Author Archives: admin

MAKING RISOTTO WITH KIDS

Posted: Aug 24, 2015

No, I don’t mean risotto with a side of kids but working with kids to prepare Risotto!

For those of you who have been following along this is an extension of my last post “1990’s: DJANGO STARTS TO GET IT TOGETHER”, where I was working for a family during the summer of 1993 in the Netherlands and enjoyed teaching their kids to cook. So if your not into cooking or are a good cook already and won’t learn much from this than go do something else. The rest of you – follow me.

Most kids, especially by the time they are teenagers, are quite astute and if they are interested in a topic will grasp ideas and instructions very well. I have never had any kids and not spent a lot of time with them other than that summer in 1993 but I was really impressed. Intelligent ideas, inquisitive perspective, a steely sense of right and wrong – we should all be more like teenagers!

I know that Janice and Jim had a lot of fun doing the cooking school they had, and one course that Jim and his chef designed was “College Survival”. The idea was to cover in the space of five evening classes, a quick course in equipment, hygiene, and cooking techniques. Their experience with Risotto and young people was much like what mine had been. We have compared notes and some of my future entries here will shamelessly borrow on their experience with their cooking school as well. Time for a little plug – check out the link to the cooking school in the LINKS WE LOVE section.

The amount of time I have spent in North America in the last couple of decades has been limited but I think that pizza, mac and cheese, and burgers are still the staples of teenage diets there. European kids like pizza as well but really enjoy a variety of pasta dishes and sauces and risotto is a pretty popular one with them.

One of the things I love about this dish is that you can mix it up so much. We all think of using Arborio, but there are other kinds of rice that are fat, starchy and medium grain that will also get you that creamy texture: try Carnaroli, Roma, Vialone, Violone Nano and Maratelli.

What works so well with kids is that you can also put one “sous chef” on the rice and stock mixture while another is working on the prep of the toppings or ingredients.

But it all starts with the stock. At the end of this piece I have included some detail on preparing a good stock. I have worked in big kitchen operations on cruise ships that resemble food factories and in small little kitchens on private yachts with limited counter space and even less fridge space and after doing this for a few decades a few rules keep floating to the surface.

This is probably a good place to introduce DJANGOS KITCHEN RULE #1 – IF A COMPONENT FOR A COURSE IS AVAILABLE THAT IS VIRTUALLY AS GOOD AS YOUR OWN, BUY IT AND SPEND YOUR TIME AND ENERGY ON SOMETHING THAT WILL MAKE THE DISH SPECIAL.

Ok so that may not be the epiphany of the century but too often we spend our time trying to see if we can make a component of a dish ourselves that takes a lot of time and energy to not really be appreciated by the guest. You need to find the sweet spot in each recipe that combines the efficiency of buying something prepared vs. the taste and quality of the result. The cost factor of course comes into this little equation as well. Most people who make phyllo pastry or puff pastry the first time will quickly realize that unless they are doing it all the time or for a large group – just buy it frozen at the grocery store and focus on what you are doing with it.

So if you are living in a place with great grocery or specialty stores available and have limited space go buy your vegetable, chicken or beef stock. If it’s not readily available or you have the time and interest go to the bottom of this piece and work away on producing a good stock. Personally, I do both. When I have the time I will produce a great stock and it will be the basis for a great risotto, and other times I will have some that I made at an earlier point in the freezer to pull out but sometimes it just doesn’t work out to make it and I will buy the stock. One of the benefits of buying the stock is that you can now focus your attention and limited time on more interesting components to add to the risotto or sit on top. On the rare occasion I have lived on land and had a conventional kitchen, I have found freezing your homemade stock a great way to go, but most of the time my freezer space on a boat has been pretty precious.

Whichever way you go you will have to choose one of those three types of stock and the choice will come down to matching the stock with the protein or vegetable that will be the feature of the risotto: we will make a butternut squash risotto with a vegetable stock, a seafood risotto with a fish stock, a beef risotto with a veal stock and a duck risotto with a chicken stock, for example. Otherwise, the flavours just become jumbled. Of course, vegetarians are going to use a vegetable stock for everything.

So once we have our stock, here is what we are going to do to prepare the Risotto.

The grocery list is below the ingredients.

Before getting going on anything, turn the kids on to kitchen hygiene. Get them to wash up before handling food, and every time they have handled raw meat or fish, and get the utensils or plates that have touched those raw products into a designated area or sink or dishwasher for clean up later. They won’t know if you don’t teach them and getting them into good habits first thing is the way to go.

I like to set up two large stock pots. One will be for our finished Risotto and one is for the stock.

get started by peeling and chopping fairly fine the onion, garlic, and the celery
Put your stock into the first stock pot and put on a low- medium heat. We are really just preheating or warming this stock, not trying to boil it. The only purpose this stock pot is for is heating the vegetable, beef or fish stock so if any of my explanation is not clear – everything else is being added to the other pot
Preheat the second large stock pot (or if don’t have two you could use a saute pan or fry pan) to medium-low heat
add the two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil to this second pot and about 15 ml of the butter
add the finely chopped shallots or onion, the celery and garlic and sauté in the second pot, for ten or fifteen minutes. It’s better to do them at a lower temperature but have some control of the exercise, especially when working with kids or teenagers.
get the rice into the second pot and saute for two to four minutes. Make sure you stir the rice at this point
this is where I would typically add a glass (cup) or two of white wine, and once it’s largely absorbed or evaporated off you can move to the next step.
So from this point, you have a wonderful task available for your sous-chef (child or teenager). Have them ladle (about a half cup size ladle) one scoop of stock into the rice mixture and stir to help the stock be absorbed by the rice. When it is largely absorbed into the rice give it another ladle full and continue with this process until all the stock has been added. This process is going to take about twenty or thirty minutes or more.
Meanwhile, during this process of adding the stock to the rice mixture, you or your other sous chef can work on the other components that will either be added to the dish or sit on top. (see comments below)
when the stock is all added and absorbed the rice should be al dente, just chewy to the bite, you can also decide if you would like to add another half cup of dry white wine (sauvignon blanc for example). It’s not usually done if you added it earlier but if you did not put in earlier it does add to the flavor and sweetness to put some in at this point. If you are poor the way I have been for most of my life I would not put it in earlier as much of it evaporates and putting in half a cup at this point gives a nice flavour.
at this point its time to add our unsalted butter and Reggiano Parmigiano cheese and any of our mixtures we are mixing in. (See comments below)
then plate up with your toppings and serve in heated bowls.

