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Finding well-being through travel and books. |
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Hello and welcome! I have two great passions in life. The first one is travel. After a series of life-changing events, my husband and I decided to spend the kids’ inheritance and see as much of the world as possible (I’m still bitter about Damascus). Our bible? A Thousand Places to See Before You Die. Please join us on our adventures seeing new places, meeting fascinating people and trying new, exciting, and sometimes just plain weird, food. My second great passion is books. Reading expands my interior world in the same way travel expands my external one. And, books are a great way to armchair travel - not only through distance but through time as well. My tastes are eclectic, so we’ll be looking at a wide range of writing in a possibly haphazard fashion. Come along for the ride! My best, Kirsten ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| I had no intention of letting my poor blog languish unattended for a week. I'm currently doing two writing courses and the volume of work this past week just about brought me to my knees. Now that's under control I turn and face another issue. Does anyone else out there have a child in her mid-twenties who is unemployed and a drain on the family exchequer? Do they ever learn to solve their own problems? I fear I've become some sort of pathological enabler but where is the line between letting them sort it out for themselves and them getting into so much trouble they do something foolhardy? Sigh. There is some good news - to follow up on my last blog post I did attend my wrist slapping meeting at the MOT. Took a lecture from a young lady not much older than my daughter, and, as I was clearly authentically contrite, managed to exist relatively unscathed. And now, back to a Character Sketch for a Supporting Character. |
| It was a hot summer night as I drove through the Rocky Mountains just west of Banff and I was twenty-three years old. My friends and I had started out that morning in Vancouver and were heading for Calgary. Everyone else was asleep, the radio was on and I was singing to Blondie when the flashing lights went on behind me. With a sigh I pulled over and as the Mountie walked up to my window I handed him my documents with my very best smile. “Pretty heavy foot there, lady,” he commented. I felt like saying ‘Well gee, officer, you must have been going pretty fast yourself to catch me.’ What I actually said was, “I am so sorry, I don’t know what came over me,” and looked suitably contrite. He laughed, handed me back my documents and said, “Go on then, but slow down so I’m not pulling you out of a ditch five miles down the road.” Fast forward several decades and I’m heading towards the Big Smoke on the 401. It’s a beautiful sunny, summer afternoon, and for a brief moment I am alone on the highway. There are no transport trucks, no other cars, just me, the music and my passenger. … and the flashing lights behind me. I pulled over and got out my documents. This time the patrolman approached the passenger’s window instead of mine. Do I look like a homicidal, peri-menopausal harridan now, I wondered. He looked about twelve and was all puffed up. “Is there some reason you were going 136 km/hr in a 100 km/hr zone?” He was absolutely deadpan. “Gosh,” I said. I actually was surprised. It must have been because there was no one around me to judge my speed by, but honestly, sometimes 136 km/hr is just keeping up with the traffic. I could tell thought that it wasn’t a good answer right now. I apologized, I was in the wrong and there was no point in making a lot of spurious excuses. He took my documents, went to his car and returned with a ticket for $275 and 3 demerit points. To make another long story short, I am now going to the Ministry of Transport offices on Friday to meet with a counsellor to explain why my driver’s license shouldn’t be suspended. My grown son thinks it’s hilarious. Me? … meh, not so much. |
| “Good morning, cows,” I give the glossy brown beasts a wave as I stride past the pasture at the bottom of our lane on my morning walk. The trees are limned with gold and crimson now and the air is cheek reddening. As I pass one of the coves on the lake there is a flock of geese in the rushes, their plump white bottoms flash in the sunlight as they paddle around gossiping like ladies at a kaffe klatch. On my way back I count the herd of cattle rather anxiously as I go past. One, with a blaze of white stroked down his broad face, looks up and regards me thoughtfully as he continues to chew. They are all steers, and steers have only one ending… well at least these are content for the moment. I know – yes I am the same person who posted a scrumptious recipe for a dry rib for smoked beef ribs but I have, like so many others successfully executed the mental gymnastics necessary to separate the food on my plate from the placid creature in front of me now. It is beef, not cow; veal, not calf; and pork, not pig. Styrofoam and plastic wrap sanitize the whole process. I am not vilifying meat eating … but not for lunch today. I think that today it’s going to be an easy favorite - eggs. Eggs are virtually the perfect food: only 70 calories per egg; the highest quality protein of all foods, eleven essential nutrients and fifteen important vitamins and minerals. These include vitamin B folate, found to reduce birth defects; carotinoids that may reduce the risk of cataracts; and macular degeneration. And, of particular note to the aging baby boomers, half the required daily dose of choline required to protect memory. Eggs got a very bad rap in the early 70”s when the American Heart Association virtually condemned them saying they were a threat to the heart. The entire egg industry was practically brought to its knees over what was later found to be bad science. A cautionary tale and one we should remember when evaluating the ‘health scare of the week’ in the media. But enough with the lecture, today I’m going to make luscious, creamy scrambled eggs with a thank you nod to Julia Child. These are dead easy to make take only a few minutes.
