The Canadian Dictionary

Having gone back and forth from the States the last few years has also brought me some insight into my home country of Canada. I’m constantly learning about differences in taxes, holidays, traditions, school systems and even ways of speaking.

To keep me in touch with Canada while I’m away, I listen to CBC Radio 3, the Canadian indie off-shoot of our public national radio station CBC. Sometimes they have a feature called “The Canadian Dictionary”, which highlights a uniquely Canadian word and provides the definition. I thought I’d present my own version of the Canadian Dictionary, featuring words that I sometimes say and Americans have no idea what I'm talking about.

In alphabetical order:

Boxing Day – December 26th (the day after Christmas Day); origin explained on Wikipedia

brown bread - whole wheat bread

caesar – a cocktail apparently originating in Calgary – made with vodka and Clamato (clam & tomato) juice with tabasco sauce served on ice with a stick of celery

cheezies - cheese puffs; a genericized trademark based on a brand of crunchy cheese snack sold only in Canada

cheque - a written order to a bank to pay the stated amount of money from one's account; a check (Am)

chesterfield - a couch or a sofa

fountain pop – drink machine commonly at fast food restaurants; mixes drink syrup and water to make pop

freezie - a frozen, flavoured sugar-water treat

ginch or gonch – slang for (male) underwear

gongshow - a slang word meaning "everything is chaos" or a way to describe a crazy event/experience

keener – someone that is really enthusiastic towards something, often a student, over-achiever

line up – a queue, a line

loonie – a one dollar coin

mickie - a pint/flask sized bottle of liquour

Ogopogo – a fabled sea serpent that lives in Okanagan Lake, like the Loch Ness monster

parkade - a parking garage or parking structure

pencil crayon - coloured pencils

poutine – a delicious dish originating in Quebec consisting of fries, cheese curds and gravy; often consumed late-night after the bar

runners - athletic sports shoes

serviette – a napkin

skookum - sturdy, heavy duty

stagette - a bachelorette party

suck - a weak, self-pitying person; a crybaby or a sore loser. Can be used as a term of endearment for pets or children

toonie – a two dollar coin

toque – a knit/wool winter hat, sometimes with a pom-pom on top

two-six - a 26 oz (750 mL) bottle of liquor

washroom – a public bathroom, also “I have to go to the washroom”

zed - the last letter of the alphabet, not zee (Am)

Also, a few strange pronunciations or phrases that throw off my fellow American friends:

grade 3 - as opposed to "3rd grade"

pasta - pronounced pahsta (Can) not posta (Am)

process - pronounced pro-cess (Can) not prah-cess (Am)

1st year, 2nd year, etc - as opposed to freshman, sophomore, etc; refers to year of post-secondary study

It's all very fascinating, isn't it? Now just think about how misunderstood I must feel sometimes!

If you're interested in learning more about this interesting topic of Canadian English, check out these sites:

Wiki How's "How to Understand Candian Slang"

Wikipedia's "Canadian English"

CoolSlang's "Canadian Slang Dictionary"

The Feeling of Christmas

For the first time ever I was in California right up until December 21st. Usually I go back to Canada near the beginning of December. Before I left I was discussing with a couple of friends who had recently moved to Santa Cruz from Georgia how much it didn’t feel like Christmas. That day it was about 18 degrees C (64 degrees F), which may have had something to do with it. We also just weren’t feeling the Christmas spirit around town- we had collectively noticed there weren't as many Christmas decorations on the city streets, in the shops or on people’s houses.

On December 21st when I arrived in Vancouver it was chilly and definitely felt wintery (by Vancouver’s standards). My sister Brady lives right near City Hall and there were lights all over the lawn, as well as a huge tree covered in lights. On Tuesday, when Brady and I went out shopping and wandering around the city, it was bustling. People walking around with Santa hats, stores were all decked out with decorations, there was Christmas music playing everywhere. When we went into Barbara Jo’s Books to Cooks, a great little cookbook and food & wine book shop, they offered us some mulled wine to sip and sugar cookies to eat while we browsed. As we walked along the street Brady said “It barely feels like Christmas. There’s no snow and it's weird to not be at home with Mom and Dad, getting ready for the holidays.” My sister graduated from university earlier this year and is now working as a nurse. She will be starting her 4 day work week on Christmas Day and then will fly up to Smithers to join the rest of our family at our brother and sister-in-law’s house. Our brother Conor also works through Christmas at the mine and will be arriving home from camp the same day. We'll have our own, post-poned version of Christmas on the 30th, including gift opening and turkey dinner. Guaranteed that our sister-in-law Shawna will have the house decked out and plenty of food!

