Meditation on Haggis

In an attempt to celebrate my passion for food, I made myself a promise earlier this year: to eat whatever was put in front of me. Any preconceived notions of how I felt about one kind of food or another would be put to rest and I would bravely expose myself to the many unique cuisines that are celebrated (at least by somebody) across this planet. The plan had been going rather well. I had been invited to a charity dinner earlier in the week and the host restaurant offered an innovative fixed menu. I had the opportunity to eat swordfish, duck, while gently explaining to my dining companions that although sweetbreads (one of the other menu items) sound like something that just came out of the bakery oven, they are actually veal pancreas. Sweetbreads, as it turns out are delicious. That’s right, just because they’re offal doesn’t mean they’re awful. Having conquered fish, wild game, and internal organs, confidence in my abilities to eat the strange and wonderful were growing—perhaps a little too quickly—which is why, when sent an invite to a Robbie Burns Dinner hosted by one of my favourite fine dining establishments I jumped at the opportunity to sample the “Great Chieftain o’ the puddin-race,” the haggis.

Everyone has an opinion on haggis, regardless of whether they’ve eaten it or not. The knowledge that it’s traditionally served in a sheep’s stomach is often enough to churn the guts of even the bravest people that reside beyond the borders of Scotland. Haggis has become that rare dish were outsiders assume—perhaps safely—that no one outside of the country of origin would ever willingly eat such a concoction. On January 25th, in a celebration dedicated to Scotland’s Bard, I attempted to dispel the myths surrounding the legendary haggis.

Leah (my adventurous dining companion) and I had arrived at the restaurant and were seated amongst the brave and curious; I only felt slightly conspicuous without a family tartan—I’m not of Scottish ancestry and the closest I’m willing to get to a tartan is the Burberry plaid scarves I covet. Still, it was a welcoming group with that sense of camaraderie that can only be fostered through participation in something that falls well-outside the main stream—it’s a similar principle held dear during fraternity hazings: that which is strange and potentially unpleasant, brings us together. Some of my preparatory reading on haggis had suggested that it possessed a “spicy” flavour. I couldn’t wrap my head around what spice was indigenous to Scotland. I wondered whether the fabled shamrock is piquant. Leah and I ordered a glass of sparkling white before being served our first course, a bowl of cock-a-leekie soup. There’s rarely a more appropriate beverage than a tall glass of something bubbly. It signals the celebratory and has been known to elevate a meal beyond its humble origin. If the soup was any indication of the meal we’d be about to receive, than I for one was truly grateful. The rich broth was delicately accented with the aromatic leeks, but it was Leah who had identified the sweet and surprising treasure at the bottom of the bowl as sliced prunes. Our empty bowls retrieved, we sat back in eager anticipation of the main course. As the sounds of bagpipes filled the room via the tinny restaurant stereo we smiled wide, confident that not only would haggis be delicious, but that we’d be begging for seconds.

I thought I had mentally prepared for the oncoming haggis. I had rationalized that a sheep’s stomach is no worse than a natural casing on a good sausage. In fact, my haggis reading had suggested that the sheep’s stomach variety was a rarity these days, stomachs being supplanted by the more easily sourced (and less labour intensive) casing. I’d eaten Boudain about a year ago and it was pretty good, and in terms of questionable food no one really knows what goes into hotdogs anyways. In comparison, how bad could haggis be?

I’m not about to insult Scotland’s national dish or deride the people who appreciate haggis as comfort food, but whatever preparation I had gone through before gingerly shoveling that loamy loaf into my mouth was sorely inadequate. The smell was so overwhelming it was as if I had been sucker punched; my taste buds along with my psyche had been cold cocked; no less than three of my senses were currently under assault. There are times I’ve risked the potable and I’ve even consumed the unpalatable, but if there was a time in my life that I prayed for the hand of god to descend from heaven and anoint the food in front of me with holy hot sauce, this was that time. It turns out there is no spicy seasoning in Scotland; it is a cuisine based on the savory and bland where a simple onion not only constitutes rare herbs and seasoning, but potentially the vegetable component of a meal as well. If I had thought I was going to get away with my haggis being housed in a casing, I was mistaken. As rare as an authentically cooked haggis might be, the chef had done a noble job replicating this traditional food, and for a moment I fumbled in removing the inch thick rubber band of sheep gut that encased my slice of haggis; my heart sank as I let it fall lifeless near the edge of my plate. Children have been known to remove the crust from a slice of bread; I hoped I hadn’t transgressed culinary law too badly in removing the stomach peel from the (marginally) more enticing food on my plate. As I mentioned, this dinner was hosted in a fine dining establishment. “Fine dining” has become a euphemism for “you will not find salt or pepper on your table” and I toyed with the idea of crushing the lone flower that stood as the centerpiece of our table into a fine powder in hopes it would improve the taste of what was in front of me. I can only describe the flavour of haggis as robust—which really is the only word that can be used to describe the flavour of something made from sheep’s “pluck” (a combination of heart, liver and lungs). As a child my mother had fought battles over chicken hearts; my father had grown up on liver. I remember opening the fridge door as a child only to be confronted with a smoked beef tongue. Still, the idea of eating lung was entirely new (and somewhat unsettling) to me. My mind leapt into survival mode as I spread the inadequate helping of neeps (turnip) and tatties (mashed potatoes) over the haggis to create the illusion of shepherd’s pie.

A glance from Leah confirmed that her enthusiasm for our culinary adventure had worn thin; mine was close behind. Still, it was important for me to keep my promise and to eat anything that was put on my plate. Bite by nimble bite the massive helping of haggis began to diminish until finally with only the elastic tether of sheep’s stomach left, I rested my fork and knife across my plate to indicate to the waiter, that at his earliest convenience he remove my plate so that I might start repressing the memory of this dinner as quickly as possible. We beat a hasty retreat through desert, which in itself was a disappointing combination of whisky infused whipped cream coupled with raspberries and toasted oats. At this point I was looking forward to years of electroshock therapy in hopes it would mitigate the psychological scarring brought on by the consumption of Scotland’s national dish.

In North America we focus primarily on the muscular system of an animal for food, which despite being a great source of protein doesn’t hold a candle to the nutrient rich stores found in an animal’s internal organs. Although popular in certain areas, I challenge anyone to walk into their local grocery store and find internal organs on display in the meat department. My experience with the haggis may not stand as my personal high-water mark for culinary enjoyment, but of greater concern to me is that many North Americans have been led to believe that meat does not come from animals, but exclusively from the butcher’s refrigerated display case, and then only in the form of steaks and chops.

I ate enough haggis that night to make me confident that were I to eat it three more times, I could actually eat it without a grimace on my face. The cultural hurdle of tying into a dish composed of not one, but at least three internal organs was just a little more than my fragile North American mindset could handle. We left the restaurant; the only thing I took with me was the warped sense of pride in having finished my entire plate of haggis. It’s a strange sensation to be able to hold your head high and for a moment, actually salvage some dignity in having accomplished something you otherwise found unpleasant. It’s an absurd sensation like being proud of unclogging the toilet, but here I was, a smile on my face as if I had just high-fived the nurse after a colonoscopy.

Meditation on Meatloaf

This weekend I made my first meatloaf, a dish that was banned by my mother in 1984 and has since held the allure of forbidden fruit. Reviled by many, I was convinced that this classic American comfort food could ascend the mundane so I took it upon myself to elevate it from its lowly status. Meatloaf isn’t inherently bad, but almost everyone I’ve spoken to has a bad meatloaf story. People swear up and down that they’ve ingested the worst meatloaf in the world, some unsavory, so-dense-it-has-its-own-gravitational field mass, slathered in a banal red glaze (otherwise known as ketchup) that strikes fear in the hearts of cafeteria diners everywhere. I desperately wanted to buck that trend. Besides, like any recipe, meatloaf is only as good as what you put in it. Working against me was the philosophy that meatloaf recipes, like mitochondrial DNA, are inherited from one’s mother, so the long search began to find a recipe to use as the base for my transcendent meatloaf.

For my basic recipe I decided to trust in the culinary wizardry of the Food Network’s, Alton Brown. The first challenge was finding ground chuck. “Chuck comes from an area of the cow that is more exercised, giving it more robust flavor.” Chuck, however, apparently doesn’t come from my grocery store. With my options of beef limited to medium, lean, or extra lean ground beef, I opted for the lean as quickly as I opted to not to over think the discrepancy. I mean it all comes from the same animal, right? The recipe then called for ground sirloin. Given the limited selection of products at my local groceteria made from ground steer, like a struggling World Series team, I was already 0 and 2. But why be responsible for the demise of one animal, when I could be responsible for the demise of two different animals? So I settled on a pack of fresh, sun-dried tomato pork sausages, which I would remove from the casings. Thankfully, all the other ingredients seemed to fall into place.

