Dibah grew up in France, where the table isn't where you refuel — it's where you live. Lunch at school was an hour, sometimes two. Dinner was the reason to come home.
Living abroad since seventeen, she watched that slip away: in England everyone meets at the pub after work and stays late — but when is dinner? In Canada she heard children take a sandwich to school and eat it at their desk, the same desk where they study. Some of the best conversations of a life happen around a meal — in the making, the eating, the excuse of an occasion to gather.
Becoming a mother sharpened it into the ingredients themselves. In France you just buy a chicken — poulet fermier — and it's good. Is the chicken here the same? Why are the eggs on the counter there and in the fridge here? Why does the fruit look perfect in the store and taste better from a market stall in the south of France?
And it became a running argument between the two of us — the rib-eye, the pastéis de nata, eggs on the counter. Arif keeps bringing home the thing that was on sale; Dibah won't budge on the good one. The shop is that argument settled: the things we both finally agree are worth it.
Not more — better. A pantry of the good ones, chosen by hand, brought to your table in Edmonton.
Dibah & Arif