Isn’t it strange how some foods, some dishes, some flavors are associated with a place in time and space?
Sensory memory is a strange, strange thing. One moment you’re walking down the street, worrying about something that will turn out to be inconsequential, and the next you catch a whiff of something: roasting peanuts or wet paint or a perfume you smelled once on someone now long forgotten, and you’re transported somewhere, some-when, else.
I was back in Toronto last week to visit my friends from my first year of university there — the year before I started this blog.
It’s kind of hard to believe that that was 10 years ago — arriving in Toronto had me feeling, at once, that it could have been yesterday that I was walking around Little Italy, sitting in Tim Horton’s with a large coffee, stomping snow off my boots in front of one of our favorite pubs… or else that it really was 10 years ago, that I really have changed that much.
Maybe a bit of both.
I spent one of my days there wandering around the city with the English One, snapping pictures of neighborhoods.
That was one of the only things that I knew about Toronto before I moved there, before I arrived for orientation — which I remembered suddenly at one point during our trip, was called Frosh Week at U of T, how can you forget things that were once so normal? I knew, even back then, that Toronto was known as the city of neighborhoods, a city defined by the countless delineations within it. Cross this street and you’re in Liberty Village. Now Little Italy. Now Korea Town. Now the Entertainment District. Now the Beaches. I used to know them all. I also used to know all the provinces in Canada. Once, this was home, and now it’s foreign, like so many foreign places.
10 years ago, Toronto was a strange place for me. I was strange in Toronto, had encountered Toronto at a strange time.
After three years at boarding school, I had wanted Columbia University so badly that I was convinced I was going until I got my rejection letter. I had picked my classes, my dorm. I chose U of T almost on a whim, because one of my best friends was going there, because it got me out of the northeast, because they had a good cinema program, because Toronto kind of looked like New York, though not at all. I don’t know how 18-year-olds are supposed to make intelligent choices when we hardly know ourselves yet.
I was mystified by Toronto this time.
10 years ago, I wandered the city, begging it to be New York. And it wasn’t — like a rebound who’s smart and sweet and funny… but just shows up too soon. And now that New York and I are no longer in love, it’s like I was meeting Toronto again for the first time. And I regret not taking full advantage of it when I was there.
We spent most of our days rehoofing our old haunts, pointing out the storefront that was once our favorite Thai restaurant, once the Subway where our friend worked, once the building that was home to the lecture we went to. Once. But what I loved even more was this day of wandering, of snapping pictures beneath a blue sky — I got a tan in Canada, if you can believe it — of wondering what it would have been like if I had been in Toronto in a time when I was ready to love it.
I left Toronto for Cannes the first time, for Paris the second. Toronto was a necessary foothold between America and France, and yet, in my past, that’s all it is. Visiting it as a tourist, I only got glimpses of all the things I’ll miss. Its quirkiness. Its people. Its strange way it has about making me feel at home and foreign all at once.
Oh, and the beer. I’ll miss that a lot.
But regardless of how I felt about it on this trip, being in Toronto also sent memories flooding back. After all, even though I was missing New York, I was having a lot of fun in Toronto, 10 years ago. I did send myself on forced marches, just like I had at night in New York — though, I’ll admit, I was far more lost in Toronto.
I did have favorite spots, favorite addresses. I did have sensory memories. The Tim Horton’s smelling of over-steeped tea and maple frosting. The market in Kensington that reeked of pot where I bought strawberries.
And when I got home, this salad, which, I remember, was one of the first recipes I followed, alone in my kitchen in Toronto, as a lunchtime staple.
The recipe itself had far more ingredients when I first made it. I bought them all: the flat-leafed parsley, even though I needed a scant tablespoon or two, the red onion I didn’t know how to dice properly, the olives that would languish and mold on the refrigerator shelf, because I didn’t like olives then, and don’t really love them now either, come to think of it.
It’s been years since I followed a recipe, really. Unless I’m testing a cookbook for a review, recipes have become guidelines for me — I look at them, think of the things I’d change, the things I have, the things that are a pain to buy. It feels as though I’ve always cooked that way, until I think about the recipes I used to make when I was in Toronto.
It’s hard to see ourselves changing, as it happens, but it does. And it’s lovely to be able to take a real trip down memory lane — even if memory lane is an ocean away — to remember who we used to be.
Cannellini Bean and Tuna Salad
1 16 oz. can cannellini beans
4 3 oz. cans of tuna fish, canned in olive oil, drained
2 green onions, finely chopped
1 lemon
salt and pepper
mixed greens
Break up the tuna fish with a fork in a bowl. Drain and rinse the cannellini beans, and toss them with the tuna fish. Add the green onions and season with lemon juice, salt and pepper. Toss until well combined.
Mound the salad on top of the greens. Serve with a lemon wedge.
I love this post! 🙂