A Part of My Heritage

When a building is integral to the story of a place, sometimes government steps in and protects it from the forces of progress and change by calling it a heritage site. The home in Salzburg where Mozart was born. The Old North Church in Boston where furtive lanterns warned patriots that the British were coming. Tear down those buildings, and the towns don’t just suffer a loss of tourist money. Losing heritage sites is like losing history, diluting identity. 

You don't have to be a country, or even a city, to have a heritage sites. Everyone has places that played an important part in their lives, their histories. A childhood home where that one cabinet door never closed right. A corner store where allowances were spent on gummy worms. A park where someone knelt and offered a ring. Any place whose destruction you would mourn, because you could never share it with your children, is a personal heritage site for you. 

I'd like to share one of mine.

Place Ville Marie is an office building at the heart of downtown Montreal. It’s 47 stories of steel and sparkling glass, making an cross shape distinctive enough to earn it a place on postcards. A spotlight spins around on its summit after dark, sending out a bright white beam for miles.

At the heart of the cross, a dozen elevators whoosh up and down at an alarming speed, popping ears and making riders reach for something to hang on to. Downstairs, beneath the atrium where the sounds of high heels and conversations echo off the marble walls, is a shopping mall connecting it to Montreal's underground city.

Outside, between the main building and one of its small satellites, is a courtyard with trees and slick grey granite. Every warm sunny day, it’s filled with suits and their to-go lunches from the food court.

That courtyard is my heritage place.

I visited often enough during my suburban high school and CEGEP years, but once I found myself on the McGill University campus every day, I became a regular. Between classes, or before leaving for home, I'd come and sit on the granite ledges, alternating between reading a book and watching the water play on the green statue in the fountain. Sometimes I'd throw a penny into the fountain as I passed, although I can't say that fountain was any better at delivering on wishes than any other. When the weather got too cold for me to sit on the stone, I'd stand at the railing overlooking McGill College Avenue, a double-double warming my hands through my gloves, and take in the sparkling Christmas lights and the scarf-wrapped crowds.

The view is beautiful from that spot. McGill College Avenue, wide and tree-lined, stretches out from Place Ville Marie up to McGill's Roddick Gates and the campus beyond. Behind the university's old stone buildings, Mount Royal looms, its colors shifting over the seasons. I made sure to bring my husband here when he visited Montreal, to show him this little place that means so much to me.

I miss that courtyard dearly, and I always try to return when I'm in town over a weekend. I stay just long enough to throw a penny into the fountain, sip a coffee, and enjoy the sound of my city.

Killer Kittens and Monster Squirrels

I read an article today about how cats in the United States kill billions of critters a year. Billions. Per year. In the US alone. For reference, this is a billion: 1000000000. Multiply that by 20ish, and you're looking at how many mice, squirrels, birds, bats, and other small fluffy or feathery lives are extinguished per year, in America, in the jaws of vicious kitty cats.

Some thoughts:

1) Holy crap, we have a lot of critters out there if cats are murdering billions a year and the population of birds and squirrels still seems to be thriving (as far as I can tell, anyway).

2) I guess the loss of that many birds and small mammals is probably bad for the environmental balance, and the whole catch-neuter-release idea for stray cats isn't necessarily the best plan, although the alternative breaks my heart.

3) I wonder how much higher that number would be if my Horton was an outside cat.

4) Maybe that explains the giant monster squirrels in Mom's backyard. Evolutionary pressure.

No, really! Think about it! Obviously, the cats are preferentially picking off the smaller and weaker creatures, leaving the giant-critter-genes disproportionately represented in the population! This explains why the crows in my yard are getting so fat they waddle and the squirrels are big and strong enough to haul beefsteak tomatoes off my garden vine and eat them on the deck.

I'm in Montreal this week, and Mom likes to have her morning coffee and cigarette on the back porch even in the cold of a Canadian winter (our blood is thick up here, folks). On my second day here, I heard her yelp and race back in, slamming the door behind her. "He's back, 'stie! Jennifer! Come see this sucker!" She pointed out the window towards the biggest squirrel I had ever seen.

"He hates me," Mom told me, still wrapped in her fur coat and wanting her smoke. "He's an aggressive son of a bitch! He's the one who ate through my garbage cans and dug up my flowerpots! I put mothballs like my friend told me, but he just dug them out and threw them on the neighbor's balcony! When I'm inside at the table, he comes to the windowsill, looks me in the eye, and poops there on purpose right in front of me, the little shit!"

Good daughter that I am, I put on my purple down coat with the fluff-lined hood and stood on the balcony with my mother, brandishing a plastic shovel to defend her from giant attack squirrels. This guy came towards us once or twice, but the whoosh of the shovel scared him back to the neighbor's hanging flowerpot. I got a picture of him:

And this was one of the smaller guys.

While I was out there, I had a good look around. We were surrounded. There were dozens of squirrels hanging out in the trees behind Mom's place in Montreal, and every single one was bigger than the ones I usually deal with back in Maryland. The Canadian squirrels look exactly the same in terms of color and features, so I'm sure they're the same species, but they must weigh at least 3 pounds each.

Weight-loss-inspiration photo these guys surely have
taped to the bathroom mirrors in their nests.

