Pickles and Poutine

Motzei Shabbos I was exhausted, and planned to trek home to sleep. Instead, I was convinced to make an appearance at a friend’s going away party. He’s a good enough friend to not mind me saying that I was won over by the promise of deep-fried pickles. Seriously. To say I was intrigued would be a gross understatement. So after we separated Shabbos from chol, welcomed the new week, we walked over to Dive Bar.

We were pleasantly surprised by the numerous vegetarian offerings to be found on the menu. Then, while debating between a veggie burger and beer chaser for the deep-fried pickles, or just a beer, my friend spotted it: poutine.

A well known Quebecois comfort food: A heap of Dive Bar Fries studded with farm fresh cheddar curd cheese that melts under hot, thick gravy! Tremendously satisfying. Goes well with a cold beer! Vegetarian gravy available.

The menu said everything it had to. We ordered a side of poutine for our pickles.

The pickles were good, but not great. I’m not a huge fan of salt (the flavour that is; I certainly am a fan of its chemical reaction in cooking and baking), but even I was giving the salt shaker a work out. They were lightly beer battered then fried. The pickles were still crunchy on the inside, while the batter was golden brown. I’d order them again, but maybe from another establishment (you know, in hopes of finding a better purveyor).

And then the poutine. Oh, the poutine. It was not poutine. It was possibly passible as disco fries. Maybe. The gravy was clearly from a vegetarian gravy mix; I could recognize and taste the dehydrated peppers, onions, and celery in the sauce. And the gravy was under the fries, not spooned over the whole dish to help in the cheese melting process. But no worries - the cheese was melted in an oven (gah!) or under the heat lamps (oy!) so it didn’t need the gravy’s assistance. And the cheese. Certainly not cheese curds. Probably not of the cheddar variety either. (We guessed it was mozzarella.) So entirely disappointing. Lacking the necessary components, it had no hope of tasting good, let alone tasting like real poutine. They should not be allowed to call it poutine on the menu. I feel quite strongly about this. I mean, what if some unsuspecting New Yorker ate this alleged poutine, not understanding the dish to be an imposter, and then never sought out the real goodness in Quebec? Tragedy. (The above picture is what poutine should look like. Saturday night’s poutine was nothing at all like this yummy concoction.)

In honour of the lack of squeaky cheese (cheese curds squeak, when you bite them, oh yes), I revive danse la poutine:

Goodness

Things that were good this week:

• Hearing “The Electric Slide” loudly wafting up from the schoolyard across the street, I looked out the window to see all the classes, with their teachers, dancing out in the yard. Some were doing the electric slide, others the macarena, still other classes doing dances in slight formation/lines, while plenty of kids were just running all over dancing in congo lines. It was pretty great to watch at 10:15 on a weekday morning.

• Seeing Sex and the City with my good friend S. Better still, having pre-SatC cocktails, and sipping some more during the film. It was surprisingly funny and, despite the negative reviews, we both enjoyed it. I also quite enjoyed the fashionistas dressing to the nines, for a matinée screening: cocktail dresses, strapless mini dresses, gay guys in SatC pink (as if that’s its own shade now), and the “Carrie wore it in one episode so it must be okay” men’s shirt with a belt and flip-flops. As funny as the movie was, and as sophisticated as the NY audience thought we were, it should be noted that the biggest, longest, and heartiest laugh came midway through the film at a poo joke. We might as well have been watching an Adam Sandler movie.

• Also great, seeing your friend drunk by 1:30 in the afternoon. (Seriously, I love you. Thanks for going with me.)

• The sun, the blue skies, and reading up on the roof.

• A great Shabbos last weekend, and another amazing Shabbos rolling in in a few hours.

Drink: throw blueberries, fresh mint, lime wedges, and simple syrup into a pitcher. Mottle. Add ice cubes, tonic, and vodka. Stir. Enjoy. No, really, enjoy. Let’s call it… Benjamin’s Sprimmer Cocktail.

Vancouver Pics

The Vancouver photos!

BC travels

I spent four lovely nights in Victoria, visiting my home, my friends, remnants of my plants. It was great to relax, fully embrace my dorkiness, play a lot of Scrabble, and fall back into a comfortable rhythm with my friends.

On the way back to Vancouver, I had to transfer buses as the Ladner Exchange. There, a woman and her college-aged daughter started pointing at me, then pointing at a fellow standing a few paces from me. I stealthily paused my iPod so I could casually listen in on what they were saying about us. The mother was saying something about my “beanie” and the “head dress” of the other fellow. (Based on what I saw, I assumed him to be Sikh, so that was in fact a turban.) I wasn’t the only one listening in; the other guy had been listening and caught my eyes when this was said of us. He stepped towards the mother and daughter to clarify things with them. But he didn’t know the words “kippah” or “yarmulke,” so in trying to explain that he wasn’t wearing a head dress, and I wasn’t wearing a beanie, the mother and daughter concluded that we were both of the same religion and were wearing variations on the same religious head wear.

