Category: Food

Delightful visit and some news about that chat

All my relations, I acknowledge my unpayable debt to the peoples, lands and waters of MST country.

For Paul’s bday his double cousin Jim and spouse Jan cooked dinner; a pink salmon (they are hard to cook right and you need a meat thermometer), corn on the cob and a delicious greek salad with veggies from their garden.

Katie turned up later after dropping off Alex and Keith was supposed to go gaming but didn’t and was too upset in the tummy to eat with us. It’s all good, it was the perfect amount of food, no leftovers.

While we were talking, as we do, Jan was curious about my encounter with a yellow breasted chat.  I had read that they live in BC so hadn’t worried too much about where it appeared, but it turns out that they are rare in the lower mainland, possibly not regulars at all. She found something on line about the chat – how it was the subject of habitat rehabilitation in the Okanagan. It needs a bunch of stuff to breed. A wild rose bush in a clearing of a forest with willow and cottonwood is their idea of a home in Heaven. If you clear the wild rose bushes for development bye bye chats. Also, they just got themselves into a new bird family because they’re chonky, among other things. The one I saw was monosyllabic, but in the spring the wee bastards never shut up and have as many as 40 separate calls. Also the boys dangle their feet and shake their booties to attract girls, who watch from underneath, and they have big goddamn marks on their plumage only visible in UV. All in all a wonderful evening of natural history, family love and damned good food.

December 31-2021 – I also learned this year that chats SING AT NIGHT

BREAKING: BC MASK MANDATE FOR ALL INDOOR SPACES REINSTATED

fill the cup

For the beauty of the lands and waters and the strength of the people and creatures, I give thanks. To walk on this land is a great gift.

Got a plum cake over to Tom and Peggy, it was still warm in the pan, yesterday morning. Mebbe it wasn’t biscotti (me yelling over the phone at Tom I’M NOT A ONE HIT WONDER YOU KNOW while Peggy was no doubt rolling her eyes) but it sure is edibibble.

Walked in Fraser Foreshore Park and received the gift of a new bird; it was a yellow-breasted chat. I got a good long minute of him, yellow underneath like a waistcoat, over pale trews, and browny-green on top, and then my goodness he flew so I got his flight pattern and then there was his call, which was what got my attention in the first place.

I walk those woods, or I should say that little strip of biodiversity jammed and vulnerable between Sto:lo and Burnaby South’s industrial zone, often enough that I know what the background noise is like; nothing but crows and possibly eagles on a really hot day in August. A pleasant sunny day with a bit of wind in May and the woods ring with everything avian that has the capacity to sing, pretty much all blowing up their syrinxes at once. But this fellow was alone, and he said chak, like a bird four times his size and bellicose, and I thought who the hell is that? for he is not much of a conversationalist and I have not heard him before.

He kept making noise, that irritating chak! noise, until by great good fortune he turned out to be as yellow as a goddamned Minion and thus almost comically visible to an amateur such as I. (Less than five metres off the trail, less than five metres up a tree, and in bright frikkin sunshine. HULLO. He flopped from branch to branch and he didn’t care who saw him. And I could have stood there a while longer but chose not to, because I don’t persist in standing as well as I used to, and I had enough markers to be able to figure out what manner of critter I was looking at (I’d also clocked the eyestripe). This species is omnivorous. He’ll do well in that park if he eats millet, someone is feeding the ground birds.

I offered to take Paul to lunch and he deferred to Keith who was on another call. We were on the way back to my place and heard from Keith, so we went over for a late lunch there and I got to see the whole family including Alex, which was very pleasant. My plum cake was well received. Paul and I then spent an hour singing and playing (I of course, even with my recent illness, am well rehearsed, so I made it hard on myself by picking up an instrument I do not regularly play at this time, a standard sized mandolin. I felt like butterfingers and clumsy had come to live in my hands, it was quite comical.)

