things i love

how to spend a day in peterborough

~ carin ~ 16 Comments

If the day is Saturday…

…start with the market.

Buy potaotes from the Potato Guy who has a dozen different varieties at least and can tell you the history and origins of every single one. He will also tell you which ones make the best potato salad, the best for mashed, scalloped, boiled, baked, fried, potato-pancaked, you name it, he will tell you. He is the Potato Guy.

Buy mushrooms from the [you know what’s coming…] Mushroom Guy. Only in this case it’s the Mushroom Gal. But she’s not there in person in winter [though her ‘shrooms are]; in winter she’s in her lab figuring out how to cultivate morels.   I think she’s doing a PhD in mushroomology. Seriously. The Shiitake are always spectacular. And the Portobello are fresh and don’t need their insides scraped out before you eat/grill/sautee them the way they do when you get the ones from Outer Mongolia at the grocery store.

Buy chocolate from two lads who call themselves ChocoSol and whose [better than fair trade] endeavours are worth supporting. Not to mention the chocolate. Which is worth eating. Expensive, but that’s because it’s ethical and real. And that is the price of ethical and real food. The recipe is simple: buy smarter, eat less.

Buy clean, fresh greenhouse greens from the guy right near the entrance at a tiny table where you never know what he’ll have from week to week, but you know it will be excellent.

Buy apples from the St. Catharines guy, also apple cider; and for god’s sake, don’t forget the pulled pork pastry from The Pastry Peddler or a jar of freshly jarred honey—or cheese, or perogies, farm fresh eggs, homemade pies and cookies, sausages and a few samosas.

Buy flowers to feed the soul.

Remember to thank the buskers for their delightful ambience.

And be absolutley stunned that you spent all your money but applaud yourself for spending it so wisely and in a way that will directly help others, rather than helping already-doing-just-fine-thanks grocery store gazillionaires who bully farmers.

Make a mental note to get cat food on the way home.

Visit a 94 year-old uncle who has a fractured femur but that doesn’t stop him lighting up at the bag of mudpie chocolate cookies you bring him from the market. [p.s. bring him reading material also; Harlan Coban is a good choice.]

Have lunch at Elements. Have the wild boar pate. Have the mussel and fish stew. Have the vino verde. Smile. Sit back. Breathe. Be thankful.

Pop into Titles Bookstore. Buy a copy of something local.

Decide against visiting the many second hand bookshops on George Street [you can’t do it all] and walk west, along the river instead. If you see litter, pick it up. If you fancy a sit down, well then, for pete’s sake, sit down. [Make a note to try the patio at the Holiday Inn once the weather heats up; lovely view.]

Walk all the way to the art gallery, one of the best you’ll see anywhere, where you might find an exhibit by the students at PCVS, a local, downtown high school under threat of closure—and then wonder at the madness of the powers that be.

Choose as your favourite, an installation comprised of one large pink velveteen sofa with dark and ornately carved trim, above which are four standard paint-by-number style formal landscape paintings in gilt frames, each of which has been over-painted in Norville Morriseau style interpretations of ‘landscape’.

Second favourite installation: a text written on the wall, denouncing art. Heart-breaking in one way, given that the artist feels there’s no point in art because no one really gets it and it changes nothing. Oh dear. I want to find this person and say: it doesn’t matter. Do it anyway.

Admire the light.

Walk back along the river to your car and make a mental note to wear better shoes next time.

Stop to take pictures of a dilapidated building that was once a place to eat and drink and be merry.

Go home. Eat, drink and be merry.

[But not before picking up some cat food, otherwise there will be hell to pay.]

◊♦◊

More Travel:

Prince Edward Island
Miami
Montreal
Niagara Region
Chile
Stratford
Vancouver

airing my laundry

~ carin ~ 8 Comments

If you, like me, have always thought hanging laundry in winter results in plank-sheets, you, like me, have probably not been leaving them out long enough. 

I first heard the rumour last year, that letting them go beyond the plankified state is the way to get things soft and dry. I heard it from a Saskatchewan woman and why it didn’t sink in, I can’t imagine. Who would know better about the dynamics of wind and air? (I’m sure my mother may have mentioned this also, but I was probably too busy knowing everything at the time to listen…)

Well, seems they were both right. Laundry will dry in below freezing weather as long as the air around it is drier than the laundry itself, as explained here in the Globe and Mail’s ‘Collected Wisdom’. Temperature doesn’t matter; you just have to leave it outside long enough.

If you, like me, get a weird thrill from hanging laundry year-round, this will be happy news.

If, on the other hand, you hate laundry in all forms, read this, from Geist, and feel better about your placement in the freshly scented, fabric softened, evolutionary conga/laundry line of life.

today’s great garbage idea

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

Best system I’ve ever seen (actually had more bins/categories than I’m showing). I get excited about well-organized garbage. Also about garbage well used. Like these beautiful duds made entirely from recycled pop bottles (amazing; stuff like this makes my heart sing).
And all this, in a teeny weeny grocery in teeny weeny Keremeos, B.C. All of which begs the question of how to make this level of ‘separation’ normal everywhere— and more clothing manufacture (etc.) from the takings… aka: Garbage for Good.

goats are (were) one of my dreams

~ carin ~ 4 Comments

From the new glossy pages of The Globe and Mail (Sue Riedl’s ‘The Spread’) comes a piece about a family that moved from Israel to Kelowna and opened a goat cheese business named after their two daughters. I read it thinking: that is exactly what I’ve always wanted to do, despite not having the requisite two daughters.

I just like goats. And not only that—although I do have a story about taking one for a walk in the Austrian alps when I was nine (that got away from me because it was not used to being taken for walks by strange young Canadians and was both confused and frightened and so galloped through the village with me in hot pursuit trying to think how to say Stop Little Goat! in german)—

—but I also happen to like goat cheese.

So running a goat cheese business has always been something that seemed right up my street.

Two problems continue to prevent this:

1) They don’t allow goats on my street; at least I’ve rarely seen any, and

2) I haven’t finished the novel so don’t really have time to be milking and walking and otherwise entertaining them.

Oh, wait. There’s three.

3) Despite my general crazy love for cheese, and no matter how hard I’d be willing to try, I just know I’d never be able to describe it in these terms (from The G&M):

“Misty and Moonlight are two cheeses that stand out from the pack…. Misty is immediately distinctive with its dark ash rind made from kiln-charred root vegetables. The cheese has a mushroomy, yeasty aroma and a nice balance of flavour–salty with a soft tang that leaves a pleasantly long linger. “

The other—Moonlight—is, apparently, “smooth and creamy on the palate with mineral notes and a pleasant earthy aroma.”

Gorgeous, yes, but I’ve only just learned to describe wine as not merely tasting ‘grapey’. Now it seems it’s not enough to describe cheese as mmmm, nice…

So, notwithstanding my love of all things goatish, I’ve gotta say this is one dream I just may have to let go of.

Ah well. I’ll always have the alps.

~

things i love

~ carin ~ 4 Comments

Beach glass.
Is there anything more beautiful?
Of course there is.
But that’s not the point…
I love having little piles and jars of it scattered about the place.
Love it so much I’d like to tile the bathroom floor with it, the kitchen countertops, or maybe line the the inside of my car with a cool green mosaic.
Feels like good luck whenever I find some.

~