Chilihead

It’s hard to explain. If you love chilies the way I do, there is nothing to explain, if you don’t, well, like I said, it’s hard to explain...I guess that, for me, there is familiarity, after all, my mother pulled no punches with her chili con carne (it was made with cayenne pepper-40,000 Scoville Heat Units; the measurement for how hot a pepper is, determined by how many times a pepper is diluted in water before losing its heat..., her chili also included jalapeno-6,000 SHU, and ancho chili powder-1,000 SHU...); every Mexican restaurant we ate at in my childhood (and there were many) served chips and salsa in bottomless baskets and bowls before the meal and the salsa (jalapeno) was never made any more mild for the children, nor were the enchiladas, the chilies rellenos, the huevos rancheros, or the burritos (Tex-Mex restaurants use a lot of jalapeno, poblano-1,000 SHU, serrano-20,000 SHU, pasilla-1,000 SHU...) My brother and I discovered a Thai place in our late teens that would deliver a powerful blow if you requested it (Thai finger peppers-90,000 SHU, in sufficient quantities to humble the toughest jalapeno nibbler)—The local Chinese restaurant had a hot pepper in the Kung Pao chicken that we were advised to remove before eating (Cumari-40,000 SHU) but hey, what fun is that? The Chicken Oil Company served the ‘Death Burger” (jalapenos, again, and Tabasco sauce-6,000 SHU), Loretta, our Cajun friend, made a powerful gumbo that would burn like a tire pile (she used cayenne, black and white pepper, fresh serranos and jalapenos and yes, more cayenne)...Breakfast, lunch and dinner, where I grew up, there was always a place for chilies.

But why? When my wife sees me sweating and tearing up, nose running, unable to speak, she is dumbfounded; in fact, most people who don’t share my love of the glorious pain of pepper eating seem to share this curious amazement. But the ones who do...well, lets just say that we understand. But how can I explain it? A scientist would calmly point out that when the capsaicin interacts with the taste buds, the nerves send a signal to the brain that the mouth is being burned, the brain reacts by turning on some defense mechanisms; it increases the heart rate, speeds up the blood flow, increase perspiration, and releases endorphins. Endorphins, you may know, are the gooood stuff...Endorphins are the drugs your body keeps around to make you feel good enough to keep functioning after an injury, which was probably a pretty important survival tool for our jungle dwelling predator-prone ancestors...for the modern version of us, for chili-heads, (...and skydivers, and roller coaster riders...) endorphins are also an awesome cheap (legal, easy, non-toxic...) buzz. That’s right, we’re sitting at the table with you, munching on our peppers and getting high.

My first encounter with real extreme heat was that Thai place I mentioned earlier. I grew up in Bryan/College Station, Texas, a college town and home of Texas A&M University, a large and well regarded institution that drew (and draws) a diverse international student body with its excellent engineering, agricultural, as well as many other programs. This diversity was, although not always exactly overt in our community, a small and interesting presence that brought with it some unusual perks. One of the greatest of these was Thai Taste, a hole in the wall storefront restaurant peopled by a family of Thais who had come to help support the education of a family member (or maybe members? I can’t recall...). It was hardly a conventional restaurant: décor was somewhere between sparse and non-exsistent, the 3 or 4 tables seemed to be inherited from a real estate office boardroom or a garage sale down the street, the menu was short and often patchy, depending on who was working, or the time of day, the time of year—They often even closed for a couple of months at a time to visit Thailand and, apparently, to bring back piles of dried and specialty ingredients not otherwise available in Texas. It was not a cookie cutter Thai restaurant like so many I have visited in the years since with the same tired versions of Pad Thai, Coconut Curry and Tom Yum soup, although it offered some of these things, it offered them in a vacuum, without the influence of the standard ‘Thai Restaurant Model’ that seems to define the mildly flavoured, ‘Westernized’ and homogenized Thai restaurants that I have encountered so frequently in the cities of my travels in the years since. Thai Taste, for lack of a better description, seemed more like home cooking. There was a grandmother in the kitchen, a father, a mother, possibly a sister, perhaps an aunt or an uncle or something, teenagers who wanted to be somewhere else, young children who delighted in running the food, clearing the plates and refilling the water glasses. The food was fresh and rough, large chunks of ginger and lemongrass were left in the soup for the diner to remove, bones and gristle were unapologetically not cleaned from fish or chicken, and most importantly, spice was not held back in some vague attempt at appealing to some mythical, as yet undefined to me concept of ‘the Western Palate’. Almost everything was spicy at Thai Taste, some things more than others, but the reason two teenagers would return again and again to this haven of hot, was the fact that the food could be prepared as hot as you liked, all the way up to the apex of impossibility, that’s right, five stars. My brother and I returned a number of times ordered our food at this magical heat level, asked for a pitcher of ice-water, smiled at each other and plunged in. The pain was instant and furious, but the pleasure...well, here I am 20-plus years later still basking in its glow, so you can be the judge.

When I moved to Austin, I discovered my next marker on the road to chile nirvana, it was in the form of a bottled sauce at a barbecue joint called Ruby’s. Just a bottle on the table next to the Tabasco, by that point in my chile-chomping career, I could drink Tabasco out of the bottle, and I often would, publicly, usually to prove a point, or, honestly, just to show off...This new sauce looked good, a Mexican label, a bright green colour, I was having the Jambalaya, and poured about a half cup of this new treat all over it, against the advice of my dining companion who had met this fabled pepper on the field of battle before and knew exactly what I was up against. That formidable foe was my first encounter with a family of peppers known to scientists as capsicum chinense, the family that includes all of the hottest peppers in the world. The sauce was bottled habanero hot sauce (about 100,000 SHU), and that meal was the first of many with a new and lifelong friend--I almost finished it too! Of course, over time, my tolerance has grown, and now, if I wanted to, I could probably drink that sauce out of the bottle, I wouldn’t bother, of course, but, just sayin...

So yes, chilies are hot. At some point in the 1990’s Dave’s Insanity Sauce (118,000 SHU) came along and introduced ‘capsaicin extract’ as an ingredient that pushed the boundaries of heat into the realm of weaponry; enjoying habanero sauce eventually lead to sampling raw habaneros (up to 350,000 SHU). Dave’s Insanity, upped the intensity in subsequent sauces and opened the floodgates to a host of new competitors using even more and more extract, a process that changed the whole game, but, of course, I tried each new sauce as it came around, and even though through all that heat my tolerance steadily grew, I was also humbled again and again, once, in California, by a bottle of some poison called ‘Da Bomb’, the only bottle of hot sauce which I could not finish, and once, even, by a plate of a half-dozen chicken wings at a roadside stop in Erie, New York, which required a signed release before it could be served. I ate four before tapping out. There was, until recently, always still one more challenge, the true, according to many, Holy Grail of Heat, India’s mythical Bhut (or Naga) Jolokia, the fabled ‘Ghost Pepper’ (1 million-plus(!) SHU) which I actually finally sampled here in Canada last month. It was, though astoundingly hot, surprisingly easy for me, easier than I expected, (too much extract over the years, I suppose) but I also wonder if my sample was anywhere close to as hot as they come (or if, as one observer noted, perhaps I am just the Hulk Hogan of Hot, thanks Kathy...) But either way, it leads one to wonder, is that really all there is? Will I keep trying, keep eating more and more, hotter and hotter? Will I eventually have to spray police grade pepper spray (5 million SHU) down my throat, or score some straight capsaicin extract (16 million SHU) for a weekend with the boys? Well, the short answer is...no.

