twenty-six.

I was going to do a list of "twenty six awesome things about this week," but realized that not only would it get difficult to think up that many awesome things, but it might not be a realistic picture of life. I mean, things ARE pretty good, but life has lots of sides to it. So here goes: Twenty-six Things About This Week, Awesome and Otherwise.

1. It started with a rainy Sunday. One of the best bits of that day: watching this part of the "David Bowie" episode of Flight of the Conchords, on YouTube of course. "What are you doing in my room?" "It's all part of your freaky dream. Am I freaking you out?"

2. I started my new job at a marine supply and yacht maintenance facility, here in my village. My feet were sore on Monday night from walking around on a concrete floor looking for marine parts and standing behind the corner. But, I was proud of myself for going into something brand new, and facing all that newness. It felt like when you're in a foreign place with people you've just met, who all know each other. And they're having a conversation about stuff they all know really well, and you have to just listen, not having a clue really who they're talking about - only in this case, it's "fuel connectors" and "retainer rings".

3. I'm house-sitting and dog-caring for some people I've house-sat for before.

4. The house is comfortable, sensually-pleasing (art, books, nice furniture, lots of windows with beautiful views of the lake and Kidston Island) and for two weeks, my temporary home.

5. It has a big queen-size bed decked out with a pile of down-filled pillows.

6. The dog, Nell the border collie, is a sweet, loving, frisky, excitable, entertaining and smart companion. She tries to chew at water in the bathtub.

7. The last time I was house-sitting here, I was with my then-boyfriend. He is now my ex-boyfriend, and I miss him fiercely. Everything here reminds me of him - the same way that everything reminded me of him just after we broke up, which has now waned to nearly everything.

8. There is a fireplace (which - of course - reminds me of how he took care of it for me when we were here), and I love to come home from work and build up the embers back into a hot, rustling fire. On Sunday, when it was raining, and on Monday, when it was gloomy, the fire was especially comforting.

9. Because I've been swimming in a pool (at a resort here in town - a month's pass is $56), I've had towels drying by the fireplace, draped over some of the dining room table chairs. They are summer's beach towels, and colored brightly, with stripes.

10. Although it's been a busy week, I've been able to get in some swim time. I get on my bathing suit (or "swimming costume" - which makes me feel British to say) and my swim cap (which makes me feel like a "real" swimmer) and shower quickly. Then I get into the pool, walking down the steps until the water is waist-high. I push off into the water. My stresses float away behind me.

11. The pool water is an artificial yet pretty, icy-glacier blue. However, it is not cold like a glacier, which is probably good. Its temperature is mild. Depending on the day, it can border on too warm, but mostly it's refreshing.

12. Words I've learned and/or used a lot, so far this week: anode, bilge pump, work orders, Mercury Marine, Stright-MacKay, rigging, teak, deck, anti-fouling, draft, charts, wharfage, mooring, spark plug, purchase orders, boom truck, accounts receivable, bolt, pitch... the list goes on, and on.

13. I drive around in my car, to get to work, to do groceries, to take the dog for a walk in the country. I've had my car now for two months. My dirty little secret - I really, really like driving. (I feel a lot of guilt about it, though. But I do really, really like driving. I'm thinking of doing a whole post on this at some point.)

14. I have a tentative plan to get some body work done on my car, by a guy who's known as one of the best body-workers in our area. I'll be getting some rusty spots sanded down, and the whole thing buffed to a nice sheen that might just restore her to her 1997 glory. Dealing with men in garages and talking about car things on my own car, and talking prices that I will pay, make me feel like I have truly become an adult. (Whether or not this is right, and/or is a symptom of our North American addiction to cars, is a whole other matter.)

15. For a similar reason, I am really liking this new job. I get to explore the masculine side of me - or at least, the part of me that likes to learn how things work, and work with actual physical things like machinery. I am feeling my brain expand, feeling it build new neurological connections as it takes in all this new knowledge.

16. Elise Blaha, of enJOY it, a blog I read pretty frequently, is getting married this coming weekend. She's documenting it on her blog - and she's a neat, crafty and designy gal, so it's an indulgent and pretty read.

17. It also happens to be Earth Week, and today is Earth Day.

18. My friend Bill Conall will be heading to Orillia pretty soon for the award ceremony. However, tomorrow night (Friday, April 23) he'll be here at the Baddeck Library, doing an event.