Will that feel like Christmas? Probably not really, but maybe it coud. What does Christmas feel like?

I think it has a lot to do with what you grow up with. When Brady said it didn’t feel like Christmas, it was likely because she was missing out on what she normally associates with this time of the year. Based on our experience of Christmas when we were younger, I'd say she was probably yearning for: hunting for a Christmas tree with Dad, having snow on the ground, horsedrawn sleigh rides, visiting with extended family, toboggan races, filling the cupboards with baking, nuts & candies, decorating the tree and the house, strings of lights, Elvis Christmas records, Christmas morning rituals, board games in the evenings…

Then as we grow up, the feeling of Christmas inevitably shifts, but hopefully isn't lost. What it really comes down to is being with family, to hang out, eat together, play games and share each other’s company, no matter what the day, the weather, how many decorations and what music is playing.

Happy Holidays!

New York City visit

It's been a good trip to New York so far, although I am slightly disappointed that most of this second week I've been sick in bed! It was bound to happen though- that's what happens when things slow down and you finally get a chance to relax, right?

Walking

The first week here was nice and mellow- lots of walking around and exploring. Jim and I are staying at an apartment in the Flat Iron district, on 23rd St and 5th Ave. It's fun because it's a different neighbourhood from where we usually stay (the East Village or Lower East Side). It's not as residential, but is within reasonable walking distance from almost everything. We explored Chelsea, Times Square, Hell's Kitchen, the West Village, Midtown...

It was exciting to finally check out the completed portion of the High Line in Chelsea. Jim and I were fortunate to get a sneak preview of the place about a year ago when it was still under contruction because we were considering it a potential farm dinner site. The High Line was once a raised railway running through the westside of Manhattan, but has now been turned into a beautiful walking park.

The High Line is restored with wild plants and grasses

that were growing there naturally prior to it's

redevlopment as a park

The walking path goes right through some of the buildings in the Meat Packing District, as the freight trains used to stop right at the buildings and unload their cargo

With the redevelopment process all of the railway steel was sandblasted to remove the lead paint that was originally on it

They've been doing a lot of work lately in NYC in terms of public spaces and pedestrian access. In May of this year they turned Times Square into a pedestrian mall. There are little tables and chairs set up along the street along with some vendors. I think it makes the space seem a lot less chaotic, which is nice. Herald Square (which is on 34th and Broadway) is also a pedestrian mall now.

Herald Square pedestrian mall

Times Square

Eating

We've taken it easy on the eating this first week too (read: no farm dinner restaurants where we end up gorging ourselves) and enjoyed Ippudo (a Japanese ramen noodle restaurant), Shang (Toronto chef Susur Lee's first US place) Craftbar (of the Tom Colicchio empire) and my favourite place, just around the corner from the apartment: Shaffer City Oyster Bar. Shaffer City has the best happy hour ever with half price glasses of wine and half price oysters from 4 pm to 8 pm everyday!

We also went to this sandwich place called Eisenberg's downstairs from our apartment, mostly because I was enticed by their sign.

My kind of people...

Seeing

Some of you know that many years ago, during my streak of working many random jobs, I was an usher for Cirque du Soleil's Alegria when it was in Vancouver for a month and a half one summer. Since then I've also seen Varekai, O and Zumanity. When I learned that Wintuk would be playing in New York while we were there I couldn't miss it. It's advertised as a holiday show for the whole family "about a boy's quest for snow." It was being held in the theatre at Madison Square Gardens which was exciting too since I've never been there before.

