Tag: Food and Drink

Ummm…Melamine

I have not put my mind to the question of whether the passing of my cat is related to the pet food poisoning matter. The one ate from the same dish and the late Frobie had symptoms for years. Yet, now learning more as we are about what has been going on, it would not be hard to wonder:

As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.

“…a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests…” “…not believed to be particularly toxic…” Just another reason to say thank you China.

Seeds

I set about picking the seeds for the garden this morning. Seeds and even fruiting bushes and trees are the perfect e-commerce product. Neat, compact and modest in price. One of the nice things about some sites is the ability to spend about 50% more – three bucks instead of two – and get the small commercial producer’s size of any seeds you particularly covet. For me, that is Genovese basil to blend with olive oil for a winter’s worth of green sludge but I am also getting super-sized on the sugar snap peas. I will squeeze the peas into every spare sunny wall and trellis. Between them will be pots of the basil and even a couple of figs amongst them, ordered on-line and shipped bare rooted by courier.

Why? I plan to gorge, of course. Gorging is an under appreciated activity and, frankly, is wasted for the most part on things we later regret – hot dogs, cheezies, booze. There is nothing, however, as puritanically lustful and the gorging on sugar snap peas when they are perfectly ready to be separated from vine and joined with your obsession. Except maybe the anticipation of that moment. There may even be a day or perhaps a week, global warming willing, when there will be figs – more figs than one ought to eat. Chomped right by the plant, sliced and layered with ham, stewed with port and poured hot on vanilla ice cream.

Friday Not Going Postal Chatfest

An interesting week for we and Canada Post. One day a package that hardly registered for weight within province was taken for posting and the clerk said “eight bucks.” “Eight bucks! Forget it. Give it to her next time we visit.” On another day, two packages with identical size and identical content were taken to Canada Post, one going to Philadelphia (ten hours drive, in another country) and one to Toronto (two hours drive, in my province.) The Toronto package cost a buck more. My world has turned upside-down.

  • Via John, I learned about Yorkshire forced indoor rhubarb. There used to be a show on PBS called The Victorian Garden and there was an entire episode about forcing houses where vegetables and fruits were grown and kept through the winter. I always wanted to live on pale homegrown foods.
  • Check out footnote nine on page six of this .pdf copy of a Canadian Senate Committee Report on border security. They want to allow us to bring back up to $2,000 bucks a day from the US including hooch, booze and other sippables. This is new information to me and changes my otherwise dim view of the legislative body. Imagine the right to pop over to Alex Bay for a 2-4 of Thousand Island Pale Ale. Imagine.
  • What has the Internet really done for us? I think it is fair to say that the idle magazine reader question is a valid concern. It has been a long time since I bought thirty bucks worth of magazines to go through on a Saturday morning. In fact, I cut back all magazine buying to just Sports Illustrated. I like pictures.
  • This is as important a transitional weekend as Labour Day. By the next one of these bullet points comes into being, there will be an NCAA champion crowned and the baseball season will be in full swing. The bulbs are popping up in the garden and if there is any drying out I may stick a shovel in the ground. I need to thing about seeds and which tomato to grown. Think Stokes and Vesey’s.

Not much today. These are the times of plenty. I am doing real things in real time. I have a real time life in many ways.

A Trip To The Snowy South


A few months to go yet.

A nice bomb down to the great state of Ithaca where we had diner at Moosewood with Gary and Maude as the greatest Charlie Brown snow in history fell outside. I wanted to sing “Hark the Herald” to loo-lo-loo-lo-looooo as roundheaded cartoon kids skated. We split a jug of draft Cascazilla which was entirely the right drink at the right time. The Ithaca Holiday Inn has solidified itself as the place to stay. We are down in Ithaca there a lot and others have thrown everything from the hallways that smell like a nursing home, to a “pool” that was about 15 by 22 feet, to that light that flashed all night, to the other pool with the green water and the sandbars forming naturally in the deep end. Go with the Holiday Inn. Room 265 works for kids if you are not in the Room 1000 bracket.

We ended up at State Diner on, no question appropriately, State Street and had a great breakfast. We often end up at Ithaca Bakery for breakfast where I have a bagel with sprouts, guack and a formed veggie patty so between that and Moosewood I have to make sure I balance my man-drum pretend-Ithacan with my townie pretend-Ithacan. State Diner can do that for me now. I eat corned beef hash and poached eggs but only on the road. This was a good one. Solid move on the toast as well with 3 slices per order and a light touch on the butter. But it was butter. Coffee is better at the Ithaca bakery but not by much. The staff are kind and helpful at both.

