Tasting locally and freshly

For the third (or so) year in a row, Jean and I attended Foodlink’s Taste Local! Taste Fresh! event. This year, as in all previous, it was a beautiful, sunny day. The venue was new, however: a park in St. Jacob’s instead of at Victoria Park in Kitchener.

I had been emailed several times about this event, so was starting to wonder if ticket sales were slow. Apparently not, because there were plenty of people on hand. I later heard it sold out. This despite the $65 tickets, which is arguably pretty expensive.

What you got for your money was access to 20 booths where local restaurants combine with local food producers to come up with a tasting dish. This year, in a nice touch, we each got a porcelain dish to put the food on, replacing the previous biodegradable styrofoam. As previous years, we left completely full from the experience, despite not having lunch first nor dinner after (though we did eat breakfast).

Best ingredient discovery: Ground emu. Which tastes very much like ground beef, as become clear in the mini emu burgers served by Benjamin’s. But it doesn’t have the health and environmental concerns that beef does. I want to get me more emu!

Most creative dish: Charbries’ tomato lollypop and tomato cotton candy. Delicious and nutritious! But seriously, reminded you that tomatoes are a fruit, but not being a terribly sweet one, the cotton candy and lollypop weren’t sicky sweet. Very nicely done.

Most popular dish: Ironically, the one we simply did not have room for, as we kept waiting for the line to diminish—and it never did. This was Art Bar’s mini hot dogs, hand made with local organic beef.

Also pretty darn popular, and we did try this: Whole Lotta Gelata’s Fire and Ice, which combined a piece of local beef (again) with savory gelato: garlic, chipotle flavor. Actually, very good.

Clearly, this was a meatatarian crowd.

Most useful information: That Uptown21 has a few special dinners coming up in October, including one on October 29, partnered with WordsWorth, featuring recipes by Lucy Waverman (Globe food writer). You also get a copy of her cookbook.

New restaurant discovery: Duke Street Muse,  a vegetarian restaurant and cafe, which made a nice curried veggie dip. Because we sometimes do have to dine with vegetarians.

And actually, the vegetarian contingent acquitted itself nicely. For example, we really enjoyed the veggie and herb cheese balls from The Children Museum’s Exhibit Cafe, and also the delicious ginger pumpkin cheezecake by Divinely Raw.

Also noteworthy: Uptown21’s smoked lamb fantastico was delicious, if messy; 20 King’s beet cannoli’s were delicious; and it’s hard to go wrong with baked brie from Harmony Organics (by Vidalia’s).

Funniest moment: Talking with the representative from Lyndon fish hatcheries, whom we’d previously sat with at one of those local chef’s gala dinners we go to: “Oh, I remember you. You’re the ones who blogged about us!”

Good news

Follow-up to Almost too stupid to believe, from this weekend’s Globe and Mail:

Nobody expected the little people to win. Yet this week in the hinterland north of Toronto, a ragtag alliance of farmers, natives and knitting grannies saved an aquifer with the purest water on earth. Joe Friesen explains how the subjects of Tiny Township defeated the King of Simcoe politics and all but killed the dump.

From 2025, here’s a current link with more information: A Story to be Told: The Story of Site 41.

Defending Taking Woodstock

Taking Woodstock is a movie by Ang Lee that opened this weekend. Based on a true story, it features one Elliot Tiber (played by The Daily Show’s Demetri Martin), a repressed young man who has returned to his small home town to try and help his parents save their rundown motel. When he hears that another nearby town has banned a planned major music festival, he seizes on the opportunity to convince promoters to hold it in White Lake instead. Despite some bumps on the way, a deal is struck to hold the proceedings on a neighbour’s farm. Soon Elliot, his parents, and indeed the whole town are caught up in a tidal wave of history, as Woodstock brings thousands of young hippies to town.

I’d read about this movie a couple months ago, in the Princess Guide, and always planned to go, just because it sounded like something I would like. And that Jean might even enjoy. But then the day it opened, the critics starting commenting. The movie doesn’t work, they said. No magic. Too many characters; you don’t care about any of them. The main character is dull. The movie is dull. It’s too slow. The split screen only multiplies the boredom. The jokes all fall flat.

