RIP Collage Video

I’m so old that my first exercise video was not even audio-visual: It was sound-only. An LP.

And it was ridiculous. Of course, the instructor (you may have heard of her—Jane Fonda?) tried to clearly explain what moves to do, but that just didn’t always work. What some of the moves were meant to be remain a mystery to me to this day. (But no, I don’t still have the album…)

So the advent of exercise classes on VHS home tapes were a clear improvement. Not all the moves were easy to do, but at least you could always tell what they were.

And as is true in general, the exercise DVDs were an improvement over those. No more rewinding and fast-forwarding. More content could be put on each disk. Easier to pick and choose to do partial or combination workouts.

I love working out to videos. Nothing’s more convenient, you never have to worry about the weather, and unless you’re buying a crazy number of them, it’s way cheaper than a gym memberships. You get something of the illusion of working out with someone else, and even that illusion is more motivating than working out on your own. And the variety available—aerobics, strength, flexibility, or a combination of all. Short, long, or in between. Dancey or athletic. Easy-going, intermediate, or tough.

Whatever your mood today: There’s a home workout for that.

And so it really pains me to see Collage Video go out of business. They sold nothing but fitness videos (along with a few fitness accessories). And they did it better than anyone else.

They broke down each video by all the factors that home fitness die-hards care about: instructor, length, level, workout type, body part focus. They included video samples so you could assess whether a new instructor or style seemed appealing. They had fantastic forums and review comments. They rated the videos themselves, highlighting some as favorites.

But ultimately, they could not battle the price pressure from the likes of Amazon, nor the general decline in the DVD format.

So when I decided I could use some more workouts with a lower-body focus, I did what I always do: I picked up the latest Collage Video catalog and picked out about five that I thought would do.

Only now I cannot order them from the Collage Video website.

Amazon? It had exactly one of them in stock. OK, so I probably didn’t need all five, but I wanted at least one more. I went a-huntin’, and finally located a site that offered one of them as a download. I can burn that to DVD or play it from the computer (which is connected to my TV), so that’s fine. Only, I needed this rubber band thingie for that workout. Collage would have sent it to me with the DVD. With the download… Not so much. So more research for that, resulting in a trip to Walmart to purchase that.

Walmart!

I’m not sure this is progress. I know streaming is the thing now, but the best option there seems to be Gaiam TV, at $10 (US) a month. Not a crazy price, but then, I don’t think I was spending $120+ yearly on exercise videos before…

Reblog: Two days alone

Feeling this post, originally from September 2012, could use another outing. (Will also point out that Jean’s being at location with wifi access—unlike when he’s in the Canadian wilderness—is an improvement. Especially since we’ve figured out Skype. Sort of.)

—————————–

Jean was away on a canoe trip the last couple days. He was asked a lot, as he usually does on these occasions, “What does Cathy do when you’re gone?”

When obviously, I just sit in the corner and cry.

No, actually… I’m not really sure what to make of the question. (What do they think single people do… all the time?) But to answer it: I do pretty much the same things I do on any other weekend at home. Only alone.

Like, I run errands. I read (especially on my highly addictive tablet). I watch TV and DVDs (especially those programs Jean doesn’t care for). I cook (and eat. And drink wine.) I exercise (inside and out). I call up my parents.

Now, on some of these occasions, I do get together with friends and do stuff (dinner or concert out, or whatever), or get myself to Toronto and meet with a sister or two. I am even capable of taking myself out to a movie or concert—something I occasionally do even when Jean is home, actually, to give him a break from attending events he’s only semi-interested in. (Try it sometime, if you haven’t. Turns out, once you’re in a crowd at an event, it’s really hard to tell you’re a loser with no friends. 🙂 )

I guess that’s what they’re really wondering, eh? How I handle being alone? Well, for an introvert, there are worse things than alone. My weekend was not exciting, but know what? I was never bored.

Post-Valentine activities

We don’t go out to restaurants on or around Valentine’s Day, as it’s just unpleasant. The next day Valentine’s we did go out ballroom dancing, though. Sufficiently romantic, and considerably more enjoyable!