As a belated Christmas gift, I had treated myself to an immersion blender; something I could use to pulverize and emulsify the contents of my stockpot into smooth, creamy soups. It’s been a cold winter and homemade soup has become for me proof for the existence of god. My meatloaf recipe, which now seemed to be in a state of perpetual modification, needed a blender with which to purée the croutons into a breadcrumb-like state. This would be the first time I used the chopping attachment for my immersion blender. Power tools are almost guaranteed fun, but razor-sharp blades, rotating at an impossibly high rate of speed, which turn croutons into a fine meal in a matter of seconds, are supremely satisfying. Yes, I’m a simple man. I mixed seasoned pulverized crouton mix, the ground animal, and the vegetables together in a bowl careful not to “squeeze” the meat as the recipe suggested. Now, there are two schools of thought as to how to cook meatloaf. Theory number one suggests that a meatloaf presupposes using a loaf pan. In terms of defined shapeliness, this is a great option, but a loaf pan mitigates the surface area that can be covered by a delicious glaze. It’s also inhibits an oven’s natural ability to create that “crust” of caramelized glaze on the exterior of the meatloaf, considered by many the supreme element of a good meatloaf. I took option number two: I covered a baking sheet with parchment paper and gently shaped my meatloaf into something resembling a deformed football. It’s important to note for those of you unfamiliar with baking, that waxed paper is not a suitable replacement for parchment paper—yes, they are two different things. Were someone to use waxed paper under his or her meatloaf, you would be subject to the laborious and frustrating process of gingerly pulling it from the bottom of the meatloaf like the cellophane wrapper of a stale caramel that had exceeded room temperature through its storage in a trouser pocket. I say this hypothetically, of course.

Despite the substitutions, the modifications, my penchant for freestyle cooking, and the unconfirmed use of wax paper instead of parchment paper, the meatloaf was excellent. My guest and reluctant guinea pig smiled with relief with her first bite exclaiming, “well it certainly isn’t my mother’s meatloaf!” Of course now, with a little confidence bolstering my ego, I’m prepared to additionally modify my recipe, and I’m toying with the idea of a Greek meatloaf (ground lamb, lots of oregano, and chopped kalamata olives) or an Italian meatloaf (ground beef, ground pork, and ground veal, with basil, parsley and an arrabiata sauce). The joy of any simple recipe is that it can be changed to suit the tastes, needs and desires of those who’d like to eat it. There is no excuse for bad meatloaf, especially when a little imagination can elevate it beyond its humble origins. Most importantly, it is not necessary to listen to Meatloaf well making meatloaf (thank god).

Geoffrey’s Basic Meatloaf (modified from “Good Eats Meat Loaf” recipe courtesy of Alton Brown).

140 grams (5 ounces) garlic-flavoured croutons
½ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ teaspoon chipotle chili powder
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 medium sized onion, roughly chopped
2 carrots, peeled and broken
4-5 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons green peppercorns (from a jar)
1-pound ground beef (or other meat)
1-pound fresh sausage (I used a sun-dried tomato sausage)
1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt
1 egg

For the glaze.

½ cup catsup
1 teaspoon ground cumin
Dash (or a couple) Worchestershire sauce
Dash hot pepper sauce
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Heat oven to 325 degrees F.

In a food processor bowl, combine croutons, black pepper, cayenne pepper, chili powder, and thyme. Pulse until the mixture is of a fine texture. Place this mixture into a large bowl. Combine the onion, carrot, garlic, and red pepper in the food processor bowl. Pulse until the mixture is finely chopped, but not pureed. Combine the vegetable mixture, the ground beef and the ground sausage with the breadcrumb mixture. Season the meat mixture with the kosher salt. Add the egg and the green peppercorns, combine thoroughly, but avoid squeezing the meat. Gently push and turn the meatloaf into the side of the mixing bowl until it takes on a football-esque shape. Onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, turn the meatloaf out of the mixing bowl onto the center of the tray. Combine the catsup, cumin, Worcestershire sauce, hot pepper sauce and balsamic vinegar. Brush half the glaze onto the meatloaf after it has been cooking for about 10-minutes. Cook another 30-minutes before additionally applying the remaining glaze.

Cook to an internal temperature of 160 degrees, remove from the oven and let the meatloaf rest for 10-miuntes before slicing. To create a “crust” on the meatloaf, simply paint a couple of tablespoons of reserved glaze onto the meatloaf once it has reached 160 degrees, and place under the broiler for a moment or two.

I’d love to hear your meatloaf stories and exchange recipes.

Happy eating!

Meditation on New Year's Eve: A Trip Report

For all the excitement surrounding New Year’s Eve, it’s the one night of the year that perpetually falls short of expectation. It’s for this reason, that three years ago, on the eve of a most unsatisfying new year, I swore a blood oath never make plans till the day of this one night that links two years. Going into New Year’s sans expectation has since served me well, and I will continue this laissez faire tradition of waiting till the last possible moment to commit to anything on Dec. 31st. Given the life changes that occurred in 2007, I wasn’t entirely convinced that I wanted to see 2008, let alone greet it with anything other than apprehension. 2007 was an amazing year for a variety of reasons: I ended a long-term relationship, had some success writing professionally, fell in love, had my heart broken (on a couple of occasions) and still, like a punch-drunk pugilist, seemed to be prepared for more abuse.

It was noon on the December 31st, an otherwise non-descript day save a spike in liquor sales that had been steadily escalating since nine that morning. I may take a relaxed approach to an evening’s festivities, but I was uncharacteristically organized in terms of my stockpile of liquor; the gin was chilling in the freezer and a bottle of Prosecco had been hiding in the fridge door for a couple days. I was only working till 3:00pm and it was around noon that I received a message saying that a friend was going to host an impromptu party at her Pilates studio. After work I went to work on the phone, calling my friend Amy (the sister of the studio’s owner) to see if she wanted to come by for drinks beforehand. I also had it set in my mind that my roommate Craig, whether he wanted to or not, was coming with us (I had convinced myself if it’s one day of the year someone shouldn’t be left alone, it’s New Year’s…I’m not entirely sure why, but it seemed to make sense at the time).

Amy showed up with her wine, Craig had his beer, and I was already into my second gin and soda, but it wasn’t until 11:15 that we were motivated to leave for our destination. We arrived at the studio 30-minutes later, took the elevator up and I was introduced to one of the most incredible spaces I’ve ever seen. 12-foot ceilings and wood floors greeted us, and to satisfy patrons’ penchant for the latest exercise craze (strip-aerobics) there were 12, floor-to-ceiling stripper poles for our drunken amusement. Lucky for us, the poles were already waxed, which is just as well as I had forgotten to bring my buffing kit. Did I mention there were hula-hoops? Anyways, we arrived, started chatting and it was 12:04 before we realized it was in fact, the New Year. We congratulated one another on our mutual survival of 2007, hugged, shook hands, and then got back to the business at hand, drinking. Stacked in the corner were machines called “Reformers.” Although they are part of an exercise regimen, for the untrained eye these appeared like medieval torture devices which could have easily been at home in a dimly lit dungeon where uniformed men with strong jaw lines remind you they have ways of making you talk.

Despite a broken turntable, the music was great, and the only thing better than my personal bottle of gin, soda, and my bag of pre-cut limes was the freezer, which had bags of ice aplenty. With New Year’s rounding out my holiday calendar I was quite convinced, in my fragile state, that I hadn’t been this inebriated in at least a week. It was then and only then, susceptible to suggestion as I was, that learning to hula-hoop seemed like a great idea. Women it turns out have a physiological advantage over men in the arena of hula hoping; it’s called “hips.” Try as I might to get a rhythm going, my hyper-masculine, upside-down pyramid physique seemed to work against me; a couple gyrations of the hips and the hoop would be lying at my feet, a victim (much like I would be later that evening) of gravity. Eventually, Amy offered enough advice for me to overcome the learning curve and I was swinging the plastic tubing around my waist like a pro. I must have hula hooped for all of 2-minutes, but when I stopped I realized how insane the endurance contests of the 1950’s were. Hula hooping, staple of playgrounds and high-pitched, pre-pubescent girls—it turns out—happens to be an incredible abdominal workout, which in retrospect makes sense given the stack of them that reside in this Pilates studio. Fatigued from my first physical activity of 2008, we decided that we needed to go dancing. Amy and I declined a ride from someone at the party, who despite denying it like a senator on the campaign trail, had been drinking with us that evening. It was about to be a cold walk home when a friend whose band had just finished a set at a local bar, pulled over and offered us a lift. We got back to my place, we dropped-off our booze and began the walk to the Armview, where we intended to meet back our posse and dance till the wee hours of the morning. With 100-meters to go to our destination, I saw Craig my roommate walking towards us. Given the recent spate of violent assaults in my neighborhood, I sent Amy off to the Armview and walked home with Craig. Craig’s late night desire for pizza was eventually assuaged with thoughts of grilled cheese sandwiches (which we had the ingredients for at our apartment), and having cooked Craig dinner earlier that night, the favour was returned to me in the form of a perfect grilled cheese sandwich. Wiping the crumbs from the corners of my mouth, I made my way to the bedroom and let the red LED display of my alarm clock bid me good morning with the time 4:00am.

