M^HTaking Stock

Today is a warm day. Notwithstanding the heat, I'm making veal stock today using the Cajun cooker I bought for the deep fried turkey. So as the stock simmers happily outside, I'm inside enjoying a quiet afternoon.

It's funny, but having taken the trouble to attend my 20th high school reunion, I've been thinking about what the heck I've managed to accomplish since those days of potential, when theoretically all options were open to me...

I started an engineering degree, which turned into a comp sci degree, which turned into giving up on the university experience altogether, although that in itself took several years and many thousands of dollars. No surprise really; although I had graduated high school with honours, looking at my transcript from those days, all my A's were in literature, French, German, English, ... and all my B's were in computer science, math, physics, chemistry... Let's just say that my undergrad grades from those days were atrocious.

I had a series of part and full time jobs doing things that were interesting and fun; at one point I had one full time night job and two extensive part time jobs at the same time. There was one week where I went literally from one to the next with no break in between followed by a scant opportunity to sleep, and culminated with a sleep of the dead.

I muddled along happily enough.

But then I had enough of just muddling along and decided to go back to school. I'd picked the program I wanted to do at UCFV in Abbotsford, was making plans on how I was going to pitch it to my parents whose basement I would have had to live in for the duration, even though it would have meant a commute from their place in Chilliwack.

That was right around the time opportunity knocked and I damn ripped the door off its hinges to let it in; I was hired by a high tech company in Vancouver in the winter of 1998, a balmy west coast February, and they required me to have a BA but as part of the benefits package, paid for it.

Life's been pretty rosy ever since. Finished the BA with honours in 2002. Got married a month after graduation to TOIL (the one I love :-). Was laid off by the company that brought me to Vancouver in September and was still an official employee there the day my current employer hired me. Bought a home in Vancouver four or five months after that. Delighted father of a beautiful daughter a touch over a year after that. Started graduate school when she was four months old. I'm looking forward to her being one of the cute little kids that hands their parents flowers when they walk off the podium after getting their degree.

So here I am, making a lovely veal stock, living a modest lifestyle in the beautiful city of Vancouver, working for a high tech company with an education degree and working on a liberal arts masters.

La vie est belle.

A Poetic Salad

This little gem popped into my mailbox today…

Recipe for a Salad
Sydney Smith

To make this condiment your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard-boil'd eggs;
Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen seive,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give.
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, half-suspected, animate the whole.
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites so soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault
To add a double quantity of salt;
Four times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown,
And twice with vinegar procur'd from town;
And lastly o'er the flavour'd compound toss
A magic soupcon of anchovy sauce.
Oh, green and glorious! Oh, herbaceous treat!
Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat;
Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad-bowl!
Serenely full, the epicure would say,
`Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today.

Pondok Indonesia

To celebrate the rain finally coming to give a break to the seemingly and I might add unusually endless series of hot days, we ordered out for dinner. Around the corner from us is a place called Pondok; we've been meaning to try then out ever since we moved into the neighborhood.

I can say I'm sorry I waited so long! While three dishes (satay chicken, a spicy beef stew, and mixed vegetables, plus two orders of rice) came to almost $40, it was an ample quantity for the two of us and it was all delicious.

The satay particularly impressed me - this was no simple peanut butter based peanut sauce but rather a rich complex sauce that kept my palate guessing as to the next flavour that would burst onto my tongue.

The beef stew (Rendang Sapi) was hot, but not the burning heat of chilis like you might get from Szechuan cuisine; while it packed the same punch, the other herbs and seasonings in the dish mitigated the chili oil and left a pleasant taste and feeling behind.

Even the mixed vegetables were exceptionally flavourful and cooked just so.

Highly recommended and a new favourite local locale!

"You haven't changed a bit!"

So my 20th high school reunion was last Friday, and I had a really good time. I took the 3pm ferry to Victoria, and a good thing I'd made a reservation as there was a one sailing wait already. I went stright to my friend J's house (his wedding was in 1991, so my memory's not that bad) and had fun chatting with his wife L and their two very sweet kids.

As we were heading out, J's daughter asked "why do you have to go out again?"
J: We're going to a reunion.
E: What's a reunion?
J: Your mother can tell you all about it, but it's a meeting for people who knew each other once upon a time.

The event was at Swans, which is one of the brewpubs in Victoria.

I had a great time. I reconnected with a few people who were in the "I wonder what happened to..." camp, and had my general curiosity satisfied about how everyone turned out. Of the roughly 50 people who turned up, most were married, some were divorced, many had kids but not all. Several people were, like me, doing a masters degree of one kind or another. In short, results you might expect from a random group of people if you were to do a study.

Kierkegaard said "Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward."

What surprised me the most was how far some people had come to attend. From Vancouver, it's a plausible trip, but people had come from various cities in Alberta and as far away as Saskatchewan.

Of course, despite being 20 years older, everyone kept saying, as they recognized yet another face "You haven't changed a bit!"

That's why we go to reunions. Because for just a brief slice of time, we get to revisit the fork in the road...

To Boldly Go...

Tonight I’m heading to Victoria for my 20^th high school reunion.

If you asked me why, I would be hard pressed to give you an answer save perhaps “I missed the 10 year reunion”, which happened while I was still living in Victoria.

So why am I going?

There’s a series of documentary films, the first of which is called “7 Up!” In 1964, the filmmaker took a group of children, all age 7, and has since revisited them every seven years to see where they are. I watched “35 Up” and it compelling viewing, even though I didn’t know any of the people being documented.“ 42 Up” is the latest and possibly final installment.

So, if nothing else, I’m curious as to how other people turned out. High school at the time I experienced it was a pressure cooker. Every situation was the Most Important Life Event Thing Ever™! Everything that happened was writ large; of course, the perspective of time makes one realize that high school is merely a phase in life, and a rather insignificant one at that.

Of the 203 grads of 1985, there’s only one with whom I have anything one might call regular contact; I was best man at his wedding oh so many years ago (1990? 91? See, I can’t even remember), and we exchange Christmas emails and birth announcements. That’s roughly the extent of it. My good friend S who’s back in town at Emily Carr is a friend from high school days, but he graduated the year before me.

The woman who was our student council president in 1985 is organizing this 20^th reunion; as I browsed through my yearbook last night before bed, reading the little blurbs beside photos of the grads of 2005, I noticed next to her entry that she hoped to become the first female prime minister of Canada. I said I wanted to “design a popular computer” and “make gobs of money”.

And yet, here I go, to meet people who are essentially strangers to see how their lives turned out. I wasn't one of the popular kids in school; indeed, I was one of the nerdy geeks in the enriched program.

Oh well; it’s being held at Swans, a fabulous brewpub I frequented while I was still living in Victoria. If nothing else, the beer will be good!

Cheese Please!

“How can anyone be expected to govern a country with 325 cheeses?”

– General Charles De Gaulle

I love cheese. Among the many things my ancient French genetics have contributed, it’s my liking of all kinds of cheese, everything from hard cheeses like Gruyere and Gouda, to runny Camembert and soft Brie and the deliciously creamy Brillat-Savarin, to the really smelly cheeses like Roquefort and Livarot and Munster.

A couple summer ago, I made an off hand remark that my wife may never let me forget; I said BC cheeses “weren’t there yet”.

She took this to mean I didn’t care for the cheese she had asked me to purchase, but that was not it at all. At the time, the artisan cheese industry in BC was still in its youth; in start up mode you could say. They were producing all manner of things, experimenting and developing flavours for consumption by an eager public. While it was all a lot of fun to try these early efforts, compared to what you could get in Quebec (not that you can buy Quebec cheese here by and large, and a pity it is too) it was nothing special; and in terms of bang for the buck, it was hard for a BC soft cheese to compare to a soft cheese like Le Coutances from France when the latter not only tasted better but also cost less than the former!

Today, two summers later, I am happily eating those words – BC cheese has arrived. Every Saturday at the Farmer’s Market I’m buying curd (as good as anything I ever had in my youth in la belle province) from Little Qualicum Cheeseworks, who also make a very nice Brie and what they call Qualicum Spice, which is a Gouda style cheese infused with garlic, onion, and bell pepper. I love the Tiger Blue from Poplar Grove in the Okanagan. I like the sheep and goat cheeses that are available now too.

Prices for the local cheeses are also now very competitive with the imported stuff, the effect of both maturation of the industry and the strength of the Canadian dollar relative to the Euro.

BC truly is a foodie's paradise.

The Trout Lake Farmer’s Market on Saturdays usually has two cheese makers on site, but most of these cheeses are available from either La Grotta del Formaggio on Commercial Drive or at Les Amis du Fromage on 2^nd between Fir & Burrard.

A Liberal Education

One of the joys of a liberal education, and the term is being used here in the classic context of an interdisciplinary broad based schooling, is that you get to explore ideas, topics, and places that are not part of ones usual quotidian experience.

In the GLS program at SFU, they usually have a travel-study course during the summer. This year, a group went to Italy and Switzerland following the trail of the poet Shelley (among other things).

