Covered Bridges-10.

I like Frank’s old Crown Vic, back when I was a kid we had a coupe of police officers are neighbors and all the cop cars were the big old Crown Victoria’s. It’s as clean inside as out and the there’s this smell of one of those coconut air fresheners lingering there.

He spends a good deal of time in his car too. I see a small double picture frame of Robyn and Frank and his late wife Mary on the dash. The one concession is a newish stereo in the car with the satellite radio in it.

We drive down to the canal and it’s absolutely pleasant. I love these big old cars they have this feeling when you ride in them like you’re just kind of floating and honestly they’re just nicer.

Frank is a moderate driver too, not too fast but he’s not one of those doddering around types either and with the weather nice it’s a really good day for this and he even has this nice touch of listening to CBC Radio 2.

It really is a nice touch and a channel that I have listened to all over the world. For all that I am and all the places I’ve lived in I have always had a really strong a dear place in my heart for my identity as a Canadian it’s one of the reasons that I’m doing this trip.

I want to see things in my country before settling down in Bridgetown with a house and a teaching job and all of that stuff.

Oh the canal and the area around it is so nice.

Its park like especially since it’s a world heritage site now and Frank and I kill the day just driving from one spot to another and there’s always stuff going on and tourists there and I’m happily taking pictures and videos with my camer

More than once we stop and walk and stretch our legs and I get to see some of them working with some of the pleasure boats and Frank takes me to a few of these really killer spots like for the views and he tells me about the times that he and Mary used to come here for picnics and that sometimes in winter they’d be out there skating with the rest of the people.

The entire day is extremely gratifying actually. Frank will get us a drink here and there and I love a can of that Country Time lemonade and sipping it with a straw just enjoying that and feeling the way the wind moves my dress and my hair and as vain as it sounds I enjoy the looks that I’m getting as well.

Yeah there is part of me that loves being a woman and I love being a head turner too.

Though I really do try to be nice about it.

I smile at people and I make some eye contact too no matter what a person might look like.

Hey I was the over weight fat guy that never fit in and there are lots of people usually women that will for some reason actually avoid looking at people that aren’t so lucky when it comes to stuff like looks.

Mine are mostly manufactured so I really try and not to have the whole ego about looking good.

I have a very good creep-o-meter so I can usually tell the really nasty and creepy people from the regular and socially awkward ones.

Honestly before I became the woman that I was just someone being nice to me and just decent was a highlight of my day.

And there is nothing for a woman to have a guy like Frank with you. Oh there’s nothing sexual going of like that but he is enjoying this as much as me. He opens my doors and helps me in and out of his car and a lot of the time when we’re walking I have my arm in his.

It’s that really old school manners and respect thing and we both have fun doing it though it is really sweet and heart-warming the way he is still so much in love with his Mary.

That…that right there is what I want.

I want someone to fall in love with me forever and if I ever die before them I want to be able to feel their love for me when I’m in heaven.

And if they leave me first I still want to be in love with them the same way.

Sigh…

We do stop at the official canal museum so I can get a few things like posters and some DVD’s and stuff related to it so I can have some at home but I want something for my classroom too.

Yes, definitely yes I want to be that kind of teacher.

And it’s really nice to talk to Frank about that too. He’s got a lot of insight into that and things that I might want to do.

Our last stop is actually at one of the grocery stores.

He smiles at me. “Haley you really don’t have to do this.”

“You offered to take me around this week and I offered up home cooked meals while you were doing that and where I come from a deal is a deal.”

“As long as you aren’t being put out by ding it.”

“Absolutely not I actually like to cook.”

“Well since you are insisting can I invite Robyn over?”

“You can invite whoever you want. I’m sure that you know several people that are missing out on home cooked meals these days.”

“Are you certain?”

“I’m positive; everyone you invite over is someone new that I get to meet y’know.”

He kisses me on the cheek and then get’s out of the car and helps me out too and he even goes and gets me a grocery cart. “I insist on buying though young lady.”

“Fair enough do you want to shop for everything for the week or just for tonight?”

“The week if that’s alright with you then we won’t have to do this every night and we can save some time.”

I smile since I have a plan for all of this anyway that’s been stewing in my head.

“Let’s go I hope you know that I am very good at spending money.”

“I have credit cards; I think that we can manage.”

It’s still fun shopping for groceries and I think he knows my plan since I get flour and yeast and baking powder and lots of things from the baking isle and freezer containers and lots of other stuff.

In my head I’m going through things I know how to make but also recipes that I know that my Grandmother used to make or my Mom or my Dad.

