October 12th, 2009

Gratitude

Ok, so on Friday I went on about the historical meaning of Thanksgiving being tied to food, the action on the day being centred around food, and the fact that the holiday is really about food, full stop. But of course its cultural relevance today is tied up in gratitude, that it is a day of blessing-counting, appreciation, hugs, and acknowledgement. And still food. I’m going to try to put my money where my mouth is (ha!) and make this year’s list of thanks as food-oriented as possible.

I am grateful for:

1) The ability to bite and chew. About six years ago, I went to the dentist with a pain in my jaw that I thought was stress-related and found out that the bones in my jaw were totally out of whack (that’s what you get for not seeing a dentist for three years, and, er, going to really loser one as a kid). After retainers to braces and finally very scary surgery and a long recovery period, I could eat whatever I wanted without pain, and food almost never falls out of my mouth while I do (unless someone makes me laugh). It was weird to be, as an adult, forbidden certain foods, and the experience certainly makes me appreciate walking down the street eating an apple, as I did this afternoon.

2) Dining companions. Food is often the social glue, the ostensible cause for a gathering, but really it’s the cooks’ presence, much more than the food they offer, that makes the meal special. In recent weeks, I’ve been invited into people’s homes for paella, chili, two Thanksgiving dinners and an ice-cream social. On all occasions, the food was delicious but far more so was the warmth with which it was offered, and the conversation with which it was enjoyed.

3) The infinite variety of breakfast cereals. No matter how many I try, there will always be more on the shelves, and new ones every day. The upside of capitalism.

4) The ability to feed myself. I like using the economic crisis as an excuse for my inability to get my laundry folded or show up at the movies on time, but the fact is, things are not excellent in the world of employment right now (the downside of capitalism). The fact that I still have a job that keeps me in breakfast cereal and veggie burgers is no small victory and I am grateful for it. I am also grateful for the fact that I get to eat my (brown-bag, natch) work lunch with awesome humans everyday, even if they make fun of me for my addiction to canned tuna.

5) Books. Sorry, I couldn’t make this one fit (though J. M. Coetzee did profoundly warp my relationship with meat, a testament to the power of prose if there ever was one) but writing, reading, and thinking about books fills up all the time that I have that isn’t taken up by the above (or grocery shopping), and I feel lucky indeed to have that.

6) Hey, while I’m already off the theme, thanks for reading Rose-coloured. I really appreciate it.

RR

October 9th, 2009

Thanks for the eats

Canadian Thanksgiving, for those from elsewhere or just confused, is a harvest celebration. There’s some murky bits of American tradition in there, but we have no silly mythology around the holiday (other than Tom Turkey, I suppose)–we’re just glad there is stuff to eat.

This used to make a good deal more sense to me when I actually experience the harvest. Where I grew up, Thanksgiving was the last weekend of county fair season (after that were only the big fairs, like The Royal Winter Fair). All through fall, we’d be bringing in tomatoes, peppers, corn, beans, pumpkins and squash, the prettiest of which were entered in some fair or other (I would like you to know that I won a ribbon for my butternut squash in grade 3; not sure if it was a first-place ribbon, but I choose to believe it was).

In short, at this point in the year, we’d be coming to the culmination of a harvest that began in May and June with lettuce and strawberries, and it would make perfect sense to be sitting down to a meal that both featured and celebrated the fruits of that harvest.

Now that I get most of my food from Metro (though my folks are constantly thinking of reasons to come visit with quart baskets in the trunk), the celebration makes slightly less sense. But I like it very much, not only because of the nostalgia, nor yet the enforced grade-school grace-saying (yes, it was a public school, but in a *very* small town) that makes it seem logical to me to owe my supper to someone greater. I like to cook and I like to eat, and when I was younger I liked to garden to. The harvest has always been a good time.

Food is a fraught business in 2009: between genetically modified tomatoes, body-image dismorphia, peanut allergies and gluten intolerances, sometimes there’s no one at the table that has a purely peaceful relationship with their plate. But it’s the stuff that makes us live, and whatever role we play in the food chain (gardener, chef, shopper, restaurant-orderer) can be a lot of fun. I like that, though most holidays are celebrated with food, this one *is* food.

May you eat well this weekend.