My favourite pepper in the world is a chile grown and dried by Tierra Vegetables in Healdsburg, California, the variety, ‘Chilhuacle Negro.’ It is native to the Mexican regions of Oaxaca and Chiapas, and the variety is astoundingly tasty with an aroma that can only be compared to the complexity of a fine wine or a perfect cigar, and although the variety of chile is amazing, I’ve had it from other farmers, and the fact is, there is something about the soil, the care, the drying method or something else that Lee and Wayne James (the brother and sister farming team who are responsible for the chili-head Mecca that is Tierra Vegetables) do that turns this mildly spiced, aromatically overachieving chile into a piece of culinary art that, in my mind, rivals the white truffle, the saffron thread, a glass of Chateau D’Yqem, or even a perfect Malpeque oyster for its ability to produce transcendent aroma and flavour. Chihuacle Negro clocks in nowhere near 16 million Scovilles, in fact it only creeps across the Scoville finish line with a relative heat somewhere between 500-1,000 SHU. A close second, for me, in the world of favourite chilies, or even just foods in general, is the texture and warmth of a heavy walled, roasted and peeled Poblano pepper, which, stuffed with good cheese or with a sweet and tangy pork picadillo, I enjoy more than almost any other meal. That’s also only about 1,000 SHU. A freshly fire roasted Hatch chile from New Mexico at peak season is a treat that everyone should enjoy at least once in their lives and several times if possible, easy enough, again, at a measly 1000-2,500 SHU. Give me a few rings of a Hungarian wax pepper fried in olive oil with a pinch of sea salt, or a plate of flash seared pimientos di Padron, both of which are often quite mild (but which may surprise!) with Scoville Heat Units ranging from near zero to the low 1,000s. One of my favourite all time vegetarian meals includes the flesh of sweet big, meaty red bell peppers (0, that’s right, 0 SHU) roasted, peeled and layered with cream cheese, caramelized red onions and big slices of grilled portabello mushroom. Heat or no heat, I am content to dine on this equal parts notorious and nonthreatening nightshade forever. Dried, smoked, ground to any of a dozen different powders, flakes or coarse meals, reconstituted in warm water, pickled, preserved, jellied, served on popcorn, in chutney, in dessert, on breakfast or on steak, the fact is that the capsicum family, when it comes to cooking, is my family; it is as comfortable as my favourite slippers and as entertaining as an evening with an old friend.

India has spices, coffee, mangoes, tea...Thailand has fish sauce, lime leaves and galangal; Italy has white truffles and saffron; France has black truffles, stinky cheese and botrytis wines, Japan has the Ume plum and is surrounded by literal oceans of briny treasures. And in today’s world, all of us can have all of these things, all of the time. Asparagus in winter, chestnuts in the spring...Cheap oil and a fleet of planes have brought the treasures of the world into each and every one of our gourmet food stores and, for a price, we can enjoy anything that we like. For Now. But what if, or perhaps even, ‘when if’ the world shifts, when, for whatever reason, these treats from other lands are no longer around to fill our shelves or when, and even now, the price is so high that we need something else, something that is our own, easy to find and easy to grow and easy to use and store and share to delight our senses and to spur our imagination? What then? Fortunately for us, this New World, the Americas, our world, has its own trunk full of culinary treasure; our chilies, our peppers, these many capsicums which were being consumed wild in the jungles of Bolivia as long ago as 7500 BC before being cultivated in Ecuador some 6,000 years ago. Over time, these puny pods of painful pleasure travelled throughout South, Central and North America, before, finally over the recent and relatively short span of just the last 500 years or so, they fanned out in the galleys, holds, and pockets of European and other adventurers to conquer the palates and racing hearts of humans on every corner of the globe. Over time they have evolved a variety of styles, flavours, textures and aromas that span the palate as surely as they have spanned the globe. For me, chilies have followed me from Texas to California to Ontario, a magic ingredient, a family of ingredients that, in their versatility, array of flavours, ability to tease, tantalize, attack and yes, even occasionally, to get me a little bit high, has always distinguished my cuisine, opened up my taste buds to new possibilities and filled my belly with everything from astounding sweetness to astounding heat; these secret ingredients, these talismans, these tricks of the trade have become the paints whose broad rainbow of flavours, aromas, and textures are the colours that have helped me to fill out, with whatever artistry I can muster, the canvasses of plate on which I daily paint.

It’s hard to explain. If you don’t understand by now, it’s entirely possible that you never will. But let’s put it this way, sometimes it gets pretty cold up here in Canada, too cold to grow allspice, or nutmeg or mangoes or tea. And to me, it seems pretty obvious, there’s only one thing to do when it gets too cold, yeah, you know...Turn up the heat!

-Chef Bruce

The Soup Recipe You Requested...

Food, but more wet.

Mom’s soup was simple. If it was in the fridge, it was fair game: maybe some cans of stuff, maybe some stuff out of the freezer, cover the whole thing with water, adjust the spices, and it was perfect, every time. Leftover chicken or turkey? Boil it for a bit and take out the bones, well, at least most of them. Bean soup? ‘Add some of that salt pork from the freezer.’ ‘How much?’ ‘Oh, you know, some.’

You start with an onion.

I first made ‘proper soups’ at Gizmo’s, a bar and grill in College Station, Texas. I worked there just after High School for about 7 or 8 months. It was owned and run by a couple of sisters who got tired of cocktailing at other bars and decided to start their own. They were Yankees, as we called them, Northerners misplaced in our Southern Town, and they were also city girls with sensibilities that set them apart from the other folks in Northgate, College Station’s bar district. Case in point, they played and allowed only Jazz music on the stereo (the other bars on the strip played only two kinds of music, yep, that’s right: country and western). They decorated with trellises and fake flowers, unlike their competition, there was not one single oil sign, hunting trophy (or, for that matter, any other creative taxidermy experiments) or even a wooden Indian to be found. It was not exactly fancy; it was, after all, a bar, and there was no shortage of neon lights, ashtrays, paper napkins or casual drunkenness. But it aspired to be a bit more. We had no fryer, no pizza oven and no chargrill; we served sandwiches, from a broiler, bread and dips, even steamed vegetables (!) with cheese sauce, and, of course, we served soup.

