I really enjoyed "Heart of Darkness" so I thought I'd read something else by Joseph Conrad and Nostromo is widely considered one of his finest novels.

It took me a while to get into the book, and it took me a long time to finish it, but I still enjoyed it. Tales of heroics are layered on top of the efforts of one rich and powerful European man (Gould) fighting against the corruption of various governments in a fictional South American country (which happens to closely resemble Columbia).

Greed is rampant and swirls around Gould constantly as he is the owner of a very productive silver mine. To me the book seems to be a criticism of European imperialist policies as there are many attempts by Gould and his peers to impose order on the indigenous people much in the same way the western world today tries to impose democracy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Their failures are many and the costs of their successes are high.

Anyway, it's a good book, but a lot of work as it is easy to lose track of what is going on if you're not diligent in your reading. I feel like I should read it again someday over a shorter time frame and with greater focus.

Further to my previous post, I have today accomplished one of those forever postponed activities related to my blog. I can now apply "tags" to my posts for the purposes of categorization. Posts with tags will show them at the end of the body text but before the comments link. I haven't done anything else fancy with the tags yet but that might come in time. The main benefit of this for me is to get a bit more searchability in the future related to my cooking posts.

This activity took me a couple hours and was another exercise in letting go. I had lots of ideas for a perfect tagging implementation that were holding me back from doing anything at all. I wanted to use it as learning oppourtunity for Web 2.0 stuff and make it so that when I'm tagging things I get fancy dynamic feedback on already existing tags. But that's a lot of work and research and if I'm honest I just don't care enough. So I did something super ugly and hacky but it still works great for my needs. End result? I have tags and it didn't take up much time.

I do this sort of prioritization at work all the time with no problem, but for some reason I still have trouble doing it for personal projects.

Like many people I have a list of things I'd like to do "someday" that I never actually get around to due to matters of prioritization. One item on that list is to add a recipe tool to this blog with lots of cool features to help me track and share my cooking adventures.

As of today, I am scratching that item off the list. Not because I've done it but because I recognize that I likely never will. By accepting this fact and moving on I remove one small thing hanging over my head and no longer have to feel even a tiny amount of guilt for not doing it.

Furthermore, I often refrained from sharing stories about cooking on this blog because I wanted to wait until I created the recipe tool so that I could share "properly." I also realized that I don't cook in a way that lends itself to exact recipes anymore; the tool I envisioned would actually be a bit of a hindrance.

So from now on I plan to simply write about things I cook in free-form blog posts when the mood strikes me. This shall be the first.

Over New Year's this year Mike, Matt and Adrienne all stayed with me at my apartment. New Year's Day we all lazily sat around watching Netflix and eating. Then Adrienne randomly made apple sauce for everyone and my mind was blown because I didn't know you could just make apple sauce any time you wanted. I think it only took her half an hour and then we all shared this delicious treat.

A few weeks ago I bought a 3lb bag of apples that turned out to be pretty crap for eating. Rather than ignore them until they went bad and then throw them out I decided to make apple sauce. Adrienne just cooked them on the stove top with cinnamon but I wanted to see if I could kick it up a notch so I searched for some tips on the Internet. As is my usual style I merged many recipes and added my own modifications so that what I made did not really resemble anything I found. The end result was delicious though!

To make my apple sauce I peeled, cored and chopped a bunch of apples (less than 3lbs but more than 2lbs). Then I put the apples in a big pot with a bit of water, a big knob of butter (several tablespoons worth at least), a generous amount of cinnamon, some nutmeg, cardamon, a bit of maple syrup and a squeeze of lemon juice. I then cooked it slowly (stirring regularly) until the apples had broken down and the volume had reduced considerably. Finally I used an immersion blender to blend until smooth. The combination of spices and butter gives the sauce the taste of apple pie. It's amazing at any temperature and freezes well too. I have since made another batch using Northern Spy apples and it was even better. I suspect one could attain even greater results with a mixture of different types of apples.

A nice side-effect of this recipe is that the smell of spicy apples filled my apartment for days after making it (in a good way).

I don't think I'll ever buy apple sauce again.

If I were to make a list of the most important and cherished bits of my childhood from my current perspective as an adult Calvin and Hobbes would be very close to the top of that list. I also believe that if I were to form such a list from my perspective as a child it would also be near the top of that list. I still own all of the original Calvin and Hobbes books, many of which I bought myself with whatever money I received as gifts or allowance. I spent countless hours reading and re-reading them and they are dog-eared with love.

Thanks to Adrienne, who had an extra copy, I now also own the beautiful hardcover edition of "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes" which gathers all of the strips and bonus material ever produced by the masterful Bill Watterson into a three-volume collection with the glorious Sunday strips printed in full colour. It is truly a monument to his creation (quite literally as it weighs 23.7 pounds).

