Finding Words

Something that I have started doing in the last year is writing poetry. I was struggling with a novel (my usual state) and decided to take a step back, to find some way of freeing up my thoughts and language. I've only written one poem in my life, in sonnet form. If you like you can search it out here in the deep recesses of my blog.

Since then, I've written a few prose poems. I'm freeing up, with the encouragement and amazingly insightful critiques of my writing group. Oh yes, I joined one of those too, and they are really special people, for whom eating and drinking is as important as writing and sharing. My kind of people.

Well, my poetry is for them right now. So here I'd like to share a poem by a true master, Pablo Neruda, inspired by my other passion, pottery. The English translation comes after the original Spanish.


EL ALFARERO

Todo tu cuerpo tiene
copa o dulzura destinada a mi.

Cuando subo la mano
encuentro en cada sitio una paloma
que me buscaba, como
si te hubieran, amor, hecho de arcilla
para mis propias manos de alfarero.


Tus rodillas. tus senos,
tu cintura
faltan en mi como en el hueco
de una tierra sedienta
de la que desprendieron
una forma,
y juntos
somos completos como un solo rio,
como una sola arena.The Potter

~~~~~

THE POTTER

Your whole body has
a fullness or a gentleness destined for me.

When I move my hand up
I find in each place a dove
that was seeking me, as
if they had, love, made you of clay
for my own potter's hands.

Your knees, your breasts,
your waist
are missing parts of me like the hollow
of a thirsty earth
from which they broke off
a form,
and together
we are complete like a single river,
like a single grain of sand.

Cottage Bouquet

 When we arrived at the cottage this year, a lovely bouquet of wild flowers greeted us. Thanks S and S!

As the light shifted swiftly in the late afternoon, I lost myself in taking photographs. The closer I got, the more magical it was. I was lost in detail... in a good way!

Eight Days on the Lake = Three Words: Too Much Happiness

I have so many years of photographs, I thought this year I'd just edit some of the video I took. Here you go - there's even seven seconds of me, slinking out from behind the camera for a change.

Canada's cottage country... can't be beat.

Gosh, I Love Donkeys

 When I was five years old, we were living in Kuwait. I was sent home to London after school ended for the summer as I didn't seem to be faring well in the extreme heat. One day my aunt and her boyfriend took me to The Donkey Sanctuary in Devon, which has become a model for donkey sanctuaries around the world. It was founded in 1969 by Dr. Elisabeth Svendsen and you can read more about how it came to be right here. I still remember that visit, learning that donkeys were still being horribly overworked and badly treated in many parts of the world, including Britain. I learned that when they were admitted to the sanctuary, they were paired up with buddies, which not only offset loneliness but also helped keep the donkey calm if it had to have veterinary treatment; if their buddy was with them, they were more relaxed. I also remember one particular field where there was a miniature grey donkey, rather like the one below on the left, and a larger white one. We walked with them and I can still remember my arm over the larger white donkey and how rough and warm his back was.

Several years ago my mum and I visited The Donkey Sanctuary in Guelph, Ontario, which has been set up along the same lines as the one in Devon. It's a beautiful spot. The donkeys have so much room, and are excellently cared for by the staff and a slew of volunteers who do an excellent job as docents as well as more of the behind-the-scenes tasks.

Two friends and I were back this summer and it really is a special place. We hung out in the barnyard with some donkeys and even got to brush them. I knew their ears were big, but I was surprised at how lovely and furry they were, quite thick and rough. Check out those bangs!

All donkey sanctuaries need financial aid and support in other ways, like fostering donkeys on your property, sponsoring donkeys (I'm helping support Ruby who is just about a year old!), volunteering, and signing petitions, including this one that will be presented to the mayor of Santorini to ensure higher standards for the care of donkeys who act as taxis for the town.

Three Days in Prince Edward County

This was a golden moment. The fabulous four were visiting Prince Edward County again, staying in the lakeside cottage that belongs to one of the party. We were touring around one day and a small general store had two piglets outside in a little pen. It turns out that the general store is run by local farmers, hence the pile of home-made pies for sale. I never got to the pies... I was squeeing too happily along with the piglets. There was one pink female piglet, one black male one. I asked permission to pick one up and was in heaven. So small and sausagey and firm. Look at those little trotters! Having a relaxed piglet laying on one's bosom is a pretty special feeling,

