On our third day in BC, Nora took us to visit her friends in Victoria, on Vancouver Island. For some reason we only took one picture while we were there, like so:

Olympic Peninsula as viewed from near L, K & E's house

We stayed two nights. L is vegetarian, so in addition to bringing a bottle of wine, Nora volunteered me to make supper, which I did. It was simple and flavourful and asian-inspired, and I made three different dishes to maximise the chances that everyone would find something they could eat, like so:

Dal
red lentils
curry powder or paste
a little canola oil

Heat the red lentils in the oil, stirring until they turn pale. Add water, about four times as much as the lentils by volume. Keep cooking until soft, adding water as necessary. Dal should be soft and slurpy, not stiff. When the lentils are soft, stir in curry powder or paste to taste. Keep cooking on low heat for another fifteen minutes or so.

Carrots and Apricots
2 large onions, sliced thin
500 g carrots (1 lb), chopped into irregular 1-cm (half-inch) chunks
a fistful of dried apricots, sliced into 4 or 5 strips each
a little canola oil

Heat the onions gently in the canola oil while you chop the carrots and slice the apricots. When the onions are soft, stir in the carrots and apricots. This can be ready in as little as ten minutes after you add the carrots, but you can also keep cooking gently for another half hour or more as the onion flavour deepens and the carrots soften.

Rapini and Garlic
1 bunch of rapini
6 cloves of garlic, put through a garlic press
a little sesame oil

Boil a pot of water large enough for two bunches of rapini. Chop the rapini roughly and drop it into the boiling water. Leave it there for about three minutes or just until the stems start to soften. Pour out into a colander, rinse in cold water to stop the cooking and squeeze out the excess water. Set aside until just before you are ready to eat. (Blanching vegetables like this is scary to most people these days, because of all the vitamins that are leached into the cooking water. Note however that by completely immersing the vegetables in boiling water you cook them very quickly, and the reduced cooking time almost makes up for the leaching.) Just before you are ready to eat, heat the sesame oil in a heavy-bottomed pot. Stir in the garlic then immediately stir in the rapini before the garlic starts to burn. Heat through for five minutes.

Barley
1 cup pot barley
2 1/2 cups cold water

Put the barley and the water in a pot together and cook over medium heat until done, about 45 minutes.

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This menu is easy to make because there is very little timing to worry about. Everything can pretty much sit on the stove until you’re ready to sit down. The rapini are in no danger of getting grey and mushy because you don’t stir-fry them until you’re sure people are coming to the table. It’s nutritionally balanced even if you’re a little kid and you can’t stand rapini.

I finally went to my suit store and for a little over $400 I bought:
- two lined, tailored suits;
- a soft, unlined fitted jacket;
- a lined skirt.

I am still dreaming about how I can match everything with t-shirts, scarves and tights. Fun!

In other news, I have finally found something to become obsessed with as I transition into my age-appropriate role of batty menopausal pest. (Running the world will just have to wait until I’m post-menopausal, as per Margaret Mead.) The Riot for Austerity. It’s a project in which people set themselves the goal “to cut their emissions by 90% of what the average person in [Australia, Canada or] the US consumes – the approximate amount people in the rich world need to reduce by in order to avoid the worst effects of global warming.”

Which means in my case:

1. Using only 10% of the average Canadian’s annual use of 1,200 litres of gasoline, so 240 litres per year for our household of two.

2. Using only 10% of the electricity of the average Canadian’s 17,000 kW-hour per year, so only 3,400 kW hour for our household.

3. Using only 10% of the heating and cooking energy of the average Canadian. I’m not sure how to calculate this, but if I use the US figures from the site that would mean 285 litres of heating oil per year.

4. Reducing garbage production to 10% of the average Canadian’s 1.35 kg of municipal waste per day. Our allowance will thus be 135 g each per day.

5. Consuming only 10% of the water of the average Canadian household’s daily 1,000 litres of water, which means each of us would use no more than 50 litres per day.

6. Spending only 10% of what the average Canadian spends on consumer goods. That would mean capping at $1,600 per year for our household. That will cover all clothes, toiletries, recreation, household maintenance etc. for two people for a year.