Frank looks at me. “You are going to fatten me up aren’t you?”

I tip toe and kiss his cheek as we’re getting rung up. “You are a nice and warm and a really sweet man and I am going to make sure that you have some home cooking that will last you long after I’m on my way.”

“You really don’t have to do that Haley it’s too much to ask.”

I reach down and take his hand and I rub it and look at him. “I love the love that you and Mary had Frank and the way that you talk about her still so much in love with her it felt like I could feel us with her today and I think that she and I would have gotten along.”

He has this moved look and that good kind where the guy is man enough and old enough to just let those kind of feelings show. His voice is a little hoarse from it and he has this great smile that just says how much he loves her still.

“I think that you and she would have gotten along famously Haley, she would have loved you.”

“Then let me do this for her okay?”

He swallows some tears I think but he hugs me tight and I hug him back and we’re getting looks and the cashier looks at me and she asks quietly. “Any more around where you’re from?”

I smile at her and blush a little. “No…just me actually…”

She’s looking at me the whole time and Frank is too after I said that and it’s sort of touched the happy moment with that sort of happy yet sad at the same time.

I am alone really; I’ve been alone a long time actually.

Yes I want that kind of connection with people that I’m willing to do stuff like this too but honestly though I did mean what I said.

And really part of me really wants to be a nice person, to be a nice girl and have that be part of me.

I don’t know if that’s doing things for the wrong reasons like it’s vanity or stuff but it’s important to me.

We get the things and frank drives me to his house which is this really nice old seventies two story brick house with a really nice bit of property and trees with a brick laid driveway and it’s really nice.

It’s one of those houses that you bought back then to have a big family but if you made enough money it’s the kind of house that was that dream home that you could actually afford to have.

That’s so hard to even dream of these days.

But it is one of mine.

I want love…yes, but I want a home a real home and roots and a job that I can sleep at night about and just that.

Simple and yet so out of reach.

Ah well it’s the dream I’m willing to work for.

Inside the house is lovely and Mary is everywhere here. Not just in pictures but everywhere this is the house that she made into a home and one that she has seen her kids grow up in and her grandchildren play in.

Oh and her kitchen is just lovely.

It’s one of those country sized kitchens and full of cupboards and all these old things…I mean they have the tin flour barrel that you can pull out from under the counter on a swinging arm; she has a larder closet room too.

I count the place settings at his dining room table and send him off to call Robyn and others to come over and that supper will be served a little late tonight around sevenish and I start cooking even before I’m getting everything put away.

Pork chops.

The first thing I do is to find all of the cookware and I get the oven going and the pans all ready and bowls and I mix a little salt with water and sugar and make a brine for the pork chops and whisk in a package of onion soup mix and crumple some sage leaves in and just cover the chops.

Next thing is I whip up cornbread.

Now my cornbread is really easy. Cornmeal and some pastry or cake four and a little salt so it’s not flat and some baking powder and a little baking soda and grated frozen butter. I bought it frozen in the frozen pastry aisle and you will find butter there just for this reason to bake with.

See all those little butter bits melt when baked and when they do that they have water inside of them and that creates steam in what you’re baking creating loft.

The frozen butter is grated and added in with the dry ingredients so the flour coats it and they don’t sink to the bottom of the dish when I add the wet ingredients. My wet ingredients is one large can of corn juice and all and a can of cream styled corn and I blend it smooth in the blender and I mix the two together and I cover the dish with foil and poke some steam holes in it.

I have it at high heat about four fifty to start since I want the heat to activate the steam effect in the butter and the baking powder and the foil will keep the cornbread’s top from burning.

Ten minutes at that screaming hot temperature of yes it’s the old Fahrenheit temperature it’s the way that I learned to bake you go metric with me and I’ll muff it up for sure.

But after ten minutes back the heat down to three hundred and twenty five and let it cook the rest of the way for twenty minutes.

No, there is no sugar in my cornbread the corn and creamed corn is plenty sweet as it is.

Next is biscuits, these are flour biscuits and not a sweet or a cookie so it’s all-purpose self rising flour, baking soda an heaping table spoon of that, sugar…about a two heaped table spoons for eight coffee mugs of flour that you use you just want it there but not. No salt there is enough in the soda if you add more you will make them go flat. Then the grated butter for exactly the same reason as the corn bread and for my liquid I use buttermilk. It adds a lot of character and it reacts to the soda adding loft.

I am very careful to fold the buttermilk in and not to work the dough you do that and they will get tough and you’ll break the butter bits up too much you just want it to combine and make a sticky dough.

