Bowie Gets Stitches

Unbeknownst to us, Bowie gashed his lip open on something. You would think something like that would bleed heavily, but it didn't even leak. We'd know, his whole front half is pretty much white.  You'd also think he'd show signs of discomfort, but he was his usual Bowie self. It wasn't until I was giving him some rubs and hugs that I noticed his lips didn't match.

I started calling as soon as the vet's office opened. If they have call display, I'm a potential stalker. I got a 12:30 appointment. We arrived early. Bowie got weighed. He still a chunky lad. We saw the tech, we saw the vet, we were presented with a startling estimate and I signed on the dotted line.

I recommended sedating him immediately, knowing Bowie would unleash his inner bloodhound the second I left. They said they don't do that. Only when an O.R. became available would they sedate him. I admired their ethics. I also need to avoid any job that lets me dispense sedatives.

Also to never again feed the dog cookies from the jar on the counter in the exam room while waiting to see the vet. Don't do it. If your dog needs surgery, which ideally occurs on an empty stomach, you won't have to then fess up to the three cookies you swiped.

The vet tech took Bowie away and I made my way back to the reception counter to follow up. I saw the young guy whose conversation with the vet assistant I had been listening to through the other side of the exam room door. He knew very little about dogs and I didn't like the sound of what he did know, but his pup was friendly, healthy, and he cared enough to take the pup to the vet.  A man came in with an English mastiff therapy dog. It was the biggest dog I have ever seen. He was huge! The young guy asked how much the mastiff weighed. His owner said about 200 lbs. I said he looked like a really nice pony.

I watched the clock all afternoon waiting for the vet to call. When she did call late afternoon, it was blissful news all around. Bowie was repaired, his stitches would dissolve, he was a "cheap drunk" who didn't need general anesthetic (or take after his mother), and his bill was just under half of what was quoted. A choir of angels sang. Not really, but it felt that way.  The vet tech would call when he was walking and ready to come home.

My phone rang on the drive home so I continued on to the vet's office. A little brown terrier mix that looked just like Benji met me at the front door. I said to the dog, "Hey, you look just like Benji." His owner said his name was, in fact, Benji.

The tech brought me a very stoned Bowie. He gently swayed back and forth as I paid his bill and received instruction from the vet.

As high-as-a kite Major Tom and I headed for the door, a lady on the young side of senior came in carrying a white miniature poodle. "Look at his eyes!" She said of Bowie, in a heavy French accent. "He's David Bowie!"

I told her that his name was, in fact, Bowie. That we named him Bowie because of his different coloured eyes.

She laughed and gestured to her little white dog. "I have another poodle at home, a black one. Her name is Oprah."

Regardless of gender, we're calling our next dog Sport.

Everything Bread Recipe (or just plain bread)

 

Last weekend I made "everything bread", which was just white bread coated in everything bagel spice (I love that stuff). It was really good, but more importantly, it reminded me that I have a damned fine white bread recipe. It's fast (in yeast bread terms), it's delicious (verified by others), and it freezes well (only leave out what you'll eat in a couple days).

An unfortunate bit of math made me realize I've been baking bread with this recipe for 20 years. It makes four loaves, because if am going through the trouble to make one loaf, I might as well make four. To that end, anyone has an industrial Hobart mixer and a need for 30 loaves at once, I can give you that recipe, from which this one came.

Bread recipe

4 cups water (hot tub temperature)
1 1/2 tbsp salt
2 1/4 tbsp sugar
2 1/4 tbsp quick rise yeast 
1/2 cup vegetable oil
Flour (at least 10-12 cups, I've never measured it)

Everything spice

2 tbsp poppy seeds
2 tbsp sesame seeds
2 tbsp dehydrated onion
2 tbsp dehydrated garlic (if you can't find it use a tbsp granulated garlic)
1 tbsp course salt

In a very large bowl (preferably larger than this one, one day I will buy myself a proper bread bowl), add the water, salt, sugar, yeast and oil.

Then start stirring in flour by the cupful.

 

 

When the mixture becomes so stiff you can't stir in more flour, and your hand and arm are tired, dump it out on a well-floured counter top. If you are like my grandmother, scrape every last bit of dough and flour out of the bowl onto what's on the counter, wash and grease the bowl. If you're like me, get the worst of it out of the bowl and give the inside a good coat of flour.

 

 

Sprinkle flour all over the top of the shaggy mess and start kneading.  It will be really sticky to start with, so coat your hands with flour and lift the dough and sprinkle flour underneath it every few kneads until it finally absorbs enough to stop sticking to everything and you get a nice smooth ball.

