Immaculate Reception

We finally had our first out-of-province visitors this past week, just in time for the holidays. Last Monday, we picked up these two at the Vancouver International Airport (YVR, for those of you who want to check ticket prices). 


One other, unrelated, thing—my brother-in-law B.J. wanted me to mention him in this blog, but I'm not going to. 

Here's a better picture of our guests, my sister Trisha and her Friend Alex O'Meara, visiting all the way from wonderful little Bisbee, Arizona.

On this day, we were on our way downtown, to have lunch and then visit the Vancouver Art Gallery. 

So, we hopped on the SkyTrain at Nanaimo Station just up the block from our place. Tuesday was a beautiful sunny day, for the most part.

Trisha took this picture in the Granville Subway Station. Douglas is a border town near Bisbee. In spite of the sign, however, we clearly weren't in Douglas.

We had lunch at Shizen Ya, a great little organic Japanese restaurant near the art museum. 

I had the vegetable miso yaki udon, Patty had the teriyaki tofu steak with salad, brown rice, and spinach gomaae, and Trish and Alex had sushi, miso, and gyoza.


Also, Alex performed an exorcism before we ate. 

After our late lunch, we took Sid and Nancy to a great little exhibit at the VAG [sic] called Shore, Forest, and Beyond, art from the private holdings of  Michael Audain and Yoshiko Karasawa who have, over the last two decades, amassed an incredible collection of work by First Nations and non-First Nations British Columbia artists, with a few notable Mexican artists thrown in for good measure.

Trish and Alex got to use our two free guest museum passes as they were our first out-of-town visitors. 

And naturally, we had a night cap at our favorite brew pub, the Steam Works in Gas Town. Alex and I had the Coal Porter, Trisha had the Nirvana Nut Brown Ale, and Patty had the seasonal Hefeweizen. Oh, and we shared some tasty garlic fries.

To be continued...

Ambling Along

We've recently been discovering the numerous seawall and beach walks in the area. The most recent of these was Ambleside Park, where we discovered this well-shat-upon totem.

According to the city of West Vancouver, the Ambleside area was originally used for summer camping by Vancouver residents. It slowly evolved into cottage country and eventually permanent settlers inhabited the region. 


Actually, prior to the European invasion, the area was the home and fishing grounds of the Homulchesan (Xwemelch'stn) tribe of the Squamish Nation, some of whom still reside in the adjacent Capilano Indian Reserve No. 5. Funny how white people make up their own history as it suits them and their manifest destiny, eh?

This welcome totem was erected by the Squamish Nation in 2004. 

I think what the Squamish people welcome is not so much the dog walkers (but maybe the dogs) but rather the revenue they get from the land leases for the park, the port, and the Lions Gate bridge that connects Vancouver to West Vancouver.

The totem replaced this sculpture called 'Enclosed Line', created as part of the Wood Sculptures of Americas symposium, held at Klee Wyck in 1977. It was demolished after the wood was deemed unsafe and the piece was deemed un-art. [italics added]

Today, Ambleside is basically a dog park, and a pleasant enough place to amble and enjoy the sun.

I'm a sucker for shooting driftwood (call it photography 101).

A photograph of Ambleside Beach in 1918, after the settlers kicked out the original residents of the Squamish Nation, with swimmers and cabins along the waterfront.

As egregious as the displacement of the indigenous peoples was in the creation of Ambleside Park, the area was previously used a log booming grounds and staging point. So, you choose.

Pesky Pesto

This summer, at one of the September farmers' markets, I bought a $12 bag of basil. Doesn't sound like much. It was a gallon-sized bag stuffed with leaves, no stems (sounds like a good dope score). Anyway, I quickly discovered that I was in possession of a hell of a lot of basil, and a conundrum: What does one do with this much herb? There's only one answer, really. Make pesto.


So I bought fifteen bucks worth of pine nuts (that's about a quarter cup), and commenced to making several fragrant batches of green ooze. Since I was intending to freeze the stuff, I left out the garlic and the Parmigiano-Reggiano (thus postponing a run on my retirement savings). I netted well over a quart of pesto, and that's sans garlic and cheese, which are to be added in when thawed out to use. My point of all this is, what does one do with all that pestiferous pesto? A little bit goes a long way on the space-time continuum. 


Here it is, already December, and I've managed to use an eighth of the stuff. For this excursion, I'm making a little pesto pizza pie.


Note: Before you begin this recipe, put your bread stone on the lowest rack in the oven. Allow 20 minutes to pre-heat oven to 500 degrees.

I started out with a quarter batch of artisanal bread dough from the fridge—about a grapefruit-size hunk (tumors, and apparently also bread dough, are measured in fruit). Roll it out on the counter and transfer it to a cornmeal-covered pizza peel. Bye the bye, I have since purchased a new innovative peel that my friend Laura turned me on to. It's called the Super Peel and it makes putting bread, and especially pizza, on an oven stone a snap. I highly recommend it.

For those who must know (Judy) the beer in the background is St-Ambroise Oatmeal Stout from McAuslan Brewery in Montreal. It's amazing. If you ever get to Quebec, give it a try, especially delish when infused with nitrogen.

Choose your ingredients. These should be prepped before the dough is rolled out as the dough shouldn't sit long before putting it in the oven. On this outing, I chose kalamata olives, baby bella mushrooms, onion, and fontina and mozzarella cheeses.

Top the olives and onions with cheese. Top the cheese with mushrooms. Gently slide the pizza onto the stone. This can be a trick as the crust beneath the ingredients is quite thin. Bake for eight minutes.

Eat, maybe topped with a few dabs of Sriracha, or "rooster sauce", from Huy Fong foods in Los Angeles.

http://www.huyfong.com/no_frames/sriracha.htm