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.