Last October, while finishing up a month-long trip to Europe with Damir, we both agreed that we needed some sort of change in what/how we eat. He had picked up a copy of Gillian McKeiths’ You Are What You Eat when we passed through Dublin, and we had both been reading it. Very accessible reading, and basically a sensible “whole foods” diet, leaning towards macrobiotics (although I didn’t know enough about macrobiotics then to say so). She advocates eating lots of whole grains, fresh fruits and veggies, smaller amounts of animal protein, and supplements such as wheat grass. On our return, I happened to see a book review for Jessica Porter’s The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics, noticed the similarities between that and McKeith’s book, so bought that as well. Porter’s book goes a bit too much into the philosophy of macrobiotics than I care to know, but certainly gives a great introduction to the macrobiotic newbie.

Within a month, I was pretty much vegan, which is funny considering that I always thought that vegans were radical tree-huggers. Oh, wait… I wear Rockport sandals and just bought a bike and sold my car… maybe I’m one of them! I still eat meat once in a while (usually when I’m served it at someone’s house, since I really hate when I invite people to dinner and they give me a big list of what they won’t eat), fish once or twice a week, and vegetarian the rest of the time. Meat has become a condiment or flavouring for me, not a main part of my meal; I have no ethical problem with eating it, it just makes me feel heavy. I’ve had exactly one egg since the beginning of November, and almost no dairy (okay, a bit of goat or sheep cheese). No processed foods, such as white sugar or white flour. Lots of whole grains, like oat groats, quinoa and brown rice. No nightshades, which includes potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. Oh yeah, I gave up coffee: no more grande lattes from Starbucks.

The funny thing is, I hardly miss what I’ve cut out. Every once in a while I’ll have a craving for something (like spicy Thai eggplant), I’ll eat a little bit of it and the craving goes away for another couple of months. I’ve lost about 10 pounds, although that wasn’t the reason for this change, and I feel great. Tons of energy, even through my former “sleepy time” in the middle of the afternoon. People tell me that I look 10 years younger, which is a nice thing to hear as I fast approach 45. If I could just force myself to start exercising, I’d probably regress in age.

Damir’s done well on this, too: he’s lost more weight than I have, although he is genetically slender and is now a bit too skinny, and gets through his thrice-weekly Aikido classes with lots of energy when he used to have to pop sugar in some form to keep going for two hours of martial arts. He even bought a pot (this is a man who has never cooked anything in his entire life) and now makes his own brown rice, barley and quinoa at home.

Last night I attended the new (Cirque du Soleil) show, Corteo. As with every other Cirque show that I’ve seen, it was magical — a visual and aural phantasmagoria of acrobatics, comedic and dramatic acting, costumes and music. There’s a slight plot thread twisting through it, really more of a theme than a plot, but it’s the acrobatics that blew me away, as usual. There was a juggling set that defies explanation, and the finale, with several gymnasts on interlocking sets of parallel bars, was nothing short of amazing.

The original Cirque du Soleil troop, hailing from Montreal, visited Toronto for the first time more than 10 years ago, and I remember attending the show under the big blue-and-yellow circus tent and being completely entranced. Now, they’ve branched out to six troupes touring around the world, and five permanent shows (including O and Zumanity ) in Las Vegas and Orlando. Every two years or so, when they return to Toronto, I find myself drawn to the show like a moth to flame: Saltimbanco, Dralion, Varekai and other productions. Many years ago, I saw the original run of their show Alegria, which had the most hauntingly beautiful music to accompany the show, and last year they returned to Toronto with Alegria. I notice that it’s touring Japan right now, and will move on to London, Milan and Rome next year.

If you’ve never seen a Cirque du Soleil show, get yourself to a production or look for one of the TV specials or DVDs available, although there is really no replacement for seeing it live. You’ll never feel the same way about a circus again.

In France and Italy in June, my friend Pat and I stayed in apartments rather than renting hotel rooms, in order to have more space, get into the local culture, and (for me, anyway) to be able to cook. Three weeks without cooking and I would have been going a bit twitchy, so we were lucky to find three lovely apartments for one week each with relatively well-equipped kitchens, each of them close to a local outdoor market.

