STAND OUT with your B&B Menus

A Bit of Background...

One thing I've always been REALLY good at is cooking. (This, by the way, does not include baking, LOL, I'm actually not quite so good at that; I can give you a few brutal examples of that in another blog post down the road.) I got the talent and the interest from my mom who, looking back, really should have written a cookbook or two. She made everything "from scratch", with real ingredients and a fabulous balance of all 5 food groups... and we're not talking "sugar, starch, fat, grease and alcohol here, folks! We ate raw and cooked veggies every day, fruit every morning, animal protein almost every evening, and our school lunches were an always-changing but sensible packed assembly of sandwich, juice-box, apple/orange/banana, veggie sticks, cookies/dessert of some sort. Lunches were sometimes awkward as she would make the odd random choice my friends would think was "weird", like liver-sausage or marmite sandwiches, rendering me the brunt of the schoolyard teasing for the rest of that day. I ate the weird stuff anyway, because I liked them, and it's important to note that at that time there were no options.

Born in the 60's, I grew up in the time when all the fast-food giants were hitting the scene and would become not only a incomprehensively huge success story but also a leading contributor to the amount of obesity and health tragedies that the first world is dealing with today. Mom would rotate the picking by one of us 4 siblings in the "fast food of the week" for Friday or Saturday supper and that was it for our fast-food allowance for each week. It was a treat and not a staple, and it gave her the time away from the kitchen. We would also go out for dinner as a family about once/week, but it was usually ethnic and reasonably healthy; I think I was the first kid in my elementary school to eat dim-sum, sushi and tikka masala. (Again, something that made me weird and not very popular with the "in-crowd" who's parents were heavily supporting the expansion of McD's and KFC... and their kids' waistlines!) I ate well and I learned about mindful control where food is concerned.

My takeaways from childhood that would come to shape me as a culinary wiz:

• Eat healthy - fresh is best

• Be conscious of eating what's available - this is key to budgeting!

• Try everything; you might not like it but at least you'll know

Let's finish up this bit of background with a quote from my dad; I've heard this one from him so many times that it's become a mantra for many aspects of my life:

• "EVERYTHING in moderation", no explanation required here, wink-wink!

Creativity and Diversity in the B&B Kitchen

One of the things I miss about the Lodge was the property; 4 acres of delicious wonders. I had 4 very large log garden boxes where I grew all sorts of unusual herbs, veggies and fruit. I also had a huge and very abundant raspberry patch (cranberries, blueberries and saskatoons were growing wild and with great gusto within walking distance of my property!). I also had many planters with many varieties of tomatoes on the go every year... And then there was my lawn that produced many kinds of mushrooms, including the coveted morels and pines.

I educated myself on what was in season in the forest and chose unique plantings for my garden every year so that my guests would have a memorable culinary experience; it became part of my identity and return guests showed a lot of excitement over what was to land on their plates while they were there. In the fall, my off-season would be filled preserving and freezing all the fun offerings of Nature in new and interesting combinations for sauces, jams, jellies, chutneys and other pickled treats & condiments that I could use year-round to impress my guests with. I would receive many requests for recipes over the years there but I was careful not to give away too much of "my intellectual property", as my mom coined it decades before. My Breakfast Pizza became kinda legendary, LOL and the sauce secret is one that I've never shared with anyone!

Pivot Through the Reality of Availability

It's my belief that an attribute separating a cook from a chef (other than red-seal certification) is the capacity to pivot and adapt - use what's available and not, necessarily, what is expected. Everyone knows how to make bacon and eggs but what if one of those items in your plan isn't available? I remember the grocery-store "situation" in the little town nearby my Lodge; it could be really dismal pickings some days, in fact, I remember many times where there were no eggs. Can you imagine that?! I'm running a Bed and BREAKFAST with no eggs to be found in town (ugh!, insert flashback with exaggerated eye-rolling here)! It was almost always a produce-challenge to be creative there, particularly in the winter, but I always managed to do it. If something in the little store that was way out of the usual selection caught my eye I would buy it all, share a little with my besties and freeze the rest. I remember once I was astounded to see a flat of tomatillos on the shelf so I bought the whole thing, and every one went to fabulous use! It's important to note, as I reminisce of those days, that some of my most fun "foodie" customers were winter clients.

Shopping for groceries has dramatically changed for me since I owned the B&B; I now live where the selection of produce (and pretty much everything else you might eat) is fabulous. But, what has not changed at all is my ongoing quest for diversity and creativity, nor has my commitment to using what's available and in-season. Today, there's a powerful credo to "Shop Local" and support Canadian (or non-tariff-ying) producers/countries so that adds another plot twist to the shopping trips but I'm making it work.

"BED & BREAKFAST": two important words there and one of them is Breakfast. Make your breakfasts fabulous and memorable for your guests and you've got half the descriptor covered, right? LOL, no, sadly, they will find a lot more to complain about than just your beds and your breakfasts! My book highlights grossly entitled guests who could blame me for every trouble in their lives, including an entire chapter devoted to some of the most funny and ridiculous REVIEWS you could ever imagine. A final thought here is though, of all their outrageous complaints, bad reviews and petty grievances with me, nobody ever once complained about the breakfasts.

As I've been writing this post I've been thinking a lot about my recipes; I may share a few down the road, based on interest of course. I've been told (like my mom was so many times) that I should write a cookbook and I might do that too... In the interim, I'll just leave you with a few pics from the lodge and the fun things I grew and created from them.

Happy travels and culinary experiences and thank you for dropping into my website! I'm always happy to hear from readers and welcome your thoughts and suggestions for future posts.