THAT BUILDING IS CONCRETE. I sang as loud as my body can when I’m sitting down and Katie didn’t hear a thing.  It was so good, so very good to see her. Alex had a new game which he was playing with his oldest friend on line, which is in my view cute as hell. How else are kids supposed to sustain friendships without some technology I esk you.

I ate the bean chili that Keith made, and drank beer, and came home.

Doc appt today

mOm have you seen this birding site?

the worm’s eye view

For about thirty years now I’ve thought about a polemic called ‘the worm’s eye view’ which is about the state of employment in Canada. I always thought I would get to it while I was still working and the blood boiling in my veins from the insanity of the workplace animated me to rant like a little steam engine.

Mike called to say he was once again unable to get together this weekend. Today he’s going in to the office in Burnaby for the last time to clean out his desk. TPTB (The Powers That Be) have decreed a teleconference for 7:30 am Monday and ANOTHER one at 5:30 am Tuesday. A more vile Fuck You to the people who are expecting to be laid off on the 15th of this month can hardly be imagined. Mike’s mood is thus explained. It’s very hard to pin a smiling face on under the circumstances and I certainly won’t jib at that when I’m still coughing a lung up about four times a day. I’m working my way through his lovely chowder as a consolation prize. ALSO GODDESS PEGGY HAS DISCHARGED A VOLLEY OF APPLE TARTS ONTO OUR FRONT PORCH.

I was feeling sorry for meself and we went and got a very abbreviated Timmy Ho’s order. I was the one who stood in line and it was godawful, slower than bullet time and scattered with people not wearing masks. I always thought people of colour would be more sensible about masking but no, this morning was a standard cross section of humanity but with the usual bullshit men not masking (all the women were masked) and I just wanted to vent so hard and I pasted silence into my brain and a smile onto my face until Jeff turned up in the parking lot after a side trip for cat food. SO MANY CARS  ATTEMPTED TO IMPEDE OUR EGRESS that it was hard not to take it personal. I want to stick a camera there; some of the parking interactions must come close to mayhem, public mischief and homicide — occasionally.

Anyway, with respect to the worm’s eye view, I’m just going to jot down what it would look like

chapter one ONBOARDING – all the horse puckey that happens when you join.
chapter two TRAINING – the even worse busssshit that happens when you are training
chapter three – BOREDOM, OVERWORK, performance issues, CAREER PATH, JOB-HOPPING – the five states of employment
chapter four – MANAGING THE MANAGERS WHO CAN’T MANAGE
chapter five – THE PETER PRINCIPLE, IF YOU HAVE A PETER YOU GET TO BE THE PRINCIPAL
chapter six – HOW TO BE A MEMBER OF A MODEL MINORITY
chapter seven – CUSTOMER SUPPORT
chapter eight – And now, the end is near And so I face the final curtain
CONCLUSION – IT’S ALL TAINTED, CORRUPT AND EARTH-DESTROYING BUT HEY A GIRL’S GOTTA EAT.

Yesterday and today

First, have a bear from the Capilano neighbourhood of North Van, as of about last week.

AND we don’t deserve dogs. Nor cats. (Buster when he see WOMBAT he CRAZY). NOR ORANGS.

Yesterday Paul and I walked in Fraser Foreshore. I had a dizzy spell coming out of the house so I didn’t drive, and thus nagged Paul freely the entire way back and forth.

Virtually no birds singing, none of our usual animal companions, not very well attended, nobody but us and an Asian couple bothering to wear masks. I told Paul the Delta variant is like cigarette smoke and even outdoors on pathways where we have to pass close by to people you can can get a whiff…. also I’m getting REALLY MIXED PRESS on how good Astra Zeneca is on suppressing Delta. Apparently, the word is now that it’ll keep me out of hospital if I get a breakthrough infection but I’ll be more likely to be contagious to other people if I’m asymptomatic. Not exactly the shit ya wanna hear when you’re going to visit your parents, who while not frail are elderly (sorry guys but you are over 80 after all.)

