The Conquest of Montréal (and Flight Therefrom)

So we have been in Montreal. And apparently we don't have all that much to say about it?

Selena was sequestered nearly all the time on the 12th floor of one of Concordia University's several downtown buildings, where the anthropology & sociology department conference was being conducted. We had originally thought to take advantage of the opportunity of the conference to have a bit of time ourselves to enjoy in Montreal, but it didn't end up working out that way. We had to get up very early and race to Montreal the very morning the conference started, and then, as things turned out, we would have to race back home immediately as soon as the conference ended — collecting the kids from Gramma's (and grabbing a shortened night's sleep) on the way.

We decided to take the car to increase our mobile flexibility for the bit of time we'd have for ourselves in Québec — but the way things turned out, the car's main effect was in causing much stress in trying to find cheap/free parking, and then worrying about it, and having to move the thing too frequently. Though it did allow us to at least make a few stops on our way out of the city.

Specifically, we made a holy pilgrimage to La Banquise — a 24 hour diner that specializes in what is reputed by many to be the best poutine in the city. We had to settle for take-out. Because there is utterly no parking anywhere (it was hard enough even just trying to find a place to stop)! And also, anyhow, we had to run. But where we ran, in this case, was up Mount Royal (which you can see in the background in the picture above, with La Banquise being the yellow/orange building to the left). We pulled the car off at a lookout point, with a broad view of the city to the north, and while being rendered practially delirious from the dense atmosphere of freshly baked Montréal bagels covered in toasted seseme seeds all around us in the car, we partook of the amazing gooey goodness (though a bit soggy from being in a closed container) of the real Québec poutine.

Why the insanely fresh-baked bagel environment? Because after grabbing the poutine take-out, and filling the car with that mouth-wateringly maddening aroma, we swung by St-Viateur Bagel Café to pick up some fresh Montréal bagels to thank our dog-sitting friends with, back in Hamilton. And, wow, those bagels with loads of wood-fire toasted sesame seeds are not messing around! They will pwn you, and everything within at least a car-interior radius.

With these things in mind, it seems hardly significant to mention that all of this was happening during a surprising near-blizzard that enveloped the city; and that it was not at all certain the car was not going to slide right off the side of Mount Royal when we attempted to climb and stop there, slush and ice by now covering everything. The other cars crazy enough to have been there certainly can not have been said to been safe from us, nor us from them. On the mountain especially, friction had largely become a fiction. Mere trifling details. We were on our way out of the city after days in which we hadn't had time to do much together, so we had to do this!

(Let us take a moment to thankfully appreciate the wonder of emergency breaks.)

Other than the drama of leaving, the weather was quite nice (sunny), even if chilly. Besides my main job as auto valet, I did manage one day to overdo (my knees insist) a walking tour of the city on my own. My GPS tells me I traversed around 17 km (I was surprised later to discover). All that and I hadn't even brought any water with me, and barely paused to unwrap a protein bar I had in my pocket, as I wandered through La Fontaine Park, knowing I was heading towards (and inevitably up) Mount Royal.

Pretty much the only real pause in my walk, if one can even call it that, was the hour I spent shuffling around inside Notre Dame Basilica, observing the stained glass panels and all the ornate filigree. It is a remarkable space. It is in fact the space of it which I was thinking makes it so remarkable. Whatever one thinks of religion, or Catholicism in particular, what an amazing thing that people have thought something so important to construct this vast hollow space to honour it. Oh, an yes, they have covered the walls with innumerable bits of art, carved wood, coloured glass, decorated pillars — but this is literally (as well as figuratively) window dressing. It is the space that makes it awe inspiring, the beautiful vaulted ceiling so amazingly high above, and the lovely walls so perceptibly far away.

What other cultural artefacts do we have that compare? Some particular art galleries and museums (at least in Europe) come close perhaps. But they are also filled up with things. This space is gloriously mostly empty, which gives one room to fill it up with their own thoughts and feelings and communion with Everything.

And then, besides the obvious main attraction of the vast cathedral, I discovered there is an even more fantastic (artistically) chapel in the back...

Here is a map (with some pictures attached) of my walking route. Here are all the pictures from our trip. (Seeming mostly of street/public sculptures I passed.)

The conference went well for Selena. She found it interesting to be exposed to non-literature research, and see how it fit with her own academic endevours. Her (heavily abridged) paper, which was the last presentation of the conference, turned out to be thematically an excellent wrap-up of the whole thing. It talked about the role of science fiction literature in exploring and extrapolating current bio-political, sociological, and environmental themes. It opened their eyes!