RR

September 13th, 2009

Rose-coloured (and Mark) Review Twix Java

Because I needed to do a brief test run with the lovely digital recorder that Scott lent me (because of the fear I had that I would get someone to do an hour-long interview and then find I out I’d used the recorder improperly and wasted everyone’s time), I decide to alter the usual Rose-coloured Review format. Below is an actual real-time transcription of a conversation between novelist Mark Sampson and myself as we each consumed half of the Twix Java. Of course, for totally honesty, please note that the conversation was intentionally geared towards a critical review. I can’t speak for Mark, but left to my own devices, a transcription of my comments while eating a chocolate bar would consist of “Hooray for chocolate!” and then the silence of concentrated devouring.

RR: We are now going to sample a Twix Java.

(extremely long period of wrapper crinkle noises, followed by chewing)

MS: It’s definitely a different Twix experience. The cookie on the inside is not your standard Twix cookie.

RR: It’s a chocolate cookie!!

MS: It’s a chocolate cookie. And the caramel, the fudgey caramels stuff on top is quite nice.

RR: I think that’s where the coffee is.

MS: Yes, you can definitely taste the coffee in the caramel. But yeah, it’s three layers of chocolate, as opposed to chocolate, caramel, and then some sort of bland cookie.

RR: I think it was a shortbread before. I haven’t had a real Twix in a long time, which is a problem here. I don’t really have a point of comparison.

(reflective chewing sounds)

RR: Mine’s a little melted. Is yours melted?

MS: It is.

RR: I think that’s not the candy bar’s fault, I think it’s that it was in my bag.

MS: Plus it’s about 22 degrees here [note: circumstances of consumption were sitting beside the music garden on Toronto waterfront on a sunny day. Candy enjoyment might, I suppose, vary under circumstances less idyllic]

MS [reading package]: This is a limited edition chocolate bar.

RR: Yes, so this review might actually be useless because now no one can get it. [Further research indicates this to be true {Twix Java does not appear on the Twix website)}. Sigh, another extremely useful review of something no one can get, courtesy of Rose-coloured. Sorry, guys.]

MS [laughing] It’s a collector’s item that you can eat! [more chewing] Definitely good. How did you come to acquire this?

RR: P. bought it at a store called Almost Perfect. Where they sell seconds of food items.

MS: Well, I would say this is a world-class chocolate bar. The closest thing that I could compare this to is a Turtle…those Turtle chocolates?

RR: But they have nuts in them, right?

MS: Yeah. But the caramel in this is similar to the caramel in a Turtle.

RR: It’s honestly not very coffee-ish. I mean, if no one had told me this was Java Twix, I might not necessarily have picked up on it. It does taste a little like coffee but…but not all that much.

MS: [reading label] It says “coffee caramel and chocolate cookie”… I would give this a solid A minus as a chocolate bar.

[digression to discuss Big Turk, Oh Henry, etc.]

MS: Some chocolate bars you eat and it’s not as substantial. This is about medium.

RR: You only got half of itf…. I’m gonna agree with you, A minus…or maybe even an A, because this is lacking all the things I do not like in a chocolate bar, namely nuts.

MS: Yup, no nuts.

RR: There’s nothing inherently wrong with nuts but candy’s supposed to be candy… I think I’m touchy about nuts, I don’t want them *in* things. If I’m gonna eat a nut I’m gonna eat a nut.

***

I’m gonna show my scars
RR

September 9th, 2009

A report on The Dream in High Park

I won’t be doing a real review of the production of The Tempest at Dream in High Park this year. Not because it wasn’t wonderful (it was) but because it’s over, so it would be pretty pointless to offer a review of something you can’t ever go to.

Instead, I wanted to write a bit about the experience of going to the show. I have been a fan of the Dream since coming to TO, and seen most shows offered since (except for last year’s, which was a repeat of the production of *A Midsummer Night’s Dream* from the year prior–baffling since, like me, most Dream devotees like to go every year). It’s always a fine performance in a beautiful spot with an enthuiastic crowd, and this year was no exception.

I had never, however, attended so late in the season as the second-last performance, and the last non-“family focus” one. My viewing companion and I arrived close to 2 hours early, in typical RR can’t-be-too-careful manner, and were glad we did. We got a lovely spot in the tiered-earth amphitheatre (the only sore point of the night was the volunteer insisting on absolutely no photos because “it’s equity”, which I don’t know has much to do with pictures of the amphitheatre). But even at 6:15, those really good spots were dwindling in number.

