“Fifty grams of dark chocolate? For a twenty-kilo dog? Ok, I’ll write that down and make a note, but that’s less than half the toxic dose. … Oh, no worries, I’ve been getting these calls all week.”
Monday, April 20th, 2009
Monday, March 30th, 2009
Maybe Vancouver is small?
Vancouver is supposed to be smaller than Montreal (2M vs 3M) but looking over the very dense skyline it just didn’t seem so.
I happened to accidentally wander past my employer’s front door though, a coincidence suggesting that perhaps Vancouver is smaller than it looks.
Sunday, March 29th, 2009
Thank you L, K & E!
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.
*** *** ***
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.
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
Dear Burglar: do not read!
We’re off! Leaving this afternoon. To spend four days cooped up in a train together. I’ve been very excited about this trip for the last few weeks, but I wake up with a sense of doom. This is a Dumb Idea. Why on earth are we doing it? This will be not so much a citizenship present as a citizenship hazing ritual.
More to follow, I suppose.
Friday, March 6th, 2009
Excitement!
Mark got his Canadian citizenship February 6th. It was very sweet and simple and bureaucratic and communal all at once. 375 candidates from 72 countries and their friends crowded into a college auditorium. The candidates were assigned seats in the front, friends and family at the back, tables of bureaucrats in between. The entire swearing-in took about two hours, most of which was taken up with candidates finalising their paperwork.
The citizenship judge was Croatian-born and gave a moving speech about how difficult emigration and the process of building a new life in a new country is, and warmly wishing all the candidates well in their common but individually difficult endeavours.
Mark, in front with the candidates, and I, behind with the well-wishers, each wept a little, moved.
For his citizenship present, Mark and I are taking the train two-thirds of the way across the country, east to west. We’re leaving Tuesday March 10. It’s a four-day trip, and we’re getting off to stretch our legs for an extra two days in Jasper. Then we spend two weeks in the Vancouver area and fly back.
Normally transportation for this trip would be on the order of $4,000 to $5,000. But I have a bunch of travel points from travelling for work and Mark is an excellent shopper, so we’re doing it for less than $800.
They say it’s spring on Vancouver Island: the cherry trees are budding, crocuses and daffodils are blooming.
I can’t think of anything else.