I have always been terrible at receiving gifts. As a child, my difficulty would manifest itself as my being spoiled: gifts would appear, and I would frown, even throw temper tantrums, ‘this isn’t what I wanted!’ It is not the givers’ fault, they can’t know that I was ruined by a gift giver with whom they would be hard pressed to compete.
As an adult, I have been taught well to have good manners; I am gracious and pleasant, I smile and think back over the process and the importance of the ritual of giving and receiving gifts and how sharing is a way for us all to express our humanity. In our rush to keep up with life, we don’t all have the time to pick the perfect gift for each of our loved ones, but even a simple gift says something. With this in mind, and well aware of my own shortcomings when it comes time to pick a gift for someone else, I do my best to be gracious.
But, in fact, I dread receiving gifts. I live in fear that in the split second after the gift is open I will hurt someone’s feelings with an involuntary eye movement, glancing quickly down or to the side before looking the giver in the eye and offering my thanks. In that briefest of moments, I still find myself removed, questioning the necessity of the expenditure, or even, I am shamed to admit, the quality of the product, but I know these thoughts are just adult manifestations of that childish tantrum. I am gracious, but it is a learned reaction, and rarely spontaneous. I find myself, instead, removed and thinking back.
Two weeks ago now, we lost my Uncle Don. As a young boy, I remember this strange and marvelous bachelor uncle who would arrive at family gatherings like Gandalf the Grey and immediately be set upon by all the children in the area. He never fought this attention, unlike the others of the ‘grown up’ persuasion; he would revel in it and give us all his time and careful, honest attention for as long as we required it.
He was a good man who had been forced to overcome challenges. From a minor birth complication in infancy to a learning disorder in his school years he was stalled a bit, a situation complicated even more by losing his father and having to grow up a bit quicker than he had hoped. In the end, he never followed the path that many others do, into a routine of marriage, static career and suburban ‘normalcy’. He served in the navy, worked for the university, but eventually settled into a life of occasional odd jobs and a series of inexpensive ‘home-like situations’ as opposed to the house, the car and the 2.5 kids that so many of us seem to seek.
He was creative and very good with his hands. He became a well loved and excellent teacher in the Boy Scouts. He was a ‘Mountain Man’, joining with a group of others who reenacted frontier era camping from the flintlock musket to the handmade clothes; in fact, the last time I spoke with him, he said that he and his group were planning to ride and camp along ‘The Continental Divide’ (aka, ‘The Great Divide’).
He had an uncanny knack for recycling (before it was fashionable) and could piece together just about anything one could imagine out of the odds and ends that made their way onto the grounds of his various compounds, storage sheds, campsites and trailers. He built a car, not once, but twice, out of spare parts from other vehicles, wood, scraps and even bits of worn-out appliances. Not ‘go-carts’, mind you, but street legal, registered and inspected ‘Ogg-mobiles’ (as in Donald Ogg) that traveled far and wide and provided, I’m sure, many a chuckle and smile, and perhaps, even a bit of admiration and envy along the way.
One Christmas, I’d say that I was about 7 or 8; there among the shiny papers and gaudy ribbons was a simple metal box, a gift from my Uncle Don. Like its contents, the box was fashioned by hand, cut with tin snips and folded to fit together like a shoebox. Inside were a series of puzzles and a handwritten note explaining rules. The puzzles ranged from a simple pile of nails with one nailed into a block of wood (the object is to balance all of the loose nails on to the fixed one, this puzzle alone took days for my brother and me to decipher), to a pair of horseshoes joined at the ends by welded-on lengths of chain with ring around the narrow part of the chains that could be removed and replaced without breaking a weld (although we considered that method many times in our journey to discover how). There were many others as well that, all told, provided hours of entertainment and joy over the course of the following weeks, months, even years, as they came back out to challenge new friends with their deceptive simplicity. Simple handmade puzzles that undoubtedly came together out of his legendary piles of ‘junk’ that my parents and his other siblings (unlike we, the nephews) simply couldn’t seem to understand were obviously piles of treasure. Simple puzzles that took time for us to solve and took time for him to fashion; even in his absence from us then, his attention spoke...speaks...volumes.
That precious box of puzzles is easily at the top of a very short list of presents I can even remember from my childhood. Uncle Don was not a wealthy man in the conventional sense, but he had a wealth of time and with that commodity, he was the most generous man I’ve ever known.
As I am now rapidly approaching fatherhood, I (and we all) would do well to remember his lesson: it’s not the gift that counts, it is the giving.
And please, if you should happen to give me a gift, and you do see that split second glance to the side, down, or even out across the Great Divide, please, don’t take it personally. It’s not your fault; anyone would be hard pressed to compete.
Thanks again for the giving, Uncle Don.
authentic texas specialties, amazing live music, incredible selection of local, microbrewed draft beers and locally sourced and organic foods...
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Gordone...
I learned how to make love in college. Professor Charles Gordone said it in the plainest language possible, and it suddenly made sense. He said making love to a woman is not something you do in the bedroom; it is something you do all day every day. It is how you look at her, how you talk to her, how you breathe around her. Wow. That’s what I call teaching.
I never set out to be a college theatre major. I was involved in theatre in high school: I took it as a fine arts credit 2 years in a row, studying its history and structure, and was cast as an actor in a number of plays as a member of the extracurricular club. I even participated in a couple of local theatre productions as a bit player, doing mostly character work, playing several roles in a single play or basically any role that involved heavy makeup, difficult costume changes or funny accents. I found the whole process great fun. Theatre productions become micro-realities with all the folks involved sharing story arcs literally behind the scenes that begin, peak, and end, usually in parallel with the production. It is a safe world for creative types, where acting out is the expected, rather than the punishable, behaviour and where the short and transient friendships can feel as deep and as plausible while much less threatening as the ones on the outside. My high school theatre teacher, Dr. Doug Street, was a hero to me, as a student of all things 1960s, his pedigree was impeccable. He had lived in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in the right set of years and had even played drums for some psychedelic rock outfit. He was the real deal; where other high school theatre groups were learning Shakespeare and Broadway musicals, we were studying Mamet, Beckett and Ionesco. I, however, was probably not his favorite student. These days, I would have been quickly diagnosed as ADD and doped up with some exotic cocktail to keep me on the straight and narrow, but back then I was just what folks liked to call a “problem child.”
Three times, Dr. Street gave me a chance to play a large role in a student production and for both the second and third of those times I let him down by failing a class (not his) and becoming “academically ineligible” to perform. I didn’t get any more chances. He liked me though, and enjoyed my writing. He even gave me a gift of a book of Leonard Cohen’s poetry; in fact, I only found out years later that this talented poet was a musician (and a Canadian!) as well. In remembering Dr. Street now, I am surprised to realize how much he may have affected and influenced my life (San Francisco, Theatre, Cohen, Canada...a handlebar mustache...). Teachers are like that.
As a burgeoning rock star in those years I also followed Jim Morrison’s lead and read pretentious literature such as Nietzsche, Sartre and Carl Jung of which, I can now admit, I understood only a fraction. When I (finally) graduated high school and, after a break, decided I should probably go to college (you know, just in case the rock star thing didn’t work out) my inexplicable commitment to my pretentious reading list made me think I should pursue the discipline of psychology...after all, who could be better equipped to tackle the academic problems of the intricate workings of the human mind than a troubled, creative, angst-ridden, Jim Morrison wannabe with a short attention span?
So anyway, I guess just to have something else to do while failing my Introduction to Psychology course, I took a theatre class as a fine arts credit.
Dr. Charles Gordone was not a typical professor. I can say that with some authority as I spent the next two years of my life trying to soak up everything I could from the great man. I still know that walking into that class on a whim was one of the best things that ever happened to me. He was not Dr. Street, who, for his pedigree should have been the more flamboyant of the two, where Dr. Street had been studious and careful, Gordone was a bundle of energy and a character through and through. He was a flashy dresser on a conservative campus (Texas A&M), a proud black man with a white wife who had sought out a small town, probably BECAUSE he wanted to raise eyebrows. He was a courageous quick thinker, a fast talking street smart mixed race superman from Cleveland who had MADE IT in New York (as America’s first Pulitzer Prize winning black playwright) then spent the next 30 years telling his story. I am one of the lucky ones who got to hear it. And be taught.
The class that caught me was a method acting class. As a ‘veteran actor’ I figured the class would be a breeze. Fat chance. Gordone ran us through the paces and no-one got to sit down until we had given him something real. There was crying, real anger, and real exhilaration. A duet scene I performed for a final grade in that class is still marked in my mind as probably my only great performance, all done under the driving constant rapprochement of a dedicated teacher. I followed his first class with another and another, scoring well enough in each that it became logical for me to switch my major to theatre to take advantage of my finally well positioned GPA. But by the third semester I was busily failing Introduction to Theatre as well.
Gordone was a fierce mentor. He spoke of nurturing the creative spirit as a duty. He would not let the small group of us who followed him from class to class get away with anything less than our best creative effort. And he kept talking along the whole way. He talked about fearlessness and love of beauty; he talked about racism and stupidity; he talked about the great people he’d known and his pride. And he talked about love. He gave me the little nugget above that has carried me for all these years as a grateful student.
I never got that Theatre degree. I’m pretty sure that not everyone is suited for college life or is meant to have a diploma that says we learned what we supposed to (or jumped through the hoops we were supposed to.) But neither did Dr. Gordone. According to what he told us, his degree was awarded for achievement. And trust me, he earned it. To my knowledge, he never published another play after his Pulitzer Prize winner “No Place to be Somebody”, but his art lived on, lives on, in those of us he taught.
He once told us a story about how he, a savvy urbanite, had ended up in Texas; he said that he and his wife drove south until they saw cows, then parked and started looking for work. I’m sure it was a bit of an exaggeration, but it was obvious that he had intentionally chosen a challenging environment in which to settle so he could feel like he was making a difference. I can’t help but identify with that decision sometimes as I look around our small town, and think of the challenge we have taken on.
Teaching is a noble profession. I’ve got two teaching parents, a sister and a grandmother that taught. We are all lucky to have people who are willing to share the gift of knowledge with us and who affect us in ways we may take years to understand. I never did get that theatre degree, but I was lucky to have met and learned from Dr. Street and Dr. Gordone, both of them, as theatre teachers made me a better chef, a better artist and better man.
