Michele Sabad - First We Eat: Food, Life, and More Stories

F ood. First, we eat. Then we live. We all must eat; life demands it. As a successful species, humans have become adept at providing food to fuel themselves wherever and whatever the circumstances. Weve evolved to be clever and enterprising, and food is the never-ending quest, a continual obsession. We talk about food, fantasize about food, read about food. We desire it. We need it. We want it. We take pictures of food. Some of us have more food, more than we even need. Some not so much. This book will relay stories of one of us, this author, and stories of her life with food.

Stories. A requirement in a fulfilling life. Books, movies, plays for sure, but even daily gossip, social media posts, chats with strangersall to convey the stories, big and small, of our lives. Arguably, life without stories, unlike life without food, is possible but not very fun. We live our stories. We blurb, we chat with cashiers about a souvenir grocery bag, we talk to the bus driver about the traffic delay, we discuss with strangersthe weather is a topic everyone can opine on. Our childrens lives. Our health issues. Our recipes. All these are stories humans tell and absorb, because we are alive. We care and share a need to know, to learn, to figure out the world and our place in it. We may exaggerate, invent, even lie in our stories, to exchange ideas and information. We crave to know, to understand, to judge, to learn about life!

As a lucky Canadian, Ive discovered the food history and stories of my family, my grandparents, and my European immigrant ancestors. Canada, the tossed salad of the world, has many food cultures to enjoy. But history and culture evolve, food preparation evolves, and so do the stories of them and with them. My father was in the Army, and then my husband was in the Air Forcethere were unique family circumstances in this kind of life to contribute to my inventory of food stories. I grew up and lived all over the country and even out of it, from being born in Calgary, Alberta, to living in Germany and then back to Canada, to Labrador and Saskatchewan, Ontario, Manitoba, back to Alberta, and finally settled in my kids hometown of Aylmer, a part of Gatineau, Qubec in the National Capital region of Ottawa, Ontario. Cultural differences of a locale are always reflected in their food, so Ive had quite the variety in my life: prairie family picnics, German fasching food (carnival food like chocolate cream puffs with wafer bottoms); Newfoundland fish feeds (Seal flipper pie. Did I really eat that or dream it?); Qubec cabanes sucre (maple sugar shacks) where suckers are made by rolling the thickened boiled syrup on a stick in the snow. Over a lifetime of six decades, Ive also discovered my own ways with food. Providing and preparing sustenance is a daily act of life, and as society and technology changes, so do our food rituals. What we eat as children is almost certainly not what nor how we eat as adults. Ive noticed that as I age, however, that Im drifting back to those earlier times of my life with food. Ah, but what a journey, lifelife and food!

One of my first memories is of eating a peanut butter sandwich with a cousin on the cement steps of someones (Mine? His?) house. Summertime. Wearing shorts, my brown hair in pigtails. Swatting away flies (so probably at my cousins homeall my cousins lived in the prairie countryside, rife with flies at every meal, especially, but not restricted to, outdoors). Do you recall, or did you know, that old homes with wooden window frames had small circular holes in the sillor maybe the frame itself, I dont knowon the outside of the bottom of the window? Ventilation? I think they were winter storm windows, but not everyone changed them with the coming of summer; they were often painted shut. Anyway, sitting on that step, my cousin was eating his sandwich of soft white bread, and peeling off the crusts. And then he was taking those crusts and stuffing them into those little window frame holes under the window.

What are you doing that for? I must have asked, because I remember his answer, I dont eat crusts!

Why not?

Because they put hair on your chest.

Oh! I looked down at my own sandwich in a new light.

And so go the stories of food and life. The life Ive enjoyed and still enjoy is threaded with stories of food, as Im sure is yours.

The accounts in this book are true and about me, as told by me, the author, but this is not simply a memoir. There are recipes of dishes or meals that I myself have created, but this is not a recipe book, nor a cookbook. There are stories of eating and types of food, and how I learned to manage my weight in our Western world of plenty, but this is most definitely not a diet book. There are tales with advice and lessons learned, but I wouldnt call it a self-help book. Its just a book of stories about food. A book I hope you will enjoy as I share them with you.