Common additions to put into the risotto are: grape tomatoes cut in half, asparagus cut at two cm (three-quarters of an inch) lengths, mushrooms sliced or ripped and sauteed, chicken or pork cut into bite size pieces and grilled.

Common toppings are: Sauteed portobello mushroom slices, grilled jumbo shrimp or prawns, sautéed or grilled scallops, boiled or steamed lobster tails, boneless skinless chicken breasts or duck grilled and sliced on top.

Sometimes when we would go shopping together Isa and Tess would really get into it and be looking for different flavours and textures and when their older siblings would go shopping for us the envelope would really get pushed (anchovies and capers, sundried tomatoes and spicy meatballs, grilled squid with strips of grilled fennel) but it was a great way to include the older ones who had little interest in cooking but extensive interest in eating. I was successful at getting Luna to plant a potted herb garden on the back deck of the boat with Italian parsley, basil, thyme and rosemary and one or more of these would regularly find their way into the food we would make. Lars ended up quite pleased with himself when we made pesto near the end of the season with the fruits of our basil plant that was looking more like a small tree!

A Note on Salt: traditional risotto recipes will have salt added through this process and will use salted butter. Today the appetite for salt is considerably reduced from the past and as there is already salt in the cheese most of the time I will wait until the end to see if we are going to add any salt to the dish. It’s easy to put it in later and impossible to take it out!

If you are going to add pepper you would usually use a white pepper.

GROCERY LIST (for risotto as a main course for six)

1 liter organic stock, such as chicken, fish, vegetable – or make your own – see below
1 large onion
2 cloves of garlic
Five or six shoots of celery (about half a stock)
100 g Parmesan cheese (3.5 oz) – when grated it turns into about half a cup
2 tablespoons olive oil
unsalted butter
400 g risotto rice (14 oz)
dry white wine or vermouth (optional)

THE CHEATS

As we go forward with more recipes you will learn that I love to share “cheats” or tips that largely come from commercial applications of food prep or just from my experience working in small spaces with future meals in mind.

Some of these relate to logistics and planning. In a commercial context, a chef or a cook is always thinking of the second or third day of the components of a meal. A roast chicken or turkey the first day becomes chicken sandwiches or chicken soup the second day and also becomes the basis for our chicken stock. So whenever you are having a chicken, turkey or fish build in the leftovers and time to prepare your stock.

Another great cheat with making risotto is to have more ingredients on hand and to do some arancini balls that you can freeze for a future meal. At a future post, I will go through a recipe for Arancini balls.

MAKING BEEF, VEGETABLE AND FISH STOCK

The core of a good soup, sauce or risotto is a good stock, whether beef, vegetable or fish.

Always rinse chicken and fish bones in cold water to wash off blood and reduce impurities in your stock. It is important to use fresh bones.

A stock or broth is a semi-clear, thin liquid flavoured by soluble substances extracted from meat, poultry, fish and their bones, and from vegetables and seasonings.

Beef Bones-There are two different types of stocks for beef. A white stock can be made from beef or veal bones. Cooking the bones without browning them first will make a white stock. Browning the bones in the oven on the stove top before cooling them will make a brown stock.

Chicken and Fish – Remember to wash chicken or fish really well in cold water before beginning.

Mirepoix– Aromatic vegetables are the second most important ingredient in flavouring a stock. The basic flavouring for mirepoix is carrots, celery, and onions. Other ingredients that can be added to a mirepoix are vegetables such as mushrooms and tomatoes. Tomato products provide both flavour and acid to a stock. It can also provide some colour that might be undesirable in some stocks. When making a white veal stock, we would not add a tomato product.

You can adjust the combination of vegetables in a mirepoix to get a desired flavour or colour for your stock. For example, increase the amount of carrots and your stock will become darker. Increase the amount of onions and celery and the stock will be lighter.

Note: Your vegetable stock will take on the flavours of the vegetables used so choose the ratio of vegetables wisely so your vegetable stocks flavour will complement the dish.

The size of the vegetables is also an important factor when cooking a stock. A beef or veal stock need to be cooked for several hours and the longer it is cooked the darker the stock.

Chicken stock need only be cooked for one hour or so to extract all the marrow and nutrients from the bones. A fish stock can be made in 30-45 minutes.
Vegetable stock can be made in 15-30 minutes. It is important to note that vegetable stocks were not part of classical French cuisine. The increase in demand for vegetable stocks has arisen from the increase in vegetarians. Making a good and consistent vegetable stock comes from practice.

Scraps-meat scraps can be added to a stock to provide additional flavour provided the scrapes are low in fat, clean, wholesome and appropriate for the stock being made. For instance, you should only use beef or veal scrapes when making a beef or veal stock. When making a vegetable stock, caution should be used in the amounts of strongly flavoured vegetables such as asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussel sprouts. These vegetables each have a strong flavour and will overpower the stock if too much is used.

Starchy vegetables like potatoes, sweet potatoes, and winter squash will make a stock cloudy.

Seasoning and Spices-Salt is usually not added when making a stock, however, using a slight amount will help to extract marrow and flavouring from the bones. Herbs and spices should be used only slightly. You can either put the herbs and spices in the mix and then get them out with a fine strainer but if you like your stock to be a bit more dense and you are using a more course strainer you should put the collection of seasonings and spices in sachet or cheesecloth bag tied up so that it infuses the stock but can then be easily pulled out later. It is also a way that you can see how the flavor is evolving as you are preparing your stock and pull the little sachet or cheesecloth bag out part way through the process. Common herbs and spices used when making a stock are, black peppercorns, thyme, basil, parsley stems, bay leaves, cloves, garlic, apples, star anise, and cinnamon. The combination and amount of seasoning is based on the type and amount of stock being prepared.

RECIPES

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Brown bones (do not burn) in a roasting pan. When brown, add tomato paste to bones and mirepoix to roasting pan. Continue to roast for an additional 10 minutes. Add bones and browned mirepoix to large stock pot. Cover bones with cold water. Add all the other ingredients to the stock pot and bring to a boil. Deglaze the roasting pan with red wine and add to stockpot. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer for three to four hours. The longer you cook the stock, the darker it will become. Skim any foam (impurities) from the surface. Strain stock. This stock will keep for up to three or four days. If you have freezer space it is great to freeze some for future use.

