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.

Crafting Smörgåstårta

I started off this weekend quite bitter and disappointed. Given the course of how Friday closed for me at work, I was in real need of something more relaxing to do for leisure . . .  but that shit wasn’t happening. Instead of getting to check out the massive indoor flea market, or maybe the pet expo at Prairieland that I wanted to see, or skiing with my friend, or getting the chance to reunite with my brothers and sisters-in-law to finally go on a whiskey tour at Lucky Bastard distillery, I’m left being obliged to review, study, and attend workshops all bloody weekend at Saskatchewan Polytechnic* for not just one, but both weekend days. My Sunday isn’t even sacred for my quality weekend time, and I’ll be missing out on the Roughriders vs. Argonauts CFL semi-final, while I’m being fraught and tortured with test anxiety. That’s like bloody sacrilege to have such a workshop on this very day! I left SaskPoly on Saturday afternoon, too deflated and de-energized to do much of anything. I also had the aggravation of needing to do some grocery shopping for some protein afterward, by the way, a terrible idea on late Saturday afternoon if you hate crowds like I do.

I had a bear-like craving for either smoked or cured salmon, along with some other elegant form of seafood for some crazy reason (but not sushi, oddly enough . . . something more novel and different from that). If not for Saturday, then for my Sunday. I found a deal on smoked salmon and some shrimp on sale, and . . . Merry-flipping-early-Christmas to me . . . I also discovered a real rarity for these parts . . . whole crayfish! I always wanted to experiment with these little devils. I think I’m going to put them into some Spanish paella. I remembered that there was an odd inventory of eggs, veggies and other things to use up first as well in the fridge. I also reminded myself of my brewing project schedule, and reminded myself that should find something that accords with the non-wastage of the by-products of that after the first racking. Getting the crayfish reminded me of something about Sweden** (they have an annual festival there devoted to the eating of these little buggers). The thoughts of Swedish cuisine made me recollect flashes of some other inspirational things I glimpsed once on Pinterest as to what to do with my salmon and shrimp, and in this convoluted way I got an idea rolling and all these things coalesced in a lightning flash. My next culinary experiment was going to be making a Smörgåstårta: Swedish, for “sandwich cake”. I collected a couple more elementals for the project, and got the hell out of that store in a hurry.

The process went as such for innovating my version of a Smörgåstårta:

Step 1 – Crafting the “cake”: Knowing that I had to transfer (rack) my beer wort from a primary to secondary fermentation stage, I took and exploited the residual trub (mucky looking sediment residue) which is loaded full of live yeast, to serve as the leavening agent, along with some buttermilk for my “cake”. As it was loaded with more hoppy flavour, I added sweetened and aromatic caramelized onions and poppy seeds to the all-purpose flour dough to tame down some of its bitterness. I fashioned a dough and cooked it in a round, straight-sided baking dish. After baking it until done, I trimmed away the excess and the crusty surface (to be used as croutons). I don’t remember how long this took between the kneading, rising, and baking, but it was long enough for me to consume a couple of casually sipped gin and tonics. For an easier way to do this, you’d probably just buy a round bread loaf of whatever your preference is (like sourdough or pumpernickel) and trim it such that you get a wide cylindrical loaf.

Step 2 – Section the Loaf:   I made three horizontal cuts across the loaf, dividing them into four even sections.

Step 3 – Select and spread your fillings: You can use any damn filling you want, provided that it doesn’t make the bread layers too soggy. My choices for this particular experiment were: Herbed Liver pâté and chopped peppers spread evenly, add a bread section, then smearing on egg salad (flavoured with a small pinch of curry) over that, then layering with another section, then avocado and shrimp spread evenly, topped with the last layer section.

Step 4 – Making the “icing”: That was made with a 3:2:1 ratio of cream cheese, crème fraîche, and mayonnaise respectively. For this project, ¼ cup proportions were used for those ratio numbers. Sour cream might work if you don’t have access to crème fraiche, bit if you want to know how to make it, read further below. I reckon for an even more authentic icing ingredient, skyr could be used. I mentioned it briefly in another post. I may try that some day. Anyway, mix those three ingredients together to an even consistency, and chill for an hour before Icing your cake. Chill the iced cake for another hour before the next step.

Step 5 – You garnish that bastard like crazy! – Or at least this is the way that the Swedes seem to like to do it. Use whatever is edible, not just like what I have in the picture; use whatever it is that turns your crank. I used my smoked salmon, olives, cucumbers, tomatoes, capers and some dill for this one, crowned with one of my new little friends. Once that is finished, put it back in the fridge and keep it chilled before serving.

Oh yeah, for making your own crème fraîche, follow these steps:

1.       Scald a litre capacity mason jar with boiling water, filling it to the brim and emptying it. Also

immerse a sealer ring (and airlock if you have one) under boiling temperature water as well.

2.       Once the jar is emptied, pour in a litre of whipping cream, add to it 2 tablespoons of buttermilk and stir it in.

