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Weighty matters

August 12, 2020 in Life as we know it | Permalink


There was an item missing from my recent list of COVID-19 pandemic losses and gains. That item was – counter-intuitively – both a loss and a gain… indeed, it was a gain because it was a loss!

Cryptic – huh?!

The fact is – since the beginning of March I have lost a healthy (see what I did there?) amount of weight – which is, naturally, a significant gain.

Now – I am aware that for some people the lock-downs enforced throughout the COVID world have had the opposite effect – and that the loss of gym sessions and other physical exercise has led to less than pleasant effects. My apologies to anyone to whom this applies (and indeed anyone else who takes offence!) should my gentle celebration come over as being in any way… smug!

Clearly I have been lucky. Now – I do habitually weigh a little less in the summer than I do when clad in my winter ‘overcoat’ and though my regular fitness sessions at our local leisure centre were abruptly curtailed in March I have continued to attend classes… first online via Zoom and more recently in the open air in the rather lovely park adjacent to the library in Sidney – but I don’t feel that these influences are great enough to have caused this difference.

No – something else is definitely going on. This is what I think has happened:

Being (mostly) retired and no longer tied to a single weekly grocery shop I have been in the habit of popping out on a day by day basis as and when we decide what to eat. Further – my two days a week at the college and my visits to fitness classes usually entailed the partaking of a coffee (or two) as part of the process. I have to admit that I had rather fallen into the habit of rewarding my endeavours with a little ‘treat’ of some variety.

Of course, under COVID one goes grocery shopping as little as possible – once a week or less – and without classes to attend (either as instructor or instructee) the notion of a reward becomes redundant.

There you have it. Cutting out the little treats helps Jack to lose some weight!

But does it make him a dull boy?

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Lost in translation

November 15, 2019 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Image by Igor Ovsyannykov from PixabayI have long been an enthusiastic amateur pizzaiolo.

Once I became gainfully employed (as a young man back in the late seventies) and could thus afford on occasion to eat out, it didn’t take long to discover a somewhat superior but yet reasonably-priced pizza chain that I and other close friends and associates could frequent – and where we subsequently spent a fair amount of our leisure time.

Pizza Express was founded in London back on 1965 by Italophile and pizza enthusiast – Peter Boizot. He had learnt how to make Neapolitan pizzas properly in Italy and was eager to share his knowledge. Though it has since been bought out the chain is still running today in the UK and elsewhere and is still a reliable ‘go to’ when one is in the mood for a good basic pizza.

I liked the product so much (whilst at the same time disliking grocery store pizzas with a similar fervour) that I decided that I had to learn how to make my own pizzas at home. Mr. Boizot had helpfully published a slender volume describing the art in detail and I rapidly acquired a copy. The book has long since disappeared into that mysterious place to which valuable things sadly vanish all too often, but not before I had memorised most of the essential details.

I happily spent the next three and a half decades practicing the noble art and – though I say so myself – I ended up as a pretty decent pizzaiolo.

Then we moved to Canada!…

I still make pizza – though somewhat less frequently than of yore – but I have found that I must now relearn how to make it well. The reason for this somewhat counter-intuitive fact is simple: ingredients!

Back in the UK I had a reliable source of “00” flour, usable instant yeast, various ‘ready to go’ tomato bases and just the right cheeses, mushrooms, olives and artichoke hearts and suchlike.

Here in Canada these things are all subtly different and the resulting pizzas just aren’t quite as good. I found the flour but instant yeast results have thus far varied wildly, making it difficult to get a reliable ‘rise’ and the consequent fluffy texture. Cheeses are difficult in part because of the Canadian habit of selling everything in vast quantities. I used to be able to get a decent mozzarella from Waitrose in just the right portion size to make a decent pizza for two. Here I have to buy a huge thing which results either in my overdoing its use or in wasting good cheese. I can’t get quite such good goat cheeses either.

The main problem, however, has been the tomato base. In the UK there were at least two different products that delivered from the can the required thickness, texture and taste to make a reliably yummy pizza. Here there is apparently no equivalent. I am now having to resort to learning how to make my own tomato base from scratch. One might suggest that I could have done this before now, but the fact remains that there was previously no need to do so. It is now going to take me a while to learn how to turn out a decent one.