19. A man came into the library and said, "Do you have a humour section?" I said (without realizing I was making a pun), "Funny you should say that!" (I was in the middle of creating a display for books that had previously won the Stephen Leacock award.)

20. Burning papers in the fireplace instead of recycling them - makes you feel like you're REALLY getting rid of them. The to-do lists no longer exist. Or at least, they've become ash, which is impossible to read.

21. I have far more library books out than I can actually read. Thankfully, unlike agreeing to real-life events or actual responsibilities, with library books you can just return the ones you don't want anymore.

22. As impulse grabs go, library books are a good one. You see one on the shelf that strikes your fancy and you can just TAKE IT. No matter how much or how little money you make, you can go into a library and just take out books that make you go, "ooh!" And I don't pay fines any more because I'm library staff - but even if you did pay fines, they would be pretty minimal considering what you get from a library!

23. The week is not even over yet! On the weekend, I plan to go to a "feast" - a local chef who likes to branch out and try new things has these events where people he knows go to his house and sit down together for a meal. A six-course tasting menu all based on a theme, and using as many locally-sourced, organic ingredients as possible. Last month it was Alice in Wonderland. This month it is based on the 1922 novel, Enchanted April. It will be my first time attending one of these "feasts." No doubt I'll report back to you.

24. Today is a beautiful, sunny, sunny day. I have made a poster on the stand-up easel by the front of the library that says, "Happy Earth Day!" and have put a container of markers next to it, inviting patrons to add to it. So far we have gotten: a flower, "Happy Mirth Day," and "Happy Bearthday."

25. Making a list of things is fun, but can run out of steam too. Good thing this list is almost over.

26. Today is my twenty-sixth birthday! That's the reason this list has twenty-six items. My friend Mel left me a message with her singing "Happy Birthday," and my Mum and brother met me at the door at work, also in song. (And bearing a gift certificate to my new favorite restaurant, the Black Spoon. Hurray!)

Twenty-six. I feel both not-that-old-yet, and exactly-that-old. Funny how ages work - they're important to us, but we can definitely take them too seriously. How old did you feel when you were twenty-six? Or, if you're not that old yet, where you do see yourself when you're there?

...

what "julie & julia" taught me

This past week I went to the cinema with some friends. We watched the new movie, "Julie & Julia," which is "based on two true stories," as the tagline has it. I'd been wanting to see it since I heard about it several months ago, since I have a very soft spot for Nora Ephron films, for food films, and for Meryl Streep films. All three in one? OK, we're on! Also, I'm a blogger, and so a film about a blogger also scores points with me. So, it was inevitable that I would see it, really.

We settled in for the film, my two friends and I. One of them, M, had just recently decided to go off dairy products, suspecting that she might be allergic. I am attempting to limit my own sugar intake, as well as caffeine, so that meant that we didn't smuggle anything into the theatre besides gummy bears. I did take a long, sad glance at the popcorn counter, but the prices were enough to scare me back to sense. (Four DOLLARS for a chocolate bar. And it's not even a very good chocolate bar. It's waxy Dove "dark" chocolate that tastes more like additives than chocolate. Sad, sad, sad. I mean, if it was Just-us Fair Trade Dark chocolate then I would happily pay four dollars. But - no.)


Well, the movie was a joy. Yes, there were trite moments, and yes, I tried to stay just a tiny bit aware of the Hollywood machine and all that. But mostly I sunk into that film like I would into a great big, overstuffed armchair on a rainy afternoon. It was like "You've Got Mail" crossed with, well, Julia Child, and you all know how I feel about "You've Got Mail". So, as you might imagine, I loved a lot of things about "Julie and Julia," but I think the three most important lessons I took from it can be summed up as:

1. Tall, big-boned women rock. Julia Child was six foot two, according to my sources. (The Internet.) Meryl Streep playing Child stalks all over the screen, making no apologies about her larger-than-the-norm body. Indeed, neither does Stanley Tucci's Paul Child, Julia's adoring husband, apologize for loving her body. It's obvious they lust after each other, as well as being in love, and I liked how physical they were - there's a moment where "Julia" reaches for "Paul" when they are kissing, both in nightclothes, and the way she touches his belly and reaches for his waistline and below that is tender and yet erotic.

