Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Dinner party experiments.
It’s another dinner party night tonight! This time at Sam and Caelie’s, last month at Jess and Trevor’s. Before that, we hosted. Not to mention the BBQ dinner-party experiment we hosted last weekend and the friends we are having over on Friday….. B & I are working on our social life through food gatherings with friends and near-strangers these days and it’s really taken over out social calendar!
I want to start writing about these little events as they happen – so this will suffice as the introductory post to our experiments which currently involve:
- A monthly east van dinner party collective involving four couples who rotate dinners between houses.
- A series of dinner parties at our house (monthly) where we invite a bunch of people who don’t know each other.
- Regular other gatherings involving friends we don’t see enough of otherwise. Or who we want to get to know better. And,
- Accepting invitations that we might normally turn down. As a result, we’re having lunch at the house of one of my former professors next weekend.
Food being the ultimate ice-breaker, we’re working the theme that community likes to eat together and eating together makes community….. not to mention, we’ve had some pretty interesting eating to date. Expect to see these meals documented from here on out as I expect tonight is grilled cheese sandwiches with fondue for dessert and I’m still working on the menu for Friday (turns out one of our guests is gluten and dairy-intolerant so I’m switching things around last minute). Lots of interesting eating, conversations and people promised!
Rhubarb love.
I was away for a few days last week, hoping to return to a garden bursting with new growth in my absence – but alas! The weather here has not been great – cold and rainy through most of April – so although I could see some marginal growth, it wasn’t what I had hoped for. On top of that, my one free day to garden this weekend (Sunday) was a wash of showers, winds and coldish temperatures, so I got very little of my front bed (in desperate need of some attention) done.
But despite it all, I harvested my first crop of the spring season – 4 and a half pounds of lovely red, Rhubarb from the sprawling plant at the foot of our compost bin out back. Best thing is, that’s just the first harvest of what will probably top out at around 14 pounds of rhubarb by the end of summer – this is one prodigious plant (that I do nothing for, really, it just grows and grows).
Growing up, the only way we ever had rhubarb was in pie form. Served warm with vanilla ice cream, my mother’s rhubarb pie was one of my favourite summer treats (rivaled only by the blackberry pies in early fall)…. and last summer I think that’s pretty much what we did with all our plant produced – pie filling and crisps. But really, we don’t make desserts that often, and I gave about half of what our plant produced to friends because I was at a loss with the surplus. Little did I know about the many websites devoted to rhubarb out there!
The Rhubarb Compendium and Savor the Rhubarb are two such sites dedicated to as many uses for rhubarb in cooking as you can think of. Chutneys, muffins, jams, drinks, candy, sidedishes – even craft projects! Oh yes, the many things you can do with rhubarb.
For my part, I made a batch of yummy muffins last night (rich, not too sweet) and cut the remaining four pounds into cubes for the freezer. Once I harvest another two pounds in a few weeks I am going to attempt a batch of wine which will be ready to drink by next summer. This will be my first foray into wine-making, so I’ll be impatient about it I’m sure!
The rest of this summer’s rhubarb? I’m thinking jam, chutney and assorted desserts. Whatever we do with it, I’ll be sure to write it down here. Recipes after the cut! Read More
Where and how to write.
I was away last week in Ottawa, which is part of the silence here for the last little while. But more than that, I haven’t been much up to blogging lately which I think is a byproduct of forcing myself to write everyday before work – most of which isn’t blog content. I’m finding the whole “writer” thing to be a bit depressing at the moment, whereas when I just blot I’m much happier about my writing. It’s not that the writing is better, but I have the instant gratification of being read – every day if I want – which just isn’t the case with the serious business of writing I’ve been attempting for the last year or so.
So I’ve decided to give it a break for a month or so – the writing first thing in the morning gig is up for the moment – because it’s burning me out and I have three blog projects I would rather give my time to. While it’s true that the dedicated writing every day produces better content, I feel limited by it, and quite frankly a little oppressed by the culture around getting published in a dwindling print-market. Why is it so important anyway? I have gone through periods of having more new readers per month on this blog than many journals have in their subscriber base. Oh, right, because my content here isn’t vetted by “those who know” and so I’ve deemed myself unworthy. One more reason to dislike myself is not something I need right now.
It’s just a break though I’m sure. I know the daily routine assists my output of more polished and well-thought-out material, but at the moment I’m not feeling competetive enough to get up every day and challenge everyone else for a spot on the page. I promise, though, I’ll be writing here and Amongtheweeds and Viaduct instead. Because I can’t not write, it’s just the where and how I write that shifts.
Finishing things.
I haven’t been posting too much this week because I’ve been crazy-busy both at and after work. I’ve managed only two posts at Among the Weeds and none here! I also didn’t manage to work out much this week, which is also a sign that my life is way overloaded.
What I did manage to do this week is finish two essays and one poem that I believe are close to ready for submission. I suppose that the article I wrote for Resistance magazine must also have been published this week since yesterday was Earth Day and the mag was timed to come out on the 40th anniversary of the event.
Since I don’t have a lot to say at the moment – I will leave you with the following before and after shot of our backyard in the year since we moved in (we’ve been there exactly one year this week). I wrote a long post about our studio project at Among the Weeds today and was looking at the various photos. Putting these two together – the transformation is pretty crazy! The before shot was taken at a more lush time of year (early fall), so this year’s shot is still a little barren looking…. but wait until summer! Then it’s going to really shine with all this hard work we’ve been doing!
The Backyard Bookshed Project.
I am definitely getting the camera out this weekend! We’ve got it all going on in the garden now – including potatoes, scallions, broccoli, and nasturtiums starting in the last two days! Not to mention almost-edible radishes and joi choi. In about two weeks I should be taking a bit more than chives out of the garden and I can’t wait!
I thought today I might write about our studio project today because backyard structures – sheds, home offices, living rooms – are all the rage these days among homeowners and we just completed our own version just as planting season started.
When we moved into our house last spring we got our priorities in order right away: 1) Put a suite in the basement, and 2) do something about the collapsing garage in the backyard. So while I got a small garden going last year, we were mainly focused on the basement suite which took over our lives until August when it was finished (and our finances drained). Flash forward to this December when I was fortunate enough to sell my half-duplex on the Sunshine Coast with enough money to turn towards our second priority project out back.
As far as it went, there were three obvious options to our sagging garage: tear it down for more yard space, fix it up to be a garage for our car which I’m just as happy to park out front, or turn into more liveable space. While the first option would have been the cheapest… we don’t have a huge living/dining area in our house… so the temptation was there to go for the third option (which incidentally is the best way to add resale value to a property in our overpriced real estate market). With that in mind, I put together some drawings (not professional ones by a long shot) that turned the garage into an outdoor living room with a sleeping loft and a storage room instead.
Fortunately, my partner is willing to find and deal with workmen, because I positively *hate* doing that part of the project since most men in the biz tend to treat women pretty badly (patronizing, often sexist, sometimes bullying…..). As soon as the sale on my house was inked and we knew money would be coming in, he got on the phone and contacted a contractor who had sort of been referred to us, plus called up an electrician we had used before and really liked. Read More
Red Cedar 