For an evening as unplanned as it was, it was hard to believe how much fun I’d enjoyed. I drifted off into slumber, content and satisfied with my luck at having good friends, excellent taste in gin, the good fortune of having all the makings of grilled cheese sandwiches at home in my fridge and a great roommate willing to cook said grilled cheese. I went to bed, happy. A happiness that was sadly short-lived by the splitting headache and the terrible fatigue the next morning.

WARNING: NOT READING THIS POST COULD LEAD TO CHROMOSOMAL ABNORMALITIES AND DEATH!

Any good marketing textbook will tell you that consumers, for the most part, are irrational creatures. It goes a long way to explain the shopping habits of North Americans, who in a culture that fosters an acceptance of materialistic accumulation, seem to feel the desire to own increasingly more, despite needing less and less. Marketing isn’t exclusively to blame, at some point the onus is on the consumer rather than the producer to make responsible buying decisions; you can’t blame companies and their marketing departments for trying to make a buck. That being said, marketing by fear has become pervasive, and makes easy targets out of many sheep-like consumers. Recently, one of my competitors (Mountain Equipment Co-op) voluntarily accepted returns on polycarbonate water bottles for fear they were leaking plasticides into the water that it held.

The scare began when Dr. Patricia Hunt of Case Western Reserve University discovered a spike in the chromosomal abnormalities in lab mice she was researching. Her discovery correlated with a lab technician that had washed the polycarbonate cages in a “harsh detergent not ordinarily used for that purpose.” Since then, bottle manufacturers such as Sigg (who make aluminum water bottles) and Klean Kanteen (which, despite being made of stainless steel, have plastic drinking lids), have seized the opportunity to market their “safer, nontoxic” water bottles. Customers unwilling to question the veracity of the toxic claims, or those too lazy to read the original research study, have bought into this unsubstantiated allegation hook-line-and-sinker. The fact is that bisphenal A, the chemical that is blamed for the chromosomal abnormalities in Hunt’s study, is found not exclusively in polycarbonate bottles but in an array of products we use every day including: municipal and domestic water pipes, Brita water filters, and the epoxy lining of tin cans. Bisphenal A is so pervasive that to suggest the intermittent use of a water bottle will be directly related to birth defects and genetic abnormalities is fundamentally irresponsible. It’s akin to not watching television for fear of radiation poisoning, although we have no issue with microwaves, cell phones, and wireless telecommunications.

I’m not specifically advocating the use of polycarbonates as a drinking receptacle, rather, I’m highlighting my concerns about MEC’s take-back program and recent media attention about plastic water-bottle fears as nothing short of terrorism. Jean Baudrillard (French philosopher and all around bon vivant) once commented that terrorism and anti-terrorism are identical insofar as they both attempt to manage a population through fear. Marketing departments have seized on this notion of selling, not to consumers’ desires, but to their fears, in an attempt to scare someone into a purchase based on the irrational assumption that the competitor’s product will indeed kill you. Even Jorge Nanez, an employee at the Toronto MEC, in a National Post article dated December 7th is quoted about MEC’s water bottle take-back-program as saying "It's just a precaution situation. We decided just to go that way, but it's not like it's confirmed to be dangerous." So, until we hear back from Health Canada in May of next year, there is nothing to suggest that the plastic water bottles we use to keep hydrated are good, bad, or indifferent to our health.

That being said, we’re talking about plastics here; items that have been created out of chemicals for three main reasons: cost, durability and convenience. I have no doubt there exists safer materials to use, but plastics have created an entire culture based on the trifecta of those three virtues. Let’s be clear, I work in an outdoor retail store that shares the street both with a McDonalds as well as an organic health food store. I’m under no illusion which sells goods that are better for my body, and yet, I’d be willing to make a bet as to which enterprise makes more money in the course of a year selling food. I suspect McDonalds would be hard pressed to convince someone they offer a safer, healthier alternative to dried kelp, and yet, there is something succulent about a Big Mac that immediately trumps the benefits of a quinoa, adzuki beans and carob.

The greater irony for me is that when I started in the outdoor retail industry almost 11-years ago, there was a growing concern about the use of aluminum water bottles (yes, the Sigg bottles that have regained popularity in light of the recent polycarbonate water bottle concerns). These were associated with premature development of Alzheimer’s Disease simply because an unrelated study apparently found a correlation between “activated aluminum” and Alzheimer’s. A couple years later concerns started growing about the possible leaching of toxins from HDPE water bottles that had replaced the Sigg bottles as the then “safe” alternative. In turn, polycarbonates were billed as a no-risk, non-leaching alternative to HDPE, and now, with the concerns over bisphenal A, consumers are returning to bottles that were once considered “unsafe” as a healthier alternative to what is now considered a public health hazard. My aversion to this carousel of safe-versus-unsafe has more to do with tedium than it does science, given that no matter what the scientific outcome of water-bottle research holds, it is guaranteed, that smoking and car accidents will kill many more people during a year than any water bottle on the market (yet both cars and cigarettes are still legal). Environmental groups and companies that produce, for the time being, “safe” products are using this fear to further an honourable agenda through unscrupulous means. Ultimately, it is up to the consumer to decide whether their choices will be mandated by fear, or whether, with a little research, each and every one of us will be able to come to our own decision as to what we are willing to ingest in the interest of cost, convenience and safety.

I think people are missing the big picture. The biggest concern on the health horizon is not smoking, pollution related illness, car accidents, drug abuse or bisphenal A. The juggernaut of all chemical compounds that should be banned is none other than Dihydrogen Monoxide (DMHO). Negative effects of DMHO include:

-Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
-Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
-Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
-DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
-Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.
-Contributes to soil erosion.
-Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals.
-Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits.
-Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.
-Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.
-Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks.
-Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S.
-Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.

Furthermore, DMHO has been found in almost every water bottle ever produced! I implore you to seek out further information about the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide (aka: Hydrogen Hydroxide, Hydronium Hydroxide, or simply Hydric acid) at http://www.dhmo.org Write your local politician and encourage legislation that will ban this insidious product. It’s only in reacting to these types of products that we’ll be able to make our world a little safer, although none of us will get out of here alive.

Meditation on the Food Network

The $134.00 dent in my VISA card from the Paderno once-a-year warehouse sale, was the initial signifier that my recent addiction of all things food related had come to burden me financially. Not that a 10” stainless steel fry pan, an 8” sauté pan, and a 1.5 litre stainless steel pot are bad things—in fact, they’re quite necessary for most of the cooking I do these days. Throw in a set of dry measures and some measuring spoons and I’ve purchased a lovely addition to my expanding cookware collection. I’ve always enjoyed food and am fortunate to have grown up in a household where food, good cooking and the fellowship that both provide, were always in abundance. Mom had honed her cooking skills much in the same way many of he peers had; under the expectation that she contributed to a working household. But times change and it seems that many people of my generation would be lost if it weren’t for the advent of the can opener and microwave. It’s perhaps one of the reasons why I’ve been mainlining the Food Network recently, because short of reverting to some infantile stage and pulling at Mom’s apron strings while she dances around the kitchen, it’s really the most practical method to familiarize one’s self with the nuances of food and technique. I mean which one of my coworkers is going to tell me what a chiffonade is? Or explain to me the celery root isn’t actually the root of the celery plant? These are all mysteries that would be otherwise unsolved were it not for the people that fascinate me by cooking on television. It also doesn’t hurt that current television chefs are much more attractive than their grand dame predecessor Julia Childs. Though she may be credited with popularizing French cuisine in America, I have little doubt that every household would be making pasta from scratch and Betty Crocker would have long since gone out of business if the likes of Nigella Lawson and Giada De Laurentiis had been Ms. Childs’ contemporaries. It is a known fact that Nigella Lawson, with her love of all things chocolaty, is able to forgo using a double boiler to melt chocolate in favour of using her velvety, intoxicating voice.



Giada’s television success may be credited to the ease of which her cuisine is emulated, by the amateur cook at home. But it’s her stylist who emphasizes plunging necklines and her camera man who has a proclivity for zooming in on said plunging neckline under the guise of zooming in on her food processor that deserve the credit for her success. Though some of my friends describe her as having a fiendishly large head, it is not the only abnormally large part of her anatomy on her otherwise petit frame, so I can’t say I’ve actually noticed her hat size. In fact, a quick search on YouTube has dredged up some footage of her on one of her travel shows, clad in a bikini, with all the monotony of her banter edited out in favour of Europe’s 1986 hit, “Final Countdown” as the backing soundtrack. One Giada….um…fan…I guess has edited a sequence of one of her shows that is laden with more sexual innuendo in 2-minutes than most NC-17 rated films risk in their 96 minute runtime. However, I also found a slightly more tame video clip of Giada, co-starring a couple of rabbits.