Wintuk was definitely entertaining, though a little more kid-oriented than I was expecting. The introduction to the show had all of the performers running around on skateboards, BMXs and roller skates doing tricks and going up and down the ramps on the set. Cool, just not very Cirque-like. The second half of the show featured more of the Cirque du Soleil elements that I would expect: the rings/contorsionism, aerial stramps and Russian bars. Overall a good show and worth the price (which was much cheaper than most Cirque shows). I saw the other day that Ovo is a new Cirque show coming to the Bay Area at the end of the year. I'll probably have to drag Jim to that one too so he gets a more authentic experience.

Jim and I had a business meeting with a guy who had his office on the 34th floor of the Novotel Hotel, just North of Times Square. There is a deck on the floor and we got to check out this amazing view.

Looking towards Times Square from the 34th floor

of the Novotel Hotel

Here a few other shots from roaming around the city:

I was walking along 34th St, saw the Macy's

and got this feeling that I recognized it.

Then I saw this window display and realized why!

Macy's sign and the Empire State Building

Looking North on Broadway near 34th St

Busy streets and a beautiful sunset reflecting off the buildings

Another view of the Empire State Building

The subway in New York is so fascinating. I could be fully entertained

by sitting in one of the stations or riding one of the trains for hours.

So many people going places...

The 23rd St subway station has hat mosaics on the walls,

each hat being of a famous person

More subway art - these remind me of the Doozers from Fraggle Rock!

I'm hoping I get better this in the next day or so so I can actually enjoy our last weekend here!

Back from Tour

It's strange to be so intensely involved with something for a period of time and then all of a sudden be done. That's what farm dinner season is like. It's Saturday, October 17th and I have a chance to sit at the coffeeshop, drink a tea and update my much-neglected blog. I have no new emails in my inbox. This is the first real "Saturday" I've experienced probably all year. And I'm going through withdrawls.

But don't mistake me for complaining, because I'm definitely not. I'm a workaholic (I think I've said that before somewhere in this blog). And I love it.

Our farm dinner season was big this year. We've had 56 events since May 16th. My staff is quick to remind me of the short time that I "left them and went to Canada" for my dear friend Heidi's wedding. I missed out on a few dinners then, though it was far from a holiday. On a side note, it just so happens to be Ms. Heidi Clayden's birthday today so happy day to her!

I have a really hard time staying in touch while we're on the road and in the thick of it. This is adequately shown by my lack of blog updates. I think my family and friends are used to it by now. Not to say that it's okay, but I'm thankful that they're satisfied with the short emails/text messages that say "I'm alive" or "Driving through Illinois".

One of the most amazing parts of being on the road is traveling with our crew. We quite literally live on a tour bus together for 3 and a half months. Yes, it is like a rock band. We roll into town, set up our "show", "perform", pack it all up and go onto the next place. Our schedule is just as intensive as a lot of bands too. And the crew has fun, squabbles, sleeps, eats and drives together day in and day out. We started this year's tour with a solid crew of 8, give or take, fluctuated up to 13 at a high point, and finished back in California with 7. They came from all over: Tennessee, Georgia, Vermont, Illinois, California and Canada (that's me!) Everyone ranged in age from 23 to 29 (Jim, who started the company, being older than that of course), with different backgrounds, experiences and roles. The common tie being we were all stoked on visiting farms and doing farm dinners. We started out barely knowing each other but by the end you have no choice but to be close: you know your co-workers best and worst habits, their favourite snacks and every clothing item they have in their suitcase, among other things. You learn to "love each other like family".

It takes a special person to live on the road and do what we do day in and day out for months. With the economy how it was at the beginning of the year, we received many resumes from middle-aged people who had been working in offices the past 20 years, recently lost their jobs, and romanticized about living on the bus and doing farm dinners. Not to say that they wouldn't be able to do it, but I would guess that 99% of those people would have had enough of us after about a week. Best for them to read about it in magazines and follow the blog (when we happen to update it). There's a reason all of the staff is in their 20s. The rest I'll leave to your imagination.

There are many photos and even more stories to share, though today is not the day for that. I've included just a few photos below to give you a taste. I do want to update my map to include more dots of where I've been and maybe some photos/short stories. The way it looks right now is not very representative of the last couple of years....

