Berry Foraging, My Pemmican Project, and Ugly Fish

I have no shame in saying that the constant daily influx of being mindful of the presence of lockdowns, the masking up, the event postponements, the extra measures for social distancing, the death tolls on the news, concern for family and friends, the ineptitude of some leaders and governments, and some of the willful ignorance of the public in general, to deal with this matter responsibly and seriously, are all making it harder for me to avoid a depressed state. Today is Day 2 of a 4-Day weekend for me. There’s offerings and opportunities for overtime abound coming to me, but I am not tempted at all to take any right now. I poked into work to take OT during my last 4-day weekend, and it did me no good at all in retrospect. A four day weekend happening every six weeks is the only positive trade-off I have after my schedule had been jumbled around as it has since the Covid-19 measures took effect. It’s (allegedly) summer, and I should be using these days off wisely.

However, yesterday was a day that I felt I didn’t play out so well in being wise, at least in the beginning of it. I had absolutely no energy or motivation to do anything constructive for much of it, but I did force myself to move. I thought of going fishing, but the prospect of facing a stampede of ticks charging at me through the rushes and grass along the river shore near my favoured spots wasn’t anything I wanted to contend with right then. Mid-July is the beginning of canning season for me typically. I did brew up some Watermelon Rind Pickles, but there was no heart in that task: it felt more like a job of being stringent to stop household wastage rather than an act of pride of creating a homemade culinary pleasure. Something reduced to a menial cleaning duty, like mopping a floor, or scouring a toilet.

Mid-July here is also Saskatoon berry season, and, even though again my energies and instincts didn’t feel right, I forced myself to try a bit foraging around some spots where I correctly guessed that there would be an abundance of bushes - to at least feel a little more useful and productive. However, it wasn’t very fruitful - literally. I also correctly guessed that they would have also had been picked over already by other foragers, since shutdowns have made it more likely that some of those without work were more resourceful in using the extra time to snoop around for free seasonal food. Surprisingly, I managed not to invoke furious swarms of mosquitoes as I rustled through the bushes, being so close to the river, but an hour or so in the oppressive humidity was enough, and I tapped out. The few odd good berries that were left were sparse, some were already becoming desiccated, and amidst puny immature ones that only birds would take interest in. I combed the area, working along for at least a kilometre southward, to only get a yield of about 400 grams of berries of mediocre quality.

I tried not to allow all this effort to become another senseless waste of time. These saskatoons were not of any size or quality to be usable for dessert fare like pies; too miniscule of quantity to use for jam. I found the thought of working an hour to make what would amount to a couple of fruit smoothies ridiculous.

The thought of another possible use for them struck me as ridiculous: making pemmican. The ridiculous part being that I lived all my life here in this province, and I have never once sampled any sort of pemmican. It’s now considered to be an archaic foodstuff, heading down the road of dietary obsolescence, like many other food traditions that have become obscured and extinguished since the advent of modern refrigeration, and food preservation science. I can forgive myself, and I won’t be too self-critical about that kind of ignorance on my part. Very few people here, in fact, even amongst those who are of native ancestry or Métis, from which it originated, have ever sampled pemmican in this modern age. When I shared this idea with my girlfriend, she looked at me with the expression like she saw the needle on my weird-o-meter flip over into the red zone, that mirrored a conclusion that the Covid situation is turning her poor boyfriend into some sort of crazy, paranoid, doomsday prepper*. That seems to be the only isolated subculture remaining that is taking a serious interest in making pemmican; if not eating it, then storing it in some bunker somewhere, where it awaits them for Armageddon. That is really kind of a shame, because it’s something that would be an honestly true local Canadian/Saskatchewan food: a meat preservation technique that has been used to sustain the indigenous people here for centuries, if not millennia, but not readily adopted for our modern culture here in Western Canada. I’d like to see it be given some more due respect as a food with some historical significance and cultural identity for this province. I’m not saying that it has to be made popular again, but the technique for making it should be at least given some honour, and be preserved for posterity, like the rest of those so-called pioneer recipes that were collected for the sake of the history of the communities of our province. 

So, out of my own scientific and anthropological curiosity, I decided to commit to this project. It comes as a disappointment to my girlfriend, who I’m sure would have rather preferred that I try make her some scones with those few saskatoons I found.

Making pemmican merges techniques of preservation that intersect the making of sausage and jerky. It’s simply made of lean, dried meat; mixed with mashed, dried berries, maybe with salt if it was available; blended and coated with melted tallow. After that, it is then pressed, formed, wrapped, and when packed in an air-tight container, it’s one of these foods that can last nearly forever (if kept dry) without further need of resources to preserve it (hence why preppers really dig this stuff). It is a food that’s energy-dense (without any carbs/added sugar) and protein-rich, and also readily portable and easy to cache without refrigeration, or other sophisticated method of storage. That was the appeal of it to the indigenous peoples, and later to the traders, trappers, and frontiersmen in the early days of settling in this territory. It’s as perfect a food that can be made for the practical purpose of enduring the rigours of outdoor living and/or a hunter-gatherer nomadic lifestyle: be it grunting along portaging canoes, chasing down your next meal in the bush or on the plain, or just for plainly and simply surviving in an uninsulated, flimsy walled, collapsible, portable shelter during the worst of weather inclemency. As a diet food, you can’t get more Paleo than something that was actually crafted since the Stone Age.

I have actually tried to make pemmican once before in my lifetime. It was back when I was in the sixth grade in school. Making “pemmican” was part of our social studies class project when we were learning a bit of the aboriginal culture and history of our province. We used hamburger and saskatoon berries mashed together the “traditional way”, by using rocks, but the drying process failed completely. I remember afterward, as a result, we had containers full of horrible, maggot-festered, slimy, rotting mush; with a gag reflex-triggering stench. It was definitely a moment where that could have dissuaded me forever from ever being curious about it again.

