Singing

Gary had to cancel our scheduled lesson on the 4th because he had the WorstColdEver(tm), and so I finally had a chance to meet him last Friday.

He told me his theory of singing instruction, which I won't bother to repeat here - suffice to say that he has over thirty years teaching experience, and everything he explained made sense to me, and hey, I have no basis of comparison.

That said, he said that he teaches unlike pretty much every other voice coach out there, but it worked very well for me.

I've always thought I had a good ear for music, as does my wife, but it was still good for the ego to hear Gary tell me I had a really good instinct for music, and that furhtermore I took instruction exceptionally well.

We spent the first part of the lesson going over the basics of the human voice, how we make sound (which Gary termed "the human grunt") and how to turn it into not only musical sounds, posture, breathing, and so forth. I had brought along some music (Comedian Harmonists and Ensemble Six) as samples of what I wanted to be able to sing well some day, although I also want to sing Nessun Dorma, Toreador, and other opera arias that are just plain fun to sing.

In seemingly no time, I was singing scales, and if you've ever heard an operatic singer warming up, well, that's what I was doing although with frequent coaching, variations on technique, and practice practice practice.

Gary said he was going to be my "instant feeback mechanism", and that he would keep raising the bar as we went along. Indeed, in our first hour, he says, we did a lot more than he usually does with a new student.

Interestingly enough, he told me not to practice before our next lesson so he wouldn't have to undo anything. So, I'm keeping my end of the bargain so far, but still singing along with my favoiurite songs the same old way I ever have.

I've signed up for lessons until the end of the month, but I'll definitely carry on until the end of the summer. Hopefully grad school this fall will allow me to carry on with the singing too.

Bishop's

My beautiful wife's favourite restaurant in Vancouver is Bishop's (http://www.bishopsonline.com), and I must say it's one of mine as well. Since it was her birthday last Thursday, I took her there for dinner.

The service, as always, was impeccable, and the food was delicious. The whole wheat pumpkin seed soda bread that came was particularly tasty.

I had probably the best fresh raw oysters I've had (and not a grain of grit to be found, which with raw oysters is an amazing feat), followed by a splendid grilled breast of duck with sweet potato mash and seasonal vegetables, and the chocolate hazelnut torte for dessert.

For her, the cream of asparagus soup, Dungeness crab cake, and crème brulée. Everything was fabulous and we have a wonderful meal.

We also took advantage of the "new" law that says you can take leftover wine home. This might seem like a small thing, but what it does is open up the wine list when there are only two of you dining. Just about every restaurant has wine by the glass and a small selection of hald bottles; but, the wines by the glass tend to be, without being a snob about it, ordinary, and the selection of half bottles is quite limited.

When there are only two of you, and you've both had a pre-dinner drink, and one has to drive home afterwards, it doesn't make sense to have a full bottle of wine. The ability to take the rest home is the perfect compromise.

The sommelier suggested the Noble Ridge Pinot Noir to go with our dinner, and it was fantastic - an excellent pick to go with out excellent meal.

Charcuterie

This is posted a week after the fact, but then, just like the products of charcuterie, a little time makes a good thing better.

Last Tuesday, the local Slow Food chapter organized a tour of the Oyama Sausage production plant down in the industrial area under the Oak Street Bridge. There, we were allowed to sample very generous servings of a wide selection of their wonderful products and given a tour.

John van der Lieck has been in the charcuterie business for a very long time, and has been here in Vancouver for over 20 years, making and selling his fantastic products.

What is charcuterie I hear you ask? Well, a simple answer would be "it's about sausages and hams" - but there's a lot more to it than that. These days, many companies make sausages and hams (and not always very good ones), but classic charcuterie was all about preserving meat for later consumption. As John put it so succinctly, "if you want to understand charcuterie, think of a European winter."

And it's actually as simple as that. In the days before refrigeration, people wanted to have food available in the winter and into spring so they would have something to eat before the bountiful fruits of summer and crops of the fall. Meat was a particularly valuable commodity, and the Europeans developed all manner of techniques to preserve meat - every combination one can think of to salt, smoke, and spice meat so it would keep.

There are many books available on the subject, so I will not comment further on preservation methods - suffice to say that if you're interested, I'm sure you can use Google and the library as well as anyone else.

Every meat product they sell at the Oyama store is made at their plant, and everything they make at the plant is sold exclusively through the store. They use special breeds of pig and boar for their sausages, hams, and salamis, and the choice comes through in the rich flavour of the meat. One particular delight at the sample table was a ham which was over a year old that had been brined in ale and treacle and smoked for three months.

I have always liked their products, but I am thoroughly impressed by John's passion for his craft, a craft which is slowly dying out as large corporations make bland generic hams for the mass market.

If you haven't tried Oyama sausages, terrines, hams, and salamis, you need to go to Granville Island soon and try their products out.

Vancouver truly is a foodie's paradise.