I want everyone to have this information. Some of the symptoms aren't what you might think, and I know/know of some very smart people who've witnessed heart attacks and didn't know it at the time. A lot of this is direct from various heart and stroke websites and covers heart attack, cardiac arrest and various forms of stroke.

A heart attack occurs when blood flow to a section of heart muscle becomes blocked. If the flow of blood isn’t restored quickly, the section of heart muscle becomes damaged from lack of oxygen and begins to die. A person having a heart attack may feel sudden pain:
* Sudden discomfort or pain that does not go away with rest
* Pain that may be in the chest, neck, jaw, shoulder, arms or back
* Pain that may feel like burning, squeezing, heaviness, tightness or pressure
* In women, pain may be more vague
* Chest pain or discomfort that is brought on with exertion and goes away with rest
They may also have a shortness of breath, or indigestion/nausea/vomiting, and/or have cool, clammy skin, and/or experience anxiety or denial. So a person who's got indigestion, some pain, is anxious and telling you to piss off may be having a panic attack - or a heart attack.
So what do you do? If it's you, stop telling people to piss off, you're just agitating yourself and looking like a moron. Whoever can should call 911. The person experiencing the possible heart attack should stop what they're doing, sit or lie down, try to relax. If they/you take nitroglycerin, take the normal dose. If they/you experience chest pain, chew (which is gross, do it anyway) one adult 325 mg tablet or 2 80 mg tablets of ASA (acetylsalicylic acid, commonly referred to as Aspirin®). Pain medicines such as acetaminophen (commonly known as Tylenol®) or ibuprofen (commonly known as Advil®) do not work the same way as ASA (Aspirin) and therefore will not help in the emergency situation described above.

If you're alone, wait for help. You've called 911, right? If not, call them now. You may have seen an email about coughing to keep the heart going if you're alone and suspect you're having a heart attack. The Heart and Stroke website advises to ignore this email. Think about it, if your goal is to rest and keep calm how is forcing deep coughs going to help? And you've received a lot of bullshit emails, right? The coughing thing was one of them, don't do it.

Cardiac arrest is something different. Cardiac arrest is the sudden, abrupt loss of heart function. The victim may or may not have diagnosed heart disease. Sudden death (also called sudden cardiac death) occurs within minutes after symptoms appear.During cardiac arrest a victim loses consciousness, stops normal breathing and loses pulse and blood pressure. If you're alone and experience cardiac arrest, you're fucked. On the up side according to some doctors I've spoken to, you're not going to feel a thing, you're just going to drop, may not have any warning of something amiss. You'll remain unconscious as your body dies. If you're in front of someone who's dropped for no apparent reason and isn't responding to their name, being shaken or shouted at, check for pulse, breathing. Tilt their head back and listen for breathing for a maximum of 5 seconds. No breathing, pulse, response? Might be cardiac arrest. If there are other people around, have someone call 911. Tell someone to get an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) if one is available. Most gyms have them now, all fire trucks do and there's one every 20 ft (from what I've heard) at Pearson airport. If none is available, begin CPR if you know it.
If you're alone with a person appearing to be experiencing cardiac arrest, call 911, get the AED yourself if one is available. If none is available, begin CPR if you know it. The main message here is learn CPR.

Stroke is something different again. A stroke is a sudden loss of brain function. It is caused by the interruption of flow of blood to the brain (ischemic stroke) or the rupture of blood vessels in the brain (hemorrhagic stroke). Effects and damage are going to depend on where the stroke occurred.

We can all thank the episode of House with the pregnant photographer for the FAST way of recognizing a stroke. Remember?
F = Face. Is your smile crooked? Is part of your face drooping?
A = Arms. Are you able to raise your arms to the same level in front of you? No? Weakness on one side, my friend.
S = Speech. Subject, noun, verb, give it a try. If you suddenly are having trouble speaking, that's a bad thing.
T = Time. You're having a stroke. Get medical attention immediately. The longer you wait, the more damaged (or dead) you'll be.