Last weekend

Last weekend Anne took the kids to the cottage with Gramma, while we (Selena and I) stayed behind at Anne's place in Toronto and had a sort of kidless holiday. Here are some pictures of what was going on.... (click pic for more)

Sadza & Selena

Here is something like what Selena's "Decolonizing Bodies" class is up to today. This picture is from the trial run she did of the recipe this weekend. What you are looking at is sadza, a Zimbabwean (and other African countries) staple food made from fine corn meal, served with many things. In this case Selena is offering a spicy tomato relish, with greens. She is actually giving a short presentation responding to some elements of Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions. Sadza is a feature of life in the story, so Selena thought it would be interesting to make some for the class to sample while she presents and they discuss. She's weird like that.

And by weird, of course, I mean great.

That would be the end of the nice story, except that, as it turned out, suddenly yesterday just when she had intended to make the stuff some combination of mysterious conditions nervously coincided and she came down with a severe migraine. She had started to work on the tomato relish, while I went out to fetch some last minute forgotten ingredients.By the time I got back, she had gone back to bed, feeling too poorly to continue (the smell of food actually making her feel worse). So, it seemed it was up to me -- entirely out of my competence with many of these ingredients -- to try to finish putting the stuff together.

My guide was the recipe from the internet, and my memory of how the trial run had tasted and looked. The recipe instructions were fairly detailed, but many of the details were opaque to me. I have never worked with kale. I've never ground my own coriander seeds. And so on! Oh well! I figured at least probably no one in her class would be very familiar with Zimbabwe cuisine, so if I mess up the spices and make it taste really weird maybe they'll just think it's that much more exotic. And if I mess up the spices in another way and it just tastes bland, well then maybe it'll be considered as a "Westernized" version, and at least no one will have a strong reaction against it. Who knows!

In the morning Selena checked it out. After a slight pepping up with a bit of salt declared it "okay". Wheh! She then went on to make the actual Sadza itself.

I'm sure the class will have fun with the food, and appreciate Selena's effort. They never need know that some part of their semi-authentic Zimbabwe taste experience was hacked together by the awkward husband in desperation late the night before.

Pizza alchemy

Tired (oh, so tired) of Emeth's incessant rejection of my beautiful pizzas as "disgusting", I one day had the brilliant idea of getting him to put whatever he wanted on his (stupid) pizza. After a long and exhaustive search for toppings we finally found one he was willing to tolerate. Corn.Yes, corn. Just corn. He was even excited to have his very own corn pizza. Istra, always fearing someone else might get something good, then requested corn also. And so a tradition was born.

Now when I make pizzas, we end up with a pizza that looks like the one seen here. I let the kids top a quarter each with whatever toppings they want. Emeth always wants corn. (This time he also allowed a few black olives.) Istra, slightly more liberal, added pineapple and tomatoes to her olives and corn. The other half of the pizza has no corn! (Because, honestly, that's disgusting! Though a few stray kernels sometimes horrifyingly do stray across the boundary line...)

Anyhow, Emeth actually eats his corn pizza, and does not complain about pizza (as much) anymore. So, it's all good.

Just in case you're curious, the meat-like topping on the "adult" side of the pizza is actually some globs of left-over taco filling (made from Yves "ground round", lentils & seasonings). Sounds a bit strange, but worked extremely well. Taco pizza!

Puffballelena

Here's the giant puff ball that Selena was so ecstatic to have stumbled upon in the woods a few weeks ago. It is large. Gigantic, even.

She sliced and fried a good bit of it for dinner, but didn't take the internet's advice about cooking it all right away. By the next day the creamy white insides of the remains of thing had begun to yellow -- a sign that it was going to spore, which is not good to eat. So a bunch of the poor giant thing went out... but maybe... maybe those spores will sprout again... in my mom's back yard?!

My Lunch Tomorrow

We visited the garden this weekend and came away with all this! We harvested much more than we had expected; we had only the purple plastic bag pictured but ended up nearly filling a mesh laundry bag with all these lovely leafies. Looks like my lunch tomorrow is covered.

Ethiopian surprise

So Anne suddenly arranged that we'd go out with the birthday girls to a restaurant. We haven't been out with the kids to a restaurant for quite a long time.

This is partially because some of us aren't really the most restaurant oriented people in the world. (Restaurant oriented?) Restaurants are expensive (compared to groceries). And, of course, because it is usually turns out to be so agonizing, in one way or another, having to deal with the kids in such a setting. We have to try to find something on the menu appropriate, and desirable (both by the kids and by us), which is usually really hard. The kids often don't like the food. They are noisy, and messy. In short, as all parents know, it usually turns out -- no matter how much you think it's going to be fun, and save you from cooking -- to be a rather more stressful experience than anticipated.

The last time I remember, I guess wasn't all that long ago... it was in Orillia at Brewery Bay with Selena's mom, last summer. But I can't remember a time before that, so it may have been an anomaly. Also, if there's any place that could be a good restaurant to take kids, it might well be Brewery Bay. It's a casual, family-friendly pub-like sort of place; but most importantly it has some fairly private booths -- so all the whining, noise, mess, melt downs, and "accidents" can be more easily contained. And the menu is fairly diverse and "fun". Still, as I recall, the kids did little but complain, and have to be constantly managed. Emeth refused to to eat pretty much anything, as usual. The kids really don't like experimenting with new food very much, and Emeth especially will barely eat anything besides his familiar standbys: oatmeal porridge, peanut butter sandwiches, pizza with almost nothing on it (though just recently he suddenly decided he likes frozen spinach pizza!?), and noodles with little to no sauce. It would be quite insane to go out to a restaurant to order noodles with no sauce.

