Tag: Food and Drink

Stewed Fruit And Crust

Last evening I was witness to a dish of wild blueberries, oats butter and sugar: blueberry crisp. But then I thought for a moment that it might have been blueberry crumble when I was a kid. I knew we never called it Blueberry Brown Betty but others in school might have. Brown Better always struck me as the sort of thing New Brunswickers might say. But these are distinct but related to blueberry grunt, more dumplings than crust. There must be more in the matrix of grannie-approved stewed fruit dessert terminology.

Then it was the question of onomatopoeic foods. Do people have grunt after bubble and squeek? And what about my dream meal: mahi-mahi with piri-piri sauce on a bed of cous-cous served with cocoa? Makes you think.


Man contemplating piri-piri sauce

Baby Bok Choi

When the world that is Canada comes out of its fixation with the election and has yet to slump back towards the TV screen for the Winter Olympics, there may be a moment to consider something new including new things to eat. In winter there are chinese greens to consider.

Bok Choi is that thing that looks like celery at the bottom and romaine lettuce at the top. Last night we had it simply done. Quarter them length-wise. Heat the pan moderately hot. Olive oil and a drop of sesame oil and bash in the bok, moving and flipping until the tops are wilted and the thicker base warmed through. Light in taste and texture, they pile well upon a steak.

This has been a public service announcement.

Omnitopia

Ian has been on a bit of a roll lately. Today he raises the question of standardization and homogenization of commercial culture on the road:

But on a long road trip, the understanding that you are never more than fifty miles from a Wendy’s chili (low fat, kids!) or the 100% positivity that the Starbucks in Barstow has hazelnut syrup can be… oddly comforting. I’ve railed against predictability and ninnyism my whole life, and yet I am given succor that there are 12,804 places to get a large fries with McDonalds’ bizarrely tasty hot mustard sauce. Omnitopia offers sanitation, can always provide a bathroom in moments of desperation. But it also means you will never try that fascinating-looking Mexican place three miles off the freeway. You will stop frequenting that indie bookstore, but why bother when Barnes & Noble lets you read on the couch in the aisle? Holding a Starbucks latté, for that matter?

While that attraction to the familiar is there my reaction to travel is the opposite. I want to find that Mexican place and add it to my own set of stepping stones as I travel across the river. The more I travel often through the same places the more I find the places I don’t expect to find there. So now I know there is a guy making “Syrians” in the centre of New Hampshire, that Di Pietros in South Portland, Maine is a little friendlier than the pizza is good, that there is such a thing as a chocolate Boston there, too, and salt potatoes in Syracuse and Cambodian diners here in Kingston. That is one reason why I have come to dislike the train or the plane as well. The car comes with brakes you get to use yourself. I plan to use them, too. I have to head into the Big Smoke overnight Thursday and I may stop, oh, about fifty kilometres off the 401 at an old church in the country for six small bottles of the finest pale ale in Ontario.

Sometimes it does not work out. Like the bad bathrooms. Like the roads you shouldn’t have taken. Like this summer’s side trip to the Connecticut shore where we had a hard time finding the spot until we found Mystic and the Sea Swirl. It is all about the hunt and it just takes time.

Better Before

I need more information. When the yogurt says “best before” is there a second time period which could be called “better before” followed by “it’s up to you” and maybe then “roll the dice until” and finally a “you got to be kidding me” deadline? And can yogurt really go bad?

Good Pizza

I don’t talk about products much. I don’t talk too much about food that comes from freezers – but to be fair freezer food is one of the great wonders of the western world.

A hint to all Canada: the new President’s Choice Chicago pizza is really good. It is what it promises. Then, for dessert, there is Creamsicle ice cream from Breyers. It is like a bucket of Creamsicles without the sticks. As Creamsicles are proof of intellegent design in themselves, I am very much in support of the 2 litre format.

I actually eat mostly not from the freezer but when one is going to eat from a freezer to placate the needs of those who are both under five feet and under ten years old these are the things I recommend.

Whaling And Me

Japan’s fleet sets sail to kill 1,000 whales off Antarctica. Do I care? I think that I do but why?

  • First, the excuse that this is science could only be accepted by those who could support intelligent design as science:

    The fleet sailed on Tuesday from Shimonoseki port for the first year of a “research” programme called JARPA-2. It envisages catching up to 935 minke whales and 10 fin whales during the southern hemisphere summer to “…monitor the Antarctic ecosystem, model competition among whale species… elucidate temporal and spatial changes in stock structure and improve the management procedure for the Antarctic minke whale stocks.”

    There is a high chance that the fleet of scientists will be successful in elucidating spatial changes in stock structure through killing 1,000 whales. That is pretty much a no brainer. High marks, scientists, high marks.

  • I grew up in Atlantic Canada in the anti-sealing times. Big news in 1979 in high school biology. I never bought it. Maybe I should of when the cod soon started to disappear after the sealing stopped. But if you think about where the seals and cod live and what is up river from their continental shelf home…maybe it was not the seals so much as the draino, the liquid plumber, the pharmacuticals and other stuff being flushed down into the great septic system of the eastern North America. Why is the killing of whales any less skewed by those not involved?
  • And it is not the animal rights aspect. I don’t mind the eating of any animal below a primate. I am Scottish and we’ll eat pretty much any thing. We push steaks aside to get to the stewed kidneys. But there is that lack of necessity. Why must half a world be crossed for the acquisition of a bun stuffing? Maybe it is gastronomic hegemony? The desire to have dominion over the world through consuming it all. I know I don’t get that.

So I am not against sealing or hunting with guns or arrows let alone fishing with a rod or a net. I eat meat. It comes from animals. I think about bossy over a pot roast – it’s only right. I’d probably chew on a muktuk or other rarer smaller sea mammal as well given a chance and the right dipping sauce. But when it is a whale and not a big harbour flipper-rat or the bleating little sheep, somehow it is different. It’s the Leviathan.

Have I bought into big media’s spin? Which big media’s spin – the pro or the con? Maybe I have just made sure I learned enough to feel guilt but just enough to learn a little less to feel a lot of guilt or actually do something. I do recall a time from before these little guilts mine and the world’s when I was very young and Dad mentioned that he had performed the burial of the guy or a kid of the guy who has invented the harpoon gun shown above.

Day Off For Nuttin

I decided there is only one thing better than one long weekend in October and that is two. I don’t really take too many days off and usually carry days from one year to the next. It is still a newish idea to me that I have legislated days off as opposed to days that I stay away from work. Here are some things to consider along with me as I aim at achieving a whole lot of nuttin:

  • Anyway, it is the first day of NCPR’s funding drive and eight hours into the week they are already at 31% of their estimated requirements. I will give and, right after I convince you it is one of the best radio stations out there, you should, too.
  • Based on the beer blog and with the goal of having a hobby that pays for itself, I have been invited to take baby steps into the more formal world of writing about been by news-printy inky-handy publications based in Wisconsin and New York City. What would you like written about beer?
  • The blog bubble has taken off in style with a widget being sold for 2.3 million. That is nuts except if there is a revenue stream in the works and I am thinking RSS spam. All aggregators being sent ads amongst their RSS feeds somehow. The future will suck and then collapse as usual.