Geez.

Forewarned, forearmed, expectations lowered, we decided to go anyway.

And we really liked it. Both of us.

One useful point the critics made is that this is no re-creation of the Woodstock Music Festival itself. It really is a sideways, faraway view of that. It all swirls around Elliot; he is not, he wasn’t, at the center of it.

But that perspective worked for me just fine. It was exciting to see more and more, cooler and cooler, people come to town. It was fun to see the effects on the townspeople. Yes, there are a lot of characters, but I generally enjoyed my brief time with each. The main character may not have been the most interesting of them, but that was the point, and to me made him easier to identify with. The jokes did not fall flat; a lot of it was really funny. And it was quite the cast: Imelda Staunton, Eugene Levy, Robert Downie Jr, and newcomer Jonathan Groff (as Zen concert promoter Michael Lang), whom I expect we’ll be seeing more of.

The split screen, while making it a bit confusing what to focus on, did harken nicely to the famous documentary, as did the mudslide scene. Elliot’s one acid-fueled glimpse at the famous stage really is a gorgeous. And the whole thing was a nice reminder that it was pretty amazing that so many kids came together, in conditions so far from ideal (mud, rain, show stoppages, inadequate toilet facilities, inadequate water and food, traffic jams for miles), yet have the whole thing be entirely peaceful. It may not have been the dawning of the age of Aquarius, but it was still a really nice weekend.

So there you go. If this sounds like the type of movie you would like, if you’re not sick to death of boomers and their nostalgia for the 60s, then try it. I think you’ll like it.

He said, she said

This is how Jean explains the fact that we were in Orillia this weekend:

I got back from my canoeing trip and Cathy says, “You need to book November 6 off work. Because we’re going to an adultery concert.”

So I said, “Ah, is there something you’re trying to tell me, honey?”

But see, she meant Roger Daltrey—you know, from The Who?

So, that’s why I can’t do woodworking / go canoeing with you / stay any later at this party. Because we have to drive to Orillia this weekend, to get the pre-sale tickets at the box office, so we can get the good seats.

Which is a good little anecdote. Amusing. Not quite how I remember it, but some of the facts are there.

I did indeed find out, while Jean was away, that Roger Daltrey was touring (for the first time in 25 years), and that his only Ontario date was at the casino in Orillia. Of course I wanted to go—not like there are tons of opportunities to see him perform in relatively small venues—but Orillia struck me as a slightly annoying location, as it wasn’t so far away as to be impossible or terribly expensive to get there, but not so close as to be able to just buy tickets and worry about the details later.

The Who’s official website talked about this 2-day pre-sale (available only to Who fan club members—$50 US for that), including meet and greet packages. That all seemed cool, but there were no price details, and I wasn’t sure how many tickets I’d be needing, and… I fretted, but let those 2 days pass.

Which turned out to be a great decision, since Orillia was excluded from all that—no Who fan club pre-sale, no meet and greet packages on offer. (And by the way, it’s $350-$400 for that meet and greet stuff. Rather a lot for what would likely just be an awkward, 2-minute conversation with a stranger, eh? Like, what would I say to him? “Mr. Daltrey, I’m a big fan of your work. What a great voice. And what a great chest. Really, thank you so much for not wearing a shirt for most of the seventies! I really appreciate that!”

I’m sure that would have gone over well.)

Anyway. Pre-sale tickets for Orillia were set for August 16, so I had about a week after Jean got back to talk him into it. Because, see, Jean doesn’t particularly like going to rock concerts, as a rule, and while he has nothing against The Who, you wouldn’t call him a big fan, either.

I waited a day, then launched my pitch. I started with a joke about researching casinos because I thought I might take up gambling, but that fell a bit flat, so I just went into the facts, “and I know it’s a three-hour drive, and it’s Thursday night, which means you’re on call, and…”

“Well, find a friend to go with you and I’ll drive you. We’ll stay overnight, right?”

Say what now? “Yes, we’d have to. And I don’t know that any of my friends would be interested, but I don’t mind doing the concert part by myself.”

