Feasts, Birthdays, Halloween and the Passing of Time

What do you get when you fill a house with people from the four corners of the earth? Some great food! Joe and his ESL students made quite a feast for lunch today: chicken satay, lamb kebobs, fried noodles with barbequed pork and vegetables, an Asian salad with peanut sauce and a Vietnamese dessert served at special occasions like weddings, funerals, etc. Joe ended up with two birthday cakes – both chocolate – but then you can never really have too much chocolate cake! And while a lot of that still sits on our counter, I’ve just baked a third cake – this one pumpkin cheese cake – for a crowd that will be here tomorrow night for dinner.

 

As for Halloween, it’s been pretty low key. We have had very few kids, and when I went out for a walk a short while ago, the streets were almost empty. It was a gorgeous night for a walk – mild, with the snow glistening on the trees. I couldn’t help but marvel though at how much my life has changed in the blink of an eye.

Flashing back 10 years or so, Halloween was a hectic time where I’d try my best to get some semblance of a healthy dinner into three very excited kids before they jumped into their costumes and raced out the door. Tonight I was on the phone with my daughter who’s at the other end of the country, in her own house, giving out her own candy. My oldest son was likely doing much the same thing from his own place in Victoria.  It seems so strange, and I can’t help but feel a bit melancholy. I’m starting to understand why people enjoy their grandkids so much (not that I’m looking for those any time soon). They get a second chance at partaking in all the fun stuff they did with their children.

So who knows…in another 10 years I might find myself once again trying unsuccessfully to feed some little ones before they head out for an evening of trick or treating. I look forward to that day. In the meantime, Happy Halloween everyone.

Busy!

What a busy time it’s been in my world – thus the lack of posts lately. Work has been over the top crazy, plus yesterday was Joe’s birthday. Unfortunately we didn’t have much of a celebration dinner, since Jamie was involved in the Haunted House, presented each year by the Music, Art and Drama students in town. Joe and I took a friend’s two little boys to it last night, and it really was quite good. The theme was a haunted theatre and Jamie’s part was a concession stand worker, selling various body parts. He was also part of a song and dance number that was hilarious. I had no idea he had such a clear, lovely baritone voice.

Today Joe is bringing his ESL class home for lunch, so I am baking a birthday cake for him (none of the students in his class has a tradition of birthday cakes). Then tomorrow night we’re having a house full for a big meal and more cake.

I decided to take today off because I was feeling burnt out. It’s such a treat to be able to sit by the fire in my jammies and not go anywhere this morning. However I’d better get a move on if I want that cake to be ready by noon!

Old Old Fashioned

Thanks to Murray and Lucca for your supporting words regarding yesterday’s post. Sometimes I feel like I’m turning into this crazy, middle-aged woman raving about stuff that means little to anyone else. I have visions of myself as a senior citizen ranting from some street corner, with those walking past me averting their eyes in uncomfortable-ness. So it’s good to know I’m not the only one who feels the way I do about certain things.

I thought the both of you might enjoy reading the lyrics of this song by the Scottish band Frightened Rabbit. It’s called Old Old Fashioned:

I’ll turn off the TV
It’s killing us who never speak
There’s a radio in the corner
It’s dying to make a scene
So give me soft, soft static
With a human voice underneath
And we can both get old fashioned
Put the brakes on these fast, fast wheels
Oh let’s get old fashioned
Back to how things used to be
If I get old, old fashioned
Would you get old, old fashioned with me?

Put the wall clock in the top drawer
Turn off the lights so we can see
We will waltz across the carpet
1-2-3-2-2-3
So give me the soft, soft static
Of the open fire and the shuffle of our feet
We can both get old fashioned
Do it like they did in ‘43
Oh let’s get old fashioned
Back to how things used to be
If I get old, old fashioned
Would you get old, old fashioned with me?”

Confession

I have a confession to make. I have stopped watching the news on TV and stopped listening to it on the radio. Clearly this is sacrilegious coming from a former journalist and CBC radio host. But you see, here’s the rub…I just don’t need the depression factor. It seems every time I watched the news, I’d get this big knot in my stomach, and a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness would come over me. The wars, the hatred, the murdering and other horrendous acts done to fellow human beings and to our planet: hearing all about this stuff in headline format and 30 second sound bites is an assault on my psyche that doesn’t do me any good and I can’t really see that it does any good, period. So I’ve decided to shield myself from it for awhile.

That doesn’t mean I’ll be totally oblivious to what’s going on. I will still read the papers from time to time, a format that at its best allows for a more analytical, indepth look at issues, and I will never stop reading books or watching documentary films.

But if I appear to be out of touch or not ‘in the know’ about the latest school shooting or I’m not up to date on the number of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, forgive me, but it’s my new health regime.

