Bernard Fanning Writes A Hymn (And A Good One, At That) 1:33 p.m.

Just good.

Sunday Afternoon Salmon Tartare 5:53 p.m.

One of the blessings of leaving near the Atwater Market is that you can choose to have a salmon tartare on Sunday afternoon for no reason in particular. This recipe is borrowed, probably mostly in spirit, from Bar & Boeuf. Bar & Boeuf is a wonderful restaurant in downtown Montreal across the street from my office, where my roommate also happens to work. Because my roommate works there (and is such a wonderful person) I was able to spend a shift in the kitchen, mostly observing but also deveining fois gras poorly. Watching orders of tartare being prepared reminded me that I loved these raw bits. I also realized that I had yet to make one at home. Anyway, this is a very basic salmon tartare that's lovely with a glass of Sauvignon blanc on a Sunday afternoon.

From Cooking & Food (Montréal)

Ingredients are as follows:

• sushi-grade salmon
• dash of olive oil
• minced shallots
• chives
• finely chopped dill
• coarsely ground sea salt
• fresh ground pepper
  
• lime zest
• fresh lime juice

Rinse your salmon in cold water and pat try. Cut the salmon with a sharp knife into small cubes. There is a specific way to cut sushi, I'm not entirely sure if it does in the case of tartare. Well, I'm sure it does to some people but it doesn't really to me.

Add a dash of olive oil and coat the salmon until it's got a bit of a sheen. Add everything except the lime juice and mix gently together. Refrigerate for about an hour.

From Cooking & Food (Montréal)

Now that that's done, slice baguette into to fairly thin pieces, drizzle with a bit of olive oil and bake in an oven at 425 for a couple of minutes, or until they're slightly brown.

Assemble and enjoy!

From Cooking & Food (Montréal)

You Know You Work Too Much When... 1:32 p.m.

You propose to your partner a surprise date night tradition whereby each of you, every month, plans a surprise date for the other. You add that each surprise date should be evaluated using a set of criteria mutually agreed upon in advance and that all evaluations should be compiled so that the health of the relationship can be charted over time. Um, yeah. Vacation, anyone?

From April Holiday (France)

Found Poem 8:20 p.m.

So it's a found poem sort of, I found it in an old notebook from a decade ago...

C'est la grande ville
et c'est
la belle et éclatante maternelle
Ma copine mélange
de la peinture
dans son verre de jus
et elle me promet, me promet
du noir
C'est la grande ville

Smoking: Epic Love & Hatred 6:46 p.m.

It's expensive, useless, smelly, deadly. And we do it anyway. I do it anyway. Not regularly, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that I do it sometimes and shouldn't at all.

Is it because I did it when I was young? It's like a first love: the best parts manage to pierce the thick weight of memory loss. And the bad parts? Well, what bad parts? Oh yeah, the ones yet to come.

How is it that in the midst of all this Progress that companies are still allowed to sell a product that kills people? Not maybe kills people, but definitely kills people. And a lot of them, at that. Money, power, a lot reasons I guess. But none of them good. None of them good enough.

My Cousin Karen's Most Excellent Ceasar Salad Dressing 7:52 p.m.

Step 1 - Take a clove of garlic, smash it, cover it with olive oil and put it in a small container. Then take this concoction and put it into the freezer for 1 hour. (This step is supposed to make the dressing thicker.)

Step 2 - In a blender mix together:

• 0.5 tsp. ground pepper
• 0.5 tsp. dry mustard
• 2 tsp. worchestershire
• 1 can anchovies
• 1 coddled egg
• 2 tbsp. grated parmesean
• 3-4 tbsp. lemon juice (approx 1/2 a lemon)
• 3/4 cup olive oil frozen garlic clove (from Step 1)

And that's all, folks! It's very good, particularly if you enjoy anchovies (which I never thought I would, but at 25, very much do).

Best Quote Ever 7:18 p.m.

I mentioned to Joe (we're being more conscious about our meat consumption these days) that he could get organic sausage or bacon for tonight's perogie dinner if went to Atwater Market, which is about a kilometer further than the IGA. His response was: It's too cold to be moral.

Fair enough. At minus 26 with the wind chill, I'm tempted to agree.

You're Smart, You Know That? 5:33 p.m.

It's happened to me, more than once, to have someone turn to me, look rather honest and say, "you're really smart, you know that?" Not in some many words. More awkwardly, or quickly or something. But more or less that. It happened to me today.

Does it happen to everybody? Not because I'm interseted in knowing whether I'm smarter than other people (I am, but I'm also stupider than a GRRREAT many others), but because I'm interested in the kind of people who make these confessions, accusations of intelligence. Is it about complicity? "We're smart, but not everbody is. We've got something in common."

I think it's about complicity. I think it's the secret handshake of my intelligence bracket (it's a spectrum, I know, but the purpose of conversation...): not smart enough to exist exclusively in subtlety (booze doesn't help), but smart enough to know when they've got company. Bonjour.

