The Wandering Dinner Party

So, the day after The Numbers Game closed, before some people went one direction, and as other people just arrived to start on the next show, we decided on the first test round of our Grand Experiment: The Wandering Dinner Party.

 There are a handful of us living in walking range of each other. (A very novel concept after 24 years in the country, where the nearest 'next door' get together was the exciting New Year's Eve dinners at friends' farm, about 18 km away.) Admittedly, the walk is easier when the weather is good. Our evening was a bit chilly, but clear, dry weather.

 I'd wanted to be part of the Grand Experiment, especially in this first round, while it was still small in numbers! But I wisely decided I was only able for cocktails and canapes, where people might expect to just stand around...nibbling something on a toothpick.

 By some quirk of fate, we actually managed to sit. Kind of. And I contrived some table space for the canapes. (Greatly in need of some cooking, even with no time, no tools, and minimal ingredients, I chose a Spanish theme, and did some tapas and sherries.)

                                                                            Guests!

 Next we had a brisk walk across downtown Orangeville, past our final location, and across a small bridge over a stream. (Tim shone his flashlight down to show it to us in the dark! I hadn't even realized this pathway existed, and it certainly tightens up our little route.)
Our next stop, for the entree, was the lovely little apartment where Paula, our Stage Manager from the show which just closed, and Kevin, our incoming Stage Manager, live. (They're also brand newcomers to the place, though with fewer boxes!)

Here we had a succulent roast with all the best accompaniments. Then we wandered back to our final address for dessert.

An amazing chocolate ginger cheesecake, and a cocktail with citrus and ginger. And an elderflower liqueur.

Then a final nightcap of blueberry wine, and music on Tim's victrola! (And a stagger back home in the nippy evening air...)
  Of course, the very next day I started three days of intensive packing and moving, (still not finished) and all empty spaces are now filled with boxes. And I've started working on the Christmas show, so may not have time to breathe till we open...

Film at 11

I'm wondering if I should just rename the blog, "Film at 11". I have a friend who keeps wondering at me if there's *more* Film at 11. And I have to keep confessing that no, there isn't. But it does seem a little like a major news story if I accomplish something.... Mind you, at some point I'm sure this will just return to Random Acts of Thinking, so I'd hate to re-brand it as something more exciting!

 The show, our first of the season, World Premiere of John Spurway's The Numbers Game has opened. I think it's the pure charm of the married couple playing the roles that it delightful. And because of late night schedules, I've actually been at the flat a few times. And this past weekend I actually put together some shelving, and unpacked some books. (Actually, I was looking for the box of towels, and that eventually required me to check each box, and then it made sense to relabel them in more detail, and then I found the cookbooks, and voila!)

I

And this is AFTER purging a huge lot of books, as well as packing another couple of boxes for storage... I guess I have a bit of a fixation with cookbooks.

I improvised a bit of a living room space, and created a coffee table, so I could actually eat. (Yes, I'd set up the bedroom so I could stay over. I just had forgotten that if I was staying over for more than a day, I'd probably have to eat meals before crew call, and I might  need somewhere to do that.)

  

My kitchen unpacking isn't going particularly quickly. I find I'm stymied by deciding where to unpack things to. After 24 years with more or less the same kitchen set up, my natural inclination is to replicate it as closely as possible. But this kitchen is as physically different as it's possible to get. And the apartment was designed to maximize the use of space. So the cupboards are quite high, because the ceilings are high. (The original house dates from the 1860's.) And then they've got a couple of open shelves beneath the cupboards. So I'm perplexed about where to store dishes, or where to store pantry items. Consequently, I end up unpacking little. Or when I actually look for things, like glasses, say, I simply can't figure out which box I put them in. It would be nice to be methodical about unpacking, but that may just keep me living from boxes till 2014!

(The plaid bag is show laundry, and behind that louvred door is a little apartment washer and dryer!)

    

Anyway, I have officially cooked my first dinner. (Since I don't think that take-out pho counts.) It occurred to me that I didn't really have much by way of actual food in the house, beyond jars of preserves I'd moved, and some of the "hateful condiments". So I bought myself the replacement sandwich grill I knew I'd want to get, and some cheese and bread. And took some of the leftover sweet-cured ham I'd made for a Thanksgiving fete, and grilled myself a ham and cheese sandwich. It's not the most exotic of culinary explorations, but it was tasty.

