Waiting for Good Joe - the existentialist search for a decent cup of coffee

On one end of the accessibility spectrum are good coffee, fresh vegetables and unsweetened bread !  On the other, rather delightfully, are oranges, seafood and avocados.  Some of this polarity can be explained by agricultural limitations, by culture and regional tastes or by commercial drivers.  The reasons don't matter as much as knowing that all the stuff you need to make lemonade is around. And in fact, that you may even stumble upon some premium quality lemons you didn't even know you wanted.

Rather than stew in my disappointment and food snobbery, I rush headlong into appreciation of the
yin and yang of it.  What are we, anyway, without the balance of light and dark, good and evil, espresso and arabica.  In fact, it's this balance and opposition in the world that keeps us able to survive as a people.  Let's think about it.  (This is where those faint of tolerance step away from their screens for a moment of patriotism -just some soft apologetic patriotism: I am Canadian after all).  If Canada were not so cold and dark for so much of the year, we would be hot and overpopulated.  We might not be so famously polite as we elbowed people to get through the throngs that would invariably feature in our streets and subways.  Indeed, we probably wouldn't even have subways.  Here I am facing a similar balance question.  Maybe if Florida had good lattes and a native root vegetable or two, all these marshy miles between condo developments would be even more full of residents with long arms and aggressive elbows.

There's an expression my mother uses a lot as a metaphor for compromise "putting water in one's wine". I find that an appropriate turn of phrase as my current compromise takes the form of symbolically taking water OUT OF my wine.  Or more literally putting more coffee in my coffee so that it looks and tastes like coffee and not the water in which I would soak my paintbrushes...if I had paintbrushes.

As a result of having sussed out this first survival strategy (i.e. ordering a triple whatever at any coffee dispensing establishment from Tarpon Springs to Talahassee), I sit comfortably caffeinated and equipped to go on and tell you about the bread, the vegetables and other food yarns..... I found it downright foreign that no major grocery chain within three counties has bread that doesn't feature some form of sugar in the first three ingredients.  And as bread should only really have five or six ingredients, well, don't get me started. After what I believe to be thorough searches of boutique food marts, eco-elite grocery joints, health food shops, and artisanal bakeries, I have come up short again and again.  The upshot of all this is a monthly trip with a very specific list of things I can't find anywhere else - including sugarfree bread - to the distant far away land they call Whole Foods. Yes, it's quite a drive but making the long trek, re-useable shopping bag in hand, reaps bonus rewards.  That they have devoted a good 25% of retail space to an impressive collection of wines is only a small part of that bonus.  I look forward to the chortles and the resulting endorphins that are all released when I peruse those endless aisles of wine in knowing I will happen upon something like this:

or this playful red...

 or a fractious brew like one of these guys.....

Even without the extra diversion provided by label trolling, the long trip to Whole Foods can be justified by the fact that it's relatively lower priced than its shishi cousin in a posh part of the city back home.  There is something economically stabilizing about everything being housed in a strip mall. Rich or poor, we all shop within stuccoed walls.

So. Coffee and bread. Check.

As all my pals on the food security beat know, accessibility sometimes refers to availability and sometimes it refers to price.  Why such a vocal, almost litigious society would stand for paying an average of $3.50USD for a bunch of broccoli, I don't know for sure.  I can only speculate that it's because they don't eat it.  I'll save pedantic lectures about nutrition for another post (don't panic - I probably won't get around to it) but will just say, the shelves in the store are brimming - yes brimming - with fresh vegetables which everyone is passing by in favour of the aisles and aisles of endcap refrigerators. Albeit, they do contain pizza pockets and 'tater tots, they also contain frozen broccoli, brussel sprouts and peas (which will be on my shopping list so we can eat something that has grown in soil as opposed to shrink wrapping without declaring bankruptcy).  So, is everyone eating frozen vegetables because the fresh stuff is so expensive or is the fresh stuff so expensive because no one buys it and instead buy the frozen stuff?  Which came first: the frozen chicken nugget or the egg substitute?

Hold the phone - things are getting 'ugly'. I left my blogging for a minute when a message came in from a local grower about heirloom ugly tomatoes she is giving away to fellow Freecyclers.  Ahh tomatoes and community - what a glorious combination.  This new development dilutes what I have said above, somewhat.  So, take it with a grain of salt.... or a swig of coffee.

Time for the yang.  It's not as if fish and seafood grow on trees or anything but fresh good quality aquatic fare is obviously much more available here given the proximity to the sea.  And since seafood is something easily cooked at home, I can by-pass my neighbours' preferences for breading and frying everything and cook it up à la me. I don't deny Canadians' worship of fried food (we go one better and sprinkle the fried item with sugar) but I  have never seen the likes of this North of the 49th

In any case, I depart from my countrymen here when I declare my love for a plain grilled fish - gills and all over a breaded, fried one. So, even if you don't eat anything that still has its eyes, I am sure you can appreciate the sublime goodness of food that comes to you looking much like it did when it was harvested, soon after it was harvested, and from just next door - or close enough.  Not even a trip to my favourite fish market at home would promise such variety.

