I do not shop

I am not a shopper.

I used to be, up until I was about 22 or 23. Back then I shopped too much. (My mother's almost-funny joke was "If you drop Susan in the middle of a forest, she would find a tree she wanted to buy."). But over the years, especially with the explosion of malls and big-box outlets and the loss of the non-chain neighbourhood stores, I completely lost patience with it.

Clothes were always an issue. I am tall, with very long legs and arms and very broad shoulders. Up until I was 29, I weighed under 115. Finding clothes that both fit and suited me was incredibly difficult. I take a size 10 shoe with a combination last (B foot with AA heel), and those are very hard to find in anything other than bug-ugly.

But it is not just clothes and shoes that I hate to shop for. I hate most shopping. I will go out looking for a piece of furniture, some paint, some good bread or almost anything, usually with a very specific idea of what I want or a specific requirement to meet. I find nothing even close, and I very soon (about 2 hours) get beyond frustrated and just go home.

Yesterday, inexplicably, I had the shopping mojo. Every place I went had exactly what I was looking for (or not looking for because I had given up). I got some new jeans for my new waist (31, down from 36: I nearly plotzed!) at the first store I went into. Then some decent rolls and a lovely bowl for my fruit and a matching, perfect butter dish, all in the space of about an hour.

I stopped by at a friend's place around noon and was invited to stay for a barbeque, but I did not dare: the shopping gods don't often bestow their favours on me and I did not dare to laugh at them while they were smiling on me. En route to the grocery store I noticed a couple of stores I did not remember, and I stopped at them on a whim. I found a TV stand that totally met the vision I had held onto for over a year (to replace the wobbly microwave stand I have been using), the perfect unit to hold my scanner (currently residing on a chair in my office) and both of my printers (one still in the box) and a lamp for $10 that was exactly what I needed for a particular place.

I am spending my morning getting my TV and stereo into the stand, and setting up the office electronics, while having coffee with my rolls. And, I may even get into shopping again, if I have another day or two like yesterday.

Taxes and Dances

I got my tax refund in the mail yesterday, and when I went to file the papers (before taking the cheque to the bank) I discovered my file cabinet had returns back to 1974 and no room. So, I spent the better part of the morning with my shredder, and I now have room for this year's paper work.

Last night we had yet another dance performance to attend (this has been a very rich month dance-wise), and it was thoroughly enjoyable. Compagnie Marie Chouinard "bODY_rEMIX/gOLDBERG vARIATIONS". Last time we saw this company and this choreographer's work was a couple of years ago, with her version of "Le Sacre du printemps", and we were thrilled by it. Last night's performance was wierder, but it did not disappoint.

Also received yesterday with the 2007/2008 NAC dance season calender (http://nac-cna.ca/en/dance/index_0708.html), so part of this afternoon will be spent pouring over it. We will still get series A, B and C, but I love looking over it and starting the anticipation early.

Off to deposit that cheque.

Things that frost my gourd (Part 2)

I've got two of them (today has been one of those days).

1. People who answer your questions with the answer they want to give, not the answer to the question you asked.
   
   For nearly 3 weeks I have been asking one simple (well, to my mind it was simple) question: what are the rules for naming an 'x' you are building to hold a 'y'. Once the strange looks (I thought I had sprouted horns out of the center of my forehead) had passed, I was told how to do something with 'y', how to write a procedure describing how 'y' is used, how to build an 'm' to hold an 'n', that 'x's did not need names and eventually that 'x's did not even exist. All of that accompanied with a semi-condescending look that said "Every idiot knows that.". Today, I found the rules (which I knew existed, because we had to take a course about the use of 'x's but where we were not told the rules of naming them.).
   
   
2. Businesses who make their employees answer the phone with "How can I give you excellent service today?"
   
   To date I have resisted the urge to say something like "Wow-You really do dare to dream the impossible dream!" or "You can't. I want the same crappy service I have come to expect from ....." or "By tapdancing your answers to me in Morse code.", but some day I will (unless I come up with a better one between now and then, and I am accepting contributions). Being greeted like that (expecially after spending 20 minutes on hold) generally means that the excellent service bird has already flown the coop.

Ciao for now

Curmudgeons-R-Us TM

Recipe for Angel Biscuits

2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 pinch soda
1/8 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening
1/4 cup warm water
1 pkg dry yeast
1 cup buttermilk

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Set aside. Mix dry ingredients in order and cut in shortening. Stir in buttermilk and dissolved yeast. Blend thoroughly. Can be refrigerated at this point in covered bowl 3 days.

Knead lightly on floured board. Roll out and cut with biscuit cutter. Place on greased baking sheet. Let rise slightly.

Bake in 400 degree oven until brown.

Can also be used for coffee cake and cinnamon rolls.

Things that frost my gourd (Part 1)

One thing that has annoyed me increasingly since they first started appearing in restaurants with pretensions to god-knows-what are the Giant Pepper Mill People.

This insidious species shows up at your table 0.01023 seconds after your plate is placed in front of you with The Giant Pepper Mill, and their signature vocalization "Would you like some fresh pepper on that?".