There are other symptoms though. Massive sudden headache, dizziness and vision problems are additional things you should watch for. If you or someone in front of you seems to be having a stroke, get medical attention immediately. It may be nothing but are you a doctor? No? Well, let one decide. The faster you get to help, the better your chances for surviving well are. There are medications you may be given during your stroke at a hospital, whether they're appropriate to your circumstance are up to the health care providers on staff.

And that's it. It's a cliche to say that lots of hearts break when one does, but it's also a fact. The sudden loss of someone to heart attack or stroke is as much of a shock to loved ones as losing them to a car crash or bullet. You have one heart, and it's precious. You have one mind, and it's valuable. Take care of both. Educate yourself and people around you, take CPR courses with friends. Eat real food in appropriate amounts. Don't smoke. Exercise regularly. Enjoy your life and be happy. You are loved.

Venue Review: La Maquette

Prettiest. Venue. Ever. Found on the south side of King St. at Church, the staff bend over backward to make the experience good, by all accounts the food is excellent and certainly it's well situated and voted one of the most romantic restaurants in the city. I've heard people note that it's not an inexpensive venue but I'm here to point something out: if what you want is elegant and pretty La Maquette has great value.

Consider this: one of the single best cost saving things a couple can do for their wedding, second only to limiting the guest list, is to have the wedding and reception in a reastaurant. No separate catering fee, no table rentals, no special occasions permit to aquire, no rental of linens, no hiring of staff and wondering if, transient workers that they can be, they'll show up. A restaurant is really the way to go: it's easy to arrange a tasting of the food, it's a known quantity, and all your costs are easier to determine and therefore less likely to bite you in the ass. Now, very swank restaurants can be pricier and certainly La Maquette is that. But it's also more than that - it's beautiful. Don't want to spend extra money on flowers or decoration? You don't have to. The interior is a work of art, at first seeming just quite pretty but on further examination the level of detail and depth to the quality of attention in it's design are truly breathtaking. Over the course of your event your guests will just get more and more impressed. The atmosphere is magnificent, the rooms open and inviting. No, I haven't had dinner there yet and will update this post once I do, but from the joy of couples I've seen married there and the quality of service I've seen on display I whole heartedly recommend it.

Bare Bones Marriage Ceremony for Ontario

For anyone wondering, this is what the marriage act requires. The spirit of it is covered in any general ceremony I do, but the actual language was requested by one couple ages ago. Here it is, dry as toast, from the Ontario Marriage Act:

I do solemnly declare that I do not know of any lawful impediment why I, AB, may not be joined in matrimony to CD,

Je déclare solennellement que moi, AB, je ne connais aucun empêchement légal à mon mariage avec CD,

and each of the parties shall say to the other:

I call upon these persons here present to witness that I, AB, do take you, CD, to be my lawful wedded wife (or to be my lawful wedded husband or to be my lawful wedded partner or to be my lawful wedded spouse),

Je demande aux personnes qui sont ici présentes d’être témoins que moi, AB, je prends CD comme légitime épouse (ou comme légitime époux ou comme partenaire conjugal légitime ou comme légitime conjoint(e)),

after which the person solemnizing the marriage shall say:

I, EF, by virtue of the powers vested in me by the Marriage Act, do hereby pronounce you AB and CD to be married,

En vertu des pouvoirs qui me sont conférés par la Loi sur le mariage, moi, EF, je vous déclare mariés(ées), AB et CD.

Last nights dinner

We had a friend over for dinner, the kind of friend that only ever makes sense. In celebration we went kind of all out on the food front. Here's the menu:

Steaks - Dead, happy animals, not factory farmed BS. BBQ'd to rare. Only problem was I got too much meat for two people to eat. Not everyone felt this was a problem.

Potato - Kind of scalloped, but without cheese or flour. Sliced and layered local, organic spuds with onion, minced Ontario garlic, paprika, salt and pepper and a dab of Becel in every layer. Potato ends saved for the top to keep in moisture. Put in an enamel cast iron pot with lid and baked at 300 for 40 min, then 400 for 20 min. This turned out very, very nicely and will happen again.

