Heavy Traffic; Dinner at Abbraccio

Happy Easter, everybody! I hope the Big Bunny leaves you loads of yummy chocolate treats and that your bonnet wins a prize at lunch, and if you are brunching somewhere fabulous, you have tons of mimosas to wash everything down.

Traffic is heavy, as is the rule on our narrow streets during any holiday, and the buses drop people off at Casa Ley’s and have them walk into Centro from there. Patrice flies back to Calgary on Sunday, so we will allow extra time to get to the airport. She is a flight angel for a number of lucky doggies headed for a new life in Canada; another reason to get to the airport in good time.

Last night, Rob Burton and Jan Dorland drove Patrice and me north to Abbraccio Cucina Italiana for dinner. It took a good ten minutes to peruse the extensive, beautifully put-together Italian food menu. We sat out on the quiet, unairconditioned patio and spent close to three hours laughing and talking, oddly enough, about food and, most importantly, food in our childhoods.

We all grew up in Canada – Patrice and I in Calgary, Rob in Winnipeg and Jan in Chatham, Ontario. The strangest memories, popped out of our mouths from 50 to 70 years ago – we remembered details of crisp evenings on Halloween, and from Jan – of the air being redolent with the smell of tomato soup. Campbell’s had a factory in Chatham. Rob laughed about stealing crabapples in his neighborhood when he was ten and recalled that because Winnipeg was so cold, real apples never had a chance to grow to proper size.

I remembered someone putting a pea pod in my hand and proudly pronouncing it came from their garden. I didn’t know what it was and asked what the bright green thing was and was shocked to learn peas were that color. I grew up eating gray canned peas swimming in liquid. That story hit a nerve in Rob, who remembers the taste of canned peas being mashed into Shephard’s pie and freely admits that he still loves them.

My sister mentioned rhubarb, which unleashed stories of ripping off stalks while skulking through the alleys of our youthful neighborhoods, eating it raw and unwashed but dipped in paper cones full of sugar, sweet rhubarb pies from me, and strawberry rhubarb pie from Jan, who says he used to make a mean one, and all of us agreed that stewed rhubarb was fantastic, with dinner or afterward for dessert.

As we shared a delectable tiramisu, we spoke of lilacs, with each of us remembering that sweet, rather spicy intoxicating fragrance that is a sure sign of a Canadian summer and seeing the beauty of those trees in various colors, gently moving in breezes that could bring snow at any minute but for a deep inhale everything was right with the world. Funny the things we miss in our exuberant tropical climate that is swarming with sensual aromas.