The following day was the “Family Day” stat holiday in Ontario, so we went with a small group for our second snowshoe outing of the year. As with our first time, about a week earlier, we had lovely winter weather and tons of snow to walk on. You could almost forget you were still in the city.

Wait! .. don't leave me in the cold! — Off we go…

Yesterday got warmer and rainier, then icier, so I’m not sure how the snow will be now. But we decided to have a dinner out then, at Verses. While we’d had a couple special dinners there semi recently, we hadn’t had a chance to try their regular winter menu before now.

Verses - a lovely refuge on a stormy night — We actually had the place to ourselves, to start… Not something you’d experience February 14th.

The appetizer list always has many amazing-sounding options on it, but I quickly settled on the oysters five ways: poached, cripsy, Rockefeller, steamed, and of course, raw. Each with its own distinct accompaniments, from smoked bacon to tomato sorbet shooter. My goodness, each one was fantastic.

Jean managed with the foie gras, this time served with foie gras custard brûleé, brioche, and cranberry and bluberry. That was rather sublime as well.

We were both tempted by the roast duck served with kale, squash batons, and chestnut ravioli, but Jean let me order it.

It was quite delectable, but he probably did even better with the tender pork shank braised in cider and beer, served with rutabaga, Brussels sprouts, and beets.

He wasn’t able to finish it all, but declared it made a rather good breakfast as well. (The wine, by the way—which he did not have for breakfast—was a very lovely 2010 Cote du Rhone, one of their feature wines.)

For dessert, I went chocolate, with a flourless chocolate cake served with chantilly, apricot foam, and passion fruit popsicle. All at a quite manageable serving size.

Jean had the cheese plate, which was downsized somewhat compared with past menus, but still fairly large (better for sharing, only I didn’t, so he left some). He included a manchego, Sauvagine, and goat cheese. It was served with dried wild blueberry bread, spiced almonds, port fig jam, and honey comb.

Hmm. Maybe we should make this a tradition… Post-Valentine weekday dinner out…

Flirting with the arts

Last weekend we attended a KW Symphony concert called Sound in Motion: Music and the Body. This was part of the Intersections series, where the orchestra combines with something; this time, with a yoga instructor or “mindfulness educator”. The evening began with only her, actually, leading us through some breathing and stretching exercises. Of course, we were in street clothes and sitting in concert seats, so we weren’t exactly doing downward facing dog, but she adapted to the space we had and the fact that we could stand up.

During the first few pieces the symphony played, she continued to interact with us in various ways, leading us through movements and breathing in conjunction with the music. We weren’t to clap between pieces, but to just keep focusing inward.

For the last two pieces all was quiet, though, as we were to try to stay mindful as we just listened to the music (which were a couple of more modern classical music pieces). It was amazing how well that worked at quelling the problem one usually has at classical concerts, that the mind has a tendency to start wandering off at certain points. Maybe, if you can manage to go right from yoga class to a classical concert, you’ll get more out of it.

That was Friday. On Sunday I was registered into this program called Flirting with the Arts. It offered 12 half-hour arts-related sessions, of which you selected 6, to give you just a taste of what they’re like. It was held at a volunteer-run coffee shop in downtown Kitchener (itself an interesting place).

Although I thought I’d allowed myself sufficient time to get there for the 10:00 start, I was wrong. Between snow making the drive slower and the nearest parking lot being full, I arrived at about 9:59. Thanks to some jogging to get there.

My first session was by an art therapist, so focused on creating really personal art, not intended for display to others. It was interesting, but not ideal as my first one, as I was still stressed from the lateness and had trouble getting my heart rate back down to normal enough to really focus, as was the point here.

The second was on slide guitar playing. I quite like the idea of playing guitar, as it’s so much more portable than piano, and some songs I like simply sound better on guitar than piano. But I don’t know that I like the idea enough to spend the time it would take to learn.

Slide guitar playing means, basically, putting a tube on your finger and sliding that down the strings to play, rather than pressing the strings down at certain positions to strum chords. In a half hour, we just got the basics of what you can do with that sliding technique. I didn’t seem to be a natural, so I think the instructor was just being polite when he said my first efforts sounded great. But I did get better by the end.