Oh well! There is – as they say – no harm in trying (at least we get to eat pizza!)…

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Whisky Galore

January 30, 2019 in Life in BC | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidThe Girl and I attended – jointly or severally – two whisky-based events of late that proved to be just the ticket for whiling away the long January nights as we wait for the first signs of spring to appear. And what an excellent way to pass the time!

The first of these was a whisky tasting – one of the events that comprise the Victoria Whisky Festival. I had acquired a wodge of tickets for this evening at an Intrepid Theatre charity event last November, as a result of trying to drive up the bidding (wearing my board of directors hat) and getting caught unexpected with the lot when the music stopped. Not that I was complaining…

As it happened I got caught out this way on several other items, but all of them have (or will) come in most useful. A gift voucher for Orr’s Family Butcher provided us with our Christmas prime rib and a similar token for Fig Deli furnished goodies for our holiday entertaining. I still have some vouchers for Flying Fish Winery (where we make our ‘own’ wine) and I need to head over soon to place an order so that our wine rack continues to overflow.

The whisky festival runs over four nights at the Hotel Grand Pacific by the Inner Harbour and this was the fourteenth incarnation thereof. The tasting that we attended was led by the knowledgeable Mike Brisebois of Distell Malts, which outfit owns the Bunnahabhain, Deanston and Tobermory Distilleries. Seven whiskies were tasted from the range offered by those three concerns – and very good they were too.

Deanston I did not know. It is a lowland distillery, not too far from Stirling. It was established in the mid-sixties in a disused old cotton mill on the banks of the river Teith, and has built a reputation since then. The Tobermory Distillery, the only such on the island of Mull, dates back much further – to 1798 – and is one of the oldest in Scotland. Bunnahabhain is a much loved distillery on Islay that – unlike most of the other distillers on the island – does not foreground the peaty tones for which Islay is known.

We were most impressed by the almost sweet tones of the Palo Cortado cask finished Special Edition, but pretty much everybody present agreed that the Bunnahabhain 18 Year was the whisky of the evening. Now – if only I could afford a bottle!

The second event of the month was the wild celebratory night that we spent this Saturday just passed at the Caledonian Distillery and Twa Dogs Brewery, where we enjoyed a fabulous five course Scottish menu (including, naturally, haggis, neaps and tatties) by Truffles Catering, who are locally based in Brentwood Bay. To accompany this feast we tasted a further five of the Caledonian’s whiskies, particularly enjoying their guest whisky – a blend of Blair Atholl and McDuff single malts. The evening was admirably hosted by the Caledonian’s resident hairy Scot and much reciting of the Great Man’s poetry and accompanying merriment were the order of the day (or night!).

Never let it be said that the Scots do not know how to celebrate!

 

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Innocents abroad

May 13, 2018 in Flotsam and Jetsam, Photos | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid“In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.”

Mark Twain – The Innocents Abroad

Let it be said at once that in Montreal there is no need at all to try to make anyone understand their own language. The locals will – in a nanosecond – detect that French is not your native tongue, from which point on they simply abjure its use – effortlessly showing up your linguistic shortcomings and contriving so to do without effecting the distainful air that one so often encounters in Paris.

Should you, like us, have transported your existence to the paradise that is the west coast of Canada (some five and a half thousand miles distant from the European continent) but still on occasion find yourself assailed by yearnings for the sophistication and epicurean delights of the French capital… then Montreal is the perfect halfway house in which just such a fix may be obtained.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidThis is specifically so of the old town, in which we are currently staying in a perfectly decent Air-B’n’B apartment. Unlike much else in Canada Vieux Montreal is properly old and has a strong European heritage. On our first day here we ventured forth looking for a suitable bistro. In the ‘Modavie’ we found one that was so French that we might easily have been in the backstreets of Paris itself.

The fare was excellent French bistro cooking, with a truly authentic Soupe a l’Oignon followed by a lamb burger made with pulled lamb for me and sea bass (really hard to find on the west coast) for The Girl. We wrapped up with a Pouding Chômeur which reminded The Girl of her childhood.

