Weddings, marriage and anniversaries - a wandering train of thought nearly derails

Alone, we are an inglorious mixture of lonely chemicals. With friends and family, we're human beings and the difference is love.  One type of human love is romantic and one way to celebrate it, which is most certainly not for everyone, is marriage. 


I say it's not for everyone because marriage requires more from us by way of tolerance, tenacity, trust, devotion, communication and strength than is naturally occurring in our soup of an existence. We must be bold to seize love but it takes a lasting courage and fortitude to hold tight. And both people in a marriage must be equal to the task, or it won't work - one person can't carry a marriage. It's too god damned heavy. But two people can do it, if they're willing to become exceptionally good, their most exceptionally brave selves. And marriage makes that happen. 


It's not easy, but it's fun. A good marriage is the continuation of a wedding celebration, a long conversation that always seems too short, a dance of give and take and give and share and turn and spin and dip. There is no single recipe that will work for all persons but there are common factors that must exist, in whatever measure necessary. Respect, communication, trust, devotion, admiration. This'd be like flour, sugar, eggs and salt if you were making cake. And sit down, you gluten intolerant vegans, you know damn well it's a metaphor. 


It's good to surround yourself with people who support your union. It's not good to exclude all others, because a little grit is good for the soul, but positivism is essential. We must remind ourselves, if necessary, our reasons to be grateful. 


I am grateful for all the weddings I've done over the years. Each time I walked a couple through their vows, to myself I renewed my own and since, as stated above, marriage isn't easy each wedding helped renew my faith in the institution. And then I'd go home and we'd cuddle and watch TV or talk about our respective days and what tomorrow should ideally look like. It's been said that marriage is not gazing at one another but standing shoulder to shoulder and looking out in the same direction. I always get reminded of that line from Godfather 3 when I think of this, "our boats must go in the same direction", but it's as true of love as it is of crime. Common goals being so very uncommon, being something to treasure. 


We don't always treasure it properly. We, as a species, fall into cliche and routine. It's a disgusting way to treat something as enviable and precious as affection, and tends to warp the feeling in lasting, unpleasant ways. As an officiant, I particularly loved providing same sex weddings because there was an evident appreciation and courage in that first wave of couples who'd been waiting so, so long, some of them coming from very far away to enjoy our newly found and rational laws of the summer of 2003. Couples afraid to go to city hall because back home they'd have been attacked, but going anyway. A couple who were, after 32 years of loving each other, on the brink of entering an old folks home and just wanted the paper work to prove they shouldn't be separated. On the worst days of mis-communication that bordered on slander, how could I become cynical in the light of such strength. And so the next conversation with my (slightly more rational) husband would gain a better focus, and a better outcome. 


In the summer of 2003, a summer of love in Toronto, two men of good character also got married. I wasn't at their wedding but got to know them latter. They ran a bed and breakfast and over the time of same helped over fifty couples get married too. Today is their anniversary which has got me thinking about all of these things.


An anniversary is a time to celebrate the mix of our marriages - the tenacity and trust, the talk and the silence, lust and fine regard - and the order and quantity of these ingredients varies, of course, on any given year. An anniversary celebrates present joy, past time shared and a future still stretching out. It's pretty spiffy. I don't think we need to buy each other expensive gifts or fall into consumer traps but appreciate each other? Most profoundly, most definitely. Today, as they appreciate each other I appreciate them, for their friendship and fine example, for their courage and infectious sense of fun. I'm better for having known them and I think my marriage is too. Gentlemen, you rock. 


******
Quotes according to the internets: 


Love one another and you will be happy.  It's as simple and as difficult as that.  ~Michael Leunig

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.  ~Marcel Proust

Basic Diet Plan

I was talking with my doctor last month about weight loss and various plans. She's extremely grounded and recommended the following:
Don't diet. Don't follow a tight plan.
What she recommended was overall, try to eat a little less. Look at your plate, is it food? Good food? Aim for good, real food on your plate and maybe a little less of it. Ignore candy and pop and things like that. Drink lots of water - not to much, but stay hydrated. Get a pedometer and start counting up steps to 10,000/day. And don't eat after 6 or 7pm.
The last bit threw me - no late dinners, snacks? But the principal sounds sane if a bit of a restructuring on how we eat - in the evening, you're gearing up for bed. Not a marathon, not a workday but sleep. How many calories do we need for that? Not so many. Huh.