So, it's pretty quiet and empty in here. Squeezing in a few friends should be okay. Thought it would be a god place to stick up some pictures of how the Hidden Tower is progressing. Ummm... slowly. At some point maybe I'll be able to try comparing before and afters, just to see. Or not.
 On Sunday some really good friends helped me move a smallish ton of stuff. Not then entire world of stuff, but everything that I'd already packed, and anything not nailed down that Neil thought he could squeeze into two trailer loads!
 Yesterday I shoved some of it around to make some more room to bring another section of the mountain. How it will ever really fit together to make room for me and Lily is any one's guess. (Good thing Lily is small!)

So, on Sunday, Beckie discovered that I have at least one piece of art that tones in really well with the living room, and we've decided I don't need to rush to paint it. And in fact, when I've filled this tiny little space up with all my crap, not only will we not know what colour walls there, we may not even notice there are borders!

The bedroom, no two ways about it, is small, and has some weird joggies in the wall. So it's very much a logistical jigsaw puzzle. I have anther idea to try. Need to try these now before the mattress is delivered, and before I try to put shelves in bookcases and fill them. In other words, while things are still minimally light.

The kitchen is small too. (Everything about this place is small, but it has charm. And I guess if your living in a hidden tower behind a tangled forest, you can't expect palatial digs.) But the kitchen does open at the window end and wrap around to the living room, so I'll see how functional it can be made. After all, a kitchen is incredibly important in my life. May be a tad tinier for kitchen parties though...
 Sarah suggested putting the little freezer into the closet, the door of which you can see beside it. Space-wise it would fit. I'll have to check nearness of outlets, and see how the trade of cupboard space for floor space seems.

And of course, because there must be a FIRST item into one's fridge:

These are a traditional brined pickle made by a good friend! Yum.



And I suppose you can't get too much more random than this after a long time away...

 v

Disconnect

"No cats allowed?"

"but you couldn't possibly mean me..."

Clean-Up Crew

NOT the door into summer!

A Change is as Good as...

So, like many people, I'm sure, we've always found that we expand to fill any given space, and that there's never enough of it, or we're never using it as well as we're sure we must be able.When we first moved to Wareham, the place seemed huge. Well...large, anyway. And since that first moment, there has never been enough space, ever again! We're always highly envious of people who seem to have room when they need it.

 In Not-Winter we manage better, and are able to spill outwards when we have people by. It's much trickier in poor weather. And often requires some upheavalling. (new word?)

 So, because it was Boat Burning time again, and we had invited a dozen or so friends, we tried to maximize our space by shifting things around. And then sitting there a day later, in weary contemplation of putting things back, we got to musing. Again.

Over the years Darrell, like the camel in the tent, has gradually been moving bits of his office upstairs.The attractive-in-summer back room on the ground floor, is not so attractive in winter. Unless you're a joint of meat! There might have also been a social component; he spends a lot of time at his desk. There's research, communications, business, and computer games. I think back then we wondered if we'd ever see each other!
 But as there has been more and more research and writing, and design and program coordination sneaking into his day, he's also needed more and more books and papers. So there has been much running up and down of stairs after one thing or another. And then small libraries of materials just started to accumulate around him. And when changes in the world of technology demanded he get a faster computer, but wouldn't allow him to keep everything he needed on one computer, or programs he needed to use weren't compatible well, then there was another machine in the space. And extra hard drives to hold vast research info. And when no-one printed slides anymore, a gadget to allow him to transfer all his existing body of photographic work to digital, and so on and so on...

 For a while he has cast covetous eyes on the space off our kitchen, that was once my office, and since then has been our pantry and occasional guest room. Once again I bleated 'but I'd need a pantry space!' (since otherwise there's a heck of a lot of kitchen overflow and a sizable library of historic cookery books, with nowhere to go.)
 And this time we actually decided to see what that might require, and how we could make it happen.