3.       Place airlock and sealer ring on the jar, and leave it at room temperature for at least 12 hours, if you don’t have an airlock like the one pictured, place a clean double folded cheese cloth across the lip of the jar and the sealer ring on it, not allowing the cheese cloth to contact the mixture. Be aware that the fermentation process will be about 4 hours faster this way. The airlock method will be slower, but purer (less contaminated) with native culture.

4.       Once the cream has a stiffened viscosity, put a clean, sterilized jar lid over it, seal it with the sealer ring, and store it in the refrigerator until ready to use it. Try to use it within a week stored this way.

The nice thing about this dish is that, like sushi, simple things can be used and made to look absolutely decadent. Like pizza, or soup, it allows for ingredient variability. I know it’s one that I’ll probably attempt again. The thing I'd do next time around would be to use my own homemade gravid lax instead of smoked salmon. The fact alone that one can take brewing slop and convert it into a classy party dish is cool trick in and of itself. As recipe concepts go, I’ll be definitely filing this one under “panty melters”. It was super delicious, and it would be nice to see an idea like this catch on. I'm glad I tried this out, as it would probably be the only way I'd get to sample some of this aside from actually going to Sweden.

*- I'm not really bitter or hateful about the workshops per se: they were useful with new tricks and techniques to learn, the instructor was good; it's just that the timing of them was bad.
**- I don’t keep it a secret, or apologize for being a bit of a Swedophile. I’ve made an effort to learn some of the basics of the language, and tune into some of the cultural aspects of that country. I don’t know why that is. Perhaps I listened to a little too much ABBA as a child to get this indoctrination happening. It turns out that I have much in common with the typical Swedish mindset, I think their women are gorgeous, and as I don’t really like tropical weather, I could easily adapt to their winters, which are a lot less severe than the ones here in Saskatchewan.

Fermented Spicy Corn Relish

I was just busy trying to be dutiful: clearing some stuff out of the fridge and processing it as best as I can, since I probably wouldn’t be able to do so later in the week ahead, due to some period of infirmity after a surgery. It’s a long story I’d rather not relate here, but currently, I’m impaired with only being able to use one arm soundly, so household chores have been light. I’m just doing half the prep work, and letting microbes do the rest. I’m letting them be my replacement left hand.

I spotted an interesting recipe for corn relish: totally weird and kind of exotic sounding stuff - I like that! However, as pain is already fatiguing me enough to dissuade me from running out for shopping trips, I restricted myself to just using stuff that is already here, thus inventing my own version of it. Perhaps it is a crazily contrived medley: being spawned from the product of both a lack of sleep, and the influence of pain medication. I tried to keep it simple. Be thankful though if you do want to copy and try it for yourself, as it is very rare that I record quantities and proportions when I improvise in the kitchen.

Ingredients

4             Large cobs of Fresh Corn (Maize)

1             Small Onion, finely chopped

½             Cup of Celery, finely minced (include the leaf bits if you want)

1              Teaspoon of Cumin Seeds

2              Tablespoons of Chili Pepper Flakes

2             Tablespoons of Course Kosher Salt

1             Tablespoon of White Sugar

Procedure

1. Use a quart or litre size canning jar that can be fitted with a lid with an airlock fixture. Scald the jar to sterilize it by filling it with boiling water. If possible, turn the airlock fixture upside down, and immerse it in the water of the jar. Leave it this way until you are ready to fill it with the relish mix.

2. Cut away the corn from the cobs into a mixing bowl, add in the remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly.

3. Using a heavy clean implement to crush the mixture to release the liquids in the kernels. Crush it enough to make the consistency look like kind of a very thick mushy porridge. I used a large wooden pestle, but I assume the top part of a meat tenderizer hammer could be used, or else a clean, unopened, tin of soup would work too. Don’t be tempted to use a spoon to taste the mix, and then putting the same spoon back in the bowl of contents. Not only is that just plain gross; you risk contaminating your batch and end up getting something quite different as a result, perhaps like something brewing closer to chicha*.

4. Empty the water from the jar, and begin spooning in the corn mixture and packing it in the jar, tamping it down often to get rid of any air spaces. Fill the jar tightly until the contents are level and are at about 2 cm below the jar opening.

5. Cover the compressed level surface of with 1 cm of boiled water; pour it in slowly. Made sure the sealing surface edge of the jar is absolutely clean and free of residue and debris, place the airlock fitted lid on the jar, and screw it on tightly. Fill the airlock to the halfway level with boiled water.

6. Put the jar in a warm place in the kitchen and allow it ferment for 2 to 3 days. After that, replace the airlock with a fitted lid and store it in the fridge, or divide it into smaller jars and can it via boiling water immersion, or using a pressure cooker.

I would guess that this would be the kind of condiment to be used with burgers, or a grilled chorizo sausage on a bun, or for Tex-Mex cooking, or as something to roll into a burrito, or to blend into a dip. Maybe going into a trance involving more pain-killers will lead to more ideas for uses for it.

