My Sunday Afternoon Project

It's my turn to host the annual Advent Garden celebration, which takes place next Sunday night. So I spent a few hours today setting up the double spiral. Next Sunday, after dark, dozens of candles will be lit along the entire route in and out of the spiral's centre.

By the way, I think something is wrong with this camera. Every photo I've taken lately has dark edges.

Dinner for One

It was dinner for one tonight. Joe and Jamie went to a friend's birthday party, but I begged off, wanting to spend some time just relaxing at home. Because it was just me, I got to make something that isn't a big hit with anyone else in our house...squash soup. This particular version of the recipe, with apples, yoghurt, onions, spices, etc., is especially tasty. I'll freeze the leftovers to take to work for lunches.

Cooking for one is a rare occurance for me. I think doing it on a regular basis would be a challenge. I'm afraid I'd fall into the habit of not going much beyond a sandwich or omelet. My friend Lucca, on the other hand, cooks for herself the way she would were she having dinner guests. It's always delicious, healthy and imaginative. Over the years, she's taught me much of what I know about cooking, and every time I see her, I learn more. I'm sure she must have been a gifted chef in a previous life!

Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

I come from a family where ghosts, spirits and the paranormal are accepted as a simple fact of life. The house I grew up in was haunted by a woman we all assumed was Margaret Caldwell. She and her husband came from Ireland and settled on our land in the 1830s, and she and one of her babies are apparently buried on the property, although we've never been able to find the burial site.

Often times Margaret would make her presence known....particularly when my dad was doing renovations on the house. Tools he was using would disappear, and would show up across the road in the field. The piano would play at night when we were all in bed. And once, Dad woke up to find his mattress turned upside down and the wrong way around.

And Margaret wasn't the only one who came back for a visit. I saw my grandmother's ghost sitting up in her bed shortly after she died.

I tell you all this so you understand why I have fully been expecting an encounter with my dad. Every day since his passing I've talked to him and asked him to communicate with me in some way so I know he's doing OK. And every day, nothing happens. I don't feel him around me at all. Nothing. Zippo.

Yesterday I went for a walk with a friend, who's father died a few weeks before mine did. She was telling me how her dad has been with her since he passed away, giving her advice on everything from buying a new car to writing a series of children's books. He sat beside her the whole time she drove back to the Yukon from Ontario. However this week he told her that he had to move on because there were other things he needed to do, and she was lamenting the fact that she could feel him getting further and further away from her.

The more she talked, and more cheated and angry I felt. I silently berated my father...if her dad could do all that, why couldn't my own father have taken just a bit of time to let me know he's alright. I'm not asking for a lot of his time...just a few minutes really. Why the silent treatment? I was furious with him. Still am. I often feel Mom around me, so what's up with my father??

Buy Nothing Day: Worth a Second Look?

Buy Nothing Day is a pretty well known phenomenon by now. It was the brainchild of a Vancouver cartoonist who, in 1992, decided to do something to fight back against the corporate domination of our culture. Buy Nothing Day is this Saturday, and here in the Yukon there are a number of things planned that have piqued my interest.

In the past I've scoffed at Buy Nothing Day. I've heard of too many people stocking up the day before, just so they can say they didn't buy anything on 'the day'. Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it? But a whole month of week-ends focusing on alternatives to buying stuff - that just might be worth checking out.

Red Haired Monster

There are few things quite as fascinating as reading through old newspapers. Yesterday I spent the afternoon at the Yukon Archives, looking for articles for a special project I'm working on. Apart from all the stuff I found on the construction of the Whitehorse dam, I uncovered this piece, published in the Whitehorse Star on August 2, 1956.

Red Haired, 100-Foot Long Monster Washed Ashore in Alaska

The body of a monster has been washed ashore 60 miles southeast of here. The carcass is estimated at more than 100 feet long and 15 feet wide at the broadest point. Its origin and species are a mystery.

Experts say it fits no known description of prehistoric beasts, and the reddish-brown hair on its body precludes any relationship to whales or elephants. The hair, about two inches long, covers the thick decaying hide. Syrupy blood flows from puffy parts of the flesh when it is poked with a stick or shovel. No blubber or fat can be seen on the carcass. The crimson flesh is decomposing rapidly.

The monster now lies buried in the sand 125 feet from the waters of the Gulf of Alaska. The place is Dry Harbour, 15 miles southwest of the Akwe River, and about 10 miles from mountains in which many glaciers come down to the sea.