The first place was in Ile sur la Sorgue, a small town in Provence, east of Avignon, where essentially the entire town turns into a market twice a week. Although I’ve been to France many times, mostly for business, I’ve never stayed in Provence and was pleasantly overwhelmed by the smells and tastes in the market. Amazing cheeses, smoked sausages of goat or bull, asparagus and other seasonal vegetables, and a good supply of fresh fish. I grilled vegetables sprinkled with Herbes de Provence, and tossed them with pasta, unfiltered olive oil and fresh Parmigiana-Reggiano — more Italian than French, but when you’re that close to the border, it really doesn’t matter. We would step around the corner to the bakery in the morning for hot-from-the-oven baguettes, and have a lunch of bread, cheese and sausage while driving around the countryside. I was introduced to the rosés of Provence: crisp, dry and fruity, and I’ll be less likely to prejudge pink wines again. Pat had heard from a friend about the melons in Provence, and I ate melon every day in both France and Italy: smaller than our supermarket cantaloupes, with intense aroma and flavour. Altogether, nothing better than these rustic, lusty flavours in the summertime.

Next was Florence, where we stayed a block from the market near Santa Croce: I could see the market from our kitchen window! It had been a few years since I had been in Italy, and a few more since I had attended the cooking school at Villa Delia, but the tastes and recipes just flooded back into my head. Amazingly, I found a food mill in the kitchen so was able to make a sauce of simmered red peppers and herbs, pressed through the mill to make a wonderfully smooth sauce for the hand-made ravioli that we found at the market. We made perfect caprese salads with fresh buffalo-milk mozzarella, vine-ripened tomatoes and handfuls of fresh basil, and snacked on tiny, piquant olives and sharp bleu cheese while sipping Chianti on the terrace of our apartment looking out at the hills of Fiesole.

Lastly was Venice, where we stayed (coincidentally) in the Santa Croce district, a five-minute walk from the Rialto fish market. We ate monkfish, mantis prawns, scallops in the shell, scampi — and that’s just what we cooked for ourselves. I found a little shop near the market that sold handmade gnocchi, and had a very well-illustrated lesson (in Italian) from the woman behind the counter on how to cook it. A quick pan-fry or grilling for the fish, and we ate it with fresh bread and salad in the warm mid-June evenings. However, it’s never too hot for risotto: I saved the prawn heads for a broth, and made a risotto of the shellfish broth with leeks and the biggest porcini mushrooms that I had ever seen. I even think that the mushroom guy in the market liked me, because he threw in a handful of herbs with the porcini that made a perfect complement chopped and sprinkled on the risotto.

I never miss the opportunity to visit a local market when I travel, whether it’s a souk in Egypt or La Boqueria in Barcelona, and having a little flat to prepare and serve the local delicacies provides a great opportunity to feel even more like a local.

Pictures compliments of my talented photographer friend and travelling companion, Pat Anderson.

I went to Open Studio’s “100 Prints” event earlier this year, an event that I have been attending for about 10 years. It’s a fund-raiser for Open Studio wherein 100 artists each donate an original work of art (made with printmaking techniques such as lithography, silk-screening, giclée), and 100 people each buy a ticket for $300. There’s an hour or so of walking around and looking at the art, sipping a glass of wine and eating some great hors d’oeuvres, then they start drawing numbers out of a barrel. When the number on your ticket is drawn, you have one minute to pick one of the artworks that remains on the walls. Great fun, raises money for the excellent printmaking facilities and scholarships at Open Studio, and I’ve always taken home something interesting.

This year, my walls are full. 900 square feet of apartment, and I have every wall covered with art: much of it from Open Studio (Jan Winton, Tara Cooper, Dana Holst and others), some photographs, one large computer-generated fractal image, a few antique prints, and a lone acrylic painting. I just can’t justify buying more art, and will likely stay that way until I move to a bigger place.

So for the first time in 10 years, I didn’t buy a ticket, but went as the guest of a friend who I introduced to 100 Prints a few years back. What a different perspective! Usually, when I go, I know that I’m coming home with one of those prints on the walls, so I rank everything into five categories (A through E, or “love it” to “birdcage lining”) on the first walk-around, then rank the ones within my A list. If everything on my A list is chosen before my number is drawn, I start ranking my B list. I’ve rarely had to move past my A list, and only once past my B list: there’s no accounting for taste, since the person whose number is drawn first inevitably picks something on my E list.

Walking around without a ticket in hand, my perspective was more along the lines of “what would I pay $300 for at an art show”? Although all of the works are worth at least that much, it’s more a matter of what would I choose to pick to hang on my walls if I didn’t have to pick something. I saw one fabulous piece that my friend ranked on his E list (I already knew that he and I do not share our taste in art), and three or four others that I really liked. My first choice went early, but the one that would have been my second choice didn’t go until very near the end, so I likely would have had it if I had bought a ticket.
Oh well, I don’t have the room on my walls anyway.