*- Here is some interesting, yet useless, fermentation information for you . . . Chicha is a type of maize beer that was made by the ancient Incans, and other Meso-American indigenous cultures. An integral step of the mashing process to make it involved the kernels of raw corn being chewed, spat out, and then collected, as enzymes in human saliva help break down the complex starches in corn into simpler sugars to enable it to be fermented into an alcoholic beverage. I shared this fact once at that right moment while someone was sipping their beer, only to watch it spew out their mouth and nose as they gagged at the thought of this. That alone was pure entertainment right there. Who says history and science can’t be fun?

Fermento or Demento?

There is always a cause and
a way to network for a better
good at the Farmers' Market
which places that big,
 corporate food distributors
just won't allow.

I’m outside this morning, watching the leaves turn yellow, and slurping some coffee before I cycle out to the Farmers’ Market. I go there more for ideas than for the products, and I meet and get to chat with like-minded people. My love for the Farmers’ Market is directly proportional to the hatred I feel going to a giant food store [CFM α DFS, or LFM = k(HFS)]. This will be my last entry about food for a while, I swear. The extra sitting around to purposely stay off my legs/feet is beginning to bore me, so I feel compelled to write something. The only walking and standing that I could handle for the past couple of days was to can some brewed pickles in the kitchen, and to play around with shaping plastics and metal: jury-rigging and custom making a type of airlock system for another experiment I had in mind. I caught myself for a moment, wondering . . . who in the hell else on this Earth would be as interested to tinker around with this sort of thing? More about this in a new paragraph when I return.

I learned that I am eligible to acquire yet another label. I would assume that it is official for me, and has been so for quite some time; I just took on wearing another hat for it as my interests expand into other categories. After that project, I re-read some of Michael Pollan’s book, Cooked, to recall a past caption I saw in it regarding this same situation. I realized that I veer toward belonging to this particular and peculiar group of people who busy themselves over the art and science of fermenting food products. Apparently there is a name for them: they are called fermentos. They are this strange and esoteric subculture of people who openly invite microbial cultures into their homes, and harness those agents of decomposition for enabling some unique and (hopefully) delicious transformations of their kitchen stock. They are the home brewers and vintners, pickle and condiment makers, and the preservers/crafters and masters of all other things made from what is essentially the controlled spoilage of grain, fruits and vegetables, various meat proteins, and milk. I’m not sure if I like that name, but it is what it is. It does portray and represent though a set of people with a grander and purposeful agenda - at least for them. They choose a greater good over convenience. They are more likely to grow (or at least be interested in and appreciate) gardens, and are apt to treat food like it was precious more so than the average sort. They are crazy enough to accept a margin of risk of contamination that may ruin their results. These are people who, for the most part, understand how the flawed current conventional systems of: commercial food production and land (ab)use, marketing, distribution, preservation, and how the obscene amount of toxicity and wastage within all those facets, are doing more harm than good to us and the planet. This is their (our) way of weaning ourselves away, and opting out of that system. Making wine and beer at home, and recycling your own bottles and containers then becomes like a noble form of insurrection. For some of the more radical fermentos, personal economy doesn’t even enter the picture. For instance, it might be cheaper to buy a brick of factory-made mozzarella at a store, but for one to take the time and effort to make it in one’s own kitchen, despite the extra cost, indicates a lot of hubris and a strong urge to rebel*.

To admit that I appear to be one of these so-called fermento beings to some degree, and to say that I’ve invested some time and interest in exploring the ways one can exploit micro-organisms to make things like alcohol and kefir, cure sausage, or preserve and flavour vegetables instead of eradicating them from my kitchen with cleaning chemical warfare may seem weird to some. The effort to do so isn’t that much more complicated or troublesome than what I already do now in terms of having to divide and repackage bulk foods into more manageable portions with living as a single person. So long as time and money aren’t wasted, I don’t care too much about how my hobbies, health measures, and harmless efforts to save a buck might look weird and eccentric to some. However, I do concern myself about getting too wrapped up in the more conventional things, for sake of appearing “normal”, which in actuality will ultimately do real harm to us all. Our current rate and state of food waste is one of those things that I really want to distance myself from and be less involved with. In regards to the paradigm of the food system in place now, both nationally and globally, here is what I think is really ridiculously weird, demented, insane, and shameful to be allowing:

·         It is estimated that up to a third of the food for human consumption is wasted globally. Much of that isn’t even due to actual spoilage or expiration in more affluent nations. Food stores of more developed countries reject or discard a lot of produce just because it doesn’t reach some standard of being “aesthetically pleasing”.

·         That 30% doesn’t just represent a waste of the actually food; it also represents the squandering and wastage of water, fuel and fertilizer to cultivate, process, package, and transport it . . . just to have it put in a landfill later! The dumping of all that wasted food is also a major contributor of untapped methane emissions which also lead to greenhouse gases. More detailed stats from the David Suzuki Foundation.

·         It is shameful that we still are destroying and clearing away more natural habitats to grow yet more food for human consumption when we are already wasting the ridiculous amount that currently we do.