At this point he looked to me, so I stepped over and tried to clarify. At some point the daughter had a “light bulb” moment and said something like, “Oh, like what the Pope wears?!” Um, yes. Kind of. Many religions have customs of head coverings and… I lost them. He looked at me and shrugged. The daughter started talking to her mom about an Easter “South Park” episode which claimed the Pope’s hat was pointy because the Pope had rabbit ears to hide. And I put my earphones back in and turned on my iPod.

It’s good to be back on the west coast…

As a side note, I’d recommend reading two recent posts on Jewschool: The H in Apartheid, a thoughtful piece on Hebron, and No One Is Jewish, about Jews who have had their conversion revoked.

Pesach Plumage

So here I am in Seattle, cleaning, kashering, and cooking. The kitchen is pristine. The rest of the house… not my domain. Because I’m not the one who will be eating in this house post-Passover, I’m allowing my host to have the final word on some of the halakhah. The result is the chometz cupboard and box in the fridge (stuff he’ll want to eat in a week, that’s expensive to replace, and needs to be refrigerated). Thanks to the internet, both the box and the cupboard have been sold. That is, he no longer owns a cupboard in his kitchen, nor does he own the box in his fridge. I had fun with it, drawing on the boxes:

Then we had to find a feather. Despite suggesting to a friend that “tackling a bird” would be a great way to get a feather, I was not about to attempt this method on my own. We went to a dollar store that had a craft section. Alas, no feathers. We checked a K-Mart, alas, no craft section. Then we went to a giant pet store chain. They sell birds and, sure enough, there were feathers at the bottom of their clean-looking cages. While I wandered amongst the cat toys, trying to decide which cat toy could be defeathered the most easily, my friend approached an employee. “I have sort of a weird question… We need a feather for a religious ceremony. And I saw some in the birds’ cages. Could we have them?” The employee found a second employee, who agreed. Minutes later, he was on his hands and knees in the bird cage (while we were both mildly creeped out because, you know, no matter how clean that cage liner was…) grabbing a half dozen colourful feathers from budgies. My friend and I both reached for the nearby hand santizer as a reaction, but it was empty. (Oh, and let’s not forget the smell in there. A customer’s big ol’ dog had decided the floor next to the bird cages was the perfect place to do his business, both businesses.) Hands were washed once we returned home.

And now we have tiny little feathers to sweep for crumbs with.

Roads of the East

Recently, I heard an interview on DNTO with someone who was described as a “professional house guest.” He has some very clear expectations for his ever changing housing: you offer him a place to stay, with a bed or couch, for a minimum of two weeks, and in exchange he has done everything from cooking and cleaning to washing dogs to home repairs and minor renovations. But he doesn’t stop there. He also has rent-free work space, which he got through bartering. He approached an organisation with a bit of extra space and offered up his services in exchange for a place to call his office. For them, he’ll stuff envelopes, do photocopying, and in general help with the tedious things that have to get done around the office but no one really wants to do.

He described his living situation quite positively, and, 14 (or was it 18?) beds/couches and one year later, has no plans to go back to a permanent living arrangement.

When I heard this, I was amazed. By no means have I made formal arrangements with my fabulous friends who are housing me, but I have done a good deal of cleaning, cooking, and other errands (quite happy to chip in!). And, depending on when I start the count, I’ve either been doing this for three-and-a-half months or one-and-a-half, which corresponds to either ten or seven beds (excluding one nighters, such as spending a Shabbos night on a friend’s couch, then returning to my “regularly scheduled” friend’s motzei; Florida’s backyard or concrete floors; and the retreat cabins in Maryland). And I’m exhausted. Despite sleeping longer, and more regularly, than I have in many years, I’m definitely feeling the effect of not having a stable, regular place to call home. I shouldn’t be surprised - after all, only a few weeks ago, in Florida, I taught a lesson on the effects of housing or a lack thereof. But I really didn’t expect the results to be felt so quickly.

And I wish I had more to show for the last few weeks, but I don’t. Well, I do. But it’s not exactly concrete.

