Wine Country

Tomorrow I head off on a much needed and well-deserved (if I do say so myself) vacation that includes a bit of time in the Okanagan, which is beautiful wine country as nice as I've seen anywhere. I've been to vineyards in Europe (Germany and France), Australia (both Victoria and South Australia), and Washington State; the Okanagan has places that are every bit as nice as those locales. To be sure, they are different experiences, but they all have a certain conviviality and joie de vivre about them.

Part of the pleasure of going to wine country is sampling. One blog I particularly enjoy reading talked about wine tastings and asked "what wine tasting type are you?" I laughed when I read it since I've seen all those types at various wine and food events I've been to; it was the laugh of recognition. I myself like to live in mostly in the Happy Drinker category, but I also have enough interest about wines and personal edification that I am also frequently to be found in the Student group.

I don't know how many wineries we might get to with a 16 month old in tow, but I will at least be able to report back on Tinhorn Creek as we'll be spending a few nights in their guest facilities.

BC has come a long way with their wines and indeed, there are some truly spectacular wines to be had.

Soup!

As I mentioned yesterday, I made veal stock. I ended up with 17 liters of it when all was said and done.

Stock is a wonderful thing. It’s amazingly versatile. You can cook rice or vegetables in it and they will taste richer without having added any fat or many calories. It’s a great base for sauces of all kinds, and I love what Bourdain calls dinosaur sauces (the old fashioned kind with a roux base).

Best of all though, I now have plenty of stock to keep me going this fall and winter with soup; nothing like a nice bowl of hot soup on a cold wet rainy slimy day in late autumn.

I won’t even resist the pun – my freezer’s well stocked!

Memphis Blues

If you like barbecue, as in slow cooked southern style ribs and all the fixings, then run, don’t walk, to Memphis Blues. They have two locations, one on Broadway near Granville (east of Granville), and one on Commercial Drive north of 1^st. I live closer to the latter and although the former is the original restaurant, I think the latter does it better. Don’t know why that should be, but there you go.

Memphis Blues is not a place to be a vegetarian. Everything has meat in it. The collard greens (the one thing I’ve tried there I haven’t liked) have meat in them. The beans have meat. The coleslaw and potato salad don’t have meat, but I wouldn’t risk feeding it to a vegetarian even so. It’s a carnivore’s paradise!

If you’re on your own, I highly recommend the classic pulled pork sandwich with all the trimmings. If you’re feeding a small group (4 say), get the Memphis platter, which has a sampling of everything – sausage, ribs, short ribs, roast chicken, pulled pork, beef brisket, beans, corn bread, seasoned fries, coleslaw, potato salad, and barbecue sauce. Larger groups, say 6-8 will get by with the Elvis platter, which is the Memphis platter with double the meat.

The food there is delicious! Serve with lots of beer and a stack of napkins.

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.”