I'm not kidding. Thick branches dip dangerously under their weight. The downstairs neighbor is contributing to their weight problem by throwing crackers and stale bread out for them on a regular basis. If you're quiet, you can hear them crunching from the balcony. It's surreal, hearing dozens of crackers being crunched by hundreds of tiny teeth.  I tried hard to get a picture of the really fat one, but he stayed too far away. He doesn't fit through the holes in the chain-link fence, poor little guy, so he had to climb the fence to get at his carbs.



A photo of Fatty from 2008. He's still using it in his SquirrelMatch.com profile.

I'll be back out there tomorrow for more balcony defense. Wish me luck. They may bring reinforcements. Does anyone have an outside cat I can borrow?

Heritage

A part of our heritage.

Say those words to any Canadian in their thirties, and they will either mime a frantic telegraph operator or tell you they smell burnt toast.

No, we're not all insane. 

Years ago, when my age cohort was young and impressionable, a series of short  films were aired on TV alongside commercials for Skip-Its and Ninja Turtle figurines. These "Heritage Minutes" were sponsored by various corporations over the years and were aired on Canadian TV networks as a way to increase the amount of Canadian content we were exposed to. 

Thus we learned about Doctor Wilder Penfield, pioneer in neurosurgery and mapper of the brain, first director of McGill University's Montreal Neurological Institute. 

We learned about the Halifax Explosion of 1917, where a ship loaded with explosives caught fire in the harbour after a collision. The disaster would have claimed more lives than it did had it not been for the sacrifice of Vince Coleman, a telegraph operator who stayed at his post to warn incoming trains of the danger.

While we absorbed Saturday morning cartoons, we learned of hockey heroes, war heroes, inventors and pioneers, all Canadian, all a part of our shared heritage. Those short films have stayed with me for decades now, snippets of them playing in my head, their words waiting on my tongue.

"Johnson, Sir... Molly Johnson."

"I, Emily Murphy, of Alberta, and all Canadian women after me: persons, under the law."

"Missus Trout!!"

I looked these videos up today because it occurred to me that I've forgotten much of my Canadian history. I will need to study American history if I am to pass the citizenship test next year, but much of the Canadian history I learned as a child is beginning to fade. I remember Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain. At least, I remember their names. I remember the Iroquois and their longhouses. I remember Vimy Ridge, and the bright poppy fields of Flanders. But I can't remember the story. I can't explain anymore what Canada is, where it came from, how it changed and grew. I am forgetting my heritage.



If you would like to watch more of these videos, and I recommend that you do, there is a playlist of all of them on Youtube here.

The best game you can name

This is the fifth of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here. Note: it's entirely possible some of these memories are inexact, but I'm sticking with them anyway.

Hockey jersey from local New Brunswick team

Hockey doesn't feel real here. Sure, there are tons of loyal Capitals fans around, judging by the personalized license plates, but this isn't a hockey town the way Montreal is. I miss my Canadiens. I miss listening to the games in French, and I miss watching them with my brother.

We loved making jokes out of the players' names. Plekanec was one of my favorites. Good ol' Pleck-a-Neck. Zednik and Kostitsyn were pretty good too, because of the high consonant concentration. And when the team gives you someone with a name like Bouillon, they're asking you to have fun with it. If he looked strong during a game, he was Bouillon de boeuf - beef broth. If he was playing badly, he was Bouillon de poulet (chicken broth). Inevitably, when Bouillon scored, we'd make his name into "Boo-yah!" like a couple of dorks. As for the player named Bonk, every time he scored a goal, we'd bonk heads. Naturally.

The year before I moved to the States, the Canadiens made the Stanley Cup playoffs. My bro and I put on our team jerseys and settled in his room to watch a game on his TV. He sank into his big green easy chair and I flung myself onto the unmade bed. The music at the arena drowned out the TV announcers' voices. Spotlights tracked across the surface of the ice. Player after player was introduced over the loudspeaker to the roar of the crowd. The Molson Centre* was packed with excited fans who'd been lucky enough to score themselves expensive and hard-to-get playoff tickets. It seemed as though everyone, in every seat, was waving a white towel emblazoned with the team logo. My brother stood up and left the room for a moment, returning with two white washcloths. We whirled them for all we were worth every time our guys rushed the opposing net.

I can't quite get myself as psyched when I'm watching a Capitals game. Even when the Habs make the playoffs and I have a chance to see them play on TV, I don't pull out my jersey. It feels silly when it's just me. I hereby declare that the next time the Canadiens make it to the playoffs, I will pack my jersey and a white towel, and head home to Montreal to watch a game with my bro.

*It's the Bell Center now, but I can never seem to remember that name.

Bonjour, hi.

This is the third of my "Advent Calendar" Christmas ornament posts. For some background information about this project and why I'm challenging myself to complete it, see here.

Grenouille/Frog

I'm a Frenglish-Canadian.

You see, I was raised with two first languages, and have never been quite sure which box to check for "mother tongue" on official forms. I have a very English first name and a very French last name and have consequently had my name impressively mangled by both English and French speakers over the years. One French co-worker called me "Jane" for the two years I worked with her, because she just could not wrap her speech centers around "Jen".

