First and utmost, I must thank my mother, Mary. There often tends to be something of the cursory about acknowledgements, but I want to take this opportunity to reckon with my own rather typically male tendency to carry on as if I’d been born fully formed from the cloven head of Zeus, rather than made of, indebted to, formed, and informed by another human being. For while I suspect she views many of my gastronomic concerns as a touch trivial and portentous (how could she not—I am an absurd figure!), I see them as growing from a soil she prepared. Beyond the very real, too-often-unrecognized work of being a mother, cooking and caring for two kids and a husband (I have, in the past, in my own self-narrating failed to recognize, and have misrepresented, the primacy of this caregiving work, a testament to the self-serving contortions of memory), she always maintained a commitment to doing so in a way that felt meaningful on her own terms, engaging me as much as possible in that process. Whether growing a garden, keeping me around and underfoot in lieu of sending me to kindergarten, giving me a weekly night of responsibility to cook for the family, or just refusing to buy me Sugar Crisp, all of this contributed to a basic understanding that food comes from somewhere. Not just from a package, not simply from a store. Perhaps more importantly than the food itself, she imparted what I am inclined now to describe as a curiosity about the world, and a dissatisfaction with many of the idées reçues of the time, an unwillingness to accept the just-so stories that organized our lives. We have argued enough over the years, but I always recall on her part a willingness to explain and debate, rather than to merely invoke the parental authority of “Because I said so,” even or especially when I was an entitled, petulant, teenage punk. This has certainly influenced my approach to food, and no less my approach to life itself. So, thanks.
For the matter more immediately at hand, a tremendous thank-you to John for being a patient, thoughtful, and incisive editor. There is likely no better motivator for an author than to have an editor one suspects may be a better writer than oneself. Thank you similarly to Leigh Nash for tolerating my endless rationalizations for seemingly arbitrary capitalization, and insisting that at least some of the time, some readers should be able to discern what the hell I am talking about. Thank you to Craig Schweickert for being an indispensable companion and guide in things oenological; Camilla Wynne for her friendship, chip-ship, and pastry counsel; Heather Vandenengel for her beer counsel; Nazlie Faridi for reining in my more outlandish and scientifically irresponsible speculations about neurology; Cheyanne Turions for pointing me to indigenous works on bannock and for any number of conversations about food, art, and politics; Gina Badger for helping me to understand cooking and eating as forms of love and struggle beyond the usual clichés; Katie Mathieu for being the first person to make me think about fermentation; and to Maddie Ritts for being the most game, indulgent, and combative dining partner I could hope for. Also to Barbara the cat for being a beacon to us all by refusing to entertain interest in any human food other than butter, and a beacon to me personally by being a little point of perplexing, loving light.
Parts of this text have appeared in some form on my blog Still Crapulent After All These Years (www.foodandtrembling.com), in the National Post, and elements of “The Cauldron of the Speckled Seas” appear in modified form in en Route, April 2017.