Cookies, Of The Online Persuasion 3:19 p.m.

I had to answer a couple of questions about cookies for a continuing studies certificate I'm taking in Web Intelligence. The whole exercise was so interesting that I thought I'd share.

Are you willing to give up your "privacy" in order to have easier-to-use websites?

The author’s use of quotation marks implies that even he/she is unsure as to whether veritable privacy, or “privacy” as it is commonly understood, is at stake. The question presumes that first-party cookies (the tool employed to make websites easier to use) require you to give up some kind of privacy.

Wikipedia (although not always the most reliable, by far my favourite website) describes privacy as the “ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively”.

Do cookies threaten a user’s ability to selectively reveal themselves? I think third-party cookies do, but I believe that “giving up privacy in order to have easier-to-use websites” is a question about first-party cookies, since third-party cookies are most often used by advertisers to track visitor behaviour across a broad portfolio of websites and not to improve a particular website’s ease-of-use.

To explore a different angle of the debate, I don’t necessarily think first-party cookies require us to give up privacy. I should mention that I understand first-party cookies to be tied to a single domain. It occurred to me that multinational conglomerates might use cookies to track user behaviour across multiple sites and brands; I would consider those to be third-party cookies. Although I don’t think the distinction will be valid for long.

The issue of health care related web interactions is an interesting one. If I visit a disease-specific information site and provide my email address in order to receive news alerts, I am privately and consciously transacting with the operator of the website for the purpose of receiving communications. If my email address, associated with that disease-specific site, is eventually the basis for an insurance provider to deny me coverage, I think it’s fair to say that my privacy has been violated and that I (sure as hell) didn’t sign up for that.

Similarly, in the case of cookies, if I visit a site and my settings are such that a cookie is downloaded to my machine, I am choosing to reveal a discrete amount of information to the website operator. Data is being created about a private interaction, between me and the operator’s site. But I don’t agree to be eventually denied insurance coverage because the site’s cookie history was sold to an insurance company.

Just like walking down the street, I’ve never thought that interacting with a website was an entirely anonymous activity. The web is a community of users, gathered behind websites, and interactions with users, people create information. If you want to wear a paper bag, you’re welcome to change your privacy settings, but people are still going to see you walking down the street (i.e. analytics solutions will recognize your location, browser settings, length of visit, pages viewed).

I may be rambling. To wrap it up, I don’t think that we have to give up privacy to have easier-to-use websites. But I think that we need to have more clearly articulated privacy standards where the onus is on websites to comply and not on users to review lengthy and complex privacy policy statements. But that’s a question for another day.

Are you willing to give up your "privacy" so that the ads you see on websites are likely to be more relevant to you?

Yes, but only because it’s useful for work: to see what kind of targeted campaigns people are running. I subscribe to the widespread marketing industry hypocrisy that loathes being on the receiving end of a sales pitch, however relevant.

My Secret Confession 8:58 p.m.

I can't cook rice.

Baked Fish Fillets, Love Aunt Betsy Anne 7:01 p.m.

1 pound fish fillets
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon paprika
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon all purpose flour
Dash salt and pepper
1/2 cup milk
1 cup bread crumbs
1 tablespoon snipped parsley
Oven 350 degrees

Cut fillets into serving pieces. Place in greased shallow baking dish. Sprinkle with lemon juice, paprika, salt and pepper. In saucepan melt butter; blend in flour, salt and pepper. Add milk; cook and stir until thick and bubbly. Pour sauce over fillets. Sprinkle with crumbs. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Trim with parsley. Makes 3 or 4 servings.

I’ve used lots of different kinds of fillets with this recipe and all seem great – although our favourite is orange roughy which unfortunately is hard to find here in Jasper. You can also add more spices if you want and it’s quite easy to double the recipe. Double if you want lots of sauce.

Enjoy!

Love Aunt Betsy Anne

Meet Our New Pet Rats (No, Really) 6:16 p.m.

We adopted a couple of young male rats at the Montreal SPCA today. Named them Eegrek and Doublevé, my original spelling of the French letters Y and W. We're just getting used to each other at the moment, but they're terribly cute and have great taste in food, just like their parents. They had barbecued chicken, avocado, blueberries and cheese for dinner tonight. But we're planning for a more grain and fruit-based diet as a rule.

Meet Eegrek, as Joe notices that there is a wee pit of poo on his back (probably acquired during the metro ride in the cardboard box) that needs to be cleaned up.

Meet Doublevé, who's feeling a little bit shy.

The Club Sandwich Made Well 10:09 a.m.

There are many things I appreciate about North American greasy spoons. The club sandwich isn't one of them. You know how there are some dishes that even the sketchiest of restaurants would be hard pressed to screw up? You guessed it, the club sandwich isn't among them. You can screw up a club sandwhich alright - and how. I was reminded of this when I ordered the "flagship" turkey club at a greasy spoon somewhere in Orillia on my birthday. Limp iceberg lettuce, mayo in little packets on the side. I dare not recall the horror in further detail. As for the matter of my being in a greasy spoon in Orillia on my birthday, that's a story for another time.