I've never been comfortable defining a spot for myself along the language continuum. In Quebec, you're Francophone or Anglophone, and your social world will change according to your label. You read The Gazette, or Le Journal de Montreal. You either went to McGill or to UdeM. You spent Saturday nights at the bars on Crescent Street, or on Rue Saint-Denis. There were some who crossed into foreign territory, of course - it's not as though there were language guards at the doors - but those people were definitely in the minority.

As a kid, I never really understood that there was an unspoken divide. We spoke French with Mom's side of the family, and English with Dad's side. It was English at home for the most part, but from kindergarten onward, I was in a French Immersion program, speaking French half the day. We didn't just have French class, we had classes in French. Maybe one year, history and ecology would be in French, with math and music in English, and the next year it would change.

I didn't feel like an Anglo, but I didn't feel quite French either. That lack of specific language identity never bothered me until I got a little older and get a taste of bullying and language discrimination. I know, right? White girl in Canada, who am I to talk about discrimination? But when you're walking to the city pool with your sister and a friend, and some French kids no bigger or badder than yourselves throw gravel at you because you're speaking English, and tell you to "Go home, fucking English"*, what else can you call it?

The kids were idiots, obviously, and we ignored them and continued on to the swimming pool. I wasn't traumatized by the event and I'm not crippled by it now. But it stayed with me. Every time I ask myself whether I'm Anglo or Franco, I remember sting of the gravel and the bite of their words. I'm both, and I'm neither. I can never remember the French word for peacock or the English word for pamplemousse. I stumble over the gendered nouns of French, and yet I'll "put my coat" or "pass the vacuum" and not see a damn thing wrong with what I'm saying, despite the funny looks I get. My accent comes out when I drink, and when I'm really mad, or watching hockey, I curse in French.

I'm just going to define myself with my made-up "Frenglish-Canadian" and if you don't like it, you can piss off, câlisse.

*One, I was home. Two, they insulted us in English. If you're going to insult me, do it right.

For Momo.

My grandmother, Mabel Mills Blais, known by all as Momo, passed away last weekend. I have been wanting to write her a tribute, but how can I condense a whole life onto this page? The magnitude of that task intimidated me all week and kept me from trying, until I realized that it's not my job to chronicle every detail of Momo's long and fascinating life; at least, not right now. Everyone who knew her has their own version of Momo to remember, and all I can do is share my Momo with you. The Momo who will live on in my memories.

My most comfortable and familiar Momo memories center around her kitchen table, where we'd sit and chat when I came to visit. Standing ready by the stove, nudging one of her rescued feline friends from the counter, she'd ask “Shall I make us a cuppa tea?” Refusing the offer got me nowhere – half a cup was always her next offer, as though the thought of a guest in her home not drinking at least a little tea was unconscionable. Officially, Momo herself only ever wanted half a cup of anything. She just had to drink through the top half to get to the bottom half, that's all. When the tea situation was settled to her satisfaction, she would clink mugs and spoons and shift the whistling kettle while she hummed to herself about what one should do with drunken sailors*. Always sturdy, sensible, big coffee mugs for Momo's tea - I never saw her using dainty teacups. Dainty just wasn't her way. 

Momo's mugs of tea always came with offers of food: cookies, May West snack cakes, toasted tomato “sangwiches”... Despite years of my best efforts to convince my grandmother that I do not like sliced raw tomatoes as a sandwich filling, she offered me one every time I was in her kitchen. I can't decide whether my preference just never registered for her, or whether she was getting a good laugh out of it. I'm inclined to believe the latter. Still, I have to wonder – what if I'd said yes, just to throw her off? Did she keep fresh tomatoes in her kitchen all year, season to season, just in case I called her bluff?

We talked about everything at that table. Sometimes politics, sometimes family goings-on, and always a discussion of something she'd heard on the radio. CJAD talk radio was her constant companion, always droning on in some corner of the house at all hours of the day and night. When her eyes started to go, the radio meant even more to her, and she'd relate stories from the radio programs as though she'd heard them from good friends. Whenever I came to her with a problem or a complaint about something at work or at school, she'd think for a moment and ask “Do you ever listen to Dr. So-and-So on CJAD? They talk about that sometimes. You should call in.” I often sighed, quite rudely and unfairly, when she asked me about the radio programs, because I never listened to anything but music stations and she knew that. It was the tomato sangwiches all over again!

She did watch TV sometimes, most of it absorbed through her closed eyelids while she rumbled the couch cushions with her snoring. If someone tried to turn off the TV while she was installed, she'd wake with a jolt and protest that she'd been watching that, and resting her eyes! And you know, if you quizzed her, she could almost always tell you exactly what had been happening on the screen.

Momo never had a problem sharing her opinions with you or with anyone within earshot. She was a woman who loved a good debate, and would shamelessly shift sides in a discussion if it meant it would keep the conversation lively. Looking back on those moments now, I can't help but think that I've got a bit of her in me. I see all sides of every argument and can play the Devil's Advocate and rationalize almost any position, if I'm given a chance. I see now that all those cups of tea with Momo had more of a role in shaping my personality than I ever realized at the time.

