Nostalgia: –noun
a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a formertime in one's life, to one's home or
homeland, or to one'sfamily and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness
of a former place or time:
Christmas this year looks a lot different than past years.
Actually, the month of December looks a lot different than it has the past 6.
December as a Chef usually represents a time where personal commitments are second to the demands of the restaurant and food service industry. Christmas parties, family gatherings, even Christmas Day with the family were put on the backburner as hundreds of people filed in to the banquet halls and restaurants of the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver and Newlands Golf and Country Club.
Corporate parties took up the mass majority of these elaborate banquets, and hours were spent in the kitchen prepping and cooking for guests hungry for turkey, ham, stuffing, gravy, and pumpkin pie. Christmas day at the Fairmont was a time when families would come to Griffins restaurant and feast on the many dishes featured on the Christmas day buffet. I spent those times cooking halibut a la minute, saucing, plating and garnishing an assortment of dishes, and replacing dishes on the buffet.
With all this commotion, there were rare times when I would be able to enjoy time with family.
Christmas visits were short, with present unwrapping and meals sandwiched between work and other plans. Home, it seems, had become a strange place to me.
Most people who know me don’t know me as a home body. To be brutally honest, time with family was never a high priority on my list of things to do. It seems the language barrier between my parents and I has proven to be a factor in a lack of deepened relationship with them. On top of that, with my sister in Victoria studying music and my brother busy with work and his hobbies, there wasn’t much pulling me home. So Christmas this year would be a special one.
With Squeah life, December is the complete opposite of the rest of the food industry. December is slow, and groups are sparse. Most of my time was spent composing recipes and planning renovations. With apprenticeship planning and research on the trends of the industry, most of my days were spent in the office. Though my heart is in the kitchen, this time has its many perks, one of which is a good chunk of time spent at home for Christmas.
This year was going to be different. This was my chance to reconnect with my family.
December 23rd, my 25th birthday, began with a shift in the kitchen, and ended with a feast of sushi in the dining room of my parents’ house in Surrey. Salmon, tuna, lightly cooked mackerel were all beautifully sliced and laid gently on a small clump of perfectly cooked rice. Unagi, or freshwater eel, was sliced thin and topped on the traditional California roll to produce the Dragon roll. Dynamite rolls, tobbiko nigiri, ebi, and house rolls made up the rest of the platters and we enjoyed these clean tastes with an equally clear and crisp green tea. This is a tradition that my parents have for me, and we have practiced it for many years. It was beginning to feel like Christmas.
Then came a special time spent with my dad. We went through his knife collection, and I was able to see with my own eyes some of the knives he had used as a chef when he was younger. The highlight of this time was when my dad willingly gave me his first chef’s knife, a 12 inch Japanese chef’s knife, one he used when he was 18 years old. The very steel that was in my father’s hands in 1961 would be in my hands. I know that cutting an onion will seem different, knowing that the knife did the same motions almost 50 years ago.
Christmas Eve was an eventful one, with 5 of my parents’ friends coming over for a potluck. I don’t remember the last time I was able to cook for my parents, which is quite the sad fact, considering how many people I do cook for, and so I was able to spend time with my dad in the kitchen. We peeled and cut and sliced as we prepared a few dishes for the potluck. I made warm potato salad with hardboiled egg and sliced onion and carrot, and sautéed prawns finished with garlic, butter and freshly squeezed lemon juice. An afternoon of fellowship and good food followed, and I was even able to show off my catering photo albums and show people what I was doing with my time. The evening ended with a trip down to Olivet Church for the Christmas Eve service.
Then today came; Christmas day, 2010. I was able to sleep in, and when I woke, I woke up to my room. I woke up to the light green color of my walls, sprinkled with a bit of graffiti, from a day when I tried out some new spray paint a few years ago. I walked up the stairs and the decorations were the same; glittery wreaths going up the railing of the stairs, a small tree and some ornamental decorations on a table on the top of the stairs. It was the same as in years past, but unlike years past, I was able to enjoy it for the whole day. I had some duck and squab marinating from the night before so I put it in the oven. We had a church service as a family. In years past, we used to have a big Christmas celebration as Surrey Mennonite Church. We used to get about 40 people at those services, the biggest showing of the year. We would start with the regular traditional service and then had a music recital section of the service, where my brother, sister and I would do different things as well as some of the younger people in the church. My dad and two other men would always sing “We three kings” in Japanese, there would be skits, and it would be a great time! With the number of members in that church diminishing, it was just the family for the service this year. My grandparents and immediate family sat at our dining table and had church. It was a blast from the past. The order of the service was the same, the songs were familiar, and the message was actually one that our first pastor of Surrey Mennonite Church had given in 1994. My dad had brought it up from then and used the same outline to give the message today. Although my Japanese isn’t as good as before, I was still able to keep up and understood most of the message. We then gave that pastor a call as a family. Her name is Anna Dyck, and she now lives in Drake, Saskatchewan. She was a missionary in Japan for a number of years and started our church in Surrey back in the early 90’s. It was great to catch up with her and tell her what has been going on in our lives. So much has changed, and yet some things are still the same. After opening presents, we had dinner. We had dinner as an entire family, just like we did for years when I was still in high school. Every Sunday morning we would have a meal as an entire family before going to church. It brought back many happy memories. We had roast duck and squab, farmer sausage with Dijon mustard, white rice, French baguette, squid sautéed with soy and ginger, and mixed greens with ponzu dressing. As I looked around the table, I saw the happy faces of my mom and dad, looking around to see three generations of the Takeda family all at one table. As the tender and fatty duck got devoured and as the feeling of cold butter on warm baguette and acidic and crisp baby greens repeatedly washed down the taste of farmer sausage with Dijon, I realized that this is the essence of Christmas. Christ was born on this day. He was born on this day to set us free, so we could enjoy life with hope. He was born on this day so that as we sit and eat and enjoy the company around us, we know that we are the luckiest people on earth, because Christ died for you and me.
Merry Christmas.
