After noting the weather was forecast to rain on the holiday, the Reliance neighborhood decided to hold Canada Day on July 2nd this year. July 1st found me baking up a storm to help feed the crowd of what became 19. The pantry is starting to look a bit empty and I had to really dig to find some inspiration to feed what I knew would be a ravenous post-parade hoard.
To avoid boredom out here in isolation, I seldom cook the same recipe twice. That gets a bit challenging when I have to use the very same ingredients I’ve been using all winter. Thanks to my love of reading recipes and watching TV cooking shows, I haven’t run out of new ideas yet. But I do get stuck sometimes, unable to access that creative side of my brain. One method I employ to push through the baker’s block is to take those ingredients of which I have an abundance from the shelves and place them on the kitchen island.
This day I was looking at a pound of good lard, a kilo of ground moose and an old jar of homemade cranberry jam Roger had found at the bottom of the freezer. Immediately a picture of jam tarts came to my mind, followed very quickly by French Canadian Tourtiere tarts. Inspiration is an elusive thing and when it flashes like lightning I know enough to jump on it immediately and ride it like a witch’s broomstick.
I learned how to make a proper pastry many years ago, so with an experienced hand I quickly cut the lard and flour together and gently tossed it with the egg vinegar and water. The secret to flaky pastry is to hardly touch the very cold lard or moist pastry with your warm hands and to leave lots of pea sized bits to bubble up and create crispy flakes while baking in the hot oven.
Four dozen cranberry jam mini tarts magically appeared on the cooling racks and much relieved, I turned my attention to stirring up a delicious meat, potato and onion filling. Cinnamon, cloves and allspice made the house smell like Christmas in July and the first taste made my eyes roll back in my head it was so delicious. Another four dozen tarts magically appeared and my ardent desire to make tarts completely faded even though I still had half a pan of meat filling. Stuffed meat buns jumped into my mind and it wasn’t long before I had a lovely white bread dough rising above the wood stove. A trick I learned from a Mennonite cooking site is to add your oil when you knead the dough and not with the liquid ingredients. And don’t forget the egg wash.
Forming up a beautiful stuffed meat bun is a skill I only learned how to do properly this past winter even though I have been making a semblance of them for many years. After reading a blog post for German meat buns their method was so simple I wondered at my past 35 years of struggling with other shapes.
Our Canada Day Parade was scheduled to begin at noon sharp. Time being both relative and quantified, 12:15 p.m. found us carefully making our way down to our boat carrying the bags of carefully packed pastries. Speeding across Police Bay, I felt a momentary twinge of guilt for being late, but it passed when we observed no movement about the buildings of Trophy Lodge other than a barking dog.
On our arrival, friends started to come out of various buildings and soon the constant chatter became a force to be reckoned with and it remained at the same fevered pitch for the next 7 hours.
The news was passed around that our neighbours from the Hoarfrost River Homestead were also on their way by boat to join us for the festivities and it wasn’t long before we spotted their small craft chugging along, passing through the Narrows. Laughter and hugs went all the way around again as we enfolded another three into our little gathering. I reminded everyone that Canada Day is the old Dominion Day and is Memorial Day in Newfoundland, in remembrance of the almost 800 brave Newfoundland boys who were killed at the Battle of Beaumont-Hamel, July 1, 1916.
Marching around the boardwalks singing O Canada these days can be a strain, both on the memory and politically. There is a section of the song I learned in French in school, which I have completely forgotten, a bit embarrassing. And then there is the new switch from all thy sons command to all of us command. Thinking of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment that was basically completely wiped out, Newfoundland losing on this one day 10 per cent of her young men, I belted out at the top of my lungs the words I felt best remembered their sacrifice. May they never be forgotten.