Laurie and Marsha were in dire need of stepping away from the bar (at least 12 steps away, one would hope) when I met them, and ran this dive-y little jazz bar as one would expect from a couple of waning moons; it was graceful and sloppy, fun and dangerous, exciting and scary. In the evenings, as a 19 year old and the ‘kid’ in the kitchen, I was a mascot of sorts—brought out and shown off, fed drinks and encouraged to entertain. In the mornings, however, it was all business. Laurie, thanks to a long and steady diet of white wine and menthol cigarettes, was creatively past her peak, but had, while ‘up North’ learned to make soups the old fashioned way. Her recipes were explicit, precise, and ‘from scratch.’ We made broth and chopped vegetables; we layered aromatics and sweat them; we made roux and used wine judiciously (at least for cooking...). We added the broth (or the stock) to the sweated vegetables and/or the translucent onions, brought it to a simmer and then added the roots, followed, in 20 minutes or so, by the softer vegetables, and then, eventually, the greens or the cabbage—with the herbs coming last, just before service. Grains were added according to their cooking times, pasta was added to the pot before service, never to the whole batch. Meat was browned just before adding the aromatics, set aside and later returned to the simmering broth. Salt and pepper were added in bits throughout and adjusted at the end to taste... Once, while waiting for Laurie to teach me how to make a roux to finish a gumbo, she spotted an older biker at the bar who was immediately hauled off of his stool and coerced into the kitchen; ‘Chopper’ was an old Cajun from the Bayou and, while stirring the flour into the oil with a long wooden spoon, he carefully explained to me that a proper roux, when finished, carried the same hue as the skin of a mulatto woman. Why, specifically a woman, I never quite understood, but the image stuck, and I think of it every time I make a roux today.

I came to work one day after a break and found the building empty. My last paycheck never came. At the time, I was, understandably, a little peeved, but in hindsight, those lessons in soup and the image of Chopper the Giant Cajun Biker stirring a proper roux in that tiny kitchen more than covered for the lost wages.

You add the broth.

I wasn’t very poor growing up, but I wasn’t very rich either. We were comfortable, but not flush. Mom says dad always came through in the pinch—the bills got paid, no-one went hungry, but, well, let’s just say that wastefulness was never an option. Food, to me, is never just simple nourishment, nor is it ever just a medium for creative expression. It is both of these things, of course, but it is also always something more. Food is life. And not metaphorically (though it is a rather tidy metaphor) food is, literally, from life, to life, through life, it is the Eucharist, the host and the wine, the body and the blood. We live only through the consumption of life, and some day, when our time comes, we will become food for something else. Food willing. This is a spiritual truth to me. Given this truth, I find it unfathomable that food, good food, is ever wasted—I feel that food, that life, is a gift and one not to be trifled with, it is something that deserves respect and that it should never, ever be wasted.

In stating this I am all but confessing to being something that we cooks call a ‘trash can’ cook. This title is a dart thrown by some who would disparage a style of cooking that creatively redirects what would otherwise be wasted into another use rather than making one of those ‘proper soups’ I learned to make at Gizmo’s. Things like Mom’s ‘end of the week vegetable soup’. Yesterday’s leftover shepherd’s pie as today’s beef chowder, last week’s stir fry as yesterday’s hot and sour soup. Well, frankly, I don’t consider that barb an insult; I will accept that badge of honour and wear it with pride. If a ‘trash can’ cook is someone who doesn’t believe in wastefulness, someone who has a creative spirit, someone who sees life and chooses not to waste it, well, then I am Oscar the Grouch and welcome to the kitchen in my can.

Add the vegetables, meats, and other foods in order of their cooking times.

Soup has always been a peasant food, a meal of thrift. The word ‘Chowder’ comes to us from ‘chaudiere’ the French name for the giant cooking pots in the village squares in coastal France where the fishermen, the working stiffs, were welcomed home with a bubbling stew to which they added the bycatch of the day. Stews, curries, hot pots, pho, every culture has a tradition of using the trimmings creatively to stretch the lifespan of a meal, to use the whole animal, to re-use what would otherwise be lost. Most ‘proper soups’ evolved from these bubbling cauldrons, these products of thrift and ingenuity, these meals that were built not from recipes but rather, from whatever there was to be found. Comforting restoratives. Restore-ants, as it were. It was a concentrated meat broth developed in France that lent its name to the storefronts where it was offered, giving us ‘restaurants’ as we know them today.

Taste and adjust.

I don’t really use a recipe for soup, but I don’t really not use one either. I start by looking around, seeing what is available, what is good, what needs to be used, and then I start with an onion, brown the meats, sweat the aromatics, add the broth, the vegetables and taste and adjust. Just before serving, I add the garnish, the herbs, the pasta... I allow it to simmer, I let the flavours mingle. And I do not waste a single drop.

my first chef checks...

When Chef Jason left Cenare, he gave me a pair of chef pants - he’d outgrown them, they were still in good condition, and he didn’t need them anymore. It’s odd that I remember that, but they were my first pair...Cenare (pronounced, che-NAH-ree, in case you don't talk Italian, I think it means "to dine"), an Italian restaurant in my home town, was my first ‘real’ cooking job. Well, second actually, if you count the 3 month gig at Ferrari’s, another Italian place that qualified me for the job at Cenare. I don’t count Ferrari’s, I did my best to forget as much as I could about that sad, dirty, ominously quiet restaurant—let’s just say that it was the kind of place where an 18 year old kid with no experience could be promoted to head cook in 6 weeks. And no, that’s not a compliment to my precocious talent...What I learned there was mostly what not to do, but at least having the experience, however dubious, of working in an Italian restaurant on my resume did help when I applied to Cenare, a real restaurant: a place with a chef, a reputation, you know, a place with customers... Cenare was an “authentic” Italian fine dining restaurant. It was “authentic” to what you’d expect from an Italian joint in a medium to small Texas town in the 80’s; but we’ll just say it wasn’t exactly the cuisine I encountered when I finally travelled to Italy a few years later. It was, however, that particular, comforting, Americanized Italian food that so many of us enjoy, spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, manicotti, linguine with a clams, picatta, Marsala...Caesar salad. Food fried in breadcrumbs, layered in red sauce and smothered with cheese. It was rich, hearty, delicious and popular.



Cenare had been around for about 10 years by the time I came to work there, and in those days, the kitchen was still an old-school boy’s club. The guys who worked there were career blue collar cooks; regular guys that could hold a hot skillet without a mitt, could handle a 20 ticket rail without flinching (that’s cooking dinner for 20 tables at once...try it some time, it’s a gas!), and could throw out a banquet dinner for a crowd of 30 in the back room, all at the same time... It was tough, hot, fast work, and we took all of our cuts, burns, and screaming managers with a smile. We knew that no-one wanted our job and that knowledge was an immense source of power. Cenare was an old-school boy’s club, the kind of kitchen I haven’t seen much of in the days since—there was drinking and smoking (I still smoked back then, we’d move about three feet off the line to a spot by the back door... it’s hard to imagine smoking in a kitchen now, it’ seems like a scene from a movie...), gambling (poker nights... football pools), and all the competitive games that guys in groups always seem to create for ourselves... we would move the trash can back two feet at a time to see who could hit it from the farthest distance, we would line up to see who could cut onions fastest, mushrooms, peppers, clean shrimp—nothing was just a task, it was a game, a contest, a chance to prove ourselves. We were young, strong and invincible, and as long as the food came out fast, looked good and tasted good, no-one could tell us what to do. Well, except for chef Jason...