Traditional forms of pemmican aren’t just restricted to bison and other wild meat - but can also made of something that required more of an acquired taste. I was made aware more recently of a sort of fish pemmican made by the northern Dene people of this province. The substance in question, if I remember right, is something called “losh”. When first told about this, I was uncertain if it referred to the fish used, or the recipe for its preparation. The Dene method of making this stuff involves taking the big, fatty liver from fish we call a mariah (pronounced the same as the first name of the singer Mariah Carrey). It’s also known by the other names, varying regionally, of burbot, or ling)**. I’ve always known it being called by the first name I mentioned. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s a freshwater relative to cod, with a fat, flat, frog-like looking head with a lower barbel on it, and an eel-like tail. As far as native species of fish in this province go, this one isn’t likely ever going win any beauty contests. It’s an icky dull brownish colour, and it’s about as ugly looking as a pail full of smashed assholes. Anyway, this creature’s liver is mixed and mashed together with dried cranberries, and perhaps some parts of its pulverized flesh. The rest of the process and details of preparing it is of no interest or consequence to me because I’m quite sure that I would never fucking ever eat such a thing anyway. I won’t knock its possible nutritional benefits though. It’s probably a very potent and practical nutritional powerhouse, loaded with all the same vitamins that cod-liver oil supplements have. Sensible to eat in a Northern area where plant-based vitamins are lacking most of the year. The point is that its preparation/composition has the common elements as that of pemmican: basically some sort of mix of flesh, dried berries, and animal fat. Apart from that, I imagine and assume that the traditional way of adding some seasoning and flavouring to food in the pre-colonial times for the aboriginal people was pretty much limited to just using salt or wood smoke.

Getting back on track. I decided to start this project today. There was no set method amid any of the recipes and techniques I reviewed online, so I’m jury-rigging my own from the bits and pieces found that accord to the materials I have in my kitchen.

Meat, salt, and saskatoons

I originally thought I was going to make my first pemmican trial as authentic as possible and use bison meat. However, even a modest quantity of bison meat costs a mint, and it would be a shame to have a possible failure result with such a great expense. So, I opted for the leanest beef I could find: some trimmed eye of round, using about two kilograms worth, accounting for the fact that the weight will shrink to about half or more once I dry it. The melted tallow component is actually beef suet. If you are already feeling repulsed, and going “Ewww!”, and are of British ancestry, I remind you that there is such a thing as suet pudding in the English gastronomical circle. The butcher I visited told me that there is little difference between the two, and process of rendering it would probably be easier. I got myself a kilogram of that to render down (using my slow-cooker). That, plus my 400 grams of berries, mashed and muddled with about 2 tablespoons of salt were my total ingredients. I sliced the beef pieces to about a 5 millimetre thickness. I coated them with the mashed and salted saskatoon berries. I placed some on an even single layer on a mesh drying rack in the oven at 225 degrees F (107 degrees C) for several hours. The rest of the slices that would not fit on that rack were put in my food dehydrator. 

I dried the pieces until they were about half their original volume, and quite rigid and no longer sticking to the rack surface. Using my hand meat grinder, I then ground down that stuff and got a yield of about 750 grams of berry/meat component. I rendered off enough suet for about an equal weight of it to make a 1:1 mixture. I blended it together while the liquified suet was still warm. I got a consistency in the mixture that looked like a thick lumpy pudding. I lined rectangular containers with wax paper, poured it in these molds, and allowed the mix to set and cool. I used a paper towel to blot off some excess grease from the surface of my cooling pemmican bricks.

Suet added to the mix.
The bowl on the right is the
remaining cracklings from the
rendered suet. They won't be
wasted. I'll add them as filler for
my next sausage-making project.

Rectangular containers lined with
wax paper to form my "bricks".
It makes this operation look
somewhat illicit!

The finished product all set and wrapped up.
One innovation I used for forming (not exactly
traditional) was a homemade wooden press used
for making sushi.

If you are as crazy or adventurous to copy what I’ve been doing, know this. Beef fat hardens quickly and is more waxy than it is oily/greasy. Never dispose of hot beef fat down your sink! Unless you want a visit from your plumber. I haven’t done this myself, but I felt compelled to warn people who might be silly enough to try to do that. Wipe and scrape off as much of the splatters and excess residues from your surfaces, bowls, and utensils and dispose in the garbage before you wash them.

My Verdict: The process was a lot more labour intensive than just making straight up jerky or even making sausage. I found it to be a bit messier than those processes. The texture after it finished setting was kind of waxy, as could be expected. I have not actually tasted it yet; I’m waiting for a bit of biochemical magic to happen first. I stored most of the bars in my freezer except for one. That one is the smallest of them which I kept out in room temperature that will be used as sort of a sacrificial scientific assay, to see and monitor if, or when, any decomposition does occur. If so, how long will it take place? I’m also curious, given that there are sugars in the berries trapped in an anaerobic environment, if any sort of secondary fermentation process will happen, as like when dextrose is added to salamis that are hung to air dry and be preserved that way by sort of being pickled in the residual alcohol internally, which also gives them a signature flavour.

If I dare myself to make this stuff again, I think my next berry ingredient will be some further reduction of a blueberry jam that I made that did not set and was thence rebranded “blueberry syrup” to recover from my failure. I also have dried juniper berries which could be interesting. I saw a version with honey added, another forever food, which may help with its conservation.

I’m now curious as to how to use it culinarily, apart from just whittling away at a bar of it and eating it off the knife while camping in the bush somewhere, or while ice fishing, or keeping a bar of it packed in a winter roadside emergency kit in your car’s trunk. I imagine it could be used the same way as being set on a charcuterie platter, or the same way Ukrainians (from the old country) traditionally eat salo (smoked/salted raw pork lard), i.e. with bread, pickles, and vodka. Who knows? Avenues of further innovations could start from here.

*- Not so, I just need to pull myself out of my blue funk with something novel to do.