Just because farm dinner tour is over doesn't mean I'm going to sit still. I have two plane tickets booked already: I found a steal of a deal on a return flight to Seattle ($109!!) next week, from where I'll rent a car and go to Salmon Arm and Vancouver for a week. Back to Santa Cruz for a couple of days and then off to New York City for 3 weeks. I've been there a number of times in the past couple of years, but it's usually a whirlwind of a trip, like 5 farm dinners in 6 days. It'll be great to hang out with some of the great chefs we've met and visit some farms and people. I'm especially looking forward to seeing Ben and Annie at their Rooftop Farm in Brooklyn and of course hanging out with my good chef friend Bill Telepan, who has the best laugh on the East Coast.

That's all for now, but consider me back in touch.

Our 2009 Tour bus

Dinners happen in cities....

... in dry fields...

... and on very green farms.

The chairs in the field at Dingo Farms in Bradford, ON:
one of the most challenging dinners for myself- more on that later.

We survived the Dingo Farms dinner together:
Mark Cutrara from Cowbell Restaurant in Toronto, ON and myself.
He's amazing.

Another beautiful Canadian dinner site:
North Arm Farm in Pemberton, BC.

Family meal with the staff after cleaning up another long table.

Tweeting in the Spring

So I was just reading someone else's blog and then thought "Wow, it's been a while since I looked at my own blog". A whole month actually. Time flies when you're... buried in work.

The past month has been a little hectic (that's an understatement). Outstanding in the Field's 2009 North American tour schedule came out on March 20th, the first day of Spring. The weeks leading up were intense: confirming guest chefs and farm sites for the schedule, putting together the information for the website, setting up our new reservations system... This year we had our act together enough to pre-release the schedule for viewing for two days prior to when the tickets went on sale. That gave people the opportunity to look at the schedule, call their family/friends and make plans before the mad dash on March 20th. We had a list of the dinners on the schedule, but then I also updated our Dinner Map to include the upcoming 2009 dinners. It's a pretty amazing visual- we're going all over the place this summer! Jim and I sometimes joke that the whole point of Outstanding in the Field at this point is to make that map look really good. How cool is it that we added that Montana dot? And the Missouri dot! We put together 54 dinners all together, including 10 new states that we've never even been to before. AND we're going to Ontario! That's pretty exciting for me at least. Unfortunately Montreal never did come together (that chef likes to play hard to get with me!) But we'll definitely still be stopping in Montreal to say hello and show my American workmates La Banquisse poutine!

Anyways, so our reservations page went live at 9 am PST/12 noon EST on March 20th. There were so many people trying to access the site at once it was having a hard time handling it all. That and then the reservations system didn't function exactly as *ahem* planned. Let's just say it involved me barking out each reservation to Jim and Caleb who were tallying like madmen. This was reminiscent of last year for me, but last time I was by myself in my little apartment in Montreal.

It's a little small and maybe hard to make out, but that's the tally count for the tickets as they sold for the 2008 Outstanding in the Field season. Little did we know that we'd get slammed with reservations and 9 events would sell out in the first day.

We eventually found out it was a pretty silly little mistake to do with the taxes that caused the problem this year (ah taxes). The guy who installed the system on our website obviously felt horrible about the whole situation. Live and learn. Next year everything will run perfectly, I'm sure of it this time! We'll also be sure to upgrade the website so it will be able to handle 10,000 visiting the site all at once trying to make their reservations and/or just watching the fun (you know who you are).

So about tweeting. Not sure how many of you have heard of Twitter? It's the latest social networking craze. And I signed up. I know, shocking. Me being the one who is so anti-Facebook. But this is slightly different because I've sort of signed up for work purposes. Twitter is this service that allows you to send out your status message/thought of the moment to the world at any given point. The interface is very simple and you're really only supposed to answer the question "What are you doing?" in 140 characters (that characters, not words) or less. You can send your message through the website, from your phone as a text message, from an iPhone app, or from a desktop application. Of course there's also the whole aspect of "following" and "followers". So I wasted a good deal of time on Sunday perusing the online community of Twitter and finding food/farm-related people to "follow". I was actually surprised with how few people I came across. It is definitely in the process of catching on. Many of the "people" I ended up signing up to follow are actually blog sites, news sites or organizations that are using Twitter as a way to keep in constant touch with their followers. For example Eater, New York Times Dining, epicurious. Ultimately, this is what a lot of people are using it for though. Celebrities, chefs, farmers, organizations- it's like a cheap advertising tool. For example, Nate Appleman, a San Francisco chef tweets "Lamb burger is back at SPQR. Get it while you can. It goes great with a side of chix nuggets". It's really a simplified way to blog. I'm still not sure if it's going to take off as well as something like Facebook, but I kind of like it. It's much less involved too: tell them your name, a short "bio" (also only 160 characters), add a profile photo and if you're really into it you can change you background on your page. That's about it.