The evening was made, however, by the wonderful hospitality of our server – Caroline – and the larger than life maître d’ – Lorenzo Baldassarre – who went out of his way to make the occasion memorable.

Now – Canadians (and those who have visited) will need no convincing of the ‘Frenchness’ of Montreal. To others, have a look at the photos in this (and subsequent) posts and see what you think.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

 

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Giving thanks

October 11, 2017 in Life in BC | Permalink

Growing up in the UK and paying little attention to matters beyond the confines of those verdant isles, my only vague understanding of the North American tradition of Thanksgiving came from the sort of cultural osmosis that arose from the post-war mid-Atlantic homogenisation of the entertainment industry. Even then I had no idea what it really signified and indeed thought little enough at all about it, except to wonder why on earth the Americans had instigated another turkey-based festival so close to Christmas.

I most likely assumed that the celebration had something to do with the secession of the US from its former colonial state, or was perhaps somehow related to the civil war. Either way I figured that it had little to do with us Brits and that given our long and (in)glorious history we probably didn’t feel the need to hold any special festival because we were permanently thankful for who we were.

The gentle reader will be unsurprised to hear that I received a rapid education in such matters when the Kickass Canada Girl and I moved in together. I learned that the Canadian and US Thanksgivings were different things and that they take place almost a month apart. As in so many areas the Canadian variant comes first! Whilst yet in the UK we celebrated the festival on a number of occasions with a gathering of Canadian expats and most enjoyable it was too.

What I still had not gleaned (a fact I can only blame on the sad decline of brain activity that comes with age) was that there is after all a correspondence between Thanksgiving and a UK feast day. I refer, of course, to that excellent pagan celebration – Harvest Festival. Doh! In my defence I would point out that Harvest Festival is not a public holiday in the UK, being traditionally celebrated on the nearest Sunday to the Harvest Moon. I was also misled by the lateness in the year of the American version – way after the harvest has been safely gathered in. Nonetheless, now that I have been enlightened it all makes perfect sense.

The long and the short of this inconsequential musing is that we celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving last weekend with our dear friends from Saanichton and were treated to a truly magnificent feast. A good time was had by all and the harvest was well and truly lauded.

Hoorah!

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A phoenix rises

March 12, 2017 in Life in BC | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid“Now I will believe that there are unicorns
That in Arabia there is one tree, the phoenix’ throne
One phoenix at this hour reigning there.”

William Shakespeare – The Tempest

To those who live in any degree of proximity at all to mother nature – be it through custody of some humble (or grand) garden (or yard!) or by virtue of residing on the brink of the barely-charted wilderness – the persistence of the myth of the phoenix will make perfect sense.

To the centrality of the bird (with its magical ability to fly all-seeing above our prosaic earth-bound existence) to mythologies from around the globe is added the life-giving power of the renaissance/resurrection connate in the cycle of the seasons. The added bonus in many versions of the myth of the cleansing/regenerative power of fire only adds to its potency and illuminates the Christian church’s desire to appropriate this pagan apologue (along with many others of course) into its oeuvre – however temporarily it may so have done.

Further idle musing upon the subject of the bird summons for me images of autumn – of the fallen dead leaves fueling November bonfires – of the blade-razed stubble burning in crimson swathes across the moribund fields as the chilled charred soil surrenders to the winter… and then of spring – the first tender shoots pushing their tremulous way through the dank, inclement loam, searching for the first warming kiss of the sun god’s life-giving rays…

But I fear that I digress – and this time I have not yet even begun…

This post – although appearing at an appropriate juncture in the new year – is not actually about nature at all, but rather concerns a quite different rebirth – though one just as keenly welcomed as is (or would be!) the spring itself – or indeed the fiery metempsychosis of the indomitable bird. Allow me to elucidate…

Way back in the early days of these dribblings I posted to this blog a miscellany of images which included one such of my favourite Greater Victorian supplier of meats – Orr’s of Brentwood Bay. I proselytized all too briefly regarding the extensive merits of this Scottish family institution at the time, but in a further post not two years later I found myself reporting the sad news that Orr’s was no more – having in the meantime gone out of business.