Until then, I had worked mostly in fast food, making sandwiches, McDonalds, a short stint at Red Lobster, a taco shack, and, of course, there had been the years in my parents’ restaurant, before I was old enough to appreciate it, as well as that 3 month thing at the other Italian place, but Cenare was, as I said, my first ‘real’ restaurant experience. It was a cooking job where I came to see cooking as not just a part time job to get me through college, but as a possible direction, a possible career. It took me a few years to finally make that decision, but Cenare was certainly the place where it began.



After I had been there about a year, the old Cenare died. Chef Jason, the source of our power and prestige, the quarterback who had carried our team to first place for a decade... left. He took a job at, I believe, a Chili’s, possibly an Olive Garden, something corporate, something with security, insurance. It was a shock. The owners were flummoxed, confused, nervous. I mean, the cooking crew was solid, good even, but the chef had been the key player, and as long as he had been running the plays, everyone knew what could be done; they knew, without question, that the food would be good, fast, consistent. When he left, all of us 2nd stringers started getting the eye; who was going to step up? Who was going to carry the ball? Who would not only be a good cook, but would also lead? Ultimately, it was no-one.



I am proud, prouder than I was about my “promotion” at Ferrari’s, to say that I was given some of his duties, some of the most fun parts, anyway. I was handed a box of indexed recipes and as a “creative” type, asked to take on the job of selecting and presenting our popular daily specials. I was moved from the pantry and pasta stations to Jason’s old station on the ‘hot’ line, where the real action was: doing sauté, the station that is still my favourite some 18 years later. I didn’t get stuck with the stuff I later came to understand was the real meat of his work: the sourcing of products, the inventories, the scheduling, the ordering, the day to day work that a true chef must master in order to enjoy his moments at the stove. It was, for me at that time, just about an ideal situation. I had a place to be creative; some, but not too much responsibility; I was stepping into the shoes (...pants? No, that sounds weird...) of a popular chef, working his old station, cooking for his regulars, some of whom had been enjoying the product of his practiced hands for as long as 10 years, all the while with none of his burdens: the stress of the bottom line, covering for the dishwashers vacation, making sure that the toilets were scrubbed. It seemed ideal, and for a young cook, it was. Ideal for me, anyway... but for the customers? For the owners? Well, these things even out over time I suppose...for me, it was year of learning in the best way I ever got to experience, learning by complaint.



Complaint might be too strong a word; constructive criticism might be more accurate. You see, when I moved to the sauté station, when I moved to Chef Jason’s old spot, the expectation game changed for me. I was no longer answering to the chef, my finished plates no longer passed by his watchful eyes; his stern (but fair and honest) voice no longer corrected my mistakes and oversights. I was instead answering to another boss, the same boss I am answering to today. You.



At some time or another, all of us who eat in restaurants are faced with a similar dilemma: whether or not to complain about a poorly executed meal. Sometimes the decision is easy: a hair, or worse; a band-aid, a bug—perhaps a little gross, but easy. These decisions make themselves for you; “I have the evidence right here, please correct this error.” But as we all also know, other situations are not nearly as easy to decide...a steak too rare or too cooked.(“do I really want to wait 20 minutes for a new one?”) or a flavour combination that doesn’t appeal or really work (“nope, I don’t actually like mussels with mangos and raspberries”). These are the times when we face the tough choice, do we complain, or even just comment? Do we spoil a cook’s night or do we let slide (“Overall, to be fair, it was still pretty good”) Do we swallow our opinion and blurt it out later in a bitter online ‘review’, or do we just say it? Say to our server, “Hey, that was good, but it wasn’t the greatest, the tart flavour just didn’t grab me.”



As a business owner, I want you to have a perfect evening, perfect service, amazing food, the music just so, the temperature in the dining room is good, the memory is pleasant, evocative... and most importantly, I want you to leave happy, plan to come back and tell everyone you meet about what a great time you had. After all, I’ve got to make a living! As a chef, in addition to these things, I want the food to be hot enough, seasoned right, presented in an appealing way, to be fresh. All good chefs also want something more; to communicate a creative ideal. For me it is that of local and organic ingredients prepared with a spirit of honesty, generosity and imagination—I want to not only feed you, but to make you think about where, how and why this particular food came to you at this moment, in this particular way. And finally, as a diner, and a hungry human like anyone else, I also want to be fed well, to feel a sense of value, but most importantly, to get the sense that someone back there really cares what just came out on that plate. So should you complain? Comment? Well, for me the answer is yes. But first, let me tell you why (and how):



I was lucky to have a crack at Chef Jason’s old customers...lucky in a way that few cooks ever get to experience. They were regulars, they were opinionated, they were comfortable and they weren’t in a hurry. When I did something that wasn’t perfect, or was ‘too creative’ or was under seasoned, over seasoned, over cooked, undercooked, they sent it back, they told the server, they might even come back and tell me themselves. They wanted things a certain way, had (rightfully) come to expect a certain level of quality and were happy to let me know when I missed the mark. I should be fair (...to myself, I mean, hey, it wasn’t all bad!), most of the food I sent out that year was approved, eaten, and complimented, but it was the food that didn’t succeed, or was even “just OK,” and the fact that the folks were willing to let me know, that made it easily my best year of school in all my years of cooking.



My taste isn’t your taste. No taste is exactly the same, but good food is like the US Supreme Court described pornography, “you know it when you see it,” –or in this case, taste it; but no chef worth his salt (or lack of it...) should be allowed to get away with serving poor food night after night without anyone saying anything. Now, often, this does tend to be a self correcting system—over time, people just stop coming back to a restaurant with bad food, but what about food that is just OK? Sometimes, price, location and service will keep mediocre food alive for years beyond its due date. What I’m saying is that I suspect that culturally (and this goes for both Canada and the US, and possibly, from my understanding, our mutual grandmother Great Britain, as well) we are too easy on bad and mediocre food; not wanting to come off as boorish or rude, we err on the side of caution and give a pass to most meals without comment.



But this is only half the story, the problem is also that when we do finally complain, we are so rude that it fosters resentment instead of dialogue. What made Cenare so positive an experience is that I was nurtured by complaint; the comments were constructive and honest and when applied became the foundation of my growth as a chef. They were never pissy and bitter, and they always came with second and even third chances. And the best part was that when I did start to hit the mark, they stopped being Chef Jason’s customers and started to become my own...



My fellow cooks (and servers, and pretty much all professional restaurant folks) are probably white knuckled and anxious reading this...Am I seriously giving a pass to complain? Am I offering permission for anyone to be ‘that customer?’ We all know the one: ”The water’s too cold...the plate has a smudge...the baseboard is dusty... my food is too, umm, flavourful...” (...that last one was an actual complaint!) We all know the one, and no, I’m not advocating for the fussy, high maintenance, impossible to please customer to become the norm. I’m just saying that if we considered food to be a dialogue, over time, if we brought more (constructive) complaint into the culture, we would all benefit with a little bit better food.