The clothes on Julia Child are straight-up beautiful 1940s and 50s dresses, skirts and blouses, which emphasize the waist, and she's got the figure to pull it off. It just happens to be a bigger than average figure; her height, for all that it dominates the screen, is only referenced a few times - the message is that yes, she's tall, but that's not what the fuss was all about. The fuss, rightly so, was about her presence, her passion, and her cooking.

(If you're interested in reading and thinking more about bodies and body size and being positive about fat and big and tall and all that, I highly recommend this blog: Shapely Prose. In fact, I might just do a whole blog post about it at some point.)

2. Women bloggers rock. So the other half of the story is Julie Powell, who was an aspiring writer working in a less-than-dream job in 2002, when she decided to write a blog chronicling a year of cooking her way through Julia Child's book "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." (Side note: I started blogging in 2002, too!) I loved how 2002 is now part of history, now, and how at that point, blogging was this new thing that only a few people were doing.

I'm beginning to think that maybe my love for both "You've Got Mail" and "Sex and the City" is actually due to a passion for scenes of women typing on laptops. Because, well, this movie's got a spate of them. What can I say? I identify. I might have only gotten a laptop to call my own last year, but for almost seven years I've been typing my own blogs and articles out on a keyboard, so when I see Meg Ryan, Sarah Jessica Parker and now Amy Adams tap-tapping away, while a voice-over reads what she's typing, I get a wee bit excited. Mind you, my writing doesn't take place in a stylish New York City apartment, nor in front of a window, usually. And, my voice-over is all in my own head. But this I know for sure - bloggers, and women, and hey! women bloggers - rock, and I'm proud to be one, and to see them onscreen. You don't need a book deal to write and publish, you just need tenacity, an audience, and the ability to type. (Voice-over optional.)

3. Butter rocks. As my friend M found out, much to her now-dairy-less dismay, butter is all over this movie. There is even a short montage where one, then two, then three large blocks of butter are added to a hot frying pan, while the voice-over declares: "Nope, you can never have too much butter!" And, at the end of the film, when "Julie" visits the Smithsonian exhibit of "Julia's" kitchen, she secretly leaves a block of unsalted butter under a portrait of the chef. Everything in French cooking, it seems, meets butter at some point or another, and "Butter makes everything better" easily could have been the alternate tagline for this movie. Butter - and the movie as a whole is pretty tasty - except, of course, if you're lactose-intolerant.


In other news: I invested in the actual CD release version of the new Fat Freddy's Drop album, and I am not sorry. It only took a week and a half to arrive from New Zealand, and thanks to the favorable exchange rate, 36 NZ$ turned out to be only 27 CAN$. (That was Air Mail included.)

If you haven't yet listened to Fat Freddy's Drop, and you like reggae, soul, dub or R&B, I suggest you get yourself over to their website and listen to some samples. Or, check them out on YouTube, as there are lots of videos for their tunes there.

That's it for now! Until next Thursday.

mission: dill, part II

So I ended up making dill pickles! Who would have guessed? Considering that I've never canned anything before, I impressed myself, at least! And ain't that who counts? But I'll try my darndest to impress you guys too. Here goes.

I started with obtaining pickling cucumbers from the garden of a friend, as well as dill he'd graciously given, too. I also had two conflicting recipes and the Bible of backwoods cooking, "Mrs. Restino's Country Kitchen", which uses a wood stove as the standard, not a gas-fired or electric range. Hardcore! We don't actually use a wood stove, but her book is certainly helpful for a pickling novice in crisis. So after some deliberation, I decided to use Mrs. Restino's step-by-step instructions, because the first recipe I had was hurriedly scribbled from the dictated memory of another friend who makes dills, but who rarely measures his ingredients, and the second recipe used sugar and I'm trying to cut that out of my diet. So, something plain and easy to follow and not including sugar looked like my best bet.

On Tuesday, after following Mrs. Restino's directions for about an hour, I found myself in the kitchen standing over a pot, in which boiled a mixture of water and vinegar, and which also had peppercorns, mustard seed and garlic cloves dancing in its acidic depths. I was also looking over at a smaller pot which held five new "snap" lids, percolating. On the counter beside me were five pint Mason jars, sterilized, and I had put a dill flower in each, along with five or six bright green pickling cucumbers, small and tough and knobby. Then I poured enough of the boiling vinegar mixture in each jar to come almost to the rim, set a boiled snap lid on top, and a screw lid, but not screwed all the way down.