Next May, a group is going to Scotland – Islay, Isle of Skye, and Edinburgh (and points in between). My wife is keen on the idea, the prof escorting the trip has said my family is welcome to come along, my boss has said I can take the time off, and I get credit toward my degree. Three weeks sampling scotch, talking about literature, visiting sites with a professor who's contributing erudite lectures, I don’t think a liberal education gets better than that!

The Hundred Mile Diet Part Three

The Tyee has an ongoing series called the Hundred Mile Diet; they recently posted the third installment.

The third installment was one I quite enjoyed and could feel kinship with – YES! Finally talking about what’s possible and available locally instead of ranting about the evils of fossil fuels and globalization (both of which are facts of life, like gravity).

Peach season is finally upon us, the tail end of cherry and blueberry season is overlapping this nicely, and there is a bounty of fresh local produce available.

It’s a great time of year!

And once the local fruits and vegetables fade into fall and winter, we’ll start buying bananas and oranges again. Because they’ll be in season, even if they’re not local.

As I Please II...

After nearly a month of houseguests, first my friend S who stayed with us for two and a half weeks followed quickly by my in-laws for the past nine days, we finally have the house back to ourselves. I think it’ll take the next two weeks to recover enough to be fit to go on vacation at the end of the month. Sociable as I am, I am at heart an introvert and need some away-from-everyone time to recharge…

Why I Hate Buffets

Last Wednesday, there was a BBQ held at MOA for the ChemEd 2005 conference. Since my father in law and my wife were both presenting, and my father in law’s friend had a booth at the show, yours truly was a “registered participant” at the event so we all went.

ChemEd is an event for Chemistry teachers. From the outside looking in, I can’t say I was impressed with the event – the session my wife participated ostensibly for two hours when in fact it ended up only being booked for one hour and she had to do all the running around to change rooms an so forth when it wasn’t even her responsibility to do so. However, nobody else seemed interested in taking up the torch… Sigh.

Anyways, the BBQ…

The BBQ was of the usual variety – many buffet tables set up with food and a server at the end doling out the freshly grilled salmon.

The food was quite good, but it was definitely cattle call. There was a rush for seating and we didn’t sit with anyone we knew (not that we knew anyone anyways), there was a line for the food, there was negotiating two plates of food among the gaggle to get back to where my wife and daughter were. URGH!!!

I far prefer table service. I like to relax at my meals.

Culinary Capers

Saturday was a great day from a culinary perspective. My folks came for lunch to see their granddaughter (and visit with us and my in-laws) so I made pizza on the grill.

Pizza on the grill is really quite easy. You need pizza dough (of course), and whatever toppings you care to put on the pizza. We had pepperoni, green peppers, mushrooms, grated mozzarella, pizza sauce, thinly sliced onion, slivers of smoked side bacon from the JN&Z deli and sour cream with nutmeg. The latter three ingredients are for a favourite of mine, the classic Alasace tarte flambée.

To make pizza on the grill you need to make small pizza crusts about half a centimeter thick. Get your grill nice and hot, brush the crust with olive oil, and put it on. It will puff up, so be prepared to deflate it by poking it with your grill tongs. After a few minutes, brush the top with olive oil, flip it over, work quickly to put on your toppings (and only use a thin layer of them, otherwise they won’t cook) and then close the lid. After a few minutes, you have lovely thin crust pizza.

It’s easy, delicious, and will impress your guests. It’s also rustic enough to make a nice communal meal outdoors.

Deep Fried Turkey

Saturday night, I finally made use of the Cajun Cooker I’d bought at Magnet Hardware (it’s the Home Hardware on Commercial Drive) and deep-fried a turkey.

Let me begin with the end result – it was DELICIOUS!!! I’ve never had turkey that moist and juicy before. It was not at all greasy.

Now for the sequence of events… I bought everything I needed, oil, bird, potatoes for fries, and prepped it all. I started heating the oil a little after 4pm, anticipating a 5:30 or so frying… Well, it didn’t work out that way.

I think I need a more powerful burner – the one that came with the kit is a 70K BTU burner, and full out, the oil was rising about 2F every minute. One error was blanching the fries (using the approved Anthony Bourdain Les Halles method) since that caused some water to get into the oil and it took a lot of heat energy to evaporate it off.

It then took a while for the oil to get hot. Once it got to about 330F, the room temperature turkey was lowered into the oil. The oil bubbled happily around the turkey, but the temperature dropped and dropped and dropped some more until it got to 225F and stayed there.

The end result of all this was that the turkey took the 3-3.5 minutes per pound to cook, as advertised; it browned beautifully; it was absolutely delicious! The skin was only crispy in some places, but also fabulous.

There were nine of us feasting that night. Much Riesling was drunk, a beet and potato salad was devoured, a green salad likewise, and the fries, well, they’re an experiment for another day (and in small batches on the stovetop methinks!)

More importantly, it was a lot of FUN! Who knew you could entertain so many people with a boiling pot of oil?

Cats and Turkey

My cat is profoundly fond of turkey, and so, it turns out, was the young female kitten that came to visit while we were sitting outside on Saturday night.

I can only assume she is the cat of someone who moved into the neighborhood recently, as the 1^st would have been moving day and it’s common practice to keep your cat indoors for a week to get used to its surroundings before you let it out. However, she had no collar.

Last night, she came to visit again, and even snuck into the garage, apparently to settle for the night, and after we managed to extract her, found an open window to climb through (sneaking past my cat who’d chased her off Saturday morning when he saw her on the deck) and found my wife and I upstairs!

I put her out, but if she’s around again tonight, I’m going to fill the litter box in the garage and keep her safe until her owners can be found…

Taking Stock

Now that the Great Turkey Experiment has been completed, I need to figure out how to clean the pot – a 30qt pot doesn’t exactly fit in the sink. I have over 40lbs of veal bones and about 10lbs of chicken backs taking up space in my freezer and I’m out of stock of any kind! Inconceivable!

Stock is just convenient to have around. It’s easy to make, but it takes time to simmer and do its thing. It’s also summertime and it’s been very hot lately. Finally, stock is something that is best made in big batches.

As time permits in the near future, I’ll be making stock, outdoors, where it can simmer away happily without turning the house into a sauna.

Veal stock is particularly good as it has a very neutral flavour and is fabulous in both soups and sauces. With such an excess of riches in veal bones, I’m even going to make some demi-glace.

Vancouver’s New Landfill

On Sunday morning I went for a ride around the Stanley Park sea wall. As the summer’s progressed, I’ve been getting fitter and able to sustain a better speed; yesterday I managed to shave 10 minutes off my usual time (admittedly, I was in “workout” mode rather than my usual sightseeing one). Since I was driving my in-laws to the airport later that morning, I was underway before 7am.

As I went past English Bay, it occurred to me that Vancouver doesn’t need to find new landfill site, they could simply use the beach. The amount of garbage on the beach and sidewalks was absolutely disgusting. Even though the city crews had already been working for an hour, they had barely put a dent in the massive amounts of plastic bags and empty 7-11 cups and Subway wrappers.

And on a tangential note, how long does a “temporary detour” need to be in place before it’s actually deemed permanent? More importantly, how long should one tolerate private interests usurping public property?

On the stretch spanning roughly from Plaza of Nations to a little past the Granville Bridge, the Seawall cycle path has been on permanent “detour” for over a year now. The latter stretch is understandable as there has been ongoing condo tower construction. At least there, when they finish various phases, they have made the path accessible and they have even installed pavement to link up a segment that’s currently blocked by construction fencing.

Plaza of Nations is more disturbing however. The Edgewater Casino is there now, and the event planners there have seen fit to extend the modular fencing right to the edge of the retaining wall, thus forcing any pedestrian and cycle traffic out onto Pacific Boulevard. I want my public space back!

Deep Fried Goodness

Today is the day! An experiment in silliness, I bought a Cajun cooker - a device one uses to do, among other silly things, deep fried whole turkeys!

After spending the time and effort to acquire all the bits, we're going to have some friends over to join in on the silliness and eat turkey and pommes frites.

A Fine Weekend Indeed

This past weekend was quite pleasant. The weather cooperated in being nice and warm without actually being very hot and I managed to get a lot done.

The ongoing trucker strike is keeping a lot of the containers at the Port of Vancouver idle including some of the produce imported by the local grocery chains; what is in the stores looks a little tired. Fortunately, on Saturday morning we got to the farmer’s market at Trout Lake and stocked up on lots of fresh fruit and vegetables for this week.

Saturday evening, we managed to get out for the evening and enjoy the Illuminares at Trout Lake. My daughter was particularly captivated by the fire weaver show, shrieking with delight and clapping with glee. It was way past her bedtime by no way she was going to be missing any of the fun! Public Dreams is a group that promotes and puts on public spectacles. They have been very successful with their events at Trout Lake and it seems to be getting larger every year.