We had a joke that later I would be photographed cuddling a packet of bacon. We ate a lot of bacon that weekend.Sorry piglets.

We also had cocktails on the dock from where we watched a slow sunset. We visited our friend's friend's restored mill, a cidery, a country cemetary tucked away on a well-cared for rural slope (South Bay Cemetary, founded 1820), ate good meals in good company, and hung out with little Dudley, a sweet old doggy.

Five-Day Road Trip to Chicago

It’s rare to find anyone that you really enjoy travelling with. It's rarer to find three such people. I am lucky to know three people who are not just easy to travel with, but are delightful and treasured friends of many years, and so, once again, the fabulous four hit the road for Chicago. Of course flying was considered but, with suggestions for locations of interest that could be experienced along the way, it was decided that we’d drive. The main purpose of the trip was to see the Tiffany glass exhibit at the Driehaus Museum. The only other time I was in Chicago was 2008. That was in middle of Hurricane Ike and for some reason I never found a decent place to eat. What we could only hope for this time was what we got: constant sunshine, mild temperatures, and the best food.

We set off from Toronto on Thursday morning, hitting the Detroit Institute of Fine Arts (above) by lunchtime. The Diego Rivera murals (above right), the Scarab Club (below), and so much more were very worth the trip.



Later that afternoon we visited a blog favourite, the Motawi Tileworks in Ann Arbor. We spent the night nearby after a very satisfying dinner at Zingerman's Roadhouse. I'd never heard of it before, but by the time I'd finished googling it after dinner, I felt like the last person in the world to discover it. It's a national treasure and I'm so jealous that their monthly bacon box, or whatever it's called, can only be shipped to U.S. locations. That night I was catching up on Twitter and noted that the great film director John Sayles was visiting the Detroit area, specifically the University of Michigan, at a symposium about his work among other events that also included screenings and the opening of his archive. I gnashed my teeth that I had missed this by a day. His impressive entourage for the visit included his life/work partner Maggie Renzi and actor David Strathairn (secret boyfriend!).

The next morning, before hitting the road, we decided the only logical place to eat breakfast was back at Zingerman's where I had the best breakfast of my life. Onions, potato, bacon and asparagus were sauteed together before being topped by a beautiful egg, and accompanied by the best gluten-free bread I've yet tasted. I'm still thinking of this breakfast.

We hit the road and I pondered that there seem to be only three types of highway billboards in Michigan: churches, personal injury lawyers and sex stores. One after the other we were exhorted: Injured? Call us! Jesus Saves! 50,000 Square Feet of Sex Toys! We pondered why the "50,000 Square Feet" was important as as selling feature. So when a billboard suddenly popped up advertising the Kalamzazoo Institute of Art's exhibition of Tiffany glass, it kind of stood out - big time. This is the joy of a road trip... the surprises.

Kalamazoo!!!

Kalamazoo was full of charming, clapboard houses and good people. The exhibit was excellent. It didn't just showcase stunning glass and jewellery, but also detailed the way Tiffany and his artisans worked and how the glass was treated and manipulated before being cut into different shapes.

By mid-day we were in Chicago. What a great city.



Our first stop was back at the 2nd Presbyterian Church that we first visited in 2008. There was a jumble sale in support of the church in progress and I picked up two lovely green platters made in Italy, for which they tried to charge me only a $1 each. Yeah. They got more than that. The volunteers were fantastic, taking us into the church and turning on the lights for us. Even the organist appeared and gave us an impromptu recital. Of course the main attraction was the stunning collection of Tiffany and Morris windows. The moment I stepped into the church my eyes got misty. These windows are so stunningly beautiful, and the church is so short of funds. They're trying hard to raise money to restore what they can, when they can. Oh, isn't there a sensitive millionnaire somewhere who'd like to save and restore these works of art? Below left you see up into a vaulted ceiling, and a small patch of restoration work in prrogress. Below right, patched carpet.














 















In the afternoon we arrived in Oak Park, revisited Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio and wandered the streets taking pictures of some of his other designed homes before realizing it had been a long time since breakfast at Zingerman's. In a pub in Oak Park that evening, I fell on a lamb shank like a slavering dog (well, not really, just kind of) and it was - again - delicious.







Tucked into my very comfy bed that night, I caught up on Twitter. John Sayles and Maggie Renzi, that fantastic director/producer partnership behind such great films, had visited the Diego Rivera murals the day after I had. Great minds... what can I say? ;)