Alt salad - No idea where I was going with this one at first, but it seemed like it might be tastey. Fried up some onion and red bell peppers until they were soft (onion first, bell peppers much later) in Becel. Steamed one sliced, pitted pear, skin left on. Steamed some slices of scrubbed (but not skinned) beets. Served very hot - bed of peppers and onion topped with beets, topped with pear and finally goats cheese which melted just slightly into the pear and beet. Fucking awesome. Will be doing this one again for sure.

Other salad - Just torn up organic lettuce, poor bastard. It was breakfast this morning, no one paid it any heed last night.

Veg - Asparagus, cleaned and chopped, tossed with olive oil and fresh cracked salt and pepper, BBQ'd in a steel wok. Still crunchy when served, this might be my new favorite way to have asparagus.

Wine - Normally I drink red, but last nights guest drinks white so I had to go outside my comfort zone in shopping. I picked a low range bottle of Le Clos Jordanne Chardonnay, cousin to a higher range bottle that had beat out wines from all over the world in a competition last year. Oh my goodness, it was good. Buttery, round and full of life. It had character and stories to tell. It told us about sun splattered days and shenanigans at the vineyard and we were highly entertained.

Now, our guest had brought a bottle as well so we moved on to another Chardonnay from Niagara, Peller Estates. Normally quite a palatable wine it was unremarkable by comparison, a relative wallflower. This drastic side by side goes to show that you can’t judge a wine by it’s region, ever. There’s so much more that goes into making wine, and people who go on at me about there being no good Canadian wines? Have simply not met the right one. Le Clos Jordanne – or Jordy as we like to call her – is welcome back any time.

Diabetic(ish) Cookies

Due to modern medicines ability to increase overall human lifespan and the amazing effects of the western diet, the number of diabetics on my holiday baking list has gone from one to 9 in the past decade. This year I made only one batch of regular, heavily sugared oatmeal cookies and attempted to make shortbread for the first time. Shortbread is apparently flour held together with butter and enough sugar to make it easy to choke down. Giddy with success in this, I attempted to make a low-cholesterol, diabetic friendly version of shortbread using Becel and stevia. No, I wasn’t drunk, I actually thought this would work. Perhaps a lower Becel content and some stevia that wasn’t past date would have been successful, but as it was I put it in the bucket of Epic Fail.

Onward to the orthopedic cookies. Diabetes sucks enough all on it’s own, there’s no reason to my mind why cookies should be forbidden outright. I can no longer find the recipe I started with some years back, not even by consulting the oracle of Google using ingredients recalled as essential at one time. Previous attempts to re-create said recipe have resulted in pucks vaguely tasting like orange flavored mostly dry carpenters glue. Tonight was successful though, so I’ve (for the first time ever) written down what I think I just did.

The thing that makes these diabetic cookies is that they have very little direct sugar, almost no indirect sugar and no animal fat. I suppose they’re vegan too, but I don’t want to hold you back from putting honey in it.

About 2 cups flour
Handful brown sugar
Tspn baking soda
Dollop sugar free vanilla yogurt
Tspn powdered ginger
Few shakes cinnamon
¼ cup melted Becel
6 packets Now brand stevia
2-3 heaping tbsp marmalade

Likely another cook - a real cook, for instance - would put things in a certain order or something, but I really can’t remember that. You should put the stevia packets in the Becel after heating though, it mixes best in hot fluids. Mix all this stuff up together in a bowl and then place spoonfuls of it on either parchment paper or silicon baking sheets – another way to reduce fat content and allow you to have another cookie. Bake it for about 5-12 min (I wasn’t paying that close attention here) at 350 degrees. Keep an eye on them – when they start to brown around the edges, even slightly, they are totally done. Take them out before they burn. If they taste like glue, you’ve done something horribly wrong.

Nov 11 - In Flanders Fields

Poppies grow best in churned earth, and so were an enthusiastic resident of cemeteries in the First World War. Not all of the impromptu cemeteries were for entire persons – some were for arms and legs amputated with all the haste that 1915’s medical technology insisted on. LOTS of graves, large and small. Poppies flourish in the fresh wounds of the earth.