Dr. Gordone died in 1995. When he taught me, jumping around the classroom with an energy I envy now, he was already nearly 70 years old. He only gave the audiences of the world a small part of his great work, but to those of us who had the honor of being his students, he gave the rest.
I never set out to be a college theatre major. I was involved in theatre in high school: I took it as a fine arts credit 2 years in a row, studying its history and structure, and was cast as an actor in a number of plays as a member of the extracurricular club. I even participated in a couple of local theatre productions as a bit player, doing mostly character work, playing several roles in a single play or basically any role that involved heavy makeup, difficult costume changes or funny accents. I found the whole process great fun. Theatre productions become micro-realities with all the folks involved sharing story arcs literally behind the scenes that begin, peak, and end, usually in parallel with the production. It is a safe world for creative types, where acting out is the expected, rather than the punishable, behaviour and where the short and transient friendships can feel as deep and as plausible while much less threatening as the ones on the outside. My high school theatre teacher, Dr. Doug Street, was a hero to me, as a student of all things 1960s, his pedigree was impeccable. He had lived in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in the right set of years and had even played drums for some psychedelic rock outfit. He was the real deal; where other high school theatre groups were learning Shakespeare and Broadway musicals, we were studying Mamet, Beckett and Ionesco. I, however, was probably not his favorite student. These days, I would have been quickly diagnosed as ADD and doped up with some exotic cocktail to keep me on the straight and narrow, but back then I was just what folks liked to call a “problem child.”
Three times, Dr. Street gave me a chance to play a large role in a student production and for both the second and third of those times I let him down by failing a class (not his) and becoming “academically ineligible” to perform. I didn’t get any more chances. He liked me though, and enjoyed my writing. He even gave me a gift of a book of Leonard Cohen’s poetry; in fact, I only found out years later that this talented poet was a musician (and a Canadian!) as well. In remembering Dr. Street now, I am surprised to realize how much he may have affected and influenced my life (San Francisco, Theatre, Cohen, Canada...a handlebar mustache...). Teachers are like that.
As a burgeoning rock star in those years I also followed Jim Morrison’s lead and read pretentious literature such as Nietzsche, Sartre and Carl Jung of which, I can now admit, I understood only a fraction. When I (finally) graduated high school and, after a break, decided I should probably go to college (you know, just in case the rock star thing didn’t work out) my inexplicable commitment to my pretentious reading list made me think I should pursue the discipline of psychology...after all, who could be better equipped to tackle the academic problems of the intricate workings of the human mind than a troubled, creative, angst-ridden, Jim Morrison wannabe with a short attention span?
So anyway, I guess just to have something else to do while failing my Introduction to Psychology course, I took a theatre class as a fine arts credit.
Dr. Charles Gordone was not a typical professor. I can say that with some authority as I spent the next two years of my life trying to soak up everything I could from the great man. I still know that walking into that class on a whim was one of the best things that ever happened to me. He was not Dr. Street, who, for his pedigree should have been the more flamboyant of the two, where Dr. Street had been studious and careful, Gordone was a bundle of energy and a character through and through. He was a flashy dresser on a conservative campus (Texas A&M), a proud black man with a white wife who had sought out a small town, probably BECAUSE he wanted to raise eyebrows. He was a courageous quick thinker, a fast talking street smart mixed race superman from Cleveland who had MADE IT in New York (as America’s first Pulitzer Prize winning black playwright) then spent the next 30 years telling his story. I am one of the lucky ones who got to hear it. And be taught.
The class that caught me was a method acting class. As a ‘veteran actor’ I figured the class would be a breeze. Fat chance. Gordone ran us through the paces and no-one got to sit down until we had given him something real. There was crying, real anger, and real exhilaration. A duet scene I performed for a final grade in that class is still marked in my mind as probably my only great performance, all done under the driving constant rapprochement of a dedicated teacher. I followed his first class with another and another, scoring well enough in each that it became logical for me to switch my major to theatre to take advantage of my finally well positioned GPA. But by the third semester I was busily failing Introduction to Theatre as well.
Gordone was a fierce mentor. He spoke of nurturing the creative spirit as a duty. He would not let the small group of us who followed him from class to class get away with anything less than our best creative effort. And he kept talking along the whole way. He talked about fearlessness and love of beauty; he talked about racism and stupidity; he talked about the great people he’d known and his pride. And he talked about love. He gave me the little nugget above that has carried me for all these years as a grateful student.
I never got that Theatre degree. I’m pretty sure that not everyone is suited for college life or is meant to have a diploma that says we learned what we supposed to (or jumped through the hoops we were supposed to.) But neither did Dr. Gordone. According to what he told us, his degree was awarded for achievement. And trust me, he earned it. To my knowledge, he never published another play after his Pulitzer Prize winner “No Place to be Somebody”, but his art lived on, lives on, in those of us he taught.
He once told us a story about how he, a savvy urbanite, had ended up in Texas; he said that he and his wife drove south until they saw cows, then parked and started looking for work. I’m sure it was a bit of an exaggeration, but it was obvious that he had intentionally chosen a challenging environment in which to settle so he could feel like he was making a difference. I can’t help but identify with that decision sometimes as I look around our small town, and think of the challenge we have taken on.
Teaching is a noble profession. I’ve got two teaching parents, a sister and a grandmother that taught. We are all lucky to have people who are willing to share the gift of knowledge with us and who affect us in ways we may take years to understand. I never did get that theatre degree, but I was lucky to have met and learned from Dr. Street and Dr. Gordone, both of them, as theatre teachers made me a better chef, a better artist and better man.
Dr. Gordone died in 1995. When he taught me, jumping around the classroom with an energy I envy now, he was already nearly 70 years old. He only gave the audiences of the world a small part of his great work, but to those of us who had the honor of being his students, he gave the rest.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The Grease, The Egg and The Man in Black
We knew we were moving, but we didn’t know how. Then Nicole handed me the article. A guy in the South of the city was running his diesel engine on recycled vegetable oil. Nicole and I are not the types to leave a big footprint on this earth, we often buy recycled and used products; we share or use public transit and always have, we don’t see the point of the big box store spell that seems to hold most of the world in its thrall. Moving across country, possibly to another country was going to be a challenge to our ideals, whether we liked it or not, on at least some level. Crating up our worldly possessions and transporting them was bound to be costly, involve the burning of fuel, the organization of pick up and delivery at both ends, and to top it all off, we didn’t even know exactly where we wanted our trip to end. Recycled veggie oil pushing the whole adventure seemed like a perfect compromise, and I immediately became a convert.
Within a few weeks of reading that article I was throwing myself completely into the new project, reading books and researching ‘SVO’ (Straight Vegetable Oil) conversions on the internet, I was also lucky to meet a fellow traveler who had successfully taken his converted Volkswagen rabbit across much of north America, making the pipe dream seem like less of a pipe dream, and more of a pipe line (couldn’t resist it...). Now, this was several years ago and there are a couple of details to note here. One was that a key to our strategy was using recycled veggie oil; I am no longer convinced that biofuels can save the planet, but seriously, recycling cannot be all bad. And another was that I would be doing the conversion myself. Now, I am not an auto mechanic, I am a chef, but by necessity, and coming from a family of do-it-yourself Texas jimmy-riggers, I have managed to pull off a few interesting mechanical feats. Not enough, mind you, to seriously consider it a vocation, but enough that I have managed to develop what is probably a massively disproportionate sense of overconfidence in matters relating to such things. Success, even modest success, can be a dangerous drug.
The first task was finding the truck. We scoured the want ads for weeks with no luck and then one night, browsing eBay, I found the truck. It was described as being in decent shape, a former commercial fleet vehicle (regular maintenance, right?) which the current owner had purchased in an auction. It was a diesel, which was key, but (...there’s always a ‘but’...) it was also in need of a new transmission (‘otherwise, in good condition!’). There were two weeks left on the auction, and the reserve was 600 dollars. After weeks of looking at diesel trucks in the multiple thousands of dollars range, it seemed, for that split second, like a deal. Click. Two weeks later we had the truck for 600 dollars, no one else had even placed a bid, which really should have told me something. For some reason, the seller had an amazing look of relief on his face as the truck was towed away. The new tranny was about a thousand bucks, but afterward, it fired right up! I drove it home feeling lucky, what a deal! Then, of course, in the first week, the starter blew (300 bucks...). Then the glow plug array shut down (150 bucks...). Then we needed new tires (900 bucks!). Then, then, the valves were diagnosed as shot, which of course, meant a full engine rebuild. Soon, my “bargain” truck had turned out to be, well, you know...a diesel truck in the multiple thousands of dollars range. Click.
But after all that, we did have the truck. And it was a working, living breathing monster, ready to cart our worldly goods hither and yon.
Our next step was the fuel conversion. I won’t bore you with the details. Which is to say; I won’t entertain you with the humbling process by which I finally came to understand my limitations as a mechanic. In the end, we were only a month late in leaving and it only took us two more weeks after that before I had the guts to flip the switch and finally, for the first time, admit to some small degree of success. The conversion was a kit purchased online through a company called Greasel (now called Golden Fuel Systems) and the long hours of advice and guidance they provided on the phone (usually held in one hand with a wrench in the other) was invaluable and a key to my success. Along the way we also acquired a camper trailer, one of those cute old 50’s style things we called ‘the Egg’, which was our hotel room, camp kitchen and storage room for the trip, as well as the domain of our companion, Opus, a long haired grey male cat. Opus, by day, rode calmly in the cab of the truck in his carrier, and in the evenings, when he wasn’t guarding our tiny mobile home, looked forward to his leashed walks around the various campgrounds of what were eventually 21 states and 3 provinces.