There's so much more. More than I could ever fit here and more than I could ever really relate to those who never knew her. So many little things about Momo and about the big house in Longueuil. The Crayola-red and -yellow tulips in the front garden. The white stone lions on the front porch, who made such comfortable chairs for the grandchildren having imaginary adventures. Holding out peanuts for generation after generation of backyard squirrels (all of whom were named "Chippy"), and throwing stale bread out to the "dickie birds". 

Her home was always a home to all, with family members holding a lifetime, unrestricted Golden Invitation to come and stay as needed. Nobody would ever be turned away - even the Jehovah's Witnesses who came to the door were accepted for a chat, and every stray cat who ever sat on the porch and meowed for food was given love and a warm home to purr in.

We'll miss her. She was strong and opinionated, kind and witty, and it's obvious that her whole family carries parts of her with them. You won't be forgotten, Momo. Toodley-pips, and God Bless.

*Her preferred method of dealing with one was to kick 'im in the belly and bust his boiler, whatever that means, but I can't find a reference to that line anywhere other than in my memories.

Cuppy Cakes a la Momo

This isn't a recipe. It's a fond memory and a sweet tribute to my grandmother, Momo, who left us this past weekend after 91 rich years in this world. I've been working on a written tribute, because I feel it's something I need to do, but this week has been very difficult. The words aren't lining up right, so I turned to food, as so many people do in painful times.

These "cuppy cakes" were Momo's specialty, as far as my siblings and I were concerned. "Cupcakes" could mean almost anything, but when someone said "Cuppy Cakes", you knew exactly what was waiting for you. They never stood a chance of surviving overnight once they were made.

They're just simple chocolate cupcakes, made from a box mix, with holes cut into the tops to make room for homemade, lightly sweetened whipped cream. They always lived on a shelf in her fridge because of the whipped cream filling, and we kids would try to be subtle about sneaking back over to open the fridge door for just one more... Sometimes the simplest things are really the best.

They just seemed like the right thing to make this week.

Montreal Bagels

Since it's a trip home and not really a vacation, you wouldn't think I'd bring home many souvenirs for myself when I visit Montreal. Usually, this is true, but this time I had a moment of bready weakness and brought back dozens of fresh bagels. 

Explain to me how anyone can walk into a place like this and not leave with as many bagels as they could carry. I'm grateful they didn't have shopping carts, or I may have bought more. The staff was very understanding of my need to take pictures of their bagel oven. Apparently they get that all the time. See those long flat boards? They use those to get the bagels into and out of the oven, and they slide the hot golden bagels off the boards  into the big bin you see on the right, where they get scooped out and put by the dozen into paper bags for the customers waiting in line.

Brossard Bagel, in Greenfield Park, QC

One dozen of the delicious bagels I imported were to share with my coworkers, because I thought it would be a welcome change from the boxes of saltwater taffy that always appear in the break room whenever someone gets back from vacation. Also, we're a pretty seriously carbohydrate-loving group.

I sent out an excited "OMG you guys!! Montreal bagels for everyone!!" e-mail and then spent the rest of the morning trying to answer "what's a Montreal bagel?" And that's a difficult question. All I know is that they're dense, they're delicious, and I can't find anything like them around here.

So, in the interest of educating the world, I acquired different types of bagels so that I could proceed with: 

A Comparative Anatomy of Bagels

 

I started with one sesame bagel from Brossard Bagel, and one poppyseed bagel from Wegmans. I was going to get one from Panera, but I was grocery shopping anyway, and the Wegmans ones looked exactly like the Panera ones I'm used to, so I think it's a good example of a generic "bagel" available in this area. I specifically did not buy the packaged Thomas Bagels in the bread aisle, because I wanted to compare a fresh-baked Montreal bagel with a fresh-baked generic bagel from this area. The guy at the counter at Wegmans assured me that they bake them fresh, so we're on more or less even ground there.

First, let's have a look at them.

Left: Montreal bagel. Right: Wegmans bagel.

The first thing that you notice is that the Wegman's bagel looks a lot bigger than the one from Montreal. It's taller, and while it's about the same diameter, it has a much smaller center hole, making it look a lot less dense. But is it less dense?

Here's a look at the insides.

Left: Montreal bagel. Right: Wegmans bagel

They both show evidence of bubbles inside, but the ones in the Wegmans bagel are bigger. This doesn't necessarily mean it's less dense, but I noticed a big difference in texture just by poking them. The Wegmans bagel is much, much more squashable.

I crushed the bagels with my girly pink dumbbells to demonstrate the squash factor. Using a 5-pound weight on each bagel eliminates the possibility of me pushing harder on one or the other.

Left: Montreal bagel. Right: Wegmans bagel

As you can see, the one on the left barely deforms at all, and the one on the right looks like a Tempur-Pedic commercial. I'm going to let this stand as my test of bagel density, because calculating bagel volume is a little too intense a task for me, and I'm not in the mood for math.

I told my coworker that I was doing a bagel experiment, and she generously offered to get me a couple of bagels from a Jewish bakery in her neighborhood, to give me a third data point. Fantastic!

I didn't squash the bagel from the Jewish bakery, because I was too excited about jamming it into the toaster so I could eat it, but I did take a photo of its insides for you.