·         On the continent of Africa, about 70% of its population is involved with farming and agriculture; yet many of them are starving and reliant on food and aid from the Western world: from places mostly in Western Europe and North America where the numbers of farmers are dwindling down to only about 2% of those populations.**

·         On a monetary level, it is estimated that it would take about 30 billion dollars to end world hunger; another 120 billion or so, if distributed the right way, to end world poverty altogether. The USA alone uses, on average, about 121 billion dollars a year just to dispose of that nation’s food waste. Better food management and a renaissance and rediscovery of the art of home canning and preservation of food; not just in the USA, or North America and Europe, but globally, could help drop that number drastically.

Another thing that we can do to economize and avoid food waste is to just try to make a better effort to be daring and open-minded enough to find alternative ways to make that which we find unappetizing into something more palatable. It involves some creativity. This action is also my chosen experiment for the day. Along with some other stuff for a bigger project, I bought turnips today at the Farmers’ Market. They were really fresh and super-cheap. I wondered how many of them from that vendor's table would be thrown away afterward just because they aren’t seen as a real treat and thence couldn’t be sold. The Hudderites were selling them, so there is some comfort in knowing that their frugal practices wouldn’t allow them to be wasted. However, there was also the dissatisfaction of knowing that these things were just wasting fuel and space on a truck being taken for a ride back to the colony again for no monetary profit, to be later either used by them, or fed to livestock if they were starting to spoil. They were better off not leaving their farm to begin with. Therein was the moment of clarity to devise a challenge for myself, and an opportunity to be innovative.

Ordinarily, my regular relationship with turnips is that of absolute loathing. How they could have ever

IT"S ALIVE!!!! I've become the Dr. Frankenstein
of scary, mutant vegetable preparation.

been willingly chosen as edible garden produce; managing to escape from being classified as some sort of wretched bulbous weed, is a mystery to me. As a kid, I hated the ghastly goddamned stench those things made when they were boiled, and their taste had that indescribably horrid note of vile bitterness that made me want to rip out my own tongue. I never managed to grow out of that disgust for them like I have with other foodstuffs. However, I’m a big enough man to give them one last chance by finding an alternate way to prepare them. The hypothesis of this experiment is this: the foulness of turnips may be erased (or at least reduced) if I try pickling them using a lacto-culture. That is, taking two stinky negative things, and turning them into a positive. I researched and found a recipe on the web posted by a fellow despiser of them, who now claims to be an instant convert to liking them after he discovered a middle-eastern method of pickling them. The recipe is simple called Lebanese pickled turnips. The advantages of their preparation are the following:

·         They are not subjected to any boiling water or steam at all, thus they aren’t exuding that ungodly miasma that stinks up the place.

·         A sharp knife, a clean jar, a lid fitted with an airlock, are all you need for equipment. A leftover piece of raw beet, some coarse salt, some garlic, and spices is all you have to add to them as ingredients.

·         You won’t have to travel to Lebanon, or any other war zone, to try them.***

I won’t go through the trouble of creating a link for it until it’s proven to work out. They are still brewing, and I won’t be able to sample them for a few days yet.

The challenge is also applicable to nose-to-tail eating of animal protein. I do have some ideas for using the less favoured parts and innards of various life stock. Things and recipes that I’m genuinely curious about. I’ll be kind, and spare you all the details and graphics of what’s involved there.

*- They are the sorts of people who give genuine credence to the line, “Blessed are the Cheese Makers!” . . . from one of my favourite comedy movies: Monty Python’s The Life of Brian.

**-To be fair and accurate, many impoverished third world and sub-tropical nations have opted, or are having their land used (sometimes seized by force) to grow more non-nutritional cash crops to export for the decadent things of first world living, things like: sugar, tobacco, cotton, cacoa beans, tea, coffee, plus those other crops like coca and opium to fund narco-crime syndicates and terrorism. Due to a lack of reliable infrastructures to allow for refrigeration or other preservation methods, and poor logistical systems for food distribution, up to 50% of food produced in countries in such regions ends up being wasted. This could drastically change if people were given more knowledge of how to can or lacto-ferment things in their own homes; but the initial cost and availability of buying and amassing enough things like re-sealable jars and resources like heating fuel and clean water is a stumbling block for many of them in such places. Waste and preventable food and water born disease due to spoilage occurs because of extreme poverty. The freedom and privilege of being able to can one’s own food stock is becoming only accessible to those well off enough to do it.

***- Yeah, I know. . . I’m really scraping at the bottom of the barrel to find positives about this.

Fermentation Experimentation (on Baba's Magic Rocks)

I’ve started this entry after work, by the light of the Blue Moon. I almost feel like howling at it as I sip and sample a rather large glass of the mead that I brewed last year. Tonight marks the beginning of having another stretch of days off before the better part of this summer slips away; ones in which at least the sky won’t be a dull grey haze, and the air won’t be loaded with smoke like the last stretch of time off.

One of the first things that I’ll be indulging in with that time is preparing and eating some decent food. There are enough moments when I’m involved in the Iron Chef challenge at work, but I’m still limited by their menus and the lack of ingredients, or the crap ingredients I find there, so I’m never able to make the stuff that I really want. I have a bit of a reputation in my circles as being a bit of a food rebel (believe it or not). I don’t allow myself to be restricted by recipes very much. Time off means I get to bend the needle into that zone again with ingredients I really want, but then again there are still limits. More on this tomorrow.

