Friday, May 28, 2004

the Birthday Blues, or A non-foodie posting

I turn 25 today.

Holy cow, I'm a quarter of a century old.

These last few days I've been continuiously questioning what I've done with my life. There are people who, at my age, are already professionally successful. I was just reading the latest McLean's where they featured the best, brightest and youngest that Canada has to offer. I see their story, I see they're 23, 24, 25,...and as the Birthday Blues overtake me, I begin to question if I'm a total failure.

I mean, I'm 25, and I work part time at a fashion jewellery store, peddling pieces of metal to teenagers. I've been trying to break into the entertainnment/news business, with little success, for two years. I know I have potential, but I feel like somtimes I'm constantly running into a brick wall,and when I try to back track, another wall appears. As someone else once wrote (about being a twenty-somthing)"...and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender!"

But I realize that if I start thinking this way, I'll self destruct. Perhaps this is my quarter-life crisis.

Let's look at what I have done in the last 7 years: I've moved to the Boston, earned two bachelor's degrees,found my first boyfriend, built myself a close knit group of friends, dumped my first boyfriend, had my first apartment, had my second internship, found my first job, had my second apartment, got my first promtion, spent my first christmas away from home and at work, quit my first job, moved to canada, found my third apartment, made another group of friends, worked on my first film, worked on my second film, met a wonderful man to call my boyfriend, had my sister move in with me, found my fourth apartment, became an AD, found my first retail job, spent my second christmas alone,started taking classes so I can start my own business, celebrated one year with my new boyfriend, and here I am, 25 years old.

I realized nowhere in my life did I fail. I'm simply not taking the graduate-job-married route.I had hoped to be an assistant producer by the time I'm this age. but maybe that's not where I'm supposed to me. Life has a weird, weird way of working out for me. And while I love the "business" maybe it's not where I'm meant to be. But by no means am I giving up my TV dreams. While being a hot shot TV sports producer would be fabulous, equally fabulous would be to have my own business, or to be a food writer that can rival, in my own little world, Nigella Lawson.

Here are my resolutions for the next year, out in the open so I'll be accountable to everyone who reads this.

I will start GingerLily, my jewellery company.

I will treat my body better then how I'm treating it now.

I will not turn down opportunies that come my way, nor will I stop creating opportunites for myself.

I will worry less what i think others think of me and listen to my heart more often.

I will not conform to someone else's idea of a career, or life.

I will write more, especially about things I care about.

At 25, I really will start dancing like no one's watching.

I will not stop having dreams, and will constantly try to fulfill them.

Oh heck, I'm only 25!! I'll have my cake and eat it too!!




Sunday, May 23, 2004

Random Ramblings of a "Foodie" Kind

1) After a long day at work dealing with silly, silly people last week, I broke down and did what I considered stage 1 of alcoholism - I decided to get a drink at a pub, by myself. But instead of drinking myself into a stupor, I discovered that the Manhattan I ordered isn't what I REALLY wanted - so I told the waiter to order me up some escargots and a shepherd's pie.
It was glorious. Granted, the snails probably came from a can, and the pie mass frabicated, but there was somthing deeply comforting about the vast quantities of garlic butter with slightly stale bread, and insta-meat-filling with machined mash potatos. I just ate what tasted good, and sometimes that's all that matters.
Moral of the story - dining alone can be a comforting and calming experience, no alcohol or mental fuzziness involved.

2) After my 'foodie' class, I went to dinner with a talented pastry chef friend of mine. While originally the idea was to hit Jamie Kennedy's new low priced bistro, it's closed Monday nights. After much hemming and hawing, we settled on the Bier Market, a high-browed pub with a menu of about 150 "biers" and a decent food menu. We discovered that:
a) Fondue is best left to the experts - not a place called the Bier Market.
b) 9$ is a stupid amount to pay for three halves of sausages, a piece of provolone, some pickles and mustard.
c) It is physically possible to get drunk off a boozy french onion soup.