Bagel from Jewish bakery

It looked very much like the Wegmans bagel, both inside and out. It was fat and fluffy-looking, and it had many large bubbles inside. The biggest difference was the smell - much more yeasty than the Wegmans bagel. I also noticed that the texture was denser, but not as dense as the Montreal bagel. Many of the little holes had doughy threads across them, making me think there's a lot of gluten in this bread.

The Taste Test

I toasted the bagels in my cheap two-slice toaster, and then tasted them both with butter and plain cream cheese. I also tried the bagel from the Jewish bakery with some veggie cream cheese, which is a specialty of that deli. It seemed like the right thing to do. The bagels were tested at least a half hour apart. I am so very very full of carbohydrates.

Wegmans bagel

It got crunchy on the outside, and remained very soft and bready on the inside. It felt like it took a long time to gain any brown color. Where I cut the toasted bagel in half, the knife flattened the bagel completely. It tasted bland, vaguely yeasty, like a big soft chunk of white bread. No dominating taste or smell. Not entirely different from a dinner roll.

Montreal bagel

Much more difficult to cut in half because of its density, so my halves were uneven. If ever there was an appropriate time for those safety bagel cutter things, it's with Montreal bagels. It turned brown much more quickly than the first bagel. The Montreal bagel had a much sweeter taste, and I posit that the higher sugar content led to faster browning. Incredibly chewy, with a crunchy crust. Coworkers commented on the sweetness of the bagels I brought in, and how chewy they were.

Jewish bagel

Its browning speed fell somewhere between the other two. The smell and the taste were very yeasty, and it was chewier than the Wegmans bagel by far, which surprised me given how similar they look. It was nowhere near as dense and chewy as the Montreal bagel, though, so although it was good it didn't win my taste test. Yes, I'm biased. I admit it.

So why are Montreal bagels so dense? I'm not sure. Wikipedia has the following to say about how Montreal bagels differ from the "generic bagel":

• The bagel dough includes egg and honey.
• Honey is also added to the water used for poaching the bagels before baking.
• The bagels are baked in a wood-fired oven. 

All these things make them so much more delicious than any other type of bagel I've ever tried. I don't know why they haven't spread out and become more popular across Canada and the United States - you'd think the sweetness would be a great selling point. There are some recipes I've found online for "Montreal-style bagels", and one of these days I may give that a shot, but for now, I have dozens of frozen bagels to tide me over.

Oh, before I close this out, I have one more reason why Montreal bagels are better. Check this out, from the same Wikipedia article:

Montreal-style bagels are currently the only style of bagel to have ventured into in space. Gregory Chamitoff, who grew up in Montreal, took three bags of sesame bagels with him on his assignments to STS-124 as passenger and ISS Expedition 17 as crewmember.

That's right. I thought I was a hardcore fan because I dragged dozens across the border in my Honda Fit, and here I learn this guy brought them to space. We loves our bagels, what can I say.

Saint Jean and Poutine

June 24th is a big day in Quebec. It's the "national" holiday, by which I mean it's recognized by the province, which considers itself a nation. Or something. I'm not going to delve into the deep political meaning of the day, because I don't want to get into a discussion of separatism and federalism and the language laws and the government. Simply stated, it's the feast day of Saint-Jean-Baptiste, or Saint John the Baptist, who is Quebec's patron saint.

Like all other summer holidays in North America, it is a day for grilling, beer, flags, and fireworks. And that's all that really matters. A day to get together with friends and family, enjoy the time off work, and have a couple of burgers and a Molson while kicking back and fighting mosquitoes.

That's what you do when you're in Quebec for the holiday, anyway. Far from home and without my fun and boisterous French Canadian family and friends, it's hard to really get the party on.

For my celebration, I had my morning coffee in my Quebec flag mug, and I greeted the cats in French for a change. They gave no sign, naturally, that they noticed the deviation from the norm. Instead of fireworks and beer, we had a day of Costco and laundry, and I popped over to Facebook a few times to see how others back home were celebrating. A day at the beach, hot dogs and champagne... even my sister, far off in Vancouver, draped a Quebec flag over her patio table for her coffee break.

I set things right in my home by having poutine for dinner.

Poutine, for those who don't know it, is pretty much Quebec's national dish. It's a delicious mix of cheese and french fries covered in a brown gravy. Not just any fries or cheese or gravy will do, though, and so making poutine here in the States is a challenge.

French fries are easy enough to get, and I sent Dave out to get some from Five Guys Burgers and Fries because they're the perfect poutine fries. They're equivalent to the ones at one of Quebec's best poutine makers, the fast-food chain La Belle Province. You're going to use these fries to sop up gravy, so they need to be soft enough to spear with a fork and flexible enough to curve into the corners of the bowl and get all the gravy. Five Guys gets it just right.

I have packets of poutine sauce, so I made a batch while Dave was off at Five Guys. It's just a basic brown gravy, nothing too fancy, but different restaurants back home have their own versions. I may try making my own one day, when I run out of packets, but I think it would be acceptable to use a generic "brown gravy" packet if necessary.

The hardest part to get right is the cheese.