By the way, I coincidentally came across a speech today that the American actor Tim Robbins gave to journalists in his country. Here’s an excerpt:

 “In all seriousness folks, let’s face it. We are at an abyss as a country and as an industry. And I know that saying we are at an abyss isn’t the stuff of keynote addresses but all sarcasm and irony and rude pithiness aside, we are at a critical juncture in this nation’s history. This is a nation divided and reeling from betrayal and economic hardships. And you, the broadcasters of this great nation have a tremendous power, and a tremendous potential to effect change. You have the power to turn this country away from cynicism. You have the power to turn this nation away from the hatred and the divisive dialogue that has rendered such a corrosive affect on our body politic. You can lift us up into a more enlightened age. Or you can hide behind that old adage; “I’m just a businessman, I provide what the audience wants.” Well, I’m here to tell you that we don’t need to look at the car crash. We don’t need to live off of the pain and humiliation of the unfortunate. We don’t need to celebrate our pornographic obsession with celebrity culture. We are better than that…Only with your courage and your vision can we begin to imagine a world of broadcasting where the general consensus of those with real power say “Enough is enough. Now is the time to move away from our lesser selves. Now is the time to stop making money on the misfortunes of others and the prurient and salacious desires of the public. Now is the time to admit and recognize that we aren’t just businessmen but the guardians of the human spirit, with a responsibility to the health of this nation. That we can lift this country up with our programming, that instead of catering to the gossips and the scolds and the voyeurs we can appeal to the better nature in our audience, the better nature of what this country is all about…

Imagine a new broadcasting industry aesthetic, that respecting the better nature of the American people, produces shows that promote strength instead of fear. That does not divide, but inspires, that does not promote hate, but unity, that will not tear the weak down, but build up their strength. Imagine a world of broadcasting where the American people are encouraged to reject despair and distrust. And when they turn their TVs and radios off at night and go to sleep they possess strength, and unity and compassion for those they disagree with. That’s not out of the question. You can make that happen. It will be difficult, and will fly in the face of conventional wisdom, and standard operational procedures. But do we have any choice? The road we are on is leading us to a corruption of our former selves. We are better than that. You can help us reclaim our better nature, our perfect union…”

Controlling Our Food

It’s a snowy Sunday and once again I’m spending much of it in the kitchen. I’ve roasted a chicken and stashed the meat away in the fridge for meals later in the week, made chicken soup out of the carcass (to be frozen for another time), made a big pot of veggie fried rice, and Joe is roasting some caribou ribs to go with the rice for dinner tonight.

Ironically, while I was cooking all this I was watching a video about Monsanto called “Controlling Our Food”. I tried to add the link to this posting, but all of a sudden my link function won’t work. It almost makes a person wonder if it’s a Monsanto plot! In any case, I will write out the link (see below), as it’s an important film. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6262083407501596844

Do take two hours out of your life to watch it and if you are so moved, share it with others.

As I look at the food I prepared today, I wonder how many of the ingredients are transgenic. Not the chicken or caribou, since they’re both local and organic. And probably not the veggies. But the rice? More than likely. And the corn starch I used to thicken my soup? I’m guessing yes.  But I can only guess because Canada doesn’t require that all genetically altered foods be labled as such. If you want to know more about the situation in Canada, go here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/genetics_modification/

All of a sudden I don’t seem to have much of an appetite.

One Year

Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of my father’s passing. It’s odd, but I miss him just as much now as I did a year ago. With most other relatives I’ve lost, the intense feelings I felt immediately after their deaths waned somewhat as the months went by. Don’t get me wrong – I continue to miss them. But it’s been very different dealing with my dad’s death.  Even though my father wasn’t much of a communicator, I think we had a connection that ran pretty deep.

Anyway Dad, I hope you’re doing OK and not giving Mom too much grief! Hugs to the both of you and to Susan.

The Search for the Prince Albert Potato

When I was growing up on the farm, my father always planted a strain of potato called the Prince Albert. It had white flesh marbled with streaks of purple, and my dad declared there wasn’t another potato around that could touch this one when it came to taste. We of course all sat around the dinner table nodding our heads and smacking our lips in agreement.

Now that I have my own garden, I have been wanting to grow some of those potatoes. So I consulted Vesey’s seed catalogue in P.E.I., where many of dad’s seeds came from. No Prince Alberts to be found. I contacted them. They’d never heard of such a potato. They suggested the Purple Chief instead. ‘No thanks’, I said. I was on a mission and nothing short of the Prince Albert would do.

I spent hours on the Internet looking at various heritage seed bank sites. My searches came up empty. My brother suggested I try Noggin’s Corner in Greenwich, N.S., a place where you might sometimes find heritage vegetables. No luck there either. They forwarded my inquiry to the Canadian Potato Research Centre in New Brunswick. When the research centre couldn’t help, my email was sent to Agri-Canada’s Potato Gene Resource Repository. They reported finding one reference to the Prince Albert in a scientific paper from the 1940s, but couldn’t find a source. They offered instead to send me some Angela Mahoney’s Blue (a heritage potato with purple skin/white flesh). I might take them up on their offer, for the spud’s charming name if nothing else. But I’m not going to give up looking for my Prince. 