“Well, if you’d be alone, I’ll go with you.”

Say what now?

My second bout of fretting now deflated, I turned to the matter of getting tickets.

I called the casino and asked what the deal was with this pre-sale. Which was that, first of all, you needed a casino card. It was free to get one of those, so fine. But secondly, you had to take yourself and your casino card to the box office in Orillia, in person, and get the tickets there.

I concluded it just wasn’t reasonable to drive six hours in a day (there and back) just to get tickets, but then I fretted that they’d be all sold out in that two-day pre-sale.

Jean sighed. And then suggested that maybe we could make a weekend of it, spreading the driving over two days.

I started cooking him all his favourite foods.

But, you know, Orillia turns out to be quite a nice little town (and really only a 2.5 hours drive), apparently not drained of its life blood by its casino. It’s right on the water, and it was a beautiful weekend, so we quite enjoyed the beach and the marina. Downtown had an exhibit of classic cars, which was kind of interesting. Our reasonably priced Inn room had a little kitchen, living room, king-size bed, and two TVs! We ate in this neat restaurant set up in an old train, and went to see a musical revue about golf. (Which, OK, was a little weird, but it did fill up the evening.)

And, I am now the proud owner of two tickets in the seventh row, just slightly to the right of center stage.

On the way home, we stopped at Michael’s Statdlander’s new bakery in Singhampton. Best ice cream ever!

So now I can stop fretting. (But Jean can keep telling his anecdote.)

From 1974 interview with Roger Daltrey:

Roger Daltrey

Q: Will you still be doing this in your 60s?

A: Sure. Why not? Singers only get better with age.

Q: Would you play Vegas?

A: I don’t know. Maybe.

Q: You won’t get fat like Elvis, though, will you?

A: No. That will never happen.

Seven people and a vegetarian

A number of people ended up being interested in Uptown 21’s Tawse wine dinner, so a wee bit of organizing was required. One factor was that one person was a vegetarian, and needed to know if that could be accommodated. She called and confirmed that it could, with forewarning, so when I called to make the reservation, I specified that one individual was vegetarian.

The dinner was a sell-out, so the week before, they called to confirm everyone’s attendance. This was their phone message to me:

“I see you have a reservation here for seven people… and one vegetarian.”

And that was our joke for the evening. Because if you’re not going to eat the lower life forms, are you really a person?

Unlike Uptown 21’s daily specials, at this five-course wine dinner, full glasses of wine were on offer for each of the five courses. With refills, if you wanted (I declined those). But it was over a fairly extended amount of time—starting at 6:30 pm and continuing to past 10:30—so that kept the level of drunkenness at bay.

The first wine was a 2008 Echoes Riesling, which is one of those Ontario Riesling that is actually dry but tastes rather off-dry. Quite pleasing to me; I think Riesling is one the grapes that Ontario does best. That was served with a peach, arugula, and burnt goat cheese amuse-bouche, indeed a nice balance of flavours.

Next was another 2008 Rieseling, this one the Foxcroft Block, which actually has the same level of sugar as the first, but tasted much more dry. That made it less appealing to me to drink on its own, but some at the table liked it better. All agreed that comparing the two was interesting. That was served with a fresh tomato-mascarpone and wild leek tart with Riesling braised pork belly and micro greens salad. Excellent tomatoes, nice crisp pork, and the acidity of the wine was a good balance for the fat.

Next up (after some talk with the vintner, who was doing the rounds of the tables): 2006 Quarry Road Chardonnay, a very oaky, very rich-tasting wine. With flavour this strong, it was a bit polarizing, with some not liking it on its own at all, and others very much. But all agreed that it changed some with the food, which was seared sea scallop in sweet corn consommé, corn marmalade, shallot popcorn foam, brown butter, and sea salt.

(Yes, I kept the menu; I couldn’t remember that all that.) These plates came with the single seared scallop and corn, then the butter sauce was poured over, then the foam. It was very peppery, and the foam didn’t have much taste on its own, but the scallop was nicely done, and the corn certainly in season.