Before you can even consider throwing some poutine together yourself, you will need to find the freshest possible cheese curds. Do not even think about using shredded cheddar or mozzarella, no matter what you've seen on the internet or tried in American restaurants. Ideally, you need "squeaky cheese". Curds so fresh that they squeak between your teeth as you bite into them. Unfortunately, that's not easy to find in my area, and probably not easy to find in much of the United States, but the grocery chain Wegmans sells a reasonable facsimile (right flavor, no squeak).

There aren't many Wegmanses around here, which is why I've never had the chance to make my own poutine before. Last week, though, the brand new store opened up in my neighborhood just in time for me to do this for Saint Jean! Hooray!

Admit it. You want some.

Montreal Student Protests

It's been over five years since I've been able to call Montreal my place of residence, but on some level it will always be home to me.

For the last 100 days, there have been protests in Montreal as students speak out against proposed university tuition hikes. The proposed increases are substantial - 75% over five years, for a total increase of $1625. Students who believe that education should be a right and not a privilege decided to leave classes in April and have not been back since. The Student Society of McGill University has put up a website outlining the proposed changes and why they are opposed to them, and I recommend you read it to understand the background of the situation.

While I understand the resistance to a tuition increase, I am embarrassed by the behavior of the protesters who say they speak for all students in the province. There has been a dangerous violent element to these protests, with a couple of student groups sanctioning violent acts as a means of getting the point across to the government. Rocks are being thrown at storefronts and bank windows are being broken. My friends here in the United States have been warned by the US embassy in Ottawa that travel to Montreal may be dangerous. What does that tell the world about my city? For all the protesters are pounding their chests and demanding justice and freedom, Canada is not a repressed Middle-Eastern country fighting to free itself from the tyranny of a violent and all-controlling government. 

 

Montrealers love to strike, and Montreal's students love to protest. I am not opposed to organized strikes or peaceful protests against government decisions - history has proven the tactics to be effective. The Quebec government's recent passing of Bill 78, requiring that the authorities be notified 8 hours before the start of a protest, pissed a lot of people off, but what choice does the province have? Time and time again, a Montreal protest becomes a riot, where police cars are set on fire and tear gas canisters are thrown into crowds. Why? The legitimacy of the cause these students are fighting for is lost in the sensationalism of their violent acts.

Here's a short video from CBC News - you can see that things are clearly out of hand.

No side is entirely right or wrong here. The educational institutions need to be more transparent, as does the government, and student loans need to be made available to a larger number of people. Right now, relatively few people qualify for government-backed student loans, because the income bar is set quite low and takes into account how much money the student's parents make, regardless of whether the parents intend to help their children pay for school.

That said, the protesters also need to be more reasonable. Everything is getting more expensive, everywhere. From the perspective of students in the rest of Canada, Quebec students have no right to complain about how much university costs them. And, looking at the numbers on the Quebec government's website, I tend to agree. We've had it good for a very long time, enjoying the lowest tuition rates in the country. Even with the increase, by 2015 Quebec's students will be paying under $4000 a year for their education, still far lower than what students in most provinces pay now. Is $4000 a year really so much of a hardship? At the risk of coming across as callous, I got through school by working in retail and in telemarketing, and commuting by bus from my mother's house in the suburbs instead of renting a downtown apartment. Not everyone has those options - I was lucky to find jobs that paid better than minimum wage, and I had a family willing to put up with me at home while I finished school - but I feel like some of the protesters feel like they shouldn't have to work for their education. That's just not realistic.

Two-thirds of Quebec's students are still attending school, trying to finish the semester of classes they've paid for. The angry minority, in my humble opinion, needs to decide exactly what their battle is, who it is with, and how to fight it effectively. Protest and demonstrations are valid tools for communicating displeasure with government policy - throwing rocks and deliberately baiting cops are not.

Crêpes

Crêpes were always a Christmas morning tradition with my family, either at home or at Grandmaman's house. We woke up too late this Christmas to bother with breakfast, since we were off for a huge feast at my in-laws in the afternoon, so I shifted crêpe day to New Year's Day instead. A great start to the year, I think!

Crêpes

4 eggs

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

1 1/2 cups flour

2 cups milk

1 tsp soft butter

(Makes approximately 8 large crepes)

Beat the eggs with the soft butter, sugar, and salt, until they're frothy. Add milk and keep beating. Using a whisk is usually best. Add the flour and beat out the lumps, but it's ok if you've got small lumps, it won't matter. Keep the batter cold. This is very important. I usually leave an ice cube or two in the bowl of batter, especially if it's going to sit a few minutes before it goes into the pan.

Heat your pan with butter and a little oil (canola, vegetable, whatever you have handy) and wait till it's hot enough to make a drop of water sizzle. Drop a ladle full of batter into the center of the pan and tip and swirl the pan to coat the whole surface. When the edges of the crêpe curl and brown, shake the pan. If the crêpe moves freely, it's ready to flip. Shake it so it's hanging out of the pan a little on one edge, then slide a spatula under it to help you flip it. If you have mad kitchen skills and think you can flip it with a flick of your wrist, feel free, but I can never make that work.

This is what it should look like when you flip it:

Once flipped, cook the other side for 30 seconds to one minute, then transfer (slide) to a plate.