We had fun; I’ve got loads of memories from that trip. We traveled as far to the Northwest as Vancouver Island to eat at the Sooke Harbour House, a world class destination and a highlight of my lifetime restaurant experiences. We paused or stopped in various places I’d always hoped to see throughout the Northwest and the Rockies, including the Redwood forests in Northern California, the cities of Eugene, Oregon, Olympia and Seattle, Washington, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming in the Grand Teton National Park. We also saw lots of Colorado and a bit of New Mexico, before we paused in Texas to visit my family, offload some of our possessions, filter some more oil and regroup. The second half of our trip took us up through the Midwest with a stop in Chicago to visit a cousin before we crossed into Canada to stay for a while. The border patrol in Detroit took one look at our ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ alternative fuel arrangement with its various heated fuel lines, duct tape, boating accessories, water heater insulation and various barrels of veggie crude (not to mention our hand-painted pickup and our oil-slicked vintage 1950s camping egg) before sending us back to US soil. We were shocked and dismayed but after a little soul searching and with some advice from a seasoned border crosser or two decided to try again on the other side of the lake. The slightly more redneck friendly border patrol agents at the upstate New York border had a different take on our alternate fuel system and laughed at the response we had gotten to it in Detroit and gave us a pass, saying, ‘whatever gets you down the road!’
The veggie oil experiment was not a complete bust, but I don’t like to take too much credit for its impact on the planet. In the end, we only had a few long stretches of recycled planet saving vegetable based fuel burns, interspersed with a lot of stretches of good old fashioned dinosaur juice pushing a lot of weight a lot of miles without a whole lot of breaks. Some unanticipated challenges arose, such as the importance of heavy filtration, and the time it took to accomplish that. Also, the awkwardness and sheer dumb luck needed to procure good quality veggie oil while we were in transit, and the messy, messy, smelly oiliness that inevitably coated every surface of our lives and possessions throughout the whole process. But we didn’t do it because it was easy, to paraphrase JFK, we did it because it was hard. Our ideals had made us want to at least try something. But more often than not the challenges proved for us to be too great to overcome within our timeline and limited budget, and while the veggie oil, when we found it was technically free, it was not easy to find; whereas, petroleum diesel was everywhere, taunting us with its ease of access and for the effort, comparatively low cost. Now, to be fair, we did know about some of the challenges we would be facing on our trip in advance and had always planned to supplement our veggie oil supply with biodiesel, its processed cousin, which is available commercially and works just like regular diesel (no conversion necessary). We had a map of biodiesel pumps across the breadth of our journey and sought them out, even detoured out of our way to use them. But they are few (though growing in number) and far between, and even though it is heavily subsidized, the cost was much higher, usually as much as 20 cents to the gallon. Frankly, by the end of our trip, petroleum or ‘dinosaur’ diesel was what kept our show on the road. Our veggie oil adventure was not an unqualified success, it was an exercise, an experiment, and, we hoped, another hand in the hard work of clearing a path that leads away from the fossil fuel economy that seems, in my mind, to be at root of a series of messes (ever heard the Middle East? Global warming?) But in the end, I think what it turned out be was a fact-finding mission on our part, and facts are not as pleasant as we’d like to think.
Much of the rhetoric that comes out in support of biofuels, especially ethanol, seems to imply that our lifestyles can continue, uninterrupted from one fuel source, petroleum; to another, in this case, ‘bio’ or plant based fuels. Some enlightening statistics have shot holes though this argument. From the numbers I’ve seen, even as productive as the grain belt of the US is, its entire production, if converted to fuel crops, could not even come close to keeping up with our current, much less our future fuel needs. And that’s not even taking into account that some of that grain belt production should be, you know, feeding us. Not to mention the tough reality that this new biofuel focused agriculture would push the chemically intensive, pesticide, herbicide, and genetically modified monoculture beast that ‘Big Ag’ has become to even more extremes doing untold damage along the way. Sadly, by my reckoning, biofuels are a false prophet. They are a feel good solution, but not the truth. Without some sort of sea change in our world view, this process leads down a scary road. I mean, we haven’t used all the oil yet, but we will, doing untold damage in the process no doubt, but it won’t stop there; if we don’t face the truth and change, then what is next? Will we use up all the other available carbon in our hunger for more power? The fact is that the truth is a bitter pill. In the real world, we will have to stop using as much fuel. We will have to drive less, fly less and accept that everything is going to cost more. We will have to get off the grids that control our lives or convert them to clean renewables like wind and solar power. At least until some Prometheus brings us a new gift of fire from the gods to power our lives. And I do believe it will happen, is happening. Kinetic energy, wind and solar, even some aspects of hydrogen offer glimmers of hope, and honestly, in the end, I think it will be something even better, even simpler than all these things. Modern science has made it clear that energy and power are all around us, and I believe that all we need is the right creative mind to figure out how to unlock it. But until then, we’ve got to face the facts, and the fact is that our answers are not going to be found at the gas pump.
The truck broke down the day that Johnny Cash died. We were stuck in New Hampshire for the night. The transmission again, I guess all that trailer hauling was a bit too much for it. After that we nicknamed it Johnny Cash in honor of ‘the Man in Black’. Even without the significance and coincidence of the great man’s untimely demise, the nickname was appropriate; before our trip, Nicole had hand-painted the truck with black Rust-o-leum and, perhaps even more obviously, because we’d dumped so much Cash into it over time. But for all of our problems, (and I haven’t mentioned all of them, trust me) the truck had become a bit of a friend and just as much a companion and a part of our story on our trip as Opus. But that was its last stop for a while. We stored it in New Hampshire until the following summer when I flew out to pick it up and drive it to Texas where Nicole and I had moved for the year before we settled in Canada for good. The truck drove me back to Texas solo, and then drove all of us back to Canada for one last anxious border crossing, this time from Maine into New Brunswick, and also completing our just over a year long circuit from coast to coast. After our arrival, we eventually settled into Kemptville. The truck had developed an oil leak and started running rough, it also needed snow tires (more cash) and there was also a fee to consider involved in properly importing it. Reality set in, and we bought a smaller more efficient car. When the last of the boxes were moved, we parked old Johnny until I had enough time or enough cash to get him up and running again.
Tim Aubin was a rose farmer in Africa. He always says that he used to run the farm with one finger, pointing it at this guy or that with instructions. Now, as a small farmer in rural Ontario, he says that more often than not, he finds that finger pointing back at himself. Years ago, he and his wife Roshan decided to take their future into their own hands. Together, they operate Aubin Farms, one of my favorite local farms, one look at their farmer’s market table and you’ll know why. After years of life in the “Big Ag” game, Tim likes to keep things real. They don’t use pesticides or herbicides; they strive to keep a closed cycle, or a waste-free farm. Everything on the farm that is not eaten or sold is used somewhere; from the sheep’s wool for blankets to the vegetable trimmings Roshan uses in her variety of delicious pickles and chutneys and what little is left or can’t be used anywhere else that finds its home in the compost heap and becomes the nutrition for the next round of crops. As a chef, the incredible quality of their product is reason enough for me to admire them, but as a human, and someone with more than a few environmentalist leanings, the choices they have made that have brought them to where they are fill me with such deep respect and admiration that I have trouble voicing it. Nicole and I left San Francisco to find a place to raise our family. To find a place where we could walk to work, shop locally, and live a lower impact life. Aubin Farms has quickly become an important part of that life. Their table was an anchor at last years Kemptville Farmer’s market and their food has fed dozens of our guests and as importantly, it has fed us. It’s the kind of food that looks better, tastes better and smells better than you can find anywhere else. It is local food, and it is what we are all about. Low food miles? We’ve got ‘em. Tim also picks up the compost at the restaurant; something that seems so natural, that our trimmings would go to nourish his next crop which we’ll soon be happily buying. One day earlier this year he asked me about the old truck out back, beside the compost bins. ‘It runs,’ I said, ‘It leaks oil and needs snow tires, but it’s carried me over many a mile.’ Two weeks later he made me an offer. A good old fashioned real farm offer and I swear I wouldn’t have taken ten thousand dollars for that truck from anyone. But from Tim, an offer of trade was more than enough.
Sunday June 8th marks the first day of our local farmer’s market in conjunction with the Dandelion Festival and our very own street party VegStock, an all afternoon musical event on a big stage right out in front of the restaurant. Come say hi to all our farmer’s market vendors at their new location between the Court House and the water; stick around for some tunes, some barbecue and some Beau’s Lug Tread beer. And be sure to say hi to Tim and Roshan, and wish them luck with their new truck.
Within a few weeks of reading that article I was throwing myself completely into the new project, reading books and researching ‘SVO’ (Straight Vegetable Oil) conversions on the internet, I was also lucky to meet a fellow traveler who had successfully taken his converted Volkswagen rabbit across much of north America, making the pipe dream seem like less of a pipe dream, and more of a pipe line (couldn’t resist it...). Now, this was several years ago and there are a couple of details to note here. One was that a key to our strategy was using recycled veggie oil; I am no longer convinced that biofuels can save the planet, but seriously, recycling cannot be all bad. And another was that I would be doing the conversion myself. Now, I am not an auto mechanic, I am a chef, but by necessity, and coming from a family of do-it-yourself Texas jimmy-riggers, I have managed to pull off a few interesting mechanical feats. Not enough, mind you, to seriously consider it a vocation, but enough that I have managed to develop what is probably a massively disproportionate sense of overconfidence in matters relating to such things. Success, even modest success, can be a dangerous drug.
The first task was finding the truck. We scoured the want ads for weeks with no luck and then one night, browsing eBay, I found the truck. It was described as being in decent shape, a former commercial fleet vehicle (regular maintenance, right?) which the current owner had purchased in an auction. It was a diesel, which was key, but (...there’s always a ‘but’...) it was also in need of a new transmission (‘otherwise, in good condition!’). There were two weeks left on the auction, and the reserve was 600 dollars. After weeks of looking at diesel trucks in the multiple thousands of dollars range, it seemed, for that split second, like a deal. Click. Two weeks later we had the truck for 600 dollars, no one else had even placed a bid, which really should have told me something. For some reason, the seller had an amazing look of relief on his face as the truck was towed away. The new tranny was about a thousand bucks, but afterward, it fired right up! I drove it home feeling lucky, what a deal! Then, of course, in the first week, the starter blew (300 bucks...). Then the glow plug array shut down (150 bucks...). Then we needed new tires (900 bucks!). Then, then, the valves were diagnosed as shot, which of course, meant a full engine rebuild. Soon, my “bargain” truck had turned out to be, well, you know...a diesel truck in the multiple thousands of dollars range. Click.