I think it'll be really great to keep the excitement around the farm dinners this season, as I know people are always interested to hear about our travels along the way. As much as we try to blog, this will be a lot more easy to keep up with. And of course if you don't hear from me here on this blog for another month you can always check out my Twitter page.

Vancouver Visit via Seattle

Here's a good thing about the current state of the economy: cheap flights. Since I arrived here in Santa Cruz from Peru over a month ago and decided to stay, I've been itching to go back to Vancouver to get a few things. Mostly some more clothing items (getting kind of tired of the same 4 shirts) and my beloved bicycle. But especially my bicycle.

When I saw flights to Seattle for $79 each way and knew I could get a cheap car rental through Priceline.com, I couldn't resist. The total of the car rental and flight was just under $300. Not bad considering a return flight directly to Vancouver would have been $480. And this way I would also have a car to buzz around Vancity for a few days.

The stop in Seattle actually worked out quite well because I was also able to visit a potential farm dinner chef there that afternoon. We already had the interest of Tamara Murphy of Brasa (the "pig lady of Seattle") and so I was just stopping in that day to discuss details and hopefully confirm her participation. She's recently taken over the cafe under the Elliot Bay Book Company, a fairly iconic bookstore in Seattle. The cafe had evolved into a sad-looking soup kitchen of late and Tamara wanted to revitalize the place. I hadn't seen the place before, but it's definitely looking wonderful now. The old brick walls have an interesting story as well: they used to be above ground. This was a history lesson for me, but apparently Seattle was actually elevated after a devestating fire in the late 1800s. It's kind of hard to explain, so take a look at the story here and/or at wikipedia. Tamara and I had a great time chatting and visiting for over two hours. She was enthusiastic about Outstanding in the Field and participating since it lined up so well with her great support of the local Seattle-area farmers. She also does a really interesting annual event herself called Burning Beast (a big meat-fest collaboration by Seattle chefs) and has a very informative "Life of a Pig" blog on her website. Hence Pig Lady. Anyways, it seemed like everything was set for her doing a July 15th event with us in the Seattle area, but then she emailed me a few days later saying she'd forgotten about the plans she'd already made to leave town that week. Unfortunate, but I'm glad I was able to get to know her a bit better anyways. I'm sure she'll be on the schedule sometime in the future.

It was a quick but fun weekend in Vancouver, complete with an evening of beer and good food at Stella's with Jordan, dinner at Abigail's Party and shenanigans with Colleen, a good walk around UBC and down to the beach with Jordan and Duke, a visit to the Winter Market at Wise Hall, a Salmon Armian disco-funk party and of course gathering of my things and bicycle from "storage" in White Rock.

Hiking down at Spanish Banks near UBC
with Jordan, Duke and the other dogs and people

How could I forget, I also had the pleasure of hanging out the LUSH factory one morning with Jordan, who is now the new manager of the bubble room. He even has his own sticker now- check it out!

Yay Jordan!

So just like that and I'm back in Santa Cruz again. I've been working on some home improvements lately, which I'll share with you soon.

It's sunny in the wintertime

Look what I went and did- got you all excited about a blog that I was going to keep up to date and then went and disappeared. I'll try and work on it.

So I'm still in Santa Cruz and have actually now decided to stay here for the winter. My original plan was to head up to the North to live with my brother Conor and his wife Shawna, but after being here for a couple of weeks, I just decided to stay. And besides, who goes to Canada for the winter? Especially when you can go to the beach in California instead?