As a business owner, I want your experience to be amazing, because frankly, word of mouth is my only effective form of advertising. If you don’t tell us what is wrong, (and, I might add, before you pay the bill and get up to leave...) we have no chance of correcting it. If you leave unhappy and complain to other people instead of us, we’ll never know and we’ll never get better. As a chef, I am still learning every day, and one thing I’ve learned is that if I can bring a picky customer around, a person who (rightfully) expects quality and value...if I can please an individual palate, then I can create a loyal customer for life. As a chef who is trying to share a creative ideal, how can I ever bring you around if you don’t enjoy the experience, if you don’t let me know? And finally, as a diner, when I face that choice of whether or not to comment or complain, you might be surprised; usually, I’ll let something go, an obvious accident (things happen...) doesn’t bother me. With an experience that shows that people don’t care, with a truly awful meal? Honestly? I, like most people probably just won’t go back. But when someone is trying, even if they are failing badly, but it is obvious that they care...well, it’s only right to let them know; they deserve the chance to improve just like I did, and, I hope, still do.



Thanks, Boss.

We don't need oil.

There’s a geyser in the gulf. Our unquenchable thirst for oil has lead to one the worst environmental disasters of all time. Everyday we see images of the oil spewing forth like the wrath of an angry God from the bowels of the earth into what were once unspoiled waters in the Gulf of Mexico. And every day we hope someone out there is smart enough, is able enough, that someone, that anyone, really, has the will, the means and the capability we need to stop this horrible, horrible crisis from continuing. We need a hero, a superman; we need someone who has all the answers and all the power. Well, allow me to introduce you to...you.

You can’t stop this disaster, I mean, eventually we will, someone will, but sadly, this time, it will only be after much more damage is done. But you do have the power, the will and the capability to stop it from ever happening again. You’ve known it for a while, it’s like the smoker who keeps seeing those warnings on the pack and continues to light up. You know better, it’s just so damn hard to stop. The warning signs are all here, you’ve seen them for years, not just on every other TV newscast, but in the weird storms, the too long winters, the too short winters, the too hot summers, the snows in July, all the little details that keep adding up in the backs of our minds. Gas prices keep going up, sure, they shift around too, but overall, it’s not really getting any cheaper any time soon. Oil is, and we’ve always known this, a finite resource. The nagging doubts, the understanding of the deeper truths, the facts are all there, and we’ve all known them for a long time. You don’t even have to accept the findings of the vast majority of climate scientists who agree on the concept of the greenhouse effect and its industrial origins to realize and accept that eventually cheap oil will be a memory, not a fact of the present, and that when that happens, unless we all make some serious changes, things are not going to be very pretty. The warning signs are all there, but it’s just so damn hard to quit.

I am not new to these worries and fears; I often pondered this peculiar state of the world in high school, even earlier. How was it that we could collectively ignore this obvious, glaring truth? Like many teens, my ignorant, youthful mind turned quickly to conspiracy theories—of course, it must be a plot by the state, which hates the planet and wants it to rot; it is the older generation that cares nothing for the future and is wallowing in its greed and using a gangster mentality of crushing all competition no matter what its intrinsic value to the planet, and to its, and to my future... I was right of course, and wrong. Yes, there are those who live a cynical self absorbed life of gangster-ism, but there are many more who are simply short-sighted, ignorant, non-philosophical, stuck-in-their-ways, childish, or doing harm by simply doing nothing, feeling that a problem on the scale of planetary health is simply too big to take on as an individual.

I eventually turned my fear into curiosity and made a point of educating myself on any number of environmental causes such as our consumption of meat and the impact of our industrialized food system on the environment, a fascinating, rich, possibly (in my opinion) singular set of facts at which crossroads I built my career. There was also a book by Buckminster Fuller that made me consider subjects like mass transit and off-grid housing. A science teacher opened my mind to ideas about alternative fuels and peak oil. A girlfriend’s copy of the Whole Earth Catalog sent my mind in a dozen directions considering our potential and even hopeful future. I read about ‘back-to-the-land’ experiments from the sixties like the Farm in Tennessee and Tassajara in California. And yet, it seemed that the more I learned, the less I understood—it seemed that the knowledge was ankle deep and rising all around me and yet no-one near me seemed to notice or even care.

I decided to take personal action. I became a vegetarian, eventually a vegan, and finally an organic and local foods consumer and advocate. I recycled, composted, used natural and biodegradable cleaners and bought secondhand when possible. I learned bits of knowledge about everything from foraging and organic farming to home-brewing with a long term goal of homesteading. After years of working for other folks in businesses that didn’t quite match my value system, I eventually joined with my wife and friends and opened a business of my own which is, in many ways, its own intentional community.

Over the years I have always kept ear to the ground of the larger environmental movement and have been thrilled to watch it move from the fringes into mainstream consciousness. Things like Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ and widely circulated ideas like the 100 mile diet, green energy, rising oil prices, climate change, ‘climate-gate’ and even security and international conflicts and wars, and most recently, even a disaster like the ongoing one in the Gulf, have all been important memes for opening discussions about environmental issues with broad cross-sections of people for whom the subject held no interest in those many years when I felt like a lonely soul on the vast and empty frontier. I welcome all discussion on the subject of environmental health, because I honestly believe that any discussion will, by the virtue of truth, eventually lead to a more sensible, sane and sustainable world and that even the naysayers do their part by keeping the subject open.

But I also, like many, fear that not enough is being done, fast enough, to change what needs to fixed before things really get worse. I wish, with all my heart that I could turn on a light switch and show the world what folks like me and the many wise souls who lit my path have seen clearly and for a very long time—that we are approaching a cliff, and that the fall will not be fun, the ride exciting, the time spent on the way down pleasant and that the sharp, sudden stop at the end will not be the comic pratfall for which we may hope, but rather a complete, utter and final end to the kind of life we have known, loved and enjoyed. I wish I could flip that switch, not because I want to take away hope, but rather, because I honestly, deeply and sincerely want to offer it. I believe that if we could all, if even just most of us could, like some comic book hero, see what absolutely needs to be done to nudge this Spaceship Earth back on to course then we could certainly do it. We could, and we certainly should.

I believe that the time has come for us to call on that hero, to call our hero back from his journey, from her quest for truth and knowledge; it is time for us to call on that hero within ourselves and say now, now we’re ready. We’re ready to do the small things that need to be done, but to do them together and on such a broad scale that they become the largest thing we’ve ever done on earth. There is a geyser in the gulf, and there is a blanket of gas on the earth, it is time for us to say “no more.” I know it’s so damn hard to quit, but just like a smoker knows he eventually must, it is time to and it is time to say I will do it for my health, for the health of everyone I love and care about, I will make changes because I want to live in a world where we don’t need mile deep offshore oil wells to support our way of life, we don’t even need twenty foot deep offshore oil wells. We don’t need oil. The fact is that we humans are simple, resilient creatures, if we have community food, and shelter, we really don’t need anything else.

