41

Apparently I had a birthday yesterday. How old am I? 34. The title of this post? A typo. The white in my goatee? Bleaching effect of sun and chlorine.

Ah, who am I kidding? I'm as old as I am, and it bothers me not a whit. I put on an aloha shirt (it is an aloha shirt, more or less, from Tori Richard) and proceeded to open presents, have a nice little lunch with Max at our usual place,
then join Daniel for dinner at the bar at Yoshi's.



A day older today, not much wiser, and in possession of at least a few photos to prove that I had a rather nice birthday indeed!

does this now count as a rut?

I don't know, am I in a rut? Or can I blame it on the heat for making me keep the stove and oven off and further ascribe it to wanting to enjoy the purity of seasonal produce? Or am I lazy?

(likely this last one)

Two more balcony salad dinners. Monday night, after swim practice. A bit of smoked mackerel this time for our protein, and a quick, thin and light gazpacho left chilling while we were at the pool. The soup made a return on Tuesday, enlivened with some diced cucumber, pepper, and onion, and some chopped parsley to boot. Our neighbour Jeff (I have a preponderance of Jeffs and Jephs these days, it seems) came up for dinner with us, sitting through the soup and on to a tuna salad nicoise (I'd had one at Yoshi's on Tuesday, and decided I wanted to do one at home). The yellowfin was a splurge, but a tasty one. I was pleased with the platter. Better still, Jeff baked dessert for us. His oven switched on, not mine! And it was a tasty dessert, too - cobblers made with blueberries and raspberries he'd picked the day before. Yum!

Dinner out tonight (it's my birthday, I am home alone, and I am not cooking). Tomorrow? Oh, salad sounds good, I think...

variations on a theme

If I may, I will frame this entry by stating the obvious: I am pale, pasty white. To this I add that I spent my formative years in northern BC where - though it could get hotter than most people here can believe - cool and wet was the norm. My summers are ideally set no higher than 24 degrees (that's Centigrade - no jokes about sled dogs being needed once you cross the border into Canada). I loathe the heat.




And yet I live in Chicago (fast approaching my 11-year anniversary), and heat and humidity are the essence of summer here. My response? I turn on the AC as high as it will go and stay away from the oven and stove. I'd love to say that dinner then becomes a choice between ice cream and Popsicles, but no, I try to keep us eating something halfway decent.




Lately, given the heat, it's been salads, cold fish, nuts, cheeses, fruit. Things I don't need to cook. Wash, cut, plate, yes. But no cooking, not if I can help it. Wine as well with the occasional martini sneaking in. Call it a rut, but so be it if a rut means that I - pale, pasty, cold-weather loving Canuck that I am - can survive the Chicago summer!

Sunday dinner with Marie

It's nice to have an opportunity to have dinner just with my sister, Marie, once in a while. A week ago she and I sat at the bar at the back of Campagnolo, just the two of us. Dissecting family politics. Talking wedding and real estate. Being the brother and sister that we can be when no one's watching. Sharing a good BC white wine, sharing two different pizzas,
sharing a couple of salads,
sharing some cheese. A very good evening in our favourite neighbourhood joint. Ah yes, it would have been good to have Conrad there, too, but every once in a while, it's a treat to reduce things down to the two of us who've known each other the almost-41 years I've been alive.

unexpected things in Vancouver

Consult Google Maps. Look for Vancouver, BC. Found it? Good. It's in western Canada, you may note. Not the Deep South.

And yet, there is southern BBQ to be found there.

I LOATHE food chauvinism even if I'm guilty of it myself. I find myself wanting to smack people who think, for example, that the British cannot offer good food. I despair of the unwarranted bagel snobbery of New York City. I laugh at the notion that east coast blue crabs are superior. All of which, of course, exposes my biases (I think British food has many fine points; Montreal bagels rock; west coast Dungeness and snow crab are the best).

And so it is that I snicker at the idea that the South is the only place that can conjure up BBQ. Whatever. Insert eyeroll here. And still, I was excited this past weekend while I was on a quick trip to Vancouver to get to a place new to me, Peckinpah in Gastown. Southern BBQ... mmmmmm! And I've stopped eating pork and beef!

No matter, there were a few options on the menu for me. Good beer for starters - White Bark. I enjoyed two pints. Also, the best darn chicken wings I've ever had. Smoked, and I added my own sauce. Tender, salty, good.

But in the end, it was just fun. Food that encourages finger licking. Friends and my sister,

all of us lined up at the bar to eat. A fun evening, managing to dodge the on and off heavy rain last Saturday. A place to take Conrad to some time in the future. An unexpected delight, and thank goodness for that. A little culinary surprise now and then is much welcome, I have to say.

concert night

Conrad
and I have been making more of an effort lately to actually take advantage of living in a big city. We get complacent, we know. We like holing up at home with a nice bit of wine and our lake/urban views from the balcony. Oh yes, pity us.

But we have been making efforts. I just renewed my membership to the Art Institute, and we make it there at least a few times a year now. I've been to a couple of concerts, big and small, this year and dragged Conrad to one. We've tried restaurants outside of our neighbourhood (with Nightwood being the most noteworthy). And last night, after too many years since our last go-round, we headed on down to Grant Park with a picnic in tow, taking in a concert and dining on the lawn on a summer evening.

We really need to do that more often.

First off, let me not hide my light under a bushel. I made some good food for us, specifically a torta rustica.
We'll be enjoying that big pie for days, but it really is an excellent dish. Swap out the chicken breast slices in it for some sort of roasted vegetable and you can have a delightfully satisfying vegetarian dish. We opted for the chicken, however. I had lightly cooked some asparagus, chilled it, and then dressed it with a simple vinaigrette when I plated it. We had cherries, chocolate, and nuts to snack on. Fizzy water. Wine. Ah, Felton Road - a snotty person running your wine room when we visited, but delicious wine, undeniably.

The music? I can't comment too intelligently on it. I rather liked the opening piece, a Mexican composition and a Mexican conductor. The rest? It was lovely background as I began re-reading The Rebel Angels (every few years I return to The Cornish Trilogy and The Deptford Trilogy). The skies darkened, and the skyline lit up.



It was a lovely evening, and we even caught a cab home without difficulty! As Conrad and I remarked to each other, we've had a very urban weekend, and one that we've enjoyed immensely!