Pepper Made Me Learn To Cook

I was raised on processed food, most people in North America are. Dried pasta, tinned meat, powdered milk, the whole nine yards of preservatives, colouring and flavour. No blame placed, it was what we could afford and mom did her best. For the longest time moms were told that the vitamin enriched, nutritionally balanced food like products were better for us anyway, they were told this by guys wearing lab coats who looked very serious and played convincing scientists. Today, we know that fresh vegetables are better, than whole foods are better for us. It's a long, slow climb out of the all you can eat industrialized buffet but we're learning. 



I'd already been a vegetarian for years by the time I moved to Toronto in the early 90's. A Nature of Things special called "the ultimate slavery" saw to that but I still didn't really understand food and cooking. Noodles were easy and I've always loved bread of any description but this doesn't exactly inspire anyone to get out a pan and some cookbooks.


What did inspire me was tasting fresh ground pepper for the first time. I'd never had it, and the difference in flavour between the pre-ground dried stuff opened my eyes to the possibility that there was a different sort of food out there, a less processed and better tasting food. My first pepper grinder was kind of sketchy and beat up, from a yard sale. It had one setting, would frequently stall and I'd hit it on the door frame in such a way that it didn't burst open and spray pepper pellets everywhere. That was a learning process in and of itself. Over the years it's been replaced by a new model from the Bay and augmented by a tiny hand held pepper grinder I'd put in my husbands lunch when he was going to school. Or my purse, if we were going out. Ever broken out your own pepper mill in a restaurant? At first, people look at you like a freak, which you are, because who does that. But then - just sometimes - someone would ask to borrow it. Good times. 


Our plastic Hudsons Bay pepper mill was showing it's age by the time we sold our house to invest in film equipment and make a zombie movie (a decisions which I'm sure makes the pocket pepper mill seem sane) and so we got a new mill. We went with PEUGEOT, because it was made in France and I thought there was a better chance that the people who made it wanted to make it. Then we used it. It was almost like going from powder pepper to the fresh stuff all over again. What I didn't know at the time was this is pretty much the best mill you can buy. It will be the last one we buy and likely left to someone special in our will, they last that long. PEUGEOT has been ruling the pepper pulverizing world since 1874, based on superior coffee smashing tech. The one in the photo is being given away as a present, it's from The Inspired Cook on Queen East. 


Learning to cook real food is, I think, the second most revolutionary thing a person can do these days. The first would be growing our own food, a noble pursuit in which the squirrels presently thwart me. There have been people in my life whose mad cooking prowess have inspired me - Ian, Dana, Jim, Veronica, Victoria, Ron and Marni bring a lot of love to their tables. They each, I'm sure, had experiences that led them to their delicious ways. But for myself it was grinding a pepper mill that liberated me into real food prep, which is gradually becoming a joy in hosting and path to better health. 

5 Mostly Heart Healthy Recipies

Last year I promised these to my sponsors for the Ride For Heart and Stroke (follow the link and you can sponsor me this year) and bollixed up sending them out. So here they are in all their glory - 5 recipes to help you eat well.

Before any of those, one word of advice: raw almonds. When a friend was diagnosed with somewhat high cholesterol and needed to make dietary adjustments to correct it (it wasn't so high, he was under a doctors care, so should you be, this doesn't replace a doctors advice nor should be taken as such blah blah blah) his doctor recommended eating 10-20 raw, unsalted almonds a day. In large quantities they're too high in fat but in these moderate amounts, quoth the doc, there was evidence to suggest that they lowered bad levels of cholesterol.

CELERIAC AND APPLE SOUP
Celeriac is the root ball of the celery plant, peppery and gorgeous on the taste buds. You'll know it when you see it in the produce section as it's the lobster of the vegetable kingdom - hideous to behold. Shave the skin off and set them aside to make stock with (see below, Stock) and then dice the white interior of a large ball of celery route. Add about 2-3 diced skinned and cored apples to the mix and *just* cover with .5 water, .5 vegetable stock. Or meat stock, if you're in a meaty mood. Bring to a boil and reduce the heat, cooking until the contents are soft. Use a hand blender to puree the entire pot, or potato masher if you don't have a hand blender. Season to taste, going easy on the salt.