Ocean Beach in San Francisco on Super Bowl Sunday

Tshirt weather I like

Workaholic

Outstanding in the Field work is back in full swing now. We've got an ambitious 2009 schedule in the works and I've been spending the last couple of weeks contacting various chefs and farms across the country, asking them to be involved in our farm dinners this year. This year has been much much easier to put everything together. It definitely helps that I've done it once before and am a bit more confident in my communication, etc. but also because we are working with more than a couple of the people we know from last year. So instead of writing a long email saying "Hello... this is what Outstanding in the Field is all about... we've been all of these places, done lots of dinners with great chefs... you should too!" I can just write "Hi friend, how's 2009 treating you? Want to do a farm dinner again? Great- see you then!" Much easier. Less convincing involved. Although it still is great getting new people on board. I spoke on the phone today with a really wonderful sounding chef from Atlanta (Southern accents are so enchanting!) who didn't really know much about Outstanding in the Field. So I gave him the whole schpeel and by the end he was totally excited and impressed. Yay!


Zumba!

In an attempt to stay sane while working this year, I've been trying to take at least one day off a week and making sure I get out and about to have some fun. I also joined a local gym and have found my new favourite exercise class: Zumba! It is a latin/hip-hop fusion aerobics dance class. Some may recall the days in Vancouver when I was taking Latin Funk classes at Kits Workout (I tended to talk about it a lot!) and I've definitely been missing Tuesday and Thursdays with Gustavo. Zumba could never be as amazing as Latin Funk, but it sure is good fun, and you definitely feel it the next day! And of course I also love it for the good latin tunes! Check out this video to get a taste of Zumba.


Elephant Seals

One day a couple of weeks ago Jim and I went up the coast in hopes of seeing some elephant seals. Thousands of elephant seals come to this one area north of Santa Cruz once a year to mate and it's turned into quite the attraction. Now the parks dept regulate how many people go on the beach everyday and you have to buy advanced tickets to gain access. Jim and I decided to drive further up the coast, park, and then take a leisurely walk a mile or so down the beach to where the seals are (and we may or may not have been allowed to go). It was a really beautiful day, so the walk was nice. I wasn't really sure what to expect, so when we got to an area of the beach covered in these massive lumps that looked like huge logs, how was I supposed to know they were all seals?

So where are the seals?

See them now?

Not actually a log, but a few hundred pound animal!

See the people silhouettes in the first two photos there? Well lucky for us those weren't park rangers, but just scientists out observing the seals. They gave us a polite warning that if the ranger was to catch us out on this particular beach, which was closed to the public (what signs?) we could get hundreds of dollars in fines. With that, we carried on our way, back to where we came from.
We hadn't got too close to the seals, also because it isn't really that safe to do so. I have a hard time believing those huge lumps can move too quickly, but apparently they can. We saw a few move around and they sort of move like worms, "inching" along (metre by metre).

We safely crossed back over to the public area without sighting a ranger. But soon after we did encounter someone else:

A lonely elephant seal on the beach!

It was pretty amazing to get this closer up look of the animal. He was fully facing us too, so we could be a little more confident with anticipating any movement. Take a look at this, they really do look just like elephants, without the ears!

Jim thought that this was one of the juvenile males that wasn't involved in the whole mating process this time around. Apparently the full-sized males can get up to 6,000 lb. and be 16 feet long. I'm not sure I'd want to run into one of those guys at the beach...

Home Sweet Santa Cruz

Home is a relative term for me these days. I consider myself to have about 5 homes these days: Santa Cruz, Montreal, Salmon Arm, Vancouver and Smithers. I sometimes also like to joke that The Thompson Hotel in the Lower East Side, NYC is my home, since between September and November last year I stayed there 3 separate times for at least 4 days at a time. I'm about due for a visit back I think- the new restaurant, Shang (headed by big name Toronto chef Susur Lee), just opened last month and I'm eager to go check it out.