Aug 1st, Mid-afternoon

My time off runs into a phase when I’m in the middle of a brewing project. So, I’m sticking around home for the first few days to tend to it before I act on any impulses to leave town. It’s also the time of the year when somehow the rural instinct in me from my early upbringing is aroused, and I become tuned into crafting some preserves, pickles, and doing other folksy kinds of canning projects. I’m also on a kick now to make a mindful effort to eat more (locally grown) vegetables. It’s a good time to do it because now that late summer is approaching, more local fare is available at the Farmer’s Market. As much as I would enjoy my time off by hyper-utilizing my propane grill to barbeque all the meat that I can lay my hands on, the price of it lately has skyrocketed considerably: this drought we are having is the excuse for that. Imported fruit produce is costing more too because of our devalued dollar. I’m also trying to heal my legs again, so my running progress has regressed, and I’m not burning off the same amount of calories as I usually would at this time of year. Eating more veggies and less energy dense food like meat and carbs/fructose may be the remedy. I’m trying not to feel deprived, so I’m preparing my greens and veggies in the ways I like eating them. Eating them raw/marinated, or having pickles or sauerkraut are my favourite ways to intake vegetable matter. So I’m focusing on this.

I got lucky recently after taking a random tour through one of the Asian grocery stores* here in

My new baby, who's ready to get
down to business.

town, and found an amazing fermentation jar: the same kind used by Koreans to make kimchi. This one was the perfect size for my needs. It is enamelled earthenware crockery, and it was dirt cheap too: a real bargain, costing less than a quarter of similar ones I was looking at while browsing online. Other fermentation crocks I’ve spotted in yard sales start at ridiculously high prices too because they are sold as “antiques”. I thought it would be a great investment for experimenting and making my own lacto-fermented pickles and, more importantly, for brewing sauerkraut**. So there I was, excitedly hauling it over to their till: a crackpot with crockpot. I won’t go broke now buying what is considered as delicatessen food at a hyper inflated prices. I can make my own now at will. Nostalgia also was the driver, probably the most pressing one, for me to get this thing. Homemade sauerkraut, like the stuff I was raised on, tastes the best.

However, I have the humbling and disappointing realization that I won’t ever be making the best that there is or ever was, because I will be lacking one especially crucial element for brewing up the perfect sauerkraut. That would be . . . my Baba’s magic rocks. My Ukrainian grandmother’s sauerkraut, in my mind, was the best that there ever was. It wasn't delicious because of any sort of special ingredient she added. Only salt and shredded cabbage were used. It was delicious because of the special rocks she used in the process. Traditionally, or at least as it was in her tradition, rocks were placed on top of the shredded cabbage to keep it submerged and compressed in the brewing vessel in such a way that the bacterial culture that makes this stuff does its job right. The magic power was in those rocks! The more scientific explanation is that the pores in those rocks harboured the lactobacillus microbes, which used whatever mineral matrix that is in those stones to direct their particular course of evolution through natural selection after several generations of replication. The fittest ones that could exploit those minerals, and withstood being immersed in the salt and that specific pH level that a crock full of raw cabbage has, out-competed and out-performed all other strains; and the inferior ones then died off and disappeared. The result is a dominant, unique strain of anaerobic bacteria which was thus optimally mutated for making and imparting that lovely signature flavouring. In essence, that particular kind of rock is a micro-biome, and my grandmother was lucky enough to find the perfect ones to allow this kind of goodness to happen. It's easier just to say that those rocks are magical.

It’s kind of like the same concept of how artisan cheeses from Europe can only be made and found in one special unique place, because of some certain breed of cow eating a specific plant that only grows in some particular valley, which then flavours the milk fat, which then makes the curds that are pressed and then cellared and aged in some cave which has its own unique microbial environment that is found nowhere else on Earth. Replicating stuff like this elsewhere becomes nearly impossible, even in lab conditions. Fermented stuff is special in another way. Such food stuffs are given more of an opportunity than regular food to affix some special cultural identity: e.g. milk is ubiquitous, but things like skyr, an Icelandic cultured dairy product, is something very unique. It’s not really cheese, and not really yogurt because of its unique microbial culture profile. It was probably made entirely by accident during the first part of human settlement there a over thousand years ago, when some microscopic gollywobs native to that island probably shot out from the bowels of the Earth through one of their geysers, and plopped into an open pail of milk, and then someone dared themselves to consume it. It doesn’t get much more elemental than that. It is only cultured and made there, and not readily available anywhere else beyond Scandinavia. Icelanders are probably very proud to call this stuff their own, as it is a part of their culinary tradition and no one else’s. Belgian beer is another example. Rather than conforming to the rigid standards of having antiseptic conditions for brewing within a closed system, the beer in some places in that country is brewed in open vats, and the windows of the brewery are opened to allow the natural wild yeasts, pollens, and other God-only-knows-what particles (like dust falling off from the overhanging cobwebs) to blow in and ferment and flavour the wort. The resulting beer, like it or not, can’t be replicated in a test lab, and can only be made in Belgium. If the technique was tried somewhere else, it would never be exactly that same kind of beer, because nowhere else except that specific area of Belgium has that particular environmental signature. This is what the French call terroir: the characteristic flavourings in wine and other cultured foods and produce that is a direct result of the elements and environment that they were produced in. In the case of Baba’s rocks though, I would imagine and guess that the proper French term could probably be called pierroir*** since the unique culturing conditions stem from a stone.