Sunday was a good day for getting things done. I slept in, despite good intentions of getting up early, but went for my bicycle ride around Stanley Park along the seawall and back and had a nice late brunch of croissants, generously dosed with the Straßbourg terrine from Oyama on Granville Island. I then went out to Magnet Hardware on Commercial Drive. This is an independently owned Home Hardware, and the staff there is fabulous! They know their stock, and if you go in and say, “I need a ___”, they will take you to the right spot in the store and show you their selection. Anyways, I finally spent the money on a turkey deep fryer! For $139, I got the complete kit with outdoor burner, 30qt pot with insert, turkey stand, and the all-important deep-frying thermometer. I’m not sure exactly when I’ll do a turkey, but in the interim I have a lot of veal bones and chicken parts waiting to be turned into stock, and when I do canning later this summer, there’s no reason I can’t do it outside.

After the shopping trip, S and I went to La Casa di Gelato over on Venables. They boast over 168 flavours of gelato – everything from vanilla to pear & Gorgonzola and back again. My favourite flavour of ice cream has always been pistachio, and they make a nice one here. I also like many of their other flavours, including the aforementioned pear & Gorgonzola, basil Pernod, and, yes, dill pickle! Of course, these novelty flavours are best as samples – I’ve never had an entire scoop of them.

I managed to clean out the garage and get all the recycling down to the depot and most importantly get our lawn furniture! My reward was I spent part of the afternoon sitting outside under my pear tree, reading my latest issue of Gastronomica, listening to the birds at the feeder, enjoying the shade and drinking wine spritzers; when you make your own wine, making spritzers out of it is a fine thing to do on a hot day indeed.

Tonight, we’re hosting a barbecue for H&M and our good friend T who’s visiting from Montreal with her beau; we haven’t seen T since she moved to McGill to take up a professorship, almost two years! It will be nice to see her again and to meet V, of whom we have heard many nice things.

The Hundred Mile Diet Revisited

The Hundred Mile Diet series on The Tyee has had its second installment posted, this time on the subject of trying to find chicken eggs that are not only from local organically farmed sources, but also fed from local feed – as the authors discovered, most of the organic chicken in the lower mainland is getting their feed from Alberta.

There are two items I will comment on.

One is from the article itself where the authors state:

“The strange fact is that vegetarianism as commonly practiced is, like the rest of the industrial food system, propped up by the globalization of food and everything that it entails, including a total disconnection between food consumers and producers, and the cataclysmic ecological costs of shipping food around the world.”

The statement from the article is actually several ideas rolled up into one, but let’s begin with the idea that shipping food around the world has “cataclysmic ecological costs”. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have here a fine example of hyperbole.

We live in a highly urbanized society, and the fact is that almost everything we city-dwellers wish to buy has to be transported to us; this is accomplished, shockingly enough, through some combination of rail, truck, and airplane!

It should then come as no surprise that there is a disconnection between consumers and producers. I live in an urban part of Vancouver, a block or so away from a nexus of busy streets (one of which is a trucking route) and Skytrain. The main reason I have any connection to what I eat is that I am passionate about food. I take the time and effort to make wise food choices.

In terms of the ecological shipping costs, the solution lies in educating and informing the public, and putting our money where our mouths are. I generally don’t shop at Safeway since most of their produce comes from the US; but this also begs the question of whether it is ok or not to buy hothouse tomatoes in February. Is it?

It’s all well and good to ask the questions the authors asking, but it seems to me they are taking a good idea to its unreasonable extreme.

The other item is from a commentator who goes by the handle Fiat Lux who responded to the article with the opening salvo:

“Trade is a necessary fact of life, but commerce for profits is not trade.”

Our societal model is based in no small part on the writings of the philosopher John Locke. Two of the tenets put forth by Locke are the notions of the earth held in common and the right to private property. This may seem to be contradictory at first, but they are actually complementary. The second notion, of private property, is of key importance to this discussion.

If I am a manufacturer of widgets, then I want to trade the product of my labour, widgets, for goods and services I need. As a civilization, we long ago created a very cool tool called money! I sell my widgets for money, and I spend money to buy what I want.

Ah, but then we have to address the notion of commerce for profit.

If trade is a necessary part of life, but profit is bad, then I should only make as many widgets as I need to sell to meet my needs and break even. This is ridiculous. Perhaps there is a great need of widgets and I have the capacity to fill that need. Why then should I not make as many widgets as I can sell and then keep the “profit” of my labours (being the difference between what I have earned from selling my widgets and spending on my needs)? That, my friends, is trade.

Now I return to Locke’s notion that we own the earth in common. We do. We all need to live on this fragile planet and share the resources. The best way we can do that is make sensible choices about the resources we use to minimize our impact. This includes trying whenever reasonable and possible to buy food that’s local, seasonal, fresh and raised in a sustainable manner. This includes both organic and traditional agricultural methods.

Reinvention

The Oxford English Dictionary defines reinvention as a derivative of the transitive verb reinvent; according to the etymological data, the first cited use was in 1719.

Several people I know have been through or are undergoing a reinvention process.

My friend S is someone I have known since high school; of all the people I know and still keep in touch with, I’ve known him the longest.

This week he started a job at Emily Carr, doing exactly the kind of work he’s been hoping to do since he reinvented himself. After working as a programmer, a job he grew increasingly disenfranchised with, he quit. Unlike other people I know who’ve also quit jobs they didn’t like, he had a plan. He wanted to do something completely different, and the route, though expensive and time-consuming, has led him to where he is today.

It takes a lot of guts to pack up your life, with no safety net, and start afresh in a completely different career. So, kudos and congratulations my friend, you deserve it.

Reinvention is on the mind of another good friend of mine; J recently interviewed for a job that would suit him perfectly. Should that not pan out, he has a number of ideas he’s considering, among them going to culinary school.

My friend L has recently begun her own reinvention; chrysalis like, she has vanished from our social circle and gone into a virtual cocoon of introspection and sorting her life out. I’m very interested in the outcome.

My own reinvention is taking me on a meandering and enjoyable path. After taking a philosophy course (existentialism as it happens) through continuing studies at Langara, I developed a philosophically informed life plan; it’s a document that I keep with me. It details my core beliefs, my goals, my own rules for living a sane existence, and things that give me pleasure.

Putting these kinds of things in writing is actually a very difficult exercise, but ultimately it’s been very rewarding. Presently, I know what goals are really important to me, like my masters program at SFU, so I make choices about my time and effort that gravitate me towards my goals. I think part of the difficulty in writing it down is the implicit commitment it calls for. If nothing else, I'm now very interested in philosophy.

About once a year, I re-write my life plan. Things change; goals and beliefs that were important to me a year ago may have slipped down a notch or two on the priority list (or be chucked out wholesale). My current sheet has many annotations on it and it’s time for an update and cleanup. Some of my goals have been accomplished, some need adjusting, a few are going to be dropped, and a few new ones have popped onto my radar.

This weekend, I hope, I will have the opportunity to sit somewhere peaceful and quiet and tinker.

The 2005 Vancouver Folk Music Festival

This past weekend was the 28^th Vancouver Folk Music Festival, and also marked the fourth year in a row I’ve attended. My wife, daughter, and I spent the better part of Saturday and Sunday there, and like last year, we skipped the evening concerts. My daughter had a great time, running, dancing, going up to strangers and stealing their sunscreen, and climbing into other people’s chairs and sitting there with a smug look on her face; it was very amusing.

For the uninitiated, the Folk Fest starts on Friday night with a big concert on the main stage. On Saturday and Sunday, there are seven stages scattered around Jericho Park with music going from about 10am until almost 6pm, with a big evening concert taking place on the main stage. Of the seven stages, stage 1 is in the children’s area and has acts that cater to the younger set (but with adult appeal all the same).

I’ve always had fun at the Folk Fest, but for my wife it’s the must do event of the summer. Our best friends H&M and J&E are also in that camp, the latter having been volunteers there since forever (at least 12 years if not longer).

Once again, I enjoyed this year and last a lot more than the first two. This has little to do with the event and the artists present, but rather with time and energy. On Saturday we were on site from 10am until almost 6pm, and on Sunday from 10am until a little after 4pm. Prior to that it was an exercise in endurance: Friday from 6-10pm, Saturday and Sunday from 10am-10pm.

Some things that continue to impress me:

The Folk Fest thrives on its strong corps of volunteers. Indeed, according to J&E, if you even wanted to volunteer, you’d probably end up on a waiting list. One of the consequences is that this is impeccably well organized and run; although I will digress for a moment and admit there are often delays at the various stages, but those are de rigueur when you have three of four groups on stage at the same time and everyone needs to get their instruments hooked up and sound checked, repeat every hour or so per stage throughout the day. If nothing else, it lends a lovely consistency and continuity to the proceedings, and the volunteers have all been friendly, approachable and helpful.

There's an assortment of musicians and groups. Pretty much no matter your particular musical interest, there's bound to be something you find interesting – or, as I like to put it, "something to please and offend everyone". There's a lot of opportunity to discover artists and styles you've never heard before (and to listen and seek out old favourites too). And with seven stages, if you don't like what's going on where you are, you can go check out what's going on somewhere else!

