a keeper for sure. Let me know if you try it!

It was a huge success: Parking spots are now bike lanes, transit is fast and easy, and the streets (and local businesses) are full of people https://t.co/4tG4XiSJD1

— Fast Company (@FastCompany) February 2, 2019

• The truth about Vaseline and what to use instead, terra20.com
• We tried 20 store-bought mac and cheese brands to determine which is the best (and the absolute worst), washingtonpost.com
• Remembering a friend and neighbour, Rolph Almstedt, kitchissippi.com
• You Know the Lorena Bobbitt Story. But Not All of It, nytimes.com
• Faking it: how selfie dysmorphia is driving people to seek surgery, theguardian.com
• What White, Western Audiences Don’t Understand About Marie Kondo’s ‘Tidying Up’, huffingtonpost.ca

On the nightstand: Manhattan Beach: A Novel

Of all my school years, from kindergarten to my last year of university, grades seven and eight were the worst. After sixth grade I left my neighbourhood school to enroll in a French immersion program in a middle school located in a completely different part of town. It meant taking the school bus for the first time and inserting myself into an established population of seventh graders who’d all known each other since they first started school. I knew exactly one person at that new school, my best friend Kristina B., who came along with me. We dropped ourselves into this whole new world together.

I remember a few things about those years, not all of them are bad of course, but it was an awkward time for me to say the least. That was the year that one of my classmates proclaimed that I was a stuck up snob. I pretended that I didn’t hear her and that I wasn’t totally shattered. I think it was the first time that I realized that other people NOTICED what I said and did, and had opinions about it.

What that person didn’t understand was that I was terminally shy. I really didn’t like putting myself out there. I just couldn’t.

That same year I had a teacher tell me I should smile more.

The girl I was in seventh grade is still part of me, although I work hard at tamping her down and pretending to be more outgoing than I really am. It’s exhausting to put yourself out there, try to smile more, to fake it ’til you make it.

–

I have to admit that I wasn’t really thinking about my seventh-grade self when I RSVPd to a special launch party for the Embassy Hotel and Suites here in Ottawa last weekend. Part of me was dreading it, although maybe DREADING is a strong word. I was worried about what I was going to order, seeing as I was in the middle of a Dry January (in other words, not drinking any alcohol for the entire month).

I approached the bar and asked the bartenders about a mocktail, which resulted in a hurried consultation before one of them poured me a glass full of juice (orange and pineapple) with a bit of soda for fizz.

Until that night, my Dry January had been pretty much smooth sailing. No booze at home means I couldn’t imbibe. No biggie. And at no point did I really feel like I *needed* anything, so I guess that’s good. I know one glass of wine or beer every day isn’t bad for you, I’m glad that alcohol isn’t a crutch for me.

As I sipped my tall glass of iced juice I wondered how hard this night was going to be for me. Alcohol, as we all know, is a social lubricant. I have always thought I was chattier, funnier, and more confident if I had a glass of wine or two in me. But I made an interesting discovery about myself that night. I don’t need alcohol to be a good conversationalist or to have a good time. In fact, I had a perfectly good time without it. I realized that all I really needed was a glass in my hand, and it didn’t matter what was inside it.

I still have some thinking to do about all of this but what I do know is that I feel pretty good right now. I feel strong, but then again, while I’ve been doing this Dry January I’ve also been eating better, cutting way down on caffeine and sugar, and trying to get more sleep and exercise.

Now that Dry January is over I’m not sure what the next few weeks and months are going to look like in terms of drinking. What I do know is that I’ve certainly become more mindful. I’ve thought a lot about why I drink and when. Why do we celebrate with alcohol? Why do we reach for it when we feel happy or sad or stressed? What can we replace it with? It’s something worth thinking about, for sure.

Maybe it’s because it’s been on my mind, but I’m seeing more alcohol-related marketing and products everywhere. I’ve written about it before. There are fundraisers that focus on wine, social events that revolve around drinking, etc etc. It’s everywhere. Alcohol is legal. And socially acceptable. But should we really be encouraging it in this way?

I also think that restaurants, pubs, and bars are missing the boat by not providing their patrons with non-alcoholic options beyond juice and pop. Even the LCBO, whose goal it is to sell as much liquor, beer, and wine as possible has a surprisingly long list of mocktail recipes on their website. And why is it that if you’re at a bar or a party and you don’t grab a beer or wine that people look at you strangely? (“No. I’m not pregnant thankyouverymuch.”) As I said, I still have a lot to process but it has changed me a bit.