You know the answers, you know the truth, and the little things become big things when lots of people do them. Change a light bulb from incandescent to fluorescent, turn up the ac, turn down the furnace, do something in town instead of travelling to the city. Walk more, watch less TV, buy local food, buy local art, garden, compost, learn to sew...You know what to do, and its easy, you’ve just been waiting for the right time to try it. Now is that time. It is time to say that we are ready to start living in a world where we all find our inner hero and for me; that world is the one where my daughter can someday be proud of herself and of all of us and say, “We saw it coming, and we did our part, we didn’t wait for anyone else to fix things. We lit our own path. We are the one we need.”

--Chef Bruce

If you are a Kemptville local, and this story resonates for you, come check out what’s up with Sustainable North Grenville ( www.sustainablenorthgrenville.ca ), a new citizen’s group that is looking for positive ways to transition our community to a more permanent, resilient and sensible future. If not, find a group like ours near you...or start one...

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
--Margaret Mead

Texas Style ‘Slow-Enloe’ Beef Short Ribs:

In Texas, my home country, we do not rush the cooking of beef; our signature barbecued food is whole smoked beef brisket which spends as much as 18 hours in a smoker at about 200 to 250 degrees (Fahrenheit), a.k.a.; slow and low... This recipe (which feeds about 6 people) is for a similar cut, the ‘braising’ or ‘short’ beef rib; a cut which the butcher at a local abattoir described to me as ‘old-fashioned.’ I guess that means that it ain’t diet food. It is similar in that both the brisket and the braising rib have a lot of connective tissue and fat, the elements that make a braise or a slow smoke work so well. Over time, at low temperature, the connective tissue (or tendons) actually melt and turn into gelatin, which is that magic, mysterious ingredient that gives slow cooked meat the amazing ‘sticky’ mouth feel that we associate with everything from pork ribs at the local Chinese restaurant to the demi-glace at the finest French bistro. The fat, which is critical, works as a slow baste, melting and helping to keep the meat moist throughout the long process. Sped up, the tendons seize and become gristle, the fat melts too quickly and becomes a frying oil, either flaring up and becoming dangerous or (depending on the cooking method) actually frying the meat and creating a different product altogether. When you do take your time, however, this ‘old-fashioned’ cut really shines!

You’ll need:

A good smoker or barbecue pit and wood, charcoal, or even (in a pinch) propane and smoking chips; this chef does not recommend propane, (I don’t care for the flavour) but should you have no choice, make sure you have lots of well soaked wood chips in an aluminum pan or in a pouch of foil with holes punched in it. Much has been written on the process of smoking, so we’ll assume you have the ability to figure this part out, but the key points are indirect heat, and mostly closed heat dampers to keep in as much smoke as possible, and choosing good wood for flavour.

5 lb. Aubin Farm’s beef braising ribs
½ cup ‘Steve’s Spicy Coffee’ barbecue rub (recipe follows...)
1-2 tablespoons salt (a good sprinkle...)
Texanadian Barbecue Sauce (recipe follows...)
Root Cellar Slaw (recipe follows...)
Buns

The evening before a lunch or early in the morning before a dinner to serve these, light your barbecue pit or smoker, then, coat the meat with the rub and the salt and let sit for about an hour, while the coals burn down. If you have a thermometer, when the internal temperature of the BBQ is about 250 degrees and you have good smoke, the coals are ready; rake them all to one side of the pit. Place your ribs on the far side of the grill, away from the fire, close the lid and allow the smoke to do its magic. Make sure there is constant smoke by feeding more soaked chips or chunks for at least the first couple of hours and also watch the temperature closely, being careful to never allow it above 250 degrees. You can even switch the meat (covered) to an oven after the first few hours and get some sleep. Most Texas BBQ pit masters will remind you that a good lager in an ample, steady supply is essential to this process and I will not diverge from that philosophy in this recipe. As Lone Star is not available here, I would recommend Beau’s Lug Tread as a more than suitable substitute. The ribs will need at least 8 and as many as 12 hours of steady, slow cooking; you’ll know they are ready when the bone lifts out of the meat without effort. Serve the pulled meat on buns with barbecue sauce and Root Cellar Slaw.

A quick note on choosing wood and two stage smoking:

I learned how to smoke meat with mesquite, a resinous wood that when used judiciously is one the world’s finest seasonings, but can also result in an acrid creosote flavour after too long with too much smoke. As such, I learned a two stage smoking process, a few hours of smoke followed by either wrapping the meat in foil to finish cooking or even removing it to an oven for the last few hours. These days, in an attempt to achieve a genuine local product, I use a wood blend that includes maple, apple, white cedar and sometimes black walnut. Including some resinous woods like the walnut and cedar reminds of mesquite, in that you can get a stronger, better smoke flavour, but it can also lead to the same problems; if you are using just maple or oak, don’t worry so much about over-smoking or wrapping, but if you, like me, want that deep flavour that only a resinous wood will provide, just plan to be judicious and ease up on the smoke after the first few hours.

Steve’s Spicy Coffee:

I took a batch of this rub to the cottage a few years back for a barbecue, but early in the morning on the day of the barbecue my groggy (...hung-over...) brother-in-law mistook it for the coffee and brewed us all a big pot; ever since, we can only refer to it as Steve’s Spicy Coffee in honour of his finest hour. (Thanks for being such a good sport, Steve...)

1 cup ground, dried medium spice peppers such as ancho, guajillo, or chilhuacle.
¼ cup freshly ground coffee beans (decaf, if you must...)
¼ cup brown Sucanat or brown sugar
¼ cup ground cumin
2 tablespoons dried oregano

--Mix together, use as needed, store excess in an airtight container and use as you would a chili powder or a Montreal Steak Spice, etc.

Texanadian BBQ Sauce:

‘It’s the Maple Syrple!’

½ yellow onion, sliced thin
2 teaspoons canola or sunflower oil
¼ cup ‘Steve’s Spicy Coffee’ or your favourite chili powder blend
2 cups canned Utopia tomatoes and juice
4 tablespoons Utopia tomato paste
1 cup maple syrup
2/3 cup Barkley’s apple cider vinegar
2/3 cup tamari soy sauce

--Caramelize the onion in the oil. Add spice, then add remaining ingredients, simmer ½ hour. Blend.

Root Cellar Slaw:

Weather-wise, we locavores in Canada are in the dip right now waiting for the first green shoots to get long enough to pluck and eat, while concurrently staring at the bottom of last year’s barrel. The weather is drawing us outdoors to barbecue, but what veggies do we eat today? Boiled turnips again? How about taking those turnips, those beets, even the cabbage, carrots and onions from the back shelf of the root cellar and making this delicious, quick slaw?

3 cups shredded mixed roots such as carrots, beets, sunchokes and turnips
3 cups shredded cabbage
1 small onion, sliced thin
1 tablespoon salt
¼ cup Barkley’s apple cider vinegar
¼ cup honey or sugar
¼ cup sunflower or canola oil
2 teaspoons dried dill
2 teaspoons dried parsley
1 teaspoon chili flakes
1 teaspoon toasted caraway seeds

--In a large bowl, mix the veggies and salt. In a small saucepan, bring the remaining ingredients to a boil, pour the hot dressing over the veggies, stir and cover for five minutes. Then uncover, stir again and enjoy!