So we put down the blanket (actually, my Urban Outfitters bedspread from first-year rez) and edged it with a moat of food. Because that’s what people do at Dream while waiting for the show to start–eat elaborate and enormous picnics, and eyeball everyone else’s picnics. For example, for years I’ve seen people drinking wine out of those little stemmed dixie cups, but when I looked it up on the website this year, I found that alcoholic beverages are forbidden…but sure enough the couple to our right and in front had those cuppies, and the people behind us had a pitcher of sangria…I guess it’s ok if there aren’t any obvious bottles?

The thing to do other than eat and picnic-watch was of course people-watch, because there were *so many* there. About 20 minutes before showtime, one of the site managers announced that we were at over 750 people and new arrivals were still…arriving (sentence fail). There were people all over the hillsides, almost into the trees, and in our row we were rather intimate with our neighbours.

It was extraordinary to see perhaps 800 people out on a Saturday night to watch Shakespeare. Especially since they were all ages and demographics, not the feared “all oldsters” crowds of some of the downtown theatres’ “big shows”. The folks to my left were my parents age, quoting Obama when asked if they had room to scoot down (“Can we do it? Yes we can!”) and eating out of an elegantly pack cooler. In front and to the left were an extremely young and conservatively dressed pair on a date, very pleased with themselves and each other. My companion pointed out that two rows ahead was a father playing patticake with a 3-year-old girl. Later, the father and the mother each took responsibility for slathering one half of the child’s limbs in bug spray.

Behind us was my favourite group, 20 people gathered to celebrate a birthday. They had more and better food than I’ve ever seen come out of backpacks (a wheel of brie!), were all in a narrow range of midtwenties but an assortment of sexual orientations, and spent their time discussing a) food, b) alcohol, c) the iron man race the birthday boy had recently run, d) one of the guests’ recent engagement to a man who lives in another city, e) what is the *Tempest* about, anyway?

I love that people in Toronto just know that the Dream is a good time, that it’s fun to watch Shakespeare there not only because you can eat and snog and play with your kids at the same time, but also because these are good lusty plays and CanStage presents them for everyone, not just theatre people.

The Dream is Pay What You Can, so no one should ever miss a show due to lack of funds. And the “recommended donation” is only $20 anyway–an incredible deal.

Sorry, this is still a rave about something you can’t see for another 10 months, after all. But really, mark it on your 2010 calandar!!

I’ll give you three guesses
RR

September 3rd, 2009

Another excerpt for deletion

I actually forgot I wrote this scene–I had a plan but it got away from me and Akalena never appears again in the story. When I began rereading it, I was all “What the…oh, yeah. This.” and had to cut the whole scene. This is why it takes me so long to finish anything.

***

The breakfast special was a McMuffin derivative. Kate cut the egg rectangles out of the cookie sheets of egg baked the night before and folded them onto the muffin bottoms. A gorgeous Ukrainian girl, Akalena, was picking out the right slice or slices of peameal bacon for each sandwich, adding up to 2 ounces. She was so blindingly blond and silent, her clothing so wildly incorrect—high-waisted belted jeans and tucked in sleeveless blouses—that Kate and Sarah had assumed her fresh from immigration and bereft of language. But then it turned out later that Akalena had lived in Etobicoke all her life and her mom too, and she went to Martingrove and she just considered “ugly boring girls” like Sarah and Kate not worth talking to. Akalena put the bacon pieces on the egg slab, before Sarah slapped on the cheese and muffintop, and wrapped the whole disgusting mess in Saran.

Through and through and through
RR

August 28th, 2009

Rose-coloured Reviews T&T Supermarket

I was tired and overstimulated from an afternoon gathering featuring no fewer than 7 children under 3, but when my friend Z asked if I would mind stopping at a Chinese supermarket in Markham, I felt my energy returning.

Markham contains Chinatown North for Toronto, and Chinatown North contains wonders of new (to me) restaurants, groceries, and other things that I know nothing about that are not contained in the older, bigger, wonderful but different Toronto Chinatown south. And carless me does not get to go to Markham very often–this would only be my third trip, which is why I don’t know much about what’s on offer there.

I had never, for example, heard of our destination, T&T Supermarket, even though it apparently has some TTC-able branches, and is wonderful. WONDERFUL.