We bailed on pho as soon as I mentioned Schnitzel, by gar, and I got three takeout schnitzel dinners from Balkan House so Jeff could enjoy our celebratory meal too. Paul took exactly the same amount of time to get beer from the Oliver Twist, which faces Balkan House (I suspect he actually used the crosswalk, since jaywalking across Edmonds is something only silly young people do) as it took for the food to arrive. It was fantastic… much better than the last time, although the food portions on the rice and potatoes were smaller than I’m used to. The breading though… always a classic.

That plus beer (Red Racer Vanilla Stout, a total rip off of Granville Island Winter Ale) and a blueberry turnover for dessert, and we had a lovely meal.

Finished Swan Song and loved it. I think it’s a one-watch but it was a lovely, heartfelt movie with lots of great bit performances, the young gay bartender being a standout. Wish I had his name but imdb is oooooosssssssslessssss.

We’re really feeling the Lack of ‘Wanted’. They made three seasons and stopped, like sensible people, but we are not sensible people and want more. As always, we are salved by Elementary and the inhuman perfection that is Lucy Liu in that show.

Danny DeVito’s been locked out of his Twitter account for supporting the Nabisco strike. LOL

Small shop & collapse

Well my brief burst of energy has imploded. I’m feeling small and tangled-up and misanthropic, but many things, including Buster’s training schedule, are exactly as they should be. But…. blueberry turnovers, for the first time, so that was tasty.

Slept from 9:30 pm to 6 am this morning! I am well rested but not energetic, what gives, body.

Heading to Victoria next week with some descendants, unless something hinders. Fingers crossed for a good visit.

This is for me mam.

Still LOVING “Wanted”, coming up on the end of the show, 3rd season.

And from the JOSUS FUKING CHRIS IT’S A PANDEMIC PEOPLE department…

OTTAWA — The Public Service Alliance of Canada president says he “will not stand for the termination” of federal public servants who refuse to get vaccinated, after Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau warned of “consequences” for those civil servants.

In an interview with CTV News, Chris Aylward said “it’s very concerning to us when national party leaders are making statements around discipline around terminations when it comes to these vaccinations. That is totally unacceptable to us.”

Aylward, who represents more than 160,000 federal public servants, stated that he supports the government’s stance that all federal public servants should be vaccinated. But he said unvaccinated employees will require accommodations to keep their jobs.

  • CTV News, from website 10;08 am PST 18 Aug 2021

An Alabama doctor is tired of helping people who refuse to protect themselves and others – so he’s no longer taking appointments with anti-vaxxers.

Mobile, Ala., physician Dr. Jason Valentine posted a photo on Facebook in which he’s seen standing in front of a sign that reads “Effective Oct. 1, 2021, Dr. Valentine will no longer see patients that are not vaccinated against COVID-19.”

from

By 
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
AUG 17, 2021  5:23 PM
Today is the 40th anniversary of the day Paul and I went to housekeeping. I emailed him asking him if he wants to get takeout for lunch. His response was that he has appointments so we’ll do it tomorrow.
copyright Masato Mattori

I am not going to spend a lot of time yoinking your chain about Afghanistan. The politics of exploitation and colonization stretch into pre-history and I’m not a pro. Therefore I will stick with the present.

  1. If you have the money or donations in kind, please give generously to Afghan refugee and aid organizations in Canada or your jurisdiction. They are more clued in to what is going on and what is needed than I am and I’d rather give money to an Afghani woman in Canada, who will most intelligently disburse what she can to current refugees, than try to give a dime to international aid organizations, given the difficulties with freight at the moment. If your hope is lively donate directly to Afghan Red Crescent
  2. Please, if you have the stomach for it, read this: Stonekettle’s comments about Afghanistan.
  3. Please consider sponsoring or assisting in sponsoring a refugee, or asking your house of worship to sponsor someone. The one time I signed sponsorship papers for an individual it was the brother in law of a co-worker. I signed up for being financially responsible for him (as did another co-worker, who awesome as they are will remain nameless here) but never had to expend cash because he was working and self supporting two months after landing here (despite his considerable health problems, a consequence of the privations he endured as a refugee).

got up at four

Made tomato lentil soup. Very tasty; zero fat and hardly any salt nonetheless.