Perhaps what is more interesting than these two sirens of TV cuisine is the popularity that celebrity chefs have achieved in recent years. Wolfgang Puck transcended not only the kitchen and the sound stage of his own cooking show, but became a returning character on the popular TV drama Las Vegas. People like Emeril Lagasse not only made cameo appearances on TV shows like The Family Guy, but had an entire character (Neptunian Chef Elzar on Futurama) based on their persona. Similarly, chefs like Rachel Ray have elevated themselves well past the status of celebrity chef, to very simply, celebrity.

At least in part, the rise of the celebrity TV chef is a credit to their character on TV. Most TV chefs—as with most television personalities—succeed by injecting excitement into what they do. The difference between Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter and my drunk cousin is the enthusiasm that Steve featured when approaching an animal—unlike my cousin who intends malicious harm to whatever he approaches when inebriated. In the one instance, we become part of the scenario as Steve’s fascination, love and whimsy brings him, and us, closer to the animals he approaches. In the case of my cousin, we become part of the scenario when we dial 911 to get him emergency medical treatment after a bout of drunken idiocy. It’s this enthusiasm that TV chefs inject into their shows, and it is ironically an excitement based on the pedestrian. At some basic level, we all have the capability to get over to the grocery store, purchase the appropriate ingredients and become a culinary wizard in our own home. We may not be fortunate to have a full set of Le Creuset pots, or our mise en place already prepared, but any of these shows succeed by convincing us the food we see cooked on TV holds the potential to be cooked in our own home. It’s the encouragement of the TV chef that spurs us on and motivates the viewer, and it is our stomachs and the adoration of our friends that motivate us to continue with our culinary adventures.

Yes, charisma plays a crucial role in the increasing popularity of celebrity chefs as there needs to be a charismatic component to anyone that hosts his or her own show, cooking or otherwise. And yet, charisma can’t exclusively carry anyone that far (myself being a perfect example). But given that all of us eat, there must be a unity in food, it’s preparation and its cause and effect that creates a universal language that all of us can understand. There is the reliability of the recipe (assuming one follows it) and a predictability that is hard to otherwise attain in this unpredictable world. This culinary unity can be extrapolated to include the importance of breaking bread with others, having an awareness of the food chain, sustainable farming practices, and supporting local food growers and producers. But I suspect that the reason why celebrity chefs succeed has less to do with the fact that we all eat, or our social awareness. We appreciate TV chefs and the great food they create not because they remind us of the great meals we’ve enjoyed in the past, but because in watching chefs on TV we hope to contribute in some small way, to not necessarily creating great meals ourselves, but to avoid contributing to the litany of bad ones.

Meditation on Metaxa

Dear Metaxa,

Gin, it is said, is flavoured with juniper berries. I have walked amongst juniper from time to time, and though I might be skeptical of the enjoyment of drinking something flavoured with shrubbery, like many liquors and spirits, gin excels. In fact, drinking alcohol that has been distilled from either rotting vegetation or grains seems to be par for the course. I guess that’s why, upon drinking your product this weekend, I was shocked that a distillery would think it a good idea, wise even, to create a beverage that is quite obviously distilled from a petroleum based product (I’m thinking diesel here), which is then apparently, "carefully blended" with the fruitful essence of arsenic. I must say, some people find astringents stimulating, invigorating even. I for one dislike the sensation of a spiny sea urchin clawing its way down my throat, but that’s just personal preference. Perhaps the idea of having your sinuses burned-out while your tonsils are simultaneously dissolved is one of Metaxa’s "unique characteristics." But unless Metaxa is popular with rendition teams as a technique to extract information from suspected terrorists in the way you claim Metaxa extracts its essence from herbs and rose leaves, I find your justification for these characteristics, like your product, hard to swallow. And it’s not as if I haven’t had regrettable alcohol related experiences before; to this day, terms like, “Jager Bomb,” and “Prairie Fire” strike fear deep in my soul, and yet, I don’t think anyone has ever made any claims that either of the aforementioned beverages offer anything close to an epicurean experience, rather, they are well regarded drinks with only a couple possible intentions in mind: to get one rip-snorting-drunk and/or beverages that give some satisfaction to their purchaser when ordered for an ex-boyfriend/ex-girlfriend. But the sheer loathing, the hatred that comes from purchasing an entire bottle of your “Zeus urine” results in nothing but a violent opinion of your product and the country it comes from. It’s common knowledge that Greece and its population are responsible for many of the cultural aspects that we have come to call civilization. The Greeks’ creation and production of mathematics, culture, and philosophy is well regarded, which is why I am surprised that a country of such cultural fortitude could create something to drink which could alternately be used to fuel old farm machinery—and perhaps in this day and age of oil awareness, Metaxa could be justified as an alternate fuel/energy source. Ironically, it’s not enough for you to kill-off the people of this earth with one Metaxa product; you actually offer a selection of aged poisons! As a neophyte (and never again) consumer of your product, may I suggest that all production be dedicated to the "Private Reserve.” I will sleep better at night knowing that your product, which then must be aged at least 20-years, will keep Metaxa out of the hands of the curious and drunk for a longer period of time than your 3, 5, and 7-year old products. But this isn’t simply a letter to deride your precious Greek brandy (although I appreciate your corporate frustration at Metaxa being, "misled as a brandy but in actual fact is something more..."—“something more” is so ambiguous, I’m forced to wonder if the Greeks, are now trying to usurp the Medici’s with the popularization of poisoning friends and house guests), it is in fact a letter seeking advice, and subsequent help if needed. You claim that each bottle of Metaxa possesses "2000 Hours of Sunshine." Given the correlation between sun exposure and malignant skin cancer, I'm forced to ask: having consumed at least 1000 hours worth of sun exposure last weekend, am I going to die?


* * *


Dear Valued Metaxa Consumer,

We at Metaxa/Exxon are deeply concerned over your physical manifestations of what can only be described as the sheer pleasure of experience. Many consumers have found unique results from participating in the Metaxa lifestyle. Let us share a few suggestions for your imbibing pleasure...

1. Sunscreen. While 1000 hours of sunshine is not the complete Metaxa package, it is recommended that 20 minutes prior to, during, and for 2 days after partaking in a Metaxa liquid ride, that the user liberally apply 40 SPF sunscreen not only to their exposed skin, but also to the inside of any drinking vessel they may use.

2. Crucibles. Many satisfied Metaxa consumers have found that while drinking our product "straight up" is a "hair on your chest" kind of activity, the true value of Metaxa can only be found when reduced in a crucible, allowing for a rareification of the beverage... this may be the something more you are after Mr. Milder. When concentrated in the crucible, it has been found that not only is Metaxa a phenomenal waffle syrup, tractor fuel, and disinfectant, it can also be used to conjure Greek gods and their minions. You've never seen a Minotaur like this before.

3.Ipecac. If you can't stomach Metaxa, get it out of there.

We hope these suggestions will imbue your next Metaxa experience with an extra couple hours of sunshine, and remember, the bottle it comes in has not disintegrated, so you should be fine... right?

Meditation on Lavalife

Try it sometime: create a profile, using no more than 250 words, in which you’re supposed to attract the attention of your gender-of-choice. Despite the fact that most of us consider ourselves individuals, you’d be shocked at how generic the results of this exercise are. This has been my experience with Lavalife, an online introduction service for people that refuse to meet while drunk in a bar or who are leery about the people that approach them while shopping in the frozen food section of the grocery store. The irony, that profiles tend to come across like shopping lists, where one attempts not to find a date or a mate, but find people with commonalities that will presumably lead to a successful courtship means it is less of an exercise in attracting a compatible mate, than it is an exercise in attracting, or rather, finding similarities in one another’s shopping list. But how successful can comparisons on paper actually be? So much of a healthy relationship depends on what lies beneath the surface, rather than, “you like peanut butter, I like peanut butter—we both like peanut butter!” Some couples I’ve chatted with actually enjoy the differences in their respective likes and dislikes, in hobbies and pastimes; it grants a degree of independence, a reprieve from the mental construct of thinking solely as a couple, and allows them to be more like two autonomous beings that frequently find themselves on the same track.

And finding people with similar interests on a dating website is easy. Everyone appears to enjoy the outdoors, cooking, and quiet nights at home with a movie. These aren’t bad things, and yet they illustrate some of the shortcomings of trying to find a partner through a picture and a paragraph. Assuming for a moment that the people filling out these profiles are telling the truth (and that statement opens up an entire septic tank of worms, because yes folks, people on the internet sometimes lie), there still exists an exceptional amount of ambiguity in any of their statements. I don’t mean to call into question the veracity of all of Lavalife’s profiles, but am forced to entertain three important considerations whenever I see the results of someone doing a little self-reflexive analysis.