I love to barbeque, and since I live in an apartment without a terrace, I have to make do with commandeering the barbeque duties at friends’ houses or on picnics. Monday I was sailing on a friend’s boat, and she asked me to bring the main course for a picnic afterwards; knowing that are were barbeques available at the sailing club, my mind started working overtime. Tuscan-flavoured Cornish hen, spatchcocked and marinated in olive oil, lemon and rosemary? Scallops and lemon chunks on skewers, sprinkled with thyme? I decided on cedar-planked salmon, a favourite of mine ever since I tasted it in Vancouver about 20 years ago.

My cedar planks are definitely non-standard. Most people either buy them at the grocery store (where they cost 10 times what they’re worth), or take a chance that the cedar that they’re buying at Home Depot isn’t treated with anything toxic. Mine, however, are lovingly cut with a chain saw by my father from the dead cedars on their property, so are really whole slices through the trunk rather than proper planks. Their cedars are mostly red heart-wood, which makes for a very beautiful cedar slice that smells amazing, even before it’s put on the fire.

I bought a fillet of wild Atlantic salmon, about one pound in weight: enough for three in case we ended up with a last-minute addition at dinner, but not too much that we couldn’t eat it all ourselves, if pressed. It was an inch or more thick at the thickest point, and still had the skin on one side. Before I left for the sailing club, I sprinkled the non-skin side with salt and pepper, drizzled over a bit of sesame oil, then spread on a very thin coating of Dijon mustard. I packed it into the cooler with a bottle of Argento Pinot Grigio (a cheap-and-cheerful “picnic wine” from Argentina), and added the cedar slice which I had soaked in water for an hour then sealed in a bag with a bit of water to stay saturated before heading off.

Four hours later, after the sailing, I fired up the barbeque. Once the grill was hot, I put the plank on to toast on one side, then flipped it over as soon as it started to smoke and turned the heat off on that side of the grill (to avoid salmon flambé) but left the heat on the other side of the grill fairly high. I placed the salmon, skin side down, onto the plank, closed the lid and walked away for about 10 minutes, knowing that constant peeking just lets the heat out and significantly slows the cooking process. There is only one rule to cooking fish: don’t overcook it. If you think that it’s not quite done, take it off the heat and let it sit for a few minutes, it’ll be perfect. With the thickness of the salmon in this case, it took about 20 minutes to cook, and when I checked it, it was still quite underdone at the very centre. That’s fine, I like my salmon a bit on the sushi side, but by the time that it rested while we prepared the salads, it was almost completely cooked through — perfect!

There’s really nothing like the taste of cedar-planked salmon: the fish itself has a fairly bold taste, especially if you leave it slightly underdone, overlaid with a bit of smokiness from the charred plank and the distinctly pleasant taste of cedar. It’s incredibly moist because the cedar is saturated so releases steam during the cooking, yet dry to the touch on the outside because of the heat in the covered barbeque. The sesame oil enhanced the smokiness, and the Dijon balanced the rich oiliness of the fish.

We never had a third guest arrived, but the two of us managed to tuck away that pound of salmon without problem.

As I rapidly approach that magic mid-40’s mark, I think more and more about two things: when is my mid-life crisis going to end, and what am I going to do to keep in shape? I figure that I can’t do much about the mid-life crisis except to let it run its course, but I can do something about getting and staying fit. There’s a gym in my condo building but I just can’t bring myself to toil over a hot treadmill, and since I work most days at home, I don’t even have the 30-minute daily walk to and from the financial district to work any more.