How am I supposed to know if I want pepper? The aroma from the plate hasn't even had time to reach my nose, so how can I have tasted it yet to see if it is in need of pepper?

Equally annoying are the subspecies of the Giant Pepper Mill People (homo idiotus phalusspapaver); the Parmesan Cheese Shakers (homo idiotus fromagus) and the new to science Giant SeaSalt Grinder Grinders (homo idiotus sel-de-mer-oh-merde).

When I attended the Stratford Chefs School, we were taught the importance of tasting the food we were preparing (always with a clean spoon! and at every stage of the process) to insure that the seasoning was balanced and appropriate. (Which was hard for me to learn: years of low-to-no-salt cooking for someone with blood pressure issues had made me highly sensitive to salt, with the result that I under salted things as a matter or course, and found salting appropriate for the general public taste was highly over-salted to my taste.)

But I digress ...

This pouncing on you, armed with giant condiment dispensers, before you have even tasted a bite and identified what, if any, deficiencies in seasoning exist in the dish, means that these restaurants do not trust the food coming out of the kitchen to taste the way it should (assuming the kitchen staff actually prepares it, which is a subject for a future rant).

Another way to look at the Giant Pepper Mill People (GPMP) is that they know that fresh ground pepper tastes better than anything ground more than 4 hours earlier. And that restaurants were going broke replacing pepper mills that people had swiped. Fine ... I could almost buy that, except that these things are so huge that I cannot imagine them walking out of restaurants in any great number, so why not just leave them on the table until the diner is ready (or not) for extra pepper? It might entail them standing up to pepper their food, but I believe that freshly ground pepper is worth a standing ovation every now and then.

Still, a pepper mill on the table may not be seen as an optimal (from the restauranteur's point of view) solution to the problem of presenting diners with freshly ground pepper. But that still leaves question about why the GPMP pounce on you mere micro seconds after your plate was delivered, and why the GPMPs, or restaurants owners, feel this is appropriate or fitting to 'a fine dining experience'?

I have noticed, though, that restaurants that could or do rate 1-3 Michelin starts rarely, if ever, employ GPMPs (or either of the subspecies). And when they do, these homo idiotus have obviously been through extensive behaviour modification by trained professionals, so that a suitable interval (approximately two mouthfuls worth of time) is allowed to lapse before approaching a diner with the Giant Pepper Mill. This is infinitely preferable to the Pavlovian response most of the species has to seeing a plate go onto the table in front of a customer.

La La La Whoda Thunk revisited

Last night was our next dance at the NAC, and as April 23rd was the almost-ex's 50th birthday I treated him to dinner before the performance.

While we were have our preprandial beverages (I really must write about my choice, Delerium Tremens, some time ... if only for the utterly divine and transcendant flavour and aroma, kick like a mule and the cute pink elephants on the glass it was served in), we talked a bit more about the last performance we saw. The music was extraordninary--clever homages to some of the most famous ballet music ever, teasing because it went beyond imitative while still leaving you in no doubt of what the inspiration was. Discussion about the choreography and perfomances, and we both felt that we wished we could see it again, as there was still much to consider, and by talking it through we both felt we could see different things than we had at first viewing. Maybe that is what it is about: exploration to see new things in the same piece in the same way you look at a Van Gough many times, and always for some while.

The performance of Un peu de tendreses bordel de merde!/A little tenderness for crying out loud! was in many ways less comprehensible than Amjad, but infinitely more enjoyed by both of us. We have no idea what it was all about, but were rivitted from the beginning (when we realized that the woman who, without a ticket who was in Brent's seat and tried to argue with him about it, was actually one of the dancers for the show) straight through to the end.

I got to thinking about my previous comments on Brent's and my feelings about modern dance, and I think I did us both an injustice with the "but we know what we like" gibe. Our conversation over dinner, and after last night's show, indicate that we both think about it a lot during and afterwards, and have both learned a lot more about dance than we knew when we started on this particular journey.

Angel biscuits

For years I have been intrigued by a recipe from Finland called Angel Biscuits. A mix between baking powder biscuits and yeast rolls, the recipe looked interesting and the name was irresistable.

I put it off for some time because I am just one person, and if I do make things like those biscuits, I often end up throwing half of them out, because I cannot eat them all before they are stale. (Note to self: write a recipe collection for singles who believe in real food.) Then I found an Angel Biscuits recipe that says it can remain in covered in the fridge for up to 5 days.

I made them Sunday, and have had biscuits with dinner for the past two days. The Angel Biscuits did not disappoint: they were the combination of flaky and tender that I expected.

La La La Whoda Thunk

Not quite a year after we were married, Brent and I subscribed to a series of dance performances sponsored by our university. It was a series of mixed offerings: classical ballet, modern dance, and a Chinese acrobatic troupe (if memory serves). We discovered that we were both so-so on the classical ballet (I had more patience with it than Brent did) and that we both really liked the modern dance performances. We continued subscribing to the series. There were two great years where both the Grand Theatre and Queen's had dance series: 14 or 15 shows a season between the two. It was super, and I think it was those two years that really made us the modern dance fans that we are.