But after all that, we did have the truck. And it was a working, living breathing monster, ready to cart our worldly goods hither and yon.
Our next step was the fuel conversion. I won’t bore you with the details. Which is to say; I won’t entertain you with the humbling process by which I finally came to understand my limitations as a mechanic. In the end, we were only a month late in leaving and it only took us two more weeks after that before I had the guts to flip the switch and finally, for the first time, admit to some small degree of success. The conversion was a kit purchased online through a company called Greasel (now called Golden Fuel Systems) and the long hours of advice and guidance they provided on the phone (usually held in one hand with a wrench in the other) was invaluable and a key to my success. Along the way we also acquired a camper trailer, one of those cute old 50’s style things we called ‘the Egg’, which was our hotel room, camp kitchen and storage room for the trip, as well as the domain of our companion, Opus, a long haired grey male cat. Opus, by day, rode calmly in the cab of the truck in his carrier, and in the evenings, when he wasn’t guarding our tiny mobile home, looked forward to his leashed walks around the various campgrounds of what were eventually 21 states and 3 provinces.
We had fun; I’ve got loads of memories from that trip. We traveled as far to the Northwest as Vancouver Island to eat at the Sooke Harbour House, a world class destination and a highlight of my lifetime restaurant experiences. We paused or stopped in various places I’d always hoped to see throughout the Northwest and the Rockies, including the Redwood forests in Northern California, the cities of Eugene, Oregon, Olympia and Seattle, Washington, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming in the Grand Teton National Park. We also saw lots of Colorado and a bit of New Mexico, before we paused in Texas to visit my family, offload some of our possessions, filter some more oil and regroup. The second half of our trip took us up through the Midwest with a stop in Chicago to visit a cousin before we crossed into Canada to stay for a while. The border patrol in Detroit took one look at our ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ alternative fuel arrangement with its various heated fuel lines, duct tape, boating accessories, water heater insulation and various barrels of veggie crude (not to mention our hand-painted pickup and our oil-slicked vintage 1950s camping egg) before sending us back to US soil. We were shocked and dismayed but after a little soul searching and with some advice from a seasoned border crosser or two decided to try again on the other side of the lake. The slightly more redneck friendly border patrol agents at the upstate New York border had a different take on our alternate fuel system and laughed at the response we had gotten to it in Detroit and gave us a pass, saying, ‘whatever gets you down the road!’
The veggie oil experiment was not a complete bust, but I don’t like to take too much credit for its impact on the planet. In the end, we only had a few long stretches of recycled planet saving vegetable based fuel burns, interspersed with a lot of stretches of good old fashioned dinosaur juice pushing a lot of weight a lot of miles without a whole lot of breaks. Some unanticipated challenges arose, such as the importance of heavy filtration, and the time it took to accomplish that. Also, the awkwardness and sheer dumb luck needed to procure good quality veggie oil while we were in transit, and the messy, messy, smelly oiliness that inevitably coated every surface of our lives and possessions throughout the whole process. But we didn’t do it because it was easy, to paraphrase JFK, we did it because it was hard. Our ideals had made us want to at least try something. But more often than not the challenges proved for us to be too great to overcome within our timeline and limited budget, and while the veggie oil, when we found it was technically free, it was not easy to find; whereas, petroleum diesel was everywhere, taunting us with its ease of access and for the effort, comparatively low cost. Now, to be fair, we did know about some of the challenges we would be facing on our trip in advance and had always planned to supplement our veggie oil supply with biodiesel, its processed cousin, which is available commercially and works just like regular diesel (no conversion necessary). We had a map of biodiesel pumps across the breadth of our journey and sought them out, even detoured out of our way to use them. But they are few (though growing in number) and far between, and even though it is heavily subsidized, the cost was much higher, usually as much as 20 cents to the gallon. Frankly, by the end of our trip, petroleum or ‘dinosaur’ diesel was what kept our show on the road. Our veggie oil adventure was not an unqualified success, it was an exercise, an experiment, and, we hoped, another hand in the hard work of clearing a path that leads away from the fossil fuel economy that seems, in my mind, to be at root of a series of messes (ever heard the Middle East? Global warming?) But in the end, I think what it turned out be was a fact-finding mission on our part, and facts are not as pleasant as we’d like to think.
Much of the rhetoric that comes out in support of biofuels, especially ethanol, seems to imply that our lifestyles can continue, uninterrupted from one fuel source, petroleum; to another, in this case, ‘bio’ or plant based fuels. Some enlightening statistics have shot holes though this argument. From the numbers I’ve seen, even as productive as the grain belt of the US is, its entire production, if converted to fuel crops, could not even come close to keeping up with our current, much less our future fuel needs. And that’s not even taking into account that some of that grain belt production should be, you know, feeding us. Not to mention the tough reality that this new biofuel focused agriculture would push the chemically intensive, pesticide, herbicide, and genetically modified monoculture beast that ‘Big Ag’ has become to even more extremes doing untold damage along the way. Sadly, by my reckoning, biofuels are a false prophet. They are a feel good solution, but not the truth. Without some sort of sea change in our world view, this process leads down a scary road. I mean, we haven’t used all the oil yet, but we will, doing untold damage in the process no doubt, but it won’t stop there; if we don’t face the truth and change, then what is next? Will we use up all the other available carbon in our hunger for more power? The fact is that the truth is a bitter pill. In the real world, we will have to stop using as much fuel. We will have to drive less, fly less and accept that everything is going to cost more. We will have to get off the grids that control our lives or convert them to clean renewables like wind and solar power. At least until some Prometheus brings us a new gift of fire from the gods to power our lives. And I do believe it will happen, is happening. Kinetic energy, wind and solar, even some aspects of hydrogen offer glimmers of hope, and honestly, in the end, I think it will be something even better, even simpler than all these things. Modern science has made it clear that energy and power are all around us, and I believe that all we need is the right creative mind to figure out how to unlock it. But until then, we’ve got to face the facts, and the fact is that our answers are not going to be found at the gas pump.
The truck broke down the day that Johnny Cash died. We were stuck in New Hampshire for the night. The transmission again, I guess all that trailer hauling was a bit too much for it. After that we nicknamed it Johnny Cash in honor of ‘the Man in Black’. Even without the significance and coincidence of the great man’s untimely demise, the nickname was appropriate; before our trip, Nicole had hand-painted the truck with black Rust-o-leum and, perhaps even more obviously, because we’d dumped so much Cash into it over time. But for all of our problems, (and I haven’t mentioned all of them, trust me) the truck had become a bit of a friend and just as much a companion and a part of our story on our trip as Opus. But that was its last stop for a while. We stored it in New Hampshire until the following summer when I flew out to pick it up and drive it to Texas where Nicole and I had moved for the year before we settled in Canada for good. The truck drove me back to Texas solo, and then drove all of us back to Canada for one last anxious border crossing, this time from Maine into New Brunswick, and also completing our just over a year long circuit from coast to coast. After our arrival, we eventually settled into Kemptville. The truck had developed an oil leak and started running rough, it also needed snow tires (more cash) and there was also a fee to consider involved in properly importing it. Reality set in, and we bought a smaller more efficient car. When the last of the boxes were moved, we parked old Johnny until I had enough time or enough cash to get him up and running again.
Tim Aubin was a rose farmer in Africa. He always says that he used to run the farm with one finger, pointing it at this guy or that with instructions. Now, as a small farmer in rural Ontario, he says that more often than not, he finds that finger pointing back at himself. Years ago, he and his wife Roshan decided to take their future into their own hands. Together, they operate Aubin Farms, one of my favorite local farms, one look at their farmer’s market table and you’ll know why. After years of life in the “Big Ag” game, Tim likes to keep things real. They don’t use pesticides or herbicides; they strive to keep a closed cycle, or a waste-free farm. Everything on the farm that is not eaten or sold is used somewhere; from the sheep’s wool for blankets to the vegetable trimmings Roshan uses in her variety of delicious pickles and chutneys and what little is left or can’t be used anywhere else that finds its home in the compost heap and becomes the nutrition for the next round of crops. As a chef, the incredible quality of their product is reason enough for me to admire them, but as a human, and someone with more than a few environmentalist leanings, the choices they have made that have brought them to where they are fill me with such deep respect and admiration that I have trouble voicing it. Nicole and I left San Francisco to find a place to raise our family. To find a place where we could walk to work, shop locally, and live a lower impact life. Aubin Farms has quickly become an important part of that life. Their table was an anchor at last years Kemptville Farmer’s market and their food has fed dozens of our guests and as importantly, it has fed us. It’s the kind of food that looks better, tastes better and smells better than you can find anywhere else. It is local food, and it is what we are all about. Low food miles? We’ve got ‘em. Tim also picks up the compost at the restaurant; something that seems so natural, that our trimmings would go to nourish his next crop which we’ll soon be happily buying. One day earlier this year he asked me about the old truck out back, beside the compost bins. ‘It runs,’ I said, ‘It leaks oil and needs snow tires, but it’s carried me over many a mile.’ Two weeks later he made me an offer. A good old fashioned real farm offer and I swear I wouldn’t have taken ten thousand dollars for that truck from anyone. But from Tim, an offer of trade was more than enough.
Sunday June 8th marks the first day of our local farmer’s market in conjunction with the Dandelion Festival and our very own street party VegStock, an all afternoon musical event on a big stage right out in front of the restaurant. Come say hi to all our farmer’s market vendors at their new location between the Court House and the water; stick around for some tunes, some barbecue and some Beau’s Lug Tread beer. And be sure to say hi to Tim and Roshan, and wish them luck with their new truck.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Chemistry
“So you wanna be a rock and roll star?” Yes, Roger, I do. In fact, I was about 90 percent sure up until about 1996 that no other job would do. It didn't seem (at the time) all that unrealistic either...I’m not the most talented singer or songwriter or anything, but many of my heroes had achieved (in my mind) the nebulous prize of stardom not with talent alone, but with the right combination of talent, charisma, determination and sheer luck. I had determination in spades, a measure of talent and an admittedly self-perceived modicum of charisma, and luck? Luck can happen to anyone, right? So I figured I was a cinch. Pop stardom, in my theory, is about anticipation...It is the ability to look around the corner, guess what people will want to hear in six months, then work night and day perfecting it. If you guess correctly, the world will be waiting for you...and if you guess wrong? Well, you can always try again. I gave it a whirl. In those days, I used to wake up wondering how in the world I could be the one, the one voice in the crowd that would be heard. I used to fill every moment of down time chewing on lyrics in my head, trying to write the line that would stick, the phrase that would attack and keep on attacking until every last ear had been consumed. I tried so hard to say what people wanted to hear. Me and the boys had a band, and we tried real hard...you know the story. Jonathan quit, Bruce got married...here's the twist: Bruce got divorced and tried again, this time with a sense of urgency.