Bonnie Raitt playing slide guitar — Not destined to be the next Bonnie Raitt—note the tube on her finger, here?

Next up was acting. The lesson here was that you don’t inject emotion into words when acting; you feel emotion and project that outward, regardless of the actual words. This was explored in exercises where you had to convey a message using gibberish, and another where you had to convey an emotional backstory into truly prosaic dialogue. It was a cool session with a very enthusiastic instructor (a playwright).

We had lunch break then, which Jean came to join me for. (We went to another little restaurant rather than eat this cafe.) Then he ran away and I continued with afternoon sessions.

The first was landscape painting, and the idea was to try to paint the outline of a landscape you were imagining. My main problem was I’m not any kind of good at just imagining a landscape, so was never really sure where I was trying to go in that half hour. The results were therefore less than impressive.

Next up was portrait painting. We were instructed to bring a photo of ourselves to work from. It was the fifth time of day this artist had been teaching amateurs, and she was getting good at helping us avoid the pitfalls. It was all step by step: the head shape, eye position, and nose position in pencil outline; colour in the shadows of the face using various shades of some kind of pencil; don’t spend too long on the eyes, and don’t draw them too big (though I still did); and then take wet brush to the color and bring it life.

It was surprising how well that turned in just a half hour. Mine actually looked like me.

Finally, I had a writing session. That one was right in my comfort zone, so wasn’t as enlightening. But it was fun, especially the session in which we had to create stories by adding a sentence to what other people. One turned out quite hilarious.

So not sure if any of these flirtations will turn into longer-term relationships, but it was certainly an interesting Sunday.

Early new year?

As in other recent years, plans to go out to dine on New Year’s Eve meant that we couldn’t also do our gourmet cooking thing that day. With Jean working, alternate dates to do that were either this weekend, or the first weekend of January.

While I won’t get into details here, this Christmas required on-the-fly revamping of plans due to unexpected medical issues. Somehow, this persuaded me not to wait. So though we’d only been back from vacation about a day and a half, we did our gourmet dinner yesterday.

Instead of the usual appetizer / main dish / dessert, I decided to try a “small plate” or tapas approach to the meal. We made four appetizers, and two small-serving desserts. And in keeping with that—and also because Jean was on call (fortunately, that did not disrupt things)—we just did tasting portions of wine: one white, one red, one port.

Four appetizers and two wines — Here are the four assembled appetizers and two wines

Unlike the Christmas dinner, most of these were from recipe books (as opposed to online)—three of them from a cookbook published by the Cancer Research Society:

Carpaccio of red tuna with citrus and avocado quenelle: The first item I selected, because I’ve been wanting to try it for ages. Fairly easy, really. You make a vinaigrette of citrus juice, olive oil, and ginger. You mash avocado with lime juice and sesame oil, then add some tabasco. Then you get sushi-grade tuna, slice it thinly, and serve it with the vinaigrette, avocado, orange pieces, and sesame seeds. (Salt and pepper are involved throughout, as well.)
Spring rolls: A bit more involved, but still not too bad. You fry up some red pepper. Then you mix green onion, fresh mint, fresh coriander, watercress (my bean sprout substitute) with sesame oil and salt and pepper. Then you roll the pepper, some enoki mushrooms, and the mixture in hot-water softened rice paper. Jean did all the rolling.
Edamame with Guérande salt: Easiest recipe ever. Boil frozen edamame 10 minutes, drain, and season with sea salt.

I had some boneless lamb loin on hand, and got the idea to try lamb skewers. That recipe I did find online, at Epicurious: Skewered lamb with almond-mint pesto. The pesto involved mixing almonds, Parmesan cheese, garlic, olive, fresh mint, and fresh basil in a food processor. The lamb was cut thin, threaded onto a skewer, brushed with olive oil and salt and pepper, then broiled two minutes per side.

So nothing was that hard, and we were fortunately able to find everything we didn’t already have on hand at our nearby Sobey’s that morning. Of course, things inevitably get a little crazy when you’re trying to finish up four recipes more or less at the same time, but we managed.

And we’re having a good year, because everything was really good. They’d all be “make again”’s (albeit probably not all again on the same day).