ROAST LEMON POTATOES
Potatoes aren't exactly high on the good for you scale so if you're going to have them, they should be awesome. Take two lbs of yellow flesh potatoes, peel and slice them into big wedges. Toss with enough olive oil to make 1tsp of fresh diced oregano stick (about a quarter cup), and add to this about 3-4 tbsp of lemon juice. Too much lemon and your potatoes will taste like a cleaning product, not enough and you won't get the yum. Experiment to find your preferred balance. Bake for 30 min at 230C or until the potatoes are fork tender. Pepper to taste.

BLACK EYED PEAS AND KALE - VEGAN!
Pre-cook a cup of black eyed peas - your rice cooker is perfect for this. Take about a lb of kale, remove the tough stalks and dice or tear into smallish pieces. Steam for about five minutes until the leaves are softer and a brighter green. Splash some olive oil in a large skillet and saute one or two red onions, peeled and diced, until soft. Add the kale and black eyed peas, a splash of additional olive oil, a tsp of crushed chillies and a pinch of salt. Stir fry on medium to low for about five minutes. Transfer to a large serving dish and drizzle with the juice from one lemon and some fresh ground pepper. Toss and serve.

SIMPLE BAKED COD
Get two (or more) nice, thick fillets of cod, de-boned and skinned. You can get these from a fish shop for best quality, but the blue menu boxed frozen things from Loblaws actually aren't bad. Pre-heat oven to 375C. Place in an open baking dish and brush with olive oil, a pinch of salt on each fillet and then *cake* with fresh cracked pepper. Bake for about 15 or 20 min until the fish easily flakes apart. Eat.

STOCK
Most packaged stocks are extremely high in salt, and high sodium intake screws with your system and can lead to really bad news for your heart. Taking charge of your stock is therefore a good idea. As you cook, take the scraps from cutting vegetables and save them in your freezer. We use a plastic ice cream tub for this - when the tub is full, it's time to make stock. Shavings of celeriac, onion skins, ends of carrots - it's all good. You may want to keep a separate container in the freezer for meat/fat scraps. Use a good sized stock pot for all and pick a day when you'll be around the house because you'll want to let this simmer for a few hours.

Veggie stock: throw your veggie scraps in the pot with some fresh diced carrots and tomatoes, fresh celery and parsley. *Just* cover with water. Simmer for 3-5 hrs, strain thoroughly and throw the scrap veg in the composter. Let the stock cool and then package in a glass jar for the fridge, placing the rest in freezer-friendly containers to save for later.

Beef/meat stock: go to your butcher and get some good sized stock bones. Brush these with low-sodium tomato paste or crushed tomatoes and bake at about 250C for 20-30 min. In your pot, you may wish to saute an onion and some garlic clove for an extra smoky yum flavour. Add to this your scrap meat AND scrap veg, some diced carrot and parsley, ground pepper. Cover with water. Simmer for 4-6 hrs, strain very well and compost the scraps, store the remaining cooled stock as above.

Chicken stock: This is the main component in chicken soup, which you have when you're sick so I'm a big fussier with is. Go to your butcher and get a grain fed whole chicken. The meat is not as important as the bone for this, so see if you can get some extra bones. Take a meat cleaver and - carefully but forcefully - hack that poor little sucker into bits. Be careful that in your haste you don't end up with raw chicken stuck to your ceiling, this is bad. You want to hack through the bones to expose the marrow, where much of your flavour comes from. Saute two onions in the bottom of your stock pot with a) olive oil or b) the remains of your last chicken stock, if you still have some. Remove from heat. Place the chicken bits in the pot with diced carrots, celery and parsley. You may want to throw in a clove or four of garlic. Cover with water, simmer for 4-6 hrs. Strain carefully and treat as above.

Special notes: when cooking with bones be very, very, very careful about staining your stock. You may end up transferring the contents more than 4 times to get all the bits out. One stray shard of chicken bone can make the difference between a yummy soup and a very bad occasion. Also, use the best quality bones you can - because your cutting into/using the marrow of the animal, you want an animal that was fed and housed in the best standards you can afford, both for flavour and best quality healthy food. Organic is ideal, free range and hormone free is the next best thing. You may also wish to freeze some stock in an ice cube tray; when making soup or stir fry you have these ready to toss in stock cubes at your finger tips.

Have fun!