You may think I’m being silly spending all this time trying to track down a potato. What’s the big deal, right? The thing is, my small example points to the bigger issue of the loss of so many varieties of fruits and vegetables. Apparently North Americans now only get to taste less than one percent of the vegetable varieties that were grown here a century ago. And in Peru, the birthplace of potatoes, you can only find a few dozen varieties. Farmers there once grew four thousand varieties.

Sadly, the varieties most available today are ones that have been bred not for flavour, but for long travel and storage times. In some ways, our food is as endangered as the polar bear and rain forest.

Cooking as Therapy

It was a long, stressful week, and so today I’m doing what for me is one of the best forms of therapy…I’m cooking. In fact apart from my early morning yoga, I’ve done little else today. A friend went sheep hunting yesterday and gave us some of the spoils, so I’ve made a wild sheep stew with Yukon cranberries and dumplings. That will be dinner, along with some pumpkin cheesecake donated by a friend (left over from dinner at her place last night). I’ve also turned the carcass of our Thanksgiving chicken into broth (now tucked away in the freezer for future use) and there’s a feed of old fashioned baked beans bubbling away in the slow cooker (Jacob’s Cattle beans brought back from my last trip to Nova Scotia). Joe’s contribution has been to make a big pot of spaghetti sauce. It feels good to get a head start on the week’s meals.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about food and eating frugally, after six local families were challenged to live for one week on $6.50 a day per person, the amount they would have received were they on social assistance. They reported that it could be done, but certainly with far more planning, far less variety, and far fewer fruits and vegetables than they were used to. There were no special treats, no meals out, few convenience foods, and the vast majority of the meals were largely made up of starch from rice, cereal and pasta.

Living on $6.50 per person a day would be doable for us because we have a freezer full of meat, berries and garden vegetables. We also have some generous friends who share food with us. Without that, I think meals would be pretty mundane and uninspiring, and would be lacking in all the vitamins a person should get. I don’t think I could be like a friend of ours, who in his bachelor days was perfectly happy to eat porridge and yoghurt every morning, and dahl and rice or potatoes every evening. Few people in North America are content with such a simple diet. 

Interestingly, I read an article from the New York Times this week that reported that in economic hard times, people actually eat healthier, since they do more cooking at home and eat fast foods much less often.

What about you? Could you get by on a food budget of $6.50 a day? What would you eat?

The Three Nuns at Bombay Peggy’s

I have been wanting to stay at Bombay Peggy’s in Dawson City ever since it opened several years ago. Bombay Peggy’s is a former brothel turned inn. You can read all about its history on its web site. The inn has always been too pricey for me during my summer trips North. However since it’s low season, it is now quite affordable, and so I chose to stay there last night while in Dawson for work.

I stayed in the Lipstick Room, pictured below. Before going out to dinner, I enjoyed port in the parlour, and after my meeting I relaxed in the very elegant and large clawfoot tub while reading about the former Madam and bootlegger Margaret Vera Dorval, better known as Bombay Peggy. However as I pondered what life must have been like for Peg, I looked up to find three very stern looking nuns staring out at me from a picture hanging on the bathroom wall. There was no information given about who these women were or where the photo was taken. The image was both disturbing and quite powerful. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. How ironic to have such a picture in an old whore house!

The Lipstick Room

Sherry and port is served every afternoon in the parlour.

The Aliens Did It!

I certainly don’t mean this blog to turn into a dream journal, but I do have to share a dream I had last night…for entertainment value if nothing else, and to try to break tensions just a tad. It’s been a pretty stressful week, with several power outages. Understandably, the public is frustrated and angry, and I have had verbal abuse, a death threat, and a reporter accusing me of lying to him. It was the lying accusation that upset me the most. Just for the record, I don’t lie.

One of the outages, on Monday, remains a mystery as to its cause. Neither electrical company in the territory can find anything that points to a problem. After last night’s dream, I can announce that THE ALIENS DID IT!

In the dream, I was working in the diesel plant in Whitehorse in the middle of the night. All of a sudden a tall man with brown paint on his face broke in. I thought I was witnessing a robbery and fumbled in my pocket to find my cell phone so I could call 911. I couldn’t find it. Before I knew it, the entire plant was filled with people, working away with quiet intensity. I continued to search for my cell phone, but could only find devices in my pocket that only looked remotely like any cell phone I had ever seen.

I started talking to some of the people in the room, and as I did, the plant disappeared, and in its place was a beautifully built village. All the homes were powered with water, but using a much more highly advanced system than exists on earth today. They tried to explain to me how it worked, but I didn’t understand the concepts.

Then my HR director appeared and when she smiled at me, I saw that her teeth were glowing. It was then that I realized she was an alien, as were all the other people in the room. I asked her if anyone else at work knew about this, and she said many employees knew…in fact I was one of the last to know. It was then that I woke up.

Now I don’t know what the time difference is between here and Shanghai, but at some point on the 14th this video was posted on YouTube. And I heard there were power outages on the Thanksgiving week-end in B.C. and in parts of the U.S. too.

So there you have it. The aliens did it. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it