Our Daily Bread...

In three years, I’ve made every batch of brown bread at the restaurant except for one. That day, I had help from my good friend Rob Mathewson, who those of us locally know as the gentle giant genius of loaf behind Grateful Bread, the bread consortium that has anchored our local farmers’ market these past three years. He and his equally storied and infinitely interesting wife Shelley just moved on last month to the West Coast, for work, but also for family, which is also how I found myself here, so who am I to judge? Just a bit sad, that’s all...But anyway, this story is about bread, so we’ll talk about all that stuff some other time. This story is about bread, about baking, and about my favourite baker.



I guess my first experiences making bread were my grandmother’s Parker House Rolls, a recipe in which each yeasty, white ball of dough was dipped in melted butter before it was packed together in Corning ware, then risen and baked. The effect, though guilty in hindsight, was mind expanding in practice. My mom complained that her mother in law had never mentioned the second package of yeast on the recipe she wrote out, and that had she not spied that sneaky addition over her shoulder one day, no-one would have ever known. That might be why no-one else’s rolls ever came out quite as good, but I think we all suspect it was more than just that. The most critical ingredient in bread, I have come to discover, is the baker. When she baked those rolls, it was her way of showing her love.



I moved back to my home town from West Texas in ’93 or so and was lucky enough to find a job at a little scratch bakery, Brazos Blue Ribbon, that was operated by a couple of ex-hippie types who probably just wanted a place to buy whole grain fresh bread and muffins themselves and couldn’t find anyone else doing it. They had a wide selection of loaves, pastries, kolaches, and cookies and they served sandwiches and soups for lunch. I was hired as an assistant baker, which meant I never got to see lunch; lunch time, for me, was now in the middle of my night. I arrived at work every day at 2 am and left work at about ten, at least for the six short months that I managed to survive that schedule. Maybe it was as a result of these long, late hours, but the head baker there was insane, good insane, I mean; he was a hilarious, huge, jolly, loud, heavy metal singing madman, and at 2 o’clock in the morning, I was his only audience and his biggest fan. He taught me like Obi Wan taught Luke, with a pile of clichés, aphorisms, cleverly mixed metaphors and the occasional near backhand (which I probably deserved...) I was told to use my hands to mix the dough; ‘spatulas are liars!’ I was trained to taste the dough, to ‘think with my hands’, to ‘bake with my nose...’ I was no baker when I came in, I had mistakenly believed that 5 years of line cooking would qualify me for some kind of high speed ascension to that goal; but, by the time I left, I was, although not quite a baker, at least not quite as foolish as when I arrived. He was a great teacher, he loved what he did, and it showed. So why did I leave? Honestly? I wasn’t ready to give up sunlight; I don’t think I ever will be. Baking, as a profession, asks a high price from those who it calls.



Rob is not a baker by profession (...yet?). He worked here in Kemptville in some capacity for the government; he told me about it once, it was something to do with measuring water levels, analyzing drainage from wetlands, that kind of thing...I’m not really sure, the fact is, when I talk to Rob, it’s usually about bread. He loves bread, he loves baking...when he’s not at work (or practicing his clarinet), it’s likely that he’s baking. He always reminds me of that jolly baker from Brazos Blue Ribbon, he has that same big presence, the same quick smile and twinkling eye—and I don’t care what he gets paid for, the man is, and will always be, a baker. He understands, naturally, instinctually, what it took me so long to learn about bread, about why bread is not pure science or pure art, about how good bread is craft, plain and simple, about how your hands know more about baking than your head, and that your heart and nose are just as critical to the process as your mixer, your oven or your timer. Baking bread is about patience and care. It is about good humour and generosity. It is about love and, if you do it right (and he does...), it is about changing the way people think about every other bite of food they take.



Rob has given more to this community than just some tasty loaves; he is one of those good, generous people who come along and just can’t seem to help but share. He started, a couple of years ago, giving classes on baking to anyone who was interested, he dreamed up the whole idea as a charitable act...the classes, or workshops, were, I believe, actually a ruse to get a dozen or so extra hands out to roll dough for bread for a Salvation Army Food Bank fundraiser (I may have my facts wrong, but I believe it was for one of our Mother’s Day brunches here at the Municipal Center). The idea caught on, and soon, these workshops (again, not to be confused with free labour...) were given several times a year, baking bread for Christmas food baskets, again for our Mother’s Day brunch, for a free community Thanksgiving dinner, or, really for any event or even person that needed an extra bit of sustenance to be broken and shared. I noticed once that at the workshops, and with the free loaves of bread, he gave out a recipe on a little piece of onion skin paper along with an idea, a prayer really, a request that the holder of the recipe would bake it with others, and that in exchange for this loaf, in lieu of payment, that they would do this same giving again, for other food banks, for other friends, for anyone who might need a warm loaf of love. Luckily, at the very first workshop, the friendly friar of the leavened loaf won a convert, my sister-in-law, and really, one of the world’s all time greatest people, Denise Busby.



Now with all due respect to Rob, who was the reason I set out to write this story, within the first two or three lines I, and really, anyone who has bought bread at our exciting little market over the last few years, probably knew very quickly where this was going to end up. Denise is the kind of person who just seems to do well at most anything she tries; over the years that I have been lucky enough to know her, not only has she been a record breaking manager for a noted office supply company in the heart of Ottawa, she has evolved into a master hobby gardener, a photographer of immense talent, the most patient wife her incredibly lucky husband could hope for, and, on an incredibly personal note, the greatest aunt I could ever imagine for my, for all of our, little girl. She also, thanks to Rob’s workshops, and a great deal of that natural instinct like both my Grandmother’s and his, has become a phenomenal baker. The first year of the market, Rob alone was the baker, but starting in the second and continuing with the third, Rob was joined by Denise as a fellow ‘Grateful Bread’ baker. As often as Rob has been at the market of a Sunday, Denise has been there as well, at first with breads she learned to bake with Rob, but later and lately with scones, cookies, and even breads made with her own recipes. I am, I admit, a very picky person when it comes to the quality of food (hey, it’s my job!) and I can honestly say that during the market season, her Chipotle-Cheddar Bread is one of the greatest pleasures of my daily life.



Bread was one of the first things that we humans learned to make. Almost every culture has a bread of some kind, flour and water, maybe some other stuff, a leavening agent, some time of work, some time of rest. Bread is what we share, when we share. It is the most basic of sustenance, and, as a symbol, it speaks to the core of who and what we all are. It is the first thing we serve at most restaurants, because throughout our cultural memory, it has become an act of welcome so common that to not offer it would be out of place. Early on we learned that all of the bounteous harvest our farmers’ market’s amazing vegetables would bring people out once, but that it was the bread for which they returned.