1) The list of likes and hobbies are the types of things that are written to intentionally try and attract a mate. And I could be wrong here, but there are a lot of women that say things to the effect, “I have no problem with you going out with the guys, or you inviting them over to watch the game.” And maybe these women are so confidant, so self-assured, that generously donating a night a week to a future partner’s frat-boy-habits-die-hard antics is something that they legitimately enjoy doing. But the fact that they’d put that out there, as if it were the Rapala at the end of the line, makes me question their motivation. Benign is the woman (or man) that actually believes the statement they’ve just written; dangerous is the person who thinks they believe this. If you’re willing to suggest you enjoy certain things—things that deep down in your heart you find kind of difficult to stomach—simply to attract a mate, how much of yourself are you willing to sacrifice in the search? Should you really make that sacrifice? Wouldn't you attract the same amount of interest if you simply wrote somewhere in your profile: “Willing to compromise”?

2) When people list their attributes, who’s there to correct them? Some profile parole board actually exists to make sure you haven’t uploaded any naughty pictures, but no one is there to inform readers of your profile that you cheated on your last three partners, six times, each! I have yet to see a profile that looks for someone who is “dishonest,” “disrespectful,” and interested in “gold-digging.” And yet, based on a number of dating horror stories I’ve heard, those people do exist, and I bet those people haven’t listed any of those social maladjustments in their opus of redeeming features. Again, for the moment, let’s assume that what everyone writes on their profile is true—or at least what they believe to be true; all things considered, Robert Mugabe probably considers himself a pretty affable guy. A major problem with the idea of profile-based, get-to-know-ya websites is that how we perceive ourselves may not be how the rest of the world perceives us. Look at Jena, Louisiana: The world sees this town in Louisiana as being abjectly racist and culturally insensitive because some people feel it’s ok to hang nooses and trees and from the back bumper of pick-up trucks to keep a marginalized African American populous “in-line.” Of course many community members in Jena don’t consider themselves racist, how could they? They haven’t lynched anyone in at least a month! In a culture that considers both picnicking and 55-day-canoe-trips-in-Canada’s remote-North, “outdoor activities,” context and clarification stand for a lot.

3) And if we can assume for a second that the profile your reading is a reflection of the person you’re reading about, and that reflection is written by them rather than a group of their peers—which is interesting given how many profiles contain the words, “my friends would describe me as…”—but assuming that their profile is written by them, and that said reflection reflects their reality (real or imagined), then maybe their list of likes and dislikes has less to do with the, “now” than in the wish, the dream, the goal that they hope every morning, that upon finding their soul mate, their life will become. There is little doubt, that when you find that right guy or girl, those evenings in front of the fire while lounging on the bear-skin rug are kind of nice, romantic even. More so than sitting there alone, watching the rug’s dead, glass eyes staring back at you, asking the same question over and over again: “why are you still single?”

The last thing I want to do is be overly critical of a website that has afforded me the opportunity to meet some really great people. What I offer here are some legitimate questions, questions that I think anyone should at least “entertain” any time they read something that someone has written about themselves in an attempt to distill themselves into some formalized, profile-essence. It also serves as a warning of the limitations of websites like Lavalife, which has allowed some people the opportunity to forgo any and all non-insular forms of meeting potential life partners, mates, or hot dates. Sure there’s comfort in meeting people from behind a keyboard; aside from a sense of anonymity, the internet provides a “technological courage,” (effective, albeit imbued with far less of the interesting side effects that its alcoholic counterpart, “liquid courage” provides). But the cost is the opportunity you just missed, with that cute cashier at the grocery store who was checking you out while you fumbled with your grapefruit. They would have loved it if you’d asked them for coffee, or desert. They noticed you, but you were too worried about updating your profile to notice them.

Meditation on Dating, Fashion, and Fundraisers

My heart broke un petit peu when Leah told me she was going hiking with a guy named Peter that she'd met at her friend's wedding. It's not as if she doesn't have the right, or that I haven't been out on my own fair share of coffee dates, yet it pulls at the heartstrings just a little bit. I'm trying to be happy for her, but between you and me there's just the slightest bit of jealousy that lurks somewhere under my otherwise brave veneer. Of course, now I'll torture myself with the inevitable comparison between her dates and myself but as most people that try to unravel the rationale of relationships have already established, relationships are not rational beasts. It does, however, make me smile that she's getting out, away from her two favourite fixtures: the couch and television. Our relationship was frequently based around these two pieces of furniture, and at least part of me blames our breakup with the fact that our new apartment could only hold one small sofa, which was positioned in such a way as to make it difficult for two people to share and watch TV at the same time (the other part of me blames our breakup on her uncanny winning streak of our games of dominoes).

It's ludicrous, of course, to blame the decline of a relationship on a piece of furniture--but it's no less arbitrary than the crescendo of resentment leading to a split, brought on by forgetting to put the toilet seat down, or neglecting dirty dishes.

It's funny how little things can be compounded into catalysts for change. It's funny how much I miss sitting beside someone on the sofa.

I attended my very first fundraiser, the other night, my chief motivation being to catch up with a long-lost highschool/university friend. The fundraiser was nice, but strange. I didn't really get a good chance to catch up with Anna; she was busy satisfying her obligation as new executive director of the Gainey Foundation (www.gaineyfoundation.com). I don't resent her for that; they're trying to raise $2 million dollars in the next year, and the fact that she had left a complimentary $250.00 ticket at the door for me, so I could attend, probably didn't help the foundation’s financial efforts. For future reference, catching up with old school chums is best done over coffee, or drinks, or just about anywhere other than a social event that requires hob-knobbing. However, I need to tell you this about the fundraiser: I looked good. Damn good. Having lost a bunch of bulk, my Hugo Boss suit looks better on me than ever. Also, in the absence of being charged admission, I decided to spend some money on a real treat, a new pair of Cole Haan dress shoes. Despite my normal, self-described style of "outdoor-retail-dirt-bag," I clean up nicely (and I say this knowing that people typically say, “Oh, s/he cleans up well,” but I clean up beautifully) and have an appreciation for nice clothing and conventional style. My roommate was shocked to see me in my black suit and lilac shirt--the only tie he owns is from one of the snowboard companies he sells. I don’t know if this pertains to other urban centres, but in Halifax there exists something called, “The Law of the Lowest Common Denominator.” A law which states that no matter how poorly dressed you are for an event, fancy dinner or gallery opening, inevitably there will be someone in attendance dressed more shabbily than you—the law can be a godsend when you’re obliged to attend a function and forgot to get your suite pressed. I still dislike inappropriate attire, but the Law of the Lowest Common Denominator has stood me in good stead from time to time. But on this night, in this company, I dare say I was the best-dressed person there (I have yet to understand how “business casual” gets interpreted as “rugby shirt and khakis”). I was hoping to make a good impression on one of the organizers of the event as I'm hoping to join a public relations committee as a writer, for the Bluenose marathon, which he oversees. I felt out of place at this event at least partially because Anna was the only person I really knew in attendance. At least that’s what I had assumed until I ran into a girl at this event (“woman” now, I suppose) whom I had gone to highschool with for one year. It's slightly disconcerting to start a conversation with the following sentence: "Wow! It's been like...15 years!" Sweet Jesus, I hope those conversations don't happen too often, but I fear I've crossed the age threshold where I'll be having those conversations more often. Soon I'll be reluctant to ask after old friends' parents for fear that they've shuffled-off this earth. Still, the evening was kind of lost on me. Not being a hockey fan, the bevy of hockey legends that attended this event to bolster support for a great cause, weren’t recognizable to me; a fact that I’m sure risks my Canadian citizenship as I write this.

It was nice to get dressed up again. It’s been a while; I had forgotten that I pull off a three-button jacket with the best of them. I got home, tired from red wine but took more than a moment to pause in front of the full-length mirror and admire myself. It does the ego good, and despite being alone for the rest of the evening, I kept myself company with a smile on my face, confident that Leah’s date, Peter, could never look this good in a suit.

Meditation on Young Drivers

My biggest fear of driving has been confirmed: that there will come a day when I am forced to share the road with my driver’s ed classmates, a group that makes single celled organisms look like Nobel laureates. It’s upsetting for me to think that one 16-year old is convinced that the appropriate answer is, “Run him down!” to the question, “What should a driver do in this scenario?” I might have found some humour in his morbid comment initially, but given fixation on that response (it’s the one answer he’s ever offered and continues to offer), I’m forced to not only question whether I should ever enter another vehicle again, but be a pedestrian in Atlantic Canada, ever.

I’m not offended by the girl beside me, who, from what I can tell, is the fastest text messenger on earth—neglecting the “4 Habits” (and “20 Sub Habits”) that my driving school preaches, in favour of being in constant communication with her peers via an acronym based language that I’ll never understand. What do I care if she fails her exam through neglect? I don’t, except that I live in fear of the possibility (given the success rate of passing the driving exam for the people that attend this class) that she will, in fact, pass. I’m hoping her fondness for text messaging doesn’t transpose inside the vehicles, as it’s tough to keep your hands at “10” and “2” when you’re chatting with your girlfriends about the cute boy in class. It’s little wonder why drivers in her age bracket have the highest per capita driver fatality rate.