Brown Stock-Beef Stock

5-6 kg (10-12 lbs) Beef or veal bones

10-12 L (10-12 qts) Cold Water

Mirepoix:

500 g ( 1 lb)Onion chopped

250 g ( 8 oz) Carrots chopped

250 g (8oz) Celery chopped

Sachet:

1 Bay leaf

¼ tsp or 1 ml Thyme

¼ tsp or 1 ml Black Peppercorns

6-8 Parsley Stems

Note: After the stock has been strained add cold water over the bones again and cook for an hour. This mixture is called a remoulage or remi. It is a weak brown stock but is excellent as a starter for your next brown stock.

White Stock-Chicken or Veal

5-6 kg (10-12 lbs) Beef or veal bones

10-12 L (10-12 qts) Cold Water

Mirepoix:

500 g ( 1 lb)Onion chopped

250 g ( 8 oz) Carrots chopped

250 g (8oz) Celery chopped

Sachet:

1 Bay leaf

¼ tsp or 1 ml Thyme

¼ tsp or 1 ml Black Peppercorns

6-8 Parsley Stems

Rinse chicken bones in cold water. Add all the ingredients to a stock pot and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer for one hour to one and a half hours. Skim any foam (impurities) from the surface. Strain stock. This stock can be kept in the fridge for 3-4 days or frozen.

Vegetable Stock

1 lb. or 500 g Onion chopped medium dice

8 oz. or 250 g Carrots chopped medium dice

8 oz or 250 g Celery chopped medium dice

1 Tomato roughly chopped in ¼’s

Sachet:

1 Bay leaf

¼ tsp or 1 ml Thyme

¼ tsp or 1 ml Black Peppercorns

6-8 Parsley Stems

Add all the ingredients to a stock pot and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer for 30 minutes to one hour. Strain stock. Keep in the fridge for 3- 4 days or freeze.

Note: For a mushroom risotto stock add mushroom stems to the stock for flavour.

THE 1990’S: DJANGO STARTS TO GET IT TOGETHER

Posted: March 24, 2015

Well, that title is a bit over the top, not totally accurate and a little pretentious to refer to me in the third person, but yes, by the back half of 1990’s things were going better for me.

They did not start out that way. A cruise line that will go un-named decided to make an example to the staff by firing me for a long series of complaints about my behavior. At that time the cruise lines were all trying to fight each other for creating “a whole environment” for the passengers and part of that was to upgrade the staff. Up until then, it had been that if you behaved yourself and you were off duty and were discrete about it you be in the pool or go to one of the bars. No more. The new ships had much nicer kitchens and cafeterias on the lower decks just for the staff and more places to hang out with other staff members but if you were not to be on a deck for a reason as an employee doing something for a passenger (increasingly being called a “guest”) than you were not to be on a guest deck.

So, it was in this environment that a young crew member had convinced me to go for a jog with her (something I would not characteristically do, so you can appreciate how nice she must have been) on the exercise deck. That was the excuse for getting rid of me. She got off with a warning, but I wasn’t even able to finish the cruise. Just me and my backpack on the dock in Amsterdam. It was November 1992.

I thought that I had done alright with my finances at the time but had no idea what life was like when you had to pay for a place to live and for groceries. Living on the ship and being provided food every day was just a way of life for me. While my pay had been acceptable, I would blow most of it when between cruises and when you are only off the ship for a few days you don’t really gear up for buying groceries, preferring to just eat at restaurants or take out. During the previous decade, I had saved a grand total of $3,250.00. I had no idea how bad an achievement this was but I quickly learned that a few thousand dollars will not take you far, especially in Amsterdam. Within weeks I had moved further north to the port of Harlingen in Friesland province on the coast of the Wadden Sea. While a nice enough historic town and place to summer today, it has a long history as a seaport and still counts fishing and shipping as major employers. As a cook, I was able to find various short-term gigs as the cook on working ships till the spring when I met Marc and Lotte.

Now as a little background, working as a cook in various jobs, particularly around large private yachts is a good gig if the yacht is large enough and if the season is long enough. The boating season in southern Europe, and North Africa or the Caribbean can work year round but getting up into France, Belgium and the Netherlands, the season ends with a thud in mid-September.

The positive part is that like other northern climates the summer gets jambed into about twelve weeks and often the pay can be very good, albeit for a short time. It also gets you out of those southern locations that are so nice in the winter but sweltering in the summer. So that spring I knew that I would need to take the best paying job I could find to start to build up a bit of a cushion for making my way back to the warmer weather when the fall would hit the Netherlands. The job was posted at the posting board near the port as a CHEF/COOK, but when I spoke to them it was very clear that it was a chef and babysitter role. But Marc and Lotte were nice, the boat was amazing and fifteen euros an hour for 10 hours a day for six days a week could really add up. The math was dampened a bit by having to live at a nearby campground and buy my food for one day or two days a week but otherwise, the money I would save would hold me over for several months down south when the season wrapped up. My life was very much feast and famine at the time. So I took the gig – Chef, and Babysitter!

To say babysitting four kids sounds pretty ominous but the reality is that two were almost 17, twins – a girl and a boy, Luna, and Lars, and the other two were 14 and 13, both girls – Isa and Tess. They were all pretty good kids and the twins I really didn’t have to do anything for other than feed. We were docked on a large canal in the old town, so there were lots of things to do but unless the younger ones were with me or with their parents or one of the twins they were not allowed to be off the boat. Isa and Tess were good kids but a boat, any size boat, is not big enough for teenagers to spend the whole summer and I spend a lot of time trying to find ways for them to be entertained. Their parents’ boat was a 22 meter (so about 72 foot) power yacht, only about four or five years old and was very well equipped. While a boat of that size sounds large, once you put a few full-size mammals in it there was not a lot of extra room. They were all large Dutch people. The twins were both taller than me and even Isa and Tess were over 1.75 meters (5′ 9″).