Anyways, since leaving Peru I've returned "home" to Santa Cruz, CA, where the company I work for, Outstanding in the Field, is based. One of the reasons I originally went to Peru was to get away. Yes, it is hard to get away when you're always away... you have to choose somewhere where you can really give the illusion that you're off the edge of the world, like in Peru. There's no way they have internet and cellphones there.... right? Turns out they do, but at least when you say you're in South America, people don't expect you to be in touch. Last year was busy, really busy, with OITF. I pretty much worked nonstop from May onwards, and the four months prior to that I was going to school at McGill as well as planning our dinner tour. I needed a break, to say the least. But now I'm back and refreshed and ready to get going... starting Monday.

For those of you that might not know so much about Outstanding in the Field, I wrote this little description about it as well as how I originally became involved.


Outstanding in the Field

About 4 years ago I met Outstanding in the Field at the UBC Farm, when I was then working at the Saturday morning Farm Market. Responding to an email sent out by the volunteer coordinator at the farm, I had signed up to help out at the dinner event that was happening one Sunday evening in August. It was a gorgeous event and I had a lot of fun working with the California crew who put these events on all across the country. Jim Denevan is the founder of the company, a some sort of quote “mysterious, handsome Californian artist/chef” who had been devoting himself to his cause since 1999. Katy Oursler was the coordinator/manager of the team, a charming girl with great farm dinner dresses and a welcoming smile. That first year there were three other team members, including a bus driver, a front of the house manager and a dishwasher. It was quite the crew, to say the least, but I was totally enamoured with them all.

It would be a full year until I would see the group again, and although there had been a few staff changes, I still had a great time helping out at the 2006 event. Once again, we set a long table next to the rows of flowers in the field at the UBC Farm. Chef David Hawksworth then of West Restaurant, cooked a delicious 5 course meal, mostly following the “100 mile diet”, and of course paired with local BC wines. The fisherman, cheesemaker, winemaker and UBC Farmers all joined the guests at the table as well, sharing their stories about where the ingredients came from and how they were produced. It was a very educational dining experience! The most fun part for the staff was hanging around the campfire in the field after finishing the cleanup, enjoying the leftover food and wine and hearing the stories of the Californian travelers. Who wouldn’t want to travel around doing this all summer? Happy guests, beautiful farms, fantastic chefs and delicious food and wine… sign me up! So after I graduated with my Biochemistry degree from UBC, I began harrassing Katy to take me on tour for the summer of 2007. I had to put that education to good use! Katy was hesitant since I didn’t have any restaurant/serving experience whatsoever, but with my looong list of prior, highly diverse and random jobs (see the right side bar of this blog) and my persistent emails, I managed to convince her otherwise. In June of 2007, my friends and I gave our notice at “the MacDonald House”, our Vancouver home on 23rd and MacDonald St for the past two and a half years. I packed up my little room and stored some boxes in my friend Colleen’s parent’s basement, then headed off to California to enlist in Outstanding in the Field for the summer. We did 16 events that summer: 14 public events and 2 private. We went all over California, up to Vancouver, across the USA and back from June until October. Relative to our 2008 schedule, this seems like peanuts now, but it was still pretty tiring, a lot of work, but really fun and rewarding. I was hooked. That summer was Katy’s 4th year of traveling across the country, planning the events and managing the tour. It had been hard times, pioneering the “farm dinners”, convincing people that it would be fun and interesting to eat local food in the field. The 2007 tour was the first one that came very close to selling out, as the popularity of local eating and “knowing your farmers” and finally boomed. After that year, Katy was willing to step aside for the upcoming 2008 season and let someone else take the ropes. Being the obsessive organizational enthusiast I am, I was happy to step in. And now here I am! I’ve recovered from our somewhat traumatizing, overambitious 2008 tour of 37 events across the country and am more than satisfied with how everything turned out. It was a very successful and inspiring season. We had over 6,000 guests and greatly increased our “portfolio” of farmers and chefs across the country. I was fortunate to be communcating with some of the best chefs across America: Bill Telepan, Nate Appleman, Paul Virant, Lachlan Patterson, Mary Dumont, and on....

The sky is our limit, that’s for sure. And Jim and I are definitely testing that theory with our 2009 schedule planning.