Actually, if you ever needed a reason to stay off the road, then driver’s ed is the place for you. Every reason not to drive is localized in one convenient classroom. The best part is that the instructor never garners the respect that a typical teacher does, so aberrations like crunching empty aluminum cans and the rustle of bags of chips are never governed, and escalate without consequence. But it really is my confidence in the future of our population that is shaken. During the last class the instructor would periodically display newspaper clippings describing horrific accidents and would ask us what the drivers had done wrong, other than cause massive carnage and destruction. One clipping described a woman who, in an attempt to miss a stray dog, crossed into the oncoming lane and struck the approaching vehicle head-on, killing the oncoming driver. We discussed the inappropriateness of the driver’s actions, and then behind me with the earnestness that only a teenager can provide came the query, “But what if she was an animal lover?” Slowly I turned to face her, and in a calm tone of voice that was quite the opposite of the sheer loathing I felt inside, I replied, “Don’t forget, people are animals too.” I understand that biology is not a prerequisite for driver’s ed—heck, I’m not sure I’ve taken a biology class in my life, but the world’s imminent doom was sealed in her following words: “No we’re not…people are mammals.” She sat back, confident that she had refuted my point of people being animals. On this rare occasion, I had the good fortune to be seated beside a young woman with above average intelligence, with a high regard for sarcasm. Although she masked her comment with the body language of muttering something under-your-breath, she had intentionally made it audible enough to garner a class guffaw. “Mammals, like dogs?” She asked rhetorically.

As quickly as my faith in humanity was redeemed, it declined again when we were asked to do an open book test, and 30% of the class failed.

My concern with my own behaviour behind the wheel is now completely overwhelmed by my concern with everyone else’s behaviour behind the wheel. An uncle of mine tried to assuage my fears earlier in the year by saying, “Sure it’s a little disconcerting at first, but eventually it’s just like flying a paper airplane.” Once, I had chatted with my Mom about what gave her faith in humanity. “Driving.” She said. I asked her to elaborate. “Well when you’re driving down the highway the only thing separating vehicles is a painted line. There are speed limits, but you can drive faster if you want. Yet, generally people drive staying to their own lane, most people drive around the speed limit, and generally people arrive at their destination no worse for wear than when they started. Given the amount of people on the road, there are surprisingly few accidents.” Her analogy of driver self-governance as a metaphor for a good and just society was solid. So while my faith in humanity is rocked by the prospect of driving, my Mother’s is affirmed. Then again, she’s never been to my Young Drivers class.

Meditation on Turning Thirty

Turning thirty isn't just anti-climactic; it’s the Y2K of birthdays. All the fear and trepidation, the nervous anticipation and the excitement of crossing this generational threshold, dissolve into the realization that for the rest of the planet (save those that share your birthday) it’s just another day in the world. Even for me, as in-tune with the universe as I am, there really wasn’t a perceptible difference between my birthday and the day before. Now that it’s come and gone, the following days have been eerily similar to the celebratory one. All this time I thought turning thirty would automatically earn me the respect of my peers and the admiration of many. You can imagine my disappointment when I found out those two things need to be earned through hard work. What a rip off.

But one day just doesn’t seem like it’s enough to commemorate this milestone of entry into my fourth decade. It’s for this reason that I have decided to celebrate not just a birthday, but an entire birthday-fest for the next ten days, culminating in a concert with a band I’ve never heard of before. It will be there, on the dance floor, that I will be forced to admit that my birthday has come and gone for another year, and that I will never see thirty, again.

It’s been a good birthday, and celebrated over the projected course of ten days, I dare say it’s been and will continue to be great, albeit significantly less ruckus than birthdays past. Excitement it seems is now found at the bottom of a couple of pint glasses and in the company of good friends. My sense of getting older is that aging affords us the luxury of finding the pleasant in the simple. Still, like dating documents with the wrong year shortly after January 1st, I’ve caught myself introducing myself as “29-year old Geoffrey” and not his vastly more mature, thirty-year old counterpart.

The 20’s were generally a good decade for me, but not great. I had subscribed to some bad behaviour and put enough self-induced roadblocks in my life that entering thirty has been met less with fanfare than a grand sigh of relief. I did a lot in my twenties that I’m not proud of (and will resist embellishing), but without sounding dense, it seems like a necessary period of time for me to get where I am today, even if the journey is reminiscent the Purgatorio. The twenties weren’t all doom and gloom either. I was fortunate enough to maintain some great friendships and for six years, enjoy the company of a wonderful woman who helped me realize that the burden of the world is cut in half when born on two sets of shoulders.

But thirty marks a turning point for me, and for that, I’m excited. And it’s not just me, the general consensus of my friends who are older than me swear that, “the thirties are the best!” I might lack the courage to ask whether this was a beer-induced revelation or not, but it seems a hopeful observation.

A former employer of mine who had celebrated his sixtieth birthday earlier in the year pulled me aside and asked what I thought of turning thirty. I explained to him that it wasn’t too bad, but that I sort of felt like I was getting old (which, all things considered, is kind of a dumb statement—it’s not as if any of us are getting younger, despite what TV ads for skin cream might suggest). He smiled and leaned in, “turning thirty isn’t too bad. In fact, turning forty and fifty aren’t that bad either.” He paused, leaned backed and winked “But when you turn sixty? That’s when you know you’re starting to get old.”

Meditation on Roommates, New and Old

It was a lonely walk home with the realization that Leah wouldn’t be there to greet me. Leah was busy setting up in her new home, one street over while I was left with her vacancy to deal with. Sadly, it’s a vacancy that can’t be filled with my new roomate Craig’s behemoth, super-plush couch—though I’ve had worse things enter my life. With the flux of one roommate moving out and another moving in, I know that it will be a hard couple of days to come. But that’s life, and anyone that feels the desire to paraphrase this scenario with a tidal metaphor risks a punch in the nose.

If changing roommates has taught me anything it’s the financial cost of doing so. Dishes, pots, odds and end all find their way back to their original owner and I’m getting a sense of what it will cost to replace all those items that I’ve until now enjoyed free of charge, including the box of Raisin Bran that I contest was mine (even if I had eaten Leah’s entire box of Raisin Bran the week before). I’m almost scared to do anything in my apartment for fear I will discover yet-another-needing-to-be-replaced-item, but it’s not all loss. Craig has a super-nice TV with picture-in-picture, which really means that I can ignore two programs at the same time. He also has an X-Box so I wonder if there will be marathon sessions of Halo 2 in my future. The changing of the guard here at my humble Lawrence Street apartment also means bringing some closure to my relationship with Leah. We broke up weeks ago and yet, because we continued to live together there continued to exist a relationship, albeit from separate rooms. Leah leaving the apartment marks the first time in almost six years we’ve lived apart, and frankly, the prospect of separate lives is little scary. The loss of the individual is a fact of long-term relationships, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing. We make personal sacrifices for the good of the relationship, for the betterment of the unit and those that don’t, risk finding themselves as characters in episodes of The Peoples’ Court, Dr. Phil, or Jerry Springer depending on the severity of their lack-of-compromise. Becoming an individual again will be an interesting, nerve-wracking prospect. In past I’ve been my own worst enemy; I hope in hurtling towards thirty, I can turn into my own best friend.

There is a melancholy in change and the loss of the known; I’m unconvinced whether the inherent joy in my morning grapefruit, coffee, and the aforementioned Raising Bran (which I have re-appropriated from Leah’s place) will be enough to assuage the fear of the unfamiliar. But, in time the unfamiliar will inevitably become the familiar—like growing a plant from seed, it just takes time. Of course, Craig will have idiosyncrasies that I’ll need to get used to, and I hope he doesn’t come to some quiet-yet-horrific realization that he’s just moved in with a complete freak, though that might not be far from the truth. Ironically, my new roommate and his girlfriend of four years are also recently broken-up, though they are feeling out their current relationship status from the comfort of separate dwellings. Whatever I’m going through I guess I can take comfort in the fact that I’m not the only one, and in the bedroom next to mine is someone in a similar scenario. No one likes to be by themselves in these kinds of boats; we just hope any company we gain doesn’t constitute a ship of fools.

We’ll be off to the mall today to pick up some furnishings for Leah’s new place—a bachelor apartment of such economy that the finish work and the near-perfect layout only slightly make up for a space where one can watch TV, stir the soup on the stove, and make one’s bed all while sitting on the toilet. Mon petit endroit is palatial in comparison, and has even grown marginally since Craig in his naïve, new-roommate generosity has given me exclusive use of the large, main closet.

If anything, my co-habitation with Leah—though it may have lacked perfection—has meant consistency: a prized commodity given my past luck in finding exceptionally bad roommates. I have lived with those that insisted on urinating in 4-litre jugs to save them a trip to the bathroom in the “wee” hours of the morning, and then refused to throw their piss-receptacles, away. I’ve lived with the person that watched religious programming on the Vision Network at 2:00am at a deafening volume with his face pressed against the glass. I’ve lived with people that deep-fried every piece of food they consumed and never changed the oil, reusing it for every meal during their entire 6-month stay in my apartment. I assure you, I’ve lived with the worst. Craig being employed and sane means that I have climbed at least a ladder’s length in rungs of quality in finding a suitable roomy—I just hope he feels the same way.