So, this is the view towards Darrell's office corner, after moving much furniture around for Boat. Originally, the couch had run across behind Darrell's desk, and the room had been casually subdivided into a living area, and a dining area, with the wood stove in the middle. We confess to being slaves to watching some TV during dinner, so the idea of moving the audio visual equipment to the far wall has crossed our minds already. The couch got moved into a position that would work with that, to see if we'd still end up with a room we could live with. (And move around in without crashing into things!)

To begin creating a pantry space, the antique plate dresser was moved away from the wall and rotated to form a boundary of the new butler's pantry. The loom has been taken down, and will move out to the new weaving shed, where it will have the company of my 45" counterbalance, and a table loom and an inkle loom. Shelves have been created on the walls, as well as on the back of the plate dresser.

This is the plate dresser in its new position, and emptied and refilled.With even a bit of organization! (Note, my laptop isn't normally taking up dining room space. It wasn't till this winter that I suddenly decided it was more comfortable working on it, rather than at my desk in the mostly unheated studio!)

Here's the pantry space, mostly finished. There's still some sorting and organizing to happen, but I'm getting the hang of it.

And while there's still a ways to go, one of the most recent steps has been to move the antique buffet to where Darrell's desk had been. Now we have to go through all those boxes of tapes and decide if there's any there we want to keep, do some repair on wall and floor in that corner, and contemplate the next moves of the puzzle. It's not quick, but it's certainly been interesting!

A Place For Everything

                                                                And everything in its place...

Up-Helly-Aa 2012

The final installment?

If we're to trust the Mayans, that is.

Mmmmmm, toasty!

                                                 The happiness of a wood-stove.

The Shape of Things To Come

From a casual comment that a neat idea would be to build a 'weaving shed', where I could keep and use my looms, and free up some space in my office/studio for its intended sewing use, has come this:

The bare bones of a shed. Not started when planned, exactly, but with haste before winter sets in.

Since we've had another short gasp of milder and drier weather, Darrell has hustled to put this structure together. He figures if he can get walls and roof up enough to keep the elements out, he'll be able to continue working on the inside. The whole thing is planned along the lines of our Wendy house. (The roof of which is visible just beyond the shed. ) Essentially the building is constructed like a deck, on blocks. Though this building will be designed to be a bit more weatherproof, with insulation.
 We do use the Wendy house in winter, for hardier/adventurous guests, and with a little heater it's not too bad. But that's for sleeping. If I'm trying to work with textiles and my hands, I may need a slightly more temperate climate.

 Then, on Friday, we had a slight hiccup in the process. Driving home from a production meeting Thursday evening, I passed through small blizzards, and we woke up to this!

 Fortunately that was a brief interlude this time, and it got dry and mild again. (Mind you, there's still snow on our upstairs deck...) But if Darrell can get the walls and roof in place, it will be more protected for the next occurrence. The large opening on the front will be fitted with sliding glass doors, for maximum light, some solar gain, and for air in summer. The door to go in on this near end is also mostly glass. And a second door at the carport end, which may not even be used much, is solid. But we have a door, and we have somewhere to install it, so why not?

The Rainy Season

The level of our pond always goes down in the summer, and in fall we anxiously await it filling again with the autumn rains. One season it dropped perilously low, and didn't fill deep enough before it froze. We lost most of the 'big' fish that year.

 Since we introduced some koi to the pond a few years ago, which have been happily thriving and multiplying, and have a fairly happy eco-system out there, with frogs, toads, and turtles, crayfish and clams, as well as several species of fish, we are even more alert to the health of the pond. So it was reassuring to see the level start to rise, though I don't think we expected it to rebound quite so quickly.

In the top picture, taken as we went into the Thanksgiving weekend, the red arrow shows our 'depth gauge', a piece of steel that Darrell planted in the deep section of the pond. I think it registers about 5 feet deep. It's only visible in the summer. 

This picture was taken two weeks later. Not only has the gauge stick vanished under the surface, the entire boundary of the pond has expanded to cover most of the 'summer beach'. So, that's a bunch of water that's come out of the skies in the last fortnight. The fish should be happy, since with a good depth, the water won't freeze all the way down.