The head measures 5 1/2 feet across. The eye sockets, with fragments of decaying flesh still clinging to them, are between seven and nine inches in diameter. The sockets are about 42 inches apart.

One investigator said the animal's ribs, which are not now visible, extend about five or six feet from the spinal column. The teeth are about six inches long and about five inches wide at the base. The movable upper jaw, with a solid tusklike bone, protrudes about 5 1/2 feet beyond the end of the fixed lower jaw.

Down Memory Lane

I noticed that it's been quite some time since I posted any photos on this site, so I thought I should remedy that with a trip into the archives. These are a few of the photos I came across while looking for pictures of Dad for his memorial.

The first is me with my best friend George. He was run over by a neighbour shortly after that photo was taken. The neighbour didn't even stop, and to this day I have not forgiven him for that.

Photo number 2 was taken during an International Women's Day fashion show. A friend of mine is from India and she has closets of saris, so she staged an Indian wedding, and asked me to be the bride. It was a hoot!

The third photo is of Alan and I.

Out and About

We might be entering the darkest days of the year, but that isn't stopping me from getting out and about. On Thursday night, a neighbour and I went to see Margie Gillis. She was simply amazing - I've never seen anyone dance like that before. Her piece, A Stone's Poem, was in part inspired by time spent in Whitehorse last year. It made my heart sing to see that both Margie, and Holly Bright who performed the opening piece, The Hem of My Northern Coastal Cloud, are both 50 or older. Younger women might have more flexibility, but I would bet that there are few young dancers who could come close to having the depth that Gillis has. Last night, it was back to the Arts Centre to see Ian Parker. Joe and I sat in the balcony, so we had a wonderful view of Parker's hands - so relaxed and expressive. I particularly enjoyed his rendition of Alexina Louie's "Memories in an Ancient Garden". And I was pleasantly surprised to hear him play Beethoven's Sonata No. 14 in C Minor, better known as the Moonlight Sonata. It's such a well known piece that it's unusual to hear it played at a formal concert. He performed it well...not overdone as can sometimes be the case with this sonata. Tonight I'm off to hear J. B. MacKinnon, co-author of The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating. His story is by now a familiar one. After discovering that the food eaten by most North Americans travels an average of 1,500 gas-guzzling miles from farm to grocery store, he and his partner Alisa Smith decided to spend a year eating only food grown within a 100-mile radius of their downtown Vancouver apartment. It's an interesting book, especially the part where they make their own salt! I continue my own search for local food. My meal tonight, a potato and chick-pea curry with chicken, is far from local. Sadly, only the potatoes are from the Yukon. But I have big plans to change that come this summer...stay tuned!

Moving Through Space

Last night I took a three hour dance workshop with Margie Gillis. She speaks a language that's sometimes difficult to understand, but her ideas are amazing. We worked a lot on moving through space. Her mantra was, "You know what you know. But what DON'T you know?" In other words, when you move into a shape or in a way that feels familiar to you, try to move instead to a shape or line that is not familiar to you. What she pulled out of us was quite wonderful.

We danced with our bodies flowing with red, then with blue, and then with yellow. We danced allowing our thumbs, then our cheeks, then our bellies to lead us. We danced with ribbons flowing out of all our extremities. We played and wiggled and jiggled and even did something called the primeval blob.

About an hour into the class, I started to feel very nauseous. Shortly after that, Margie made a comment that if any of us were feeling sick, we should congratulate ourselves, because it was a good thing. She went on to explain that our muscles were working to release any tensions and emotions that our bodies were holding on to. That release was what was causing the nausea.

All in all, a truly interesting way to spend a Tuesday evening. And I'm very much looking forward to seeing her perform on Thursday night.

Blue

It's odd that at 48 years old a person can feel like an abandoned orphan. But that's how I've been feeling the last couple of days.

I miss my dad. And even though my mom's been gone 14 years, I find myself missing her more now than I ever did. Grief is a curious thing.