Clubs are the boyfriend's favourite sandwiches, so I made a couple for us last night. Follow these rules and you'll be just fine.

1. Don't use cold cuts. Like EVER. Use yesterday's leftover chicken or turkey, or cook a breast especially for the occasion.
   
   
2. Layer, you haven't got a choice. I hate sandwiches that fall apart and that's what you're bound to end up with unless you work with three pieces of bread. When building a club sandwich, you're an engineer. Test the viability of your structures on a sample sandwich before applying your blueprint to the whole batch.
   
   
3. Speaking of working with bread, skip the standard loaves and splurge for something gourmet. I tried a lovely olive loaf yesterday and it was worth the slightly outrageous price.
   
   
4. Spreads! Each piece of bread should be spread generously with something. A lovely Dijon, or something spicier if you prefer. If you're die-hard for mayo, you could opt for Dijonnaise. Marmalades and jellies can be interesting as well, just remember not to complicate the taste of your sandwich too much. You've already got tons of ingredients coming together in your masterpiece and need to be wary of a clusterfuck (pardon my French).
   
   
5. Make sure your vegetables are fresh - a rule that applies to all recipes. Limp lettuce is the worst. My preference is romaine, tomato (thinly sliced) and avocado. Simple but classic.
   
   
6. To toast or not to toast, that is the question. In my opinion, it's really up to you. Depends on the bread, depends what you like.

We had ours last night (untoasted) with curry cream of asparagus soup and tabouleh. As per usual, there was too much food.

Envy 6:21 p.m.

Eats me like a thick steak
Masticating at a masterful pace
Grinding, licking, tearing
At every raw and salty bit
Of flesh on the plate.

New Thyme 10:34 p.m.

 

My Mother's Chicken Amman 6:23 p.m.

I have had this recipe scrawled with a dying pen on a crumpled piece of paper stained with red wine for far too long. This was one of the dishes my mother would make when we had company coming over, before my father became a vegetarian, as I recall.

• 600 ml plain yogurt
• 1 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp cardamom
• 2 1/4 tsp ginger
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 3 cloves garlic
• 6 chicken legs

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Press the garlic into the yogurt and let it sit in the fridge for an hour or two, if you've got time. Remove from the skin from the chicken, place thighs snugly in a lightly greased pan. Mix the spices and flour together then blend into the yogurt. Pour spiced yogurt on to chicken and bake for just under an hour.

Enjoy!

Bud Light Lime: You Can Run But You Can't Hide 9:58 a.m.

It's everywhere. Like absolutely everywhere. I can't even conceive of the scope of the marketing plan. Saw this driving home from the train station the other day. Joey is determined not to try it; I think I'll cave eventually. Love Stephen Colbert on the product: "It's like drinking Bud Light downwind from an artificial flavor factory."

Friends + Chipmunk + Peanuts + Video Camera = 10:34 a.m.

Touch Yourself, Thank Me Later 11:28 a.m.

I'm obsessed with medical blogs. This is mostly because I've started fantasizing about becoming a doctor, unlikely as that may sound to those who know me. I know, I know. I don't get it either. Relax, they don't let people like me into med school.

Anyway, while reading my favourite medical blog, Vitum Medicinus, I stumbled across a new one, coincidentally (or ironically? I give up) named Incidental findings. So I poked around a little and ended up reading a post called Why I didn't do oncology.

It was a very interesting post (I had no idea there were such dirtbag oncologists out there), but the bit that really got me was about the 46-year-old woman with two young daughters and a really bad kind of breast cancer. The kind that doesn't respond to treatment. The kind that metastasizes to parts of your body you didn't even know you had while the people who love you are helpless to do anything except wear pink ribbons and cry a lot. Which got me thinking about the last time I conducted a breast self-exam.

I realized that I couldn't remember the last time I had given myself a breast exam.

The Canadian Cancer Society states plainly that 1 in 9 women is expected to develop breast cancer during her lifetime and that 1 in 28 women will die of it. Bloody hell.

So this is me, telling you (and me), that we need to conduct monthly breast self-exams. STARTING NOW. Like tonight. Go home and touch yourself, thank me later.

Aw, A Heart-Shaped Potato! Or, How I Still Don't Get Irony 11:02 a.m.

So we were barbecuing the other day and my boyfriend Joe came across a heart-shaped potato. Then he surprised me with it. Then I took pictures because I thought it was so damn cute. Then I got excited about framing the picture. Then I realized that his t-shirt had a big swear word on it. Then I sighed because ALL of his t-shirts have swear words on them. Then I thought that the swear word might make the photo ironic instead of cheesy. Then I realized that I still don't get irony.