Saturday started with perfection. Okay, the Richard H. Driehaus Museum isn't a home that William Morris would have loved, and normally a gilded age American home wouldn't be my sort of thing, but it happens to be the most beautiful home I've ever been in. My pictures don't do it justice. There isn't a square inch that isn't lovingly honed. There is the perfect balance between marble, wood and other materials. Just visit it. After a drool and some shopping in the giftstore (I indulged in every museum we visited), we headed off to the Loyola Museum of Art for an excellent and comprehensive Edward Gorey exhibit. Charming and whimsical. And I got a lovely print of my favourite Gorey illustration ever. It's just waiting to be mounted and hung. We had amazing burgers at Chef's Burger Bistro then headed off to Navy Pier for more of the Driehaus collection of Tiffany stained glass and more besides. Hot and tired after this, we did the only thing that you can do when you are hot and tired in a big city: find a cool, comfortable hotel bar. We escaped into the Bellwether Hotel where they took excellent care of us, serving us perfect tea and warm-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies with vanilla icecream. I think after that we could have handled anything. As it was all we had to do was step onto a boat for a Chicago Architecture Foundation river cruise. Sailing under the first bridge and seeing those well-loved towers soaring above me surprisingly brought tears to my eyes. Our excellent tour guide shared her extensive knowledge and it was so good to sit and absorb for an hour or so. After that the two ladies of the party hit Nordstroms on a flying visit (I bought clothes!) before an evening of food and laughs.







 







I checked Twitter again that night. Well.. look who had visited Zingerman's that day and had also returned.... for gelato. I thought of titling this blog post "My Trip to Michigan with John Sayles" but thought that would be borderline creepy. Heh heh.

On Sunday morning we drove through Riverside, a community designed by Frederick Law Olmstead who knew what he was doing. We saw a FLLW property that is for sale and very decrepit. Hello? Millionnaires? We visited the Art Institute of Chicago as the contermporary wing hadn't been open last time we'd visited. We had lunch in the treed and scenic courtyard and then saw the Viviane Maier photographic exhibit at the stunning Harold Washington Library (you can see the top floor atrium below), and the equally impressive Palmer Hotel with its glamorous, palm-festooned lobby and the shimmering, mosaiced Chicago Cultural Centre. Seriously... a great city. One of our party hadn't seen the Bean so we went to play there and at the wonderful outdoor concert shell, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, designed by Frank Gehry. We then had to find dinner. The place we'd planned on eating at was closed, so TripAdvisor came to the rescue and we ate at State and Lake Chicago Tavern which is located... at State and Lake. Such good food. This is where my friend started with Coalminer's Poutines (which included guanciale and a fried egg) and continued for his main course to consume the Butcher's Bigger Brother's Beef Brisket Bacon Burger on a Bun, which give you an idea why he was feeling he'd overdone it at the end of the meal. My baked wings were incredible. The best I've ever had. My mouth is still watering. We then headed into the sumptuous Chicago State Theatre for Eddie Izzard's show, which he's touring around, titled Force Majeure. Izzard was stylish, witty, eclectic, and the huge crowd couldn't get enough of him. He was doing three nights in Chicago alone!

The next day was a slowish drive all the way home to Toronto with a lunch stop off in Okemos, MI to see some more FLLW. I don't dream of living in a FLLW home, but there is something I find endlessly fascinating about his work.

It was a splended five days in June.

My Big Fat Cake Project 2014

It was cake time again this week! Wondering what I"m blethering about? Check out the cakes we've done in the past at this blog post and - for more detail on how each came together - throughout this blog.

This time, I proposed to the team a pattern based on red. I've had a bit of a red obsession the last couple of years. We settled on William Morris's iconic Strawberry Thief pattern (see left), available as wall paper and fabric, and - er - featured on my newest handbag. It comes in different colourways, but red it was.

The first challenge was deciding what elements of this very dense pattern were going to be rendered, and how. Then, what other elements might be alluded to. Then we split up to do the pieces of icing decoration that could be created ahead of time. The last two weekends were spent on that.

Items like the birds and larger flowery/leafy elements were made with the colour flow technique. A royal icing outline is then flooded with a softer royal icing. More royal icing work is painted or piped on. The colours were tricky but we finally found a Wedgewoody sort of blue and green which were pleasing to our eyes. The green was moss green food colouring gel with a hint of black. The blue was cornflower blue, again with a hint of black.