Ummmm....Ommmmmm

I have been trying my best to spend a short time each day meditating. It seems to set a calming tone for my day, and generally I find it very helpful. However, today I simply could not still my mind. Here's a sample of what it was like:

Inhale peace
Exhale love
Inhale peace
Exhale love
Inhale peace
Exhale...gee, I really like that CD that Lucca gave me
Inhale peace
Exhale love
Inhale...my foot is itchy. OK Janet, focus.
Inhale peace
Exhale love (image of earth surrounded by a healing green colour)
Inhale peace
Exhale love
Inhale...(image of Lucca's mom) Marigold is going for her operation tomorrow. Hope it goes well.
Exhale love
Inhale peace (image of my dad) Focus Janet, focus!
Exhale love
Inhale peace
Exhale...Hmm, what will I make for dinner tonight? I think a stir fry, with that bok choy and those nice mushrooms I got yesterday. And maybe some red peppers.
Inhale...This isn't working too well. Maybe I should stop for the day. No, just focus!
INHALE PEACE
EXHALE LOVE
INHALE PEACE...distracted by the sound of Joe closing the bathroom door. I need to remind him that the piano tuner is coming tomorrow
Inhale...Shoot, I forgot to go to the bank and get lunch money for Jamie.
Exhale...this is just not working today.
Inhale peace
Exhale love...it's kind of warm in here. Phew! Or maybe I'm having a hot flash.
Inhale....(big sigh) That's enough for today.

Oh dear!

Ups and Downs

When I vowed to a friend that I was going to do everything I could to try to eat locally, he warned me to be prepared for disappointment. "Boy," I thought. "What a downer he's being!" Well, I just got my first order since joining the local bakery's produce club, and yes, I have to admit to feeling a bit let down.

There was a kiwi from New Zealand, and lemons, bananas, and a pineapple from the southern U.S. There were purple radishes, and some spinach, cauliflower, avacado, green onions, mushrooms and bok choy that didn't all have place of origin marked, but I'm sure much if not all of it came from the U.S. Out of the entire bag, only the apples and the english cucumber (and possibly the pears) came from British Columbia.

Undaunted, I wrote a note to the owner of the bakery, asking him to explain to me how produce choices were made, and if it was possible for me to stipulate that I only wanted food that was grown within a particular geographic location. We'll see what he says.

On the up side, at the very same bakery on Saturday, I found Yukon-made goat cheese and milk. So with every disappointment comes a small victory and another small step forward.

My Experiment

Prompted by my post of two days ago (Unhappy Meal), I decided to conduct an experiment. I would go to every grocery store in the city to find out just how much local food was available for purchase. Over the last 24 hours, I have visited six grocery stores, one health food store, one corner grocer, one specialty shop and one shop aimed at tourists. The results were downright depressing. Some stores, including the health food store (to my surprize), didn't have one item produced or grown in the Yukon. A couple of the stores had Yukon grown potatoes. I found local tea, honey, jams and birch syrup (although the jams and syrup were made with sugar, so I don't consider that a local item). The little corner store scored the highest. The manager said whenever they can they get in local produce. Unfortunately, yesterday the only thing they had were potatoes and some Taku River salmon. Next I placed some calls to some of the farms I knew of. The answer was pretty much the same...they had nothing for sale at this time of year, but come see them in the spring and summer. So....if I wanted to eat locally this winter, here are my options: 1. caribou, fish, and a bit of last year's moose from our freezer 2. rhubarb from our garden, and wild cranberries, blueberries and cloudberries 3. eggs from a co-worker 4. potatoes 5. basil, mint and parsley from our garden 6. labrador tea 7. honey 8, the possibility of some goat milk and cheese from a farm not too far from our house No oil or butter, no wheat, no grains, no green vegetables (no vegetables at all apart from potatoes), no sugar, no salt, pepper or other spices, no legumes or rice, no pasta, and little if any dairy. Looking at the list, we could survive the winter on this in an emergency, but it certainly wouldn't be fun. And I definitely wouldn't get buy in from the boys in the house. So, the next question is: what is the next best option? The health food store is full of organic produce from the States and the other side of the globe, so that doesn't appeal to me. In the grocery stores, I can find root vegetables such as carrots, turnips, cabbage, onions, etc. from B.C. and Alberta, although I noticed that a lot of the produce just says "Product of Canada" - it doesn't say where in Canada. The bakery has an organic food club, and I believe they try their best to buy food that hasn't travelled for hundreds of kilometres. We used to be a member, but we found that with five of us, the weekly food basket just wasn't big enough. With three, it might be worth giving it another try...at least for the winter, until I can get my garden going again. Suggestions, anyone?

All Souls' Day

Today is All Souls' Day, or Day of the Dead. It comes from an ancient Pagan festival, which celebrated the belief that the dead would return on this day to have a meal with their still living family and friends. I'll mark the day by lighting candles and putting them in the window (to help guide the souls to my house), putting family photos on the altar in my quiet room, and setting out some extra food at dinnertime. Enough of my family has passed on recently that it should be quite a gathering at the dinner table. I hope they like left-over chicken stew, because that's what's on the menu.