During the middle of the week, we were docked and it was the kids and Lotte and like clockwork, on Thursday night Marc would arrive for three or four day weekends. The weekends were when I would get some time off. I would prepare some things for them on the Friday or Saturday morning and they would head off for the day and evening and occasionally overnight, and rarely for two days and by Sunday or Monday morning, I would be back on board working on a big breakfast. It was a bit tiring as one of the girls would always be wanting something or me to take her somewhere in town and on my time off, living at a campsite was not ideal. Most people who are camping are off on holiday and cutting loose a bit. It’s not that they are doing anything wrong but for them, every day is a holiday and for me, I would have to be up pretty early to be out on my bicycle to get groceries, load up my panniers and get to the boat. I was also one of the few tents in the campground and the various caravans and trailers were all big looming structures around me.

After the first couple of weeks, however, we discovered that the twins liked the task of taking the car to go to the market to shop for me. After I showed them how to spend time at the market and how to choose produce, fish and meat they were pretty good but would often come to the boat with some off-list items to challenge me or with some pretty dreadful cuts that they thought were a bargain.

The younger girls both liked doing art and seemed to have an endless supply of art equipment and supplies and would work on that and sometimes would go into town with one of their older siblings to buy more supplies, books, and music.

The other big activity I got them onto was cooking. That was a sweet deal. I ended up with two “sous chefs” who seemed pretty keen. One of the things they loved to make for their parents and older sister and brother at the beginning of the summer was homemade pizza. I would make up the dough and they would do the rest. But part way through the summer I showed them how easy it is to make risotto. What is really good about risotto is that it is all happening in slow motion – so no issues of critical timing etc. It also lends itself to doing it several ways. The first couple of times we just did a fairly plain one but by the end of the summer I would just do the clean up while they would do the meal and it would have lots of variations.

I set out to include my recipe for MAKING RISOTTO WITH KIDS here but it was getting a bit long so it will appear as my next post.

ON ADDICTION

Posted: Dec 11, 2014

In my last Dispatch and Ramblings about life in the 1980’s, I talked about a course that I went to for friends, partners or relatives of people challenged by mental health issues and addiction.

It had an effect on me at the time but has come to have a greater effect on me over time. It is one thing to sit in a class and work through issues and problems in dealing with someone who is dealing with these challenges but a whole different level when I would go to the Monday night group sessions. The group sessions were run by a couple volunteers, one with an alcohol history and the other with a drug history. They were typical group sessions where no one is judgemental but you are in a supportive group talking about your day to day issues in helping someone who is addicted and your personal problems flowing from your relationship with that person.

When you are young and partying with people your age it is very different than hearing from the anguish of the mom of a young person knowing their kid is living under a bridge somewhere with a needle in their arm. Another one that bothered me was a young guy who would talk about how his high school life had been, going on his bicycle most nights to the local bars to find his mom and try to get her home.

So why am I going on about this? Well for two reasons.

First, if you are dealing with this kind of thing today there are a lot of programs to help those with mental health issues and addictions and lots of programs to help you if you are the one trying to help that person on your own. The internet, of course, will have an amazing array of material available but stick to credible medical sources. Your local library will have lots of books on the topic but a good starting point is Codependent No More by Melody Beattie, published by Hazelden.

The second reason is to tell you that one thing that helped me was to write about it. I wrote a bunch of letters to my buddy and several to myself to reinforce what you need to do, to cope.

And here is a poem that came out my memories of those sessions and my thoughts on all of this. One of the constants that seemed to come out with various people at the group, whether the person they were dealing with had issues with dope, or alcohol or gambling was denial.

I wrote it in 2012.

HONEST DENIAL

I am a drunk,

not an alcoholic.

I am sad,

not depressed.

I enjoy life,

but not all the time.

WHAT THIS SITE IS ABOUT

For most of my life, I have lived as a bit of a nomad, just roaming from one thing to another and not really settling down. A few years ago I ran into an old high school buddy. We were sitting in the waiting room to see a neurologist for what later that day we learned was the same condition. He had lived his life as a “straight arrow” – went to university, went to university some more, still more university (well you get the idea) then on to marriage, a successful career, and business, kids, houses, cottages – a nice life. While all this was going on, over those same four decades I was traveling around, enjoying myself but not really focusing on anything other than what I was doing that day. No kids, no commitments, no meaningful relationships, and absolutely no wealth or comfort. I was never “on the street” but that was always a possible PLAN B for me.

So, we both ended up in the same place – with a stress-based neurological condition. Mine comes from a history where others have set my priorities, a sense of never knowing what will happen to me and no job security. His stress comes from taking on lots of stuff and not knowing how to let go. A bit of a strange situation of polar opposites needing to be more like the other to survive.

In a fit of spontaneity (not his strong suit) my buddy Jim comes up with a plan to have me keep an online blog for him and his partner Janice which gives me something to focus on and maybe make a little money and a way for him to stay in touch with people without sliding into the dangerous world of social media! It is also a way for him to have me put down some things from his life that are important to him. More of this will be explained as we go.

That leads us to the organization of this website. What follows is a description of how it is designed to work and the key components.

Almost everything on the website begins as a post in DISPATCHES & RAMBLINGS. This is the core section of the site and is where I get to rant on about whatever I want. I called it that because some things I think are important to share and deserve to be written down – the Dispatches aspect as if I am on the front lines of something, while the Ramblings are, well my ramblings – less focused thoughts.

So everything starts out in the DISPATCHES AND RAMBLINGS section and then is reproduced in the other sections where appropriate. So a recipe will appear first as a D&R post but simultaneously show up in the category FOOD & RECIPES.

Most of the site content starts in relatively current time as I only started this site a few years ago but looks backward to cover some old ground (right back to the 1970’s) as a way to explain some things. In the DISPATCHES AND RAMBLINGS tab there is a drop down if you want to become a Django Bisous aficionado and go back to read posts from when we first started this website adventure.

A pretty robust category is called JANICE & JIM. Jim is my old buddy and his wife is Janice. She has always found me to be less than the best influence on Jim but recognizes he now needs to be a bit more like me. Jim likes to tell the story from that day at the neurologists’ office when he went in for his appointment first and the neurologist told him that he was too uptight and “needed to let his crazy out” and his response was to tell her “my crazy is in a chair in the waiting room”. We have always had a bit of a conflicted relationship.

