The Measure of My Powers: A Memoir of Food, Misery, and Paris

by Jackie Kai Ellis

  Cake stands stacked with pastries, deliberate but not delicate, framed the entire picture, and then there was me, standing behind it all, staffing the scene in my apron and a little white folding chair for when I was tired, even though I almost never was. I smiled through the bags under my eyes, stirred and fulfilled, awakened by the hard work for something I felt passionate about.

  Marketgoers would walk by, salivating at the scent of butter and cinnamon wafting toward them. I would offer a taste to entice them in, and once they’d taken a bite, I’d feel a rush of happiness as their eyes rolled back, and their mouths, still full of pleasure, would utter things that were meant for their lovers.

  At the end of the market day, I would trade whatever I had left over for fresh carrots, summer squash, and raspberries from other stalls. We would chat about the day, and about what was perfectly ripe. And for the first time, I recognized something familiar in the eyes of the other market sellers: it was the same excitement I felt when I stumbled on the perfect fruit, in the perfect season. Standing all around me were others who loved the same thing: living a life full of good food.

  MACADAMIA NUT BARS

  This is a recipe that I adapted from a Martha Stewart recipe.

  I made them frequently for the farmers’ markets I sold at, and they were so popular that customers would follow me around the city for them.

  FOR THE CRUST

  2 sticks plus 2 tbsp (9 oz/255 g) unsalted butter, room temperature

  ¾ cup (6 oz/170 g) light brown sugar, firmly packed

  ½ tsp (2.5 ml) fine sea salt

  3 cups (13.4 oz/374 g) all-purpose flour

  Preheat the oven to 375°F.

  In the bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, mix the butter, brown sugar, and salt on medium speed until light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of bowl when necessary.

  Slowly add the flour, about 1 cup at a time, mixing on medium speed until well incorporated after each addition. Mix until the dough comes together and forms large clumps.

  Prepare a 9 × 13 × 2-inch baking pan by buttering the entire surface and lining the bottom and sides with parchment paper, leaving a few inches of paper hanging over on either side. You can use the extra paper as handles to lift the bars out of the pan. Press the dough evenly into the prepared pan and prick or dock the entire surface with a fork so that it bakes evenly without air bubbles. Bake until the edges and top are light golden brown, 15–20 minutes. Leaving the crust in the pan, let it cool on a wire rack until it is warm to the touch.

  FOR THE NUT TOPPING

  2 sticks (8 oz/227 g) unsalted butter, room temperature

  1 cup (8 oz/227 g) light brown sugar, firmly packed

  ¾ cup (9 oz/255 g) honey

  ¼ cup (1.75 oz/50 g) granulated sugar

  ¼ cup (2.1 oz/60 g) whipping cream

  1 tsp (5 ml) fine sea salt

  3 cups (12 oz/340 g) whole macadamia nuts

  2 cups (8 oz/227 g) pecan halves

  1 tsp (5 ml) pure vanilla extract

  Reduce oven to 325°F.

  Place the butter, brown sugar, honey, granulated sugar, cream, and salt in a large saucepan. Over high heat, bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly until the temperature reaches 243°F. Remove pan from heat and stir in the nuts and vanilla.

  Pour the filling onto the crust and bake until the filling bubbles, 15–20 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through baking. You will know it is done when the nuts around the edges become mahogany-colored. Remove from the oven, and place the pan on a wire rack to cool completely.

  Once the pastry is cool, lift it out of the pan using the parchment paper as handles. Use a sharp knife to cut into eighteen 3 × 2.1-inch bars. The caramel in the nuts will droop ever so slightly after the bars are cut. Store in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

  A NOTE ON THE MEASUREMENTS: When I began making these bars in mass quantities, I switched to weight measurements, so I’ve included both in this recipe.

  A NOTE ON THERMOMETERS: I’ve found that 243°F is the precise temperature for the bars to have the perfect consistency. Any hotter and the caramel is too hard; any cooler and the caramel doesn’t hold its shape. So a thermometer is a great investment.

  MAKES 18 BARS.