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| There is a scene in the movie Julie & Julia when Julia, played by Meryl Streep has her first dinner in a French restaurant after the Second World War. At her first bite of sole meuniere , she puts her fork down, her face drenched in bliss and sighs ‘mmmmm, butter.’ It has always puzzled me why even the simplest French food is so much better than North American and the other day, as I was reading Gina Mallet’s Last Chance to Eat, one of the mysteries was unraveled. It’s the butter. French butter, indeed most European butters have a higher butterfat content than North American butters. According to Mallet, the minimum for butterfat content in North America is 80% which is low by European standards where they have a minimum of 82%. This makes all the difference in taste, texture and cooking. Butter with only 80% butterfat goes watery when heated. With more butterfat, butter has the perfect melting point and literally melts in your mouth. This is the true secret to supreme flaky pastry : high butterfat butter that has been cultured. I have managed to find one such butter here in Canada made by Cows Creamery in Prince Edward Island. Their Sea-salted creamery butter has an 82% butterfat content. Sadly their unsalted butter is down to the normal 80% for reasons I have yet to discover. In the United States, Allison Hooper, a cheesemaker in Vermont is also making a European quality butter (86% - stupendous). And Plugrá makes one with 83% butterfat and it’s available in supermarkets. If anyone knows of others I would be very happy to learn about them and to update the blog accordingly. One of my favorite buttery recipes is this one for Fire and Snow Brownies, adapted from Nigella Lawson’s Feast. Enjoy! "Fire and Snow Brownies"  |
| I was awoken this morning by the bloodcurdling cry of a small creature taking that last bend on the Wheel of Life followed by self-satisfied hooting from an owl. It was an unsettling way to begin the day and as I later sat with my trembling fingers clutched around my mug of coffee I turned my thoughts to whether or not veganism was for me. And then I remembered the beef short ribs and decided probably not. About a year ago my husband and I went out west to visit my brothers. Both brothers are outstanding amateur chefs and have mastered such things as molecular cooking and sous vide cooking (I know – I had to look it up too). When he saw that they both had smokers and tasted the amazing smoked goose that one of them had cooked there was nothing for it he had to have one too. His competitive streak runs wide and deep. So after some research, Santa brought him a Weber bullet for Christmas last year. He loves it and it has proven to be a blessing now that he is spending more time at home. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** One of his favorite dishes to make is Smoked Beef Short Ribs. The fatty beef short rib is often made into stew meat but its’ very fattiness makes it an unctuous, tender handful after four hours in a smoker at 200° - 220°F (93 -105°C) He starts marinating them in a dry rub about 24 hours ahead of smoking for a rich, spicy flavor. "Maple sugar rib rub" In a few hours we’ll be putting these on the table: ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** I’ll accompany them with some golden beets I pulled out of the garden today, some baby carrots (they weren’t meant to be baby carrots – I had a carrot fail this year), and a glass of wine. |
| The woodchuck has eaten my periwinkle and there is a strange white powder on the leaves of my roses. |
| How much wood could a woodchuck chuck If a woodchuck could chuck wood “Hallooooo, Kirhyanna!” Pete’s voice came booming down the phone line at me and I adjusted the receiver to the requisite three inches from my ear. “You have a woodchuck in your hill, burrowing under the staircase. They can do a terrible lot of damage!” “Oh is that what it was!” I had seen a new creature a few days earlier, peering at me curiously over a small stone wall. It was far bigger than a grey squirrel but much smaller than a beaver. It scampered away, returning periodically to check me out from different angles. When I later went and looked it up, I discovered it is also known as a groundhog and is one of only a few species to enter into true hibernation. They have a wicked set of front claws. “Do you want me to get rid of it for you?” he continued. Pete is our erstwhile handyman about the place, a man huge of girth and heart but with a