I’ll save repeating myself and direct you to the Outstanding in the Field website and blog. Jim and I work on the blog together while we’re on tour. We’re a pretty good team: he’s full of ideas and I articulate them well. We polish off each entry together and post it for our readers. We have almost 20,000 people on our mailing list and a pretty broad “fanbase”, essentially all over the world. It’s exciting to think of all of the people reading our stories! Also be sure to take a look at our Dinner Site History Map, which shows most of everywhere I (we)’ve been the past couple of years with the dinners. It also includes the sites of the dinners that date back to 1999, which I of course didn’t participate in.

As I implied earlier, I have signed up for OITF Season 2009. We’re working out the details right now: a 60+ dinner tour? Maybe. We’re not sure how the current economic situation is going to influence us at this point. But we’re ready for more adventure and getting more people out to the farm.

Check out these photos to give you a taste...

New York City Community Garden Dinner
photo by Andrea Wyner

Wisconsin Cattle Ranch Pickup Truck


My other home, the Outstanding Bus
in a Minnesota field


Gearing up for Chicago deep dish pizza in the Windy City


The OITF table in a Community Garden
in Hollywood, CA


Hanging out on the beach in Miami
after an early October event


Our table with the statue of David
in Florence, Italy

And the list of adventures goes on... visit the OITF blog for the stories!

Last day in Lima

Throughout my trip I've been very fortunate to have Gean Carlo's family's house as my home base in Lima. On the 19th, I took an early bus back across the border to Peru, returned to Puno, went out to the airport in Juliaca and then flew back to Lima. It was so nice to be greeted by the family, all excited to hear about my journeys since I'd left over a week before.

Aaron was particularly excited to see his "Tia Leah" (Aunt Leah)
and play with her camera

That evening we just hung around the house and I shared photos and stories. The next day, which was ultimately my last day in Peru, Emily (Gean Carlo's daughter) and I went off to the beach at Miraflores. We had been to Miraflores before with Gean Carlo, but hadn't ventured down to the beach. One of my favourite parts of this day was taking a minibus across town. I still don't have any idea how this system works (and Emily wasn't really able to explain it either), but it did get us there and was very entertaining along the way. The constant yelling and advertising of the "doorman" who was hanging out the side of the van, along with the various patrons of the bus, all contributed to my amusement.

El Beso statue in El Parque de Amor, Miraflores
The Kiss Statue in The Love Park, Miraflores

The beach in Lima

The fancy Marriott Hotel overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the beach

We hung out on the beach for a little while, enjoying some ice cream and the occasional bit of sunshine. When it was time to ascend back to Miraflores, Emily insisted we take the path that was fenced off and stated "Peligro" (Dangerous). There were a few people doing the same so we knew it was passable, but we couldn't really see the condition of the path past half way up. Sure enough, the stairs were there, but a lot of the way they were covered with rocks, which had obviously slid off the side of the hill and deemed the trail unsafe. Emily struggled up the path in her flip flops, but we did finally make it to the top.

A little sweaty after our hike up the hillside

Beach View

Next we went back over to Parque Union and bought a few final touristy mementos for me and then went to the grocery store. I had told Gean Carlo's mother Teresa that I would make dinner for everyone that night, so Emily and I had to go get the cooking supplies. Chinese food, or chifa, is very common around Peru, so I thought I'd try making them some Japanese food: yakisoba. It's a pretty simple stirfry of cabbage, carrots, bok choy, peppers, tofu, ginger, noodles and a few other things. I managed to find everything I needed, including "tofu cheese", as it was labeled. Dinner was a success and fun to prepare and enjoy with everyone. I even got Aaron to help out with peeling the garlic, keeping the work area tidy and helping to put things in the pot. It was reminiscent of my days of teaching the Boys Cooking Club in Vancouver- so fun.

That evening Juan (Gean Carlo's father) arranged for someone down the street to come and pick me up the next morning at about 5:00 am to take me to the airport for my 7:30 am flight back to the USA. Sure enough, he still had to go knock on the guy's door the next morning at about 5:15 to wake him up... Nina, Emily and Juan were all up bright and early to see me off to the airport. Teresa had already assured me in conversation the night before, when I was explaining to her the various "homes" I had in Vancouver, Santa Cruz, Salmon Arm and Montreal, that this could be my home in Peru. What a wonderful family.

Time to get back to my not-so-real real life....