Had I really done it? The five jars sitting side-by-side certainly made it look like it. I was quite ecstatic, but I had to wait a little longer to see if the jars would seal. In the end, three out of five did seal, and headed for the cold room to live in storage, and the other two went to the fridge. I didn't know how long I was supposed to leave them in there before they could be eaten; Mrs. Restino was silent on that point.

Skip ahead three days, and my brother Mat and a friend of his are home for the Thanksgiving weekend. They've just arrived, it's late Friday night, all the bags have been brought in, tea poured and the necessary introductions made. We're sitting around talking when suddenly I remember my pickles! I jump up:

"Mat! I made pickles!"

I run to the fridge, pull out one of the two jars. Then I grab a plate, a knife and a fork. We unscrew the lid and pull out a now-mild-green pickle. I slice it into pieces and pass the plate around. The moment of truth, and the proof is in the pickle! Amazingly enough, we each bite into a very garlicky, quite vinegary dill pickle. I have the look of a proud mama on my face: I did it! It's like alchemy, at least for a beginner like me. Into the jar: raw cucumbers and boiling vinegar, plus a few other ingredients. Out of the jar: crunchy, tasty dill pickles!

The ecstasy only lasts so long before the agony sets in: in my hurry to eat my pickle, the vinegar has gone down the wrong tube and is making the top of my throat itch and burn. I cough and cough, embarrassed but proud. My pickles may be small, but they're mighty, and I seem to be living proof. Note to self for next year: cut back on the vinegar!

It's hard to top that kind of victory, but the weekend ended up being pretty great all the same. The weather was that perfect Fall blend of cold air, colorful leaves, a high wind and clouds the scud across the sky. All our food and visits were memorable. And I even got the Janice Fuller Dill Pickle Seal Of Approval, and it's not every day she gives that one out!

I'm giving thanks for pickling cucumbers great and small, friends old and new, and for the cozy feeling you get indoors on a rainy Fall day with a good book. Oh and of course loads of thanks for and to Marlo, for letting me use the above photograph. What about you? Best answer wins a virtual dill pickle.

potential accusations of materialism, be damned!

I effing love my new monitor!

That's "monitor", not "minotaur", although if I had one of those I'd probably have to love it, otherwise it would eat me.

My new monitor, on the other hand, wouldn't do such a thing. It just sits there, looks pretty, and displays a heck of a lot better than my old one did.

That plus new memory and a new operating system makes my 5-year-old computer look like a filly rather than the sad, tired old mare she really is. Let's hope I can get a few more good "racing" years out of her.

In other, non-materialistic news, just to redeem this post and maybe get a few "points" for it, although where I get to redeem those points is beyond me, here is the link to the website for the book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle", which is really, really good and which I've already pushed on just about all of my friends, so now I'm going to let my readers know about it too. Oh -- you mean my friends are my entire readership? Oh well. It can't hurt to hear about it twice. Maybe even three times.

Now back to playing Solitaire. Because even that on this new monitor is fun. Seriously.

nice rack!

Just in time for the chef's birthday! (Catriona MacInnes turns 23 on the 27th of this month.)

This photo was taken by my friend Catriona, during her final exam this year at NSCC (Nova Scotia Community College), Ackerly Campus (Dartmouth, NS), a month or so ago. Two weeks later, my mother remembered we had a rack of lamb in the freezer, which none of us know how to cook, so we asked Catriona -- home for a break between school and her summer work placement -- to come and do us the honor, not knowing she'd passed with flying colors on the very dish we were asking her to prepare for us. Serendipity in the kitchen - my favorite kind!

Catriona arrived with an industrial-strength briefcase, filled with culinary art supplies: knifes, spatulas, pastry cutters, molds, a scale, squeeze bottles, a handheld mixer, measuring cups and spoons, pliers (removing fish bones, not last minute plumbing repairs), icing tubes, and an assortment of funny-looking metal tools that turned out to be the melon ballers, a butter curler, a lemon zester, and an apple corer. Don't get in this woman's way! Ever the professional, she also changed into her chef's whites, complete with neckerchief and a digital thermometer clipped to her arm, looking like a more svelte version of Gilmore Girls' chef, Sukie: same gorgeous smile and cheery chatter.