The former roommate that stashed his urine-filled bottles under his bed prefaced his ultimate departure from our mutual accommodations with the comment, “I’m tired of putting on clothes in the middle of the night to go use the bathroom.” It seemed like an enigmatic and humerous statement at the time because: a) the piss-jugs indicated that he wasn’t fond of getting out of bed, let alone getting dressed, and b) if he ever did make it to the bathroom after hours, he did so like some horrific, stained-bed-sheet-wrapped manifestation of Ignatius J. Reilly; like some enormous, white, Pacific islander caught during the ritualistic nocturnal communication with off-shore whales, in an oversized sarong that barely covered his monstrous frame—far from what clothes are generally defined as, by Western standards. But, on the cusp of Craig’s fist night living here, I’ve come to the realization that there is luxury in the nude commute from bed to bath, and I’m now forced to admit that I’m not looking forward to the major life change that is robing before a trip to the loo.

Meditation on Moving

It’s a rainy day at the ass-end of August, which can only mean one thing: moving day! Furniture and belongings, some of it as-yet-to-be moved and some of it discarded, can’t hide from the rain. And the cheap, blue tarps that have been pulled from the shelves of every hardware store in a 10-kilometer radius will only impede the deluge for so long. It would seem that it only rains at inopportune times (a category that moving happens to fall into).

But moving is change. It brings flux to the universe and those forgotten items left in old abodes are future cocktail conversations for new tenants. And in that sense it’s not all bad (though it’s hard argument to swallow for anyone unfortunate enough to have to wrestling one hundred and fifty pound dressers, media centres and TVs down four flights of stairs). Parents swoon over fledglings that are leaving the nest for the first time, their concern leaving the aisles and shelves of every grocery store empty of non-perishable items—I sure hope Billy like Habitant Irish Stew.

Yes, it’s moving day in the University city of Halifax.

Leases are signed in ink or blood and cosigned by weepy parental units. Get a good look at your landlord now, because unless your cheque bounces it may be the last time you see him or her.

Of course I, the axis, do nothing more than sit as observer and let the happenings revolve around me. I try not to get drawn into the drama, but admittedly the “sold out” sign where the Kraft Dinner used to be forces me to gnash my teeth (just a little bit).

Leases expire at midnight tonight, and those that are leaving should have been gone, and those that are coming will shortly be there. I wonder where people stay this night? Is there an entire transient community roaming the streets as they are displaced from one location and have no right to another till the following day? I guess that’s what friends and family who sign leases throughout the year are for, way stations for the weary of packing, and pushing, and moving.

But I’m not moving. I’m resigning my lease, content with the humble apartment I call home. I helped Leah push a couple things into the van she rented and will be up early tomorrow to help her with the sofa and TV. And I supposed I might lend a hand as my new roomy moves in, and I’ll save him a trip or two by lifting a box or two. I’m happy that my life and belongings are laid out in front of me, not hiding in cardboard boxes taken from liquor and grocery stores. The last thing I used still in the place I left it. Better than that, I’m not outside, stuck waiting for a moving van and pushing my life into the back of a cube van and using every ounce of energy that isn’t already invested repairing a slipped disk in my back from carrying a poorly angled bed to keep patient during the inevitable ordeal of trying to get from point A to point B.

It’s moving day in Halifax and a rainy one at that. As thousands change homes like hermit crabs, dry and warm inside I thank the lucky stars that I’m not one of them.

The Island, Part III

We slept late. Despite our best intentions of witnessing the sunrise over Moose Island, the fatigue of the day before had gotten the better of us. At about 6:00am, I had opened one eye and carefully peered out the east-facing window at the world. It was as close as I got to the sun until, at a more cooperative hour, we decided to get out of bed. We walked downstairs and during the ritual of making coffee, realized that this was our last day in paradise. We carried our mugs of hot caffeine to the second floor balcony, and drank them slowly, letting the new day’s sun wash the sleep from our eyes. We chatted, taking inventory of that past thirty-six hours, and formulating a plan for the day ahead. There are times in life when you wish that time would run fast, very fast; then there are those rare moments where you wish the hands on the face of the clock would just stop, forever. This would have been a legitimate fantasy if it weren’t for the simple fact we were running out of food. I cleaned the blueberries and the raspberries we has bought at Masstown Market while Amy hand-beat the whipping cream, and folded it gently on top of our berry mélange. Berries have never been better, or whip cream more perfect. We sat in silence, the mutual enjoyment of our breakfast evident in our lack of conversation. Having traversed the floor of the New Minas basin the day before to reach Egg and Pinnacle islands, we had agreed to try for Moose Island today. Reports suggested that riches were to be found there in the geodes that lay hidden amongst the beach rocks. Perhaps were we to find enough geodes we could purchase Egg and Pinnacle Islands and become neighbours of our host. Caffeinated and awake, we climbed down the 188 stairs to the sea floor. Hours from departure, it was conceivable that we would miss this climb. We "handrailed" Long Island from the North side, to the East side, where a pebbled-tongue of a beach, led us into the water. We had only taken a few steps and were only up to our knees when the current, rushing with ancient strength, tried to pull us away to open water. With a misstep, Amy’s flip-flop was destined to eventually find a new home on some rocky piece of coastline on the shores of the Atlantic. Stoic and undaunted, Amy, like Jason of the Argonauts before her, would attempt this treacherous water crossing with one sandal.

Each step against the current was like wading through gravel. We would make headway East, only to realize that the tide, not low enough, would have put our lives in peril. We would then backtrack, tack North; wade back out, water rising to our chest as our goal—looming two hundred meters away—seemed ever distant. Had someone told me that someday I would spend two and a half hours fruitlessly wading in the Bay of Fundy I would have had him or her committed. Yet, here I was, for at least that long, struggling against the forces of nature. We were not only smiling, but thoroughly enjoying the experience. I looked at Amy who smiled back. We were content in our failure, our defeat had been sealed and reluctantly we found our way to a sandbar and plotted our return to Long Island. Amy lifted her leg and wiped small pieces of gravel from the underside of her foot. She was bleeding, not profusely, but the result of the lost flip-flop had made its mark with the rocky underwater terrain we had tried to cross. I Passed her my sandals we headed back along the rocky shore, and up the 188 stairs for the last time.

Despite the sun it had been cool, and in the absence of a Jacuzzi to soak our sores in, we ran a hot bath and were thanked by our weary muscles. As skin turned to prunes we exited, changed, and did some tidying around the house. I began to do the dishes and was temporarily thwarted by the absence of dish soap. At some point during our adventure, Roger, who had been doing work with Paul and Dennis, had retrieved the dish soap to aid in the process of pulling closed-cell foam wrap over newly installed water lines. Finding the auxiliary dish soap, I began to battle the stockpile of dinnerware, soiled from our stay. Amy had packed and brought her luggage to the door, and in a moment I was to do the same. We still had many questions about the island, but we were content to not answer them all. Up until now my knowledge of men that owned their own island had been limited to villains in James Bond films. Although the controls for the solar array looked complicated, they hardly looked as though they could be used to take over the world or hold entire continents for ransom. Obviously, island ownership is not limited to the super-evil; Dick Lemon’s generosity affording us this exceptional opportunity to retreat from civilization for a couple of days, to recoup and recharge. Dennis opened the door moments later and told us that it was time to go. We loaded our luggage and near-empty cooler onto the litter and watched it get hoisted into the air before the hydraulic a-frame reached out over the cliff and lowered it slowly to our waiting boat. We walked down the familiar path to the stairs, and with one final look at the house, I descended the steps, leaving the island-top paradise behind.

We were quiet on the boat ride to the mainland, Amy and I already mourning our departure from our idyllic setting. I recalled that the house's shelves were lined with good books and not the pulp fiction that has come to be associated with summer reading. There had been one title in the library that had troubled me; it was John Milton's "Paradise Lost." The idea that on this island there existed a poem about the expulsion of man from Eden was terribly ironic to me. Surely this island was paradise found! As the island receded into the distance and the dots on the fisherman's wharf grew into tourists, I began to understand. Expulsion from paradise is easy; there is no choice. The voluntary removal of one's self, however, is painful. As we transferred our luggage from boat to car the metaphor of Milton’s poem was realized. Pain doesn't stem from expulsion from the Garden; it's the fleetingness of our time there; the struggle faced is not the difficulties we face in our inhospitable world, but the inevitable pain rooted in our desire to return to paradise. In silent confidence I reflected. I hoped that I would someday find my way back here, back to the Garden of Eden, back to the small fishing Village of Five Islands. Someday I would return to the island.

