Local care package classics

I have a batch of muffins in the oven for breakfasts this week (better late than never), made with low-bush cranberries, also known as swedish cloudberries in the same way that saskatoons are known as serviceberries, from La Ronge. A couple guys from the Shell Lake area sell 'em, along with garlic, at the Market from spring to fall. I have a wonderful, wonderful bag of cranberries in my freezer ready to be slowly dished out over the season.

I love local food, cooking it and eating it. I think that feeding our friends is one of the simplest, subtlest, and yet most meaningful activities we can share. With that in mind, I'm making a mental list of things to send a friend who may be going off on sabbatical this spring... whether she likes it or not. So please share: what's your favourite local food? If you were to leave town, what would you appreciate receiving in the mail? What's your favourite place to source goodies?

x - posted to the other place, since I'm likely to get actual replies there

Inspired by this recipe, I cooked up a lovely pot of barley today. I didn't have any rosemary, and I used pot barley instead of pearl barley. What I did have was fresh parsley and week-old mushrooms from Steep Hill and pea shoots from the Market. I soaked the mushrooms in hot water for a good twenty minutes; they add great taste to the pot. Check it out - I've been toasting my rice as a matter of course, but I didn't think of toasting other grains. The recipe made plenty, and it's creamy and both hearty and light. It'll go well with my pot beans and roasted asparagus for a dog's lunch tomorrow!

am I going to try to blog more often? well... probably

So - Chuck Strahl, the man who dismantled the Wheat Board in a democratically-questionable manner, has been shuffled to the Indian Affairs portfolio. Is he intended to dismantle the Indian Act - and the Treaties - as handily? How far do you think he'll get? Discuss.

I'm taking the leap and starting Diarmaid MacCulloch's Reformation: Europe's House Divided today (or maybe tomorrow), since I finished The One Percent Doctrine yesterday. Well - I found it disappointing, not as lucidly written as, say, the book before that, The World Without Us. They're both books of investigative journalism, both very of-the-moment. I guess Weisman had the luxury of arranging his elements however he wanted - Suskind followed a vaguely chronological order, but the lack of a clear narrative thread made the whole thing hard to follow. As much as I'm on this non-fiction kick, I /am/ still reading The Well at the World's End. It's going smoothly and it's fun, but for whatever reason it doesn't draw me as much as this other stuff I'm reading.

Saw the meteor shower with some cool people last night. Lying on the hood of a car is not as easy as movies would make you think.

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Mrs. Remai

Top floor, corner suite. Designated heritage building with most architectural details intact, including painted enamel on original fixtures. Masonry, (new) arched windows. Ventilation shafts!! Hardwood floors, ten foot ceilings. Nonworking fireplace with kitschy fake fire. Functional radiators, with a tiled cover on the one in the bedroom. Original icebox converted to cupboard. Downtown, a block off Spadina. Two people ahead of me on applications, one more suite possibly becoming available. $595, which is kinda crazy high for downtown, although with a 2.5% vacancy rate who wants to take chances?

Stupid modern bathroom, boo. Kickass kitchen nook with built-in table and benches, yay. Tiny but beautiful kitchen.

No pets. :(

I think I just convinced myself.

rambling: The Kite Runner (thanks, Mom!)

I read The Kite Runner in three days.

Literature can get away with things science fiction and fantasy can't. tKR was at least as formulaic in its way as a sword and sorcery novel; compare its plot with Atonement if you doubt it. Not to mention tKR lacks subtlety - reading it, we are treated to rape, child abuse, Hitler, hard drugs, and suicide. The protagonist, Amir, is a novelist and we watch his early development as a writer. It's more peripheral than in Atonement, so I'll give Khaled Hosseini that, but it still reads as much too personal. Tacked onto that are the hospital scenes where Amir finds religion: Hosseini is a medical doctor.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Dice, you can't write; who are you to criticize? What basis do you have to judge? Yeah, I hear you. I think at least part of the problem are the perfectly wonderful books I've read, compared to which a first novel is as awkward as a first step.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy the book; if it weren't gripping I wouldn't have carried it around with me all weekend like a security blanket. I liked it; didn't love Amir, although I wanted to punch him a few times, didn't even love Hassan, perfectly nice and loyal. I was dying to know exactly what came next, other than the pattern of sin, guilt, and redemption. So, really, I'm not complaining, just noticing, the way I noticed the difference between fiction and non-fiction: I'm used to having control over my fiction, a sense of ownership. If I don't like how something goes, I'll just rewrite the ending. There's less control with non-fiction, more certainty: something is either a fact or it isn't. You can argue with it. With fiction, you can only argue how good it is, how well-written, how realistic and realised the characters are. That could be why I'm having trouble sitting back and just enjoying a piece of fiction. I like to argue, like to have a sense of ownership in the story. I don't think it's worse, I just wish I were better at compartmentalising.

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I'm just saying you should

All through February, you can send fifty pounds of produce to the Winnipeg Harvest food bank by signing up for weekly recipe emails at Peak of the Market.

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The Upside of Highland

While I prefer to post only when I have something to say, I've been poked so here you go.

I've suspended my year-long reading of A Terrible Beauty (I'm at post-modernism!) for The Upside of Down, or as Matt called it, Mr. Up Goes Down. It's a weird mix of popular and academic, as though a pop writer were accessing academic sources - with passion, yes. Unlike some books I've come across lately, the endnotes are nicely done, giving sources as well as stimulating bits of information that might break up the narrative too much for a general audience if they were in the body of the text. Like a lot of books I've been reading lately, though, there's no bibliography. Do I have to say how frustrating this is? I'm just not going to look through the endnotes to try to find the last citation (sorry, no), so I end up with a lucky glance at the right endnote or no source at all.

So far the book seems to be pimping two things: a grassroots liberal-humanist approach to the coming crises, and the forum at www.theupsideofdown.com. As for the reality of the coming crises, if not their nature, you are preaching to the choir. Well, thurifer, in my case.

So that's the first three and a half chapters of The Upside of Down. It's even bumped The Mysteries of Udolpho from the place beside my pillow, for now. I tend to read half a book and then leave it for a while, but I'm hoping to get straight through this one. It's fun cafe reading, anyway.

My other experiment is Old Pultenay scotch. It's a "maritime" highland single malt, and it's a little cheaper than Peat Monster at the LB. I mostly bought it for the cool seaside scene on the tube. I find it too clean and smooth - I'd rather drink, say, Gentleman Jack if I'm not drinking Laphroaig - but when I was wanting a drink today at work (...) it was this kind of taste I was wanting. It may yet become a preference, since there is a sweetish medicinal taste to it. Anyway, that's my rambling about scotch.