Anyhow, Anne really wanted to take my mom to her current favorite little Ethiopian Restaurant. I was worried. But you have to do what you have to do! We'd survive, one way or another.

If you're not familiar with Ethiopian dining, it's in some ways as exotic, from the usual Western dining expreience, as you can get. You eat with your hands, often from a shared central plate. Your only "utensil" is a warm, damp cloth used to wipe your fingers when needed. Many of the flavors are unique (and spicy), and it's all mixed (in your mouth) with injera. Injera is a somewhat unique flavour in itself: a sort of sour dough crêpe, or thin bubbly pancake -- made with something called teff flour. The food (usually a paste, or stew, or fine salad) is served in globs on top of an injera covered plate. To eat, you tear off bits of injera, and use it to pinch up bits of the food blobs.

Unfortunately, (perhaps anxious of the ordeal I thought would shortly overtake us with the kids) I completely forgot to take a picture of our dinner... which was quite nice looking in presentation. It was much prettier in its layout than the generic picture above (which I've taken from wikipedia).

Much to my amazement, the kids were positively enthusiastic. It turns out that perhaps the problem with most restaurants isn't that the food is too unusual for the kids, but rather that it's not unusual enough! Even the notoriously picky Emeth, hardly whined at all. He, of course, rather limited his selections as to what he'd pinch up, but (incredibly) he generally liked what he had. And he loved the injera, eating a fair bit of it plain. Istra was more adventurous, and tried everything... most of it wasn't too spicy hot, except the lentils. But even when she accidentally once got a mouth full of the spicy lentils she did not entirely freak out. It was amazing.

So it turns out, the Ethiopian restaurant (Addis Ababa) was a hit. Everyone loved it, even the kids. And besides having to remind them a few times to use "restaurant voices" (or at least not yell!), the kiddy-stress was surprisingly minimal. Yay!

One final observation: we got to the restaurant fairly early, at around 5:30pm. It seemed like the place was just opening... they still hadn't quite set all the tables. We were the only ones there for the first half-hour or so. This was nice, as it gave us a chance to settle in and the kids to get used to things without worrying about disturbing other patrons.

(Just to remember, and reference: the woman who started this restaurant also has a cookbook called Recipe of Love, which I believe Selena is rather interested in acquiring someday.)

So, along with the visit from Selena's mom and sister a few days before, we've had two pleasant dinners so far this Valentine's birthday season.

Look what's for dinner!

Emeth, in his fussy stage, often claims we are having poo for dinner, or that whatever is for dinner tastes like poo. So... if he thinks it's poo anyhow, might as well save some money and "recycle"... right?

Actually these are the results of a seitan sausage recipe I tried today. The resemblance to a certain other substance is a bit unsettling! If you close your eyes, however, they smell uncannily like rather savoury hot dogs. "Spicy hot dogs", Emeth says. They don't taste overly spicy though. The flavour is pleasant, with a hint of maple. Amazingly enough these lovely things passed the kid-taste-test for both kids! This very nearly qualifies as a Christmas miracle around here these days.

Here's the Smokey Maple Sausage recipe I used. Not sure why mine turned out so much darker looking than theirs. It must have been the extra black mushroom soy sauce I used. Also I didn't mash my beans as much as I could have, leading to the interesting extra texture and colourization.

Revolution meets pickled beet tabbouleh

Selena and I attended this documentary screening last night...

Toronto premiere screening of "How to Start a Revolution", an award winning documentary about the life and work of Gene Sharp, Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and author of the globally influential manual for non-violent struggle, "From Dictatorship to Democracy". It was pretty good, though didn't go into a lot of depth or follow up. 

This photo was taken during the (also pretty good) general discussion afterwards; probably nearly half the attenders had left by this time. The director of the documentary was supposed to be present for Q&A, but had missed his flight.

We had the rare delight of grabbing food from Ghazale on the way. Ghazale is a middle eastern hole in the wall on Bloor street. There's not really any seating, so you get your food and go. We got 4 item veggie "plates". The woman attending us confused our choices, and ended up putting only one fork in the bag (we discovered only after arriving at OISE and unpacking)... so we had to share a fork. Anyhow, I had asked for lentil salad, and some tabbouleh, but what I ended up with was pickled beet salad and tabbouleh (which is actually what Selena ordered). Well, whatever other problems there were with the order, and no matter how awkward it was having to share a fork, this was a magical accident for me. Pickled beet salad mixed with tabbouleh... who would have guessed... magical! Amazing flavour. I want more now....