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of a good meal.
    A hint of pink flushed Nick’s granite jaw. “Like,” he continued, “I give Gus a shopping list and all, but he never buys me the best stuff. He snaps up the leftover baked goods and produce at closing time, when the store is practically giving them away.”
    “I see you’ve got a lot of no-name products.”
    “Nothing wrong with no-name. It’s the wilted veggies I hate. Okay for soups and purées. But a nice Sunday dinner? Forget it.”
    Puréed meals would be the ultimate drag for a cook. No art in them, and little flavour. But that’s all the Mountain Wing patients would be able to handle without teeth. And most of them had forgotten how to swallow. “I guess you whiz a lot of stuff in the blender in a place like this,” Zol said.
    Nick gave a rueful smile at being understood by a colleague. “I’ll say.”
    Natasha pulled a large plastic bag from the bottom of a chest freezer. She grunted at the effort of dislodging it. Frosty condensation obscured the bag’s contents, but Zol could just make out what appeared to be a jumble of vegetables — corn, celery, broccoli, and a couple of beets.
    “What’s this?” Natasha asked. “This stuff should be labelled and dated.”
    “Hey —” Nick chuckled “— we use everything up so fast we don’t waste time with dating.”
    “But what is it?” said Zol. “At least the bag should be labelled.”
    Nick shrugged. “
I
can tell they’re veggies.”
    “All thrown together?” said Natasha. She lifted out another bag. “And what about these?”
    “Bread and baked goods. Gus puts everything in the freezer after his shopping trips.”
    Natasha replaced the heavy bags and shut the freezer. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter if the vegetables are all mixed up if you’re going to zap them in the blender anyway.”
    Zol fingered the loonie in his pocket as he watched Nick taste the soup the Asian man with the pockmarked cheeks had been stirring on the stove. Even if the Oliveiras did their shopping at the end of the day, and at down-market places like Food-Club and Price-Slashers, it wouldn’t cause food poisoning. But it bothered him to see good food thrown carelessly together like that. Even if it didn’t violate any regulations, it seemed a sacrilege. The quality of the meals at places like this was a constant preoccupation among the residents. And why not? They had a right to their money’s worth.
    “What about the meals in the dining room?” Zol asked. “Surely, the Belvedere Wing residents expect good food?”
    “Yeah,” Nick agreed, “they know a proper meal when they see one. Get gussied up for dinner every night. And won’t touch slimy zucchini or mushy cauliflower, even with the brown spots cut off.” He turned to his helpers and chuckled. “Gus’s beaten-up broccoli comes back untouched every time, eh boys?”
    The men nodded, tight-lipped, except for the Somali beanpole fellow whose toothy grin lit up his dark face. Zol pictured them scraping “untouched” vegetables off dirty plates and whizzing them into soup. It wouldn’t be so bad if they boiled them before recycling them. Testing the soup for infectious pathogens was suddenly a top priority.
    Nick chuckled nervously, a cast of guilt in his eyes. “Tranh hates the smell of broccoli no matter how it’s cooked.”
    While Natasha checked out the pantry, Zol poked around the kitchen. It felt good to be back inside a professional place. His own kitchen gave him a great view over the city and the lake, but a home kitchen was small potatoes. This place had real muscle. The penny-pinching Oliveiras hadn’t scrimped on equipment. The gas stove sported six turbo burners. The pots had thick copper bottoms. And the huge cast-iron frying pan gleamed with the beautifully cured surface only an expert knew how to care for.
    Zol approached Tranh, the short guy standing by the stove, and asked if he could stir the soup. He’d always loved the satisfaction of swirling a