**-Taxonomical Name: Lota lota. That seems fitting for a fish that’s a whole lota ugly. Whatever you chose to call it, it is one of the more disgusting living things you could ever pull out of a lake in Saskatchewan aside from leeches. My problem with this fish isn’t really with some prejudice against its appearance, but rather after having caught a few these from several winters of ice fishing, I’ve too often seen many come up through the ice riddled with little gray-white parasitic worms that are clinging to their bodies. A consequence of its habit of occasionally burrowing in the silt and muck of a lake or river bottom. It certainly thus doesn’t make the thought of willingly eating one of these things any more appealing, although some who are bold enough to eat these things swear and claim that there is a bit of a lobster-like flavour to them.

Winter Solstice/Yuletide 2018: The Inaugural Yule Bookfest

I’ve been writing this in a piecemeal fashion, starting around the winter solstice, Dec 21^st.

It has been a long while since I’ve posted an entry; for all good reasons. For the last while, with being in a new relationship, I’ve been more attuned into living intentionally and sharing my life privately with someone instead of being a passive commentator about life and sharing random observations about it with a general audience in written form. With the approach of our first yuletide season together, there also comes this excited eagerness and willingness in both of us to adopt some special thing to make as our own unique holiday tradition as a couple. So, we agreed to include a new observance for ourselves during this season. I feel like it is one worth sharing. Personally, I would hope it catches on with others as well if anyone so chooses to copy it.

The new custom we decided to observe isn’t really a specific local one, or even a Canadian one, but it serves our introverted selves very well. It’s one that we kind of appropriated from Icelandic tradition. By virtue of having relatives in Wynyard SK, a community that was largely founded by Icelandic settlers, I’ve already had some exposure to some traditional Icelandic Christmas (Jól) feast fare (like Rullapylse and Vinarterta) from my past holiday visits there. And now, strangely enough, we’re setting out to sample another custom similar to the one from that island, as a Canadianized form of it to suit us.

Temperature-wise, winters for that island nation seem relatively mild and less miserably frigid when compared to those here in Saskatoon, but given their proximity to the Arctic Circle, their winter nights are a lot longer during the approach to solstice*. The long cold darker nights around either side of winter solstice naturally stage an environment for which to retreat into coziness and stimulating one’s brain with a good story. Despite inhabiting one of the most expensive places to live on Earth, and being quite good at exercising frugality, folks in Iceland seem to spare no expense when it comes to buying and reading books. The result is that they have become one of the most culturally literate societies on Earth. Thus, books of all kinds are the most frequently gifted items around the Christmas season there: so much so that there is a word in their language defining this tradition of exchanging reading material as presents during the winter holidays. This annual tradition of buying and gifting books is called Jólabókaflóð, or “Christmas time book flood” roughly translated into English. It sparked some appeal in both of us when we heard about this custom because we do both like to read and would find this exchange quite endearing. We thought it best to anglicize the name to Yule Bookfest*, (see further below as to why). She suggested having this exchange on the last Advent Sunday before Christmas Day, and I thought that plan was perfect: a day of rest, dedicated to fully relishing the blessing of being able to read in peace with a fresh new story. As much as we love our families and friends; and having a chance to gather with them for feasting, gaming, and drinking, for introverted people this extra onslaught of social activity during the holidays, even with it being awesomely joyful and fun, can be a bit overwhelming and draining at times for our mental lives. Yule Bookfest is thus a way to have a day to simmer down the nerves; to take a breather from excessive social overload from the holidays, and to gain a sort of calmer private celebration; balancing the yuletide joy with some peace.

Most people around here refer to the “Christmas season” as the general period covering the latter half of December; I think this term is too vague, and a little thoughtless and sloppy for my liking. I’m a little more demanding of accuracy. I grew up in a family that, at least for a while during my childhood, observed both the Gregorian and Julian Christmases (December 25^th and January 7^th, respectively), as some other kids did in mixed Anglo-Ukrainian families in the community where I was raised, where these holiday traditions mixed and merged. In my formative childhood years, I remember that I was sometimes insistent in having others specify which Christmas they were referring to when they were trying to talk to me about the holidays. When I refer to Christmas, I mean specifically Christmas day (Dec 25^th) or I get even more specific in defining it in mentioning Julian/Ukrainian/Orthodox Christmas on Jan 7^th, and don’t usually use it so vaguely to refer to any other time within the period of December and early January. For that, I‘ve been reverting to the word “yuletide”, for referring to the greater span of days of celebrating between and during Advent and mid-January. Yuletide may sound a little more pretentious and a bit archaic, but it is a word I’m noticing that I’m becoming fond of and favoring (at least in my writing) of its use instead of using “Christmas” all the time ubiquitously over the whole season. Partially because it is a better term that can extend to generally include all days from the first Advent Sunday to Orthodox New Year’s Day (Jan 14^th) and all days in between, and covering all holidays during that time from many other cultures, including newer bizarrely contrived ones (as perhaps ours is), with the celestial event of winter solstice roughly being the tethering post in the middle of it all. As for our new celebration, I’d like to start off doing this special day right, at the very least linguistically*. I see calling it “Yule Bookfest” instead of the original “Jólabókaflóð”, or “Christmas Bookflood”, as necessarily suitable because:

·         As I said, it leaves the word Yule to indicate an extended period of winter days; not just the singular day, of Christmas. After all, one usually needs more than just one day to completely finish and enjoy a book

·         Yule is a shorter word to type than Christmas. I get lazy at typing sometimes, and brevity is sweet and efficient for modernistic purposes. Plus, there are no accented characters, or funny letters (like eth -“Đ,ð”) to mess around with while typing, unlike the original Icelandic word.  This form does respect at least some part of the cognate** from which it was translated.

·         It better denotes that it’s not a serious religious observance; it’s open for anyone to enjoy, no matter what creed/faith, or lack thereof. One has only to appreciate the gift of a book, so we can just leave the term Christmas alone.