It is with great delight – therefore – that I can now report that Fraser Orr has again set up shop in the neighbourhood, this time even closer to us in Saanichton. We will once again be able to source Ayrshire ham, black pudding, Scotch pies, Forfar Bridies, Clootie dumplings, proper haggis and all manner of wonderful meats and other provender from the auld country.

Joy of joys! For this we are truly grateful…

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Great chieftain?

February 1, 2017 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

© User:Colin / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0“Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the puddin’-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye worthy o’ a grace
As lang’s my arm.”

Rabbie Burns – ‘Address to a Haggis’

Hmmm!

A little more than a year ago we spent a most enjoyable evening at the Greater Victoria Police Pipe Band’s ‘Robbie Burns Supper‘. As may be determined from the scribblings with which I marked the occasion, a great time was had by all.

This year – for a variety of reasons – we decided instead to celebrate the ‘Immortal Memory‘ at home and duly purchased a haggis from a local purveyor of ‘meats and more‘, intending ourselves to furnish the neeps and tatties as accompaniment – along, of course, wi’ a suitable wee dram!

Now – we have greatly enjoyed much that we have purchased at the aforesaid emporium over the last year or so and we are jolly glad that it is within but a short distance of us. On this occasion – however – we were to be seriously disappointed. To be fair to them (though I’m not entirely sure why we should be so) they did not cook the haggises themselves but rather purchased them in from a third party.

On first sight the beast certainly looked authentic; I had no argument with the appearance and texture of the sheep’s stomach which forms the traditional enclosure. The puddin’ was most carefully cooked – as it should be – and then cautiously unwrapped. We rubbed our hands, licked our lips and cut into the casing…

What emerged proved to be something that tasted almost exactly unlike a haggis. To be fair – it tasted almost exactly unlike anything at all! It had not the texture of a haggis – it had not the consistency of a haggis – it had not the aroma of a haggis… Had it not been for the appearance of the sheep’s stomach there would have been no way to tell what it was that we had in front of us.

For those unfamiliar with this great (and simultaneously most humble) delicacy, the Edinburgh butcher MacSween’s describes it thus:

Now I find myself in something of a quandary regarding next year’s festivities. Do we take a chance on another locally produced puddin’ or do we revert to celebrating the occasion in a more formal setting?

Or do I simply bite the bullet and make my own haggis?

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Wine…

August 19, 2016 in Life in BC, Photos | Permalink

“…because no great story ever started with someone eating a salad!”

Unattributed

There are those – and I very much count myself amongst their number – who hold that chief amongst the many attractions of the Okanagan valley is its burgeoning viticultural industry. Certainly – to my mind at least – no sojourn there is complete without taking the time to visit a winery or two (or more!) for a tasting.

Though wines have been made in the region since the 1850s the current boom dates back only to the 1980s when the provincial government – in the face of competition from the Californian wine trade triggered by the North American Free Trade Agreement – started to offer grants to landowners to plant vitus vinifera. There are now more than two hundred wineries along the Okanagan valley and the industry is booming.

Though the wineries are small and their produce often not available outside the province – let alone outside Canada – the quality of the wines is astonishing and they have garnered an ever growing number of awards both in the Americas and internationally. Some of my favourite wines come from the aptly named ‘Golden Mile’ between Oliver and Osoyoos.

Here be some pictures from our recent visit:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

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A riot of relaxation – (day two)

June 17, 2016 in Life in BC | Permalink

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidWomen and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

Robert A. Heinlein

Day two of our sojourn in Vancouver found us proceeding hot foot to the Arts Club Theatre for a matinee performance of the musical, ‘Billy Elliot‘.

The Girl had wanted to see the show before we left London but – what with one thing and another – the chance so to do had passed us by. Discovering that it was on in Vancouver at a time that coincided with the Canada/Japan rugby international seemed an opportunity too good to miss and we duly turned the occasion into a spiffing long weekend.

We enjoyed the show greatly… in my case considerably more than I expected to. The acting, singing and dancing were to a high standard and if some of the cast struggled a little with the County Durham accents then we were mindful of the fact that many Brits also find it a tough one to crack.