The wines were a Cave Spring 2011 Estate Riesling, easily available at your LCBO, and crazy good, really. The hit of the evening. The red was a 2004 (!) Argentina Cabernet Sauvignon. It was very good and smooth, but not as big and showy as we were expecting.

Blueberry pavlova, chocolate, and port — And for dessert…

Desserts were the type you could make ahead, so I did.

The blueberry pavlova was a Gwyneth Paltrow recipe, from her My father’s daughter cookbook. The meringue is made the usual way: Egg whites, sugar, salt, vinegar, beating to stiff peaks, then baking a low temperature for an hour and drying out for another hour. Those are formed into a circle with an indent. In the indent goes some whipped cream with sugar and bluberries, then served with more blueberries on top.

Though it’s certainly not blueberry season, the organic Chilean ones I bought were very good in this rather lovely, light dessert.

The other item was from LCBO Food and Drink Holiday 2009, but it’s not available on their website. For this Festive Bark, you melt 70% chocolate in a bowl over boiling water, then stir in some cashews, candied ginger, apricots, dried cherries, and anise flavor. You spread that out, then you sprinkle sea salt on top, and let it chill.

It’s really hard to go wrong with those ingredients. That was delicious. And went nicely with Fonseca port.

We’ll weather the weather, whatever the weather

Compared with people spending Christmas in unheated, unlit homes or stuck in airports, I can’t really complain about our Christmas travel.

We had more time this year, and therefore decided to drive north, figuring we could then adjust our own itinerary as weather demanded rather than be dependent on the airline’s.

We left the weekend of the ice storm, after the smaller Friday night one ended, before the bigger Saturday one started. The roads weren’t fantastic at the start of that trip, and some bits were quite foggy. So it was slow, but we didn’t really have any problems. Eventually we drove out of the storm zone and were driving on bare pavement. We even got a bit of sun.

We decided to lay over in North Bay despite their predicted 25 cm of snow the next day. The usual 4.5 hour drive took us 6 hours, so it was nice to have a break. We also quite enjoyed our first dinner at Churchill’s, a restaurant listed in Where to Eat in Canada. It’s an older place with a warm atmosphere and an impressive wine list. We enjoyed a bottle of Malbec with appetizers of gnochi and asparagus, and calamari and tomato, both excellent. For mains I had the roast duck with potatoes and salad, while Jean had wagu (a type of beef) ribs. I found the duck a little overdone, but everything else was good. For dessert, I had three tastings of creme brulee (coconut, chocolate and sambuca, and maple), while Jean had a Greek-style dessert.

Dessert at Churchill's — Dessert at Churchill’s

The next day it was back on the road, indeed in snow. It was fairly blowy not long after taking off, but it gradually lessened as we moved north, and finally ended completely. Back to driving on pavement.

Timmins was cold this year. Highs of -20C, maybe -18C most of the time we were there. Dropping to -30 something overnight. Nevertheless, we did get out to do stuff. We went snow shoeing one day; by far the worst part was putting on the snowshoes in the windy parking lot. Once on the trails, it was actually fine. (Of course, we were well bundled up.) We went for a decent length walk the next day, and survived.

It finally warmed up some on Christmas day, to -11 or so—balmy! But with the hustle and bustle of visitors that day, I barely got outside.

Mostly anyway, we were spending time with family indoors, at somebody’s house or another’s. Always nice to celebrate together.

Me at Christmas — Not sure my family wants their photos posted here, so won’t, but here’s me…

Part of the indoor entertainment at my parents’ is watching the activity at the outdoor bird feeder. Northern birds have such nice colors! Jean spent one morning gathering pictures of them. I wish I could remember all of their names, as Dad reported them to me. (Even when it comes to birds, I’m bad with names.)

Woodpecker preparing to eat — This large woodpecker is too big to just perch on the edge of the feeder

Woodpecker at feeder — So he (or she) has to hang on from underneath, balance with the tail, and reach in for the peanuts

Blue jay at feeder — This smaller bird (blue jay?) has it easier

Bird flying to feeder — Action shot! Love this one

(Our drive back was largely unremarkable, weather-wise. One brief bit of blowing snow, and that’s all.)