·         Rather than a flood, it’s just a single book to gift each other, for indulging in deeply. So, the word fest is best.

·         From the Wikipedia definition below,*** yule is a word originally derived from something rooted in a concept of playing, feasting, merrymaking, and joking around; not being seriously contemplative or solemnly meditative. There’s plenty of time left to do that latter stuff for the goddamned miserable other part, from January onward, of a Saskatchewan winter.

What else does this special day perhaps entail besides exchanging books? I think being costumed in ultra-comfortable loungewear (e.g. housecoat, sweatpants, and/or pyjamas), finger snacks (preferably drier ones to avoid smudging your pages: perhaps cheese, crackers and various other chacuterie), a warm(ing) beverage, perhaps by a crackling fireplace, and not moving too far beyond one’s armchair, or chesterfield. Snuggling and napping between chapters is permissible and encouraged.

My girlfriend picked out a perfect book for me: both in terms as theme material for this day, and the reflection of the kind of person I am, and the strange characters I’m interested in relating to. The book I was gifted for this inaugural celebration of pages was a piece of fiction written by Robin Sloan titled Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. A cool story that involves a bright, but somewhat hapless young fellow who falls into unfolding some strange secrets centered around this bookstore and its gentleman proprietor, Mr. Penumbra. It's kind of book that will inspire you to recommit to being a more avid reader, and to perhaps try to write in more than just some unidimensional prose. It has re-affirmed ambitions that I should follow up on in the coming new year.

This is a bit of a digression . . . but the nerdy part of me usually likes to reflect on the anthropological stuff as to how and why certain traditions have originated over the holidays. This year, it’s kind of nice to be an active force in it all. Speaking of new and modern Canadian yuletide traditions, it leads me to wonder what will be unveiled in this special inaugural year of the legalization of cannabis in this country. I’m going to guess (perhaps correctly) that several folks around the country are probably going to embellish the theme having a “green Christmas” to the max. Perhaps this is the year where there will be started some grand tradition of some kind of Yuletide Bongfest which will become adopted by the potheads of this country: exchanging weed and the means for which to smoke and consume it. I presume it could be on December 20^th (to correspond with the “20” in 4/20). Who knows.

If there was one thing I wish people would tune into more of as an addiction, I wish it was the substance of reading and literature. Long winters here in Canada would set us up for making a few more scholars if Yule Bookfest was taken seriously as a celebration.

*- Sunrise on Dec 21^st in Reykjavik, 11:21 am; sunset, 3:29 pm. In Saskatoon, Sunrise, 9:12 am; sunset 4:56 pm.

**- Given that this is a bilingual nation, I would suppose that we could possibly call this “Fête d’Hiver des Livres” for the Francophones, but I’ll leave that to be properly translated by someone with a better command of French than I have.

***- Yule (from Middle English yole, from Old English ġeōl, ġeōla (“Christmastide, midwinter”), either cognate from Old Norse jól (“midwinter season, yule”),^[2] from Proto-Germanic *jehwlą (“celebration, festivity; yule”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *yekə- (“joke, play”)) +‎ -tide (“period around a holiday”) (from Old English tīd (“period, season, time; feast-day, festal-tide”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dī-(“time”)).

For Anthony . . .

“Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life - and travel - leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks - on your body or on your heart - are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.”
― Anthony Bourdain, The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones

June the eight started magnificently. I got to cycle to work on a day when all the conditions for making it the perfect morning for it were there. I had a smile pasted to my face that reflected all that was making me happy and grateful to be alive: the marvellous weather now thought of in contrast to how bitter it was here just two months ago, an end (or at least a blissful lengthened reprieve) from elements of tyranny, my once ailing pet is now recovering soundly, and all the things my sweetheart does, has, or just is, that make me so joyful that I fail to find words for in describing it all deeply and accurately. It was at work where I volunteered to fix up a cable box and reprogram a replacement remote control; where then it felt like this sphere of bliss I was in that morning became shattered by a wrecking ball as the first thing I viewed on this now functioning television was a breaking news report of the death of Anthony Bourdain. He was found in a French hotel; the cause of death being suicide by hanging. I’m trying to write words befitting of his genius and his passionate soul as my effort to remember him.

Even now as I write this three days later, I struggle to sort out the thoughts, and the words to bind them to adequately reflect all my disbelief, my shock, my sorrow about this great and devastating loss of this magnificent curator to all those who want to and dare to experience, appreciate, and dream of, both bliss-laden gastronomy and adventurous wanderlust. He was a unique celebrity: not an actor; a very real person open to exploring any countries or classes: dining along with, and genially discussing things with all sorts, ranging from patrons of Michelin starred restaurants to the humblest of street vendors. He made me want to be that kind of person with that kind of social fluidity, despite my introvert tendencies. He made me appreciate the will to craft the talent of writing better, and to note the importance and impact of honest and simple prose, and beauty of the written word, even when they are used at times to commentate with profanity on subjects leaning towards the vulgar. He reminded me that I once had the cajones to strike off to foreign places not commonly chosen as travel destinations, daring to eat local cuisine, intermingling with the locals; that I’d do it all over again once funding and freedom permits, and that it is a special privilege to be able to do so, and that past experience of doing it ultimately did me good.

One of the best books that one of my friends ever gifted me that was meaningful to my own life was a copy of Kitchen Confidential, with him as the author. His account of his humble beginnings and course of career through the culinary arts, showing all the wild, the humorous, the sultry, the seedy, and the scary behind-the-scenes happenings of the world of the kitchens ranging from eateries to upscale restaurants. It gave me the greater appreciation of improving and daring to amp up my own cooking skills, but yet it also served to scare the living hell out of me from ever wanting to pursue a career as a full-time chef or restauranteur. It also hooked me into wanting to know what his perceptions were of the rest of the world with this sort of background before he even became a traveller and gaining popularity as a TV host.

