Welcome to another “change-of-scenery” guest post from my young-old friend Jim Ferguson.

This time out, James is casting his “Oregon eye” on some very interesting cuisinery experiences he’s had the rare opportunity – and gustatory courage – to try out.

Feel free to share back with Jim some of your more intriguing food experiences.

So now friends, without further delay… here’s Jim.

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Once again, Sir Lawrence – has asked me for a guest blog contribution and as usual I am happy to bail out my old friend and give his brain a rest for a week or so.

It is timely too because I have been pondering my grandmother of late and that has opened the door to some ponderings on eating etiquette and food experiences.

How in the heck do you make that leap you might ask?

Well, you are just going to have to read on for the answer. I suspect you will read on because who doesn’t enjoy a good discussion about FOOD, n’est-ce pas!!!

Like many children, I was a bit of a messy eater. Okay! I was more like the Muppets character Cookie Monster devouring his cookies when it came to my childhood eating habits.

My poor mother was a saint for having to clean up after my older brother and me after meals.

My father was oft heard to say “Geez…were you born in a pig sty?” In fact, I heard that so often in my childhood that the whole stork theory ranked second behind the pig sty theory as to where babies came from. I was convinced that just maybe I DID emerge from a pig sty!

I guess it is reasonable to assume that most babies and toddlers are a bit messy when it comes to the finer points of eating. Back then, it wasn’t about taste but more about quantity and how fast you could shovel in the food – pure unadulterated gluttony!

As I grew older my dear Scottish grandmother contributed her sage advice towards refining my eating etiquette as only Scottish grandmothers can.

Wee youngster Jim and Grandmother Nina in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

Nina, as we called her, was a stout Scot who made her way across the Atlantic to marry my granddad in the late 1920s. Nina arrived in Quebec City and shortly after was married and suddenly she found herself pioneering in the Lac St. Jean region of Quebec.

She always had a bit of an “edge” to her and maybe this was born of her harsh life in the Quebec wilderness. I could get a smile from her from time to time but they were few and far between.

She was prim and proper and an imposing figure to this wee lad. Nary a hair was ever out of place.

She and granddad would occasionally visit us when I was growing up in Nova Scotia.

I have vivid memories of Nina telling to get my elbows off the table otherwise there could be profound social repercussions. When Nina spoke-I tended to listen!

I could not imagine what social repercussions were so important that I had to get my elbows off the table, but my grandma set me straight. I can still hear her words of wisdom saying to me in her Scottish brogue “Awe Jimmy, how do you ever expect to have supper with the Queen if you keep putting your elbows on the table?”

Queen Elizabeth had been making trips to Canada regularly back in the 1960s. In fact, she came through Halifax-Dartmouth area in Nova Scotia where I spent my younger years and had been taught the “wrist-wrist, elbow-elbow” wave that was appropriate for Her Majesty.

However, never once did I for a moment imagine that HRH was going to stop by 27 Penhorn Drive in Dartmouth to invite me for supper.

That wasn’t on my radar and, in fact, if she had stopped by, I suspect I would have run in the opposite direction screaming (think Kevin McAllister from the Christmas classic “Home Alone” running with flailing arms, screaming up the stairs, hiding under his parents bed…yup….that probably would have been me).

Now, if HRH had been a Montreal Canadiens hockey fan and brought my favourite player – Yvan Cournoyer – with her, well that would have been a different story all-together…

Well… I am now 64-years old and still no supper date with the royals on the horizon. My life is incomplete.

Still… I have learned other food pearls over the course of my lifetime as, no doubt, you have too.

I suspect Larry has more to share on this theme as he and Maureen are much more worldly-wise than I with their globetrotting over the past few decades. I did, however, learn a few choice pearls along the way besides keeping my elbows off the table.

During our Yellowknife days, Larry was quite the chef.

I recall him “relishing” (pun intended) in knowing his way around the kitchen (why else would Maureen ever have married the lad from Hamilton, right?) and in fact I was on the receiving end of his cooking talents and can attest to the fact that Chef Boyardee has nothing on Larry.

For my part, I learned how to make stew in the Arctic town, Yellowknife, in the mid-1970s.

I was living with a First Nations family at the time. Roy was Ojibwe First Nations, and Rosa, Dogrib First Nations, from a village just down Great Slave Lake from Yellowknife.

They had 4 kids but still opened their home and hearts for me to stay with them for several months.

Roy and Rosa taught me how to make a great stew and that very few ingredients were off limits.

I was never a fan of stew and so my first inclination was to politely decline the offer, but I’m glad that I allowed myself to experience Roy and Rosa’s stew. There were lots of vegetables and spices, and of course gently-browned beef tender to the bite. It really was delectable.