 

 

Both hands and arms should be tired at this point (professional bread bakers have forearms to make Popeye proud). Put the dough back in the floured/greased bowl and place it in a warm spot. I have a bread proofing setting on my oven. If yours doesn't, set your oven to 100F, which is all pressing the bread proofing button does. Leave it there for about 40 minutes.

 

When you come back, the dough will be twice as big. If it isn't leave it for another 10 minutes.

 

Flour your counter and dump the dough on it.

 

Divide the dough into four relatively same-sized pieces and knead each one into a loaf. The dough will make satisfying squeaky noises as the large air bubbles pop. Make sure you squish them all out or your bread will have holes in it.

 

 

If you're going the everything spice route, pour a bunch of the mixture on a pan or plate. I used parchment paper so I could pour the leftover spice mix back in the jar. Use another piece of parchment paper to line one big baking sheet or two small ones. If you don't have parchment, grease the pan(s) with butter.

  

Wet your hands and rub them over the top of a loaf to make it sticky and roll it in the spice mix. This works a lot better in theory than in practice, but do the best you can with it. An alternative would be to use a shaker, but I don't have one. Coat the rest of the loaves, or half and half, or just one. It's your bread.

 
Put the finished loaves on the baking sheet(s) and put them in the same warm place you used the last time. Leave them for half an hour or so. 

 

The loaves double in size. If your using the oven to proof them, take them out. Turn the oven to 350F and when it comes to temperature, bake the loaves for 30-35 minutes. When done, transfer to a cooling rack.

 

Eat, share and/or freeze. 

Meatball Soup

 
When I make this soup, which fairly often in winter, we still call it hamburger soup. The recipe originated from hamburger soup, but over the years has become its own soup. I didn't like the ground beef, so it was swapped for Italian sausage. I love marinara sauce, so the seasonings changed and the tomato soup became spaghetti sauce. Everyone needs to eat their vegetables, so the number and quantity of vegetables tripled.

The optional noodles are a nod to the tomato macaroni soup I grew up with and are great for stretching a few more bowls out of a pot, just don't get carried away or you'll end up with a casserole.

This soup freezes extremely well. We eat it a couple times and the rest is portioned into zip-lock bags and poked away in the freezer for lunches and easy suppers.

To ratchet up the comfort-food factor, serve with grilled cheese sandwiches.

Meatball Soup

1.5 tbsp oil

4 cloves garlic

1 large onion

1 large green pepper

3 medium carrots, peeled

3 stalks celery

4 small zucchinis

1 6 oz package mushrooms

1 lb Italian sausage

4 cups stock*

1 28 oz can diced tomatoes

1 26 oz can or jar of spaghetti sauce

1.5 tsp dried oregano

1.5 tbsp Clubhouse Italian seasoning (alternate: 1 tsp of salt and 1/2 tbsp dried Italian herbs)

1 tsp pepper

3 bay leaves

3 tbsp white sugar

1 cup dry pasta (optional)
 Parmesan for serving (optional)

Mince garlic and chop remaining vegetables into a one inch dice.**

In a large soup pot, add the oil and saute all the chopped vegetables except for the mushrooms and zucchinis over medium heat. When the vegetables start to soften, pinch one inch meatballs from the sausage casing into the pot. Saute until the meatballs firm up and are no longer pink. Add the mushrooms and zucchinis. Cook for five more minutes.

Add the remaining ingredients, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for about an hour, stirring occasionally. If adding pasta, do so at the 45 minute mark. Taste, season as needed, and serve with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese (a sprinkle of Italian breadcrumbs also works).

*I use reconstituted powdered stock, beef, chicken or vegetable, whichever one I have on hand. If you're a vegetarian, use vegetable stock and the end result of whatever tofu endures to become vegetarian Italian sausage.

**When cutting the carrots and celery into one inch chunks, cut them at a 45 degree angle, they look nicer cut this way. Eat the odd shaped ends. Trim the ends of the zucchini and cut in half lengthwise and then cut each half again lengthwise. Line up and spears and cut in one inch chunks at a 90 degree angle (zucchini doesn't hold a bias cut well with long cooking, so straight cut). Quarter the mushrooms unless they are small, then half them, if very small, leave whole. If you're in a hurry, substitute the veg with a few bags of frozen Italian veg. I haven't tried it, but I can't see why it wouldn't work.

Of bread and grandmothers

"What Christmas gift did you always want and never get?" Asked the radio D.J. when I was driving to work one day last week. Alone in my car, I blurted out "Easy Bake Oven". Then I laughed, because the reason why I never got an Easy Bake Oven is the same reason I don't have one now. I was allowed to use the real oven.

Growing up on a rural Nova Scotia farm in the pre-wireless age (it's barely wired now), make your own fun was an essential component of childhood. Having grandparents living 14 feet away was an essential component in that.