Next time, we hit the Shortstop Deli.

My Juleglogg Experiment

So the juleglogg experiment worked out well. Just straight frozen berries filling 80% of a couple of half-litre mason jars filled up with 22 buck Polish vodka and left for three weeks in the cold room. Polish vodka is made of rye, not spuds or whatever else other folk make the vodka out of these says.

Not being a big consumer of spirits, this turned out more to my liking than I would have thought. The dry berry flavour is far better than a store-bought flavoured vodka, twiggy and unprocessed. The colour is deep as jam.

Social Host Liability

An odd bit of public welfare notification giving from the PEI Liquor Commission, an organization I recall as lacking a strong leadership role in public awareness on the risks associated with the product:

The 24-page guide, released in time for the holidays, gives tips on planning a party, recipes and bar-stocking ideas. It also includes sobering information on a person’s liability as a host, and dispels myths about alcohol consumption. The guide notes a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision that social hosts don’t have the same burden of responsibility that bars and restaurants do in ensuring guests do not leave intoxicated.

“A social host at a party where alcohol is served is not under a duty of care to members of the public who may be injured by a guest’s actions, unless the host’s conduct implicates him or her in the creation or exacerbation of the risk,” the top court ruled. “Short of active implication, a host is entitled to respect the autonomy of a guest. However, the PEI Liquor Control Commission’s booklet says, the Supreme Court ruling does not provide a carte blanche.”

That ruling from last May could and likely does have a more limited application than many have hope and here is why:

  • At para 26 the court says:

    I conclude that the necessary proximity has not been established and, consequently, that social hosts of parties where alcohol is served do not owe a duty of care to public users of highways. First, the injury to Ms. Childs was not reasonably foreseeable on the facts found by the trial judge. Second, even if foreseeability were established, no duty would arise because the wrong alleged is a failure to act or nonfeasance in circumstances where there was no positive duty to act.

    So where the wrong is an omission, a not doing of something, there is no duty.

  • Key facts by the trial judge found include the following at para 4:

    The party hosted by Dwight Courrier and Julie Zimmerman at their home was a “BYOB” (Bring Your Own Booze) event. The only alcohol served by the hosts was three-quarters of a bottle of champagne in small glasses at midnight. Mr. Desormeaux was known to his hosts to be a heavy drinker. The trial judge heard evidence that when Mr. Desormeaux walked to his car to leave, Mr. Courrier accompanied him and asked, “Are you okay, brother?” Mr. Desormeaux responded “No problem”, got behind the wheel and drove away with two passengers.

    So the hosts were not piling on the drinks, they were not serving the drinks, they were not “operating the bar”. They were not “acting.”

So what do you make of that? No duty to guests and those the guest might later injure arises where the host takes no party because in this case the hosts played a very limited part in the intoxication of the guest. Does that mean the law has changed in relation to the service of drinks by the host? Isn’t Christmas the time, unlike say 30 years ago, when people now host more parties where they serve the alcohol compared to the rest of the year?

To be very fair, I have not read the booklet and the news item says they have confirmed it is not a free for all. But be as careful as before. Take prudent advice. Don’t consider anything has changed when you are pouring the drinks. You may well still be as responsible as before in another set of circumstances. Do you want five to ten years in a court case that goes to the Supremes to find out?

The Final First Friday Of A Month Of 2006 Chat

I remember like it was yesterday that it was recently not now but that was a lot longer ago than I recall.

What is going on? It is a moving day for someone I know and I am lending a hand so a half day. It is also a double party evening. It’s been so long since one of them came a long I can’t recall how they work. Sweater vest and red tie for the first, ball cap and mandolin for the latter. Have we discussed “mand-o-lin”: violin for the hands, no?

  • Old logo good, new logo swooptastic!!!
  • This is neat if you have a British last name as illustrated by “Campbell” here.
  • This is just weird:

    When Christopher Fleming-Brown, a banker living in the exclusive area of Kensington, London, kicked a ball about with his five year-old son in a large private garden communally owned by the houses in his crescent, little did he know he would later face a two year court battle for inadvertently turning the garden into “a public recreation ground,” contrary to the Town Gardens Protection Act 1863…[because]…[l]ast November, a magistrate court held that this game did not constitute football, as there were no ‘teams’ involved. According to the present law, they concluded, teams means football…

    What!!! I am not one to just on the “Europe is dying” bandwagon but this is just…what…they appealed?