These are savory crêpes, not sweet dessert ones. Normally I cover them with a thin sprinkling of brown sugar, then roll them up and drizzle maple syrup over them, and they really don't need to be any further improved. You could also put ham and cheese or any other savory fillings in them - after flipping the crêpe, lay some cheese and whatever else you want on one half of the crepe and then flip the other half over it. Instant filled crêpe.

While you do not need a fancy crêpe pan to make crepes, I do recommend getting one if you're going to make crêpes with any regularity. Flipping them is much simpler with a special pan because of the low edges, and I find the heat is very even, at least in the one I have. Look for one that's about 10 inches across and has a very shallow lip. You don't need a "crêpe spreader" tool, just tipping the pan is plenty to get the batter spread out. If you're using a normal frying pan, you will be fine, but it may be trickier to get a spatula underneath the crêpe to flip it.

Canadian Food Memories

Have a good look at the picture below and tell me what you see.

If you said "macaroni and cheese", you're way off. And you're not Canadian.

We're talking about the blue box of goodness here. Kraft Dinner. Skinny macaroni and that packet of frighteningly orange "cheese" powder, a staple of my childhood. I ate so much of this stuff that I should be a lot more yellow by now from all that dye. I burned out on it near the end of my teens, pushing it to the "starving and in a hurry and I can't find anything else" category of foods, but I used to ask for KD for supper. With hot dogs cut up in it. And not with ketchup. I don't care what the Barenaked Ladies tell you, that is not a thing.

They have almost the same stuff here, but it's not quite the same. The box is different, and it changed its name when it crossed the border, but even the taste isn't right. I've found that the American doppelgangers of my favorite childhood foods are always just a little off. They look similar enough to inspire some excitement as I pop open a bottle or tear open a box, but then I'm left with a sense of emptiness when they don't live up to the dream.


These are cans of Alpha-getti and Zoodles. You don't know what these things are unless you grew up in the Great White North, and if this is your story, I am sad for you. They are alphabet or animal noodles in a tomato sauce, and they made it possible for a whole generation of Canadian schoolchildren to learn to spell with their dinners or have hippopotamuses for lunch. After moving here, I had an unhealthy craving for Zoodles, but couldn't find them at the grocery store. I decided Spaghetti-O's would be a reasonable substitute, since O does indeed belong to the alphabet. And I guess if you had a great imagination, they could be interpreted as rolled-up armadillos and this fit into the Zoo family in a pinch. But no, they didn't quite taste right. Actually, they sucked. I do not like Spaghetti-O's!

America's got plenty of awesome foods and I'm not wasting away for lack of tasty things to eat, but sometimes, when I'm tired, or home sick (or, for that matter, homesick), I crave a familiar taste of home, and the stuff here just can't give that to me.



Dear family: send Zoodles.

Getting a new Passport

My Canadian passport expires in September of this year, and since I'd like to have permission to travel, I need to renew it. The process isn't too terrible, since the Canadian government now has a faster way to renew a passport by mail from the United States: fill out a form, get some new pictures taken, mail it all in with the fee and your old passport, and you'll get your new passport in a month or two.

Well, as usual, nothing in my world is ever as simple as it should be. First of all, getting pictures taken was a huge hassle. I showed up at a Target photo studio, because I was assured over the phone that they do passport pictures there. Luckily, before we got started, I thought to mention to the nice photo lady that these were for a Canadian passport. Oh, no, she said, we can't do those! We looked at the helpful 5 pages of rules and instructions that Passport Canada had me download with my application, and sure enough, the format is different. I figured the photo studio, with all their digital magic, could make it happen, but she said passport photos are done with a Polaroid and they only have one size, 2x2 inches. And mine needed to be 2 inches by two-and-three-quarter inches. Great. She recommended the fancy camera shop at the mall, so I went home and started making phone calls.


Walgreens won't do it.
Rite Aid won't do it.
Costco won't do it.
Picture People won't do it.
Ritz Camera won't do it.
JCPenney photo studio won't do it.

I ended up at Sears, apparently the only place in Maryland capable of taking a picture of me in 2x2.75 size.

The photos are, of course, terrible, because of the rules. Hair off my face, look straight forward, completely neutral expression with no frown or smile. It's a mug shot, really, and it shows me that I should never commit a crime because the photo of me they'll show on TV when I'm arrested will be horrible.

Then it was off to FedEx to mail it all to Canada. I would have loved to use regular old mail, but Canada Post is currently on strike, which means my passport application would not get to its destination because the postal workers are all hanging out and picketing instead of getting the mail where it needs to go.

That particular FedEx office, in Columbia, gets a big fat F for customer service. The assistant manager there treated me like an idiot, rolling his eyes at my questions and telling me "the instructions are on the form". I have never done this before, there are a dozen different forms and envelopes, and you're "helping" your customer by hanging out 20 feet away at your computer and mumbling things at me while sighing at my incompetence. Thanks, jackass. Luckily there was another guy there who was nice enough to walk me through sending this very important package, so it's quite likely that it will get there.

So... now I wait. They say 20 business days is the average turnaround time, excluding the shipping time, so I should get it back soon. I'm nervous about emergency need to travel before then, but I guess that's what the embassy is for. Knock wood that I won't need that!