Paul’s about to come over and take me to Fraser Foreshore before it gets too hot.

About sixty words of infill on previously existing projects. I have so much work ahead of me to massage the mss into shape it’s quite vexxing.

Put down more ant traps, the ants are back in sheeting hordes.

Cedar Isle Farm reports the harvest:

Barley – not good, sadly

Wheat – both hard and soft, excellent quality and yield

Oats – OH YEAH BABY

Rye – much better than anticipated

This has been your community supported agriculture report.

 

Paul ate lentil soup, iced tea and pecan-apricot chocolate mascarpone salad.

wotta meal

four perfect things:

seared ahi tuna

homemade wasabi sauce

pan seared yellow peppers

thai rice with a macédoine of vegetables

Plated beautifully and served red hot.

Plus nearbeer and some OG Kush

WHAT A MEAL

THEN I slept in until 8:30. Mike bought a weighted blanket. I’ve had coffee and I think eggs are happening and life in the eyrie is once again glorious.

famjam inbound

Forecast for Sunday is partly cloudy and 21 degrees at this point, which seems favourable for a picnic. So unless that changes, the famjam is ON for 4pm Sunday.

THIS FROM ALEX

WE ARE GO FOR FAMILY PICNIC ON THE BEACH ON SUNDAY

I’ve got a *tiny* red spot/bruise in the crook of my left arm. The phlebotomist was very good. I always donate on the left. It felt weird the other day to have a nurse check me for track marks. I don’t feel off but I’m not 100 percent perky again yet – I had another very solid and reborative (*not* rebarbative lol) sleep.  Yesterday I ran two loads of laundry and made tuna salad for a late lunch (ingredients, tuna, real mayo, capers, scallions and artichokes all chopped into the tuna, over iceberg lettuce salad and I’ll thank you very much to nod when I tell you it was good) and watched a fair amount of TV – two episodes of Elementary, can you believe we started a rewatch again so soon after the end of the last rewatch? We did a shop in the morning and bought no chicken, pork or beef. I watered the dogwood and the cedar hedge. Kim the Landlord had the cedar hedge put in and she’s attached to it and I try to help keep it healthy.

Now I know I’ve been mentioning mascarpone cheese a lot, because we’ve been eating it every week. I got it for myself as an eating treat for the first time about six months ago and now it gets used for any number of wild purposes, like being added to Indian food to take the heat down or being used as dip for crackers. My current favourite treatment for it is to chop pecans and dried apricots into it and add home made chocolate syrup and whomp it up and eat it like a parfait, but mostly I just put it on bagels, a truly lovely application, especially for a sweeter bagel like a blueberry bagel. I have converted Jeff into a mascarpone fan. The other day he referred to it as ‘massacre pony’ cheese and I thought I was going to die laughing, because it sounds exactly like the kind of mishearing I applied to many things when I was a kid.

I have learned – directly from Katie – that she anticipates the birth of a boy child. The happy couple is fine either way. “I’ll raise strong men and get awesome daughters in law” she said and I laughed.   I don’t have facebook or I would have known a couple of days ago. She calls me on the land line, all apologetic, because I don’t have a cell phone or she’d have texted me. Isn’t modern parenting wild?

Now I got myself all wound up over mascarpone cheese, so I toasted a blueberry bagel, and one half of it is on Jeff’s desk for when he comes back from looking for something downstairs and the other half is being consumed with tea, Yorkshire Gold, hot, by yours truly.