I’ve learned a lot about baking over the years; I learned about tortillas, the bread of Mexico, from fellow cooks and older Mexican ladies at a taqueria in my home town, my first job outside of the stifling world of fast food. I learned about thin crust pizza dough from a skilled chef at Romeo’s in Austin where I baked in a wood fired oven, and I trained intensively through those dark nights at the Brazos Blue Ribbon, teaching my hands how to feel for when the dough was just right. I have learned that sometimes it’s about a second package of yeast that someone forgot to mention, and that sometimes it is about no yeast at all, just patience and courage. And I have learned, after all that, that all the knowledge in the world will only produce a pretty good loaf of bread.



Thanks Rob, it was always a pleasure to bake and to break bread with you, and I hope to do it again soon. You’ve given a lot to this community, more than we ever could have asked, Vancouver Island is lucky to have your big, generous heart in its midst. I understand why you moved to be close to family; that is, after all, also what brought us here.



I hope that my bread, the one I’ve made every batch of save one, is half as good as Rob’s, half as good as my grandmother’s Parker House Rolls. I’ve tried to shape it, learn it, understand it, infuse it with all the meaning, heart and soul that I can, and every time I make it I think maybe, maybe this time, maybe I’m getting close. Bread is more than just flour and water and yeast and salt. It is family, it is being together, it is sharing and it is love. And for me that means that on the last weekend in May, when the time is finally here at that first market of the season, I’ll be right there in line again, waiting anxiously for that first loaf, for that first taste of Chipotle-Cheddar from Denise, Abigail’s Aunt Denise, my favourite baker.

‘God Bless America’

I couldn’t help thinking, the other day, when I saw this sign in a window in Ogdensburg, how strongly Irving Berlin must have been feeling the day he wrote it. I mean: to wish the blessings of the highest being one can imagine on an entity, on a group of people, on a landmass with non-specific boundaries, on a vision, a shared dream, a collective effort—I guess my generation is too far removed from any great revolutionary moments to fully appreciate the intensity of that kind of emotion, at least as it relates to a piece of land. But it moved me. Yes, even embarrassed me a little. I’m not one to speak of it, especially as an American living abroad, but, if I’m honest, yes, my programming is still in place.



When I was a kid, I read with interest and horror of the shortcuts my ancestors had taken to acquire the ‘right’ to the land they ‘discovered.’ I was so incensed that in my youthful agitation, I chose a quiet, but, I felt, meaningful protest; I refused to, as it was the custom, stand and recite the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’ in my school classroom. My teachers were naturally upset, rebellion of any form being seen as a disruption in a routine based system, but I was more surprised to find that my classmates were upset as well—‘Don’t you know about the Indians?’ I asked, ‘The smallpox blankets? Wounded Knee? The trail of tears?’ Some of our ancestors were definitely not the good guys. Slavery was also and still is a huge stain of on the face of my nation, and my generation, as the first desegregated one in my small southern town, was still itchy and uncomfortable in its new multicoloured clothes. Perhaps that’s why they didn’t care, ‘This is America,’ they said, ‘love it or leave it.’ Patriotism has always been a hard road for me.



I don’t understand why most folks can’t seem to see the connection between ‘patriotism’ and ‘nationalism,’ (i.e.: ‘fascism.’) All patriotism, to me, seems to be built upon the simple preconception that we are better than them, for some reason. And really, are we? Do we actually have some divine gift that puts us above our peers? By virtue of an address? A Zip Code? Seriously, American ‘exceptionalism’ as it is called these days, when examined closely, is little more than a philosophy of thinly veiled racism.



I do love much about America. My programming aside, America is my nostalgic home, I love Thomas Jefferson’s words (more than his actions, actually,) and I love that a rebellion of tax shirkers could actually produce a fairly even handed and intelligent method of self government. I like checks and balances and I like term limits, I like that even the worst of presidents can only really get away with about 8 years in office and that, if we want to, we can flip the whole card and start fresh without firing a single bullet. It seems smart; it acknowledges the pendulum of public sentiment and provides a mechanism for bloodless revolution. And when you think about it, it would take a bunch of people who’d lost so much in a bloody one to come up with and actually agree on such a radical idea. I’m sure my historians out there will want to remind me of the Magna Carta or even of ancient Greek philosophers who laid out the framework that the ‘founding fathers’ adopted long before, but, nonetheless, they could have gone a few different directions once they had the reins, and yet, at the moment, they chose democracy, for better or worse.



So, do I love it or hate it? Well, both. I’ve travelled a bit more now, and I also now live here, in Canada, a place that tells you they find patriotism distasteful, but makes exceptions for hockey, Canada day, any rendering of the anthem, or any mention or presence of any native Canadian anywhere in American popular culture. I’ve also visited Europe, in a ‘post 9-11’ world and met equal parts admiration for our exciting culture and horror at our actions on the world stage, horror that mirrored my own youthful disgust at my reading of my country’s history. I have hated the way, from a distance, America looks more and more like a selfish bully, even with ‘a new face’; it still projects willful ignorance regarding it’s own behaviour and seems to consume everything around it at an alarming rate like one of it’s famously obese children. Yet, as I say, I have travelled a bit more now and have also seen that American people are no worse at heart than the people in any of these other places either; I have met with racism and stereotypes wherever I have gone, ignorance and childish, selfish behaviour, even with boorish and criminally violent foolishness. America, it seems, has no trademark on stupidity whether you love it or leave it.



‘Democracy,’ as Winston Churchill said, ‘is the worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried...’ A telling quote. I love much about the idea of America, and much about the idea of Canada, Norway, Denmark, even Japan and yes, even China. I love lots of ideas behind governments, I love the idealism from which they spring and I love the facets of them that seem to work for however long people put their minds to it. But in the end, it always seems to come back to our nature, our avarice, our greed, our compassion and our desire for joy, for love, for security or for safety. The same universal human emotional behaviours that make us choose between decaf and regular, between charity and big screen televisions, behind, beneath and surrounding every decision we make every day. Governments, countries, landmasses of non-specific boundaries, these collective groups of people work and don’t work because they are conceived by, made up of and belong to, of, and by people. Human, frail, weak, and beautiful people.



God Bless America. I checked the lyrics, and it didn’t say, ‘She’s gonna need it.’ But maybe it should have. And really, maybe it should say ‘God bless this planet,’ because that’s where all this patriotism, this pride in ‘our people’ is going to have to redirect itself if we want to see our grandchildren enjoying the ‘pursuit of happiness’ instead of the ‘pursuit of potable water’ like the folks in desertified swaths of Africa our carbon economies have helped to create. Woody Guthrie knew this; he hated Berlin’s heart swelling opus and responded with ‘God Blessed America for Me’ a song he eventually changed to ‘This Land is Your Land’, his most famous song and an important poem in its own right. His answer to ‘God Bless America’ did not speak of a lofty divine being whose hand could guide us through a night with a light, he spoke of America’s terrestrial beauty, of how his own two feet carried him across it, of nature’s bounty. And he spoke of a fence:

As I went walking I saw a sign there

And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."

But on the other side it didn't say nothing,

That side was made for you and me.



I’ll leave it there. This land was made for you and me.