Major McCrae was a surgeon in the First World War. Near the end of 17 days of surgery in the Ypres salient, a feat that he later likened to Hades and said he would not have thought possible if told from the outset what would be expected of him, one death in particular affected him. His friend and former student Lieut. Alexis Helmer was killed in a shell burst. In the absence of chaplain McCrae performed the funeral service himself.

The next day he took a short break with his notebook, leaned on the back of an ambulance. He looked at the cemetery, the poppies blown by a breeze from the east. A witness, 22yr old sergeant major Cyril Allinson was delivering mail and walked over to McCrae, who looked up but continued writing. In twenty precious minutes he composed “In Flanders Fields” in the form of a French rondeau. Allinson reported that the surgeon looked calm but very tired, and kept glancing toward Helmers grave. He also confirmed that what is depicted in the poem is an exact representation of what the scene looked like.

McCrae was dissatisfied with the poem and tossed it aside, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. One of them, Punch, published it on December 8th 1915. In the years since it has become a fixture of Remembrance Day, recited with (and sometimes without) feeling at memorials and school celebrations. For the most part it is praised as one of the most memorable poems of it’s time. Some literary critics have decried it for its recruiting poster feel in the last stanza. I say, if one has not spend 17 days up to their elbows in the entrails their comrades, one is wise not to question the motivations of the author’s mind – and just be grateful to have never been in the circumstance, and grateful to the person who was.

So it’s remembrance day, when we remember fallen soldiers with gratitude and respect. And those still serving. And those who’ve been broken or damaged by battles. And, for my part, anyone who’s job it is to run toward something I’d like to run away from – in 2001, I remembered fire fighters and police who’d fallen in duty, and have each year since. (These days, I also take a moment to shake my fist in the direction of Westborough Baptist Church for protesting soldiers funerals and being dinks in general.) And each year I give a minute to McCrae, for the corner of his beaten and brutalized mind that distilled a moment in time into the poem we know today. I remember the soldier, the surgeon, the writer.

Tonights Thanksgiving Dinner

Was a hit. Very simple food, I'm not a chef or anything, but here's what we had:

Turkey, 14lbs. Time of death very recent, cause was listed as suspected tastiness. This years bird was ordered from Rowe Farms to avoid the insanity of St. Lawrence market and the creepiness of trying to find an antibiotic-free/grain fed frozen carcass among the "pre-basted" versions in the supermarkets. Pre-basted? With what? How? Get the fuck out of my kitchen, Corporation X.

• Bird was rinsed and innards removed. Innards were a perky display of unrecognizable organs which have been put aside for further study. Stuffing was 2 celery stalks, one onion and 6 pieces of diced rye bread with salt and pepper, jammed into said unfortunate bird. Bird placed chest down in the roasting pan. I do this because then you don't (so long as you keep the lid on) have to bast it. No, you don't get the golden brown skin or the picture perfect display - but who cares. Tasty, zero stress and saves time. Actually gives more time for socializing or reading or FB'ing or getting drunk. Moving on.
• Acorn squash, roasted with butter to a light brown and then mashed with more butter and a (small) sprinkle of brown sugar.
• Carrots, sliced and steamed.
• This bit of the family likes tinned jellied cranberries, which is just horrible. I managed to get it out of the tin with the ridges intact and served it garnished with a celery sprig. And a side of shame. We will not speak of the potatoes.
• Gravy made using turkey drippings scooped with a micro ladle from the roasting pan, 2.5 cups worth. (I know turkey basters exist but they just seem unhygienic.) Heated drippings in a pan and added a splash of wooster sauce and some salt/pepper. Mixed a few fistfuls of organic white(ish) flour with some cold water, then mixed this into the pan as well. Stirred maniacally for about 3 min and voila - gravy.

The carnivores at the table attested to the tastiness of the unfortunate turkey and said gravy. And all veg was consumed with glee. Realized half way through that I hadn't made a salad or supplied rolls, feeling a pang of host guilt before refilling my glass. Guests brought pumpkin pie and something called "nuttie butties" which turn out to be pre-packaged ice cream drumsticks. So not all good and glorious real food but up to that point we were a local version of healthy. With more butter than would be usually recommended, likely. Anywho, that's a handful of barely understandable Thanksgiving recipes for y'all.