Leafy greens

Tough and hardy, kale and Brussels sprouts, all chopped up, are the basis of the salad I'm trying this January.

Toasted slivered almonds add some pleasure to the virtuous greens. 

Grated Parmesan  has a further civilizing effect.

 Everyone with aging eyes has had the lecture: eat lots of leafy greens to combat macular degeneration. I try. But lately, I've been discouraged by the whiff of rot that arises every time I open even the freshest new box of lettuce; a little digging around always turns up some clumps of disintegrating leaves.

How could I resist, then, when a new magazine arrived offering a salad that is not only "practically wilt-proof," but is "tamed by dressing" and improves with time in the fridge? At first I doubted: the two main ingredients -- kale and Brussels sprouts -- are ones I could happily live without. But the reason I'm writing this is that it actually works. If you add grated Parmesan, slivered almonds and the simple dressing, the salad is tasty and lasts a few days in the fridge.

Take a bowlful, add sliced apples or pears, chicken or whatever else you want, and you've got a meal and saved your eyes, all in one shot.

Here's the recipe, from the January/February edition of Western Living magazine:

Kale Salad
1 small bunch kale
6 to 8 big Brussels sprouts
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan, aged Gouda or pecorino
1/3 cup sliced or slivered almonds, toasted.

(Wash kale, shake dry, remove tough stems, chop up leaves. Halve sprouts lengthwise and thinly slice to shred them, discarding the tough ends. Put kale and sprouts in bowl.)

Dressing
1/3 cup olive oil
3 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp grainy mustard
1 garlic clove, finely crushed
2 tsp sugar
Salt and freshly ground pepper

(Shake or stir together all the ingredients, and drizzle over greens. Add Parmesan, almonds, and any other ingredients and toss. Serves 2 to 4.)

I often stay away from magazine recipes, as  complicated ones can be iffy, but this looked simple, and the ingredient list was reasonable.

Almonds on the finished salad. I've found  that adding sliced pear is a nice touch.

Vesuvius moon

Clear skies mean cold temperatures, but they also give photographers like John a clear shot at the full moon. This photo looks toward Crofton on Vancouver Island from Saltspring Island. 

It was 10 C (50 F) indoors when John arrived at our place in Vesuvius on Saltspring Island this week. The house looks cozy, but its lack of insulation and walls of big windows guarantee it will be cold when the unimaginable happens and temperatures drop below zero on the Gulf Islands. John cranked up the baseboard heaters and got the fireplace blazing with three armloads of wood, but the temperature maxed out at 18 C (64 F) during his whole three-day stay.

One compensation: the moon was full. When he woke up Thursday morning, he just had to shove open the sliding glass doors in the bedroom to shoot the moon over the ocean. He kept the electric blanket on.

Auntie Carrot

My niece-in-law Aya and I have decided to take advantage of the few family connections we have in Vancouver and get together more regularly. On Tuesday, I was at her place while she made supper. Here her daughter Emi looks on as Aya brings a big bowl of fruits and vegetables to the counter to be fed into the juicer. 

Two-year-old  Emi samples an apple while she waits for the action to get underway.

Aya feeds the last of the bowlful into the juicer, as Emi fishes for strays. 

Mother and daughter share a joke while finishing the operation. 

About a week ago, my niece Aya sent me a video clip of her two-year-old daughter Emi chopping up a carrot with a big knife. I was worried until I realized that the carrot was wooden, pre-cut into re-attachable chunks, and the knife equally harmless. A clue was that Emi's dad, my nephew Etienne, was standing beside her cutting up real carrots with a real knife, and not alarmed at all.

On Tuesday, Emi was busily helping her mother put a big bowl of cut-up fruits, greens, and yes, carrots, through a juicer to make a healthy drink for supper. Emi is learning several languages all at once -- French, Spanish and English -- so she has three different words for any given object. I don't know if her multilingual upbringing is responsible, but partway through the evening, I realized that Emi's efforts to say my name were reverting back to a familiar vegetable. It seems that I am Auntie Carrot.

Missed it

They only had three days, but they made the most of it. Vancouverites flocked to Trout Lake last week after the park board declared it was safe for skating. I wasn't one of them. (Photo by John Denniston)

Twenty years after it froze hard enough in Vancouver to allow for outdoor skating, the miracle happened again last week. Thousands of skaters began packing Trout Lake in east Vancouver after the park board said on Thursday, Jan. 5, that the ice was thick enough to be safe.  John photographed the skaters, and I thought longingly about joining them.