Toronto is a pretty good city for cycling, although the drivers are a bit aggressive (I know, I’m one of them), so with a ton of bicycle commuters and couriers in the downtown core, I decided to get a bike. Many excuses and more than a year later, I finally bought one this week, and in doing so, found a great cycling shop: The Urbane Cyclist. (I’m not sure if someone didn’t know how to spell “urban” or if they really are trying to appeal to a more refined clientele, but I’m sold on them.) I started off with a five-star recommendation in NOW magazine, where Urbane Cyclist came out on top when the writer visited a number of shops looking for a city bike. When I walked in the shop on Saturday it was near-empty, but it quickly filled up with people looking for bikes and accessories, some of them obviously long-time customers who knew the staff by name. I told them my price range and what I was looking for (something to go riding in the city, no off-road, no racing), and a few minutes later I was riding around the local park to try out a particular model. Back to the shop, a few adjustments to the seat and handlebars, and out for another ride. Back to the shop, switch to a larger frame, out for another ride. Back to the shop, try out the original one again, which turned out to be the one that fit the best — I should have trusted their judgement in the first place! Three different salespeople looked after me, but they all seemed to know what was going on with the bike that I was trying out, so it was a pretty seamless customer experience, although a bit long because of all the other people in the store. I waited while they attached a kickstand and lock bracket, and traded out the quick-release seat and tire clips for Allen key bolts (to reduce the probability of someone stealing the parts), and rode home on my new bike.

I hadn’t checked their website before, but I looked them up when I got home. Why were the people so knowledgeable and helpful? Because they’re a workers co-op, and everyone’s a part owner. Why did they have just what I was looking for? Because their core clientele is bicycle commuters and couriers, who spend all their time riding in the city, just like me. And why were they able to do the necessary modifications while I waited, and throw in two free bike tune-ups to boot? Because they started as a bike repair shop for daily bike commuters, and still do a huge amount of repair work.

With a little bit of motivation, I’ll be joining the hordes of other bikers on Toronto’s streets and bike paths on a daily basis. In fact, I’m even selling my car.

I’ve been negotiating a contract with a customer for the last two months. That’s a bit of a problem because even though a piece of the work was due last week, I didn’t receive a signed contract until the day before the original due date, mostly due to delays by their legal department. Now, their accounting department has some as-yet-unexplained problem with the contract, and when they were informed that they are holding up a critical project, they replied “please note this only affects the payment not the services rendered”.

Does anyone else find this quote hilarious? I may not have an MBA, but I’ve been in business long enough to know that I don’t render any services on a contract without the promise of being paid. Meanwhile, I’ve spent two months (off and on) of unbillable time trying to get this contract signed for what is not, in the end, a huge amount of money. Needless to say, I didn’t discount my rate for them.

One of the things that I love about living in Toronto is the multiculturalism. Walk the streets, and you’ll see people of all colour, hear at least 150 different spoken languages (that’s how many the local 9-1-1 emergency service offers), and, best of all, experience restaurants from every country in the world. We’re blessed with very little cross-cultural violence, and lots of cross-cultural social mixing: my circle of friends includes people from Croatia, France, Australia, Serbia, Trinidad, Jamaica, England, the U.S. and Northern Ireland. I even mixed the Croatians and Serbians once, with nary a cross word spoken between them: it must be something in the water here.

One of Toronto’s biggest cross-cultural events is Caribana, which has its roots in the Trinidad and Tobago pre-Lent carnival: Trinidad, having a cultural mix of African and East Indian descendents itself, is the perfect inspiration for our cross-cultural party. This two-week-long party culminates in a huge parade along Toronto’s Lakeshore Blvd. on the Saturday of the August long weekend (the weekend that includes the first Monday in August), and during the two weeks of the festival, the city is awash with visitors attending Caribana parties, playing in soca and calypso bands, working on parade floats and — at an extravagant event two days before the parade — choosing the parade king and queen. The streets downtown, where I live, are exuberantly noisy with people until late at night, getting into the Caribana spirit; although I could live without the thumping bass from someone’s car parked outside my window at 2a.m., I appreciate that it’s a non-violent outlet for the heightened energy level in the city at this time of year.

This past Saturday’s parade was classic Caribana: a million (!) people peacefully gathered along the parade route to watch, listen and dance to the hours-long pageant of fabulous floats, exotically-attired dancers and mas’ (masquerade) bands. There’s fierce competition between the bands with their music, but the best part is the dancers and their costumes, and how they turn the parade into an audience-participation event by inspiring us all to dance at least a little as they gyrate past. In a previous year, I remember watching one beautiful woman in a costume that included a lot of feathers and not a lot of fabric as she danced up to one of the policemen along the parade route. The cop tried to look blasé as the dancer turned her back to him and — grinning devilishly at the audience — shimmied right up rub full-length against him, dancing all the while, but he finally broke a smile and shuffled to the music, to the applause of those standing around. That moment: blazing sun, the breeze off the lake, calypso music, visual overload from the decorative floats and dancers, crowds pressing in on all sides, and that tiny black woman making that big white cop break his facade and be human for our amusement — that moment will always represent Caribana for me.