I do a trick I learned and tape masking tape and I tape down some waxed paper and use that as mu rolling surface. I just roll out the dough from the bowl with a little flour down to keep them from sticking and when you have it in a rough mat that’s about an inch thick then you’re done.

I use a water glass to cut them out and put the on a baking sheet and into the top oven.

I’m actually fast at that since I scratch cook and bake my whole family did that and so do most people who have or come from big families.

That done I heat the frying pans and start to sear the pork chops and I get a pot and pour all the brining liquid into that and get it boiling and I add my secret weapon for pork gravy pork hock. It’s a hock and there’s just some meat and there’s fat and most importantly there’s skin. I drop it isn and leave it the gelatine that will come out of that will give that secret mouth feel to the gravy I’m going to make.

Green beans I just clip and the same with the carrots they don’t need fussing with other than blanching so the next thing is the mashed potatoes.

I grew up on a farm and peeling potatoes is no hard chore but I make a full pot of them and cut then into chunks that will cook evenly and fast. Again my secret weapon (I have lots of those) with the potatoes. I heat some milk in the microwave and I make instant mashed potatoes…the thing is to make them actually pretty runny and when you do that because of the milk in them they get this still super potatoey creaminess.

Everything is cooking so I do my dad’s desert. I make some pie crust and I use butter…not lard it’s processed to hell and so is shortening if I had real pork grease I’d use that instead…that’s the original lard actually but I don’t so butter.

Next is I peel and core a bunch of apples and I bough granny smiths because they’re tart and once they’re done that I roll then in cinnamon and brown sugar and then I cover the pie crust with it too.

Dad called these apple bombs and the idea is to cut out a round of crust and to set the apple in it and fold the dough around the apple leaving the hole from the core open. It lets the heat inside the apple bomb and it’s sort of like a baked apple and sort of like apple pie only when they’re baked off you can fill that hole with ice cream.

I take the seared off chops off and put them in a baking dish with some foil over them and into the oven I had the cornbread in. The biscuits are done and the apple bombs go into the top oven and I turn the heat down there because they can cook long and slow and it won’t hurt them.

I use a bit of the boiling stock and an egg turner to get all the browned stuff off the pans that I seared the cops with and I pour that into the stock and I wash them and I put them away and start cleaning up.

That’s why the waxed paper is such a good idea too it’s easy to clean up. Oh and you can do that with anything that’ll be messy too though.

I hear people coming in and I make a pot of coffee get milk and sugar and mugs and take it all out to where Frank is and a few ladies and a few gentlemen all sort of his age and smile at them all.

Introductions are made and I do offer to make some tea and there’s two takers both of the ladies who ask if they can join me in the kitchen and we’re just going back inside when Robyn shows up.

“Hi.”

“Hi…oh it smells so good in here.”

“Good, it’ll be another thirty minutes there’s coffee if you want some.”

“Sure…thank you for the flowers they really made my day.”

“You’re welcome.”

She blushes a little. “Actually I’ve never gotten flowers before.”

“Really? Why not?”

“None of the girls that I’ve dated ever got me them before…it was really kind of cool.”

I smile. “You want to join us in the kitchen?’

Oh I almost laugh at the semi panicked look there. “Uhm…I think I’ll stay out here me and cooking don’t mix.”

“You work in a diner.”

“I serve the food I don’t make it, trust me we’re all better off.”

Okay I laugh. “I have to get back inside and finish things off.”

“Okay and Haley?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks for doing this. It’s really cool.”

“Well Frank’s a really nice guy and this is a lot more fun than spending the evenings watching cable in my hotel room.”

I slip through the doors and I go back to cooking.

The gravy has been going full boil since I had it on and the stock is reduced right to where I want it for the amount of people I’m serving I drain off the potatoes and add butter and start to mash them and add some of the instant potato soup stopping to taste a little to get the texture where I want them.

I do the beans and carrots in a shallow pan of water and they cook while I set the dining room table with the other ladies. Of course we’re talking about what I made and they love the hock added to it and I admit I learn a few new ideas that Betty came up with for that and with the wicker place mats for the dishes soon there’s piping chops and all the fixings out and I have the apple bombs out and cooling off.

Frank has this big smile on his face as we’re all sitting around his table and everyone looks happy too and I take hands and look at everyone.

“Anyone want to say grace?”

Frank does the job and we all hold hands and I love the way this all feels and then we’re tucking into the supper.

I’ve missed this family dinner feeling, I think that they have too.