I moved to Austin in 1992 with intentions of regrouping the band that had formed the centerpiece of my high school pipedreams and finishing the story we'd all started to write all those years before. The core members had moved there and were still heavily involved in music. We had some talent, but more importantly, we had chemistry. I've jammed with people everywhere and everywhen since those days and have come to realize how precious a commodity that was. Chemistry is that magic thing that happens when you've got a few people jamming and something clicks, suddenly, you're out of the moment, it's like another person is there jamming with you, you know what everyone else is going to do, when they're going to do it, and it all sounds good. It sounds like hoodoo, but once you've had it, there ain't no going back. Every time I played with Kevin and Brandon from the first time back in high school I felt that feeling.
I've sometimes described music as an affliction, a recurring disease that attacks me anew every few years. I forget it's there for months at a time and then one day, WHAM, I've written a whole song and am dragging out my guitar and dusting it off to figure out the chords. These days I actually practice regularly just so I don't have to build my calluses back up when the mood strikes. But back then it was like a state of being. All I wanted to do was sing some how, some way, every single day.
I had another ace in the hole, as well. Kevin Allen, my guitarist and best friend in those days, was (and is) a bona fide guitar hero. This character would be sitting on the couch practicing guitar when I left for work in the morning and would often still be there, practicing when I got home eight hours later. For the record, he’s still playing; his band is recording their 6th full length record and in a successful 10+ year career, has toured just about every corner of the globe.
When I moved to Austin to regroup, it was on Kevin's invitation. He called me up, out of the blue, and asked me to come up to Austin to jam. I was at a low point, and his invitation sounded like the hand of an angel intervening to save me from harm. As we started to get to know each other again, a lot of that familiar chemistry came back. We grew into a five piece, and one day, practicing on the porch, we borrowed our landlord's name (Odus Krumly) and we had a band again.
Brandon, ever the oddball, suggested that we try a new direction, eschewing our punk, pop and psychedelic roots and forming a real country band. None of us had ever performed, or even regularly listened to country music, but growing up in Texas, all of us had been raised on the stuff. The idea was to try something new, to challenge ourselves and to stretch. Since country music was also not near and dear to us (at that time) we also felt no obligation to treat it with any respect. Our approach was brash and comedic, but as we delved deeper into the history and technique of the genre, it was eventually tinged and then filled with respect. I realized that what I originally thought of as witty parodies were actually quite true to a thread of country music that celebrates a smart-alecky turn of phrase like few other types of music, and that my voice was actually well suited to the style. As I often say, Texan is my first language. What had started as a parody became a journey of discovery and soon I was seeking out early recordings by Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Bob Wills. I was also thrilled to find many of those artists in my father's record collection, a discovery that brought me closer to someone I'd sometimes had trouble relating to in those years.
I always think back on those days with fondness. It all seemed so right. The songs were fun and fresh, the timing seemed right, and the dream was coming alive.
So what happened? Well, we still had to practice. We had to get shows and record demos. We still had to do the hard work of being musicians. This is what many people who have never been inside this world never see. Music, good music anyway, is hard work. I thought I had the will and determination, but then I started to listen to another voice in my head that was questioning my choices. I started to think about not what to say that would make me popular, but what to say that would make me feel good about what I had just said. And then one day it just stopped, the songs dried up. I had nothing left to say.
In 1996 I made a decision to devote my energies to cooking. I've written before about how I was discovering that cooking could also function for me as a creative outlet, but less than a year after leaving Austin and moving to San Francisco, something else happened. I began working with a cool guy, another former musician with a sense of humour and an oddball demeanor. We started talking about food in new ways and playing with ideas in a familiar way. We were jamming...and we had chemistry. Eric Tucker, the chef at Millennium taught me a lot more than how to be a good chef; he taught me that cooking could be just as fulfilling and just as creative as music had ever been. Within a couple of years of working together, we did a spot on the Food Network, published an internationally released cookbook and "played gigs" (read: catered for high profile events) in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. We had more than a few brushes with various types of celebrity, cooking for movie stars, musicians of note, even political names. I was actually living out my rock star fantasy in the cooking world, something I'd never even imagined...who knew? When I first started cooking the closest thing we had to a celebrity chef was Julia Childs, hardly an adequate predictor for the likes of Ramsey, Bourdain, Legasse, Flay and numerous others that were setting out to make chefs into household names in the years to come. My brushes with this culture were bizarre and comedic, with Eric and I laughing at the culture the same way the guys in Odus Krumly laughed our way through our Country Music, it was fun and fresh and our dream was coming alive.
When the time came, I outgrew Millennium, the same way I'd outgrown the music scene in Austin. Another relationship with a special chemistry beyond what I could have imagined became and still is the best jam session for me yet, with my wife, Nicole. These days, she and I have settled in a small town south of Ottawa and started our own band. Brent and Jenn Kelaher, our business partners, are jamming along with us and the branch is a special place for reasons all those other jam sessions could never have touched. We are saying something we think is important; that thing that I could never communicate in my songs is at the very core of what we do here, supporting local foods, organic farmers and the importance of community. Doing not what we think is popular, but what we think is right. And just as everything is starting to settle into place, the music is back in my life again as well, less like an affliction this time, and more like an old friend.
In 2006, ten years after I'd written a song any better than a two line jingle, it came back. I was doing laundry one minute and the next thing I knew, it was two hours later and I was putting the finishing touches on 'Walkin Sam', a song for my father, the guy whose music collection had finally helped us mend the troubled relationship of my teenaged years. The song is about charity, goodwill and community and finally gave voice to the things I couldn't seem to say all those years before. I've been writing regularly since then, and it's good to be in a place where that feels right. At the branch, in my cooking, in my writing and in my music, I can finally say what I need to, not what I feel like I have to.
Music, cooking, writing, all these things are connected for me. They are creative, special; they help me to reach across what is small in physical space, at times, but can be an incalculable distance when measured in understanding. The food is a way to give nourishment, to show care; the music, a way to provide joy; the writing, a way to let other people know that they are not alone...that someone else has thoughts that tumble through their head, has stories to tell and hopes and dreams to share. And that chemistry, the jamming, and the music that comes when it's working...to me, when you hear that other person, when you feel that magic, like I do almost every day at the branch, that's just how you know it's right.
I moved to Austin in 1992 with intentions of regrouping the band that had formed the centerpiece of my high school pipedreams and finishing the story we'd all started to write all those years before. The core members had moved there and were still heavily involved in music. We had some talent, but more importantly, we had chemistry. I've jammed with people everywhere and everywhen since those days and have come to realize how precious a commodity that was. Chemistry is that magic thing that happens when you've got a few people jamming and something clicks, suddenly, you're out of the moment, it's like another person is there jamming with you, you know what everyone else is going to do, when they're going to do it, and it all sounds good. It sounds like hoodoo, but once you've had it, there ain't no going back. Every time I played with Kevin and Brandon from the first time back in high school I felt that feeling.
I've sometimes described music as an affliction, a recurring disease that attacks me anew every few years. I forget it's there for months at a time and then one day, WHAM, I've written a whole song and am dragging out my guitar and dusting it off to figure out the chords. These days I actually practice regularly just so I don't have to build my calluses back up when the mood strikes. But back then it was like a state of being. All I wanted to do was sing some how, some way, every single day.
I had another ace in the hole, as well. Kevin Allen, my guitarist and best friend in those days, was (and is) a bona fide guitar hero. This character would be sitting on the couch practicing guitar when I left for work in the morning and would often still be there, practicing when I got home eight hours later. For the record, he’s still playing; his band is recording their 6th full length record and in a successful 10+ year career, has toured just about every corner of the globe.
When I moved to Austin to regroup, it was on Kevin's invitation. He called me up, out of the blue, and asked me to come up to Austin to jam. I was at a low point, and his invitation sounded like the hand of an angel intervening to save me from harm. As we started to get to know each other again, a lot of that familiar chemistry came back. We grew into a five piece, and one day, practicing on the porch, we borrowed our landlord's name (Odus Krumly) and we had a band again.
Brandon, ever the oddball, suggested that we try a new direction, eschewing our punk, pop and psychedelic roots and forming a real country band. None of us had ever performed, or even regularly listened to country music, but growing up in Texas, all of us had been raised on the stuff. The idea was to try something new, to challenge ourselves and to stretch. Since country music was also not near and dear to us (at that time) we also felt no obligation to treat it with any respect. Our approach was brash and comedic, but as we delved deeper into the history and technique of the genre, it was eventually tinged and then filled with respect. I realized that what I originally thought of as witty parodies were actually quite true to a thread of country music that celebrates a smart-alecky turn of phrase like few other types of music, and that my voice was actually well suited to the style. As I often say, Texan is my first language. What had started as a parody became a journey of discovery and soon I was seeking out early recordings by Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Bob Wills. I was also thrilled to find many of those artists in my father's record collection, a discovery that brought me closer to someone I'd sometimes had trouble relating to in those years.
I always think back on those days with fondness. It all seemed so right. The songs were fun and fresh, the timing seemed right, and the dream was coming alive.
So what happened? Well, we still had to practice. We had to get shows and record demos. We still had to do the hard work of being musicians. This is what many people who have never been inside this world never see. Music, good music anyway, is hard work. I thought I had the will and determination, but then I started to listen to another voice in my head that was questioning my choices. I started to think about not what to say that would make me popular, but what to say that would make me feel good about what I had just said. And then one day it just stopped, the songs dried up. I had nothing left to say.