Unhappy Meals

I stumbled across this article, published several months ago in the New York Times Magazine. It's lengthy, but there is a summary at the end that I'm posting for easy access. I am becoming more and more determined to limit my diet as much as possible to locally grown food. This article just gives me more reasons to expand my garden and put up a greenhouse in the spring.

1. Eat food. Though in our current state of confusion, this is much easier said than done. So try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these.

2. Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims. They’re apt to be heavily processed, and the claims are often dubious at best. Don’t forget that margarine, one of the first industrial foods to claim that it was more healthful than the traditional food it replaced, turned out to give people heart attacks. When Kellogg’s can boast about its Healthy Heart Strawberry Vanilla cereal bars, health claims have become hopelessly compromised. (The American Heart Association charges food makers for their endorsement.) Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign that they have nothing valuable to say about health.

3. Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number — or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.None of these characteristics are necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but all of them are reliable markers for foods that have been highly processed.

4. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible. You won’t find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmer’s market; you also won’t find food harvested long ago and far away. What you will find are fresh whole foods picked at the peak of nutritional quality. Precisely the kind of food your great-great-grandmother would have recognized as food.

5. Pay more, eat less. The American food system has for a century devoted its energies and policies to increasing quantity and reducing price, not to improving quality. There’s no escaping the fact that better food — measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond) — costs more, because it has been grown or raised less intensively and with more care. Not everyone can afford to eat well in America, which is shameful, but most of us can: Americans spend, on average, less than 10 percent of their income on food, down from 24 percent in 1947, and less than the citizens of any other nation. And those of us who can afford to eat well should. Paying more for food well grown in good soils — whether certified organic or not — will contribute not only to your health (by reducing exposure to pesticides) but also to the health of others who might not themselves be able to afford that sort of food: the people who grow it and the people who live downstream, and downwind, of the farms where it is grown.
“Eat less” is the most unwelcome advice of all, but in fact the scientific case for eating a lot less than we currently do is compelling. “Calorie restriction” has repeatedly been shown to slow aging in animals, and many researchers (including Walter Willett, the Harvard epidemiologist) believe it offers the single strongest link between diet and cancer prevention. Food abundance is a problem, but culture has helped here, too, by promoting the idea of moderation. Once one of the longest-lived people on earth, the Okinawans practiced a principle they called “Hara Hachi Bu”: eat until you are 80 percent full. To make the “eat less” message a bit more palatable, consider that quality may have a bearing on quantity: I don’t know about you, but the better the quality of the food I eat, the less of it I need to feel satisfied. All tomatoes are not created equal.

6. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves. Scientists may disagree on what’s so good about plants — the antioxidants? Fiber? Omega-3s? — but they do agree that they’re probably really good for you and certainly can’t hurt. Also, by eating a plant-based diet, you’ll be consuming far fewer calories, since plant foods (except seeds) are typically less “energy dense” than the other things you might eat. Vegetarians are healthier than carnivores, but near vegetarians (“flexitarians”) are as healthy as vegetarians. Thomas Jefferson was on to something when he advised treating meat more as a flavoring than a food.

7. Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. Confounding factors aside, people who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than we are. Any traditional diet will do: if it weren’t a healthy diet, the people who follow it wouldn’t still be around. True, food cultures are embedded in societies and economies and ecologies, and some of them travel better than others: Inuit not so well as Italian. In borrowing from a food culture, pay attention to how a culture eats, as well as to what it eats. In the case of the French paradox, it may not be the dietary nutrients that keep the French healthy (lots of saturated fat and alcohol?!) so much as the dietary habits: small portions, no seconds or snacking, communal meals — and the serious pleasure taken in eating. (Worrying about diet can’t possibly be good for you.) Let culture be your guide, not science.

8. Cook. And if you can, plant a garden. To take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our sustenance is the surest way to escape the culture of fast food and the values implicit in it: that food should be cheap and easy; that food is fuel and not communion. The culture of the kitchen, as embodied in those enduring traditions we call cuisines, contains more wisdom about diet and health than you are apt to find in any nutrition journal or journalism. Plus, the food you grow yourself contributes to your health long before you sit down to eat it. So you might want to think about putting down this article now and picking up a spatula or hoe.