My siblings and I grew up skating, as did mom before us, and mom and I used to talk nostalgically about the sheer joy of skimming fast over ice. To us, it was a distant dream, but my brother Brian, who is often able to skate on the lake near his Alberta home, told me recently he'd just had the best skate of his life. A sunny day, a long stretch of wind-cleared ice, geese flying past -- it was like, he said, being able to fly himself.

But my old skates no longer fit. My balance, never good, has deteriorated with the years. And I remember mom breaking her wrist when she had a late-life go at revisiting her childhood on skates. There are many reasons why I should not lace up a pair of skates again, but the park board just gave the final one. On Sunday, it closed the lake to skating due to rising temperatures. In Vancouver, there's not a lot of time to dither if you want to skate outdoors.

The downside of green

West Vancouver has been planning for 40 years to open up the Ambleside waterfront, creating vast areas of green space interspersed with plazas. The plans include removal of a number of buildings, including the house on this little lot on Argyle, right next to the community garden. 

Another recently cleared lot on Argyle.

Also expected to be demolished is my favourite West Vancouver building -- the Silk Purse Arts Centre. I think it should be kept as an example of an original West Vancouver waterfront cottage; besides, it's too pretty to tear down.

Here's the view that will be opened up by removing most of the waterfront buildings. 

A walk along Vancouver's Point Grey Road is mostly a walk alongside massive houses, hedges, garages and gates. But every once in a while, there's a reward; a sudden, magical revelation of ocean, sky, sailboats and freighters, with the North Shore mountains as a backdrop. The views are thanks to the city's policy, many years ago, of buying up land along the north side of the road so all Vancouverites -- not just those in the houses that hug the shore -- could enjoy the views. But the policy had to be abandoned when prices soared out of sight. Instead of being joined into an open waterfront, the lots became "pocket parks" -- gaps in the pricey smile of Point Grey Road.

I thought of our local example when John and I were in West Vancouver on Saturday, where two houses and an artists' studio have recently been bulldozed as part of the city's long-term plan to turn most of the Ambleside waterfront into open green space. The buildings were among the last of the little waterfront houses. It was sad to see them go, but the resulting views -- even with debris and demolition equipment on site -- showed how much we'd been missing.

But there is always a downside. Among the other buildings slated for demolition is one of the prettiest in West Vancouver -- an original waterfront cottage that's now an art gallery and home to the West Vancouver Community Arts Council. I've written about the Silk Purse before -- the old-fashioned windows opening on three sides to the ocean, the grand piano, the fireplace, the cozy window nook. It's so close to the water that when a huge freighter sailed past during our visit, it blocked out the windows for a minute.

I'm not the only one who adores the building. The attendant on duty Saturday said people fought hard to keep it. "You can talk, you can write, you can cry, but nothing will change their mind," she said of city authorities. "They have a plan, and they won't change it."

Thanks to that long-term planning, West Vancouverites will have unimpeded views from wide-open green space on the Ambleside waterfront instead of having to make do with the pocket parks of Point Grey Road. But urban activist Jane Jacobs argues strongly that green space is wasted unless there are numerous points of interest to engage people and attract them to make use of it. The ocean views are their own draw, but I would argue that a charming waterfront cottage bearing a whole lot of West Vancouver history on its tiny shoulders would be a valuable asset to any piece of green space.

Interior of the Silk Purse on Saturday. The grand piano is used for classical concerts, held in the mornings.

The fireplace was on, creating a cozy scene in the art gallery. 

The Ferry Building on the Ambleside waterfront is to be kept.

One of the signs along Argyle relating to the removal of the house on the lot and the future plans for the area. 

 

Bird books

The birds described and illustrated in these two 1960s-era books from mom and dad's collection haven't changed, but the times have. I was struck by how different the world is today from the one depicted in these books. 

This little booklet tucked into the back of one of the books contains recordings -- to be played on your phonograph -- of bird songs throughout North America. 

Drop the needle at the directed spot on the plastic disc, and you can hear the sound of whatever bird you've chosen. John and I have not tried this yet. 

At the back of the National Geographic Society's 1964 Song and Garden Birds of North America ($11.95 postpaid) is a pocket containing a booklet of recorded bird songs. They are to be played on your phonograph, and there are elaborate instructions for letting the needle down at the right place so you can hear the songs of "70 American birds in their natural settings."

The clear plastic records in that little booklet -- for a device that many people no longer have (and some don't know ever existed) -- are one of the ways that mom and dad's 1960s-era bird books that I unearthed yesterday reflect a totally different world.