In 1996 I made a decision to devote my energies to cooking. I've written before about how I was discovering that cooking could also function for me as a creative outlet, but less than a year after leaving Austin and moving to San Francisco, something else happened. I began working with a cool guy, another former musician with a sense of humour and an oddball demeanor. We started talking about food in new ways and playing with ideas in a familiar way. We were jamming...and we had chemistry. Eric Tucker, the chef at Millennium taught me a lot more than how to be a good chef; he taught me that cooking could be just as fulfilling and just as creative as music had ever been. Within a couple of years of working together, we did a spot on the Food Network, published an internationally released cookbook and "played gigs" (read: catered for high profile events) in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. We had more than a few brushes with various types of celebrity, cooking for movie stars, musicians of note, even political names. I was actually living out my rock star fantasy in the cooking world, something I'd never even imagined...who knew? When I first started cooking the closest thing we had to a celebrity chef was Julia Childs, hardly an adequate predictor for the likes of Ramsey, Bourdain, Legasse, Flay and numerous others that were setting out to make chefs into household names in the years to come. My brushes with this culture were bizarre and comedic, with Eric and I laughing at the culture the same way the guys in Odus Krumly laughed our way through our Country Music, it was fun and fresh and our dream was coming alive.
When the time came, I outgrew Millennium, the same way I'd outgrown the music scene in Austin. Another relationship with a special chemistry beyond what I could have imagined became and still is the best jam session for me yet, with my wife, Nicole. These days, she and I have settled in a small town south of Ottawa and started our own band. Brent and Jenn Kelaher, our business partners, are jamming along with us and the branch is a special place for reasons all those other jam sessions could never have touched. We are saying something we think is important; that thing that I could never communicate in my songs is at the very core of what we do here, supporting local foods, organic farmers and the importance of community. Doing not what we think is popular, but what we think is right. And just as everything is starting to settle into place, the music is back in my life again as well, less like an affliction this time, and more like an old friend.
In 2006, ten years after I'd written a song any better than a two line jingle, it came back. I was doing laundry one minute and the next thing I knew, it was two hours later and I was putting the finishing touches on 'Walkin Sam', a song for my father, the guy whose music collection had finally helped us mend the troubled relationship of my teenaged years. The song is about charity, goodwill and community and finally gave voice to the things I couldn't seem to say all those years before. I've been writing regularly since then, and it's good to be in a place where that feels right. At the branch, in my cooking, in my writing and in my music, I can finally say what I need to, not what I feel like I have to.
Music, cooking, writing, all these things are connected for me. They are creative, special; they help me to reach across what is small in physical space, at times, but can be an incalculable distance when measured in understanding. The food is a way to give nourishment, to show care; the music, a way to provide joy; the writing, a way to let other people know that they are not alone...that someone else has thoughts that tumble through their head, has stories to tell and hopes and dreams to share. And that chemistry, the jamming, and the music that comes when it's working...to me, when you hear that other person, when you feel that magic, like I do almost every day at the branch, that's just how you know it's right.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Global Flavour, Local Colour
“Bruce, you must visit Italy, It Is Your Home.” Those words came to me from an eccentric and charismatic gentleman of great taste named Sante Losio. I met him through his company, Fiume wines; he was importing great organic, Italian wines and our restaurant, Millennium, had one of, if not the largest, best and most thorough exclusively organic wine lists in North America. On the evening in question he was enjoying his first vegan fine dining experience, and like many new diners at that restaurant, was learning that vegan and fine dining were not mutually exclusive terms. I was asked to join him for dinner that evening as the most logical liaison between our food and wine list. While working as Sous chef for the restaurant, I had also been enjoying the “job” of learning about wines and specifically our particular wine list, even to the point where a great deal of decision making regarding it had become my domain. In fact, it had been my suggestion that we take our list, which had been well represented for organic selections up until that point, that last step to becoming a specifically organic themed list. I even wrote the mission statement which they still use:
Millennium is committed to providing the highest quality epicurean experience with a minimum impact to our environment. Naturally, this mission extends to our wine list. Many people are unaware that wine made from organically grown grapes is not a new product that exists only in fringe markets. "Organic" is simply a new name for an artisanal farming method; in fact, the great winemaking regions of Europe would not have survived the centuries without the practice of sustainable agriculture. There are many names on our list that may not be familiar to you, but even more surprising will be the names that are. Many of the world's top wine producers are coming clean about "clean" farming and this list will grow to include the finest of their wines. To the best of our knowledge this is the most comprehensive completely organic wine list on earth which, in our opinion, makes it the best wine list as well.
Of all my accomplishments in the industry, outside of the branch, I am probably the most proud of that achievement. As I have written on this blog and as I wrote in “The Artful Vegan,” Millennium’s second cookbook of which I was a co-author, bringing the knowledge and understanding of organics to any larger audience was, and is, my life’s work.
Sante Losio is a fellow traveler in this journey; his commitment to organic wines was deep and heartfelt...an emotional act by a rational man. Sante, his heart, and his family are from Italy. When I share the anecdote of our meeting with friends, I imitate his rich Italian accent, but cannot reproduce the gravitas or the intention behind the words. For Sante to tell me Italy was my home was for him to claim me as one of his own, a comrade, a brother in arms.
When I was buying wine at Millennium, Italy had over 54,000 hectares of organic vineyards compared to a few hundred in the entire U.S. Italy is also home to a movement called Slow Food, a name which speaks for itself. Though I am not Italian, outside of the vegetarian world, the majority of my fine dining training is in Italian kitchens; I am proud of this experience and feel (I hope fairly) that it gives me an insight in to at least a small bit of Italy’s culture. In my experience, the Italian cooking tradition values flavour over presentation, freshness over technique (without diminishing the importance of presentation or technique) and quality of the basic ingredients above all else. Italian chefs are brand snobs, quick to ask which canned tomato or tinned anchovy were used, which prosciutto, which parmesan... This is to say, I don’t think it was my technique that impressed him. I think it was our ingredients.
Millennium could be described as an extension of the farmer’s market. Our produce was some of the best in the world. Northern California has a long growing season, rich soil and an even richer recent history of organic farming. From the 60s to the present, what started as a handful of environmentalists ‘returning to the land’ has turned into a giant industry where small farmers are celebrated and elevated to positions of honor in a thriving food culture that values variety, flavor, freshness and a loving hand over the thrift, travel-ability and consistency of size and color that seems to govern the majority of the North American vegetable business status quo. And in that market, Millennium, a vegetable-focused restaurant, was monster; we bought directly from farmers and producers who were at the very top of their game, and, thanks to the unwavering leadership of our chef, Eric Tucker, were toe to toe with the top restaurants in California when it came to one on one farmer/chef relationships.
In my experience most people have forgotten or never experienced the difference the qualities that good local organic vegetables bring to food. I’ve heard people who taste these foods say ‘it tastes like something I had when I was a kid.’ And it does, it tastes like a memory of how good food used to be.
After meeting Sante, I was invited to participate in the first Italian Organic Wine Conference (a precursor to EcoWineFest) in Los Angeles as a judge. Our visit also included a dinner that paired these wines with a five course white truffle dinner. White truffles from Alba in Italy are one of the most prized foods on earth, often costing thousands of dollars per pound. If you’ve experienced them, you know why, if you don’t, I can’t possibly explain it. As a result of this event, and our meeting, Millennium was asked to participate in a series of dinners in the San Francisco area also featuring white truffles with a five course dinner and wine pairing of our own. I’d love to share that menu with you, but all I remember are a yuba braciole (it’s a long story), an Italian Merlot by Fasoli Gino, and a porcini flambé, which we presented in the dining room with bright, giant leaping flames. I also remember the overwhelming aroma of truffles seeping in and out of every pore of my being. I was so elated by the evening that I, to this day, value it as the single greatest cooking experience of my life.
When preparing for a wine pairing dinner, in this case a wine and truffle pairing dinner, there is a creative or brainstorming session that precedes the event. We smell, taste, discuss, imagine and relate. We open our minds to ideas that help us deepen our understanding of the wine and of the foods involved. What food makes this wine better? What is about this wine that makes this food better? We are creative, yes, but here's the thing, we must also look to tradition. We want to explore something new, but to do that well, we must also look back to the classic pairings and learn; there’s usually a reason some wines are never paired with some foods as well as a reason why some wines are always paired with others. To not acknowledge and learn from that would be to pretend that we, like the industrialist posing as a farmer, knows what is best without regarding the importance of what has gone before.
Millennium often offered dinners that paired excellent wines with our unique food; it was a great way to not only showcase our creativity, but to celebrate a small winery which usually meant celebrating both a farmer and an artist (two of my favorite things) at the same time. The synergy of wine and food, combined with the opportunity to create something new by their combination is also one of the most satisfying aspects of the trade of cooking. I remember each of these events fondly, as they were, more often than not, also a milestone in my personal journey.
Another milestone in that journey came when I finally followed Sante’s advice and visited Italy. Nicole and I spent three weeks in 2003 visiting Venice, Milan, and working on small farms in Tuscany and Piedmont. We were in Tuscany for the olive harvest and our hostess graciously treated us to a taste rivaling that of the white truffle, a fresh pressed olive oil at the source. I’ll never forget that flavour or the sweet herbaceous smell produced by burning the pruned branches from the ancient olive trees mingling with the salty Mediterranean air. We watched the sunset over the sea each night and worked each morning in a grove that had been tended by human hands for longer than the entire history of the country of my birth. Later, in Piedmont, we spent an entire day peeling chestnuts for a chestnut butter that, when it was finally ready, made the hours of burnt fingertips being torn by stubborn shells seem nonexistent.
Thanks to Sante’s advice, I had learned something about Italy by visiting. I learned that it is a place where tradition and an understanding of food are crucial. The farmers of an area know how to make the best products that can be produced by their patch of soil, because they’ve had generations of trial and error to sort it out. How egotistical it is for us to think our “industrial” farming could be superior to the techniques arrived at in this manner! The followers of traditional foodways know that the best drop of oil is the first, that the chestnut butter will be worth the work, that the best wine is made from a certain local grape, and that the cheese from this cow on this hill will need this much salt and that much time to age.
After visiting Europe, I came back to Canada with a vision; an idea of an old world restaurant in the new world. The branch is not an Italian restaurant. I do make fresh pastas and breads, I’m even curing my own prosciutto; but I also serve recipes from around the world, North America is not the old world, it is a melting pot of cultures and to not acknowledge and celebrate the wealth of recipes we have to choose from would be just as silly as eating at a McDonald’s in Paris. But we can acknowledge the old world and it’s tradition in another and perhaps more meaningful way: in our ingredients.