  “GOOD”GRANOLA

  {2006–2011}

  GIVE ME YOUR HAND OUT of the DEPTHS SOWN by YOUR SORROWS.

  Pablo Neruda

  A GLASS OF WINE HAS 125 CALORIES, A SMALL BANANA has 90 calories, a ½-cup serving of plain, dry oatmeal without milk has 150 calories, and plain yogurt has about 40 calories, which is about 100 calories less than yogurt with sweetened fruit. I would feel a surge of pride when I bought my yogurt plain and ate my oatmeal with water. I was in a silent war with food, and in those moments I was gaining ground.

  I exhaustively researched all the “good” and “bad” foods, marking which were empty calories and which were worth eating. I held a secret catalogue of nutritional information in my mind, collected from years of obsessively reading labels and books on nutrition and scouring the internet for strategies that would give me the upper hand.

  I allowed myself one complete meal a day, at dinnertime. To stave off hunger, a ½ cup of homemade granola (homemade so that I could control every ingredient), divided into two portions, sustained me throughout the day. If I was particularly hungry—which was almost always—I would drink matcha tea without milk to fill the empty sensation.

  I called myself a daytime vegetarian, eating small portions of meat only in the evenings, five days a week. With a ration of one dessert a week, my choices were deliberate, and I spent evenings creating desserts like chocolate peanut butter caramel tarts, which could satisfy all my intense cravings in a single bite.

  To keep to a limit of 1,000 calories a day, I faithfully recorded everything I ate, from a segment of orange to a thumbnail-sized piece of chocolate, in food diaries, frantically trying to balance calories eaten with daily 10-kilometer runs.

  The prize? My goal weight, my goal pants, my goal self, because whatever I was now was obviously not it. I was desperate to win, and even more terrified by what it would mean if I did.

  I was in my late twenties and thin by most Western standards, but in my mind, I was never thin enough. I knew I was pretty in an unassuming fashion, but I was completely overwhelmed by all the beauty around me and in the media, a beauty I believed I should but didn’t have. Every time I caught a glimpse of my body, I dissected it and myself into a hundred minuscule components and scrutinized each one, comparing them to the better versions I found in magazines, on television, in health food stores, and in yoga classes. Each time I lost this contest, and I would push myself harder by punishing myself with more starvation and sometimes hitting the parts of me I detested most until they bruised and bled.

  As usually happens when things are so seemingly controlled, chaos was building elsewhere. There were too many rules. One rule avalanched into twenty, and soon there were over a hundred small balls to juggle. Inevitably, feeling exhausted by the constant effort, I would drop them all at once and would gorge on a box of saltines or a tub of ice cream. Then I’d berate myself in guilt and remorse and stick a finger down my throat and throw up until my eyes watered and my nose filled with bile. I continued forcing the finger deep down my throat until I felt like I had nothing left inside me to hate.

  I lived in a perpetual state of torture, hunger, punishment, and denial for many years, not knowing what to do or how to fix it. I’d observe the girth of everyone’s waist or arm and compare it to my own. I constantly debated what to eat, when to eat it, how to eat it, how much to eat, and how to burn it off. I detested myself, but even more so, I hated myself for not being able to control my obsession. And if I ever felt my clothing taut against my body, I loathed myself more. So I wore droopy, oversized clothes with elastic waists and I stopped wearing anything that I felt pretty in, because I just never did.

  My disgust for myself was at its h
eight every time I was confronted with my own naked body. After a shower I would avert my eyes from the bathroom mirror, scrambling to put my clothes back on before I could focus on my flabby, repulsive stomach. And when I did see it, I would aggressively gather the fat and skin between my fingers to gauge just how hideous I actually was. I’d cry on the bathroom floor, feeling nauseated from helplessness and yearning to be different, someone else, someone better than me.

  I

  ONE WEEKEND I WAS SELLING HOMEMADE SEED AND nut biscotti at the market. A frail young woman with powdery skin paced back and forth dozens of times in front of my table, inspecting the cellophane-wrapped cookies and intently asking me questions about each and every ingredient. I recognized her with her fear, her torment, her sadness. I knew her, and I knew which questions she would ask next and how she was categorizing the answers into her own columns of “good” and “bad,” “safe” and “unsafe.” As I watched her anguish, I remember feeling a distinct mixture of emotions I have rarely felt since: deep pity, hatred, disgust, and annoyance.

