The Cassis Not Taken is Sweetened by the Imagination: a visit to the food bank

           

            On Wednesday, I went down to the food bank at about 10:00 as usual, but unusually, I found no line-up. The door was open, and Joe the manager was standing, smoking in the doorway. When I passed him to enter, he informed me that they would be opening at 12:30. I got number 10, which was the lowest ever, and wondered where everybody was. It was a food bank mystery.

            When I was unlocking my bike, someone else arrived who Joe told that the 12:30 start time was from now on.

            I was so unused to having an hour less time to return, that after doing all the stuff that I normally do in between, there was no time to shave and shower like I’d planned. I would have to do that when I came back home with my food.

            At 12:30, all the usual people were in the driveway, so it seems they had not been sucked into a blackhole, but had rather just come later than usual to get their numbers.

            The big, friendly young woman, who also speaks Polish, was telling the Latin American regulars that she would like to know more Spanish. She said that she only knew a few words, to which Joe added, “Yeah, and they’re all swear words!”

            Once I was inside, I had about a five-minute wait before Theresa called my number. We lingered at the first top shelf because there were a lot of little jars of obscure gourmet condiments, such as Riesling apple mustard and porter pepper mustard. There was a just as short but wider jar with a dark hue that she was curious about because she couldn’t figure out what it contained. I looked at the ingredients and found that they seemed to be only in French. I saw “cassis” and told her that it was blackberry, but I was wrong about that. I’d forgotten that cassis is actually black currant. There was another word in the ingredients that I couldn’t make sense of because it was “filles”, which means “girls” and I was pretty sure they weren’t putting girls into jam, so I wondered if there was something else that “filles” represented. I didn’t realize until later that what I was reading weren’t the ingredients but rather the name of the company, which had fooled me because it wasn’t in capital letters. The company is “Cassis Monna and Filles”, which is Cassis Monna and Daughters. Cassis though is not Monna’s first name but rather the specialty of the company, which is black currant wines and liqueurs. Apparently they came from France to Quebec and they are the only makers of blackcurrant wine in the province. There’s a charming photo of Bernard Monna with his two lovely daughters on their website. In the jar was probably a blackcurrant jam they make or made as a sideline. Anyway, I picked the pepper mustard. Theresa gave me the apple mustard as well and asked me to let her know how it was. The pepper mustard tasted a little better than the apple mustard, but both were bitter and not even as good as cheap commercial yellow mustard. I should have taken the cassis compote. I took a box of Vegetable Thins crackers and from the lower shelf I got some granola bars. I’m still not in need of pasta, rice or sauce, so I skipped those shelves. There were a couple of small containers of applesauce and one raspberry equivalent, so I took those. Of the soups, as I’d suspected I would, I found the can of Campbell’s prime rib and sweet potato soup that I’d gotten last time disappointing. Why is it that their boxed gourmet soups are delicious and yet their canned soups taste like dog food? In the last row, behind a fort made of boxes of chocolate cereal, Theresa found me one box of Honey Nut Harvest Crunch.

            Across the aisle in Sue’s section there was a choice between a litre of almond milk and two litres of Oasis Health Break mixed juices. I took the juice because almond milk tastes like chalk. There was a choice between an Eastern Chef meal or a bag of frozen fish fillets. It’s an off choice between one small meal and three meals. I took the fish. There was a tub of onion dip and a bag of four all-dressed pizza slices. I took a loaf of multi-grain from the bread section and a few pieces of fruit from the vegetable lady. It was a better haul at the food bank this time than usual.