After my grandmother died, my Mom became the keeper of the sacred magic kraut stones, and she still uses them to make our family’s sauerkraut. It’s a little milder than I remember what Baba’s was, but it is still kick-ass stuff; with that same unique signature aroma and notes of flavour that I can’t describe. Back in the university days, when we received care packages from home, the roommates I had would tie into the jars of my Mom’s sauerkraut, and they gobbled it up like greedy pigs. They agreed that it was the best they ever had. They foolishly thought though that it could just simply replicated if they made it themselves . . . my brothers and I knew better.

As well as for healthful endeavors****, I’m interested in exploring new measures of conservation of

This is trub . . .Horrid looking slop
 . . . but it did its job nicely!

energy and preservation, home economics and frugality, and reduction of waste on all levels. This guy here, who once studied biology and is interested in sustainability, is very curious to see how far cycles of fermentation can be taken within a single system, and how they can be expended and/or expanded by producing stuff with the by-products from a former fermentation cycle. An example of this is rather than discarding the trub (yeast sediment) after brewing beer, I collected it and used it as a sort of sourdough starter and to make some rye bread, which was goddamned delicious by the way! I’m now using that same bread to make kvass (see earlier entry). The lacto-culture from that kvass could be used for making more kvass, or used with fruit and honey to make a sort of healthier sort of pop, or used to ferment other vegetables for pickling. The remaining liquor from 

My resulting rye bread. Not too pretty,
but it tasted great, and will be sacrificed
for my next experiment.

that process could maybe be later used for pickling eggs . . . and so on, und so wieder, et cetera. It could probably last as long as I’m willing to commit to it.

It’s a shame that some of the younger and urban generations of today will never know what some of these homemade fermented products will ever taste like. That’s their loss. I think they have already sadly missed the benefits of such stuff. I don’t have, and never had, any sort of food allergies or intolerances, which seem to be more common with the younger people of today. I strongly suspect that starting off life being raised on things like homemade sauerkraut, unpasteurized milk, homemade cottage cheese, fresh picked unwashed berries, taking a carrot right out of the ground and eating it, and playing in real dirt helped me to develop a more resilient immune system. Having a pantry full of mason jars, and the knowledge to make stuff that fills them makes me feel like a bit of a relic from the past, but at the same time I’m bypassing an industrial system and food culture that seems to do nothing but figure out new ways to put more noxious chemicals and preservatives in the stuff we eat to poison us. There is a bit of a renaissance starting again with home canning and using natural preserving methods that include using probiotics like lactobacillus bacteria. I can only hope it catches on more.

The beginnings of bread kvass: rye bread
+ raisins + spices + yeast + water, and a
little dash of alpha-amylase to accelerate
the mashing process. And yes, I do just
happen to have a stock of refined
biochemical enzymes just lying
around in my kitchen cupboards
. . . I'm kinky that way.

If I don’t ever get to use my Baba’s rocks, it is my hope that either one or both of my nephews would get to, and learn and appreciate how to use them at least one time in their lives, so they can see and enjoy the results that they can procure, and be cognisant of the power of taste and tradition, and what real food is all about.

*- I freakin’ love probing through the merchandise at some Asian and other ethnic market stores. It opens your eyes to a lot of weird and wonderful ways and variations people can express their palette, and some stranger foods that bring people comfort. Discovering something new and tasty, when you’ve thought you’ve already had all that you wanted to try in your life, is a great experience. I do have to be wary though that some of the “medicinal” teas, herbs, spices, and condiments there that you could have tolerated well enough when you were younger can, within half an hour after consumption, make you feel like you were shitting pure battery acid.

**- For you pretentious, snobby foodies out there, I’m talking about choucroute. I know it sounds weird to be sentimental over something that in essence is the result of bacterial putrefaction. There are just some weirdos, like me, out there who love sauerkraut, while others out there would compare sauerkraut as the collecting all the most vile beer farts from everyone at an Oktoberfest, and condensing them into a jar of shredded cabbage. There is no accounting for taste.

***- Terroir is derived from “terre”, meaning land or soil; so it stands to reason that pierroir could be coined as a word derived from “pierre”, meaning rock or stone.

****- Fermented foods make for a healthier gut/digestive system, and are also proven to be useful in detoxification and chelation (removing heavy metals from the body).

On Small Things of Decadence

I've finally made it back to a state of health that is allowing me to return to work, although I must say that the cold I had last week kind of threw me down on the mat harder than I thought. Re-adapting to the rigours of a typical work day after it has been a bit of a trial. Recovery from the sinus thing was made more troublesome because I can't use my conventional arsenal of over-the-counter cold medications to combat such things anymore.

