August 9, 2019
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The Food of Vietnam by Luke Nguyen

Luke Nguyen is an Australian restaurateur and celebrity chef, whose family left Vietnam in the late 70s as so-called boat people. The Food of Vietnam is a big, splashy, beautiful book which combines a personal travelog with many appetizing recipes.

We had this book at home prior to our trip to Vietnam. I recently read it through, and now that we’ve traveled to a number of the places featured in the book, and enjoyed some of the special foods from those areas, this book has additional meaning for me.

Compelling food porn featuring one of the world’s great cuisines.

August 8, 2019
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The Hole

The City has been replacing the water main on our entire street. This is a big job, one that takes months. They actually started prior to the Long Branch Garden Tour in June. Fortunately, there was a break in the action and the work didn’t have a great effect on the garden tour.

At this point the new lines are in and disinfected and now they’re going property to property, hooking up the new service. For us this meant the crew digging a big hole in our front yard.

While I’m not thrilled with the noisy work and the excavation, I recognize a new water main on our street is a good thing. Fortunately, the hole was just north of our biggest front garden. The grass is much easier to replace than a garden which we’ve been nurturing for several years, that’s for sure.

As I type this, the hook-up has been achieved and they’ve just filled in the hole. At some point once they hook-up the rest of the street they’ll come back and deal with damage to the lawn and so on.

They crew is also replacing a fire hydrant located in the strip of garden between our place and the folks next door on the north. Right now, both the old and new hydrants are in place. The new one is actually in a better location than the old one. The old one was very tight to my neighbour’s driveway and the new one is a foot or so back toward the centre of the garden strip. A small portion of that garden was disrupted, but we moved the key plants to another spot for now and we’ll deal with bringing that garden back to life once the work is gone.

August 7, 2019
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Starsky’s parking lot incident….

I do a lot of the shopping for our household, and I shop for groceries at a number of places, including 3 different grocery stores with an ethnic focus. They are Grants, which is an Asian market, Starsky’s with Polish (etc) focus, and Adonis, with a Middle Eastern focus. They’re all great places to shop.

For some time, I’ve reduced my use of those lightweight plastic grocery bags in favour of bigger, heavier-duty bags you can reuse many times. I have bought them from various different stores and so they have the branding of those stores on them. For my part, I don’t pay much attention to that. Eventually those reusable bags become disgusting and I replace them when I need to. A bag is a bag.

One day last week, I pulled into Starsky’s because I wanted to get some kielbasa for the bbq and a few other things. I normally have a bunch of bags in the back of the car, so I grabbed one and started walking to the store. This particular bag was a bright new one, with Adonis branding.

I didn’t get 10 steps before some guy shouts at me, “that’s the wrong bag to be using here”. I said, “huh?” and looked at my bag. I realized the guy had some issue with me using an Adonis bag at Starsky’s. I started to laugh, but he didn’t think it was funny. “You should always shop here. Starsky’s is the best.” So I said, “I shop at lots of different stores. They’re all pretty good in their own way”. And he said, “No. You shop Starsky. It’s the best.”

The guy was disgusted with me both because I would shop at a grocery store with a different ethnic focus and because I would bring an Adonis bag into Starsky’s. I said, “have a good day, my friend”. He walked away, shaking his head.

Go figure.

August 6, 2019
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Yeah, yeah, I’m still here….

I haven’t posted much over the past week or so. I guess my ever-so-small brain is temporarily empty and needs to be refilled. Meanwhile, here are Emily Spencer and her late husband Thornton performing Rake and Ramblin’ boy. It’s a helluva song. I hope you enjoy it.

July 31, 2019
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BBQ Corn Chowder

I love this summer soup, and since Ontario corn has been making appearances in local groceries, I thought I’d whip some up today. I make it a little different each time and I don’t follow a recipe, but I can tell you how I went about it today.

I fired up our charcoal bbq and brought it up to a pretty high temperature. For those of you who like to grill with gas instead of charcoal I suppose that would do in a pinch, but what you’re looking for here is the kind of yummy smokiness you get with charcoal. I grilled up 5 ears of corn until they attained plenty of browny bits all around. I’ve heard that some people find it necessary to soak their corn in water for a while before they grill it, but that’s a total mystery to me. Go forth without fear and plop those ears right on the grill. Nothing bad will happen, I promise. I happened to have picked a couple zucchini from the garden so I sliced one up and grilled it too, because why not?

Next step happens back inside the house. Chop up an onion, the zucchini, a couple cloves of garlic and a big handful of sage from the garden. Chop up a piece of pancetta (optional but recommended) and toss it in the pot and start rendering it on medium heat. Add the other ingredients you just chopped up and let good things happen. Add some salt, but be careful if your pancetta is salty. Meanwhile, cut the kernals off the cobs and when that’s done, toss in the corn. After a while add some water and let the whole business simmer for a while. I added some smoked paprika and some freshly ground pepper and a little cayenne.

I removed half the soup and using an immersion blender, pureed it throroughly, then add it back into the rest of the soup. I checked and adjusted seasonings and let it simmer a while longer. You could finish it with cream but we never have cream around here. Instead, I tossed in a dollop of butter and once that melted in, I added a cup of milk.

When you’re ready to serve, chop in some parsley (yep, growing in the garden).

There are loads of possible variations and they’re all really delicious. Do it the way you like it. The smoky bbq corn and zucchini are the heart and soul of this yummy summer soup. Enjoy.