  But in an instant, a strange thing happened: I realized we were the same. She was me and I was her. The negative feelings I had for her were the same ones I felt for myself. I knew that we both tortured and loathed ourselves, disciplined ourselves with starvation, and punished our bodies by forcing vomit from them. In her I saw my own undistorted reflection, and I saw how sad and scared she was, how much she longed to be told, “You are beautiful as you are.” I understood her sorrow, that she sometimes cried when she was alone because the burden of feeling so inadequate was overwhelming. I knew her pain, and my heart broke for us both. I felt a spark of tenderness for the pained parts that existed in us both. It didn’t make the pain disappear or heal me, of course, but it did give me a glimpse of what it was to have compassion for myself, even love myself, for one small moment.

  GOOD GRANOLA

  Though I’ve been told that this recipe for granola is quite a good one, I have such mixed emotions when I taste it now that I can barely be an objective judge. Before I left for Paris, I made two large bags of this and brought them with me in my suitcase in case I couldn’t find “safe” foods to eat there. After I returned, I never made it again.

  DRY INGREDIENTS

  1,150 g rolled oats

  200 g raw cashews

  200 g raw walnut halves

  200 g raw almonds

  200 g raw pecan halves

  200 g raw pumpkin seeds

  200 g raw sunflower seeds

  100 g ground flaxseed

  400 g light brown sugar

  WET INGREDIENTS

  500 g honey

  160 g olive oil

  110 g apple sauce

  5 tsp salt

  2 tsp cinnamon

  2 tsp cardamom

  2 tsp ground ginger

  2 tbsp vanilla extract

  TO FINISH

  175 g unsweetened shredded coconut

  200 g chopped figs

  200 g chopped apricots

  Preheat the oven to 300°F.

  Stir together the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk together the wet ingredients in a medium bowl. Pour the wet into the dry and mix until very well incorporated. Pour onto 4 large sheet trays lined with parchment paper and bake for 30–45 minutes or until deep golden brown, stirring every 15 minutes.

  Stir in the coconut, figs, and apricots while the granola is still hot, and allow it to cool to room temperature. Placed in airtight containers, the granola will last 1–2 weeks.

  NOTE ON THE QUANTITY AND MEASUREMENTS: I would make this recipe in very large quantities. I found that it froze very well, but feel free to halve the recipe as well. Because of the large quantity, it was much easier to make this using weight measurements, so I have left the recipe the same as the original.

  MAKES ABOUT 30 CUPS.

  FARMERS’ MARKET, PARIS

  {2011}

  LEAN IN TO KISS ME IN ALL THE PLACES WHERE THE ache is THE MOST SPECIAL.

  Sanober Khan

  WHEN I IMAGINE A FOREIGN PLACE THAT I’VE NEVER been to, I tend to string together the small beads of facts I’ve collected over my life, and then I fill the spaces between with my imaginations, fantasies, or fears. After a time, it becomes hard to tell which are real and which are just my flourishes.

  Before I visited, the only things I remember hearing about France was that it had the most beautiful and sophisticated food on every street corner (even the fast food was supposed to be better) and that the people were unfriendly. Both of these things, when I finally visited, turned out to be mostly untrue.

  One of our first meals in Paris was at a neighborhood restaurant near our flat in the 11th arrondissement. It was Valentine’s Day, and G and I celebrated by eating out, but couldn’t go far as we were both only just recovering from horrible flus and were still feeling weak. I scanned the menu and decided on the dish that felt the most “French”—the duck confit. I’d had it a few times in Vancouver and liked it, so I fully anticipated having my definition of the dish changed forever with this meal, leaving all other versions inedible in comparison. Instead, I got a pallid, flabby-skinned leg with a scant handful of frisée drizzled in oil that was haphazardly dribbled all over the plate, making the entire presentation seem anemic and blubbery.