What our fish breathe during the winter is more of a mystery...

New Home-Owner

Through the Looking Glass

New To The Neighbourhood

After a very, very long time, we suddenly have some walnuts this year! I hadn't realized it took so long for walnut trees to reach maturity; it wasn't even something I thought about. But pretty much I'd given up on the idea of nuts. And then this year...

The Changing Skyline of Wareham

So, we've known for quite some time that there were going to more wind towers going in, north of where we had already been watching them and admiring them for several years. We hadn't realized exactly where they'd be. For quite a while now, we've received the occasional piece of informational mail, telling us about upcoming meetings, or showing grid maps for the Melancthon Wind Project. And there's been mention of Phase the next, and the one after. But the maps are vague, and the meetings at awkward times or locations.

Last fall a new series of towers looked to be going in somewhat south of us. At least we assumed that to be the case. Two fields, along a stretch of back road that I drive, appeared to be being cleared in some kind of large gravel parking lot, or too-wide laneway. Darrell eventually pronounced them to be accessways for wind tower sites. And yes, this spring they started working towards erecting the towers. At the same time men came and started doing odd roadwork at the end of our road. Darrell inquired, and discovered they were temporarily widening the intersection so that the sections of tower could be moved around corners. All of a sudden, any number of hints of road and ditch work seemed suspicious.

I tried to find some information online, and kept coming up with dead ends. An eventual news story finally led to info about the original power authority building the Melancthon Wind Farm being sold to some other power authority, and then the chase began. Eventually I tracked down current info; the trick is that if you don't know the name of the project, or the name of the company, it makes it very hard to track down on the internet. (Well, quickly, anyway.) It's entirely possible that there will be other projects going in to the north and northwest of us, but thus far I haven't found the information. Anyway, the 'local' one has a couple of sections, the bit below us, which I'd been driving by, another section immediately south of us, which also includes one down our road, and a third phase, which runs up the county road at the end of ours. All are part of the Plateau Wind Farm. When I found that website, I also found a handful of interesting documents. Some show tower placement, and set back info. Others contain interesting info on the area.

 And once they started erecting the towers, it's happened very quickly. There was a long stretch of huge bits of towers arriving at the sites, and I kept passing long involved transport vehicles carrying the mammoth sections. Road corners have all been chewed up and widened; some roads have had their pavement temporarily stolen; stretches of road have been blocked when the people moving the equipment have miscalculated the required space anyway.
 On one trip down to the Theatre, I passed about four or five different trucks all carrying a single propellor or vane for the wind towers. On the ground, on the back of a truck, one gets the sense of size. Once the towers are up they seem delicate and tall and airy.

 But I'm realizing just how much my eye is being deceived by the scale. The grouping of three towards the end of out road, and just to the north, are really only two towers on our side of the county road, and one on the other, and feel almost like they're only a field or two away, when I know from having to walk back down our road on one or another 'sad car day', that it's a much greater distance than that!

 We really can't see them well from in our house. I can just make out the vanes of one or two from the kitchen window, though early morning sun makes the towers glint bright white, and easier to find. I think any of the others will really be too far away, or obscured by trees or the natural roll of the land.

 I'll be interested to see what happens when they turn them on; if we'll notice them any more than we do now.
 But certainly none of our friends will ever need to fear not finding our place with these new and very noticeable landmarks.

It Boggles The Mind

I've been trying to track down some current info on what is happening about the proposed 'Melancthon Mega-Quarry', and came across this article in a nearby paper, The Orangeville Citizen:

http://www.citizen.on.ca/news/2011-08-18/Front_Page
 [which may or may not actually turn into a link...The widget is misbehaving today.]

NDACT consultant files new report on quarry impact
2011-08-18 / Front Page

By WES KELLER Freelance Reporter

The environmental and engineering consultant to NDACT has filed a supplement to his original response to The Highland Companies’ application for the Melancthon mega-quarry, and his office has completed a three-decade review of water pumping at Holland Marsh.

Garry Hunter of Hunter & Associates is in agreement with Highland spokesperson Lindsay Broadhead’s assertion that the 600,000 cubic metre (CM) daily water management estimate doesn’t reach that peak until excavation of the fourth area of the quarry has begun.