It’s a grocery store–big parking lot, buggies, checkout lanes, etc. But it’s also a market–various stands of prepared foods, pushing crowds and entire families shopping together, and the free samples are distributed far and wide by cheerful hawkers who yell at you (well, me) to come over to try some soy milk/dumplings/fried scallops. I was excited about the prepared food section because it reminded of Japan, with all the cute complete cheap dinners in plastic boxes. I think it was a pan-Asian market even though it was in a Chinese area, too, because I recognized some salmon teryaki and those triangular nori-wrapped rice cakes I forget the name of. Yum, everything.

Too bad I didn’t really need any of that stuff and was full of cake, but even the stuff I wasn’t buying was fun to look at: Chinese baked goods, aka, manna; giant rice-cakes that *popped* out of a rice-cake making machine (tragically, the picture didn’t turn out); kimchee in tetra paks, and all kinds of vegetables I don’t know how to cook with:

This would be intrepid M, with duriands. The sign, if you can’t read it, says, “Handle duriands carefully to avoid injury.”

Since I didn’t need so many things and was feeling somewhat restrained for once (could be all the cake), I didn’t buy much. But the Chinese eggplants I bought were excellent in stirfry, the lettuce was…well, standard lettuce, that apples were huge and tasty (though I dropped one on the floor and it got all bruised…we can’t really blame the apple, can we?); the dried mushrooms I haven’t tried yet and the sweet potato candy that I ripped into in the parking lot was…odd. But I eventually found someone who did like them to give the rest of the package to (I have another, unopened package–coming soon to a household near you!)

Also, all the little samples I tried were awesome, except the soy milk (I don’t like soy milk, but it’s so healthy that I keep trying). And the prices were super cheap and if you were more ambitious and organized like my shopping companion Z, you could get the makings of some truly fantastic food. And no one gave me a hard time for bouncing off people in the aisles, or clogging the produce section taking pictures, or not knowing which line to stand in. It was a friendly happy place full of delicious.

I later heard this place has been bought by Metro a chain that had a little cred in Quebec, but quickly spent it all in Ontario and now just annoys me (crunchy bitter raspberries the other day!!) So that can’t be good. I’m going to try to find the local one before all the awesome falls apart.

And if we’re lost together
RR

TTC Hand Stories

1) A middle-aged gentleman in a windbreaker in a corporate-branded windbreaker and earbuds sits down in the single seat ahead of me on the streetcar. I am facing forward, the way the seat goes, but he faces sideways, into the aisle. I am always startled by older people with earbuds, because my parents are my reference point for all older people, and they would no more stick appliances in their ears than in their noses. But I am reading, looking out the window, reading, not paying attention to this man…until he begins to take things out of a plastic bag. Then I have to look, in case he’s got a book and I need to read the spine, or a snack and I need to see if it looks appetizing, or…or…*anything interesting at all* (I don’t get out much; I am your streetcar worst nightmare). Whatever it is, there are several, each in an individual cellophane packet. I peer through the cello but can’t really understand what the items are–some sort of crumpled while loops of fabric. I look harder and harder until the man turns to meet my gaze and I turn back to the window, feeling like the giantest weirdo on the TTC for staring with such intensity at the poor man’s craft materials or whatever. I don’t look at him again until we get off the car, when I realize the man is gripping the pole with a hand cloaked in a thin tight white glove. His other hand is bare–yes, I looked–I don’t know what he did with the other gloves. He gets off without looking at me again, earbuds and windbreaker and Michael-Jackson glove. Another thing my parents would never do.

2) A beautiful young woman in a sleek black business suit sits on the Yonge line southbound, eating a bag of Cheetos. Look closer: it’s not *quite* a business suit. The blazer’s got a zipper that goes up to the throat, and her high spike heels are on bare feet rubbed popped-blister raw. Look closer: her hair is a tumble of beer-blond curls that have clearly required a heat-styling implement, but now they’ve started to unscrew, some rounder than others, some nearly perfectly vertical. And closer: not quite a young woman; behind her expensive narrow red glasses frames this is a university student with a posh summer job–maybe even a high-schooler. Her knees are knobby and crossed wide. She is eating the Cheetos at a great rate, as if someone will get on at a predetermined stop and take them from her. It is not a single-serving bag. Despite all of the above, as close as you can look, she is still beautiful. She eats the last cheese-twist and, with even more urgency, inserts her frost-pink manicured nails into her mouth, on at a time, and sucks the electric orange dust from the creases before she dares brush them against her cheap black suit. She finishes the tenth nail just as we arrive at Union and, crumpling the bag in her fist, she darts off.

