I write in the mornings at Cafe Calabria on Commercial Drive, where the coffee is strong and the decor is opulent. The proprietor, Frank Murdocco, has been passionate about music since he had a job, in the Sixties, at a big record store in Montreal. Here are some bizarre picks from his holiday mix to offset what you’re probably hearing, every day, in all the stores.
My dreamed-of WiFi workathon with view got a bit of a trim this morning: I was going to hop aboard an Amtrack train at the crack of dawn and write about seven billion things by the time I got to Portland. However, the train gods decreed that something was wrong with the track. Amtrak told us mudslides in Everett. CBC says protesters in White Rock. Anyway, they herded us onto buses and cleverly filtered us as we went: the peeps going on from Seattle got an express bus, while the folks going to a zillion points between Vancouver and King Station got a slow boat.
The best part of this development was that I got to Seattle an hour earlier than expected, with plenty of time to go to Zeitgeist Coffee. Kelly and I had been here in 2009 when we went on the Tucker Family Cruise-o-rama and we love love loved it. They have boiled eggs and fruit along with caffeine and bready things and Intrawebs.
The bus was completely full and though the guy next to me was nice enough, and also mostly comatose, he was taking up his entire seat, which meant I didn’t have the extra elbow room I’d have needed to break out the keyboard even if there’d been somewhere to put it. So I spent the first half of trip making myself just a leetle bit carsick by reading a book. It was a good book, and enjoyable enough to justify the nausea.
Oh! And I got a very jolly border guard.
After the coffee I got on the train, had no seatmate, and yay, the WiFi was working. Prose ensued. I got to pause thoughtfully and admire the view several times, and took many questionable pictures of same. I fancy this one is quite arty. I’m probably wrong.
The train got in and I walked to my hotel, which is all of three blocks from Powell’s downtown. After nine continuous hours of sitting, I desperately needed a real walk, so I hoofed off in the direction of the bookstore. What I didn’t know was that the Powell’s is right next to a Doc Marten’s outlet.
Some of you know I’d generally rather have arrows shoved through my cheeks than go into a shoe store, but I’ve been thinking about summer footwear lately. Thinking lots. There’s stuff about my heels, and stuff about my toes, and the general Shoe Law of Me states that all shoes must be good for at least a five kilometer walk, at the end of which they must look presentable enough to pass for girly grownup work shoes. Being shoe picky is fine if you like shopping for the things, but in my case it’s rather ridiculous.
But, having now gotten myself a pair of Docs that’ll do a 10K day and a pair of Fluvogs that’ll go that far, too, I’ve decided I prefer the Docs. So in I went, and what did I find but these?
Pretty, huh? They have the not-open back that my heel needs, and the holes in front that mean stretch–I wanted this so my toes can spread out, ducklike, in the front. And they’re pink! Pink pink Barbie camper pink!
I had other adventures, and much fun just walking around downtown Portland, a city I’m so very fond of visiting, and a pretty decent supper, but I think I’ll shelve those for now. Tomorrow I will have more adventures, with wonderful lovely people, and there will be even more pictures. Some will almost certainly be of Xerxes. How lucky am I?
Being displaced by the window installers meant that last week was not a nutritionally adventurous one. I made a peanut-pumpkin Badger recommended, but otherwise dinner mostly consisted of things from the freezer and stand-by meals.
I did end up at a new not-coffee house though: the Urban Tea Merchant.
There’s this place on Alberni Street, Thierry, see, that I like very much. It’s not too far from Kelly’s office, and they make decent coffee and tea. They sell pricey macarons and very nice little pastries, and the two of us often go there for a quick cup early Friday mornings. After we discovered Thierry, I had thought it might make a good place to hole up and work now and then in a couple of other little windows in my week–times when it’d just be nice to pause and sit before lunging off to the next thing in my day.
Unfortunately, everyone else loves Thierry, too, such that the only time you can get a seat there appears to be at the crack of dawn Friday. They tend to be packed, packed, packed.
