Cream of the Crop - Autumnal Geekquinox 2024

The date for Pete and Ellen's bi-annual dinner party was set months ago (a little earlier than the actual equinox, as sometimes happens), but he only sent around the theme a couple of weeks ago: "The Cream of the Crop." Well, who doesn't love a creamy dish or dessert prepared by an experienced cook? But it did make coming up with appropriately thematic wear a bit trickier, given my refusal to wear a crop top. Luckily a co-worker's costume from last fall gave Audrey an idea:

Things got off to a creamy start with Boozy Creamsicles to drink: a creamy, frothy drink as orange as its namesake and amped up with vodka and mango liqueur but barely any perceptible alcohol. It would be far, far too easy to drink too many of these at one go!

These were followed up by the first food course, which you might mistake for garden-variety potato skins. These were in fact individually hollowed out and deep fried tiny potatoes which not only cooked them to a perfectly fluffy consistency but added a delicious crispiness to the edges. The cheese, bacon, scallion and sour cream fillings completed them delightfully and the dash of salt on the skins was the perfect accent. And you could theoretically fill these with anything...

This was followed by a dish inspired by a classic/infamous Seinfeld bit, the Soup Nazi's Crab Bisque soup. This was really the star of the show in my opinion, and represented a tremendous exertion of effort on part of the cook, who had been prepping it since Thursday. Diced vegetables, then sautéed, then added to a scratch-made stock and then finally adding braised crabmeat - it was absolutely astonishing. Truth be told, it was too tasty for me to savour it appropriately and try to discern the multiple tastes and textures upon my palette, such was my zeal for reaching the bottom of my bowl. Pete's crab bisque has become the dish to which all future soups shall be measured against - bravo sir!

The Duck Hunt cocktail that followed the soup had a similar bill of exertion applied to it. The base of the drink is duck-fat washed bourbon, which involves heating liquefied duck fat with bourbon, freezing it, then skimming away the fat, repeatedly. Similarly to milk-washing spirits (which sounds kind of like creatures from a Japanse horror movie), this imparts a savory quality to the spirit, but less up front and more perceptible in the aftertaste.

Pete was disappointed he didn't have time for subsequent freezings and skimmings which would have clarified the liquor, but it hardly made for an unappealing presentation, especially accompanied by an immense, crystal clear ice cube.

Taste-wise it was really something - the tanginess of the bourbon complemented by citrus and bitters, then followed by a savoury richness - umami, maybe? - from the fat-washing. Anyone who has cooked potatoes in duck fat probably has a sense of what I am talking about, but this was an unconventional and delicious cocktail.

The green beans and cream dish was skipped for time (and to make room), so the next dish was the butter chicken, which I neglected to get a picture of, but you've all seen this ubiquitous dish, and Pete's scratch made variety looks pretty similar.

But. There is a decidedly discernible difference in both taste and texture!

Now, I love getting a jar of sauce, frying some chicken in the wok, simmering it all together and serving it over some rice, a Venn diagram of convenience and tastiness that overlaps nearly completely. Pete will be the first to admit that his additional efforts - which includes but is not limited to toasting his own spices before grinding them and preparing the sauce, plus marinating and broiling the chicken to get some crispiness - do not increase the taste of the end product by a sufficient enough degree to make it a worthwhile tradeoff in all cases. But is it significantly better? Oh, believe it. 

Aromatic, faintly piquant, criminally rich and completely delicious. Even if I had Pete's culinary skills, I would be unlikely to expend this degree of exertion on a dish I can obtain by such easier means and which is completely palatable, but I am so, so grateful to be friends with someone who not only can, but does!

The next beverage, limonada Suiça or Swiss lemonade, is actually a Brazilian recipe using limes - the first batch ended up being unstrained, leaving a fair bit of pulped zest in the mix. It was still a tasty tipple, using condensed milk to add both sweetness and creaminess but requiring delicate straining through one's dentition. 

The final dish of the night was the fluffiest cheesecake I have ever had, raising far higher than you might expect and topped with sweet, tangy raspberries in a thick compote.

The cheesecake was far more rich than it was sweet, and you could feel the richness around the base of your tongue, by the sides. Whether this was due to the orange blossom water or the goat cheese, I cannot say. Absolutely magnificent, and the perfect capper to almost ten hours of eating, drinking, and fellowship!

The Trip Not Taken

Back in my third and fourth year of university at Augustana in Camrose, a lot of us were Twin Peaks fans.