9. Eat like an omnivore. Try to add new species, not just new foods, to your diet. The greater the diversity of species you eat, the more likely you are to cover all your nutritional bases. That of course is an argument from nutritionism, but there is a better one, one that takes a broader view of “health.” Biodiversity in the diet means less monoculture in the fields. What does that have to do with your health? Everything. The vast monocultures that now feed us require tremendous amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to keep from collapsing. Diversifying those fields will mean fewer chemicals, healthier soils, healthier plants and animals and, in turn, healthier people. It’s all connected, which is another way of saying that your health isn’t bordered by your body and that what’s good for the soil is probably good for you, too.

Home

I'm back home. Tired and emotionally spent, but home. We gave Dad a pretty good send off, and I'll go back in the summer to finish the job. We will scatter some of his ashes on the farm at that time and perhaps plant a couple of apple trees - one for Dad and one for Mom. I will also have to dispose of all the furniture. I plan to ship a couple of things North that are special to me but the rest will be put in an estate sale. Dad's car will go to his partner, and the farm equipment will stay with the farm for now. We are also going to try to find someone to work the fields. I am not ready to make any decisions about the farm house and buildings. All in good time.

Reading over what I've just written, I realize it's all very mechanical. I don't have the energy to go any deeper. Perhaps another time.

While I was home, I found an old cookbook of my grandmother's, with recipes recorded in her handwriting on every available blank space. The book was published before the advent of electric stoves, at a time when nothing was wasted and when the only non-local produce, when available at all, was lemons and oranges. I suspect in my grandmother's house, there was neither of these things. Here's a sampling:

Boiling Potatoes
To boil a potatoe (sic) well requires more attention than is usually given. They should be well washed and left standing in cold water an hour or two, to remove the black liquor with which they are impregnated, and a brackish taste they would otherwise have. They should not be pared before boiling; they lose much of the starch by so doing, and are made insipid. Put them into a kettle of clear cold water, with a little salt, cover closely, and boil rapidly, using no more water than will just cover them, as they produce a considerable quantity of fluid themselves while boiling, and too much water will make them heavy. As soon as just done instantly pour off the water, set them back on the range, and leave the cover off the saucepan till the steam has evaporated. They will then, if a good kind, be dry and mealy. This is an Irish receipt, and a good one.

Russian Jelly for Invalids
Instead of throwing away the peel and core of apples from making a pie or pudding, put them in a jar and pour over them a pint of hot water; put the jar by the fire or in the oven until the water tastes strongly of the apples; strain the apple-water off, and throw away the peel; then add to the apple-water one tablespoonful of large sago*; set it to the fire until the sago has absorbed all the water; then put it in a mold, and it will be ready for use; to be eaten either hot or cold. A little lemon juice added improves the flavor. The proportion of peel and water must be according to the quality of the apples, as some are so much sharper than others. No decay should be allowed to be in the peel. Rhubarb may be used in the same way. The jelly should taste strongly of fruit. This jelly is most refreshing in sickness.
*Note that sago is similar to tapioca - I had no idea what it was so I had to google it.

Calf's Foot Jelly
Take two calves' feet; add to them one gallon of water; boil them down to one quart; strain, and when cold remove all fat; then add the whites of six or eight eggs (well beaten), half a pound of sugar and the juices of four lemons; mix well. Boil for a minute, constantly stirring; then strain through a flannel bag.

There are also sections in this cookbook that offer cures for everything from malaria to nervousness.

Nervousness
This unhealthy state of system depends upon general debility. It is often inherited from birth, and as often brought on by excess of sedentary occupation, overstrained employment of the brain, mental emotion, dissipation and excess. The cure of nervous complaints lies rather in moral than in medical treatment. For although much good may be effected by tonics, such as bark, quinine, etc., there is far more benefit to be derived from attention to diet and regimen. In such cases, solid food should preponderate over liquid, and the indulgence in warm and relaxing fluids should be especially avoided; plain and nourishing meat, as beef or mutton, a steak or chop, together with half a pint of bitter ale or stout, forming the best dinner. Vegetables should be but sparingly eaten. Sedentary pursuits should be cast aside as much as possible, but where they are compulsory, every spare moment should be devoted to outdoor employment and brisk exercise. Early bedtime and early rising will prove beneficial, and the use of the cold shower bath is excellent. It will also be as well to mingle with society, frequent public assemblies and amusements, and thus dispel that morbid desire for seclusion and quietude which, if indulged in to excess, renders a person unfitted for intercourse with mankind, and materially interferes with advancement in life.

Don't you love that last sentence?! Oh, and I just found another section in this book called Hints and Helps. But I'll save that for another time.