Ottawa man (almost) struck by lightning
It was the Monday afternoon of the Canada Day long weekend and everything was going to be perfect.
Sarp Kizir, a public servant, diehard foodie and sometime Ottawa food writer, was doing what he loved to do and preparing a meal for his girlfriend, Nancy Wood, who was en route to his place after a weekend of camping.
Headlining the menu would be chicken and beef tacos, fresh salad, a rice and bean dish, guacamole, tortillas and the kicker — a salsa verde, that is, a green salsa, not the factory-produced red stuff. It’s made from tomatillos, also known as Mexican husk tomatoes, which carry a more acidic taste than their red cousins and are best transformed into girlfriend impressing salsa verde by grilling them on the barbecue.
“Everything was being made from scratch, although I did buy the tortillas — but they were a special corn tortilla,” Kizir says. “For the salsa, you need to grill the tomatillos …”
So Kizir fired up the barbecue, and waited for the coals to get hot.
And while he did, a severe weather alert pinged across his phone, warning of thunderstorms in the area. The coming weather didn’t concern the chef. Kizir had cooked in the rain before and, because he finds the sound of the rain meditative, he started filming it as it fell.
“I document everything,” he says. “And it was this nice little rain shower, and I liked the scene of the barbecue flames wafting about, and I thought I could turn it into a mesmerizing meditation video I could use in the future — because I am really into that.
“I watch meditation videos to fall asleep to every night — super soothing, super relaxing stuff.”
Thunder crashed, a nice effect, thought Kizir, staying in the Zen moment until, in the next moment, lightning zapped down into his backyard.
“I could feel the reverberation, a pop — in the air — and a loud clap, right above my head, and it was so fast and so strong and so close,” he says. “I didn’t see an actual bolt. But I sensed a flash, the light.”
“I was scared, paranoid, and then I made eye contact with my door and I thought, ‘Here is my plan: I am going to go under the roof and slide inside and get out of harm’s way.”
And he did knowing he had survived some kind of cosmic near miss with near certain disaster. (According to Environment Canada, the country experiences over 2 million lightning strikes a year. Despite our relatively short summer lightning season, about 10 people are killed annually by lightning.)
Once the adrenalin rush ebbed away, the foodie went to check on his coals — perfect — then brushed his tomatillos in olive oil and got cooking.
And the verdict? “Dinner was a hit,” Kizir says. “My girlfriend loved it.”