farmer’s sensibilities towards the native wildlife. “No thanks,” I replied politely but firmly. And perhaps naively. The jury is still out on that one, but I do believe that when one lives in the country one should be prepared to share the space to some extent. I will admit to some hypocrisy here – I do draw the line at the deer eating ALL of my hostas. But I’m pretty that we’re not at risk of the woodchuck undermining the stone staircase. Nonetheless I did go down to check and found no wood had been chucked but two large baskets full of gravel that the woodchuck had excavated now needed to be removed. Pete, apparently stunned by my blatant lack of good sense, phoned my husband a few days later and asked him if he wanted the woodchuck removed. My husband wisely said that it wasn’t worth it. Riffling through the pantry for some ideas on something interesting to make for lunch today I came across a large packet of pitted dates and, since it’s a very cool day, have decided to make Sticky Toffee Pudding for dessert. "Sticky Toffee Pudding" |
| It poured yesterday. Great sheets of water that lashed at the trees, bringing down branches and obliterating the far shore of the small lake we live on. The sky was black, the thunder cracked and the power went out. As I sat, snug and dry I cast my mind back five years to the first week of life in another new house. That autumn we had moved to the outskirts of a city on the Atlantic coast, and for the first time we were living on an acreage. My husband had just started a new job and almost immediately left on an extended business trip leaving the chow and I alone in a new place. I had no problem with this; I was used to being on my own and usually enjoyed a week or two to myself. Then the tail of a hurricane hit and the chow and I were without electricity. In the city this is not such a big deal, you light a few candles, snuggle in with a good book and wait it out. On an acreage with a septic system and well, not only was I without lights, but water (toilets!), heat and cell phone as well. And of course the electric garage door wouldn’t open, so no getting to a grocery store that was a twenty minute drive away to buy water. That night the chow and I huddled together for warmth and I wondered how long this would last. The next morning dawned eerily quiet. No hum of electricity filled the place or the overhead wires as the chow and I went for a walk in the crisp fall sunshine. Envy coursed through me as I heard the roar of generators outside some of the neighboring homes. During the course of the walk I met one of my new neighbours out with his two children. When he asked how I was making out, I made light of my plight but my voice couldn’t help quivering at the mention of the enforced incarceration. “You know there’s a manual cord on every garage door,” he raised an inquiring eyebrow. “You can use that to raise it any time the power is out.” I flushed with shame as he showed me where it was and with a flick of his wrist sent the door smoothly upward and I was free. Now as I sit, ripping out eight inches of the back of a sweater I’m knitting and managed to screw up, my husband reading a book and the chow sleeping in front of a roaring fire, the gentle hum of a generator thrums outside. |
| “I survived malaria in Africa, pneumonia in Russia and a near fatal car accident in Mexico. I think it’s time I took the hint and slowed down,” said my husband after being given the diagnosis of a debilitating but non-life threatening disease of the inner ear. “So I’ve decided to take a year off to rest and recuperate as best I can. It’s been a stressful decade.” Indeed it had. He had just become a Million Mile member of one of the half dozen or so airlines he habitually flies. So my stilettos and I have been yanked out of the Big Smoke and deposited in the country. I’m going to get used to half the house and twice the husband. And I’m going to get used to, “What’s for lunch?” To celebrate the start of our new life in the wilderness I turned to an Australian wine that I first tried in Brisbane a year ago when I was visiting my son. I love the names of Australian wines and had to try ‘The Ladies who Shoot their Lunch’ when we stopped in a wine bar for refreshment one day. It seemed appropriate for today. It’s a big shiraz with spectacular flavor. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** A great accompaniment to the wine – blue cheese and walnut biscuits (recipe available upon request). |
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