Some things that disappointed me this year:

Two years ago, my wife noticed a baby change station near the first aid tent and she said at the time “That will come in handy”. Last year, we didn’t need to use it, as infants are neither messy nor mobile enough to really need it. This year though, we needed it. We went in search of it, but none of the volunteers knew where it was; we finally asked at information services and they said it wasn’t there anymore. It’s marked on all the maps though. Oops.

However, as irritants go, it could have been much worse.

One final note about the festival itself – the festival is in debt. Deep debt. $450K in the red. J&E and others in the know were telling us we’d better enjoy this year as it might well be their last. They do have a debt retirement plan in place, they’ve made some cutbacks in some areas that have ensured no net operating loss for this year, but it’s still not looking rosy.

Right then, the all-important part of the Folk Fest, the music!

Saturday

One of the first things we saw was a collaborative workshop between Dòchas, Karan Casey, and Le Vent du Nord. The latter was one of my favourite from last year; they’re a group from Québec who play a lot of up-tempo traditional tunes from la belle province. Dòchas is a quintet of girls and one guy from Scotland, and Karan Casey is from Ireland. They all have fiddle players in their midst and it was a lot of fun to watch them play together.

After an early lunch, we saw what was for us one of the highlights of the festival, the Danish fiddle/guitar partnership of Haugaard & Høirup teaming up with the Danish singers Karen & Helene. They’d worked together before, as was quite apparent from their musical collaboration, and it was a real delight. It’s a shame that they don’t have a CD out of their work together – I guess I’ll just have to play their respective CD’s at the same time.

We then headed for the shade at stage 1 to see a chap named Boris Sichon who put on quite the one-man act with all manner of percussion and woodwind instruments for the kids. It was a lot of fun, although if he had three or four other people on stage with him, it would have been something to knock your socks off.

3pm saw us in the shade at stage 2 to see the Jaipur Kawa Brass Band. This troupe from India were very entertaining indeed, and once their show was over, they walked off stage and held a procession through the crowd, tooting and drumming their way back to their dressing rooms.

Our final event of the day was seeing Le Vent du Nord doing a concert at stage 1. I really like these guys – they always have a lot of fun and they can PLAY!

Sunday

Sunday morning, my wife and daughter took the bus and I rode my bicycle with a trailer in tow with all our gear. It’s only 14km, and I had someone to ride with. Towing a trailer was even more work than I’d expected, but I still managed to sustain an average of 20km/h the entire way (bike computers, gotta love ‘em!). I have to say that it was very nice indeed to have the Chariot with us on the Sunday. Perhaps next year we’ll cycle en famille.

Sunday morning at 10am, we saw a fabulous collaboration between Haugaard & Høirup, Dòchas, and Oliver Schroer (“Reely Good Tunes”). Oliver Schroer is a Vancouver fiddle player, although he doesn’t play anything most people would recognize. He is an amazing musician, very talented, and plays a very unusual 5-string fiddle, both electronic and acoustic. He is a producer and seemingly involved in any musical happenings in BC. They played tunes in turn and at the end of the show played together (of course). I couldn’t think of a nicer way to spend the morning.

We stayed at the stage for the next session, which saw Haugaard & Høirup stay on stage to be joined by Michael Jerome Brown & the Twin Rivers String Band, and John Reischman & the Jaybirds. It was a strange juxtaposition to be sure. The latter two acts are very bluegrass/Cajun, while Haugaard & Høirup are from a much more “traditional” mold. And yet – it worked. Michael Jerome Brown & the Twin Rivers String Band are a Cajun act. John Reischman & the Jaybirds is an ensemble act that reminded me very strongly of the Backstabbers, complete with the assembling together around the mic with the bass player singing and plucking away. During this set, I wandered over to stage 6 to see a few minutes of The Dhol Foundation. The Dhol Foundation feature dhol drums which have treble on one end and bass on the other with different drumsticks for each hand – strong beats and lots of loud percussion. They had the entire crowd on their feet, and I have to say that only the heat kept me from staying to hear more of them.

By then it was lunch and we went near stage 3 to get some shade and food, so we heard a good portion of the “Guitar Slingin’ Singin’” set with David Jacobs-Strain, Kate Shutt, and Bill Bourne & Eivør Pálsdóttir. I can’t say it was my cup of tea on the whole, but some of the blues numbers they played really make me want to be in a smoky bar drinking bourbon, scotch and beer.

Oliver Schroer was playing a concert after, so we stayed in our shady spot and listened in wonder as he described his 1000km pilgrimage with three companions through France and Spain, playing his fiddle in every church he could along the way with his portable recording studio. He’s a fabulous storyteller and musician. He had a limited print of 50 cd’s of the music he created on this journey, so I promptly went to the CD tent and bought one before they were gone.

The heat was almost oppressive, but there was a strong breeze and we were able to find a patch of shade near stage 6 so we finished our day with the “Pickin’ and Kickin’” show featuring Michael Jerome Brown & the Twin Rivers String Band, Karan Casey, and Le Vent du Nord. It was a rollicking way to end that day, and with the end of that show and a sleepy girl, we headed home.

Amusingly, my wife and daughter got home at the same time as I did. And for the record, the ride from Jericho Beach is easier than the ride to. To, it’s almost all uphill, from there’s a large hill at the start and then mostly coasting home.

We bought five CD’s on the weekend: Haugaard & Høirup’s Om Sommeren (In the Summer); Karen & Helene’s debut CD; Dòchas’ An Darna Umhail (The Second Glance); Le Vent du Nord’s Les Amants du Saint Laurent (The Lovers of the St. Lawrence); and Oliver Schroer’s amazing Camino.

Chambar

Last night, to celebrate our third wedding anniversary, my wife and I went to Chambar, a Belgian restaurant. They’re right around the corner from the Stadium skytrain station on Beatty Street.

Chambar has a nice brasserie style ambience. It’s bright and well lit, and offers a lovely view of GM Place and False Creek.

The menu offers a nice variety of dishes. I had: filet Alsacien for an appetizer with a Mort Subite Geuze, a very fine lambic ale; the Waterzooi with a glass of Pfaffenheim pinot gris for the main; tarte tatin with the Dow’s Quinta do Bonfim 1996 port. My wife had: salade folle with a glass of Kriek; moule frite Coquotte with a glass of Pfaffenheim pinot gris for the main; Belgian chocolate mousse with white chocolate parfait and Batasiolo Bosc dla Rei Moscato d’Asti for dessert.

All the food was delicious, and well presented. Chambar goes for the tall food look on smaller plates; but while the portions may appear small, we were quite stuffed by the time we were done.

The moule frite were cooked just so and the fries were classic Belgian style fries. My wife said that Wazubee’s still wins the garlic mayo fries title for Vancouver, but the mussels were fabulous.

The Waterzooi was fantastic. It was presented bouillabaisse style with prawns, mussels, scallops and halibut, but the broth was the real winner; among the classic seasonings one might expect was a hint of vanilla that really accentuated the flavours of the seafood.

As an unexpected delight, the restaurant gave us our dessert drinks with their compliments on our anniversary.

Dinner for two, including a generous tip, was $140.

We will definitely be going there again.

Chambar is at 562 Beatty Street, dinner from 5:30 Monday-Saturday, closed Sunday.

They are having a Belgium Day celebration with a prix fixe menu - $50 per person – on the 21^st of July. The menu features a roast wild boar, Belgian Beer, and other items.

A Little Light Reading

Summer has always marked a season of reading for me. Growing up, summer was free of school and homework; university similarly so; even now as a working adult whose life isn’t governed by the ebb and flow of a school year anymore (although it could be argued that my part time graduate program fits the bill) summer is recreational reading time.

I’m interested by how my reading habits have changed. I used to read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, but for almost a decade now, I’ve shifted solidly into non-fiction, Nero Wolfe style mysteries, and novels that don’t fit nicely into any kind of specific niche like Timothy Taylor’s Stanley Park, or Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. It takes a great deal of persuasion to get me to even try a science fiction novel these days; my space opera days are over I think.

I’m not the kind of person who usually reads one book at a time. At the moment, I would guess I have about twenty books on the go, stacked in random order on the bookcase adjacent to my bed. They are all festooned with various kinds of bookmarks, often with whatever was conveniently to hand.

Sometimes I do read a book cover to cover. Last night I finished Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons, the novel he wrote before The Da Vinci Code; I read the latter about a year ago.

Both novels are a fun light read. Even though they’re quite long, the pacing is quick; almost reading like a novelization of a movie. Both books have inspired people to think there is truth to the symbology and secret societies portrayed between the covers. I was reading over the weekend in the paper that art galleries like the Louvre are now getting die hard fans/believers visiting all the artworks referenced in The Da Vinci Code. Even conspiracy theory books “explaining” The Da Vinci Code are starting to propagate. Hello people! It’s fiction! P.T. Barnum would have a field day.