This pair, Janice and Jim, for being straight uptight white folks are OK and recently, now that Janice doesn’t try to shoo me away as much, I have come to like and at times even admire them (well only a bit) for what they have done. So in this section, I tell their life story as well as a bit of a blog of what they are up to. Its a bit scattered because:
a. I write it, b. they don’t tell me everything, and c. some of their shit is boring.

It is really an alternative to them writing their own blog but they have to put up with my editorial. You can’t see me right now but you should picture me hunched over, wringing my hands and with a nasty glint in my eye!

Janice is a published poet and Jim and I really both like to write prose mainly but a bit of poetry as well. In PROSE & POETRY, I collect the posts that are based around pieces I have written, as well as some that Jim has written. I am not published (other than one recent poem in spring 2020) like Janice but my poetry and prose is a hobby I am increasingly pursuing. Jim writes too but not well and while he submits stuff to journals and contests is quite frankly just wasting his time and money. But its good therapy for him I think.

For most of my life I have worked in various roles in kitchens, well not kitchens really – more the food processing factories of cruise ships, the small galleys of ships or the tiny food prep areas of private yachts, barges, and other working ships and boats. The category FOOD & RECIPES collects the posts on food topics I love in this regard. Sometimes it is just me chattering away about a great meal I have had but more often it’s a bit of a ramble on my thoughts on cooking.

The PORTS & OTHER TRAVEL section is not a comprehensive or exhaustive detail of what to see and do in a particular place but a collection of posts I have done as a personal account of stuff I like in the places I know well. There are many places in the world I have not been and probably will not make it to, but there are some I really enjoy and like to share images and ideas from my time there.

Beyond the categorization of the various posts into these categories there are a few that stand on their own and did not originate in the Dispatches and Ramblings – This About section, Links We Love, The Chef Upstairs (which is still under construction), TorontoART and The Django Store.

The LINKS WE LOVE is where Janice, Jim and I all put in links to friends websites or other stuff we like and there you can see the links to their kids – Jade and Jason too. Janice is more social media savvy than Jim and she maintains her own social media accounts and those links are there as well.

THE DJANGO STORE. Well what can I say – we just launched this in July 2020 and if you plan on doing all your fashion shopping here you are in trouble, but if you want to “fly the flag” this is the place to get it.

I am working on two sections to add that are freestanding ones that are pretty beefy, so that’s why they haven’t made it here yet. The first one that we are actively working on is THE CHEF UPSTAIRS. Something of a preamble to The Chef Upstairs section I posted on July 7, 2020. The second is TorontoART, which tries to catch some of the spirit of a website Jim and Janice had built for the Toronto art community and when Jim wound it down about a year ago it had over six hundred members.

That is the end of my intro to my website. If you poke around the site long enough you will learn how I live, what I am about and much more than you ever wanted to know about my buddy Jim! As we go I will put the various posts into archive sections by year so if you just want to check out the current ones just go to Dispatches and Ramblings and they are posted in reverse chronological order but if you are really interested in going through a case of wine then you can go all the way back to the original posts from the archives and work your way through. Enjoy.

Django

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HAPPENED TO THE 1980’S

Posted: August 13, 2014

A decade is a long time and if you are young and hardworking and have any smarts at all you can really make things happen and get ahead. For me, that did not happen until the 1990’s.

For the 1980’s I worked the cruise ships – always in the kitchen. For the most part, they were the big cruise lines. The joy of working for the big operators is that it’s a bit like being in the military. They tell you what to do, they feed you, house you and give you a bit of money. Even on my time off, I didn’t really have a home base. I would share with other shipmates a furnished apartment where I had nothing but my backpack I had brought from the ship. One of my Kiwi shipmates had been working the cruise ships for about eight years and had a tattoo on her bum that summarized the whole program:

WORK, PARTY, SLEEP, REPEAT

I really did not understand what my life had become. Only if I had a toothache would I get my teeth looked at. If I had an illness I would see the ship doctor. Otherwise, my life could be summarized in that young woman’s tattoo and I literally and figuratively cruised along with a bad diet, way too much booze, and what I realize now, no real focus. I would visit my parents a couple times a year, well sometimes only once a year, and my grandmother in Brittany at least twice a year but sometimes more often.

The vibe on the cruise ship was also a bit over the top. Most of us had some level of addiction – drugs, alcohol, gaming, sex, food, risk-taking. If you have read Anthony Bourdain’s expose on the restaurant kitchen culture in Kitchen Confidential, you will have some sense of the manic, drugged up world of the kitchen staff in a lot of restaurants in those days. But the people in Bourdain’s book all got to go home at night, not still hang out with the same people they had been with all day. The bully you were living in fear of would be there at night and at that point with a few drinks in him. Women who were being sexually harassed during the day would be expected to be around these same weasels at night.

The only positive part to that was the rough justice that was liberally dished out for the worst of the jerks who would be bugging the girls. The walk-in freezers had a lock on them and while it would take a few lads to do it, throwing in the worst offender for a bit of time would usually reform not only him but others who were perfecting their bad behaviour as well. And of course, the stories were then repeated of various people who had lost toes and fingers to frostbite when left in the freezer a little too long. YIKES.

The addiction part was not solved as easily. Today most of the cruise lines recognize addiction and mental health issues and have programs and support. Today as well with so many well educated, talented young people looking for work the percentage of new hires who are pretty “damaged” already is lower I think. But in the late 1970’s and through the 1980’s – it was a crazy environment, and the line between addiction and not was whether you could get your shift finished.

Many cracked. After a news story was published about our cruise line in a major, respected magazine with an image of a number of staff members washing a deck while others were handing guests towels came out with the caption Happy Workers Going About Their Day, about a dozen of my co-workers had T-shirts made with Happy Addicts Going About Their Day on them. Two were fired, and the rest of the T-shirts were confiscated.

In 1988 I was sufficiently concerned about one friend that on a break between cruises I took a free course in Miami on “Helping an Addicted Loved one”. The whole idea was how to cope with a partner, child, parent, sibling or co-worker who has an addiction. It was an eye-opener. In the world I was in, drinking a bottle of wine, or ten or twelve beers a day was not considered over-indulging so you can imagine how out of control some of the drinkers were. And rarely was it booze or dope alone. The magic formula for most of my friends was some combination of the two. I went to the course to learn to help a friend but realized how deep I was in myself and for a couple of years whenever I would be in Miami on a Monday night would go to a group session run by volunteers for people who had taken the course and were still grappling with someone important to them who continued to live with addiction.

