Food For Thought

It's a little bit of a challenge sometimes when you are a lazy cook but an enthusiastic eater. And that's one of my biggest problems here (er..for lack of anything major to worry about). Going on week two in Iqaluit and still unapologetic over the fact that my culinary exercise has not extended beyond the complexities of instant soups and tossing coin over sunny side up or hard boiled eggs. You might think that my gushing over the finer points of Iqaluit food is just a thinly disguised excuse for not attempting to cook a decent meal with more than one ingredient. Well, that's just too bad..for here I go gushing again.

For lunch today I decided to go downstairs to buy something for take out at Caribrew. The grilled roast beef sandwich looked good so that's what I had. And it did taste good! The baguette was delicious, there was generous amount of roast beef that was not even thinly sliced and I loved how the monterey jack blended with the tomato. I don't know if it's because I have chosen to simplify a lot of things in my life here or that I am stripped away of a lot of unnecessary dramas that I am noticing and appreciating things more or that even with a fulltime schedule I still find myself a lot of extra time to slow down and yes chew carefully or all of the above but I am finding myself easier to please these days - with the taste of food, how my day went, etc. I noticed that it has become a part of end of shift report that we ask the incoming staff, how is it outside - and when they say "it's very nice outside today" it can mean light snow, no blizzard, mild winds, temperature not lower than -12C, dark-as-usual-but-what-can-you-do..things that would be categorized as a miserable winter day anywhere else. I guess when you are up north you learn to recalibrate your appreciation meter somewhat. So going back to the roast beef sandwich, so yes..that was one of the best roast beef sandwich lunch I've ever had! And once again I tried to extract some form of metaphor when I accidentally poured more than just a tiny drop of very hot cayenne pepper sauce on my roast beef (see picture) . . and still ended up enjoying the meal. Somewhere along the line of - how an accident that would otherwise cause you to sting and burn makes you happier instead.

A funny thing yesterday, I was at the cafeteria to buy my lunch and thought that their sandwich special (shaved prime rib on croissant served with soup of the day - turkey noodle soup) sounded good (it was good, of course) and decided to get some. Then the cashier slash cook said to me, "what? you're not going to order poutine today?" I don't know if that's the downside of working in a small hospital where everybody knows everybody else and they can actually remember that I have been ordering poutine on a regular basis since I got here or my secret reputation as food fanatic is slowly coming out in the open. Anyway, I never thought I'd ever say this but I love hospital cafeteria food!

Working night shift tonight and looking forward to the night shift staff's free meal :)