Also read so far this summer, I finished What is Good? by A.C. Grayling, an overview of philosophy from the Greeks to the present. Grayling is a brilliant writer; eloquent and well read, he has the gift of explaining the esoteric in a format the average reader can grasp without ever “dumbing down” the material he is discussing. I also bought and read his latest collection of short essays, The Heart of Things, which I would argue is the best in the series.

If you’ve ever read and enjoyed Peter Mayle’s autobiographically inspired A Year in Provence, you’ll really appreciate Arthur Clarke’s novel A Year in the Merde. Written in the same style as Mayle’s work, namely with each chapter representing a month, Clarke’s novel is bitingly satirical of the French. In brief, this novel follows the exploits of an English ad executive who, having successfully orchestrated the opening of a chain of French bistros in London, has been hired by a French firm to open a chain of British teashops in Paris. Things go hilariously south from there.

I’m hoping that between now and September I’ll get through more of my reading pile. I’m still about half way through George Orwell’s collected essays and The Road to Wigan Pier, almost two-thirds through Barossa Food, and have yet to get started on Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris or Dostoevsky’s The Idiot.

London Calling

It is not my intent to comment about politics and current world events on this blog, although sometimes a news story commands enough of my attention that I feel the need to make a comment on it.

In this morning’s news, it is declared that four young men who were British-born citizens of the UK carried out the recent London bombings. Furthermore, they were not known to have any radical political affiliations, although I would expect they were actively recruited and trained by some faction.

To quote an old Pogo cartoon, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

As I Please...

The essay, as A.C. Grayling points out, was not always the form we have been taught to expect in school today, namely a concise piece of writing with a clear beginning, middle, and end, ordered and consistent as to topic. It used to be quite the opposite; an attempt to write (essay, from the French essai) about numerous topics, not always related. William Hazlitt and George Orwell, among others, are both shining examples of essay writers in the latter meaning.

In my book of collected essays by George Orwell, especially in the latter parts of his life, he wrote a number of essays entitled "As I Please"; in homage to a great 20th century thinker, I have entitled today's prose the same way.

I have many small things on my mind today, so this will flow, as I please...

Despite my prognostication Friday that my daughter was better, she still had a fever into last night; she seemed to have gotten past the fever, but it has perniciously crept back. Some bugs are tougher than others.

My good friend DS, whom I have a great amount of respect for, not only because he is kind and generous of spirit, but also because he is wise and clever and intellectual, recommended a lovely piece of software available only for the Mac called Bookpedia. I finally had a quiet moment to download it and try it out, and within 20 minutes of startng to play with it, I forked out the US$18 for it. At that price, it's worth it for the entertainment value of having my books catalogued if nothing else. As a bonus, you can export your library collection to your iPod, if that's something one wanted to do.

I am more impressed with my iPod mini the more I use it. It is, if one thinks about it with any level of depth and detail, a marvellous piece of technology. It has also renewed my enjoyment and interest in music; I've rediscovered many albums in my CD collection.

On my bicycle ride around the Stanley Park sea wall this morning, I enjoyed listening to music on my iPod , which was safely tucked into my backpack. This weekend in Vancouver is the Tall Ships festival and on my ride, I saw four of the ships on show including a large 3-masted vessel that evoked the great age of sail; Master & Commander writ large so to speak. On the subject of riding bicycles, Vancouver has a network of bicycle routes that let one get around the city with a minimum of interaction with vehicle traffic; it's fabulous!

This coming weekend is the 28th annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival. For my wife and several of our best friends, this is the must-see event of the summer. I've been going for the past three years and I've always had a great time; it's got something for almost everyone and astoundingly well organized. This year, as last, we won't be attending the evening concerts; truth be told, I enjoyed last year, when we only went during the day on the Saturday and Sunday the best. The event is hosted at Jericho Beach in Vancouver, which happens to be on part of the aforementioned bicycle path network. We're thinking that it would be fun to take our daughter in a bicycle trailer and cycle to the show rather than driving or having to negotiate the bus.

Among my hobbies, I enjoy playing board games of all descriptions. My three favourite games are Go, EastFront, and Puerto Rico, but lately I've been playing more and more Scrabble. It was a childhood favourite of my wife's and she's the one who got me hooked. In fact, these days, she as often as not is the one who suggests we play something other than Scrabble for a change. I think it is in no small part due to our being very closely matched. We occasionally have runaway games where one of us seems to always get just the right letter tiles at just the right time and can spell no wrong, but on the whole, we have a lot of closely matched games; last night it came down to the last letter played to decide it.

Winning and losing games isn't important to me; I always play to win, and won't "throw" a game, but I am more interested in getting the best finish I can and enjoying the social aspects of gaming. There are those for whom winning is a blood sport, but thankfully the folks I play games with regularly appreciate the game well played even when they don't come out on top.

Comfort Food

Late Tuesday, my daughter came down with virus and an attendant high fever. The story has a happy ending; this morning she seems back to her perky precocious little self. She still has a bit of a temperature, but nothing like the often lethargic unable to get comfortable state of Wednesday and Thursday.

The stress has been incredible. It's the first time she's been genuinely sick, the two minor colds she's had in her fourteen months having hardly slowed her down. Between my wife fretting about our daughter, my fretting about both of them, and the sleep-deprived nights... I'm a bit of a zombie today.

Which brings me to the subject line; I'm going out for lunch today to my favourite diner spot in Vancouver, Risty's.

It's a classic burger and fries kind of place. Their soups are home made and tasty, the burgers are the kind you need to have plenty of napkins on hand after you lick your fingers clean, and the fries are hot crisp and delicious. I even indulge in the gravy sometimes. Even the coffee's really good, and I've had self-proclaimed coffee snobs say so.

The menu runs the usual gamut: burgers with all the extras; classic sandwiches like the Reuben, Club and Monte Cristo; meals like liver & onions, ground steak with mash and veg, turkey with all the trimmings; even classic old fashioned ice cream milkshakes. And who can forget the all day breakfast with classic french toast, fried eggs, omlettes filled to bursting... The only time you'll get in trouble with the menu is if you stray from classic diner food and go for things like the chef's salad.

Risty's is the place I go to for comfort food. They're on Granville just north of 70th. Parking out back.

Canada Day Long Weekend

The 1^st of July was Canada Day, a day for celebrating this beautiful country of ours. It also meant a long weekend.

It was also an opportunity to catch up with some friends we hadn’t seen in a while. On the Friday we visited J&E on their float home for an indoor picnic (the weather having not cooperated for our planned excursion to the Reifel bird sanctuary).

E and I make wine together. More accurately, I contribute physical labour by carting cases of wine grapes to the crusher, cranking the crusher, and so forth while E provides the equipment, technical know-how and skill. I’ve been participating in the process for a few years now, and it’s been educational. It’s also quite cheap – for under $5 a bottle, including the corks and chemicals for washing the bottles, we’re getting wine that you could expect to pay $10-15 for in the store. This is my excuse for buying wines that are sometimes well upwards of $25-30 – dollar cost averaging! Perhaps I have a future in flogging mutual finds, but I digress.

When he first invited me to play along a couple years ago, I chipped in for some late harvest Muscat from Washington State that produced a mighty fine wine. The year after that, we went a little crazy and produced almost 300 bottles; Gewürztraminer, “Bordeaux blanc”, “Spanish red”, Zinfandel, Zin-Sangiovese, California Sémillon, and a very late harvest Syrah that we turned into pseudo-port. The Sémillon was supposed to be cooking wine, but it turned out to be a very nice drinking wine – and less than $1 a bottle too!

On Friday, I had some “barrel tastings” of last fall’s production: Riesling; Ehrenfelser; Zinfandel; more “Spanish red”; “white” Syrah (a blush wine). The whites are… passable. I have a feeling they’ll become mostly cooking wine. On the other hand, I don’t mind pouring entire bottles of home made wine into what I’m cooking; I certainly wouldn’t want to do that with an $85 bottle of Châteauneuf! The reds though are outstanding! A year or two in the cellar and they’ll be great for casual dining and barbecues.

Saturday we managed to get a lot accomplished without wearing ourselves out and had a nice relaxing day of it. Before bed, I made my famous waffle batter to sit overnight in the fridge.

There’s a restaurant in Victoria called John’s Other Place. Many years ago, I went there for breakfast and had the waffle; what made this one different was a yeast batter. Absolutely fantastic. Thus began a quest to find a yeast based waffle batter. Well, in those days, Google didn’t exist, but I managed to find a recipe that I’ve long since tweaked to make my version of waffle perfection.

So for Sunday morning breakfast, we ate waffles until we hurt. Bliss.

Full of waffle goodness, we then visited my good friend and his family in Surrey and had a very pleasant afternoon in the warm sun (which apparently didn’t manage to burn off the cloud layer in our part of Vancouver).

I sometimes wish every weekend were a long one.

Radio Canada

I listen to the radio when I’m in the car. Sometimes I listen to music, but mostly I listen to CBC. For the past few months though, I’ve been listening to Radio Canada (CBC French) instead.