The friend whose problems had triggered me going to the course was eventually fired but was hired by a competing cruise line immediately. I had hoped that he might have gotten some help but he was right back into the same situation and was not coping well. That cruise line, like most of them at the time, was trying to manage this environment that was not healthy, to say the least, and would eventually need to be cleaned up or it would take them down. Earlier I referenced the employees at the cruise line I was at being fired for having T-Shirts that said Happy Addicts Going about their Day. That story of course was repeated like wildfire in the industry and the cruise line my friend went to, in trying to get ahead of the same problems on their ships tried to make light of it and every member of staff was issued a T-Shirt that said “Work Hard, Play Hard, Don’t Fall Off The Ship”. It had a mixed response. Most staff members saw it as a lame attempt to manage a virus with a band-aid. About a month later it was viewed as a failure when a thirty-year-old member of the laundry staff jumped to his death off the ship wearing that T-shirt. I was upset for his family but relieved to learn it was not my friend.

It may sound like I was becoming a normal person and managing my own intake and partying. Unfortunately, my experience from that course, the Monday night group sessions and losing a few friends over the years had only had the effect of slowing me down enough to be alive today. I was still barely straight enough to go to work each day.

I didn’t hear from or speak to Jim and Janice all through the 1980’s. What they were doing was much more “traditional”. During that time that was a derogatory term for me. “Comfortable” fit into that category as well. Janice built her fashion business, Jim rose through the ranks working for others, and they start to buy and renovate houses on the side. They had their first child, Jade, in 1985 and their second, Jason, in 1988. Then with everything going well, Jim left his job to set up his own company with two other guys. It took a while to really get going but during this time they built a cottage, did a few more house moves and renovations and by the end of the decade they are really doing well, and the business is on a good footing and Janice had wound down her business and is home taking care of the kids.

And at new years 1989 what was I doing? Well, I don’t remember but based on how the decade had gone it’s a reasonable guess that it would have been like a decade before – with a group of fine young creatures partying like the night before.

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE 1970’S

Posted: April 3, 2014

I am new to this website business and not familiar with the best way to relate some of the ideas and stories that Jim and Janice and I want to get down, so I am just going to jump in. If you have read the ABOUT section, you will know how this site came to be and why it covers the topics it does. If you haven’t read that you should probably do that, or you will be a bit lost and it might be helpful to read the first post as well.

Today I am going to look back to the 1970’s as a bit of a way for me to get warmed up and a way to introduce you to some of the characters you will be reading about here.

That ten-year span was a time of massive change for Jim and me. I started it in early high school and finished it as a full-time drifter. He started it in high school and ended up with a few degrees.

The first part was with Jim in high school. Neither of us was very good at the high school thing in Ottawa but enjoyed music, partying, fighting with parents, trying to figure out why the world was so screwed up. Jim had a pretty tight string on him for a while coming into high school after that summer incident.

In the summer of 69 before this decade began he was involved in – well caused – a nasty incident and it sort of scarred him and certainly did not help his relationship with his parents. In an earlier post I wrote about it so check out the piece here or in the PROSE & POETRY section called My First Post and you will find the piece “Summers End”.

He was an average to bad student and I was a worse one. It’s not that I wasn’t any good at it, but I was just always screwing up. So, there was always a bit of summer school involved for me and sometimes for him as well. We had a great group of friends and I don’t know if any of us appreciated just how good we had it then.

Now for anyone who has read the ABOUT section they will know that I am also to be reporting on Janice. I did not know Janice until Jim met her many years later, so I can only relate what I understand her life was like. She was a very good student, liked sewing and music and art and skiing both in the winter and water skiing as well. Her dad had been in the Canadian military, so they had moved around a lot until he left that and went into business and they settled down in Ottawa and had a cottage near Perth. Jim’s family had a cottage in that area as well. In the summers I would usually just go to summer school and hang out. Janice had a brother who was only a year older and a sister a few years younger – still does.

None of this sounds very memorable, does it? Well, where the plot thickens is when Jim and I and our friends finished high school in 1973. Jim had been the school track star and ran for a club in Ottawa as well. He did not make the team for the 1972 Olympics and realized he was never going to amount to anything. It put him kind of adrift for the next year as we finished grade 13. Yes, for those Americans, Europeans or millennials reading there was once a grade 13! It was a year for the female students to mature some more and for most of the male students start to mature and focus on getting their grades up. The universities were all gearing up for us – we were this mass of humanity all about the same age – the baby boom and colleges and universities were expanding like mad and if you had a pulse and a blood type you could get in and get some level of scholarship or financial aid. Even with that Jim, another buddy, and I decided that we would go to Europe with no particular idea of returning. With that said our other buddy was fully expecting to come back to go to university at the end of the summer but Jim and I were open-ended about our plans.

We had been touring around Europe, splitting up for a few days and then meeting up at rendezvous point and traveling together for a while and then splitting up again. It worked well, and we had some great times together – getting kicked out of Ibiza, arrested in Monaco, staying in hostels and making friends. It seemed everyone was traveling then, and we met people from everywhere.

But near the end of August Jim had another life-changing event. He had a job in Munich being the photographer for an Israeli doctor who was writing a book on the Holocaust. Touring around Dachau on a rainy day in August he learned some things that set his thinking on risk and life for good. How he relates it is that while the Holocaust itself was unique, the survivors share a common set of ideas with others who have been through such traumas. The Armenian slaughter by the Turks for example. Someone can take all your possessions, your titles and dignity, and even your family and your health but if you have your memories you keep yourself intact. Life is a collection of memories. Memories are depression proof, inflation proof, portable and your own. So, the trick is to have as many experiences as you can and put them in your memory bank. Don’t fear failure, fear not trying. Keep moving forward. It all adds to your memory bank.

I am probably not doing justice to this, and while some of this sounds self – evident it certainly was a life changer for him. Coming out of that experience he called his parents from Europe (quite a costly endeavor in 1973) told them to accept a spot at Carleton University if there was still space and to choose some courses if he did not make it back in time. They were a bit taken aback as the relationship with them was mixed and it did not sound like the son who left for Europe just months before.