Trip to Montreal

Of course the day we planned to drive up to Montreal (no airport porno-scanners for us, thankyouverymuch) was the day the big Nor'Easter was supposed to hit, dumping a ton of snow from the Carolinas to the Maritimes. We left early enough to miss all but a few flakes, and the storm stayed more coastal, so we were spared the horror of a dark blizzard drive through the mountains. Hooray! I think Dave may have been a little disappointed that we couldn't test out the new snow tires, but a safe drive was the main point. And then I forgot to call my dad and grandma when I got there safely, resulting in some minor panic attacks for which I sincerely apologize!

I learned some things on the drive.

First, always check if you have your iPod and iPod charger/FM transmitter before you leave the house. Luckily we had a few CDs and were near cities enough to pick up some radio stations, because a silent 10-hour drive would have been hard.

Frozen waterfalls are the most gorgeous thing ever. Every time we drove through a spot where rock was blasted away for the road, I saw these pretty frozen shapes on the rock surface, and I was mesmerized. I tried to take a picture but things get blurry at 65mph, so this is the best I could do:They're much more gorgeous in reality; you'll just have to trust me, or go for a drive somewhere cold and see for yourself. Some of them were blue like icebergs or glaciers! Actually, now I want to go see some icebergs and glaciers. Which is bizarre, because I hate being cold. Are there any warm glaciers I can visit?

I also learned that some graffiti can be inspirational. Thanks to whoever wrote "It can always get better" on an overpass, because it made me smile. I hope you didn't get charged with vandalism for your contribution to the world's well-being.

We also passed my favorite road sign ever. I giggle every time we pass it.Delicious irony!

After a long day of driving, with only a couple of food stops and a stretch break or two, we got to Mom's place and were welcomed by a second Christmas.

And by this wonderful ball of fluff.

And by my Mom and my wonderful dork of a brother.
All so completely worth it.

What's for Dinner: Pâté Chinois (Shepherd's Pie)

I'm not sure why it's got such different names in English and French. I like to think that it originated with Chinese shepherds and so we've both got it right. Either way, it's one of my favorite examples of cold-weather comfort food, and one of the easiest to throw together. My recipe is really simple, and I will eventually start tweaking it to add different seasonings and vegetables, but for now it's still appreciated every time I make it so I hesitate to play with it.

6 to 8 meduim potatoes (plus butter, and a dairy-based liquid of choice for mashing)
About a pound of ground beef
A packet of powdered beef gravy
One small onion or half a big one
1 can corn
1 can creamed corn

Peel, chop, and boil up the potatoes for mashing. Then, obviously, mash them. Use milk or cream, whatever you like better, but definitely toss in some butter. Everything is yummier with butter.
Dice the onion and fry it up in some butter (see - yummier!), set it aside.
Brown some ground beef in a pan. The amount is up to you - I used about a pound of it because that's what I had. Season the meat with salt and pepper, and when it's all done, mix a couple teaspoons of powdered beef gravy with about a 1/4 cup of water and stir it into the meat. Mix the onion back in.

Pour the meat into a baking dish*. Spread it around to get a nice even layer. Add the two cans of corn and spread that around. Use a big spoon to plop a scoop of mashed potatoes every couple inches across the top of the corn - you can't really spread very well because the corn is squishy and you'll make a mess, so the trick is to use smaller scoops of potatoes and try to cover a lot of surface with well-placed blobs. Then you spread the tops of the blobs so they all connect, leaving you with a smooth potatoey surface. Which you can then poke at with various utensils to make it look pretty (I used a fork and made lines). It's important to spread the potatoes to the edges to "seal" everything, otherwise you'll get meat juice bubbling up and it might make a mess.

Into the oven for about 30 min at 350. The top of the potatoes should get the slightest bit brown and will be firm when you poke at it.

And when you scoop some out to eat it, it will be delicious.

*I used an oval Corningware casserole dish, but a lasagna pan would work pretty well too. I like my shepherd's pie to be thick, as opposed to all spread out in a flatter pan, so I usually use smaller dishes with higher sides. If you're using a flatter one, check the oven often, because you won't need to leave it in as long.

Faux Poutine

I have now tried "poutine" at two different restaurants in the area. Neither of them got it right, sadly.

First was Houlihan's, with their "disco fries". Shoestring fries in a beef/mushroom gravy with shredded cheese (mozzarella, I think). They also tossed in little pieces of shredded pot roast, which was a nice addition. I don't think I can go back to that place now without having this again, so I'd say they did a good job.

Then this weekend we tried a spot called Victoria's, which had "poutine" on the appetizer menu. It was "duck fat fries" with duck gravy and duck confit (which, I learned, means little bits of duck roasted in its own fat and juices). It was... fat. The fries were super crispy and pretty dark, and I'm not sure if that's a result of them being cooked in duck fat or their being overcooked in duck fat. Either way, not too impressed with that one, because of an odd deep-fryer aftertaste. And an overall lack of cheese. Needed more cheese.

My friend is visiting from Montreal next week, and I'm going to ask her to bring me some of the proper cheese so I can make poutine here. I'm thinking that a housewarming party is a great excuse to make it.