Another is the photographs of people in the National Geographic book. A group of birdwatchers -- all Caucasian, all middle-aged and older except for one kid -- could have modelled for a Norman Rockwell illustration, with their sensible checked shirts and dresses, cardigans, bowties and even a neckerchief. There's no racial diversity, no facial piercings or pink hair, nor, I suspect, one tattoo amongst them. Another photo of children clustered around a khaki-clad man illustrating bird banding is similarly idyllic. All are wholesome, conservatively dressed and paying perfect attention.

The tone of the books is serious, even a bit pompous; pre-Internet and Google, this is where information come from. But feminism obviously still had a way to go. In one chapter, ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson writes: "Birding can be a placid occupation for maiden aunts, a rough and tumble sport, or a hair-raising adventure." Presumably, maiden aunts did not have hair-raising adventures in those days.

Peterson, a birder since age 11, says some might consider bird-watching an escape. "But in a world that often perturbs us with its synthetic quality, a world that seems sometimes to be getting out of hand, this is an escape from the artificial -- a return to reality."

 If Peterson needed an escape from the chaos and artificiality of the 1960s, imagine how much he would need it now.

Birds in winter

My birdbath cupid makes an unusual offering -- a plate of suet for the birds. I bought birdseed and suet yesterday to help the birds survive while their usual pecking territory is covered with snow. I was told that plain suet won't attract squirrels, but it looks like the birds don't like it either -- not one peck was taken from this plate.

Odd as this looks, it's a paper plate of birdseed on top of the little birdbath, frozen over for the duration. The birds found it and had a good feast on Thursday.

Top view of the birdfeeder-birdbath. I'm using paper plates instead of buying a proper birdfeeder because this is a temporary arrangement. I hope.

Birds were a natural part of life to country-born-and-raised people like my parents. They never made a fuss about it, or kept lists of the birds they spotted, but they enjoyed birds and knew the common ones by sight and song as a matter of course. "Well, that's a junco," my mother would say, surprised at my ignorance. Or a house finch, or a bushtit or a towhee or one of the many versions of sparrows.

Despite my cluelessness, I've always liked the idea of a back yard full of chirping birds, and over the years, many a birdfeeder has come and gone from my garden. There was the simple wood tray model, the metal-tube feeder, the suet dispensers, the deluxe anti-squirrel birdfeeder with overhanging dome and underlying seed catcher. But the squirrels outwitted any baffles, the seeds fell in a mess, the mice invaded, and the arrival of a cat put paid to our efforts. How to justify inviting birds to the feast, only to have Mr. Darcy feast upon them?

I retreated to two birdbaths and keeping a sharp eye on the cat. But our unusual winter -- six weeks of snow covering whatever the birds snack on in neighbourhood gardens -- has me worried about their survival. So yesterday, I was at a Wild Birds Unlimited outlet. Nothing fancy, I told the clerk. Just enough to get the birds through the worst. I explained the mice, the squirrels, the cat, and to her credit, there was no upselling. I left with a jug of birdseed and a hunk of plain suet.

Today's feast was simplicity itself. Two paper plates on two frozen birdbaths, one with birdseed, one with suet. It took a few hours, but then...a most satisfying explosion of swooping and flying and pecking and chirping and sitting-on-branches-above and calling-in-of-friends-from-away. The squirrels and crows -- amazingly -- stayed away, and the little backyard birds feasted until sundown. I still don't know what they are, but I've hauled out mom and dad's old bird books. It may be time to learn something about what they knew so well.

The back yard in winter. At least the birds have lots of trees to perch on, to keep an eye out for the cat. Who is spending most of his time indoors these days, but is glaringly obvious when he goes out into the snow.

The plate tipped over at one point, spilling some seeds on the snow. I'm bringing the plates in at night; I expect the mice will have a go at the spillover when all is quiet.

The jug of birdseed from Wild Birds Unlimited, the local mecca for anyone who cares about birds. 

Exuberant diversity

Urban activist Jane Jacobs believed a diverse range of buildings is important in creating a vibrant city. A few years ago, John photographed this construction site for yet another Vancouver tower, with similar ones in the background. 

Another view of the building site, photographed by John.

"Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them." -- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Every day on my walk to work, I used to delight in passing an elderly office building that stood out from everything else on the block. Only a few storeys high, it could have lived in Dickens' London, with its tall, narrow wooden doors ornamented with brass fittings, its old-fashioned wooden windows around which ivy climbed and trailed. One day the redevelopment sign went up, and within a couple of years, the site was just one more of the indistinguishable glass and concrete towers that make up most of downtown Vancouver.

My concern was mainly aesthetic -- the charm of the building amidst the blandness -- but urban activist Jane Jacobs' interests are much more practical. Her 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, exploring what makes cities thrive or die, cites the existence of old buildings as one of four "indispensable" conditions for generating "exuberant diversity" on city streets.