We are now separated, but still good friends, and since Brent moved to the National Capital region (I had moved here some 6 years before he did) we have gotten back to Modern dance; 3 series at the NAC each season. We are classic 'but I know what I like when I see it' fans of modern dance.

One troupe neither of us have ever really liked is La La La Human Steps. They are not the first universally acclaimed troupe that has left us cold, and probably won't be the last. The founder and choreographer of the troupe (Edouard Lock) has always struck both of us as a bit of a one-trick pony and someone with a propensity for taking a good idea and beating it well past death. We usually find that he is starting to annoy us less than 5 minutes into a performance.

Last night's La La La performance (Amjad) was a first for me, in that it held my attention and interest for nearly 25 minutes. (Brent lost patience with it a bit earlier than I did.) At one point I almost felt I could see where he was going and what he was exploring. Then the lighting (harsh, getting harsher as the evening progressed), the video (blindingly bright, and it glared right into our eyes) and the constant, seemingly irrelevant appearance and disappearance of banners along the wings got between me and the performance and caused me to lose my involvement in the dance, my appreciation of the dancers' skill (extraordinary!) and my fascination with the lines and spaces that were being created by the dance. (I often see dance as the carving of space into there and not there by the dancers.)

My heart will still sink when I see La La La Human Steps on the schedule for the next season, but we will still subscribe to all 3 modern dance series, and some day I may even find that Lock's choreography and staging don't annoy the pants off me. I always go to my seat eager to be pleased. Last night he held me for nearly 25 minutes. Who knows what will happen the next time La La La is booked for an NAC dance series?

Thursday night with the Cousins

A last minute desperation call from my second cousin (2 free tickets to a Sens playoff game) had me spending Thursday night babysitting his 3 daughters (2, 4 and 5). Kaitlyn (4) had fallen on the front stairs that morning and had a split lip. Ashley (5) was having the time of her life outdoors (17C--It was gorgeous weather). Lindsay (2) is getting very good at naming parts of the body (she really likes saying elbow, probably because that is what comes out most distinctly).

I love being with those girls, and the more often I babysit them or play with them at family events, the more fascinated I become with watching how they process the world. You can see the exploration and experimentation going on behind their eyes as they develop a picture of how the world works. They are stunning examples of the scientific method in action (repeated experimentation to test hypotheses of how things work).

I must admit I also really like the fact that they are always very excited to see me. I have enough of an ego to thrill when one of the girls asks me to pick them up, or hold their hand as we are walking along, and their father says 'Wow...that's amazing.'

I am sorry about one thing about that evening: Kaitlyn presented me with a lovely train she had made out of an egg carton when I arrived and I left it on top of their fridge. Still, I have errands in that neck of Ottawa later today, so I will just nip over to Geoff' and Jane's and pick up my train.

Addicted to ..... (insert your vice here)

Cigarettes.

But that's TOO obvious. True and shameful, but too easy.

Cookbooks.

That is less readily recognized as an addiction, but there is something about a cookbook that I just cannot resist.

I have had to forbid myself from going into bookstores of any kind as I always end up leaving with at least one, and usually more than one, cookbook.

Not the ones jumping on the latest food/eating craze, be it Low Carb, Low Fat or whatever. Nor the personality publications (those 'chef X is hot/famous/gorgeous this week: let's have him get a book out NOW!'). And definitely not the big glossy gastro-porn coffee table books, where you know the sheen on the roast chicken is from Vaseline or hairspray, where achieving the presentation requires you to manhandle every piece of food until the dish is cold, and where most of the recipes verge on inedible.

The kind of cookbook I cannot resist (the kind that are weighing down my existing book shelves and languishing in cardboard boxes because I no longer have enough shelves to hold them all) are the ones that blend history, personal experience, science and philosophy, and where the recipes are mirrors to a person's experience, to a point in time or a specific location and not simply a list of ingredients and steps.

I want to feel the love of the food and the process of making it. I want a book that you can curl up with and just read. That you can be inspired by, not just to actually cook, but to treat your food, and your life, with a little more respect and wonder.

For the first 100 or so cookbooks, I could honestly say I had made at least 5 recipes from each one. I trotted that one out a lot with my family, as they thought I was nuts: after all, 1 multi-function cookbook like the Joy of Cooking and a few index cards with some family recipes on them would last you longer than a life time. They just didn't get it.

About the time I hit 250 cookbooks, that number had dropped to two recipes from each one, and after 300 or so I had books on my shelves that I had never cooked from.

I had read them all from cover to cover, though. And my tastes changed over the years. I started with books so I could teach myself how to cook. Then I wanted to know why things worked (or didn't). Eventually I wanted to know more about the wheres and whos. That evolved into the whens, and I have no idea where this addiction of mine will take me next.

By the time I hit over 1000, I decided to weed (having been inspired by some de-cluttering programs on television: 'I can do that. I am not controlled by my stuff.'). And the weeding is not going very well at all, as I stopped dead in the process when, after the first liberation of about 50 books to good homes, I suddenly found myself frantically searching around the house and through boxes looking for books I had given away and kicking myself mentally for having done so. So the great cookbook purge is on indefinite hold.

Anybody know a good place to buy a LOT of book shelves cheap?