As I said, the branch is not an Italian restaurant, but I do serve spaghetti and meatballs, a dish which is at once Italian and new world, almost a symbol of the place at which those two worlds collide. My spaghetti is not Rusticella D’Abruzzo, arguably the world’s best product of that class; rather it is organic and Canadian, and still excellent. My tomatoes are not from San Marzano, they are Thomas’ Utopia, an Ontario company. My meatballs are made with local beef and my cheese is not from Parma, it is from the Oxford Mills Creamery, about 10 minutes from the restaurant’s back door. It is a simple dish, exactly like you’d find anywhere and yet nothing like one you’d find any where else; it is not expensive, and in many ways it is the perfect expression of my philosophy: simple, honest, local, comforting, at once traditional and completely new, and prepared with love and care.
When I met my business partners Brent and Jenn Kelaher, I knew I needed to prepare a meal that would show them that I had the chops, and that partnering with me would not be just some crazy idea. I could have wowed them with one of the baroque vegan presentations from my cookbook; I could even have presented white truffles with a porcini flambé. But instead I served them...you guessed it, spaghetti and meatballs. Nearly two years have passed since that meal and we are all still pushing forward and sharing that vision with whoever cares to see it. It is a vision of new world food with old world care; a bit of tradition with a dash of creativity, or, as we like to say, global flavour and local colour.
Later this month, I am excited to announce, we will be presenting our first wine pairing dinner with Featherstone Vineyards, an Ontario winery that seems to share some of our vision. They are an insecticide and pesticide free vineyard (unless you count Amadeus, the vineyard’s falcon and in house pest control system...) They’ve even taken the gutsy move of cellaring some of their wines in Canadian oak. I’m looking forward to celebrating their courage and craft and to enjoying an evening none of us will forget.
I still appreciate what Sante said, and value our friendship, but these days, in retrospect, I think he got it just wrong...what he should have said was “Bruce, you must visit Italy, learn from it, and bring it home!”
Millennium is committed to providing the highest quality epicurean experience with a minimum impact to our environment. Naturally, this mission extends to our wine list. Many people are unaware that wine made from organically grown grapes is not a new product that exists only in fringe markets. "Organic" is simply a new name for an artisanal farming method; in fact, the great winemaking regions of Europe would not have survived the centuries without the practice of sustainable agriculture. There are many names on our list that may not be familiar to you, but even more surprising will be the names that are. Many of the world's top wine producers are coming clean about "clean" farming and this list will grow to include the finest of their wines. To the best of our knowledge this is the most comprehensive completely organic wine list on earth which, in our opinion, makes it the best wine list as well.
Of all my accomplishments in the industry, outside of the branch, I am probably the most proud of that achievement. As I have written on this blog and as I wrote in “The Artful Vegan,” Millennium’s second cookbook of which I was a co-author, bringing the knowledge and understanding of organics to any larger audience was, and is, my life’s work.
Sante Losio is a fellow traveler in this journey; his commitment to organic wines was deep and heartfelt...an emotional act by a rational man. Sante, his heart, and his family are from Italy. When I share the anecdote of our meeting with friends, I imitate his rich Italian accent, but cannot reproduce the gravitas or the intention behind the words. For Sante to tell me Italy was my home was for him to claim me as one of his own, a comrade, a brother in arms.
When I was buying wine at Millennium, Italy had over 54,000 hectares of organic vineyards compared to a few hundred in the entire U.S. Italy is also home to a movement called Slow Food, a name which speaks for itself. Though I am not Italian, outside of the vegetarian world, the majority of my fine dining training is in Italian kitchens; I am proud of this experience and feel (I hope fairly) that it gives me an insight in to at least a small bit of Italy’s culture. In my experience, the Italian cooking tradition values flavour over presentation, freshness over technique (without diminishing the importance of presentation or technique) and quality of the basic ingredients above all else. Italian chefs are brand snobs, quick to ask which canned tomato or tinned anchovy were used, which prosciutto, which parmesan... This is to say, I don’t think it was my technique that impressed him. I think it was our ingredients.
Millennium could be described as an extension of the farmer’s market. Our produce was some of the best in the world. Northern California has a long growing season, rich soil and an even richer recent history of organic farming. From the 60s to the present, what started as a handful of environmentalists ‘returning to the land’ has turned into a giant industry where small farmers are celebrated and elevated to positions of honor in a thriving food culture that values variety, flavor, freshness and a loving hand over the thrift, travel-ability and consistency of size and color that seems to govern the majority of the North American vegetable business status quo. And in that market, Millennium, a vegetable-focused restaurant, was monster; we bought directly from farmers and producers who were at the very top of their game, and, thanks to the unwavering leadership of our chef, Eric Tucker, were toe to toe with the top restaurants in California when it came to one on one farmer/chef relationships.
In my experience most people have forgotten or never experienced the difference the qualities that good local organic vegetables bring to food. I’ve heard people who taste these foods say ‘it tastes like something I had when I was a kid.’ And it does, it tastes like a memory of how good food used to be.
After meeting Sante, I was invited to participate in the first Italian Organic Wine Conference (a precursor to EcoWineFest) in Los Angeles as a judge. Our visit also included a dinner that paired these wines with a five course white truffle dinner. White truffles from Alba in Italy are one of the most prized foods on earth, often costing thousands of dollars per pound. If you’ve experienced them, you know why, if you don’t, I can’t possibly explain it. As a result of this event, and our meeting, Millennium was asked to participate in a series of dinners in the San Francisco area also featuring white truffles with a five course dinner and wine pairing of our own. I’d love to share that menu with you, but all I remember are a yuba braciole (it’s a long story), an Italian Merlot by Fasoli Gino, and a porcini flambé, which we presented in the dining room with bright, giant leaping flames. I also remember the overwhelming aroma of truffles seeping in and out of every pore of my being. I was so elated by the evening that I, to this day, value it as the single greatest cooking experience of my life.
When preparing for a wine pairing dinner, in this case a wine and truffle pairing dinner, there is a creative or brainstorming session that precedes the event. We smell, taste, discuss, imagine and relate. We open our minds to ideas that help us deepen our understanding of the wine and of the foods involved. What food makes this wine better? What is about this wine that makes this food better? We are creative, yes, but here's the thing, we must also look to tradition. We want to explore something new, but to do that well, we must also look back to the classic pairings and learn; there’s usually a reason some wines are never paired with some foods as well as a reason why some wines are always paired with others. To not acknowledge and learn from that would be to pretend that we, like the industrialist posing as a farmer, knows what is best without regarding the importance of what has gone before.
Millennium often offered dinners that paired excellent wines with our unique food; it was a great way to not only showcase our creativity, but to celebrate a small winery which usually meant celebrating both a farmer and an artist (two of my favorite things) at the same time. The synergy of wine and food, combined with the opportunity to create something new by their combination is also one of the most satisfying aspects of the trade of cooking. I remember each of these events fondly, as they were, more often than not, also a milestone in my personal journey.
Another milestone in that journey came when I finally followed Sante’s advice and visited Italy. Nicole and I spent three weeks in 2003 visiting Venice, Milan, and working on small farms in Tuscany and Piedmont. We were in Tuscany for the olive harvest and our hostess graciously treated us to a taste rivaling that of the white truffle, a fresh pressed olive oil at the source. I’ll never forget that flavour or the sweet herbaceous smell produced by burning the pruned branches from the ancient olive trees mingling with the salty Mediterranean air. We watched the sunset over the sea each night and worked each morning in a grove that had been tended by human hands for longer than the entire history of the country of my birth. Later, in Piedmont, we spent an entire day peeling chestnuts for a chestnut butter that, when it was finally ready, made the hours of burnt fingertips being torn by stubborn shells seem nonexistent.
Thanks to Sante’s advice, I had learned something about Italy by visiting. I learned that it is a place where tradition and an understanding of food are crucial. The farmers of an area know how to make the best products that can be produced by their patch of soil, because they’ve had generations of trial and error to sort it out. How egotistical it is for us to think our “industrial” farming could be superior to the techniques arrived at in this manner! The followers of traditional foodways know that the best drop of oil is the first, that the chestnut butter will be worth the work, that the best wine is made from a certain local grape, and that the cheese from this cow on this hill will need this much salt and that much time to age.
After visiting Europe, I came back to Canada with a vision; an idea of an old world restaurant in the new world. The branch is not an Italian restaurant. I do make fresh pastas and breads, I’m even curing my own prosciutto; but I also serve recipes from around the world, North America is not the old world, it is a melting pot of cultures and to not acknowledge and celebrate the wealth of recipes we have to choose from would be just as silly as eating at a McDonald’s in Paris. But we can acknowledge the old world and it’s tradition in another and perhaps more meaningful way: in our ingredients.
As I said, the branch is not an Italian restaurant, but I do serve spaghetti and meatballs, a dish which is at once Italian and new world, almost a symbol of the place at which those two worlds collide. My spaghetti is not Rusticella D’Abruzzo, arguably the world’s best product of that class; rather it is organic and Canadian, and still excellent. My tomatoes are not from San Marzano, they are Thomas’ Utopia, an Ontario company. My meatballs are made with local beef and my cheese is not from Parma, it is from the Oxford Mills Creamery, about 10 minutes from the restaurant’s back door. It is a simple dish, exactly like you’d find anywhere and yet nothing like one you’d find any where else; it is not expensive, and in many ways it is the perfect expression of my philosophy: simple, honest, local, comforting, at once traditional and completely new, and prepared with love and care.
When I met my business partners Brent and Jenn Kelaher, I knew I needed to prepare a meal that would show them that I had the chops, and that partnering with me would not be just some crazy idea. I could have wowed them with one of the baroque vegan presentations from my cookbook; I could even have presented white truffles with a porcini flambé. But instead I served them...you guessed it, spaghetti and meatballs. Nearly two years have passed since that meal and we are all still pushing forward and sharing that vision with whoever cares to see it. It is a vision of new world food with old world care; a bit of tradition with a dash of creativity, or, as we like to say, global flavour and local colour.