So Thursday before last, when I was displaced by construction, I peeked through their door, saw the throng, and walked on half a block to that pretty tea store I’d never gone into.
Urban Tea Merchant is basically a wine bar for tea snobs. They have a tea list, broken down by country and then again by blend, as well as a menu. A pot of tea can go for as ‘little’ as $6*, or you can splash out and spend, I kid you not, forty eight friggin’ dollars on a single pot. They have linen napkins and lovely bone china and an extremely unhurried atmosphere, and since they don’t serve coffee at all, it seems as though one can always find a seat in their tiny tea room, at least at the times of day when I’m looking for somewhere to park my butt.
They also do high tea in a number of forms, including a full-bore splashy morning tea service with baked treats, wee sandwiches, and champagne or tea-infused prosecco. Check out their menu. Marvel.
Having only just discovered the tea room, I haven’t had the opportunity to try a full range of the baked treats, but I will say their chocolate scone is godlike, and comes with a tablespoon of the freshest, most vividly-flavorful jam I’ve ever had.
I’ll be headed back there next time I need a little tea-flavored self-indulgence, and I’m seriously considering saving up some dosh so I can take my honey for one of the splashy tea cakes and sandwich events.
*That $6 pot of tea is quite huge, I should add. It’s pretty typical downtown to pay half that for a wee tiny pot o’ tea, and this is a huge portion of really good stuff. And they’re in no hurry to get you in and out, so if what you’re doing is paying rent on a table where you can scribble fiction for a couple hours while getting caffeinated, it’s not too bad.
I am slowing down on To Each Their Darkness
I will also slip away, behind its back, to start up with a book I’ve been waiting for forever, even before I knew it was finally getting written. It’s called Remote
The Closer
I don’t know anyone else who’s read it… it’s so dark, it falls outside what most of my friends prefer. It’s like Dexter
So I am keen to see where the story goes next.
And while I’m talking books, Elizabeth Bear’s Range of Ghosts
In food news, I’ve finally made the pumpkin peanut soup recipe posted by Badger, from Vegan on the Cheap
I am a few weeks ahead of the Buffy rewatch, which is important for sanity reasons and nice for the Tor.com folks too. Anyway, it worked out that this week I wrote the column for “Surprise” and “Innocence,” which I called “A Very Unhappy Birthday.”
Anyway, by some peculiarity of timing, it’s now my birthday… whee! And it started at 12:30 a.m. when our downstairs neighbor started pounding nails right under our sleeping heads. They’re replacing the windows in our building, and just got to her suite, and I’m sure there are things needing remounting. She was very apologetic. She hadn’t realized it was so late. But Still!
My plans today are modest: running out to play a quick round of 1-800-I Gave You Life, you Give Me Tech Support! with Barb, a little teaching, a big late lunch at the home of cheesy goodness on Hastings, Au Petit Chavignol.
And, if I get lucky, maybe a nap. Meanwhile, here’s your gift: a visit to Youtube for my favorite birthday earworm.
More than five years ago, I read an article in McLeans (I must’ve been waiting on a doctor and desperate for entertainment) that said the average Canadian family has five meals that it prepares regularly. I took this to mean supper standbys–the things you can whip up quickly, without looking at a recipe. Things everyone in the household will eat. Either you almost always have the ingredients stocked or you can buy them handily in a nearby grocery, on autopilot, forgetting nothing even if you’ve just had brain surgery. You know what I’m saying.
Five.
It seemed like a shockingly low number. I went home and my own pile of standbys exceeded it by a factor of three, I’d say–there were about fifteen things in the three-ring binder of Alyx recipes that were the real deal, as opposed to things I’d printed out, cooked once or twice, and then left to accumulate little food smudges as their pages drifted to the back of the recipe binder.