Now we hit some reds, starting with the 2007 Laundry Vineyard Cabernet Franc. Four glasses in, my wine recollection is getting a bit fuzzy, but I think that was a fairly fruity Cabernet Franc. It was served with slow roasted beef striploin over chive whipped potatoes, caramelized summer vegetables, and a plum glace de veau. I found my beef perhaps a little too done (is that the second time this has happened to me at a wine dinner?), but the potatoes were quite delicious.

Pinot Noir was the next featured wine, this one the 2007 Grower’s Blend. Quite liked that one, a mix of pinot grapes. It was served with a delicious duck confit atop a stack of French pancakes (really, crèpes) smothered in a maple-roast summer garlic sauce, foie gras torchon (so cold foie gras), wild mushrooms, and fresh blueberries. Although I couldn’t quite finish this plate, due to getting full-ness, it was probably my favorite course.

And the finale: Dessert. Yes, we had wine for this too, and it was a 2007 Chardonnay ice wine. This ice wine was lighter than many, with a distinct apple flavour, Very appealing. It was served with vanilla custard, fresh doughnut, chardonnay caramel, and Sean’s famous “Duff-mellow” brulée. The doughnut, not too sweet on its own, was really great with the wine. The brulee is justly famous; nice texture and flavour of burnt marshmallow.

And a little decaf coffee, and some more water, and we were on our way.

I was quite happy to not have a headache the next day.

Almost too stupid to believe

Tiny Township is a, well, very small township northeast of Collingwood. And it just happens to be the location of the world’s cleanest water.

The water bubbling to the surface is so clean the only match for its purity is ice pulled from the bottom of Arctic ice cores from snows deposited thousands of years ago, well before any high-polluting industries existed.

So naturally, they’re planning to put a bunch of garbage on top of it, turning the whole area into a big landfill site.

This, despite the fact that there are plenty of alternative dump sites (this isn’t Toronto; there are plenty of open spaces around), and that:

Paradoxically, given how much people are willing to pay for clean water, the pristine water is a nuisance at the dump site.

In order to dig out a pit for the dump, the county will have to pump millions of litres out of the ground to prevent the landfill from becoming a pond. The pure water Dr. Shotyk uses for his laboratory experiments will be dumped into a nearby creek.

The amounts wasted in this way will be large, enough to slake the needs of up to 250,000 people a day for months.

The landfill is designed so that clean groundwater is supposed to seep into the dump and become contaminated with garbage residue.

So to repeat—Canada—Ontario—has the source of the cleanest, purest water on Earth.

And our big plan is to contaminate it.

Now, when water shortages are one of the many looming disasters the world (if not Canada itself, as much) is currently facing.

When I first read about this—it was a couple years ago—I tried to ignore it and hope it would go away. But this thing could start in a couple months if a group of local citizens don’t succeed in getting a one-year moratorium imposed on it.

So when the Council of Canadians called me (no, I don’t have call display) for donations, I was working up to let them down gently, until they mentioned that this issue is what they were working on. Then I had to donate to their efforts to stop it. Because I didn’t what else to do, other than feel embarrassed, and enraged.

Update: See Good news.

The office water cooler could kill you

I’m a fan of the Food Network’s Food Detectives. I record it every week. On Food Detectives, they do experiments to solve those nagging questions, such as, is there any validity to the 5-second rule? (No.) Does eating turkey actually make you sleepy? (No.) Do you really eat less if you use smaller plates? (Yes.)

It’s great because it combines two of my favourite things: facts and food. Facts are good because I can then recite them and look smart. And food… Well, everything is good about food: eating it, cooking it, reading about it, talking about it… even watching it on TV.

So a recent test they did was of public water fountains. Just how bacteria-filled is the water from those things?

Actually, not that bacteria-filled at all. They’re cleverly designed such that the water arcs out of them, not really coming into contact with the spout. As long as your mouth touches only the water, not the spout (some people don’t, so the spouts do end up somewhat bacterial), you’ll be fine.