However, he says a comparison of that with the water volume managed at the Marsh is incorrect.

“A conducted field visit and personal communication with the current and prior Holland Marsh Drainage Superintendents confirms that there are only three pumping stations in the Holland Marsh,” he says in his letter to the ministry.

Although the combined design capacity of the three stations is 595,720 CM daily, Mr. Hunter, following 10 days of interviews, studies and compiling, says, “the average pumping required to drain the 7,000-acre Holland Marsh interior over the past three decades is only 600,000 cubic meters per year or about 16,500 cubic meters per day.

“The average 16,500 cubic meters discharge per day at Holland Marsh is pumped eight feet in height whereas the Highland Companies propose to pump 600,000 cubic meters per day an average height of about 200 feet on a perpetual basis when the quarry is at full depth in the four operating cells. Highlands pumping comparison appears to have little merit,” he says.

“I also note that The Highland Companies groundwater modeling methodology — and by inference the estimated 600,000 cubic meters per day recirculation — has been seriously challenged by the MOE, GRCA, Emil Frind, Distinguished Professor Emeritus University of Waterloo, and Dr. Ken Howard of the University of Toronto as well as myself.”

Mr. Hunter said he has yet to hear “any technical comments from the Township or the NVCA (Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority).”

The annual costs of perpetual water management have been of concern to NDACT, which has often asked who would be responsible for perpetual payment once the proposed quarry’s 150-million tons have been extracted.

Mr. Hunter says the costs of maintaining the Marsh system is $200,000 annually.

He says Highland in its application “has incorrectly characterized the Holland Marsh pumping systems and its comparison to the proposed Melancthon Quarry pumping systems. The scale is significantly different.”

His supplementary report also explores the traffic component, and calculates the passenger car equivalent of the estimated number of trucks.

“The predicted peak shipping truck traffic is 326 inbound and 326 outbound or 652 hourly bidirectional pass- by 45 tonne payload trucks.

“Corresponding peak aggregate shipped is 14,670 tonnes/hr or a peaking factor of about 1.5 times the maximum RWDI (engineers Rowan Williams Davies and Irwin) specified aggregate production rate.

“This truck traffic does not include importing of secondary materials from other pits and quarries and incidental quarry traffic.

“Assuming a passenger car equivalency factor of 3.0 passenger cars/truck (pg 18, Morrison Hershfield Limited, Jan 2011) and making allowance for incidental quarry traffic, the total equivalent vehicle quarry traffic is estimated at a peak of approximately 1,000 vehicles/hr each way.”

In his conclusion, Mr. Hunter says, “if the quarry is to proceed as proposed by the Applicant, then new highways will be required linking Highways 10, 89 and 124 across the north of the Town of Shelburne. This highway should be a provincial highway with direct quarry access.

“Expansion of Highway 10 to a five lane section from Primrose to Camilla and improvements further south on Highway 10 may also be required,” Mr. Hunter concludes.

****

 It wasn't till that final flurry of submitting comments to Linda Jeffries in July, that I was even seeing exactly where this quarry was supposed to be, and that some real sense of size was being publicized. And for the most part, the brain just doesn't really visualize a lot of the comments. But somehow, if they pump 600,000 cubic metres of water out of the Holland Marsh PER YEAR at a cost of $200,000 annually, then 600,000 cubic metres of water daily, could conceivably cost $200,000 a DAY!
 And having spent a number of years commuting through the Holland Marsh, and realizing how big an area that it, and they're only removing those litres PER YEAR, is really starting to give me a scary realization of the impact of the Melancthon quarry on the area beside where I live, that I drive through daily.

 And I'm not even beginning to try and digest any of the commentary on the increase in truck traffic yet...

Montreal Bagels, Wareham-style

A couple of weekends ago we were visiting with friends, and other friends, up from the city, had brought bagels. Wonderful fresh bagels from the St. Lawrence Market. It's been a long time since I've had really good Montreal style bagels. (In fact, so long that I'd almost forgotten how exquisite they can be!)
When we lived in the city, and even when I still worked there, a lot more bakery bagels crossed our paths. I used to make a pilgrimage to some great bakery up at Yonge and Eglinton, and always bring back a special cache of them. But these days we end up with the more ordinary grocery store bagels, and the Montreal style ones have simply become a forgotten memory.