David Lynch and Mark Frost's quirky, surreal and stylish murder mystery with supernatural overtones was decidedly not for everyone, so oftentimes a group of people would gather to watch episodes in my dorm room. The wait from May to September to resolve the cliffhanger after a major character was shot was one of the longest I had ever experienced, transcending even the season carry-over during the Borg War in Next Generation.

It was an offbeat show that attracted a lot of offbeat people, like me, my friends, and even a few people in the freshman dorms who similarly found themselves exiled from the communal tv in the lounge. (Kids, this was way before mobile phones, let alone a time when you could watch shows on them. Good video even on a computer screen was still eyars away!) They would pile into my room in Solheim, glued to the 14" tv that was once the mopnitor for my TRS-80 Colour Computer.

(Funny sidebar: when I visited the Edmonton Journal offices to get a copy of the Garneau Block signed by author (and then columnist Todd Babiak) as a gift for a friend, he immediately recognized me as 'Twin Peaks guy', which I found delightfully validating.)

Anyhow, sometime early in 1991, a number of us toyed with the idea of taking a road trip during spring break down to Snoqualmie, Washington, where they filmed Twin Peaks. The diner, the hotel, the waterfall, they were all there to be seen and it wasn't even that far of a drive...but it never happened.

I can't even tell you why this expedition didn't come together, whether it was concerns over possible cost, vehicle reliability, dealing with treacherous mountain roads in February as well as a border crossing or something else. Did any of us even have a credit card at that point? And to be clear, all of those are pretty good reasons not to undertake such an odyssey!

But when I recall that road trip, I never think of it in terms of a bullet dodged, but always as an opportunity lost. 

And not just because the show that inspired the journey has become a legit cult classic, and not just because I still keep in touch with one of the other people and would love to recollect that trip with him, and not just because one of the people who were interested has passed away and another is a person I haven't had contact with since they showed up at my father's funeral. Or maybe it is all those things. 

The main source of regret is that I have no idea what I did do during that spring break, and even if it had involved returning to school later than expected with a repair or tow truck bill in hand, I know those memories would have been, well, memorable, to say the least.

This is why I am so glad Glory took advantage of her own recent opportunity, albeit in a much different context.

She and Fenya had just returned from Churchill and were attending the Hozier concert together before Fenya returned to Toronto. A number of people had dropped in to say hi, including Audrey's sister Vera, who had recently left a terrible job situation, but was looking at another potential opportunity sooner than she'd expected. 

Since her Spanish had been getting rusty due to lack of use (she had lived in Guatemala with Peace Brigades International for a time and is also a translator for hire), she started looking at a trip to Guadalajara, Mexico and found a reasonable airfare. Overhearing her musings, Glory had jokingly asked, "hey, can I come with you?"

Vera said, "well, I leave Saturday and come back the following Saturday, doesn't that muck up your schooling?"

A quick check confirmed that Glory would indeed be back in time for her first class, and having enough money in tips alone (!) to cover airfare etc. and the unexpected willingness of her aunt to let her accompany her, she quickly agreed, and a week after returning home from up north, she departed again for a week down south!

Spontaneity has never been my gift, and I know, I know, that I have missed many an opportunity due to my reluctance to take a leap of faith. I am often grateful for my cautious nature - it has also saved me a number of times! But there are other times where I recognize the detriment that goes with it.

Glory, in the meantime, enjoyed a week with a beloved relative, experienced traveller, skilled translator and appreciator of Mexican and Latinx culture, far from the all-inclusive resorts and tourist zones that many of her classmates have frequented in the past. The photos and stories she has shared paint a picture of a culturally enriching trip that was also a ton of fun. I am a little jealous, but mostly I am proud of her being able to seize that opportunity.

And who knows? If Audrey and I ever end up making our long-talked-about trip to Seattle, Snoqualmie isn't even that far away...

Alberta 2024: Corruption, Incompetence, or Both?

(CAUTION: Politics incoming!)

My province is a shambles.

Our premier, Danielle Smith, barely managed to secure a majority until after six rounds of balloting at the UCP leadership race in 2022, and was elected with a reduced majority in May 2023 after ousting Jason Kenney. Now, supported by an increasingly bold band of angry cranks and right-wing reactionaries, her government somehow feels entitled to make increasingly deranged changes.

She decided last year to somehow find efficiencies in our health care by disassembling Alberta Health Services into four separate entities. If creating barriers and silos to create efficiency in an organization considered a global leader in integrated health care only six years ago seems counter-intuitive to you, rest assured, you are not alone. And learning recently that a 41-year-old man died of cancer before ever being referred to an oncologist really felt like an alarm bell going off.