    This week, on her appeal, the High Court decided that Mr Fleming-Brown’s game had amounted to football, with Mr Lord Justice Waller saying that “By any common-sensical, natural interpretation the respondent and his son were playing football or a similar game.”

    Well that’s alright then.

  • Well, I suppose I better make my call on the Liberal Leadership Campaign:
    • Iggy – The Grit Stockwell Day. Day was elected, Iggy might be too. It will be weirder for a while and then it will be over.
    • Rae – the nicest guy in Canadian politics. If he wins I might vote for him as I have usually voted for some version of a soft socialist with a faint hope of winning power. Experience and I expect him to give a great speech. My hometown Senator Hugh made the point that few of the candidates have ever spoken to a crowd of 5,000. Rae has.
    • Dion – I don’t know that he has done anything to attract the attention of anyone who isn’t supporting him. Is he a Grit policy wonk?
    • Kennedy – less a no-chancer than three weeks ago but corduroy jackets are so 1974 and also 1994. He would probably make a good leader but he can make a good leader next time. They have to vote for someone who can win in six months.
    • Dryden – he played hockey, right?
    • The others – there are others?

      • I will likely track tomorrow’s second to sixth voting rounds via the radio.

  • Big brother has been watching…no, really – he’s my big brother…has been watching events and implications of the great “Wuzza nation?” debate and considers how nations have hockey teams so Quebec may now need one, too.
  • A freaky weather event may happen down our way later today:

    NORTHEAST WINDS AHEAD OF THE LOW PRESSURE AREA WILL DRAW DOWN THE WATER LEVELS ON EASTERN LAKE ERIE…BY ABOUT 2 FEET. THE SUDDEN SHIFT IN WINDS ALONG THE LENGTH OF LAKE ERIE AS THE COLD FRONT PASSES BY WILL LIKELY SET UP PRONOUNCED SEICH AND FORECAST PRODUCTS ARE SHOWING A RISE OF 8 FEET FROM THE LOWERED WATER LEVEL TO THE HIGHER WATER AS THE LAKE SHLOSHES BACK. A LAKESHORE FLOOD WARNING WILL BE IN EFFECT FOR LAKE ERIE FOR THIS EVENING. LAKE RISES ARE POSSIBLE ON LAKE ONTARIO AS WELL…AS THIS STORM PATTERN IS SIMILAR TO AN EVENT IN FEBRUARY 2006. WATER LEVELS ALONG THE EASTERN SHORE OF LAKE ONTARIO AND THE UPPER SAINT LAWRENCE RIVER ROSE A COUPLE OF FEET FROM OSWEGO TO CAPE VINCENT AND DOWNSTREAM TO ALEXANDRIA BAY ON THE RIVER.

    Freaky. I wish there were some sort of over the counter product to deal with “PRONOUNCED SEICH”. On the upside, this is a rare boogie boarding opportunity.

  • I will go to the Dinosaur BBQ again. I do not care. I ♥ it.

That is it. Gotta go. That must be enough. Can’t you stop emailing me? Someone is at the door. What? WHAT??? Argghhhhhh!!!….

[Exeunt. Ovation. Bows. Exeunt. Fin.]

Tales From The Green Valley

Got a little Christmassy last night watching Tales from the Green Valley on TVO last night, a 2005 BBC production, in which a number of academics with good teeth live in a 1620’s Welsh farm and display how civilized it all would have been without the ignorance, disease, constant use of alcohol and religious fanaticism. But all very good and worth watching. Here is one participant’s website. It were the December episode that drew me back to the deep mid-winter:

To celebrate Christmas 17th-century style the farmers cut a giant yule log, find traditional decorations, brew contemporary tipples, and put all hands to cooking up recipes from the age of Shakespeare, like mince pies with real meat in them. At the same time they must find time to tend the livestock, make some winter clothes, and build a hovel, a period wood store.

But they did butchered a pig and made with it plump sausages and many a pie. ‘Twas the “contemporary tipples” that was of interest, the infusion of herbs in spirit that got me thinking of storing up something of a julglögg, then I reckoned it might be a pyment or metheglin. It reminded me of when at King’s I was in charge of the Gunpowder Punch in 1984 for the Christmas Readings: 7 parts red wine, 2 parts port, 1 part brandy simmered with old apples and spices.

Taking care of this in November leaves time in early December for some careful cheese planning. Oh, and I better buy a snow shovel, too.