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This has been a good week overall. Beginning Sunday, when we enjoyed a health- and safety-conscious birthday celebration for our middle grandchild; a holiday Monday, when I re-ordered my meds (to be available for pickup Wednesday after 1 PM); then Tuesday, we replenished our cat supplies, ordering online and doing a curb-side pickup after lunch. When we got home from picking up, we ordered beer from Beyond the Pale.

Wednesday we got our BtP beer delivery and after lunch we went to the drugstore to get my meds (except for one, that has been delayed due to a billing problem). I was happy to get a 3-month supply of two of my four meds; for a third one, the one to keep osteoporosis at bay, I only got a 1-month supply, i.e. a single pill with plenty of excess packaging. I think I'll ask about that whenever they get in touch to tell me the Celebrex billing is resolved. But anyway, we did take advantage of our presence in the drug store to get some fill-in groceries: milk, cream and paper towels.

Thursday Parkdale Market was open, so we went there to replenish our tomato and leaf lettuce supply, as well as buying corn on the cob (which we enjoyed for lunch), a basket of strawberries and a locally grown cantaloupe. After that, we went to nearby Jamal and enjoyed cappuccinos on their patio - the first time we've done that since the great lockdown in March. Then in the afternoon, I baked up Betty Crocker's one-egg cake (remembering this time to freeze one layer, since last time, I let the cake grow mouldy in our breadbox!) to go with the strawberries and cream.

Yesterday (Friday), we didn't actually go anywhere much (we did do our regular neighbourhood walk), but with the weather being cooler and more temperate, we sat outside at lunchtime to enjoy our bagels and cream cheese. In the evening we had our traditional taco dinner with beer and strawberry shortcake for dessert.

And this morning, after enjoying our Parkdale cantaloupe, I baked up blueberry muffins with the last of the frozen blueberries bought in the early days of lockdown.

So maybe today's entry has conveyed the impression that I'm quite preoccupied with my tummy? Well, tomorrow I'll write about something else. Maybe all the great reading matter that's come my way of late?

Food security. Food deserts. The hundred kilometre or hundred metre diet. Eating disorders. Comfort food. Discomfort food. Fast food. Slow food. Vegetarianism. Veganism. Maybe we are what we eat, but our relationship with food can certainly be conflicted and complicated!

These days we tend pretty much to go with the flow food-wise. Today, for example, we went up to the Shouldice Farms stand on Prince of Wales, bought strawberries and tomatoes, and proceeded on to Parkdale Market where we got some of the first local corn of the season, some blueberries, some broccoli, some more tomatoes (little one this time) and some green peppers. We cooked up the corn for lunch and then went to Purple Cow and had ice cream cones for dessert.

In the summer and the fall, when good fresh food is in season, life's good. I can eat strawberries every day throughout the local growing season and never get tired of them. Add a dash of Grand Marnier (which we've come to refer to as "joy juice") and some whipped cream and angel food cake, and that's even better. And I think for sure there's a blueberry pie and maybe a few blueberry muffins in our not-too-distant future! We did give Haskap berries a try this year too - not bad but not as good as blueberries (though they're apparently much hardier and can survive lower temperatures.

Strawberries are something I liked as a child too. I may or may not have related in this blog the story of how, at the age of about seven or eight, I broke out in hives all over my body. Alarmed, my mother took me to the paediatrician and the only thing she could think of that could have caused them was the strawberries I'd eaten the evening before. She said that moving forward I should generally avoid strawberries but after I recovered, perhaps occasionally risk "literally one strawberry" and see what happened.

I probably didn't eat too many more strawberries for the rest of that summer, but of course once they literally became forbidden fruit, I craved them all the more. When they were subsequently reintegrated into my diet, I had no further recurrences of hives and strawberries and strawberry shortcake once again took their place as one of my favoured desserts.

When my daughter was going to day care (between the ages of five and eight), there used to be field trips to pick berries every summer. In those days, she wasn't too crazy about the berries themselves but liked the cream and cake! That changed as she got older and her kids are fond of berries too, especially blueberries!

Corn is a bit of a different story. I rarely ate corn when I was growing up and from my mother's perspective, corn was something you fed to the chickens! My dad was a little more open-minded about food, I think - in fact, he often used to polish off the food that no one else wanted. My mother had various comments about the matter, one of her commonest being that he was "digging his grave with his teeth". He was, however, very thin and frail during his last days and weeks, so I seriously doubt that it was anything he ate that ultimately finished him off!

Anyway, corn on the cob is another of those foods that I rarely get tired of - though it's certainly helpful to have the dental floss close at hand afterwards!

Looking back at the title I chose for this post, I realize I haven't really said much about UNEASY relationships with food. I think I was planning to comment on things like the recent Netflix video about eating disorders in which Lily Collins (who herself battled an eating disorder) starred, or the recent evidence about the dangers of artificial sweeteners and wire barbecue brushes, or the requirement for restaurant chains to post calorie counts for their offerings... but that'll have to wait for another day.