Now I've baked bagels before, though it was a long time ago. Not sure why, because they're not really any more difficult that any other shaped bread product. Yes, there's a handful of steps, but it's not rocket science, and they're pretty forgiving.

So I went looking for recipes, since I have no idea what one I used to use. And then I thought to look in one of the cookbooks that I've only been given in the last few years.

I love the cookbooks by Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford. They're beautiful, full of fabulous food and culture and travel. Even the Home Baking one, which is a little more ordinary, has a wealth of variety. And yes, there's a bagel recipe.

Pretty much it's a straightforward recipe. There was only one ingredient that made me pause. They ask for some 'wheat malt syrup'. Oops. Even looking this up in the glossary wasn't helping a lot. Back in my brewing days I might have had some barley malt syrup on hand, but wheat? And I'm betting that's not something I'll be able to easily find without going further afield. And for 2 Tablespoons worth?
Some Googling suggested a substitution of molasses, which seemed pretty logical, and was more or less what I'd thought of on my own. I'm kind of surprised that the cookbook authors didn't make any kind of suggestion, since they're usually pretty good about suggesting workarounds for exotic items, but maybe it's only exotic around Wareham!
[I want to try this recipe again, with some preplanning, and I'll sprout some wheat and roast and grind it to make my own malt syrup. Once. Just to see...)

Anyway, I was already deciding these would be a somewhat experimental version. The cookbook gave instructions for basic mixing by hand, or for using a stand mixer. I'd love one of those but don't have one. I probably could have subbed in my Cuisinart, but I thought, heck, why not just use the breadmaker. I often use it to take things to dough stage. I find my hands and arms get stiff and arthritic when I knead, and then I tend to be inefficient about it. But even more, it provides a better environment for proofing my dough. It's not so much of a thing right now, in June, but throughout the cooler months our house isn't the most useful for getting dough to rise. The breadmaker really helps with that.
So that took care of the mixing and the first rising. Then I moved the dough to a bowl, punched it down and let it rise a second time.

After the dough has risen, you divide it into quarters and work each quarter of the dough, rolling it into fat cords, and then rolling the ends together to make the bagel shapes.

I did find that trying for 8 bagels from each quarter wasn't giving me sandwich-sized bagels, even with another short rise, and the puffing in the boiling water. I switched to six from each of the last three quarters, but I think I'd try making them bigger still next time.
After the bagel shapes had risen for another fifteen minutes, I'd managed to get a pot of water with some honey, to a boil, and dropped those bagel shapes in to puff and set. I think this is the step that may not occur with grocery store bagels. Or they have some other variant that gives them a more ordinary bread quality.
[For some reason, possibly only amusing to myself, I refer to this as the 'bloviation' stage. The bagel shapes puffed up some in the boiling water, and I would encourage them to bloviate to goodly sized bagels.]

From the boiling water, the hot wet bagel shapes were dropped into seeds, and rolled about. Then baked.

These turned out remarkably well, if small. I'm not certain if my tweaking of procedure had anything to do with that. I'd also ended up using one cup of whole wheat flour when I realized I didn't really have enough all-purpose. At least I had some regular wheat flour, as opposed to having to sub in some of my weirder historical cooking flours. I find it's useful to only change so many variables at once. At least the first time through!

v

The Promise Of...

       Coltsfoot, one of the very first signs of spring growth.

              Contrasts. Not just the black cat against the white snow, but the fact that there's somewhere not snowy for him to walk as well!

              Daffs-to-be.

 

Other small sprouting things; more daffs, crocii, and scylla.

                 Wonder of wonders: the rhubarb is already starting, even under ice!

   And okay, this exotic beauty may have suddenly appeared in my garden, but by force of husband, not force of nature. It's a small solar light thing. Though I had to actually go close, and touch it, to be sure!

 And while it may not last for long, the weather forecast for the weekend, as of this aft, is for actual near-summer temps!