Eats, shoots (pics), and leaves

Food vendors, Tinder fellers, and the best way to eat yoghurt

I feel I owe my inspiration this week to

Willow Kean

and her recipes that come wrapped in the most engaging stories. I don’t have the kitchen skills to give you any recipes, but I do have a sizeable cache of memory-inducing food photos.

When I was a kid, my familiarity with produce was limited to apples, oranges, root vegetables, occasionally the exotic treat of a banana, and grapes at Christmastime. If you tried to tell me the coconut Mom sprinkled on her cakes was a fruit, I’d wouldn’t have believed you. Sobeys moved into Clarenville when I was about 11, and that’s when I first tasted green pepper—Mom started adding it to everything she cooked, chopped tiny and sprinkled in as if it were an herb.

Montenegro mornings: Warm krovni and coffee between swims

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The summers I’ve spent in Montenegro, my habit has been to wake up early and go swimming first thing before the waves get too loppy and the people get too tourist-y. (I know I’m one, too, don’t hate on me.) I’d swim, order coffee from the beach bar, then swim again. When my timing was right, I’d be out of the water and catch the doughnut vendor as she passed through with her basket just in time to order my second coffee. Breakfast of champs. When my timing was off, I’d be bobbing about somewhere offshore and see her moving among the sun loungers, “Krovni…krovni…” she’d repeat as she passed by, and me too far out to catch her eye. I wished I could make an arrangement to leave the money on my sunbed so she could leave me the krovni, but I didn’t speak enough of her language to work that out with her.