Consequently, I got into exploring the uses of more benign alternative tonics and bitters with aromatic properties to use as special elixirs. In other words, I was experimenting with the art of making cocktails. I blew the dust off of my long neglected stainless steel shaker and started to use it again. Thankfully, having alcohol in moderation isn't (yet) a problem for me¹. It has at least helped me to sleep a little better. At the risk of taking what may sound like a new adventure in snobbery, I've been exploring other avenues of bartending beyond the relatively low-brow dumping together of pop and a spirit, and having it recklessly chugged down, as it is most commonly done around this region (no offense to those who prefer to do it this way). The cost of what it would have taken for the required dosages of Neo Citron and other remedies was diverted to purchasing some special ingredients for fashioning the somewhat more obscure and unusual libations I've been curious to try out. Mixology and making cocktails kind of fascinates me now. There is a definite skill and finesse required to do it, or at the very least one could say: you still can't train a monkey to make you a decent martini. It's both scientific and sensual: in getting proportions, temperatures, aeration; the interplays of sweetness, dryness, acidity, astringency, and other flavourful notes, and getting the blending and timing of it all right to make something aromatically exciting and truly pleasing to the taste buds. With knowing the statistical popularity/prevalence of ingredients and combinatorial measures and substitutions, even a limited number and variety of bottles of spirits and aperitifs, like I have, can make hundreds of different cocktails. It's as at least as interesting to me, on a mathematical basis, as playing around with the varieties of possible pizza topping combinations, or kinds of sandwich fillings in the culinary sphere. I proudly tackle this endeavour in the name of science!

However, around these parts, getting some of the more exotic bar stock, like Kina Lillet, necessarily needed some dabbling with darker forces to procure; but now I can mix together a Vesper². Some Žubrówka (bison grass infused vodka from Poland) was also acquired by the same wretched means. Of the only two options I was given to use, I at least chose the lesser of the two evils³. Speaking of evil: while in this one liquor store, I found more things to ridicule, as I usual do when I go shopping, about how crazy our conspicuous consumption is getting to be for some of the things on which we use our disposable income. Maybe I'm just a rural bumpkin at heart, maybe my palate is yet unrefined, or perhaps I still lack some cultural wherewithal to be cognisant of that marginal line that divides the goods that are considered luxurious and those which are for the rest of the vulgar masses. Forgive me for what may seem like ignorance, but I would call it being sensible enough to drop the pretentious bullshit. I fail to see much difference in taste and aroma between a so-called cheap wine and a more expensive one, or why there is such an astronomical variation in the range of prices between certain scotches and other whiskeys. From this last time liquor shopping however, some bewilderment really made my jaw drop, and hyper-activated the ridicule circuits in my brain.
 
I encountered the most expensive bottle of liquor I have ever seen in physical form in my lifetime. It was something crazy that one would expect to find being gavelled off at a Sotheby's auction in London, but instead it was right there in the relatively unsophisticated boonies of the West side of Saskatoon. It was a bottle of French cognac of some special reserve that was listed at $3099.99. That was not a misprint, that's over . . . THREE THOUSAND <long stream of expletives here> DOLLARS CANADIAN!!! The sticker shock was enough to do a total memory wipe on me as to what particular brand it was. It doesn't much matter because I certainly won't be buying any no matter how rich I'd ever become. No liquor in a 750 mL bottle, even if it came from Mars never mind France, should ever cost that much. My surprise actually doesn't really come from discovering that there is cognac out there that is this expensive, and I seriously doubt that the price of this bottle even comes close to that of the actual most expensive cognac that's for retail sale, because I surely and truly doubt very much that human stupidity for the sake of being pompous has a set price limit. Those bottles more expensive than this one would be found in luxury hotels, or in the secret meeting rooms of the Illuminati or some other such place. I'd really rather not research it. However, what did surprise me was this detail that left me wondering: What the hell was it doing there! . . . in an area where a large percentage of the typical cars in the surrounding neighbourhood have a red book value equal to or cheaper than that particular bottle of brandy? Also: what special, mysterious, bizarre, or perverse qualities or properties, either through its historical significance or in its production, could have inspired a person to have so much audacity and gall, to mark up a bottle of this French stuff so outrageously high? Is it infused with cocaine? Did Rodin himself sculpt the mold that made the bottle? Was the juice fermented in a Fabergé Easter egg? Was the final distillation of that brandy filtered through the basket that collected King Louis XVI's freshly guillotined head? Were the grapes picked by virgins and placed in the solid gold chamber pot once belonging to Marie Antoinette, and then lovingly crushed by the hooves of unicorns to the rhythm and beat of La Marseillaise? Were the staves of the oak barrel it was aged in made from the repurposed wood stripped off of Napoleon's private battlefield latrine? What makes this priced more like an artifact and less like regular liquor? What is the bullshit story that makes this somehow better than any other brandy? It is either through the workings of the grand poohbah of all sales reps, or the dumbest of dumb wholesale purchasers for that store with this demographic that this bottle was there in the first place. All I can say is if one is paying three grand plus for a bottle of liquor, that stuff had better damn well be able to cure cancer or something. I would expect it to give me all the good things far beyond the satisfaction of merely being just pleasantly pissed like what regular liquor can already do. This potion should be like a whole weekend of entertainment in a single snifter: drinking it should be like being under the influence of cannabis, Ecstasy, and Viagra simultaneously, or else it should biochemically supercharge a body to exude some sort of pheromones to give one an aura to be like the most attractive creature on the planet (kind of like creating a reversed beer-goggles effect). As for now, I don't believe the difference between that stuff and something like Courvoisier, the last most expensive brandy I've actually sampled (under $50 a bottle), is worth an extra $3000. Frankly, it's like a criminal act to hyper-inflate a price like that. However, we don't really challenge this because we certainly don't feel sorry for the filthy rich asshole who has that kind money to carelessly throw around, and is idiotically conceited enough to buy such a thing just to put on airs and to show off affluence . . . or at least I don't anyway.
 