The Island, Part II

I am embarrassed to say that although we witnessed a stunning sunset during our stay on the island, our goal of seeing the sunrise over adjacent Moose Island never materialized. We woke the second day, the sun, unrestrained in the absence of curtains, flooding our bedroom and coaxing us out to experience the rest of the island. We drank coffee on the second floor deck, and eased ourselves into the day at a leisurely pace. Paul had been working on a boardwalk, and eventually came over to see how we were doing. Armed with our story of the previous evening and my immediate affection for Egg and Pinnacle islands, Paul asked, “Why don’t you go see them today?” I paused. Paul identified my puzzled look and clarified. “When the tide is out you can walk to them. Just take a radio with you and I’ll call you when you have to start coming in. You don’t want to be stuck out there when the tide comes in.” For people that aren’t familiar with the Bay of Fundy, it’s home to the highest tides in the world. The human mind is incapable of imagining a body of water rising forty-five feet in the course of a few hours, which is why every year without fail, a few tourists are plucked by search and rescue teams from cliff faces that border the basin. The tide is well known, so these individuals that get caught by the rising water are without a sympathetic story to tell, except perhaps, to Noah. The tides are something that need to be seen to be believed, and having already seen the high water mark the night before, the novelty of walking on the bottom of the ocean was not beyond us. We finished our coffee and a couple plums, donned our sandals and started down the trail to the stairs that led to the sea floor. Paul called out to us, “Oh, by the way, you’ll have some company this afternoon—your boss is coming for a visit.” I rolled my eyes. Only I could be so fortunate as to be isolated on a remote island, and still have my boss drop by for tea.

The stairs, we soon realized, were as difficult to descend as they were to climb. Although tempting, the extreme, near-vertical rise of the staircase prohibited us from sliding down the banister. The day before, Amy and I laughed at a document left in one of the cabins for guests to fill out. One of the sentences read, “What additions would you like to see made to the island?” Amy and I had scoffed at the absurdity of the question, as if someone could perfect perfection. It was at this moment I reconsidered adding, “slide to the sea floor” to the vacant space below the query. The rocks that comprised the seabed were more coarse than I would have imagined. Although there were some stones that had their edges worn smooth from the endless ebb of the tides, it’s not a geography I would have felt comfortable exploring without adequate footwear. We walked slowly, watching sandbars rise in the distance as the water of the New Minas Basin reacquainted itself with its mother, the Atlantic. A prehistoric Arc De Triumph loomed in front of us like a flying buttress shoring up the Western cliffs of Long Island. We dragged our hands across the eroding wall of the island, recognizing the tragedy of this majestic tide: that it erodes the island, and that at some point, a thousand years from now, Long Island might be nothing more than another sandbar in the Basin. Thankfully, we’ll be well off of this earth by then, though I wonder whether Heaven has a paradise like Long Island.

Taking our time we moved west, pushing out the tide. The terrain changing from rock to sand, our enthusiasm motivating us to wade up to our knees as we traversed the undulating bottom—furrows of sand created by the determined water. Tide pools gave us pause as we looked at the remnants of crabs and lobsters, which had no doubt been a meal for hungry sea gulls; the life in the New Minas Basin juxtaposed with the fates of the creatures that occupied it, empty clamshells littering the landscape. Gulls barked at us as if we were intruders, though stayed far enough away for us to admire. Periwinkles pimpled the land as we got closer to Egg and Pinnacle, creating a sharp, textured surface, to the soft curves of the water-worn rocks. Tide pools again attracted our attention as we watched hermit crabs carve out an existence. Life can’t be hospitable in climate where sea birds know you only as, “lunch.” We scoured the rocky beach of Pinnacle Island, looking hard, but not for anything in particular. The cacophony of the gulls reminded me to check my watch, and thinking it prudent, we began to head back. By this time the tide had fully receded, and what had been knee-deep water on the way to the little islands, was now a sandy, land bridge. We took off our sandals and walked barefoot, relishing the silty red mud between our toes. We took our time walking back to Long Island, picking up and putting down rocks, skipping stones and chatting. Without the din of a cityscape our ears strained to hear noises that weren’t there. Then, once again, as we had done before and would do again, back up the 188 steps to the main house where our hunger took over, and Amy went to work in the kitchen making deft use of an onion and the bag of chanterelles which she pan fried, and then used as a bed to cook eggs on top of; the caliber of the food the only competitor to the of the beauty of the landscape.

We ate and paused. Wanting to get some writing done, I hung my hammock between two trees and pulled my computer to my lap while Amy took one of the paths to relax on her own. It was the sound of a boat motor that pulled me away from the computer—Amy skipped down the path caroling that we had company. It was Joachim, my boss and his Uncle Rudy, Rudy’s wife, and their Dutch entourage come to see the island. My initial hesitation at seeing my employer outside of work immediately vanished. Joachim apologized for intruding but his presence made me realize how isolated we were, that with the exception of Paul, his was the first face we’d seen in a day. Besides, I consider Joachim a friend before I consider him an employer, and given the scarcity of friendly faces on this earth, his was a welcomed sight. We chatted about our adventure to Egg and Pinnacle, while Rudy toured the island. Paul suggested that we needed to visit Moose Island, next. Joachim looked a little worried; “You know the current is a lot stronger going to Moose than Pinnacle. Just make sure you’re really careful.” I took Joachim’s cautionary tone seriously. Joachim, dressed in canvas shorts and blue hoodie, looked as relaxed as I’d ever seen him. His family had owned a cottage in this area for years; the calm on his face gave strong justification for his frequent weekend visits and Mondays off. The blue stains on his neck, however, spoke of the stress of the hunted. A year earlier at the Stroink family reunion, Joachim had acquired a set of paintball guns that he used on his visiting Dutch relatives. Whether or not his family had been practicing the fine art of paintball upon their return to Holland was never discussed, but it looked as though they’d gotten the better of Joachim this year, and that he’d be lucky to survive another day with his visiting, extended family. Rudy eventually returned from the tour; he was in the long process of carving out his own paradise on the mainland. The opportunity to see another man’s castle was too great to pass up, and he returned from his tour of the island with a twinkle in his eye that made me wonder what Rudy’s next cottage project would be. In a moment our guests would be gone, down the long descent of stairs, back to the boat, and ultimately to the mainland. As the hum of the outboard died-off in the distance I turned to Amy, “is it time for the Prosecco?” She smiled affirmatively, and we went indoors for our bubbly. I popped the cork and poured two glasses. We were still recovering from our expedition, but the smiles had not left our faces. Weary, and without an itinerary, amidst the embarras de riches, we guiltily chose to relax on the couch and enjoyed our Prosecco as we watched a movie on Amy’s computer.

The movie ended and the hour was getting late, sleep would be the logical choice and yet, we felt as though our evening was incomplete. While standing in front of the throne, relieving myself from the effects of the Prosecco, I was able to look out the bathroom window at the cacophony of stars in the sky. I finished my business and informed Amy that I had a plan. We exited the house into the cool night air and walked down the unfinished boardwalk to the boathouse. When the boathouse had been introduced to us, I assumed that it would be a place to house boats. What I couldn’t have anticipated was in the whimsy that defines this island, the boathouse is a cottage inspired by the hull shape of a Mississippi river boat. We climbed the stairs to the top deck and lay on our backs. The crisp air of the early-August night had swept away the clouds, and our gazing was unencumbered save for the gentle swaying of the evergreen branches that framed the night sky high above our heads. Our patience was quietly rewarded by a periodic shooting star that streaked across our sightlines and then vanished. It had been ages since I’d looked at the sky. The pollution of streetlights, high-rises and “civilization” had eliminated the simple beauty of stargazing from my day-to-day life. In the absence of this beauty, first the eyes, and then the mind, forget the simplicity of looking skywards. I grew up in a farmhouse in rural Ontario where nights like this were taken for granted. I would never take it for granted again.

I don’t know how much time had passed, maybe an hour? Eventually, my eyes closing for longer periods of time than they were open, was my cue that it was time for bed. We walked silently back to the main house, up the stairs and under the covers, the cool breath of the summer breeze through the window lulling me to sleep. My eyes shut. I didn’t open them again till the next morning.

The Island, Part I

I don’t know how many islands there are in the world, but without having seen them all, I can say with confidence there’s not another one like this. After climbing 188 near-vertical steps to the top of Long Island, my travel partner Amy and I intuitively found our way down the main path to the house. Amongst the trees and ferns that waved to us with the help of the ocean breeze, we restrained ourselves from squealing like children, but only just. As the main house came into view, we met Paul, the on-island custodian who was presently hoisting our luggage up the side of the 180-foot cliff by means of a winch and hydraulic a-frame, an engineering marvel conceived and built by the village of Five Islands’ own, Dennis Ross. It was Dennis that had dropped us off here, a five-minute trip from the mainland by boat. We introduced ourselves to Paul, and he gave us the rundown of the island. “Go anywhere you want, and sleep anywhere you want. There are three bedrooms in the main house, and it’s the only place with electricity,” he commented. “So if you feel like roughing-it, you’re welcome to use any of the other cottages on the island.” For someone like myself, who more frequently finds himself within the confines of a nylon tent than within four walls, the prospect of sleeping in a queen-sized bed with a roo