At that point, my relationship with Jim took a big departure. While we both went to university, for me it was an extension of high school and never really stuck. By what would have been second-year university I was roaming around the U.S. and fell into a job working on a cruise ship in the kitchen. By the end of first year he was a top student always in the top ten of his classes. He had worked as a security guard all through first year working midnight shifts then going to school during the day. Driven. I mean really driven.

During this time Janice (who is a year younger than Jim and me) finished high school and after a false start at college ended up in Fashion Design College where she excelled. Jim and Janice met when she had about one more year of college to go and he had about one more year of his first degree to finish. A year later they were married in ’78.

Now at this point and through the back half of the 70’s I really did not know Jim at all. There was no internet, I was working the cruise ships and he and Janice were blasting away on their life together. He did a graduate program then more graduate work then went into a doctoral program. She finished her fashion design program and after working some jobs in that industry set up a clothing line in Toronto.

On new years eve of 1979 they were living in Toronto and were poor with a fledgling clothing line, Jim’s doctoral program had been discontinued and I was with a group of fine young creatures throwing up on the side of a ship.

MY FIRST POST!

Posted: Dec 14, 2013

Other than the content in ABOUT and what is on my home page this is my first real entry.

Over time I am going to add different parts to this website but that is all offshoots to this category really. This is the part where you get up close and personal with Django. YUMMY.

What you will find here are notes from my travels, personal rants, some of my writing and poetry, recipes I have developed or shamelessly stolen etc. As they start to appear here I will add categories to start to organize them.

So, sit in and enjoy. Because of not always being in port where I have internet the timing of my dispatches is lumpy – nothing for a while in periods I have been blown off course (figuratively and literally) and then several at once.

Why is it called Dispatches and Ramblings? Well the way I see it, DISPATCHES are important factual bits of info that are timely and important and need to make it to the recipient. There are a few of these sprinkled about my various posts. For the most part, the writing I do here are RAMBLINGS, both in the travel sense and in the disjointed literary sense.

The spark for this all starts with this idea that each of Jim and I need to be more like the other if we are going to control more of our deep stresses. He needs to lose control of things and let what happens…. well, happen. I need to put more discipline into my life, so I can let my mind not be constantly worrying about my precarious living situation. I don’t think either of us really thought about what we did in our subconscious as being a problem, but we both have evidence that it is and need to be more like the other – he is a controlling planner (he even studied Urban Planning) and I am an undisciplined party lad.

So, to get warmed up and to test how Jim is going to be with this I am going to do my first few posts on our lives when we were younger, so you can get a feel for Jim, myself and Jim’s wife Janice too.

I am going to do a series of pieces organized by decade and start in the 1970’s. But before doing that I am going to dive into a story I wrote about Jim and his mother surrounding an event that happened in the summer of 1969 which was instrumental in setting him up for some of his challenges in high school.

Writing it in the first person from Jim’s perspective may test his tolerance of this project but that’s what it’s for. So, if you see this website end next week you will know that “radio free Django” has been pulled from the airwaves. LOL.

SUMMERS END

“The Who will probably be there. And The Band too, I think – you know, Ronnie Hawkins’ backup band ” I said, knowing she and my dad had once seen Ronnie Hawkins.

“We’ve had this conversation before,” she said stepping out from behind the kitchen island in her shorts and tired pale green and yellow flowered cottage apron and wielding her wooden stir stick. “Your dad knows that there won’t be enough toilets at a makeshift music festival.”

As I stormed outside I was shouting “Arlo Guthrie, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin – they are all on the line up”.

What a way to end the summer and the prospect of going back to school. Going back to failing math, failing science and my all-time favorite – failing French, with a French heritage. The thought of going back to school was particularly upsetting because this could have been such a good weekend. I had been offered the last spot in my cousins’ car for a trip to a music festival in upper New York State. My parents had said I couldn’t go because David and his friends were five years older, might get into mischief, and there wouldn’t be enough toilets at a three-day music festival.

Toilets. It would have to be on my tombstone: HERE LIES THE BOY WHOSE LIFE WAS RUINED BY A SHORTAGE OF TOILETS!

Other than summer school, the summer had been pretty good. The two things I had enjoyed most were my summer job and just hanging out and swimming with other cottage kids when the weather was good – especially with The Americans in the bay.

My parents’ cottage sat on a point at the edge of a large bay and there were three properties in the bay. The furthest one was a cottage for a local family from the nearby town. The closest one was also a local farming family, the McGregor’s. They used to arrive at night for a swim after working at the farm and would come often on Sunday afternoons after church. They rarely stayed overnight and only one of the kids was my age. I never played with him, because the McGregor boy had accidentally shot another student and he pretty well kept to himself after that. It had happened at a ‘show and tell’ at school. He had taken in an old gun from one of the barns to show the class and when fooling around pressed the trigger. It was loaded and had nails in the barrel. It killed his classmate almost instantly. It was an accident but the kid and his whole family sort of wandered around like ghosts after that.

Next to the McGregor’s and in the middle of the bay were The Americans. Everyone just called them The Americans, instead of their names because there were so many of them. It had started as a fishing camp for five fishermen from Newcastle Pennsylvania, and after a number of years their families start coming up as well and it went from a fishing camp to a family cottage for the five families, with each of them getting two weeks during the summer.

I enjoyed the change of cottage friends every two weeks. Some only had older kids, but three of them had kids that were, if not my age, the right age to play together at the cottage. The experience of “cottage friends” being a range of ages I looked forward to each summer. Kids spanning several years will find common interests at a cottage. Sometimes the older kids, of driving age, would even take some my age or even the younger ones into one of the towns like Smiths Falls or Kingston to watch a movie on a rainy day.

The American kids were all so confident. It didn’t matter their age; they seemed to know more and had so strong a sense of everything that was American. None of them thought of Canada as anything but the wilderness and didn’t think of Canadians as very sophisticated and worse – cool. By grade eight I had a very good sense of foreign policy, particularly American and Canadian foreign policy. The war in Vietnam was ripping America apart and I was proud of Canada’s position of not being in the war and allowing draft dodgers to come to Canada. I knew the Americans had no legitimate reason to be in Vietnam, other than their passion for fighting communism wherever they found it.