A very cranberry Christmas

Jean and I have developed a tradition of celebrating with our Christmas morning and dinner the weekend before the stuff with the extended family begins. This year, that pushed it quite early, to this weekend. Even though some of the mail order gifts hadn’t quite made it to our house, yet.

Our Christmas dinner was particularly good this year, for whatever reason. It was a whole set of new recipes (on familiar themes, mind you), and they all turned out really well. Most are available online, and the time I spent organizing recipes in Evernote this year (geek alert!) paid off, as I accessed most of them on my tablet. Bit awkward switching between them, sometimes, but then again, it’s also a bit awkward switching between physical cookbooks.

In the morning I made the cranberry sauce and the pie. The pie was from Fine Cooking Magazine, and it was the very Christmas-sy Ginger-Spice Cranberry-Apple Streusel Pie.

Cranberry-apple pie — My version of the Fine Cooking pie

I followed this recipe pretty much as written, except that I made my usual vodka-based pie crust instead of using their recipe, and I didn’t use quite all the streusel topping. I didn’t find my crust over-browning as the recipe warned it might.

And though I’m jumping to the end of the meal, the pie was really good. It is a nice blend of tart and sweet, and the candied ginger adds a very interesting zing.

The cranberry sauce recipe, courtesy of Cooking Light Magazine, was very basic, essentially just substituting apple cider or juice for the usual water. I went with apple juice, since that’s what I had.

As a not-unusual choice for us, I choose duck as our Christmas meal bird. I had to start that mid-afternoon, following an LCBO recipe created by Jamie Oliver: Slow-roasted duck with sage, ginger, and rhubard sauce. Here I did a few substitutions: I couldn’t find any rhubarb this time of year, so went with cranberry. I added dried sage (from my garden, mind you) instead of fresh. And I used less onion, and white instead of red.

I also couldn’t be bothered with quite as much messing around with the gravy at the end as suggested in this recipe. (Gravy, like jam, is one of those things I don’t have great skills with.) We did create a gravy with the stuffing, defatted drippings, red wine (didn’t have Masala), and chicken broth, but we didn’t do that fried ginger thing. It still made for a nice topping on the meat, and the slow-roasted duck tasted amazing.

For sides, I settled on mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts. In the mashed potato recipe I followed this time, all cooking was done in the microwave, which was a first. You nuke the potatoes, then you nuke the milk and butter in a bowl, then you add the potatoes to that and mash them, then stir in buttermilk, Parmesan, salt, and pepper. This is buttermilk-Parmesan mashed potatoes from Cooking Light magazine. They tasted really good, and that method made fewer dishes.

Roasted Brussels sprouts with walnuts and dates were courtesy Sobey’s. I was low on walnuts after the pie, so I also used some pecans and pine nuts to make up the amount. I also left out the green onions, and used dried thyme instead of fresh and lemon juice instead of zest. No matter, as they were still quite delicious. Roasting gives Brussels sprouts quite nice flavor and texture.

Put together, the plate looked like this:

For wine, we opened up a 2008 Chateauneuf du pape, which proved highly drinkable. With dessert we had a bit of late harvest Sauvignon Blanc from Prince Edward County, which suited pretty well.

Bottles of French wine — Three French wines, but we drank only one bottle (actually, only part of one bottle) this day

One wedding and a funeral

“Welcome to your day of mixed emotions,” said my uncle. As happens occasionally in life, I was attending both a funeral, and a wedding, in one day.

The two events weren’t as different as one might have thought.

* Both began with a ceremony that took place place in a Catholic church.
* Perhaps unexpectedly, really both ceremonies featured a mix of laughter, tears, solemnity, and smiles.
* Attendees to both wore their Sunday best (though it was a Saturday).
* A meal followed both. (Though only the wedding featured an open bar and DJ dancing.)

And both ended up being at least partly on the theme of the importance of a good marriage (pray, eat, love, I guess). My cousins gave a loving and eloquent eulogy to their father, that included these words:

“My father had a message to men that he wanted to pass along. Don’t be too proud to tell your wife how much her love and care means to you. Don’t wait to express yourself.”

