…. and survives! [This blog has been a long time in coming….]
Well, actually, it turned out to be much simpler in the end.
So, my options for the Thanksgiving weekend were to go down to the Early Iron Symposium in Cooperstown with my husband and lurk around the smelters, and maybe help out with the food, which would have been totally okay, or stay at home and re-grout the shower.
Well, that’s what I thought they were, until I had an email forwarded from one of the project leaders for a Katimavik house in Orangeville, who was looking for a cook for the Orientation week.
[Katimavik is a Canadian Youth Volunteer program, for people 17 to 21. They give up a year of their life and travel around Canada, living as a group in their host communities, and working with varying non-profit partner organizations. While they’re in their group houses, they learn to cook and feed themselves, budget and shop, bake their own bread. Later in their three-month stay, they are billeted in with local families, and get to see another side of their “adopted” community. Then they move on to another three-month placement, somewhere else in Canada.]
Since the Orangeville group found a cook, their project leader suggested that the Shelburne House was still looking. Better and better, even closer to home!
And that’s where I ended up. Cooking meals for three days for a group of ten ‘kids’ (probably only kids to my ancient eyes, and certainly older than my teenagers from Twelfth Night!) and their project leader and myself.
The only tiny bump in the road is that one was lactose-intolerant, one was vegetarian, and one was “Vegan”. Ack! I hadn’t known too much about Veganism (if that’s a word) till I after I started researching it on the web. WOW! It can get pretty involved. To the point where you don’t shop till you read the labels. That was a bit scary.
I’ve dealt with vegetarians. My brother and his lady, and several close friends have been vegetarians. Plus I like to cook, and I like to research recipes, so for an occasional thing, it’s no problem at all.
Vegans, on the other hand, can be tricky.
In the long run, I was lucky. It turned out that my Vegan was really just someone who didn’t eat meat, especially ground meat, though occasionally chicken, preferred soymilk, and wasn’t too big on eggs. Not a “fine print” Vegan. But it’s far safer just saying Vegan, than having to try to explain. I fully understand.
But in the lead up, it meant I was spending a lot more time reading ingredient lists, in my pantry, and in the store, and realizing that a true, fine print Vegan up in my neighbourhood, would find it rough going!
And my group turned out to be quite nice, enthusiastic kids, fun to cook for. And I seemed to come up with enough interesting things to eat that everyone was happy, including myself.
Of course, because just planning, shopping & cooking for a dozen people who live a half hour away wasn’t enough “fun”, I had to have a psychotic moment, where for some reason, all of a sudden all I could smell in the vicinity of my geriatric Honda, Shawn of the Dead, was gasoline! I stepped out of the garage on the one day, to check on some plants, and I could smell gas. Up the drive to road? Gas. Around and inside my car? Gas.
Now Darrell had just recently fixed a leak in the gasoline somewhere…. Had it gone awry? Oh, Lordy. Here I was, on a long weekend, 13 km from the nearest town, one with no useful services, like car rentals or mechanics… Darrell and the truck in New York State. Most of the people I know at least an hour away, and probably doing their own Thanksgiving things… ARGH!
So, of course, Saturday night I did not sleep well!
Sunday I got up and drove the car over to a nearby bridge where there were at least a few feet of pavement, and I could leave the car running and peer underneath. And move the car and check for drips. (Living on bumpy rutted grassy gravel road allowances, does not make that an easy task!) Nothing seemed to be happening.
And as it turned out, I got to Shelburne, and Orangeville, quite happily the next two days. And worked my way through that tank of gas uneventfully, and am currently working through the next one. So, who knows? It was suggested that perhaps when my tank had been filled the day before the incident, some gas had got slopped… It seems that it had to be far more than just that, but whatever…. The Katimavikkers didn’t starve.