One of the coolest older Americans was named Jeep, like the car. That was so cool, it wasn’t even a nickname. Right on his driver’s license – JEEP. That was so cool. He had been up earlier that summer and for some reason, he and his family were back for a second vacation. He had finished High School and his girlfriend came up as well. One rainy day they wanted to shop for some things and asked where to go, so they took me into Brockville, so I could show them how to get to the Canadian Tire. At Canadian Tire, I had brought the money I had saved up from my summer job.

My summer job had been great. I would catch frogs in a field for about an hour and sell them to the marina as bait for fishermen. I had been saving for a bow and arrow set.

I hoped they would have one in stock- the last time they didn’t. Sure enough, they were out of stock, but a much better one was on sale, but even with the sale, it was still more than I had. It was a PROFESSIONAL HUNTING SET and said so right on the package. The bow came up to my nose when the other tip was on the ground, and the arrows had GENUINE HUNTING TIPS.

Jeep had bought a lot of stuff and paid the extra money I needed for my bow and arrow set with the Canadian Tire Money he got back. Americans were so generous. It was really confusing – they were generous, but they were also so rude and in world politics, it seemed their country was the playground bully.

At one point on the trip back, an anti-war song came on the radio and Jeep started to cry. His girlfriend explained that his best friend had been drafted and they had just received the news that he had died in Vietnam. Jeep was a big guy but had cried several times over the two weeks at the cottage and his mom had as well, especially when they were leaving. Jeep wasn’t with them when his girlfriend and his parents packed up the Buick station wagon to go back to Pennsylvania. My parents explained that he was going to be studying abroad at the end of their vacation, so he wouldn’t be going back with them. I was pretty sure the stuff Jeep was bought at Canadian Tire was not for the cottage but for him and that he would stay in Canada and avoid the draft.

Jeeps family and one other were my favourites and the Americans staying at the cottage in this last two week stretch of the summer were not much fun. One of the girls was about sixteen and had brought up a friend and they pretty much stuck to themselves, sunbathing, and playing badminton. They were nice looking, sort of like California Girls on the Beach Boys albums but treated me like a kid.

I was a bit drained from fighting with my mom, and the day was hot and really still- eerie, like Alfred Hitchcock and a good time to practice with the bow and arrow. The cicadas were the only sound. It was hard to imagine that the summer would soon be over, school would start, and I would go back to failing French and Math and getting in trouble. It was never my goal to get into trouble at school and be disruptive, but it just seemed to happen sometimes. About once a week during the summer I would remember what my principal had said last year “a bit of a waste of a human, aren’t you”? He might have been right, but it really hurt to hear it said right out loud. This year I would have to try harder.

My parents had made some strict rules for using the bow and arrow especially because of the higher quality bow and hunting arrow tips I had ended up getting, so I had a careful ritual before using it. Sandy, my dog was inside the cottage, I had told my mom what I was doing, and was shooting at a target where I could see anyone coming into the area.

After shooting at the target for a while I was getting bored and the day was so still I started shooting up in the air, and watching it land on the grass beside the water, after a spectacular trip up and then back down.

Some time passed, and I wasn’t as angry about the music festival and went in for a Popsicle. My mom had a Popsicle maker that she would freeze juice or Kool-Aid on the sticks. I liked the cherry ones best. I had two and then a big round homemade donut my mom had just made and sprinkled with big pieces of sugar.

My mom made great donuts. I liked the big round ones and odd shaped ones the best. She was a good mom when she didn’t have to deal with me doing something wrong. I sensed she dreaded the upcoming school year as much as I did. As I ate the second donut I asked if I had not gotten into as much trouble during the school year would they have let me go to the music festival this weekend. My mom thought about it for a minute before reassuring me the bigger issue was the toilettes but that perhaps if I had acted more responsibly generally, yes, they might have considered it. On the weekend, my dad would be back from the city, but it would be too late to talk to them both about the festival and she had already talked to him about it on the phone the night before. He was in the city working.

I didn’t comment further but thanked my mom for letting me know and told her it was going to be a better year. I wasn’t sure if she heard me. The radio was on and she was listening to the description of a hippie cult that had just killed some people in Hollywood the weekend before.

It’s all that was on the radio and while there was no T.V. at our cottage I suspected it would be the main thing on the T.V. as well. She wasn’t even listening to me.

“Grateful Dead, Richie Havens, Santana” I blurted.

“No toilets, no toilets, no toilets” was her rapid-fire response as she stepped out from behind the counter with her apron covered in flour and looking tired and disappointed at my outburst.

There was no reasoning with her on this. I was a bad kid who would get into more trouble if allowed to do anything fun and despite my good intentions to not fight with her I just couldn’t leave it alone. “You were never young!” I screamed, taking another donut with me as I went back outside.

“Jimi Hendrix, Jimi Hendrix” I was muttering to myself through my clenched teeth and wet cheeks. I cranked back the bowline as far as I could and shot it straight up. This one was going to be really high. As the arrow left the bow, I felt a breeze off my left shoulder. It took a few seconds to register- a wind had come up while I was inside, and the arrow was going to be pushed by the wind toward the bay and go through the roof of our boathouse. Shit, was I going to be in trouble.

I stood there with the bow and my heart in my hand. I had been in trouble a lot this summer and done badly in school last year and didn’t need this. The arrow had amazing height and was still climbing and wobbling a bit as it was being pushed by the wind even further than the boathouse.

I dropped the bow.

“Shit, it’s going over the bay!” I said aloud.

I started to run and tried to hurdle the old farm type fence between my parents and the McGregor’s and fell. It was a bad cut and bleeding, but I was back up and running again but couldn’t run fast enough in sandals and was screaming “get away from the beach” to the people who were swimming and on the docks in the bay.

I was out of breath, crying and still screaming to get off the beach as I made it to the Americans dock. One of the girls was walking from the cottage to the dock and looked puzzled at my screaming and running, and bleeding leg from the fence. I was hoping I had made it in time when I saw the arrow.

I was too late. The arrow with the barbed hunting tip had pierced one of the American girls’ upper arms who was sunbathing on the dock, went right through and had pinned her to the dock. She was screaming, the bottom half of her body was flopping like a fish and there was blood everywhere. I knew right then my life would be changed forever.