Red Cedar

You might think that this is an awful lot of photos for a single dinner party – and you might be right – but honestly, I think I have hit on the single most perfect dinner party menu for summer-time and it required some serious documentation.

Basically I was looking to host a small backyard dinner party that wasn’t a barbeque and could take a couple of food intolerance issues into account (I don’t eat wheat, and two of my guests can’t have dairy). Also I don’t like having to spend a lot of time in the kitchen once guests arrive – and I wanted to use at least some of the fresh produce from the garden even though I don’t have a ton of any one thing. So – given all these factors – tapas became the obvious choice.

With an emphasis on dips and dishes that could be prepped in advance – this is what I came up with:

Opening Cocktail: Bing Cherry Mojitos
Appetizer Tapas: Pita breads with Baba Ganoush, Marinated Feta & 2 kinds of olives.
Cold Tapas: Salad skewers, pickled asparagus, green bean salad with hazelnuts
Warm Tapas: Tortilla Espanola, Meatballs with Ouzo & Mint (served with a yogurt/dill dip), Crab Cakes with fresh guacamole
Dessert: Chocolate Gelato (non-dairy) with raspberry coulis

Not only was the meal a fabulous array of small bits and flavours – it had all the visual appeal that a summer meal in the garden should:

This was a somewhat elaborate affair – and yet still, prep time was only 3 hours, and cooking time right before serving was about 15 minutes. Total cost for the dinner: Seventy-five dollars which works out to $12.50 a person – not bad for what turned out to be a truly special meal. Because the tasks were small and varied in the preparation, this was a joy to put together. Lots of kitchen puttering without any single large task. I got all the prep done in the morning which meant a whole afternoon of lounging around in the backyard. Not bad!

It’s been about six months since my boss went off sick with a mysterious ailment that caused all sorts of internal bleeding to a point very close to death. Even now that he’s on the road to recovery and the medical system can do a lot more exploration, they have no idea what caused it, nor if it will reoccur.

In the beginning this was very upsetting to our work team, and we sent gifts and made hospital visits in the weeks until he went home – where he is now recuperating, his return date uncertain. He popped into the office last week and is looking healthy, but he made no commitments to coming back to work, and I suspect he’s still in a pretty serious period of recovery.

For the first four months one of our co-workers stepped into the role on a temporary basis – which worked out in a pinch, but he’s a bit too young (and lacks the gravitas) to be taken seriously as senior management so he wasn’t able to advocate for us unit much. It was during this time my work team got loaded with a huge website conversion project, and quite seriously I was feeling under-supported as a supervisor and project manager of the work. My manager-coworker didn’t seem to take the added workload and stress very seriously, and I experienced some skepticism from my team as to our ability to complete the project in the time frame I had committed to. I actually cried at work on more than one occasion – unusual for me – and entertained active fantasies about quitting without notice.

Two months ago we got a new acting Director – a woman who has been around our organization and in senior management for a significant period of time. As a union rep I have encountered her a fair bit, and was somewhat ambivalent – seemed nice enough, didn’t really know what she was about, didn’t have an active dislike – which is how I feel about most people I deal with and don’t know well. Now that I’ve gotten to know her better? I have to acknowledge that she’s actually pretty excellent (so far) which I think has a lot to do with the fact that she actively enjoys managing people. Like it’s what she’s all about even though she comes from a policy background and has definitely paid her bureaucrat dues – she seems energized by having a team of people, and she actively works to draw the best out of those people.

My project deadline is next Wednesday and we’ve advanced nearly to the end of the work – for real, we’re going to be 95% by deadline which is an incredible rate of success for a web redevelopment project. We’ve all worked pretty hard to get here, and I’m feeling a million times better than I was six months ago when my boss got ill, or four months ago when the hammer came down in terms of workload. This is not the first time I’ve managed a large transition such as this, but I have to say it’s probably the most intensive and the most successful time around – which I will chalk up to:

1. I am a better project manager than I used to be
2. the ability to add an extra person for a 3-person team working on it
3. solid support from above rather than ambivalence
4. accountability tracking that were part of an ongoing conversation rather than ignored – not only did I visually track the team progress which they all agree (now) was motivating, but I also reported to my manager each week with a full account of where things were at.

The last six months has been a bit of a rough ride workwise but I feel like I’m coming out of it with a better grasp on my own role as well as a good relationship with my new Director which means more better projects soon!

It’s Friday, July 19th and we (myself, Brian, and friends Leung and Dave) are now the owners of 1/3 of an acre of recreational real estate on the Link Lake Road just outside of Princeton.

Yup. It’s done. And I’m excited about it even though it’s a daunting new project (or especially because). Tomorrow we are driving up there to measure, sketch, and flag and figure some things out before the work starts. Tomorrow we will be standing on a piece of land that we outright own.

So of course, like with every new thing I embark on, I’ve been doing research. Lots of research. I’ve got library books, I’ve got magazines, I’ve got websites flagged — and I’ve got lots of ideas. Ideas! And friends who seems excited to help us get started. So that’s a good combination.

So far this is what we are thinking – no final decisions made, but lots to discuss:

• Single communal cabin on the site for hanging out, kitchen, deck-space, wood stove – and with a sleeping loft for us in the interim, guests in the future. I’m leaning towards prefab/click-lock options of which there are plenty. In particular, I’m fond of Bavarian Cottages in Kamloops and the prices for the kits are very reasonable. We plan to hook this cabin into the grid which comes to the lot-line – power is a nice thing to have – though we might eventually go solar. 
• Private sleeping quarters for each owner of 2-300 square feet maximum. These are the responsibility of each party and I expect will come later on after we have the main structure built. For the interim Brian and I are planning to build a platform on which we can put our walk-out tent which is 140 square feet and plenty sturdy enough for 3-season living.
• An outhouse. Or maybe a composting toilet. But probably an outhouse which is one of the first things we must build.
• A rainwater collection system. Since we do not have water on the property, and we do not want to spend $20,000 drilling for a well, we will bring in drinking water and otherwise use rainwater for washing up and so forth. There is a great tutorial here and I think I would like to do something like this, with the barrels situated under a supported metal roof at the top of the property. Keeps them out of sight, and we have a good slope for gravity-fed water to the main cabin area.
• A woodshed, a storage shed, a sauna, a solar shower, a wood-fired hot tub. These are also on the list of things we would like. Wood and storage sheds in the short term, other stuff over time.
• Also – an outdoor kitchen on one of the decks that can be sheltered and screened for canning. Keremeos is right down the road after all!

Obviously this is not going to happen overnight but I believe we can bring most of it to fruition in the next five years. This gives us time to both do the work and also come up with the money for each stage.

Since we got the land for so cheap, I envision being all-in at the end of the day for 100 k (split three ways) which is quite possible from the cost projections I have done so far. That’s a pretty good deal for a piece of recreational real estate within four hours of the city, and although sharing might have some challenges, I am more than glad to split the cost, work and creativity with other folks.

It’s a new grand project to be sure – but what is my life without things to work on? De rien. I am at my most fulfilled when I have something to work on, and this looks like it will be it for the next little while.