He, more than anyone, gave me the sense to see where there could be goodness, and even something majestic and exotic, in something ordinarily thought of as crude like offal, and how awful it is having the insidious metastasizing interference of monoculture of fast food chains. His tastes reflected so many of my own. He was an epicurean in the purest sense, knowing that life is lived through the senses; that is why it is so hard for me to stomach the fact that he took the extreme of ending his own life when he so boldly showed us what was beautiful and wonderful to experience in all corners of this globe. It thus must have been an extreme leave of his own senses. Having been through harsh phases of addictions, depression, and anxiety, he no doubt was exhausted of all his remaining energy to mask such things. It was apparent that he mastered doing it well, unfortunately. I can’t begin to guess what personal existential torment he must have had, or what finally made him act on this drastic and final self-destructive impulse. His death comes a month after I was left to process and be supportive to someone grieving the loss of their own child to suicide. Maybe on the subject itself, this occurrence showed me that I’m not yet done with reconciling whatever suffering it brings to those who are enduring the loss of the loved one this way.

In my own fantasy world, there is a list of people with whom I would love to have convened all together for a good dinner party: a group of contemporary celebrity figures (both living and not) for me that I regard as endowed with enough wisdom and style for living well in an enlightened or almost Christ-like manner. They would be like my personal apostles at my very own last supper. Anthony Bourdain was definitely on that list . . . and still is. He would probably would have recoiled at the thought of himself being compared to a Jesus figure, but nonetheless, he certainly was an influence on me in helping me to opt for constructive and hopeful things to do at times when I myself was in a pit of despair; helping me find simple ways to approach rejoicing life with living sensually in the little, but powerful and even medicinal, things and ways that honestly good food can possess. I wish that point of enlightenment was realized by himself and had rescued him before whatever demons he felt he was facing had led him down this dark path.

Thank you, Tony. You deserved a finale better than this; but thank you all the same for this journey you shared with us all. I know my words are nowhere close to being in the same league of mastery as yours in comparing our styles of writing, but please know that they are genuine and heartfelt. Bon voyage et bon appetite . . . and rest in peace.

Abstention Project 1: January - The Shopping Moratorium

“If men liked shopping, they'd call it research.” - Cynthia Nelms

“A bargain is something you can't use at a price you can't resist.” - Franklin P. Jones

Prelude: The post-Christmas holiday spending hangover is a good enough excuse to allow one to commit to doing this project first. Admittedly, I don’t really dig shopping to begin with, so it’s probably the easiest and most fitting one to have for the inaugural challenge of the dozen. On January 8^th I realized that I went the whole first week of the year without doing any extra shopping beyond essentials, so I thought I’d just continue for the rest of the month. The crappy winter weather of January doesn’t inspire or motivate one in moving too far away from the comfort of home either, it becomes easier to opt not to go through any trouble to frequent any shopping centre, or anywhere else where one can spend money, and thus makes it easier take on a personal crusade of anti-consumerism. Along with the (futile) measure of trying to avoid contact and exposure to people who were stricken with colds and influenza, and trying to avoid getting sick myself, I also put myself on a push back against covetous greed and affluenza.

Mission: To spend absolutely no money on extra things apart from my regular scheduled bill payments for the month of January.

Exceptions:

·         Fuel (only enough of the estimated amount rationed out to keep my car running until the end of the month)

·         Medical/Operational emergency expenses (if need be): e.g. cold/flu remedies*, car repairs/roadside assistance, household disasters, potential vet bills.

·         Redeeming collected points for purchases from my customer loyalty cards, and only on items absent from the home and on discount offer (an arbitrary value exploited, but no actual money used)

·         Using funds that were already allotted and loaded on a reloadable credit card (less than $50, used for one single indulgence of an online ticket purchase, it doubly served as some means to reunite with someone special (even if was for just a brief while). Somethings are worth bending the rules a bit for.

Reasons, Facts, and Figures:

·         Reason 1 – Always follow the money first: if you want to get a real sense of all other possible wasteful/destructive habits you might have that you need to change. You really have to see the categorical breakdown of where and how your finances, and thus consequently, your time and energy are potentially being squandered. This is what is called the Latte Factor¹ by one author I’ve been resourcing.

·         Reason 2 – Actively avoiding shopping for everything shows you (sometimes harshly) the reality of what you tend to covet as a consumer.

·         Reason 3 – Careless wastage makes me angry; I need an exercise like this to correct any fault in contributing to it that I may have. Mindless shopping and over-consumption creates waste.

·         Personal Fact 1 – My biggest purchasing sins: (cheaper) technology, as in poorer quality computers and peripherals, the kind that goes obsolete quicker than average. The kind bought at a bargain at clearance sales, but then have hard drives that fry out quickly, or generally lack capability in terms of speed and memory. If had I invested just a couple hundred dollars more at the time to get a higher quality/capability premium PC unit, I would have had something that would have lasted me at least 80% longer, plus I would have sidestepped the need of the extra expenses of one or two more cheap-ass PCs, or other components to replace. That’s the difference between being cheap and being frugal. I noted that as I was cleaning out and sorting stuff from my closets, I shocked myself by how much of this useless junk I have still lying around, plus all the extra useless cables and cords, plus the packaging they came in. At least I’m purging it now to go get processed at a better proper recycling facility, rather than pitching it out earlier at a time when it all would have went straight to a landfill. Another wasteful excess I’m seeing in my analysis is alcohol. I purchase too much of it for someone who brews his own beer, and for someone who doesn’t drink as often any more (see next month). My least wasteful expense category: clothing. My need to buy new clothes is decidedly lower than average. This leads to the subject of trash bound fashion. Perhaps this is the better coinage of the word trashion. We should be more like Jacobim Mugatu from Zoolander and try to capitalize on it instead of wasting it.