And my niece, whose wedding party included two stepsisters along with her biological sister, included this tribute to her new in-laws:

“And thank you for serving as a great example of a successful marriage. Because while my parents passed along a lot of values to me, the value of marriage wasn’t one of them.”

In the famous words of Kelso, “Ooh, burn.”

Blogger is deeper than she appears

I was joking the other day with Jean about my blogging persona. “I’m kind of jealous of her,” I said. “Nice life! Seeing all those art movies, going to concerts, eating at nice restaurants (while showing too much cleavage), traveling around, watching TV, drinking wine… Does she even work? Does she watch the news?…”

Now, clearly, I have never consciously tried to cultivate a brand for this blog as I’m not trying to monetize it nor achieve a particular readership level. Because to do that I would need to cultivate a niche and really focus on that one that area, rather than what do I do, which is just write about whatever I feel like.

Edie Brickell

But the fact is, I’ve realized, a quasi-brand has emerged anyway, and it’s one largely focused on the shallow side of life. It does not, or does not very often, touch on the following:

1. Big, weighty world issues

The world is kind of a mess. It’s not that I don’t care about this, nor that I’m uninterested in it. I read a lot of news. I fret, I fume, and I worry about it. I donate to causes. I sign petition. I tweet and retweet about certain outrages in the world.

But—although there have been exceptions, and may be again—I don’t blog that much about the issues I care deeply about, like climate change and other environmental problems; the erosion of democracy; and human rights infractions.

Because honestly, these things are just too depressing. I usually don’t feel that anything I say can really make a difference, and I generally don’t feel I have any new solutions to offer up.

I blog as an escape from all that, rather than to delve into it further.

2. My job

This one has been really conscious choice: to not blog about my employer (I certainly hope there haven’t been exceptions), and therefore not go on too much about my job, or my profession, even.

It’s partly that I don’t want to inadvertently get myself into trouble. But it’s mainly because that part of my life already consumes the majority of my waking hours. I like my job fine, but that’s enough. When I’m blogging, on my own time, it’s going to be on other subjects that interest me.

3. Personal problems

I have these, sometimes. If they’re minor enough, I may even rant about them here. But when something big is going on, when something’s really troubling me, I somehow don’t feel that telling everyone on the Internet about it is going to help in any way. Indeed, there is an inverse relationship: The more something is bothering me, the fewer the number of people I’m willing to share it with.

This is probably unhealthy, and I probably should learn to open up to people more, or more quickly. Not sure that will ever take blog form, however.

Shove me in the shallow water before I get too deep

Don’t let me get too deep

— “What I Am” by Edie Brickell

Non-virtual spam (and I don’t mean the lunch meat)

It was an unusual enough in itself that my mailbox—and by that I mean my non-virtual mailbox, the one that Canada Post delivers items to—apparently contained no junk mail this day. No flyers, nothing unaddressed. Just real mail! It seemed. Airs of bygones days, when mail was still mostly nice to receive. I got:

A real-life thank you card, with hand-written note.
The latest issue of a paper magazine that I subscribe to
A rental DVD! (From zip.ca, still in business, though I don’t know how long.)

The final item was a bit of a puzzle. An international letter, addressed to me. I was most curious about this one.

This was the opening paragraph.

Firstly, I must solicit your confidence in this transaction; this is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and top secret. Though I know that a transaction of this magnitude will make anyone apprehensive and worried, but I am assuring you that all will be well at the end of the day.

Utterly confidential and top secret! Both! With assurances that all would be well, “at the end of the day”. I was mesmerized.

Somebody in Spain had composed a full, legal-ish sounding letter, largely correctly spelled, outlining an inheritance scheme. But instead of just emailing it more or less for free to every virtual address they could get their hands on, they printed it on paper, folded it and put it in an envelope, added international postage (a stamp celebrating Unesco), and put in a real mailbox.

Is this sort of brilliant, or especially moronic? Either way, I must appreciate the effort. At least this person is working for their ill-gotten gain.

All he requires is my honest cooperation, if it doesn’t offend my moral ethics. This transaction is entirely risk free. 🙂

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1. Big, weighty world issues

2. My job

3. Personal problems

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