My brother Mat became her "apprentice chef" for the afternoon, chopping garlic, mincing rosemary, mixing the rub (garlic, rosemary, dijon mustard, honey and olive oil), as per the chef's instructions. Catriona herself was involved in preparing the meat: cutting the fat cap off, then cutting spaces or "windows" between the ribs, then scraping the rest of the connective tissue, fat and cartilage off the meat. Her joy in her chosen trade was evident: when she she first cut between the rib bones and pulled away the meat to create a neat square space, she exclaimed, "Ah, look at that window!"

This photo is also from Catriona's final exam, and it's the point at which the "windows" have been cut between the ribs, the unwanted tissues removed, and the rub spread on the meat. Our meat looked a little different from this, as it was grown and butchered at a small farm, not prepared for commercial use as her exam-lamb was. Also, because our lamb lived its life free-range and was fed organic feed, its fat, Catriona noted, was less stiff, and actually harder to handle.

After she had braised the meat in two cast-iron pans, and then rubbed them with the prepared mixure and set them to bake in the oven, Catriona prepared the reduction sauce. Her Scottish ancestry was evident: as she hoisted a bottle of Valpolicella, a red wine, to begin, she said enthusiastically, "The best thing about sauces is there's alcohol in them!" Later, I sniffed the pan, in which was simmering red wine, orange zest and juice, and fresh mint, and it smelled like sweet lollipops, Laura Secord orange suckers, only for grown-ups.

While we were waiting for the meal to cook, Mat wheeled into the kitchen on the office chair, and Catriona "knighted" him with the knife sharpener, a long metal dowel: "I knight you the best un-official apprentice chef ... in the world!" I was on the couch -- all the activity had tired me out -- writing notes and laughing. The house smelled divine: roasting lamb, rosemary, garlic, wine, orange zest. At the last minute we pulled together a salad of garden greens (Turkish rocket and dandelion leaves), with some chopped apple and a balsamic vinaigrette. Catriona "presented" the food beautifully, using a squeeze bottle to make a design on the plate using the reduction sauce, and arranging the lamb pieces on the plates much like her final exam. We all sat down, ready to dig in, impressed, excited, happy, and most importantly, hungry.

After our meal, flipping through the textbook she had brought for me to look at, I found a quote that I realized sums up the delight we all shared in this meal. I'll leave you with it. Also: Happy Birthday dear Catriona, on the 27th! Here's to good friends, and good food.

"Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensly to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale." --Elsa Schiaparelli, Italian fashion designer, 1890-1973).

pot roast post script

As sort of a post-script to the previous post (about doing things that distract you, and are also productive) and also just as a sort of "I'm proud of myself so I want to tell you all" shout out, I wanted to talk a bit about pot roast.

Today I made my first ever pot roast. I said to Marlo, "This is one of those dishes that mark adulthood for me." As a result of having to clean out my freezer over the next few weeks, in preparation for moving back to Cape Breton, I have to eat some of the meat I didn't eat all year. There are a few pot roasts in there, meat from Cape Breton farms, meat that was allowed to graze free-range, and fed good, chemical-free grain. Pot roasts are the sort of thing I've put off making because I was busy, and I had never done it before, so I was nervous to try. It takes patience, several stages of cooking, combining ingredients and heat and time in a specific way for a specific outcome. I wasn't sure I could attempt it! But since the freezer needs clearing I thought I would give it a try.

So today I followed the list of instructions Mum had given me. I browned the big chunk of beef on both sides, tossing in some chopped onion. I made the "pot likker" with water, old spaghetti sauce, and a can of mushrooms. (Apparently you can also throw in things like wine, sherry, yogurt, gravy--anything you've got in the fridge.) I set it to simmer for a few hours. About a half hour before I wanted to eat I threw in carrots and potatoes. When I went to cut the meat for my plate it practically fell off the bone, and subsequently was melt-in-your-mouth delicious. I mashed up the potatoes and carrots on my plate and put a few spoonfuls of the pot likker on top, which was all full of beef fat--yum!

As I sat at the little table here in my apartment and chewed, I felt that distinctive feeling that you get when you are both remembering a taste from childhood and realizing that you're making a new memory, that of your adult self re-creating the childhood dish. It's a feeling of pride, of "Hey, I can do this after all!" And the sense that you're growing into your mother, and that's OK.

As this is a post-script, and comes soon after the last one, I'll still read the comments of the last post, as I'm still interested in what you might have to say about it.