·         Random Fact 1 – Several thousands of tons of used clothing that are being donated to aid agencies and end up getting shipped to Africa, often end up just being incinerated or buried in their landfills there. The fact that the poorest of the poor don’t even have use for this amount of retired clothing is something to make you shake your head at for this surplus of dross. If that’s not enough to piss you off about this manner and level of wastage through reckless consumption, the next point is another fact that might further put me at risk for dissuading some from ever wanting to make any other charitable donation to Africa (specifically, the Republic of Congo) . . .

·         Random Fact 2 – One of the worst cultural examples I’ve found about fucked up priorities based on affluence-oriented conspicuous consumerism: despite living in one of the poorest regions of Africa (more than 45% of them living below their nation’s poverty line), and receiving charity in donated clothing, many Congolese men spend what amounts to more than a year’s income (up to 3000 euros/around 4500 CAD) for designer fashions like Armani and Gaultier suits, and parade around like a bunch of peacock dandy boys. And it’s not something confined to a single corrupt despot in power and their cronies and lackies, but extending to any of the men there, regardless of what occupation or social status each one has, who really don’t or wouldn’t have that kind of money at their disposal to afford this. The fact that social corruption is so rampant there assures that many of these high end fashion garments are acquired by disreputable means (theft, extortion, bribery, etc.), all for the sake of putting on airs.*** This all part of cultural institution there is known as Les Sapeurs, abbreviated from the French name from  “Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elegantes (or “the Society of Tastemakers and Elegant People” in English). Spending that kind of money to pretend being some sort of aristocrats while most likely depriving their wives and kids of food and other life essentials to do so, is one of the most depraved, disgusting, and atrocious marks of pompous, self-centred arrogance there is. It may be a holdover from whatever animistic religions they may practice there, where relics, fetish and material objects and charms are highly prized. I guess it might be a move to at least have a pretty suit to be buried in, since the average male life expectancy there is only something like 47 years. Once they are dead, it is reputed that these suits can be stolen by grave robbers soon after burial before the material gets ruined by putrefaction. Coming to a close second in terms of covetous, greed-driven, stupidity and “keeping up with the Joneses” lemming march, I find examples here closer to home. I’m talking about many of the oil patch workers around AB and SK, specifically those who dumped and sank so much of their money, and abused credit, on high ticket toys and other rapidly depreciating assets that they now can’t sell and are getting repossessed, and then had nerve to complain that they were so hard done by and “suffering” when the downturn in oil prices came and job losses happened. No tears shed for them here. According to Stats Canada, Alberta is supposed to be the richest province in this confederation, and yet has the highest household debt levels out of all the provinces of the nation compared to the national average. Sadly, Saskatchewan is doing as badly over the years in following that trend and trying to keep up with Alberta it that respect since the oil boom hit.

Substitution Materials, Activities, and Alternate Behaviours:

·         Using my stash of frozen food instead of buying more groceries, thus avoiding creating and collecting more leftovers

·         Using my food allowance at work and eating at home, no need for restaurants*

·         Instead of filling hangers, drawers, and closets, I’ve been clearing them out and reclaiming some space for myself

·         Drinking only what already remains of my brewing stock and whatever was left in my liquor cabinet (which flows into the next project)

·         Other free entertainment from multiple avenues, including finding and claiming some free collectable books from the give away table in my building

·         Exercise in my reclaimed office space, and now hopefully some Nordic skiing after work if the weather can warm up

·         Investing mental energy into learning/practicing other languages

·         More research on cryptocurrencies and investing

·         Outlining and planning for more upcoming projects for the course of the remainder of the year

Feedback Mechanisms:

·         My chequebook app. It graphed out all my spending categories and gave me an honest breakdown of what my good and bad habits were. It also showed me where savings were made through this trial.

·         My count of freezer containers of leftovers emptied (17)

·         The cleared balances on my scheduled bill and credit card statements (no biggie here, that would have been done regardless of this project)

Progress: I already have had the fastidious habit of tracking all my income and expenses long before starting this project. It’s a good foundational habit to have in place, and of course continue. However, this occasion was one of the rare few times that I’ve actually seen the weight of what my own personal inefficiencies and deficits were in terms of acquiring needless excesses. Starting the year with this project was especially important, as I said, to reckon what other things I could stand to bring under control through monthlong forbearances throughout this year. All in all, after assessing all this stuff and if gender roles were reversed, the verdict is that I’d actually be someone’s heavenly ideal of a very “cheap date” when I compare what I like to do with my free time, and what it costs for me to actually do such stuff.

Violations (Stakes and Penalties): The penalty for making any unnecessary purchases – time added on to this moratorium to commit to for each needless purchase made. A full day for each one. My 31-day abstention period for shopping really culminated into 33. The two purchases I made during the month of January that didn’t qualify as an absolute necessity: a purchase of some 50/50 tickets at a sporting event. The other was an admission fee to a fitness facility, with more time used the steam room as therapy than to actually work out. Not huge purchases, both were around $10.00, but violations all the same.

Rewards and Final Words: The material prize for me for committing to and completing this was a couple of new shirts, since I rarely shop for clothing. They are certainly not Armani or Gaultier, but they are what’s practical, cool, and comfortable for me. Cleared space, and some renewed gumption to get up and move again was another bonus. Reconnecting with frugality, listing and being cognisant about more than a hundred different ways I can spend time fruitfully without dropping a dime is always good to do too. Upon seeing a botched merger with two loyalty programs here, I reclaimed all my accumulated points afterward at the grocers before things got worse. This post-trial grocery trip ended with me spending only my loyalty points plus $25.00 secured me with enough food for my home to last for more than two months if I plan on process it painstakingly and wisely**. Another thing was managing to squirrel away a little bit of extra money to place into a reasonable risk investment, I’ll see later if that really will turn out to be rewarding or not. A shaky start, but I did give myself a few grey areas, where I could have exploited more chances to rationalize and really sabotage myself. The fact that I didn’t do that to the max is a success in and of itself. I’d say that overall I did OK for this first abstention challenge. For February’s project though, there won’t be any such flexibility like that at all. Wait and see until then.