My sister Jan and I had a stool when we started baking with Granny; we weren't tall enough to reach the counter without it. We started out with easy gear, like cookies and squares, before migrating to bread. Bread, by comparison, is labour intensive, especially when you have a grandmother intent on teaching it old school and you're four and a half feet tall. Granny was only a few inches taller full grown. Game on!

We started with a cup of very warm water, yeast and sugar in a small bowl, covered with a plate. After that, in a big bowl, really hot water to melt the lard, salt and sugar, with a bit of vinegar thrown in to make the bread keep longer. Once the lard was melted into a shiny slick across the top, we'd add flour until we had an easy to stir slurry. Then it was time to beat in the yeast, which had magically expanded to touch the top of the plate.

Then it was adding flour, flour, and more flour, 'til you couldn't mix it with a spoon any more, at which point, we'd dump it on the counter for kneading. I worked as a baker for a little while. I find kneading bread soothing. This is why.  The rhythmic smooshing of dough, pulling up the side to throw fresh flour underneath to be rolled in. Sprinkling flour into the bowl and rubbing the dough stuck to the sides so you can work in every last bit. Waste not, want not.

On to kneading till the dough squeaked. The dough had to squeak, because that meant that the yeast was working and we were crushing air bubbles. Air bubbles are critical to bread success. At the time, had I known the word "sadist" I would have used it for my grandmother. It takes a lot of kneading to make the bread squeak. I certainly don't work the dough for that long now, but I don't have to. The yeast is is better.

But my grandmother had to. Growing up, if I ruined a batch of bread we had Ben's sliced white waiting in the wings, we just didn't get the treat of homemade bread, served hot, with butter and brown sugar. In my depression-era grandmother's day, no homemade bread meant no bread, so you worked it till it you receive squeaks of confirmation. Perhaps even willed it so.

P.S. I have used quick-rise yeast ever since my stint as a baker in '96. I love it. There's no proofing (the small bowl and plate), with quick rise yeast and as with any restaurant employee, you follow the recipe. I didn't know until I was reading recipes today that folks are skipping their first rise with quick-rise yeast. I swear I felt my grandmother cringe inside me when I read about it. Granny had a standard, and that was to get as close to store bought as possible, from canned peas to white bread.  Unless you let your dough rise at least once (Granny's was twice, but that's too long), before you form loaves, you'll never work out all the big air bubbles and when it's sliced, there's holes in it. The dough needs to be refined with kneading so the bubbles are tiny throughout.  Now grocery stores sell Artisanal bread and a point of authenticity is that it's irregular. Like homemade. How rude.

Tips for political petitioners on Change.org

The following petition appeared in my newsfeed this morning. Well, a copied and pasted version of it, which links to the petition here.

Now calling for politicians to be charged with treason is nothing new. For as long as there have been politicians, and before them, monarchies, there have been people calling their actions treasonous. We just use virtual pitchforks and torches now. Harper had his treason petitioners too (they appear to have a better grasp on grammar and spelling, but some crazy leaks out between the lines), which brings us to the point of this post: 

What you need to know about online petitions

1. Online petitions are meaningless in terms of petitioning the House of Commons

For real. This is how you petition the House of Commons. Pertinent details include a paper application with handwritten, verifiable signatures. Five minutes on Change.org doesn't cut it. You need to knock on doors, plead your case, get the support in writing. Wear comfortable shoes. 

2. Online petitions can serve as a rallying cry for change, which may lead to actual change

Also for real. Online petitions that obtain widespread support can be used to apply pressure on a government or an organization to take an action, like halting the forced relocation of 40,000 people. That petition carries over two million signatures. Cecil the Lion has over a million. Oh sure, the dentist was never charged, but good luck to game hunters who want to fly their trophies home on an U.S. Airline now. 

3. For actual change, support is critical

You don't even need a factual argument. Look at Vani Hari, otherwise known as The Food Babe. Hari is an expert at generating publicity through the use of online petitions: Subway changed their bread. Starbucks changed their lattes. Budweiser changed their beer labels. And all with zero scientific evidence that changes were required. The Food Babe just takes big words, makes them sound scary, and relies on the scientific illiteracy of her followers to take her to the finish line. Any doubts, read this:

Air is 78 per cent nitrogen, 21 per cent oxygen, plus carbon dioxide, argon and other trace gases. Filling an airplane cabin with 100 per cent oxygen takes already a flying bomb and turn it into an even more volatile flying bomb. But prior to Hari deleting this post (no take backs on the internet, Hari), she had lots of supporters agreeing with her in the comments.

4. Support requires a clear, understandable, and actionable message

Hari gets this. Oh sure, while she may possess the scientific intellect of an under-performing third grader, she has mastered the art of provoking an emotional response through skillful writing. 