Did I ever tell you guys that for months and months I could hear what sounded like somebody tunnelling under the house, but it’s stopped? I don’t know what it was but it kept me awake LOTS and now it’s gone. Hopefully their ‘extra space for renters’ or ‘panic room’ or ‘torture chamber’ or ‘sex dungeon’ or ‘man cave’ is all finished now. Still I persist in wondering. I figured it couldn’t be real since Jeff couldn’t hear it. Maybe it was particular power tool oriented rats?

Still no envelope of suitable size and robustness for ontie Mary. I need to get up off my ass and go ‘into town’ (lol less than ten stops on the 123 bus more like) and get some.

Did I ever tell you guys that like most people who are on the spectrum and or have ADD I have tons of sensory issues around food and drink? because I grew up in a household where ‘suffer in silence’ was actually a family motto I’ve long since learned to power through the overwhelming majority of them (not painfully or ruining my day, just as a going to the dentist kind of powering through it), but one thing that has stuck with me since m early teens is that tea is supposed to be as hot as you can make it and to be drunk just shy of scalding; I sometimes reheat tea five times if I keep forgetting to drink it when it’s the right temperature…. the spectrum makes me need it a certain way, the ADD prevents it, it’s like there’s two witless mofos trying to control my sensorium all day. Spectrum makes me want to be upstanding and meet my commitments or SHAME of GREAT SHAME will ensure; ADD says fuck ya, smokes weed and ends up hitting the twangy box in the guest room while Jeff flees to the safety of his EBM Dark Club Music on headphones.

 

leafhopper earrings from @kanakirisuzume1’s twitter feed

Yesterday I

– loaded and ran dishwasher

– tidied kitchen

– showered and brushed teeth

– policed up my picks, they end up everywhere so I had to round up the herd

– practiced

– ran a load of laundry

– gave blood

– lunched with Paul

– STILL NO FREAKING ENVELOPE FOR MARY’S LETTER and I could not wait fifteen minutes on the phone for a doctor’s appointment so I’ll try again today and also the Visa issue still isn’t straightened out, and it’s annoying because apparently I can use my card on line but not in person? like what the hell, people.

Paul called around ten and asked if I wanted to donate blood. He arranged it all, since we normally go together, or with another family member and I hate the blood.ca website with everything in my gristly heart. I pounded fluids and ate lightly, and I felt fine after the donation (I drove home) until bedtime, when I felt a little woozy and highly strange. I’m more or less fine this morning, but sore (not at the donation site, more in my joints, which is weird). It takes even longer than usual to donate blood with all in-person questions and on screen questionnaires! It took about half an hour to process me, and even longer for Paul, likely because he couldn’t stop joking around with the pretty intake nurse (just my speculation, but definitely classic Paul), but I only had to wait about twenty minutes in the car while I hosed back 400 ml of mango juice and a mini oaty chocky bar, and Paul (who was driving, much against my wish) managed to find a lovely spot in the shade.

Made the unwelcome discovery that the CD player is no longer functioning in Paul’s Toyota; he only ever listens to CBC radio anyway so it likely would have been another year before he noticed a problem.

After, Paul declared himself desirous of a shrimp banh mi and I thought, “It’s the Pho Hong, there’s gotta be something there I can eat even if I don’t want banh mi,” and realized as we entered that they had been closed back in May/June for renovations. The Pho Hong used to be an Italian restaurant and when the first owners moved in they didn’t touch the decor; wish I had pictures, the walls were festooned with classic Italian tacky shit, as were the rickety booths, and there was a dropped ceiling.

The next renovation cleaned up the walls. All the character was gone, but the food did not change.

This renovation is all black melamine plates and dark woodgrain plastic booths and no more fabric anything (this will be a feature, post pandemic – only the most luxe places are going to have fabric anything, because otherwise everything is a ring tailed bastard to sanitize for fomites) and the ceilings are higher. ALSO, they are competing with Pho Boi further down the Kingsway toward Metrotown and they are open all night – yup, I have a 24 Pho place a five minute drive from the house now! If I was feeling energetic I could walk there in about an hour.