Since then, Smith or her party has:

• announced (officially) an official policy on pronoun usage in schools
• announced (at a party meeting) that the Alberta Sheriffs will become the new provincial police force, despite 78% of Albertans wanting to maintain the RCMP
• has announced (at a party meeting again- not publicly) the transfer of some hospital authority from AHS to faith-based provider Covenant Health, which will prohibit those hospitals from offering reproductive health options as well as end-of-life choices such as MAID
• had her husband, a restaurant owner, attend confidential internal government discussions about a high-proposed high-speed rail link between Calgary and Banff
• has appointed Clownvoy lawyer Brendan Miller, who you may remember was actually ejected from the Emergencies Act inquiry for interrupting testimony, to the Law Enforcement Review Board
• mused to supporters about moving provincial services and ministries out of the major cities and into rural areas
• denied there is any wrongdoing or conflict arising from her, her staff, and her ministers accepting luxury skybox tickets to Stanley Cup playoff games from major donors, industry bigwigs, and the supplier of the Turkish tylenot she bought

(image by Michael Nabert for his Medium article)

It is quite the flurry of activity, which most observers attribute to her upcoming leadership review and the growing discontent of the far-right element of a party sliding further to the right every week. This element, largely represented by David Parker and the wanna-be MAGAs of the north, Take Back Alberta, also includes everything from rural small-c conservatives looking for a better deal to straight up separatists who see an Alberta police force, pension and bill of rights as steps along the path to eventual independence.

In the middle are a lot of scared, low-information people susceptible to misinformation and terribly fearful of creeping socialism, sharia law, the gay agenda, the woke mind virus et cetera.

But I can't believe they will continue to support a party that appears to be doing everything they can to cripple public healthcare in this province.

Breaking AHS up into four new agencies with more overhead, management and intersecting bureaucracies should be an offense to any thinking adult, let alone a government that actually passed "red tape reduction" legislation.

Emergency room closures are becoming a regular occurrence in this province, especially in rural areas. Staffing issues (caused by hiring freezes, caused by AHS's new government appointed leadership) means existing front line care providers are burning out like cheap Christmas bulbs while accredited nurses can't find full-time positions anywhere in the province. Meanwhile, other provinces like B.C. are scooping them up in droves.

A cynical person might suggest that the UCP aren't actually trying to fix public health care delivery at all, but are hamstringing it and delivering the death of a thousand cuts so it can collapse and be replaced by a for-profit system. Why else would Premier Smith suggest that AHS has a virtual 'monopoly' on health care? Whey would she offer the notion that "competition and fear" will provide better health services for Albertans?

Whether it is willful negligence or merely deep-seated incompetence, the UCP have shown an inability to deliver health care, something Premier Smith assured supporters she would sort out in the first 90 days of her premiership, which started 692 days ago as I write this.

And criminally mishandling health care delivery is only one of the above-bulleted axes many Albertans have to grind. It is a level of nincompoopery and corruption that belongs in a backwater or banana republic and not the home of the increasingly elusive "Alberta advantage."

Worst of all, it is three years until the next election, which the shady gits have already pushed from the previous 'fixed election date' in May until October so as not to coincide with wildfire season. Which, hey, at least makes sense, what with the UCP being the ones who cut the funding for wildfire-fighting the year before Jasper nearly burned to the ground.

What will be left of this province in October of 2027? Will the premier still be Danielle Smith or an even more selfish ideologue? Will she have succeeded into moving everyone onto vouchers for health care, schooling, pensions and who knows what else? Will the Wexiters and separatists, libertarians and Objectivists still be pulling her strings, or she theirs?

Or will something else happen in the meantime?

Someone raised the fascinating point the other day that it would only take six members crossing the floor to bring this government down. How intriguing...

I am not much of a joiner, politically, but I (and many others it seems) have signed up for AB Resistance. They describe themselves as "...a non-partisan grassroots movement listening to Albertans of all political stripes who are worried about the damage the UCP is doing to Alberta. We want to do something about it." Hey, me too!

Maybe this group can find the last six UCP backbenchers with a conscience and convince them to change sides - a real long shot in a government with the largest cabinet in  decades, if not Alberta history (small government - snort). 

Regardless of whatever approach AB Resistance end up taking, waiting to vote three years from now is not an option for me, and neither is just carping about the situation to like-minded folks. This gamble doesn't even cost me a stamp, and if you have similar concerns, maybe give them a look and let's see what happens.

It should be clear to everyone paying attention that Alberta can't continue like this - and shouldn't have to.