  And all over the city, concentrated in the tourist-dense areas, were sorry excuses for dry and wrinkly croque-monsieur, salads burdened with pasty white dressings lugging slices of smoked salmon and sprinkled with bits of dried chives, as if they had put rose petals on a rhinoceros and expected an elegant dance from it. I was embarrassed at the fantasies I’d so earnestly relayed to G before we left about all the beauties of French cuisine. So in complete denial, I stubbornly refused to show how disappointed I was, and I continued to eat it, giving hearty reassuring nods to G throughout each meal.

  I

  OVER THE COMING WEEKS AND MONTHS, I EVENTUALLY found where beautiful French food existed in Paris. I explored the nuances of the city with my mouth, forming new words with my tongue, learning the subtle language of a smile and new flavors passing my lips.

  I shopped at the farmers’ markets in my neighborhood like most Parisians did, Marché d’Aligre during the week and Marché Bastille on Sundays. It was here that Paris revealed herself to me first, teaching me the questions to ask to draw her story out, and allowing me to taste her character in what I thought were insignificant moments. She’d drop a word, a sigh when she thought no one was looking, and she fed me sensuously, one bite at a time.

  “Un-uh-roh,” said the husky man behind the vegetable stall, wearing a dirty apron over a winter coat and holding his hand out toward me.

  “Pardon?” I asked, confused as to what to do next. I think I’m supposed to pay now, I had just asked for beets, he bagged them…now what?

  His thick black eyebrows, like slugs on his forehead, rose and he looked me in the eyes and repeated himself. The movements in his mouth were exaggerated and he slowed the pace of the syllables so I could decipher them: one euro. “Got it,” I thought to myself, noting the way the liaisons in the language made it both gentle on the ears and difficult to understand. And I put one euro into his fingers, which peeked through his fingerless gloves.

  The vitality of the market; the sounds of conversations and food stalls; the smells of fish, herbs, onions, roasting meats; bright vegetal colors and deep earth still clinging to roots—all of these layered and piled on top of each other like books in an old Parisian bookstore.

  I tasted far Breton for the first time, biting into the soft prunes and letting them meld with the faint scent of vanilla; the inspiring kouign amann in large wheels stuffed with roasted apples; the mature-tasting, wise crêpes made of buckwheat, educating me with their crisp edges caramelized in butter.

  As I wove through the stalls, vendors would entice me with segments of clementine, the leaves still attached to the sunny skins; juicy dates, weeping their own syrup; candied strawberries, sweet and sticking playfully t
o my molars; and aromatic pistachios, making me crave knowledge of cultures that I hadn’t wondered about before.

  There were bottles of good, honest wines cared for by sturdy men wearing tweed caps with wine-stained hands and terroir under their nails, and just a few steps away, mushrooms of all kinds—black trumpets, chanterelles, morels. Their savory forest scent was trumped only by the smell of sizzling chickens twirling on a rotisserie, their juices and fat basting themselves and dripping onto a pan of potatoes embracing it. I ate the roasted chicken, simply and with my fingers.

  Paris inhabited me. And I was so full of her that I simply forgot to feel ashamed of eating and being hungry.

  TASTES OF THE PARIS FARMERS’ MARKETS

  Things you must taste at the Bastille farmers’ market on Sunday mornings:

  When passing vendors, they will pass you bites. Try everything!

  BUCKWHEAT CRÊPES with lemon and sugar. Try to find a stall that focuses on foods from Bretagne, as they will usually have the best crêpes.

  JUICY MEDJOOL DATES, prunes, pistachios, and candied strawberries from the dried fruit and nut stalls.

  FORTY-EIGHT-MONTH cave-aged Gruyère especially, but really, all the cheeses!

  WHOLE ROASTED CHICKEN. Be sure to ask for the potatoes roasted in the chicken fat.

  FROMAGE BLANC bought by the carton at the fromagiers. Eat with fresh fruit as a dessert.

  ARTICHOKES. The artichokes in Europe seem so flavorful and much meatier than the imported ones I’ve tried in North America.