Bibliography and Resources:

1.       Bach, David. The Automatic Millionaire (Canadian Edition), 2003, Doubleday Canada

*- Which includes the natural ones, since I can’t do a lot of over the counter pharmaceuticals any more; chicken soup being one of them, and there is no other more potent decongestant remedy form of it that I know of than whatever is in Vietnamese broth. I haven’t the time to craft it, nor can I make it as perfectly or as cheaply as any one of my favourite pho joints here in town. Getting some was the one restaurant expense I could justify making; a lesser evil than a drug-form remedy with stupefying side-effects, or possible contraindications. Without it, I’m sure I would have been a big snotty mess for more than a week.

**- Cheaper yet, and for a longer duration of supply yet if I didn’t buy any meat. More on this down the road.

***- Sure, there may be more notable and visible examples of over-the-top flamboyant, materialistic, vanity-laden, and ultimately unjustifiable and unwarranted displays, and useless squandering of wealth in places like Dubai, and other wealthy regions in the oil-rich Arab world: like sports car traffic jams, building 7 star luxury hotels and super huge malls that only very few can shop in, and the competitions of who can erect the tallest phallic symbol dessert tower, but these are people who actually already provide for their families and have the excess money to throw around and to sink into such bullshit.

Winter-ruption

Some people have the habit of immersing themselves into their Sunday morning with their coffee, and leisurely reading the weekend paper. I’m noticing that since the year began that I seem to be immersing myself into my Sunday morning with my coffee in hand, and pretending as if I were writing for a newspaper.

There were unwelcome strange things going on throughout the week since last entry, mostly confined to my personal life for me to deal with beginning the moments I came home after work on more than one occasion, but thankfully these tricky things didn’t mushroom into anything more wild or intensely serious. They included: my building almost catching on fire, another threat of infestation, and my poor little pooch getting injured. Of all those, my dog’s health was/is my greatest concern. She is healing: slower than I want, of course, but at least she’s not deteriorating for the worse. I’m happy that the week ended better with new interesting experiences, and overall soothing transitions. It has been a good weekend to shake off some of the mid-winter blues, which included crawling out of my hermit hovel for a change, and being a little more social. I got myself a ticket for sporting event, which I deemed to be a kosher purchase despite some new project ambitions, which I’ll cover more about sometime in my next entry.

I checked out my first lacrosse game on Friday evening. The Sasktel Centre arena was packed. The Saskatchewan Rush played the Buffalo Bandits. Unfortunately, the Bandits earned their team name too well, first stealing away what was an initially impressive and massive lead by the Rush, coming hard and overtaking them to come to a tie, and then stealing the game away in overtime, 16-15. An epic comeback for them (uncelebrated here, of course), and an embarrassing downturn for us. It was only the Rush’s first loss of the season though - small potatoes. It was still worth the effort to go, and I’d check out at least one more game for the season. Again, I write this next part for the benefit of my non-Canadian audience. The game originated in this nation (actually long before we became a nation) centuries ago by the Iroquois tribal first nations out east. Anthropologically speaking, it was evidence that the development of such a game was an indication of less reliance on nomadic hunting and gathering, and the preference to adopt permanent settlement and the deployment of agriculture. Leisure time appears more with the fixation of working around seasons in one place, and acting out non-lethal ways to practice martial tactics through team sports also evolves*. However, despite it being our official national sport, it fell into obscurity in our cultural scene for a long while. It lost out somehow to hockey and to curling, in terms of popularity as a spectator team sport in these modern times, or at least there has never been a Lacrosse Night in Canada televised on CBC during our nation's formative sports media years. The more novel and esoteric team sport of broomball** (another rink sport invented here, because we have way too much fucking winter to deal with) even became a more popular community sport around here during my early years than Canada’s official national sport, lacrosse. Lacrosse still has been around, but it just hasn’t really been popular as a big-time league field sport until it had been recently re-hyped somehow, and has been making a grand resurgence, thankfully avoiding a sort of extinction from our identity.

I don’t know, or couldn’t guess, as to how or why lacrosse became so diminished in popularity, and a lesser meme of the field/arena/rink team sports played in this nation to begin with. Perhaps it lacked the display of brute strength of football, or the more extreme speed and sometimes pugilistic action that ice hockey has, or perhaps it wasn’t as cerebral, or loaded with enough focused and refined, single-pointed calculated target finesse that curling has in satisfying the other end of the spectrum of stimulation through spectatorship. Sadly, I believe that it wasn’t more strongly popularized throughout our history really because white guys originally from Britain or France didn’t come up with the idea first. It looks like something that Dr. Seuss may have invented. It sometimes gets tricky to follow the plays, as the ball isn’t out as much in the open as a hockey puck is, hidden in racket netting as players are trying to deek each other out, so it can be definitely harder to track. Maybe that's why it got harder to promote and sell through radio and then television, when these media forms were in their infancy: the technical issue of reporting and recording where this elusive ball was throughout a game. The extra dimensional axis along the field of play makes it as interesting, if not more so, than ice hockey. More hand-eye coordination is involved with it perhaps than hockey in that respect. Even if I were younger, I know that I’d have a real challenge playing it. I wish success not only for our team, but also to the league as a whole.

