Maybe This Time

Ok, friends. You may have noticed that I haven’t posted here for awhile. I have a confession to make: it is not entirely because I’ve been too busy to do so.

For some time, this blog just hasn’t felt “right”. I’ve spent some time trying to figure out why, and trying to figure out how to fix it and make it so. The name? The format? The posts? The methods? Really, all of the above. In the end, I decided to play around outside this sphere, and see what I could come up with.

What I came up with was this – a whole new blog at http://altsugar.wordpress.com/. Update your address books, because I’m going to be posting over there now, and not at this web address. Same old me, whole new layout.

I’m sorry for anyone who’s now disgusted with me for this, my second move since I started. I promise not to do it again. Learning pains? I suppose so. I promise the new one will be bigger and better. And I’ll post more. That’s a bonus, right?

Let me know what you think – I like comments. Or just read. Or glance. Or delete from your address book entirely. Up to you! But I think you’ll like what the new site has in store. If anything, just a cleaner layout.

There’s No Place Like London

The Courts of Justice - London, England

I find that people fall into one of two categories. The first are those who take pictures of people when they travel. You know – friends, family, locals, those guys from the bar, the cute random kid that was so adorable you just had to take a picture so you could have a photo of someone else’s child for eternity. Those people. The second are people who take pictures of buildings. That is me. I have hundreds of pictures from trips that actually have no documentation of the people I was on the trip with. But alleyways, ceiling mouldings, door frames, light fixtures – I have hundreds.

I have a slight obsession with real estate. When I was little (8?) we used to drive around Victoria. I would always want to go to particular dead-end street in Oak Bay, because there was an amazing oceanfront house that was all glass, with a suspended loft, that I had my heart set on owning one day. I don’t remember the name of the street. I remember the exact layout of the house.

When we were in Dublin, and had a spare afternoon, I persuaded my poor father to visit a nondescript restored Georgian house in the middle of the city. I’m still not entirely sure what he thought of it, but it is one of the parts of Dublin that is clearest in my mind (and note, lack of clarity has nothing to do with the consumption of Guinness). Similarly, my first trip to Paris, after seeing the requisite parts of the Louvre, I dragged my friends through its wings in an attempt to find the recreation of Napoleon III’s apartments. (We didn’t find them that trip – although I’m still not entirely sure how we missed them – but I managed to remedy that my second time to the city.) I think the best example I can give, however, is that, when travelling along Beach Drive in Victoria, rather than look out over Clover Point and the Pacific Ocean towards the distant mountains of Washington state, I without fail look the other way and critique the houses on the far side of the road, and (what’s even more sickening) recognize every single change from the last time I was there.

Queen Maria's Palace - Lisbon, Portugal

Why do I tell you this? Mostly, because I am in the wrong country. There are people in London who are actually worse than I am about their obsessions with real estate – to the point where they create museums of their homes, and meticulously create fictional families who have inhabited them over time. And further, so that when I mentioned that I immediately jumped to plan a trip to England, despite having neither the money nor time to go there, you will fully understand that it wasn’t me doing so – it was my unfortunate and incurable real estate addiction.

The Elusive Chef

There was a great article in the NY Times this morning about food. It wasn’t a recipe article, and definitely not one with a long list of ingredients including ones that you have to seek out in a tiny speciality store on the other side of town. It also wasn’t one that talked about the health benefits of a particular food. It was just an article that asked “Why don’t you cook?” and said “Here’s how easy it is to cook. Do it.” Which is a good question. I’ve taken to cooking a lot more now. I know, I went through a time where I didn’t have time to cook, or where I just couldn’t be bothered, after working for 16 hours, to come home and take another half hour to prepare something. I also remember my parents rushing to feed my brother and I in between after-school activities. Time was always an issue. But, now that I’ve switched, I’ve realized: cooking doesn’t take that much time. And it’s so much better.

It’s strange now how much more I now appreciate the food I eat. For a variety of reasons, I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with food – years of being forced to eat when I didn’t want to, and being denied/denying myself foods when they were all I could think about. But cooking for myself has somehow refined my palate: now I notice the difference between an unripe greenhouse tomato, and a fresh-off-the-vine summer tomato. And let me tell you, the difference is amazing. The unfortunate side effect is that my laziness is now competing with my taste buds. I want to go get fresh foods from smaller markets, which usually has much better produce (I suspect because they do not have to compete with all the processed junk), but Loblaws is just a block away, and I don’t want to walk blocks and blocks with groceries if I don’t need to.

I’m not saying that since I’ve started cooking that I’ve become a master chef, or a connoisseur, or whatever else you can think of that makes my meal preparation seem unattainable. But I’ve definitely become healthier, I look forward to making and eating meals, and (yay for me!) I find it so much easier to control my diabetes when the food I eat isn’t processed and I know exactly what’s in it. So I really like this NY Times article. The question is really simple: “Why don’t you cook?”