After the show there was just time to scamper back to the hotel to change for dinner. We had made reservations at one of Vancouver’s premier seafood restaurants – the Blue Water Cafe. A quick search on the InterWebNet will reveal just how highly thought of is this Yaletown eatery and it will be of little surprise that the Girl and I now think of it equally highly. The food is utterly splendid and the service exemplary – carried out by a team that clearly loves its work. Should you find your good-selves in Vancouver you really should not hesitate to make a reservation.

The wine cellar alone – curated by young Texan, William Mulholland – has won a basket of awards and features quite the best selection of fine French wines that I have encountered in Canada. We reluctantly eschewed the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Richebourg Grand Cru for somewhere north of $4,000 and settled for Mr Mulholland’s recommended Pouilly-Fumé instead. At a fraction of the price this splendid Loire white – not that easy to come across in Canada – suited the scallops and halibut well, and a postprandial malt from the equally impressive range on offer left us feeling dangerously mellow.

Not so mellow, however, that we were unable to effect a visit to IKEA on the way back to the ferry the following morning! IKEA has much in common with the modern airport terminal in that it matters not where you are in the world – if you are in IKEA you could be anywhere! I am almost minded to suggest that a visit might be in order for the ex-pat suffering a mild case of homesickness… The Richmond branch is, for example, totally interchangeable with that at Brent Cross in North London!

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Bambi!

March 10, 2016 in Life in BC | Permalink

deer-307438_1280One would think – given the degree of commonality in the respective backgrounds of our two cultures (by which I am am referring of course to those of Canada and of the UK) – that there would be relatively few instances of incomprehensible difference. There are, however, perhaps more than one might expect.

I have mentioned before, I know, my astonishment regarding the bathing habits prevalent this side of the pond. For a nation that virtually fetishises the outdoor life – regardless of the best attempts of weather to curtail it – I simply cannot understand the lack of proper bathing facilities. The ‘foot baths’ with which most Canadian bathrooms seem to be equipped scarcely allow one to wet one’s backside and a good long wallow is out of the question. A side effect of this sorry situation is that it is also nearly impossible to find in the stores the sort of unctuous bathing lotions without which any self-respecting British bathroom would be considered ill-equipped. Little chance of a good long muscle-relaxing soak in some suitably aromatic bath foam here.

I have also previously referred in these postings the strange habit of the owners of what Canadians call ‘stick shift’ automobiles (‘manual’ to the rest of us) of leaving the vehicles in gear when parked, in preference to using the handbrake. Canadians themselves might be less aware of this quirk since the great majority seem to drive automatics anyway.

These random examples were brought to mind by the latest incomprehensibility to which I have been exposed. Now, this has been on my mind for a while but was brought into sharp focus last weekend by a visit to the splendid ‘Beagle‘ public house in Cook Street Village, to which we repaired on Saturday for a spot of lunch. The excellent menu included – and of which the Kickass Canada Girl availed herself – a venison burger! Not just any venison burger, but quite the best that we have encountered.

This splendid treat, however, starkly highlighted the strange fact that – in a land where the animals abound and in a city parts of which suffer a wild deer ‘problem’ – it is simply not possible to purchase venison in any form from any of the puveyors of comestibles. Even the specialist butchers refuse to stock it – though they do carry the somewhat inferior bison. The Girl and I have taken to eating a great deal of venison over the past couple of years. It is a splendid, low-fat and extremely healthy meat, to say nothing of being easy to cook and jolly tasty.

When taxed as to why a country scratching its head as to how to deal with the plethora of unwanted deer doesn’t bow to the obvious and eat the damned things, a bizarre range of explanations are offered – from suggesting that any self respecting Canadian who fancies a haunch simply goes out with his (or her) rifle and blows one away, all the way to a trembly-lipped evocation of Bambi. Get a grip, guys!

We did ask our most helpful server at ‘The Beagle’ as to where they sourced theirs but apparently they buy in bulk from a wholesaler, possibly from outside the country.

Had we a freezer big enough it might just be worth purchasing a truck-load!

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