It's not just old buildings that are needed, of course; if everything is old, it's a sign the city is failing. The key is a mixture of old, middle and new that encourages a wide diversity of businesses -- bigger and smaller, more and less profitable -- which Jacobs sees as the key to exciting, vibrant cities. "The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones so that they vary in the economic yield they must produce," she writes.

Half a century after Jacobs wrote those words, I wonder what she would think of a downtown that couldn't retain an old ivy-covered office building or two? And what of the street life around the highrise towers that sprang up in their stead? Would she consider it exuberantly diverse?

Red-tag shoes

John and I have discovered there is a little problem when both of us decide to buy the same kind of shoes to cope with the winter weather.  These are our new shoes, along with the red tags John has added to solve the problem.

These are our old pairs. How do you choose which  belong to you?

The winter lineup: from left, our two pairs of new shoes, our two pairs of old ones, my running shoes for better days, my Sorel boots for worse ones. 

A few years ago, when John and I went to look for winter shoes that would grip in the snow and repel the slush, I was struck by the fact that men's shoes were so much more -- everything -- than the women's versions. Better built, more substantial -- they looked like shoes that meant business. As a longtime walker, I couldn't see the point of the flimsier ones over in the women's section. The result? We ended up with two pairs of the same men's shoes -- John's one size bigger.

This year's wretched winter sent us back to the store for updated versions, and once again, I was glued to the men's section. We were both interested in the new-technology water-repellent shoe on offer, and both of us found it more comfortable than others we tried on. Once again, we ended up with the same shoes.

We are quite comfortable with matching shoes (and hats, for that matter), but we have found there is one problem. One day, on my return from a long solo walk after we'd bought the first pair, John gave me a funny look. "Did you notice anything strange about the shoes?" he asked. Turns out, I had taken one of his shoes. All I'd felt was a slight looseness, but he couldn't get a foot into one of the shoes I'd left behind.

John solved the problem by adding red tags to the backs of his pair. When we got home with our new ones, his first move was to bring out the red tape. He doesn't mind sharing the men's shoe department with me, but he wants both shoes to be at home when he needs them.

Ice, ice, ice

I don't know how our back alley compares in steepness to a hill in Montreal where five vehicles successively crashed into each other, but it's steep enough to seriously hinder garbage pickup. Under the snow, the tracks are solid ice; even big trucks struggle to get up it.

The street in front of our house isn't so steep, but the tracks are ice, and the intersection at the end of the street is more of the same. There have been videos of people skating on the street in front of their houses elsewhere in the city.

This is the sidewalk in front of our house. Assiduously cleared of snow, it unfortunately became quite treacherous because of the ice patches underneath. The stores are out of salt, so John  found some sand yesterday to scatter over the ice. 

A closer view of the snow and ice in the back alley.

Looking up the hill toward Dunbar Street. With parked vehicles and only icy tracks to travel on, it can be tricky when cars meet going up and down the hill.

It was a hill, it was icy, and down it slid a bus, a pickup truck, another bus, a police car (backwards, lights flashing), then a snow-removal truck, all thumping into each other, one, two, three, four, five, almost in slow motion. No, it wasn't Vancouver with its notoriously inept winter drivers, but Montreal, where drivers have lots of experience in the snow. Thanks to the ubiquity of smartphone cameras, video of the Cote du Beaver Hall crashes was all over the Internet just after they happened on Dec. 5. Maclean's went so far as to have a top Canadian curler narrate the crash sequence as if the vehicles were so many rocks in a curling bonspiel.

John and I chortled, but we're not chortling now. Nearly a month later, our whole city is in exactly the same condition as that one unsalted hill in Montreal. Lacking the equipment, know-how (and enough salt) to deal with the snow we've been having since the start of December, our city is full of vehicles and people slipping and sliding over a thick pancake of constantly thawing, freezing and rethawing ice.

There are videos of people skating down the street in front of their homes; when John and I were shopping on Dunbar, an emergency vehicle pulled up to tend to a man who had fallen on the ice as he got out of his car. So far, I have stayed upright, but I hear of people falling and broken wrists and shoulders. The Dunbar listserv is full of anecdotes about the treacherous ice and recommendations for non-slip devices to strap onto your shoes.

Vancouverites, I have to admit, are smug about their climate -- a charge quite reasonably levied by anyone from elsewhere in Canada who has received photos of West Coast daffodils in February. But when winter arrives here and decides to stick around, a pancake of ice gives it a special extra kick. As even the seasoned drivers on the Montreal hill discovered.