Fear Of Cooking Fish

So fish is good for you, in moderate amounts. As apex predators, fish like tuna can get a high level of mercury in them so those should be limited. Because I like the planet and would like there to be fish in years to come, I've been trying to select fish that aren't terribly endangered and are sustainable catch, to the best of my ability. Lists like Seafood Watch through Monterey Bay Aquarium help, as does Canadas Seachoice Program. A new local store called Hooked might have the most promising help of all. Yes, they source ethical fish, yes they buy direct from fisherman. But they also have culinary staff to help select and advise in the preparation of fish. They may even be starting a small cooking school to help people.

Because lets face it, I grew up on fish triangles. That was my experience in preparing fish - throw the "breaded" (what the hell was that stuff anyway) reconstituted "fish" (cod? halibut? Again, who knows) on a tray and bake it until it's hot. Cooking fish scares me, it's new and if done improperly is a huge waste of food and money. So this idea of having cooks behind the counter selling you food is really, really exciting.

Although apparently I have learned to cook cod. Skinless/boneless fillets, brushed with olive oil and caked on one side with fresh ground pepper and salt, baked in an open dish pan at 375 C for about 15 - 20 min. Tried it twice has worked both times. Hurray!

Portion Control

Portion control is something most people have a problem with, and small wonder. If you look at the size of a standard dinner plate for sale in any department store today and an antique plate from the early part of the last century, you'll notice our modern plates are bigger. Food in restaurants is heaped up, what used to be a large popcorn in the movies is now a small. And coffee sizes at your local chain kiosk? Seriously? I won't name the vendor but you know the one I'm talking about: their new coffee size in the US will hold a bottle of wine. Good for getting depressed in parks, bad for really understanding how much we're eating. 

Looking at the sizes and shapes of different people, it's hard to believe that a standard measuring unit should be equal between them, which is also confusing. My 6 foot 5 inch tall broad shouldered brother runs on more protein than I do, it just makes sense. So the best, most sensible way to control portions for individuals in my humble (and non-medical professional opinion) is going by the size of your hand. If you're lucky enough to be born with even one perfectly formed hand, you'll notice that your hand is custom measured to your personal frame and height. You can use this to guide portions or serving sizes:  

Palm of your hand= approximately 3 ounces

This is your personal serving size for protein, be it animal or tofu. The thickness of your hand will also factor in as a guide for you. Normally the recommended serving size for protein is about the size of a deck of cards, which may or may not be relevant to the size of your hand. Go by your hand for this and the rest. 

Clenched fist= approximately 1 cup

This is a good visual for measuring cereal, casseroles and soups.

One cupped hand= approximately ½ cup

This is a good serving size for fruit or white potato or rice.

Two cupped hands= round it over with green leafy goodness

This is your serving size for green leafy salad. Om nom nom nom.... 

Tip of your thumb= approximately 1 teaspoon

This is your portion for things like butter, margarine or oil. Heavy fats, basically. 

One entire thumb or two thumbs together if your thumbs are freakishly small = approximately 1 Tablespoon

Serving size for peanut butter, cream cheese or salad dressing. 

Look online for other options in interpreting your hands for serving sizes. This is a combination of a couple that made sense to and seem to be working for me. 

Signs of Stroke

Young people can have strokes, kids can have strokes. You and I are susceptible too. Strokes - they're not just for old people anymore.

There's different kinds of stroke - right side, left side, base of the head, small strokes, catastrophic strokes - but most of the time if you know the basics of what a stroke looks like and get to a hospital, your chances of survival and recovery go up. That's the main thing to remember.

If you watch "House" there was an episode with a photographer having a stroke who remembered a list of symptoms called "FAST" and self diagnosed at the beginning of the episode. (It was house, so stroke wasn't her only problem) F = face, is it lopsided? Is your smile crooked? A = arms, are you able to hold them up to the same level without effort, or does one sag? S = speech (I think, might also have been smile) - is it slurred or irregular. And the last letter stood for Time, that fast help could save her and that a clock was ticking on her life. Very poetic, very effective. But it doesn't list all the symptoms.

Vision trouble and sudden, painful headache are also symptoms, along with dizziness as well as weakness and trouble speaking. This could be a stroke, go seek help. It could be something else, but don't screw around with it. Hospitals are friends, they have doctors and drugs which are excellent for just this sort of thing.