Another newly hyped outdoor game/sport for this winter-ruption season in the city that I’m checking out this weekend is Crokicurl. You can’t get much more Canadian in a game than this: taking a table game that originated in this country, something I’ve played a few times in some dingy, up-in-the-sticks barrooms (Crokinole); a game, as with darts, where one’s prowess is tested and tempered by making it even more challenging yet for one’s fine motor skills with heavy alcohol consumption, and then making an augmented version of it to play on a post-studded ice surface using curling stones for counters. What a concept! No doubt, some form of inebriation or intoxication had to be in progress as the heads came together to create this fusion of these two games. It’s so simple, and perfect! I also can’t really believe that we’ve been so stupid as to not come up with this idea a lot sooner for around these parts. Oh well, better late than never for this heroic flash of innovation. Sponsorship for this bar game come outdoor spectacle, especially from the local brewers and distilleries, i.e., those who could have some sway in allowing drinking in public, could really help it to take off in popularity during this most wretched of the yearly seasons. Hey, and why not just loosen up a bit more about drinking outside in public in the middle of bloody winter as well for special events like this? Especially considering that things are getting lax enough around here where weed is going to become legal by next summer. Hell, I bet the newly forming cannabis corporations here may also want a piece of this sponsorship action. It might be even more entertaining watching these “athletes” trying to play this while they are completely high***. It could potentially be the new stoner outdoor winter sport (not unlike snowboarding, which already holds such a distinction), that can get more involvement and appeal from the lesser-than athletic types. It will be interesting to see how this thing evolves as another one of our national wintertime leisure activities.

It's all hype folks: a sport doesn't become a sport nowadays without it. Pulling a new one out of obscurity and making it fly off the ground with popularity seems now to be impossible to do without commercial sponsorship. 

*- Non-lethal is not always the case. The Aztecs had fully adopted agriculture and civilization too, and consequently developed their own basketball-like team sport called ullamaliztli, a game that died out right along with them. Maybe it’s popularity didn’t take off so well because the losers of the game were offered as human sacrifices to their pantheon of gods. Hard to the develop teams if they are constantly being physically eliminated by getting their hearts torn out. Let's just say that their PR folks kind of didn't give this a serious think through for promotional purposes.

**- Broomball: an ice rink sport believed to have been invented right here in Saskatchewan (first official recording of it being played is in the community of Perdue). Played sort of like hockey, except with using an implement resembling a broom to whack a ball around (hence the name, like, duh!). Comparing it to hockey is like comparing (American/Canadian) football to rugby. There’s no special padding like hockey, and specially soled shoes are worn instead of skates. You need some sure footing as you run along the ice, but you may get the advantage of some added extra traction by occasionally trotting over someone's missing teeth. It can be even more pugilistic than hockey, as I’ve seen in some goonfest matches of it in the past. Maybe it's because there’s less a lot padding to punch around, and there is a decided advantage in being able to base and balance a striking posture more easily to scrap, drift, and coldcock a guy on ice while wearing shoes rather than skates. It's what makes one who is being a broomball goon even distinctively more of a lowdown dirty psycho bastard than as such in hockey in comparison. It would be great, if not miraculous, if this actually got recognized as a sport fit for the Winter Olympics, other than seen as the lowbrow hybrid spawn of hockey/rugby that it could be. 

***- I’m sure at this point of reading this composition of crazy ramblings, that some may think that I do marijuana myself. I honestly do not. My limited alcohol consumption (because of medical reasons) is enough of a vice as it is; I don’t need anything else beyond that. Personally, my life wouldn’t change when cannabis becomes legal here, except probably dealing with issues as a steward about the grey areas when it comes to interfering with work performance in others on the job. I would treat it as a medicine (one that I probably can’t take anyway due to contraindications with my other treatments), and nothing more than that. I am, however, pro-legalization; more so for the reasons that I believe a strengthened hemp-production economy and industry makes for an inroad toward more sustainable ways of environmental and ecological preservation, and will ultimately lead to less taxed and stressed healthcare, law-enforcement, and corrections systems.

Restless Browsing

This is not good. It's only 11 days into winter and I'm already climbing the walls. The good news is that I managed to cram and jam my skis in this new car despite it's smaller interior space. The bad news was that after doing that, and cruising to the ski trails, I found out that they were still lacking enough snow depth to be groomed properly. I went home disappointed, forcing myself to do responsible adult stuff when I returned there.

As much as I abhor giving patronage to any shop on Remembrance Day, I cracked - after being penned up inside, constraining myself to focusing on household tasks for the entire day, seeing that I couldn't go skiing. By the time evening came, I needed to flee from here.

The problem is that there's nowhere to really retreat to at night when lots of businesses and restaurants are closed, even when a statutory holiday falls on a Saturday. My appetite was sated and I was full and had no need to eat anywhere, but I found out that Indigo was open, and my restless mind was hungry; so I stepped into there. I just purged my place of a huge whack load of books, but I couldn't resist seeing what I would alternatively collect for my shelves. Touring the bookstores and libraries isn't just a quest for good material to read; it's an effort to discover the kind of book I'd like to write. This entry is a visual collection and reflection of what my literary tastes and other entertainment modality was shifting to as I browsed the store.

The book best suited for me

on this kind of evening.

A cookbook that I should be

learning from

The kind of cookbook I should

be writing - Sample 1

Another sample of the kind of 

cookbook I should be writing.
There is more profanity in this
one book than what I think I
used in my entire lifetime.
It gets the point across though.

Three books I'd want for a prolonged

trip to my desired European destinations.

The Joy of Less appeals to my philosophy of minimalism.

Another alternate form of porn
of stuff I'd lust for, besides for
whatever's in the Best Buy flyers.

The poetry I might be able

to appreciate.

A comical journaling

exercise book  in a format

that I wish I dreamt up of first.

The magazine I should be reading

A preformatted checklist that I

should have. However, the items on it

aren't 'weird' enough for my place.

There were also games I noticed that I'd be interested in collecting too . . . from old school to ancient school.

Ultimately though,  I ended up shaking off the urge to do any mindless consumption, realizing that what I probably most needed to do was retreat into re-reading and reviewing my own journal notes: ones loaded full of half-cocked plans, semi-mapped ideas, hair-brained schemes, and other lists that I wouldn't share here and the beginning of solutions to other challenges I may have ahead.