7. Reducing the impact of purchased food by 90%. That would mean that if I purchase 20 food items in a week, I’d use 14 home- or locally-produced items, 5 bulk dry items, and only 1 processed or out of season thing.

The idea is to pick from one to seven goals and within a year, make the infrastructure changes necessary to meet the goal(s) and maintain them after the year is up. I like the idea of this project because nobody’s saying “recycling my newspapers has the magical effect of making the impact of my consumption on the world disappear.” (Bonus! If people are actually achieving all these goals I can forgive them for breeding, which is psychologically beneficial.)

I’m not sure which, if any, of the goals I could meet. We may already be meeting the water one (oops, nope, I water the garden). With a little effort we could meet the food one, and I think we’re already not far off the heating oil one. No idea about electricity. Consumer goods would be a radical change (see beginning of this post). Garbage though – it already takes at least 135 g per day to take care of Pepe’s little incontinence problem. Enlisting his cooperation for my pet project will take some doing.

The other reason I like this project: when I am laid off and not working and rampant inflation has taken hold, being broke will be repackaged as virtue.

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Now, I wonder what M. is going to say when he finds out.

I’m fed up with all the pious concern about greenhouse gases. Really.

Most or all the remaining fossil fuel underneath the earth is going to end up as C02 in the atmosphere. The question is when: are we going to move it all from the earth to the air in the next 50 years? Or 200? But we are going to move it. So what’s the fuss?

No, we can’t compensate for fossil fuels in the air by replanting the forests we’ve cut down. The carbon that was in the forests is now in the air. If we replanted all the forests we cut down, they would suck up all the CO2 released by cutting down the original forests. The fossil CO2 would still be out there.

Besides, we can’t significantly replant the forests. Not without reducing the human population to below a million (and keeping it there). The land the forests used to occupy is needed for human habitation and agriculture.

It’s too late anyway. Does anyone remember when the Kyoto accord was signed? And how we were all so disappointed because it was too little, too late, and anyone who thought that Kyoto targets were meaningful had missed the point? Well. We’ve missed our Kyoto targets. And if they were too little, too late, then we are up shit creek, aren’t we.

I know it’s not polite to say, because having children is what people do and for most parents is the most (difficult but) satisfying part of their lives, but I honestly don’t know what people think they are accomplishing when they reproduce.

In a comment on my last post, Susan said “I thought Pepe WAS a baby!”

Good point. He’s a prosthetic baby.

prosthesis. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/prosthesis (accessed: October 15, 2008).

1. a device, either external or implanted, that substitutes for or supplements a missing or defective part of the body.

For instance, those cool racer feet for someone who’s had their feet amputated, or saline implants for someone who’s had a mastectomy. It’s fairly obvious why someone without feet would want artificial replacements: even if they don’t look or feel like feet, you can still walk and run, which is the important part. Replacing a breast with an implant is a little less clear, because the implant carries risks, making it harder to detect any recurrence of cancer; it doesn’t look or feel like a breast; and the practical uses of an implant are subtle. I’ve thought about it though, and if I had a unilateral mastectomy I think I’d have an implant. Clothes would fit better, but also the weight on my body would be balanced and I would be less susceptible to the backaches that women with a single large breast get.

Anyway. Back to Pepe. I always wanted a large family, and I like babies. I never had the circumstances I wanted to start a family, so never did. I was always certain of my decision, but I missed the kids and babies I didn’t have. Sort of an itchy, uncomfortable feeling that had me looking for something I knew I didn’t want.

Then I got dogs. They aren’t kids or babies, but they occupy the itchy kids-and-baby spot so I can settle down and concentrate on my life instead of my itch. Kind of like a saline implant isn’t a breast, but it holds the clothes in place and allows one to head out and do the groceries without worrying about the alignment of one’s spine.

Cedrika Provencher was abducted over a month ago in Trois Rivières.

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Children play in the alley behind my house, which is usually fun to watch and listen to except when the children hang on the branches of the plum tree and break them. Then I become the cross mean neighbour lady and tell them to stop.

For over a month, the only children playing in the alley have been boys.