Though Canadians and Americans may find this a boring
topic, I can assure you that millions of people in China find precise details of our food shopping and food routines quite
interesting.
So I write these areas for newcomers to our countries.
*****
Breakfast
Breakfast was the same almost everywhere in Canada. It involved eggs, bacon, and toast or cereal, washed
down with one or two cups of coffee.
The
eggs were usually scrambled, or fried. Fried eggs could be fried on one side, sunny side up, or on both sides. As Canadians
became more sophisticated, cheese and vegetables might be added to the scrambling of eggs to turn them into omelettes, lighter
fluffier recipes.
We had bacon as well. Bacon and eggs.
We also had a clear glass citrus juicer - you cut an orange in
half, and pressed it against the circular shape, squeezed, and made fresh orange juice. Laborious. Only my dad got this, as
he had a busy day going off to work. We kids got milk, often flavored with strawberry or chocolate powder to add a sugar rush.
Special days included more treats for breakfast:
Pancakes, with maple syrup
.
French toast, white bread dipped into a batter of eggs mixed with milk, then fried in the frying pan, until
light golden brown. Lots of butter.
Cinnamon
toast. Toast spread with cinnamon over the butter.
Bacon
bread. Cheap and delicious. Plain white bread fried in the leftover bacon fat, in the frying pan.
Cream of wheat porridge, a very smooth and delicious porridge,
from a mixture in a box.
Oatmeal porridge, a basic porridge, but the
pots were hard to clean, and it reminded me of the orphans in Jane Eyre, being an imaginative child.
Lemon curd, to spread on bread, a delicious tart jam.
Mapospread, a sort of maple supermarket jam made with maple syrup.
Marmite, a repulsive British product, my mother actually like the
taste of. Just the sight of the little jar made me feel like retching!
Molasses, a black syrup, better than Marmite
Corn
syrup, this came in a beautiful green and golden tin, I admired for its packaging, not its taste
Buckwheat honey, a healthy and good tasting sugar product
Toasters and coffee pots were key items in the kitchen. The toast
came with butter, salted butter bought in large one pound blocks with pictures of rural Canadian landscapes, cows in Ontario
fields munching green grass.
I remember the smell of burned toast, as I remember
the smell of burning on the ironing board, before we bought a steam iron. And my thrifty parents, scraping off the burnt marks
on the bread!
So eggs, bacon, toast, pancakes, cereal, coffee, sugar, sometimes orange
juice.
