An Anthology of Food & Feelings

Plus a mini-essay on the morale lifting power of black bean soup

My favourite part of any cookbook are the headnotes, the short introductory paragraph or section preceding a recipe that offers additional context and information about the dish. The best ones share the author’s personal connection or backstory in a way that lends an extra bit of depth to the recipe. In my humble opinion, Deb Perelman is the queen of this, imparting each page in a Smitten Kitchen cookbook with an excellent anecdote or point of view.

So imagine my delight when I came across My First Popsicle: An Anthology of Food & Feelings at my local library. Curated by Zosia Mamet, it’s like an entire book of headnotes. The anthology is full of short essays by dozens of contributors exploring meaningful memories centered around food. It’s a lovely read, with some stand-out pieces from Patti Smith, Gabourey Sidibe, and David Sedaris.

In the spirit of this book, I decided to do something a little bit different with this issue of the newsletter. Below, I’ve included my own short essay on a dish that has special meaning to me and evokes memories of rainy days in the wilds of Algonquin Park.

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Backcountry black bean soup

My first experience with the transcendent power of backcountry food was during a family canoe trip. It was the end of August, and I was eight years old. I had a bowl cut, khaki cargo shorts, and only wore Teva sandals for the entire summer. My parents, brother, sister, and our family friends were in Algonquin Park for a week, the vast expanse of wilderness north of Toronto. The family friends had a teenage son, and his French exchange student had joined for the canoe trip.

It rained the entire week. This was not west coast summer rain that pummels for half a day before burning off into a milky mist. Ontario rain settles in and puts down roots, a dull, seemingly endless thrum of precipitation that drowns your optimism. The bite of fall weather had descended early and our campsite was full of mud puddles. We were all beginning to go stir crazy after hours spent napping, reading, and playing cards in the damp tent. The French exchange student shivered in his pastel raingear, a pained expression on his face.

In the mid-afternoon, my dad boiled water and prepared a big pot of instant spicy black bean soup, and we all gathered under the tarp in a circle, cupping the chipped blue camping bowls in cold hands. The soup was thick, with whole black beans and onions, and deliciously salty. We followed it with mugs of powdered hot chocolate, its startling sweetness as comforting as the temporary warm feeling it left in my chest. It was such a simple meal, eaten in such a basic way, but it made me feel more comfortable and at home in the woods.

I wasn’t the only one soothed by the soup. When I looked up and caught a glimpse of the exchange student across the tarp from me, I noticed he looked at least 25 per cent less shell-shocked from his introduction to Canadian canoe tripping as he had pre-soup. We’ve never talked about it, but I know with one spoonful of black bean soup, my brother, sister, and I would all be transported back to that waterlogged campsite on North Tea Lake.

Thanks for reading!