We were all part of the Yellowknife Baha’i community and the group used to host a unique event called the “caribou unity stew”.

The Baha’i community of Yellowknife, always looking for ways to bring people together, would host caribou unity stews 3-4 times annually where we would rent a public hall with a kitchen facility and invite as many people to come as possible with the idea that everyone had to bring something to add to the stew pot.

The Baha’is provided the caribou and everyone else brought the other ingredients: potatoes, celery, corn, rice, carrots, etc.

It was lots of fun and I have from time to time held similar events over the years but never quite replicating those fantastic Yellowknife events.

It was always a mystery what would end up in the stew because one never knew what special ingredient guests would bring. The stews were delicious and during the winter months the meat was freshly harvested and cooked to perfection. If you recall the Galloping Gourmet – Graham Kerr – savouring every morsel of his creation, well, you get the picture…

It was also in Yellowknife that I was exposed to my version of poutine.

I was living on very little money and would go into the old Yellowknife Inn and amble along the cafeteria line and order a pop and a plate of fries with brown gravy and cheese to which I would add ketchup. I think that experience not only added a few pounds to my girth but tested my gut constitution to the max… All-in-all, my Yellowknife days were filled with food experimentation opportunities.

A number of years later, in the mid-1990s, I spent 2 months in the Republic of Guyana in South America helping with a rural health project.

Guyana has a large segment of the population from India living in the capital city of Georgetown.

I fell in love with many of the traditional foods and spices from India. Still, to this day, just the thought of a lamb vindaloo meal starts my mouth to watering. It was also the first time I saw people plunge their hands into food with gusto.

That was a huge “No No” in my family.

I was taught to NEVER launch hands first into food but in Guyana I overcame this family norm and “dove right in”. As the old saying goes, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. Well, in Guyana, I did as the Guyanese did.

When I left the big city of Georgetown to go to the remote Rupununi region to participate in the health project, I learned about eating food right out of the fire – mostly freshly harvested chicken, beef, pork, or fish. If you wanted to eat, you had to eat simply. Rice was the staple with every meal with some meat or other and lots of spices.

Later on, in Alaska, I learned to sample foods that were way off my food radar.

There are traditional foods consumed by the Eskimo peoples of NorthWest Alaska (they refer to themselves as Eskimo so I will use that term).

These foods included “black meat”, seal oil, whale blubber (muktuk), whale meat, seal, walrus meat and blubber, and exotic local bird (murre) eggs, to name but a few.

As Larry will attest, I am sure, when in a different culture, if someone offers you food you humbly accept with gratitude (at least for a taste). Well… in Alaska, I was offered all the above and sampled it all on more than one occasion.

Much of the harvested food was dipped in seal oil. Seal oil was such a staple of the Eskimo culture that it was not unusual to smell the oil emanating from the skin pores of the people who consumed this on a regular basis.

For someone who was not a regular consumer of the traditional Eskimo diet, I learned that many of these foods were an acquired taste, especially the “black meat” which was mainly seal, walrus, or reindeer meat left to dry on a rack for a week or longer until blackened and then eaten with seal oil. The meat was often tough to chew – like eating jerky – but the seal oil helped soften it up a bit.

Muktuk was made more palatable by dipping it in teriyaki sauce, a trick I learned from the locals. It was rubbery in texture. Sushi lovers would have a field day with much of the traditional cuisine.

My first experience cooking murre eggs was quite a shock.

The murre lay their eggs in the cliffs near the village and these are collected at great risk by the village folk. I was given the large eggs regularly.

I was told not to fry them like a regular egg, but… I had forgotten this important advice. I threw on some bacon and fried up an egg (they are huge) and soon discovered it was just like eating fish! Surprise! Surprise! The murre survive by eating fish so why would I think the eggs would taste otherwise? If you boil the eggs, they taste less fishy. Lesson learned.

Today, here I am at 64-years old, retired, and no longer with elbows on the table.

I still sit by the phone waiting for the Queen to call me for our long overdue supper date.

COVID-19 has curtailed any international travel plans thus limiting my exposure to new and exciting gustatory opportunities.

I am, however, left with wonderful memories of what has been.

I also know that as a dual citizen of Canada and the United States, I can, at least, plan a trip to Summerland, BC one of these years (Covid permitting) for a home-cooked meal from the kitchen of the “musical gourmet” – Sir Lawrence – in return for an evening of mandolin and guitar playing and lots of singing.

Now I wait for Larry’s call – let’s just hope he isn’t in league with the Queen.

Peace, Jim