It’s been a very enjoyable experience; in part it’s also been a look at Vancouver from a minority point of view. Although I am of a francophone background, I take my ability to speak French for granted; it’s only when I encounter certain cultural markers that I’m sharply reminded that I grew up different than most of my friends and colleagues. Radio Canada has, in some very comforting ways, linked me back to my own Canadian cultural roots. The music they play is entertaining too.

As their “centre of the universe” is Montreal instead of Toronto and much of their international news items are from France Inter rather than the usual culprits (by which I mean CNN and the BBC), it has a different perspective on the world. As an aside, listening in this morning during my commute, I heard that today is the 100^th anniversary of the laïcité law in France officially marking the separation of church and state.

I’m sure at some point I’ll get tired of listening to Radio Canada and switch to another station for a while, but it’s nice to have Radio Canada 97.7FM on the air.

A Rebuttal to Living on the Hundred Mile Diet

A recent article in The Tyee, “Living on the Hundred Mile Diet”, set me thinking once again about where the food I eat comes from.

In Gary Paul Nabhan’s book, Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods, he recounts his own attempt to eat four out of five things from within a 400km (250 mile) radius of his home in Arizona for the period of one year. He dubbed this radius his food shed, and he was mostly successful in his quest although he made many compromises based more on politics than practicality. Nabhan describes in detail the politics of food including the ecological cost of food production. The book is a worthwhile read if one is interested in the geopolitics of food and I heartily recommend it.

On one level, I strongly support the spirit of Smith and MacKinnon’s position; I particularly empathize with their comment about flavorless fruit and vegetables sold out of season.

However, noble though their motives are, I cannot support the overall idea that we ought to only eat from our local food shed.

Their contention of “fossil fuels bad” begs the question of how they got to the strawberry fields to begin with. Did they drive or take public transit? Both methods require fossil fuels. I know this is a straw man argument, but I could not let it pass. Furthermore, immigrants to BC imported grain and sugar – if one does not want to eat sugar for political reasons, that’s one thing, but to exclude it simply due to an arbitrary map line strikes me as impractical. Ditto the flour and grains.

What about coffee? Chocolate? Vanilla? Olive oil? Not in BC. How about citrus fruits? In winter, lemons, limes, oranges, mandarins, grapefruit and others are as close as most of us in Vancouver will come to fresh seasonal fruit.

Another issue is cost. Food, good fresh local seasonal and well raised and bred, should be easily accessible to everyone. In North America, people seem to have a love affair with over processed and over packaged ready to eat food. In no small part this is the result of good marketing and cheap prices; eating a healthy diet requires a lot of attention to ingredient lists and access to a healthy food budget; therein lays the core of the problem. Smith and MacKinnon may have the means to pay $11/kg for local honey, but with the average family income in the $50K range, that’s a hard sell for most people.

I try to support local farmers as much as I can: I do most of my fruit and vegetable shopping at the farmer’s market between Victoria Day and Thanksgiving; I buy free range beef, pork, and lamb from farmers in bulk – the joy of the large freezer in the garage.

Ideally I’d buy nothing but adjectival (free-range organic shade grown pesticide free unmedicated additive free non-genetically modified) food products. Like most people however, I have a finite budget with which to feed my family; I also only have so much capacity for research to check all the sources of my food. I already spend what some people would consider an inordinate amount of time cooking and baking, preserving, canning, and freezing. There is a limit to what one person can do.

This is in no small part why I am a member of the Slow Food movement. I joined because I think food is undervalued – not in terms of price, although there are arguments to be made there – but in terms of health and wellbeing and our connection to the farmers who keep us fed. The big grocery chains now carry a majority of pre-packaged pre-prepared processed food; or, as a friend of mine quipped, the now carry food over ingredients.

What we really need is not to limit our food shed, but rather follow Slow Food’s position of eco-gastronomy – choosing and eating foods that are the product of sustainable agriculture, whether organic or conventional. We need not deprive ourselves of foods simply because they come from afar.

Kudos to the Canadian Parliament

I don't usually wax poetic over politics per se, but on the eve of Canada Day on the 1st of July, the federal government has passed a bill allowing same sex marriage. Kudos to those MP's who voted in favour of the legislation allowing same sex marriage.

Today, I am proud of my government.

A Beach Full of Shells

I enjoy a variety of music, but as I've been getting older, less and less of the commercial "top 40" stuff appeals to me as it did when I was in my teens and twenties. I expect I'm not alone in this; after all, my parents didn't exactly thrill to my playing Iron Maiden, AC/DC, and Judas Priest.

I don't listen to those three groups anymore, although there are a few songs from them I'd happily have on my iPod.

I listen to more complex music these days. For instance, yesterday in my mailbox Amazon.ca had kindly left me the newest album by Al Stewart, "A Beach Full of Shells". I’ve already put it on my iPod and have had the chance to give it a full listen. So far, I’m very impressed.

I've had the pleasure of seeing Al Stewart live on three occasions: in 1984 at the Royal Theatre in Victoria (the then new album was "Russians & Americans"); in 1989 at the Forge in Victora (for "Last Days of the Century"); and in 2002 over the Labour Day weekend at the Three Rivers Winery in Walla Walla, Washington.

This last concert was part of the Three Rivers Winery “Music on the Lawn” series of concerts; these concerts are fundraisers for the orchestra. The ticket price included dinner, which was a lovely basket full of food including delicious steak sandwiches. Wine was of course available from the winery to accompany your meal.

Walla Walla is home of the oldest symphony orchestra in the US west of the Mississippi River. The conductor of said orchestra and a long time friend of Al, persuaded him to combine his love of French wine and musical talents and the album “Down in the Cellar” was the result. The idea was to have a wine and music concert tour in Washington, Oregon and California, but the Miramar records in the US went bankrupt right at CD release time. Oops. Too bad, it might have been the “Sideways” of its day.

Reviewing Rubina's Replacement Red Fort

Runbina Tandoori was one of the best Indian places in Vancouver - it was my default place to go whenever my palate leaned that way; however the owner retired at the end of March this year. We managed to get one last take out meal from there with our usual selection of dishes: chicken Makhani (aka butter chicken); naan bread; lamb Rogan Josh; saag panir; and some rice dish, (___ pulao) with generous amounts of saffron and dried fruit.

However, some new folks took over Rubina's location and have an Indian restaurant newly dubbed Red Fort. From the interior decor, very little has changed and even the large chalkboard drawing inside the main door mentioning a late night chai and dessert for a prix fixe has remained. One must conclude then that this was a nice straight takeover.

With the in-laws visiting, we thought we'd try them out; take out was just easier, so that's what we did.

The order was almost identical to the final Rubina meal: chicken Makhani; naan bread; lamb Rogan Josh; saag panir; and a mixed vegetable rice dish. Price was about the same as Rubina.

Overall, the food was acceptable, but the portions were much smaller. Three dishes plus rice and naan bread should feed four people comfortably, but there wasn't a crumb left after the meal was over and we all could have eaten more.

The saag panir was very good, and had a late hit of chili heat that was quite nice. The lamb and chicken dishes were satisfactory; nothing any decent Indian place couldn't do equally well. The rice was quite hot though; I like hot food just fine, but it was a lot spicier than the other dishes and overwhelmed the palate somewhat in contrast; we ordered everything "medium" hot. The naan was made a la minute, which is always nice.

How does Red Fort rate then? Overall, I'd say it was decent Indian food. The portions were small compared to their predecessor so you get less bang for the buck. On the whole, I would eat there again, but I'm still looking for my new default Indian place.

Rhubard Custard Pie

My in-laws are here for the weekend and it happened to be my father-in-law's birthday so we had a nice dinner for him last night.

I bought some beautiful ribeye steaks at Famous Foods and marinaded them in a mix of soy, maple syrup, olive oil, and my own spice rub. Acoompanied by a nice mixed salad and new potatoes bought at the Trout Lake farmer's market; the latter were topped with chives from my garden and some sour cream.

For dessert, my wife made one of her specialties and what has become one of my favourites - a rhubarb custard pie. The rhubarb was also acquired at the farmer's market, and it was particularly flavourful. There's just something about a fresh fruit pie that raises it to the sublime.

Simple food is often the best food.

Doctor Who

I don’t watch a lot of teevee these days; indeed, at the moment the only thing I watch is my Doctor Who on Tuesday nights on CBC. After a hiatus of several years, the BBC has revived Dr. Who. It’s been worth watching too. The new Doctor has been excellent, his companions fun, and the stories well done. The BBC has even thrown some money at the special effects department; while keeping with the campy character of the original show, gone are the really cheesy props put together sometimes literally with duct tape and hangar wire.

When I was a kid, not quite in my teens yet, Saturday nights were something I really looked forward to; that was when I would get to watch Harold Lloyd followed by the Hardy Boys, right before which I would get to make myself a bowlful of popcorn with lots of butter and salt.

This long dormant pleasure of popcorn and teevee has been been revived on Tuesdays.

When I was still living in Victoria, I used to attend the Cinecenta cinema at the university; a place that showed many second run films as well as foreign and other unusual movies. I still remember seeing two of the earlier (1960’s vintage) Doctor Who movies there; the rookie projectionist leaving a black spot of silence for about a second or so between reels of the double feature. Brilliantly enjoyable and quite fitting!