The magazine article inspired me to make an ongoing effort to expand the standby roster by at least a few recipes each year, and also to periodically back-burner recipes so Kelly and I don’t get too tired of them.
It works pretty well, but even though I’m paying more-than-average attention to this little element of our quality of life (average as determined by McLeans, you understand) little ruts still develop. I gravitate to certain kinds of recipes–soups and stews, a lot of the time, high on the veggie content and nutritional virtue, things that make extra freezable portions for those nights when all I want to do is make a salad and boil something. They’re hearty and warming and especially good in the winter, recipes that aren’t fussy, whose components aren’t too pricey.
I am in one of these expand-my-repertoire phases now, and I’m trying to push my boundaries at least some distance outward from the above stews–hence the pumpkin shrimp curry not long ago. But my second discovery was, even so, a hearty winter stew. But man, what a stew!! Seriously, this is too-good-to-be-true delicious.
My recemt campaign to cook new stuff has mostly been facilitated by the Epicurious app for the iPhone–specifically, the low-calorie mains section. But I did a tofu search last week, because I had a motley collection of leftover ingredients in the fridge: half a brick of bean curd, broccoli, light coconut milk. This recipe, which features lemon grass, also gave me an opportunity to try out something I’ve seen in one of the local groceries–toothpaste-y tubes of herbs, preserved in citrus juice and a bit of oil.
(One can buy lemongrass on the Drive, of course, and we do. But every so often there’s a phase where all of what’s available is shockingly moldy and I don’t want the spores in the house.)
This was subtle and delicious and–if you’re pepper-averse–not too spicy. I used less oil and rice than was called for, and didn’t miss either. There’s a snapshot here, if you are curious.
I made the above curry last night; I found it using the Epicurious app. I used light coconut milk rather than the full-bore stuff, and it came off really well. It also made about eight one-cup servings, which means for one hour’s work I got four nights of dinner.
And this should take you to all the stuff I routinely cook: the ginger yam tofu, the white turkey chile, the invisible spaghetti and light alfredo sauce… and so much more.
A Harry Turtledove story: Lee at the Alamo.
Tetley’s Mojito tea, which is good hot and cold.
Out in Harmony: it’s never too late to join a choir!
I spent most of yesterday puttering slowly around to all the groceries and in some cases buying frivolous things. One of my mentoring gig folks had mentioned a power granola called Holy Crap; I bought that in Urban Fare, for $12! For a cup! (Two tablespoons are supposed to be enough to fill you, but still.) It wasn’t terrible, and the tiny portion was reasonably filling. But a day later I’m at Calabria, having had my morning visit to the loo, and at the risk of TMI… I did not see our Lord and Savior just now while I was having my sit-down.
These are my standards. For $1.50 a serving I expect not only filling and nutritious but at least a preview of the second coming.
But Sechelt hippies need jobs too… if they can make a go of selling *legal* hemp products to the well-off peeps of the West End, more power to ‘em.
The slow was because I’d needed caffeine to get through Italian and then was up past 11:00 a.m., so even buying food was a mental challenge.
I have to spend part of today reviewing Italian. Class ends next week and I’m going into part II; I feel as though I might have a fighting chance if I get the grammar under my belt. I just have to decide I’m gonna, and then rearrange my catastrophically confusing notes. And get over a few things: when I found out that the word(s) for it were the same words we sometimes use for a/an on Thursday, I did have a little internal temper tantrum. “Fuck you, Italia, with your la/lo/le/li!”
Ironically, this is all brushing up my English grammar considerably. “Here’s the transitive form,” says Amalia, and of course I have to think it through in English, and then sometimes in French, before I really get it.
I caught a real break with Italian I this latest time through: only three of us signed up, so there was lots of individual attention *and* they shortened the class by half an hour… which meant we were leaving at 9:00 p.m. instead of 9:30. As I am the girl whose day starts at five, that extra half hour was golden. When Italian II starts next month it’s gonna be a jolt.