Later this month, I am excited to announce, we will be presenting our first wine pairing dinner with Featherstone Vineyards, an Ontario winery that seems to share some of our vision. They are an insecticide and pesticide free vineyard (unless you count Amadeus, the vineyard’s falcon and in house pest control system...) They’ve even taken the gutsy move of cellaring some of their wines in Canadian oak. I’m looking forward to celebrating their courage and craft and to enjoying an evening none of us will forget.
I still appreciate what Sante said, and value our friendship, but these days, in retrospect, I think he got it just wrong...what he should have said was “Bruce, you must visit Italy, learn from it, and bring it home!”
Monday, February 11, 2008
working copy, Valentines menu, 2008
Feast of Freya, 2008
pre-game:
Barcelona nights: marinated olives, toasted almonds, roasted peppers, anchovies, figs and dates stuffed with house-smoked bacon
(fino sherry)
first base:
Arugula salad with grilled blood oranges, pine nut brittle, lavender-vanilla aioli
(riesling)
or
Wild mushroom cappuccino with truffle foam
(gamay noir)
second base:
Oysters agrodolce: 3 fresh Malpeque oysters moistened with chocolate sweet and sour sauce, barbecued on the half shell and served warm
(pinot grigio)
or
Teriyaki lamb brochette: honey-soy glazed Aubin Farm lamb, grilled and served over arame, burdock and carrot kimpira with wasabi and sesame “seven secrets” oil and pickled ginger
(sake)
time out:
Lemon-ginger sorbet with poppy seed and rosemary biscotti
(prosecco)
third base:
River Bend Farm duck breast, pan seared with Uncle Bruce’s magic love dust (coffee, chili, mustard seed, fennel seed, coriander and peppercorns) served with port-raspberry demi-glace over a love nest of crispy shoestring fried leeks, potatoes, beets and parsnips
(cabernet)
or
Halibut poached in a lemongrass, damiana, ginseng and coconut love potion served over jasmine rice with bamboo shoots, bok choy, hearts of palm and grilled pineapple
(gruner veltliner)
home run:
Chocolate-chili mole cake with a molten chocolate center, avocado sorbet and smoked cherries
(port)
or
Saffron crepe with rosewater ice cream, pistachios, mandarins and spiced sugar twists
(icewine)
pre-game:
Barcelona nights: marinated olives, toasted almonds, roasted peppers, anchovies, figs and dates stuffed with house-smoked bacon
(fino sherry)
first base:
Arugula salad with grilled blood oranges, pine nut brittle, lavender-vanilla aioli
(riesling)
or
Wild mushroom cappuccino with truffle foam
(gamay noir)
second base:
Oysters agrodolce: 3 fresh Malpeque oysters moistened with chocolate sweet and sour sauce, barbecued on the half shell and served warm
(pinot grigio)
or
Teriyaki lamb brochette: honey-soy glazed Aubin Farm lamb, grilled and served over arame, burdock and carrot kimpira with wasabi and sesame “seven secrets” oil and pickled ginger
(sake)
time out:
Lemon-ginger sorbet with poppy seed and rosemary biscotti
(prosecco)
third base:
River Bend Farm duck breast, pan seared with Uncle Bruce’s magic love dust (coffee, chili, mustard seed, fennel seed, coriander and peppercorns) served with port-raspberry demi-glace over a love nest of crispy shoestring fried leeks, potatoes, beets and parsnips
(cabernet)
or
Halibut poached in a lemongrass, damiana, ginseng and coconut love potion served over jasmine rice with bamboo shoots, bok choy, hearts of palm and grilled pineapple
(gruner veltliner)
home run:
Chocolate-chili mole cake with a molten chocolate center, avocado sorbet and smoked cherries
(port)
or
Saffron crepe with rosewater ice cream, pistachios, mandarins and spiced sugar twists
(icewine)
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
For My Mom
I love quiche. There, I said it. I loved it before I heard the expression “real men don’t eat quiche.” Admittedly, I hid my love for a short period after I heard that phrase but eventually I outgrew the need to prove my manhood by meeting some silly ideal propped up by someone who had obviously never tried my mom’s quiche. My mom makes a spinach quiche that will stop your heart dead in its tracks. Perfect flaky Crisco crust, layers of onions and bacon, Swiss cheese, and a custard of eggs, spinach and cream cheese. She sprinkles on paprika for color and bakes it just right. In my considerable experience eating her quiche, she’s never made a dry one, an under-salted one, an over-salted one or a runny one. It is always just right. And I’ve never seen her use a recipe. She has one, mind you, she made me a copy when I moved to California, seeing as how I wouldn’t be able to eat hers out there. I couldn’t bring myself to do it though. Oh, I’ve made my Bruce variations, Vegan ones with olives and tofu, vegetarian ones with smoked peppers and fried breadcrumbs to replace the bacon. Even now, back in the omnivore world, with good organic bacon and the finest cheeses in the world at my fingertips. I still, rarely if ever can bring myself to make mom’s quiche. And no, it’s not just my fear of Crisco; there are plenty of good organic non trans-fat shortenings available. There’s one ingredient I don’t have and can’t replace. You know what it is. Mom’s love.
You’ve all tasted it; if not mom’s, maybe dad’s...maybe your favorite aunt or granny. I don’t know who cooked that magic meal for you. But somebody did. For me it was my mom.
Earlier this month I went back to Texas to visit my family. My folks laid out a spread from the moment we arrived and tried to take us to every restaurant, BBQ joint, taco stand, kolache house or burger and fries pub that they could to impress us with Texas’ greatest asset. We were groaning and shopping for bigger clothes but couldn’t say no; it was too much, but too good. At one point, I told Nicole, this is how they show us love. It was a simple true statement, but I didn’t realize until I said it out loud how true it was.
Our first great relationship in our lives is with our parents; by bringing us into this world there is a tacit agreement that they will provide food and shelter, keep us warm and not let us shoot our eye out with a BB gun. Parenting is nature’s original charity. It is, although potentially rewarding in increasingly theoretical ways (the statistical decline in the percentage of children taking care of aging parents being an example), and will always be a huge investment with no guarantee of return. Well, other than the overwhelming sense of relief and accomplishment most parents seem to feel when their teenager finally moves out of their house. Parenting is, by many measures a series of gifts; food, shelter, clothing, bicycles, slinkies, Legos and puppies, as required by the child, over time. But food, or nourishment and the ability to grow, is the first and greatest of these gifts.
If survival is the body of our primary instinct then parenting and procreation are its legs. In my mind, it is no coincidence that we associate these two primary human biological functions with the mysterious and difficult to precisely define word (feeling? emotion? concept?) love. And just as parenting is so tied to the providing of food, it is no coincidence that our love for our mates is also characterized by rituals that revolve around eating. Think about it: “Dinner and a movie?” “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” “Bringing home the bacon.” Meeting the parents over dinner, the wedding feast... Food and love are so closely tied together in our nature that it is impossible to separate them.
While I was in Texas I got to see my niece and nephew who are approaching 3 and 5. They are beautiful, intelligent and boisterous little spoiled brats; manipulative, aggravating and impossible not to love intensely. Food is the ultimate bargaining chip with these adorable monsters. A well timed ice cream or ‘eggy’ can mean the difference between a world of love and a world of pain. I’ve definitely noticed in my own relationships how most fights begin with hunger and end over a decent meal. Food and love are built of the same biological stuff.
When my mom bakes a quiche, she brings something to it that no McDonald’s deep fryer can ever provide. Charity. An open heart. An honest and careful desire to provide sustenance to someone to whom she made a quiet promise many years ago when she realized she was about to meet a new and lifelong friend. Man, I love quiche.
--Chef Bruce
You’ve all tasted it; if not mom’s, maybe dad’s...maybe your favorite aunt or granny. I don’t know who cooked that magic meal for you. But somebody did. For me it was my mom.
Earlier this month I went back to Texas to visit my family. My folks laid out a spread from the moment we arrived and tried to take us to every restaurant, BBQ joint, taco stand, kolache house or burger and fries pub that they could to impress us with Texas’ greatest asset. We were groaning and shopping for bigger clothes but couldn’t say no; it was too much, but too good. At one point, I told Nicole, this is how they show us love. It was a simple true statement, but I didn’t realize until I said it out loud how true it was.
Our first great relationship in our lives is with our parents; by bringing us into this world there is a tacit agreement that they will provide food and shelter, keep us warm and not let us shoot our eye out with a BB gun. Parenting is nature’s original charity. It is, although potentially rewarding in increasingly theoretical ways (the statistical decline in the percentage of children taking care of aging parents being an example), and will always be a huge investment with no guarantee of return. Well, other than the overwhelming sense of relief and accomplishment most parents seem to feel when their teenager finally moves out of their house. Parenting is, by many measures a series of gifts; food, shelter, clothing, bicycles, slinkies, Legos and puppies, as required by the child, over time. But food, or nourishment and the ability to grow, is the first and greatest of these gifts.
If survival is the body of our primary instinct then parenting and procreation are its legs. In my mind, it is no coincidence that we associate these two primary human biological functions with the mysterious and difficult to precisely define word (feeling? emotion? concept?) love. And just as parenting is so tied to the providing of food, it is no coincidence that our love for our mates is also characterized by rituals that revolve around eating. Think about it: “Dinner and a movie?” “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” “Bringing home the bacon.” Meeting the parents over dinner, the wedding feast... Food and love are so closely tied together in our nature that it is impossible to separate them.
While I was in Texas I got to see my niece and nephew who are approaching 3 and 5. They are beautiful, intelligent and boisterous little spoiled brats; manipulative, aggravating and impossible not to love intensely. Food is the ultimate bargaining chip with these adorable monsters. A well timed ice cream or ‘eggy’ can mean the difference between a world of love and a world of pain. I’ve definitely noticed in my own relationships how most fights begin with hunger and end over a decent meal. Food and love are built of the same biological stuff.
When my mom bakes a quiche, she brings something to it that no McDonald’s deep fryer can ever provide. Charity. An open heart. An honest and careful desire to provide sustenance to someone to whom she made a quiet promise many years ago when she realized she was about to meet a new and lifelong friend. Man, I love quiche.
--Chef Bruce
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