I remembered you’re supposed to have something salty so I had a small number 15, no noodle, extra veg, and (ripping swears) it was good! Paul had veggie spring rolls as well. It was most pleasant.

Now, one thing you have to know about the Pho Hong is that the women’s bathroom is designed for Vietnamese women, and not traditionally sized settler ladies. The stall is narrow AND compressed; doors swing inward AND JUST BARELY MISS THE TOILET I mean they clear it by a couple of cm, no, I’m not exaggerating, and actually I think it would be pretty funny to hang a camera at the top of the stall and video me getting into and out of the stall, because I collected bruises on many surfaces as they impacted the wall, the tp holder, the door and the toilet, so I was collecting whatever substances and materials previous occupants had left in a right jolly way, mostly with my ass. To say this is not an accessible washroom is the understatement of the century. I mean it’s not the ‘worst toilet in all of Scotland’, but it’s fucking small, is all. I wriggled out of the stall and contemplated how they could have, during the renovations, moved the fucking stall door one foot that away and fixed the worst of the problems for fat able bodied people, but these days I look at everything through a “What would a fat disabled Indigenous trans person say about this” lens and believe you me the least you’d get is an eyeroll and sigh of disgust.

Then I drove us back to my place and we parted, with many kind words of thanks and expressions of pleasure at the company, and I basically collapsed and went to bed early. Called mOm to tell her I’d given blood and to hear her talk about how wonderful Jeff is. I mean, I know, but it doesn’t get old.

Woke up after five am, which is marvellous, since I only remember waking once at ten o’clock to have two very sad and odiferous consultations with the john, got up and made tea (there’s already tons of iced tea in the fridge but I want hot tea) and an everything bagel with mascarpone cheese. Buster wanted to be brushed and wasn’t in the mood to train, so I gave him treats anyway and brushed him.

Not much is happening with writing; song writing continues, always, in the background.

I keep telling myself that I’m not a useless eater if I can donate blood. Paul said I was being too hard on myself. Also, this is ableist thinking on my part and must be expunged, but how? Out of all the horrific bigotries I carry it’s the one that is the most thoroughly internalized. I have to work on it; I have to work on it as I get older and more disabled; that will be difficult, for sure.

Long time fans of Paul’s driving style may be amused to learn that he doesn’t wildly change lanes or speed any more, and he doesn’t bolt out from behind buses and trash trucks or burn out from traffic lights or tailgate or apply the brakes as if he’s trying to flip the vehicle like he useta. His devil-may-care attitude toward centring his vehicle in a lane remains unchanged.

And sometime over the next while, a house filk and a family picnic. Life is not going back to normal. But some things from the before times will return.

Today I am going to see how I feel later this morning and try to find some envelopes of suitable size and robustness for Mary’s letter.

lovely meal

I called Keith to ask him when it would be convenient to take over his birthday presents (three different sizes of baking pan, a new paring knife and precut parchment paper (he uses it a lot for baked meals)) and his response was to invite me and Jeff over for almond crusted chicken, savoury whipped sweet potatoes and green beans. Meat and two veg, how restorative. Keith was quite appreciative of the gifts.

We picked up a tiramisu loaf from Langley Farm Market and proceeded over there. Both of us have been avoiding rush hour traffic so it was a lot like the front gate of hell, trying to get down 10th Ave yesterday at quarter to six. Fortunately we deked north onto 2nd instead of going all the way to Cumberland. Katie and Alex came out to say hi and we sat and ate a family meal at Leo M.’s old kitchen table, and man…. that was good. In attendance kMike, Keith, Kate, Alex (he didn’t eat), Paul, me and Jeff.

There’s some talk of Jeff going to Victoria; pisses me off that they won’t let us stay in our cars. I’ll be here with Buster boy.