I had no intention of poking jest specifically at the French, or to mock them about any reputed pomposity and over-extravagance, although after reading through my last paragraph it might look that way. An apology to those who thought so, as I know I have a few readers from France. Lord knows they are going through enough right now with the recent Charlie Hebdo incident. I don't want to kick them when they're down. I stand in solidarity with them in being against those sort of treacherous, barbaric acts. I'm thankful to have and share the same kind of freedom of expression that enables me to write this blog. I do, however, find it ironic that in a society that proclaims and prides itself to be on the side of equality, liberty, and fraternity, that there still is this glaring example of a holdover of the days when despotism, tyranny by elitism, and segregation of the classes in that country was institutional. They, of all people, should find this to be as outrageous as anyone else. There is no equality with marketing a commodity with an exaggerated price that no one can acquire except the extremely wealthy. Maybe it's not even their fault, maybe it's the purchasers, marketers, and wholesale vendors right here in North America who should be guillotined for such blatant and audacious greed.

I do have to commend the French for at least a couple of other things (besides the Lillet) that I did indulge in as frugal, yet decadent, treats this weekend: cheese and pâté. It swings my thoughts over to the stupid things we do in North America in our own way with the abomination that is called fast food, while there are available alternatives that are so much more pleasantly decadent that are more affordable. On Friday evening, strayed away from home, famished from not having any supper, and I felt a need to pick my spirits up after feeling bad about a foolish mistake I made. I went to my favourite pub, but it was full; the next place I wanted to try was closed down. I was thankful that my favourite cheese and deli shop was still open. I got some Saint-Paulin cheese ($8.00, but ate only a quarter of it, so really $2.00), and a marvelous pork and duck liver pâté blended with pistachios ($3.50). Though the cheese was from Québec, and the pâté was made locally, both were descended from French tradition. Adding some pickles and olives and crackers to that with a glass of wine (less than $2.00) at home, I had what I thought was an amazing little feast. Accounting for the portions I ate, chewing slowly and savouring it, I was eating better and cheaper than if I had scarfed down a stupid burger and fries with a pop from elsewhere, even friggin' McDonalds. I never felt that I ever had a richer experience by eating fast food, just indigestion.

Taking away the more snobbish elements of them, I concede that things like cocktails and deli food, in their own way, are very important things to have now and again. Small, yet affordable bits of luxury and decadence, where quality, and not quantity, matters. Bits of razzle-dazzle to remind us that life should never be boring, even with the smaller things and morsels of it. They are a reminder that for the good things to happen, It's best to be patient, and take things slowly, through sipping, sampling, and savouring; not through mindless and hurried gluttonous gobbling and guzzling, like there will be no tomorrow, and veering off into a whole other realm of over-indulgent sinning. They are reminders to balance out our lives. Not so much for the tastes and flavours themselves, but also to value some ritualized time to use to enjoy them.

That's what ultimately I think makes a person feel richer and blessed through food and drink.

1. Given my medications, I can only consume a maximum of 2-3 alcoholic drinks within a given day I choose to do it, which is not every day. Therefore, now when I'm in the mood to drink, the onus has shifted a little more towards making something that is kind of visually appealing, can be sipped slowly, and savored for an extended period. So, I can't binge drink even if I wanted to, not that it was ever my habit to begin with. Despite having some Slavic heritage, I actually find the manner and amount of hard liquor like many Russians and Ukrainians (in the old country) can dump down at one sitting to be quite distasteful, even when there is the guise of sophistication of the tradition of zakushki (a table full of appetizers and delicacies) present to take the edge off all that straight vodka (horilka).

2. The cocktail in the Bond film Casino Royale. It is a damn fine and tasty one too I find. Of course, I make mine without the digitalis poison. My Žubrówka will be used for making something nice I learned about from Top of the Hops a few years back.

3. I sullied myself finding these two ingredients in one of the private stores here, only because I couldn't find them in the public stores. It was in the Co-op owned one, and I am a member/share holder, so that is a forgivable sin to some extent. At least I didn't use Sobeys. I'm happy to say that all other potent potables I need for my personal liquor cabinet can be collected from the public liquor board store.