You? You have not. Grammatically, look at the mess you made. It's like a red tide of proofreaders marks. Did you write this on your phone? Always use a word processing program. It won't catch everything, but it'll do a better job than you did.

Your "reason for the treason" is not treason. Not that you tried in any way to explain how stating that terrorists should get to keep their citizenship is treason, but your dots do not connect. Public criticism of a law is not treason. It is freedom of expression. It is a Charter right. 

Your call to action is also incorrectly addressed, in terms of being actionable. The Supreme Court of Canada is the highest appellate court in Canada. They here appeals. They do not lay charges. The RCMP do lay charges, but the guy whose attention you really want to get is David Johnston, the Governor General of Canada. As the queen's representative, he, constitutionally, stands the best chance of deposing a prime minister.

5. Unless you want to be ridiculed, which Hari routinely is, spend a few minutes playing devil's advocate to your argument

For example, what could possibly go wrong with renouncing the citizenship of a terrorist? (As opposed to locking them for life as the Liberals said they would do in the same leaked recording.) To save you time, here's a recent historical example. In 1992, rather than incarceration, the Saudi government renounced Osama Bin Laden's citizenship and banished him from the country. This did not end well for anyone. It is reasonable to say something similar could happen as a result of Bill C-24. It is also reasonable, not treasonous, to say so.

Grammar is really important

 

Nerd confession: I enjoy reading court decisions. I really like how judges write and the stories are interesting.

On the weekend I read the decision that struck down the Cyber-safety Act. It came with a cautionary tale about the importance of choosing your words carefully when writing rules. Especially rules, but it's good practice to do it all the time. In the decision, the lawmakers’ use of the word “may” in one clause resulted in the Act being deemed procedurally unfair. The clause was also a Charter violation, but that involved significantly more elements than grammar. This blog post is about grammar.*

The clause said:

5 (1) An application for a protection order may be made to a justice, without notice to the respondent, in the form and manner prescribed by the regulations, by

(a)    the subject… (the subject's parents, police, etc.)

The judge took issue with the no-notice part, because it violated the right of the accused to be heard—the Charter violation. The attorney general argued that the clause was written that way for situations where the accused was unknown and immediate action was required. In situations where the accused was known, the Act presented only it as a possibility, not as a procedure that had to be followed.

The lawyer for the defense argued that the clause had to be read as though the application must be made without notice to the respondent. If the “may be made” portion of the clause gave applicants discretion to choose whether to notify the applicant, it followed that it also gave the applicant discretion to choose whether to make the application to a Justice of the Peace and whether to follow the application process set out in the regulations. I.e. apply however you see fit. In terms of procedural rules, this is anarchy. The judge agreed with the defense.

Grammar is really important.

*Except for this part. Laws are really important. The Cyber-safety Act didn't get scrapped because it was was ill conceived. It got scrapped because it was badly executed. So write it again. Do a better job. The hard work is already done. There's the existing Act. There's Justice McDougall's 62-page decision, which is essentially an explanation everything wrong with the Act and why, and there's two years of operational data from the CyberSCAN investigative unit. 

Compared to the nothing the lawmakers of 2013 had to work with, today's lawmakers have a road map, rich in analyses and data, already laid out for them. They just have to follow it.

Of internet quotes and a bad driver

On my way back to the office today, I was stopped at a light behind a older, customized VW hatchback. There was a decal in the rear window that read:

 

"If one day the speed kills me, do not cry because I was smiling."

Paul Walker 1973 - 2013

 

I would have forgotten about it, but for the light changing and the driver treating the descent from Victoria Road to Windmill like a closed course, which is to say a lane-changing tailgating menace on a half kilometre of city street.

 

The driver made me mad. The Paul Walker quote made me mad, because obviously the driver thought enough of it to glue it to his window. So I looked up the quote. It made me madder.

 

The quote is unattributed and appears only after Walker's death. There is no evidence he ever said it. Whether to make themselves feel better about his passing or to sell bumper stickers and window decals, someone made it up and it was accepted as fact (and we all know that never happens on the internet).

 

It's also not true. The disturbingly easy to locate online coroner's report states that Walker was in a defensive position immediately before impact. He was trying to protect himself. I have a hunch if you asked Walker if he wanted his actions to end his and his friend's life that day, he would have said no.

 

To the author of this quote, you put false words in the mouth of a dead man. That's beyond low. There's no takebacks on the internet, so don't do that again. Ever. You should already feel like tapeworm inside a tapeworm for falsifying the quote in the first place.

 

To the driver, using a fake quote to glorify a preventable accident does not make you a badass nor does it mean you're living the dream. It means you need to broaden your  horizons and try new non-car things. You may live longer. Better still, so may others.