Oranges, tangerines and grapefruits - oh my.  It should not surprise anyone that oranges in Florida are available, not very expensive, varied and delicious.  I like oranges.  But what I have become really  obsessed with is my daily fix of FSOJ.  I have it so often now that I need an abbreviation (to save time saying it so I can spend time squeezing it!)  Freshly squeezed orange juice is something I would have splurged on occasionally at brunch at a hip Riverdale joint up North.  Here, I indulge every day in either FSOJ or FSRRGJ (fresh squeezed ruby red grapefruit juice).  I am nothing if not flexible.

Oh - one more thing. The extensive time I have spent in Mexico without having picked up on this coupled with my deference for all things California make the following declaration unexpected: From this day forward ne'er a California avocado will pass my lips in favour of its flavourful, meaty Mexican cousin (that sounds dirty). They cost a buck or so each and the flavour alone makes all the nutrients you get hit with a bonus afterthought. So, I would like to add to my daily list of staples, along with juice, fish and industrial strength coffee, a beautifully hand smashed guacamole, salted and dressed with a squeeze of lime at its last possible unmarried moment before it is joined - in love -  with a crisp corn chip.  Ah bliss....

So, as long as abundance, ingenuity and compromise can run along the same path for a while, we will find a way.  Between navigating the grocery conundrums like fresh vegetables priced consistent with 14k gold and anemic coffee, I think we can make this little life of ours work here. Now, I will have to excuse myself to go and pack my day bag and some lunch for the long journey ahead. We're out of bread.

The Arrival

Each day we drove I noticed the negative space between our belongings shrinking as our clothes, books and the material sum of our life as a family all compressed ever more compactly into the space of our trunk.  This was strangely comforting in light of the fact that the space that would soon be our home was actually not much bigger than the trunk of our car and surprisingly similar in its "coziness" or "charm" or insert another appropriate realtor's adjective here.  Our apartment  - unlike our car - did have plumbing though.

This progressive compression made me think of what we left behind.  The destination of some of our items was lovingly considered.  Some of our furniture went to  Meredith to be equally lovingly looked after in our absence.  Some found new permanent homes or returned from whence they were generously donated - like our baby stuff that went via Kristen to soon to be parents.  Some met a lonely, dark and damp fate relegated to a too small (still bigger than our car though!) storage unit in a bad part of town.

And what of the fate of the consumable items? Simply throwing them away - the easiest but most heinous of solutions - would not do.  On the day before our departure, I realized that just because the refrigerator and pantry have doors on them allowing me to ignore their contents doesn't mean the new resident would do the same.  Does it?  Nope.

So, I opened said doors.  Then I panicked.  How is it that denying myself the pleasure (yes, I mean that) of grocery shopping for weeks in preparation for our departure resulted in such an insignificant reduction of food-stuffs?  Well, this would all have to be donated - thoughtfully.  After all, donating amaranth flour and candied chestnuts to a food bank is inconsiderate and naive.  Even in my state of emergency I would not succumb to this middle-class insular behaviour even if the alternatives were inconvenient...very inconvenient.

I began to consider carefully the recipients of the food. All the baking ingredients and accoutrement would go to Melissa who, were she making her living from baking rather than from nursing, would be causing health issues instead of solving them (but would be extremely rich from her cheesecake sales!)

Obscure grains, bulk items and so-proclaimed (by myself) healthy foods go to my recently reduced brother.  Staples go to practical Erika.  And any exotic, hard to find items go to my foodiest of foodie friends - Dana (props to Norma, Meredith and Kristen though).  Despite her creativity with food as well as other media, I have no idea what she will do with rose petal preserve!


When we arrived, as we started to de-compress (our nerves and our stuff) I found myself caught in this contradictory meltdown.  First, "there is no storage space here - where will we put our special jumbo muffin tin?"...and then a minute later, " doh, I forgot my electric pepper grinder" or "aw, I wish I HAD brought those rice paper wrappers after all".  Now,  I longed for the rose petal preserves and all the stuff we left behind....anything to anchor me here, to make me feel like I was just here on vacation and that this year of drinking hormone injected milk and pee-pee coloured, weak beer would fly by in a flash like the choppers Gavin would soon be piloting.

We all felt disconnected - suddenly with no sense of place - vagabond like in our bottom of the barrel clothes we were left with while everything else waited in the laundry basket.  We felt tattered and homeless especially during those first few days during the unpacking phase.  Gavin and I might glance at each other tacitly agreeing not to dwell out loud on this feeling.  'It will pass' we thought.

Only Luca acknowledged the elephant in the Florida room.   I don't know if he was referring to the little rolling Travel-pro luggage we used every time we checked into hotels - or as he was calling each inn - Luca's hotel house.  Maybe he was talking about the little case with a handle that he got for his toy cars for Christmas from his cousins, Noah and Tyler.  But when we asked him as we walked about the condo complex of our new home on our first day there, "where is Luca's house?" he pointed to our building and said in his adorable, squeaky voice with its upturned inflection at the end making everything sound like a question, "...black suitcase(?)".