These past few weeks, I became intimately familiar with the I-95. Back and forth, Boston, to and fro, New York. It might not have been the most productive use of my time (though I did watch many movies, catch up on my backlog of podcasts, and write many a hand-written letter), but it had to be. I had hoped to be in NY for a couple weeks, visiting friends, interviewing, before doing the same in Boston. But, of course, interviews and social “obligations” in NY waded into Boston time. More time spent on the I-95. I came to realise that on a Sunday night, the Greyhound could leave Port Authority and reach South Station a mere 3.5 hours later. Unfortunately, I also discovered that a random weekday ride could stretch to nearly 7 hours.

These weeks have allowed me to catch up with so many wonderful people, I can’t begin to tell you. Unfortunately, the running around also meant that I couldn’t see as many people as I’d wanted to, nor for as long as I would have liked. But I will be back east, and hopefully with more time to spare. Highlights included beers and bocce in Brooklyn; a hasty retreat from a windy picnic in Portland; getting hooked on the Ultimate Spiderman series; being amongst many queer Jews (this ought to get its own post but, wow, was that great, especially after the long queerless months in Israel), doing Jewishly queer and queerly Jewish things; Paul Simon’s concert in Brooklyn, which made me feel utterly euphoric, happier than I had been in far too long; pastrami and knish adventures in the boros; taking dance tips from the old man at the Klezmatics and Joshua Nelson concert; ice cream; cuddles with Max and Benjamin; and walking to Brooklyn from the Upper West Side.

I’ve been in Seattle about eight hours now, and I’m already missing Boston and NY. I will return… soon. [photos here.]

Modesty - or Arrr, Mateys!

This photo makes me smile.

I found it on TFOFR’s flickr stream, with the comment “The only headcoverings allowed in the church are headscarves” on an accompanying photo. So I’d taken off my baseball cap, which I’d intentionally worn in lieu of a kippah that day in Bethlehem, and put on a friend’s scarf. I love that the solution was crossdressing, of sorts.

Photo time!

A whole whack of photos from my last few days in Jerusalem. There’s some street art; happy people, music, poetry, and dancing at Def Adar Jam; and a boogie.

Amazingness of the last few days

Amazingness of the last few days

Friends. I’m blessed to have so many wonderful people in my life. And, though I’m glad I talked them out of it, it’s sweet that they volleyed around the idea of caging me in order to keep me near them.

Mile High Club. (Not that Mile High Club.) As the sun rose, I was somewhere over eastern Europe, or the Mediterranean. I noticed several black hatters standing in the aisle, reaching for their tefillin. I joined them. I got quite a few looks, but I think it was worth it. (It was suggested to me, before I left Israel, that davening on the plane/in the airport was important, so that folks could see alternatives to the black hatters’ orthodoxy.) It was also a nice bookend to the davening and shofar blowing in the airport on my way to Israel in the summer.

ICBC. Actually did something right! And easily! And quickly! They’re mailing me an extension on my driver’s license, so that it will remain valid until I get back to BC.

Swiss Air. Though they probably lost money on my flight from Zurich to Montreal, I’m thankful they didn’t cancel it. The plane was less than a quarter full - we each had a row to ourselves. Enough room to spread out, sprawl out for naps, and not care if the seats were fully reclined. I had a lovely conversation in Spanish, which pleased me as I really thought I’d forgotten that language. And then a French with a smattering of German conversation, comparing and contrasting women’s clothing/modesty in Judaism and Islam with a Catholic woman from Munich.

A fantastic welcome home from my parents and the friends I’m staying with.

SNOW! Landing in the snow was great. As we approached YUL, we were flying through the white clouds for twenty minutes. Once we descended from the clouds, the ground was white as far as I could see, which gave the illusion of still being in the clouds. It made for a trippy, but smooth, landing. Also, wearing crocs was great on the plane (comfy, easy to take off), but not such a great idea walking through the snow with my luggage from the car to the house. Wet crocs and toes! There are snow piles on every front lawn on this street - easily 3-3.5 metres tall. I’m in heaven.

Cuddles with the dog. Good talks. Many hugs. Good food. I’m happy to be back on this side of the pond.

And now, to sleep. Laila tov, bon soir, good night…

Photos!

I’ve updated the Winter in Jerusalem photo set to include more photos from the last snow “storm”, along with some from today’s.

And what do you do when it’s sleeting and hailing and snowing and thundering and raining and crazy wind blowing all in one night? Go to a friend’s for a MEAT date! (You too can have a MEAT date: find a friend with a fleishig kitchen, cook MEAT for your friends, maybe make some ’smores over the stove for dessert, drink a bunch of wine, neglect your Hebrew studies, and dance to the 80’s-a-thon on the teevee.)

Finally, we have some photos from ulpan at Hebrew University. Most of them are of the views, as requested by several of you. If you look closely, you’ll see a desert, goats, MS, and Palestinian neighbourhoods.