The water from the office water coolers, though… woah. Bacteria city! Not so well designed. Activated by bacteria-covered hands. In contact with reused, improperly cleaned water bottles… And rarely cleaned. Result was much worse than any of the tested public fountains.

Now I haven’t used the office water cooler in years. I’d like to say it was because of a well thought-out concern about bacterial contamination, but actually, it was because of a completely paranoid concern about water sitting in plastic for so long potentially picking up carcinogens. So instead I’ve been drinking bubbly water out of glass bottles, which I hope is slightly more environmental than plastic bottles—but I’m not sure.

At any rate, I have been remarkably cold- and flu-free the past few years. And it seems that, at least partly, this is why.

Put down a parking lot, paved – a skateboard park?

Must admit, when I first looked at Waterloo’s public square—built after much wailing and gnashing of teeth over lost parking spaces—that it wasn’t what I was expecting. It was just a big slab of concrete.

(Picture that was once here is no longer available…)

So of course it became overrun by skateboarders, which has caused many complaints. But, as many have pointed out, what else are you going to do on that thing? It pretty much does look like a big old skateboard park.

A recent Record editorial pointed out what I hadn’t quite realized, and am somewhat relieved about, which is that this is just the first phase of this thing. There is supposed to be more stuff, like trees, and “bistro-style” tables, and a skating rink.

(Picture of this projection no longer available.)

In the meantime, though, I don’t know that it makes so much sense to ban skateboarding completely, especially when that’s going to cost $50,000 to $100,000 year in security. Wouldn’t it be better to spend that money on finishing the thing, so it’s no longer just a skateboard slab?

And in the meantime, I kind of like this suggestion:

However it came to be, let us accept and indeed glory in our new skateboard park. We can have skateboard festivals and competitions. We can host conferences on skateboarding. We could become a world leader in skateboarding culture.

Perhaps we can be called the “Most Intelligent City on Wheels”.

Videos that don’t need more publicity from me

This was originally written in 2009, but from 2024 vantage point, two of the videos mentioned and linked to are no longer available…

  • From College Humor.com, Web Side Story, mocking web trends as famous bits of West Side Story are re-created.
  • “Addiction” dance by Kayla and Kupono from So You Think You Dance.

Last one, though, still exists—and even still seems kind of relevant, as we’re still facing issues of mistreatment by airlines (ask people in wheelchairs). The ability for an individual to actually get a corporation based on a viral video… I guess can still happen, but sure feels harder now that most of the key media for doing so are owned by giant, evil corporations. Anyway. This is what I’d written at the time.

And finally, United Breaks Guitars. My God, this guy has been everywhere since this went viral—CNN’s The Situation Room, CBS Morning Show, CTV National News, Q with Jian Ghomeshi… And more.

One thing not always noted is that Dave Carroll is originally from Timmins (just like Shania). As he recounts in the song, his guitar was tossed around and damaged by United Airways staff, who did nothing to compensate him. So this is his revenge. His goal was to reach over a million views in a year. He’s achieved that in less than a week.

Also, the video is pretty funny, and it’s a catchy little tune as well.

Toronto notices Waterloo

The Globe and Mail wrote an article about Waterloo [at a now 404ed URL].

Subhead: “Smaller town, bigger edge. What does Waterloo have that we don’t? Mennonite pragmatism and an inferiority complex.”

I often find Globe articles on Waterloo kind of amusing as they make it sound as though the place is in some distant, desolate wilderness instead within commuting distance of Toronto, and make fun bloopers like saying that the Perimeter Institute is located in an “obscure suburb” instead of where it actually is, which is right in uptown Waterloo. (Or maybe they meant that all of Waterloo is an “obscure suburb”?)

But this particular article was fairly accurate and sort of complimentary, despite the general sense of amazement that anyone with drive and intelligence would choose anywhere other than Toronto to set up shop.

One highlighted stat is that Waterloo has 2.5 patents per 10,000 employees to Toronto’s 1.09. And, seriously, with all these other articles on how Canada is falling behind in innovation, that we’re still too reliant on exporting resources, maybe the whole country—not just Toronto—would benefit from looking at what Waterloo has achieved, and how that can be emulated.