3) My boyfriend have been introducing me to the world of rural Quebecoise cuisine. In the last year or so I have had the pleasure of tasting his mom's meats pies, pizza from Bravo and the joy of joys, real Poutine and cheese curds.
What I am most privilege to have tasted is the bottle of Sortilege he gave me last Christmas. This Quebecoise specialty is not widely known and definity not listed in the Food Lover's Companion. It is a liqueur of Canadian Whisky (without an "e" - foodies will know with I mean ;)) mixed with Maple syrup. Where Ontario have Icewine, Quebec has its Sortilege. And this can kick Icewine's butt any day of the week and then some. Pat makes a good point by saying that booze and maple is somthing Quebec has an abundance of, so what ELSE would they do with it?
Sortilege is a heavenly, amber coloured nectar that, when served ice cold, taste of maple syrup with a kick. It's sweet without being sickening, but strong enough to make one speak French after one too many. Unfortunately, my boyfriend and I just finished my bottle and this is my ode to it. Perhaps one day, after this Icewine hoopla dies down, people will discover this liqueur and give it the proper respect. In the meantime, I suggest you get yourself down to your nearest liquor store and have them find you a bottle. Believe me, it's worth it.

Thursday, May 13, 2004

Mmmm... Po Boys.....

I made the mistake of reading Are You Going to Eat That? by Robb Walsh on my cross town commuter ride, having suffered the indignity of mall lunches yet again. (When will I learn the only way to eat real food is to brown bag it?) In it was a lively little article on creole and cajan cooking, and more specificly, Mr. Walsh was singing the praises of an Oyster Po Boy.

For the uninitated, a po boy is a sandwich. Usually served on skinny french bread, the sub-like concoction can be filled with just about everything under the sun, like deli meats, or more delectably, fried seafood or just oysters. Into the sandwhich goes the uninspiring lettuce and tomato and maybe mayo, and the whole thing is consumed with a copious amount of hotsauce. The old wives tales goes that this is what husbands bought their jaded wives to try to get her back into their good books.

My own experience with Po Boys stared in New Orleans, when one of my best friends, Bill, and I went down there for one last spring harrah before we graduated from Emerson. N'awlin' is a wild, crazy city fill of history and Voodoo, but more importantly, incredible, heart-stoppingly good food. (Both figuritively and very literally.)I have made it a point I will almost do anything to eat my way through the city, and Bill obligingly came along.(more of my culinary adventures in New Orleans later: I can't part with ALL my good stories on day two of blogging!)

On what must have been day two, we followed a tour book to Mike's, a hole-in-the-wall Po Boy joint in the French Quater. We walked in, looked at the menu and knew immediately we were over our heads. There was about 30 or 40 different types of po boys listed. Bill and I looked at eat other, gulped and...

"What Cho' two want?"

"Um... I'll have the... err... fried seafood..."

"Dressed? "

"Huh??"

"I said Dressed. YOu know..Lettuce, 'matos, Mayo?"

"Err... Sure..."

That was me anyway. I can't remember what Bill Ordered.

What arrived eventually was nothing short of a miracle on a plate. A massive italian loaf filled with freshly fried seafood... My mind went blank as I absorbed the heavenilness of all this. There was the greaseless, crunchy shrimps and tender scallops and the requsite oysters, still creamy within...

We finsihed our sandwiches, much to our own surprise. And I fell in love with the food of new Orleans. We Went back three days later, on our last day, to yet again

More adventures later.If anyone knows where I can get a decent po boy in Toronto let me know....

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

And so it begins....

My name is Kelly. I'm 25 years old and I live in Toronto.

I love food.

There, I said it.

In this day and age of Atkins and Weight Watcher's, of stick thin supermodels and health hazards at every turn, I love to eat well, and I love to cook. I love having dinner parties and spending hours in the kitchen.
People ask me why I bother. Why make pasta sauce when you can buy it in a jar? Or why do I insist on making cookies from scratch?
More then my body, cooking nurishes my soul and spirit, and I'm not afriad to admit that.
So this blog is for all of us city girls out there, who embraces what we eat instead of fearing it, who can eat a creme brulee and enjoy evey bite, instead of worrying what it would do to you waistline, who can bite into a ripe peach and not give a damn about its juice running down your chin.

Cheers.