Cinecenta distinguished itself in two ways with their popcorn. First, by having good old-fashioned popcorn – popped in coconut oil and seasoned with butter and salt. Just like it should be! Second, by having small quantities available for cheap – as far back as 1998, just before I moved to Vancouver, you could get a 32oz cup of it for a measly $2; not only delicious, but just the right size for a treat.

I still make popcorn this old fashioned way at home for my Tuesday evening decadence. I bought some coconut oil on spec at Famous Foods when I saw it on super sale, not knowing what I would use it for at the time. I still have the old aluminum pot I used as a kid all those years ago to make the popcorn in. I use premium Orville Redenbacher popping corn, popped on a hot burner in the coconut oil; then I add some European style cultured butter and salt. Then off to the comfy seat and the latest installment of Doctor Who!

An hour once a week in front of the teevee, watching a show I enjoyed in the salad days of my youth with perfect old-fashioned popcorn; in short, recapturing if only for an hour the carefree insouciance of an adolescent; this is one of life’s great pleasures.

Tarragon

I have friends who are moving to Calgary; it is always a bittersweet thing when friends move away. On the one hand I am sad they are going away, and on the other I am happy for them and wish them well.

We had planned to invite them over for dinner before they went, but alas he had to go there early so we had his wife and daughter over for dinner last night.

Usually on a weeknight, I don’t make a fancy meal. However, the Sunday dinner of rotisserie chicken was delayed by the previous night’s invitation; I put the chicken on the rotisserie and let it spin outside on the grill, slowly turning a beautiful crispy brown. The meat was deliciously tender and juicy, and the skin crisp and flavourful.

To accompany this fine chicken I decided to make a beurre blanc, which I had not done in a long time. Beurre blanc is a nice light sauce and full of flavour; a little goes a long way indeed. Specifically, tarragon and chicken complement each other beautifully, so I made a tarragon beurre blanc.

To make a beurre blanc, you need to start with a gastrique. I made mine with shallots and garlic and a mix of tarragon wine vinegar and the Gewürztraminer I had on hand. After reducing it to a nice thick marmalade consistency, I added room temperature cubes of butter and whisked each one in until I had the desired consistency and finally added a generous helping of minced fresh tarragon. Salt and pepper to taste of course. It complemented the chicken beautifully.

Baby potatoes and a quick “coleslaw” (made from sui choy) with raisin, feta, sunflower seeds, red bell pepper and Green Goddess dressing I’d made a few days earlier rounded out the meal.

Fresh bread

Despite the heat yesterday afternoon, I decided to bake bread. Of course, as soon as I had finished making the dough, we were invited out to dinner.

Fortunately bread is very forgiving – I simply brought the dough with me. After letting it rise, I took the minute or so needed to knead it for its second rise; once that happened, I then took another minute or two for loaf shaping and put it on the baking sheet. At that point it was time to head home anyways, and so I drove home with a baking sheet ready to get into the oven.

By the time we arrived home, the loaves just needed to wait for the oven to get to the right temperature. A few well placed artistic slashes later, in they went and one hour later fresh bread was cooling on racks on the counter.

There is just something wonderful about fresh bread.

Father's Day

Yesterday was father’s day of course, and it started well with a breakfast of freshly baked croissants and a selection of terrines from Oyama on Granville Island. I like the Straßbourg terrine the best – truffles and pistachios around a core of foie gras. Absolute heaven on the palate: fortunately for my waistline, it’s expensive enough to be an occasional treat rather than a regular at the dining table.

Yesterday was also the day of the “Car Free Festival” on the Drive – they closed off Commercial between Hastings and 1^st and had a big street party. I wish it were like that every weekend. The look on the faces of the drivers going down 1st Avenue was priceless. I finally got some cycling shoes at Bikes on the Drive a few doors down from Memphis Blues, the best place to get southern barbecue in the city; I would argue they’re even better than their other, original location on Broadway.

Café Calabria is always a great place for people watching, and is also always busy. Even so, we’re there regularly enough that Frankie and his dad knows our drinks. We stopped there after checking out the action and also getting our groceries for the week.

For dinner last night, our best friends invited us over for dinner – grilled chicken breasts, beet & potato salad, fresh baked bread, and strawberry shortcake for dessert.

It’s a great time of year.

My Favourite Cookbooks

If you look at my shelves, the most worn book you’ll find is the near-ubiquitous “Joy of Cooking”. It’s a cookbook I have a real love-hate relationship with. I love it as a reference – if you want to know about something, you’ll very likely find it inside its pages. Last summer, while canning fruit and jams and preserves, I wondered about the ease of making soup, chili, stew and so forth using home canning instead of freezing. A quick glance through the “how to can meat” section told me that the short answer is just freeze it.

As a recipe book though, I dislike it. The recipes are usually more complicated than necessary (complex for the sake of complexity I sometimes think) and often suffer from annoying levels of cross-referencing; “start with x (recipe on page 188), followed by y (recipe on page 443) and then …”

Cooking is about technique, not recipes; most of the things I make are based on experience, training (Dubrulle’s classes were very helpful there), and experimentation. The majority of the time I cook without any recipe, except when I am making something like pie crust which, being a baking thing, requires some level of accuracy.

I am approaching 100 cookbooks on my shelves at home; some of them I have never cooked from, and possibly never will; some I use all the time, thought more as inspiration for using an item on hand than for a specific recipe. Otherwise, the most referred to “books” are the binders of notes and recipes from the various workshops and courses I took though the Dubrulle Culinary School’s “Serious Amateur” program.

Some of my cookbooks are reference tomes; some are regional cookbooks acquired on travels around the world; some are beautiful “coffee table” books; most are in English, but I have a few in French and German as well. Very few of them are recipe repositories – indeed, I find it faster to visit Google to find a recipe for something specific than to search through my tomes.

My favourite reference book is the large, heavy, and expensive (but worth every penny) Larousse Gastronomique. I have several other reference books, but Larousse is to the others as the Oxford English Dictionary is to dictionaries.

The Alsace region of France is the home of my favourite food in the world, so it should come as no surprise that my favourite regional cookbook is La Cuisine Alsacienne by Pierre Gärtner. There is an English edition of this book available, but the edition I have is one of the few French language cookbooks I have.

For desserts I turn to two principal sources; Regan Daley’s In the Sweet Kitchen, which is as much cookbook as baking reference; and Rick Rodgers’ Kaffeehaus, which has desserts and pastries from Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

I love bread. Atkins would never work for me because I need good bread in my life. I bake my own as a rule – the light rye I’m known for came from Brotrezepte aus ländlichen Backstuben. Another indispensable source of inspiration for me is The Breads of France.

I have many more potential categories, but these along with my binders of notes and my kitchen journal provide me with all the inspiration and recipes I need for the foods I like to cook.

For eye candy, I have several of the Culinaria series books – Deutschland, France, Italy, Spain, and the European Specialties compendium. I also have both of Thomas Keller’s books (The French Laundry and Bouchon). They’re all very lovely coffee table books.

When I travel, either for business or pleasure, I like to find a local cookbook. I’ve particularly enjoyed Barossa Food, which I picked up in Adelaide. It’s almost not a cookbook so much as a history of how food traditions in the Barossa happened, but it’s complete with recipes. Legal Sea Foods is a chain of restaurants in New England that make very good food indeed; this was a “find” on one of my trips to Boston.

Small pleasures

I was ironing shirts tonight before bed and it struck me that sometimes it's the little things which bring the greatest pleasure; I like the feeling of a nice crisp clean ironed shirt against my skin. I also like laundry that's been dried on a clothesline in the sun; there is a certain crispness and fresh scent of towels and sheets that have had time to hang on a line in the sunshine.

Now, if only I could find a barber in town where I could get a very old fashioned shave with a straight razor, the steamed towel on the face... ahhh, bliss.

Glenys Says...

When I took the first (of several) series of "Serious Amateur" classes at Dubrulle Culinary - alas, discontinued by the Arts Institute when they took it over - I had the great fortune of having Glenys as the instructor.

Glenys is a someone I would point to if asked to provide an example of a great teacher. She exudes confidence, knows her material inside out, and more importantly, can convey what she knows in a manner that people can understand.

For weeks after I took the "9 day", I would begin sentences with "Glenys says...".

I was reminded of that today when I dug through my notes from the 9-day to find the marinade for flank steak.

Flank steak is a tough cut of meat. It was inexpensive at one time, until people came up with good recipes for it and started buying it. Now it's easily as expensive as sirloin or t-bone and sometimes more because of the relative amount of it availble.

However, a lovely piece of flank steak was included in my 1/4 of beef that I bought last fall and was tonight's dinner.

Marinade is simple but tasty. Roughly equal proportions red wine, rice vinegar, olive oil, and soy; three cloves of garlic; about the same amount by volume of chopped ginger; a couple tablespoons of sesame oil. Grill on a hot grill until rare/medium rare. Let it rest for about five minutes. Slice thinly across the grain.