Mutiny, I promise you
RR

July 17th, 2009

Rose-coloured Reviews The Sleepless Goat Cafe and Workers’ Collective

So I spent some time in Kingston, Ontario, last weekend, where there is beautiful water, friendly people, buskerfest, and a lot of waterfront pubs. Kingston also contains the Sleepless Goat Cafe and Workers’ Collective. For just a moment when you first see it, you think that an independent cafe right next to a Starbucks would have a hard road. And then you really look at the place, and think it probably has a fairly well differentiated demographic.

Inside is even more non-Starbucksy: pumpkin orange walls, mismatched chairs, a big bookshelf full of oddities, and laidback counterstaff with “equal say in the way the business is run and in the decisions affecting their everyday worklives.” (That’s a quotation from the SG website explaining the concept of a workers’ collective.) The sugar’s organic, most of the waste is recycled or composted, and the graffito in the ladies’ room (there was only one) says, “Support public libraries,” in black sharpie.

So, reading that description, the SG *could* sound a little too crunchy to tolerate, but it’s actually just right. On my two visits, the staff seemed genuinely happy to see everyone who came in, and everyone who came seemed happy to be there. And a lot of people came in, and even better, a wide variety. Unlike some allegedly chilled-out cafes, this one didn’t seem to admit only deeply attractive people between 19 and 24. There were people with babies, an editor marking up a manuscript, elderly couples in hiking boots, gaggles of twentysomethings playing boardgames, several people with walkers, and of course a few tourists (ie., yours truly). Everyone was polite in accommodating babies, walkers and whatever else, and many seemed to know the staff and each other. So civilized.

Another big difference between SG and Starbucks is that this is a real restaurant, not just a coffee shop that will sell you a stale sandwich for $6 if you really want one. The menu is extensive and would be intriguing looking even it weren’t above the counter in day-glo chalk–lots of roasted vegetables, curries and Mexican-inspired stuff. The food is almost entirely veggie, except for the option of bacon or sausage or tomato slices with the “traditional” breakfast. Which actually makes sense; ask anyone who went (semi)veggie for non-taste reasons what they might break down for, and I betcha they’ll say bacon.

I had the “non-traditional” breakfast, which is vegan even though I’m not–I just like beans and rice–and my dining companion had the breakfast burrito, so we can pronounce the Mexican-themed breakfasts very good, anyway (if this were a real review, I would have tried a wider variety at different times of day, I suppose). You don’t see beans & rice many places in Canada (I found out I like that in Costa Rica) so I really enjoyed my breakfast. Seemed a little over-carbed to serve it with home fries and toast, but whatever. The bread was the “famous” Dakota, which was just a little too full of seeds and grains for my liking, but pretty good none-the-less.

Since I only ate the one meal there (the other day we just had coffee–SG has excellent coffee) I don’t know if our long wait for hot food was typical. If one were in a major hurry, there were a bunch of appetizing pre-made salads and sandwiches and muffins in the display case. But it was a comfy place to wait (you order at the counter but the staff serves you at your table–you have to tell them where you plan on sitting!) Also, as a sign by the register indicates, The Goat has games!! So you can sign yourself out the Scrabble board (or something else, I don’t know what) and pass the time in that way. On a rainy morning, a Scrabble board is a great gift, even though there were two boards in the box and an usual number of Us, as well as some unidentified food particles. Also, the food is so good as to be worth waiting for.

In short, the Goat is good–go!

Try a little more try a little more
RR

July 9th, 2009

Life

This morning, as I planned this post, it was going to be titled “Life is Good”, because:

1) the Joyland Joyathon last night was so amazing and fun and funny and well-attended by awesome people (most of the pictures turned out terrible, due to failures of both technology and technician [though they are still available on Facebook, if you feel the need], but here’s a decent one of Brian Joseph Davis and Emily Schultz kicking off the festivities:

2) I’m heading to pretty Kingston for the weekend.

June 15th, 2009

On free will

Mom: And the cheese has been in the freezer since January, so we’re all set.
Rebecca: I don’t think you can freeze cheese.
Mom (indignant): You can freeze *anything you want*. It’s whether it will survive the process that’s the question.

Reachin’ for the stars
RR