On Thursday night, I stayed up and baked layers of chocolate cake, three layers at 18 inches square. My place smelt like heaven. On Friday morning, Laura and James showed up with their stuff and we began to assemble. The previous week James (the strong man of the group) had covered the cake board with lightly tinted fondant (so it wasn't glaringly white). We put a chocolately frosting between each layer, trimmed the edges, and then spread a thin coat over the entire cake to help the red rolled fondant stick to it. That was a big job, trying to manouveur the layers around without cracking them, and ditto for the large piece of fondant.

With our more complicated patterns in the past, we've used buttercream as a background which is like a frosting, soft and spreadable. But with fondant, which is pliable and which you roll out, we were able to place all the pieces gradually, and when we were pleased with the layout, to stick them down with dots of royal icing underneath, working like cement. We made fondant leaves and piped more royal icing to make stems, birds' legs, leaves, etc. Small three-dimensional fondant strawberries were placed at each corner, and a twisted rope of green and red fondant finished off the bottom of the cake. We waited till we were at the venue to apply the dark green ribbon around the base of the cake board. That Friday we worked from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

And once again, it was a calm and relaxed process. There's never any worries or tension. Thank you Laura and James for your collaboration once more! Eleven cakes later, we're pondering taking a break. Perhaps waiting for retirement to take on another? Who knows. What this space! Oh, and by the way - it tasted great! Moist and very, very chocolatey.

  

 

Winter Get-Away, Part One

The long, cold, snowy winter continues, although the days are lengthening. We cling to the hope of spring. But in the meantime, a winter break was needed. So I tacked on some days and put together a five-day weekend. The first two days were spent in Elora, where the gang of four went to stay at Drew House. This is a B&B and offers gourmet weekends with cooking demonstrations by owner/chef/author Roger Dufau. We went for the works, as one of the party is an old friend of the Dufaus.

It was cold and sunny, and the heavy snowfall squeaked underfoot. Elora, famous for its stone buildings, its summer music festival and its real charm, was a haven of serenity for us out-of-towners.

Roger produced a Valentine's Day menu which, to be honest, I thought was impossible in three hours or so.

Beetroots and blue potatoes
Asparagus mimosa
Caesar salad
Chicken lasagne
Roasted steelhead with shrimps and scallops
Beef Bourgignon
Beefl Wellington
Vegetables
Black Forest Cake

Readers, he did it, unflappably and charmingly in his Basque French accent and assisted by his sous-chef François, a young culinary student. What a relief fron the overexcitable self-importance of most television chefs.

The 30-or-so crowd enjoyed the demonstration with wine they had brought and Roger's indescribably good sausage rolls. He made them in front of us as part of the demo and then, thank God, they only took ten minutes to cook in a roaring oven. It was, and this is saying something, the best part of the weekend. My friend Laura turned me and said, "We're making those."

"Yeah."

We start work on this year's big cake project very soon, and she suggested that at our first get together, when we start the colour-flow decorations, that we set aside a bit of time to try making the sausage rolls.

"Yeah."

The demonstration took place in the large coachhouse building of Drew House. Afterwards the food was set up on a buffet table we all sat together en famille and ate. So good. SO. GOOD. And such an interesting table of people! Later, after a bit of shopping in the little main street of Elora (I had bought raw chocolate there last fall and had to stock up again), we had cocktails at a beautiful farmhouse. This belongs to a friend of one of our gang of four, and Chef Roger and his charming wife Kathleen were of the party. Our hosts are avid collectors of photography and there were some stunning pieces of serious historical value. We then returned to the main house, where we had run of the place, and sat by the fire chatting and making new friends. I slept like a log in the pumpkin-hued bedroom, and then, in the morning, there was more lengthy discussion over breakfast, which featured eggs benedict. It seemed most of the previous day's demo participants had stayed overnight as well. It was hard to push our chairs back from the table as the conversation flew fast and furious. Finally we groaned our way back to the car and came home. I slept... more. That's pretty much all I had done all weekend: eat and sleep. Really wonderful time.

Roger and Kathleen create a very special atmosphere, deeply relaxing and friendly, warm and irresistible. Needless to say, we'll be back. Needless to say I took some pictures.