Served with a nice simple green salad, it was delicious.

Edgar Allen Poe

I am fond of the works of Edgar Allen Poe. Having recently acquired Eric Woolfson's album "Poe: More Tales of Mystery and Imagination", a sequel to the 1976 Alan Parsons Project album "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" and reading the liner notes twigged a long lost memory of a little poem he wrote on the topic of beer.

Herewith a great little poem by a great writer.

Lines on Ale

Fill with mingled cream and amber,
I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chamber of my brain —
Quaintest thoughts — queerest fancies
Come to life and fade away;
What care I how time advances?
I am drinking ale today.

-- by Edgar Allen Poe, 1848

Best places to shop

Vancouver is truly a foodie's paradise. For instance, on Commercial Drive from Hastings down to 12th are on the order of 150 restaurants and depending on your tastes you could eat out at a different place every week and not hit the same kind of cuisine twice.

The "best restaurant" in town though is my own kitchen. This isn't meant as a boast that I could take on Rob Feenie on Iron Chef America or host my own cooking show on Food Network Canada; it is a statement of my confidence in my own culinary skills. I have the adventurous spirit to try new things, a core set of good kitchen tools, and a plethora of cookbooks to refer to for inspiration.

But every cook needs a source for supplies. I buy most things on or near Commercial Drive. There is a plethora of great little shops; Apollo Poultry for all things chicken; many fruit & vegetable markets; Italian delis by the handful; Italian coffee shops to go to after you’re done shopping (although my usual haunt is Café Calabria). Herewith, a small sampling of some of my favourite places to shop in Vancouver for my own little home "restaurant"...

• For cookbooks, there’s no better place to shop than Barbara Jo’s down in Yaletown. If you can’t get inspired to cook here, you shouldn’t set foot in a kitchen. Ever.

• There are two places I like to shop for cheese. The first is La Grotta del Formaggio on Commercial Drive. Italian style sandwiches, cheese from around the world (including many Italian cheeses as one might expect), deli meats including imported prosciutto, and they’re also the source of the fresh cake yeast I use in my baking. The second is Les Amis du Fromage. They’re a short distance from Granville Island, and you can almost just follow your nose there. They are pricier than La Grotta, but unbeatable for selection.

• Granville Island is renowned for its food market, but I like to shop at the local farmer’s market. The food there is local, often organic, and usually less expensive than the aforementioned Granville Island. You can also get things that are unavailable anywhere else in town.

• Speaking of Granville Island, one of my favourite places there is Oyama Sausage. They make all their own products, including terrines (the Strasbourg is my favourite), duck and goose confit, and throughout the year make seasonal specialties. In the fall, their order-ahead cassoulet for 2 is unbeatable and only around $12. Don’t forget to stop by La Baguette & L’Échallotte to get some bread to go with your terrine.

• Also on Granville Island is my favourite kitchen store in Vancouver, the Market Kitchen. It’s a small cozy shop with a wide selection of items including obscure things like truffle slicers; their proximity to the Pacific Culinary Arts School near the entrance to Granville Island certainly helps. The service and selection here are great!

• If you like sausages, ham, bacon, and other pork items, the place to go is the J N & Z Deli on Commerical Drive between 1^st and 2^nd (a few doors north of La Grotta). They have an open smoker and do all their own cured meats in house. Their smoked side bacon is divine. On Fridays and Saturdays only they have fresh pork, veal, and sausages available. On Saturday mornings, if you’re early enough, you can get their homemade fresh and hot from the oven meatloaf or roast suckling pig.

• Still on the Drive, Fratelli’s Italian bakery makes wonderful (and small!) pastries; their St. Honoré cake is a gourmand delight too. I find most places make unnecessarily huge pastries. I’ve often gone for a coffee and thought, “hmm, a cookie would be nice.” Unfortunately, what’s usually on offer is a cookie about the size of a dinner plate and not very good either. Here you can buy a dozen cookies to share with a few friends and have three different good ones instead of one monstrous yucky one.

• Famous Foods at the corner of Kingsway & Perry (between Knight and Victoria) is a great place to find all those obscure items that nobody else carries. Need almond bitter extract? They have it. Need bulk whole rye grain? They have it. Don’t want the mainstream brand of something? They have it. An entire row of various nut butters you can’t find anywhere else? They also carry buffalo meat in their butcher section.

• I usually buy my meat wholesale from farmers of my acquaintance, but Hills Foods in Burnaby is a wholesaler of all kinds of exotic meats and game. You need to spend at least $100 and you have to pick it up on site.

• The Gourmet Warehouse is a great place to find exotic or specialty ingredients. However, if you’re willing to spend the time exploring the Italian shops along Commercial Drive you’ll find most of what’s sold here and for less. Nevertheless, these guys have great product selection and great service. Another good place to look, although arrogantly pricy, is Meindhart’s Fine Foods on Granville and 14^th.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but this is where I would send anyone who moved to Vancouver recently to shop.

Intuit Loses a Customer

Down with Quicken!

One of the joys of getting a new computer with a different OS is migrating all ones data over.

Fortunately, some bright spark out there has created a product called Move2Mac that lets you do just that! I moved everything painlessly to my Mac with this software and special USB cable.

However, one thing that doesn't transfer over nicely is Quicken data files; in no small part, this is because the Mac version is not as feature rich as the PC version.

Nevertheless, despite my best efforts, I have been unable to transfer any of my financial data from my Windows edition of Quicken to the Mac version. The file is there, Quicken for Mac can read it, but it inevitably comes up with complete spaghetti for values.

The online help at Intuit is not helpful, and I'll be damned if I'm paying $14.95 to talk to their tech support people.

So I've given it some thought... I don't really need to keep track of all my expenditures, since I never really do anything with the information anyways. For those household expenses that my wife and I share in, it's easily kept track of in an Excel spreadsheet (or even a pencil and paper list stuck to the fridge).

My bank keeps track of all my accounts and has statements available going back a year in electronic format online. Ditto my investments. I can even do pretty charts and graphs. My bills are almost all automated. There are no debts to keep track of since I pay the credit cards in full every month.

So why bother?

I hereby say PHOOEY ON QUICKEN!

:-)

We now return to our usual programming.

Thai Son

Yesterday for lunch, I had the pleasure of going to a Vietnamese place called Thai Bon.

I say pleasure because I'm not usually wild about Vietnamese; the last time I waxed poetic about Vietnamese was the time I had curry chicken phô at Phô Pasteur in Toronto.

Of all the Asian cuisines, Vietnamese and Korean (especially the latter) have failed to impress me. It's less a function of the relative quality of these cuisines but rather that my palate just isn't wired that way. De gustibus non est disputandum.

But Thai Bon was great! It's a little place in one of those endless nooks and crannies off Number 3 Road in Richmond (and they have a second location at Main & Kingsway in the Kingsgate Mall apparently).

The menu is pretty straightforward and what you'd expect at a Vietnamese place. I had one of the lunch specials, consisting of lemongrass pork chops and "broken rice", which seemed to be steamed rice that was fully cooked and yet still al dente like a good pasta. My lunch companion had the chicken version, and we shared a salad roll which was exceptionally tasty.

I've added it to my list of options for weekday work lunch places along with I Love Sushi (Japanese), the Moutai (Szechuan), Hon's (cheap Chinese), Risty's (classic diner), Curry Express (Indian), and Rooster's Quarters (Montreal style roast chicken and smoked meat sandwiches).

Lunch for two was $20 including a quite generous tip. Recommended.

Happiness Is...

... a well stocked larder and well appointed kitchen.

One of the benefits of having a large chest freezer in the garage is that I can do things like buy a 1/4 beef or side of pork, usually from farmers I know, and store it. This has the dual benefits of letting me know the source of the meat my family eats and also keeps the cost down.

This weekend I had the time to cook at my leisure so I made a prime rib roast; I was in an experimental mood so I made a pepper crust for it. I used a peppercorn blend I had (red, green, white, black, and coriander), some allspice, flour, mustard, butter, and a little salt and rubbed the entire roast and cooked it to a nice medium rare in the centre.

My wife made a rhubarb custard pie as well, so we invited our best friends over for dinner - prime rib, nice bottle of BC red, salad, , potatoes fried in duck fat, pie for dessert. Delicious.

Apples, iPods, and iTunes

For many years I've wanted a Mac. However, the price was always a barrier (when you compare similar systems, Windows boxes have always been significantly cheaper).

However, the happy confluence of a slowly bit-rotting Dell PC, being a grad student (and thus eligible for academic computer pricing) and the release of the Mac mini and new series of iMacs, I am now the very happy owner of a new iMac and iPod mini.

I know why I waited to long, but I'm sorry that I did - from the perspective of someone who has shifted from being a "techie" to devoting my attentions to far more interesting pursuits, Apple's products are nothing short of brilliant.

And I won't even wax poetic about iTunes except to say the RIAA should take the blinders off about music downloading and adopt Apple's iTunes store model.