I have not re-read any Calvin and Hobbes in many years, so it was an absolute joy to read them all start-to-finish in large format with full colour. Also, with years of additional life perspective many of the strips and the overall tone of the work take on new meaning. The art in the comic is frequently gorgeous, but the text is the true strength. Many strips are dense with words. The vocabulary is extensive and the social commentary subtle. I like to think that although I did not understand everything in Calvin and Hobbes as a child it still shaped my world view and provided me with a point of reference upon encountering new situations as I moved through the end of childhood and the first stages of being an adult.

Even now, the themes continue to be valuable. Presence in the moment; appreciation of nature; the value of friendship; finding fun in all that is around you; and most importantly imagination. These topics never become insignificant.

Like Neil Gaiman's The Sandman Calvin and Hobbes is not "just a comic." It is art. For parents of young children I cannot recommend Calvin and Hobbes strongly enough as a way to entertain them while encouraging them to think differently about the world around us.

If you've never read Calvin and Hobbes, the best way to experience it is to get a physical copy of one of the many collections and just read it. Preferably someplace quiet and alone, without the distractions of life. For anyone looking for more perspective on the work and its famously private and principled creator Bill Watterson, check out the excellent documentary Dear Mr. Watterson.

My blogging has been a bit non-existent lately as I've been travelling a bunch in the pursuit of my favourite winter activity: snowboarding. First I went to Tahoe and then to Whistler. Both were amazing and I was able to share them with amazing friends. I've written up the usual trip journal with lots of photos. The text is a bit more terse than I'd prefer because I made the mistake of not keeping notes while travelling.

Sadly the season has come to an end for me. But I'm already starting to think about where to go next year. Utah perhaps? Or maybe Colorado. Or...both?

I really enjoy Canadian literature. I could patriotically assert that it's because Canadian authors are the best, but I suspect my enjoyment is more a result of a greater sense of place. When you live nearby to the setting of a story, or when it is someplace you yourself used to visit regularly as a child, the story becomes much more powerful.

I've read a bunch from many Canadian authors including Margaret Atwood, Mordecai Richler, Robertson Davies, Michael Ondattje, Douglas Coupland and more. But never Alice Munro, a fact that made me feel a bit remiss until her win of the Nobel Prize in literature turned that feeling into one of outright negligence. Not only is she highly decorated (three-time winner of the Governor General's Award and winner of the Man Booker Prize), but she is a specialist in short stories (which I love) and much of her work is set in Huron County, Ontario (a place I spent a lot of time in my childhood).

So I picked one of her collections at random (and found out later it happened to have won the Giller Prize in 1998 -- just another in her stack of awards). The eight stories in the collection are some of the most powerful I've ever read (David Foster Wallace's Oblivion is the only other collection to have touched me as deeply). Munro seems to have an amazing knack for communicating emotion and as a result the stories are sticky. They stick to your brain and won't leave. I read the book slowly due to busy-life-syndrome, but just now a ten second flip through each story brought them all back to me in stunning clarity. The level of characterization she achieves is incredible given the length of the works. The way her narratives can go absolutely anywhere is literally breath-taking.

I will definitely be reading more from Munro soon.

On a bit of a whim, Rob (who is up from Houston on work) and I decided to go to Canoe for dinner tonight as neither of us had ever experienced what is widely considered one of Toronto's best restaurants. Situated on the penthouse level of one of the TD buildings it certainly has one of the best views!

Although Winterlicious is on, it's almost impossible to get Winterlicious reservations at Canoe so we were "stuck" with the regular menu (and prices). We each ended up getting the chef's tasting menu, which was as follows:

Chef's tasting menu tonight at Canoe (I had the venison for my main course)

Both Rob and I loved that the theme was chocolate and absolutely everything on the menu was superb. The other nice thing was that nothing on the menu was something I currently have the skill to reproduce myself. As far as the food goes, the most revelatory thing for me was the vanilla poached apricots that were part of the dessert. I've never tasted apricots like that before, and now I never want to taste any other kind again.

Despite the awesomeness of the food and the amazing views and the excellent service, the highlight for me was the beer. Last May I dragged my mom down crazy single track roads in Belgium in order to visit the Westvleteren Brewery so that I could buy some Westvleteren XII; considered one of the best beers in the world and rather hard to acquire outside of Belgium. Unfortunately they were all out when we arrived so I had to make due with one of their other (still excellent) brews. But tonight I remedied that failure because Canoe has bottles of Westvleteren XII! And not only that, they allowed me to keep my empty bottle and when the manager noticed me walking out with it he stopped me to give me a "special gift." Two Westvleteren XII branded glasses!

Westvleteren XII glasses and bottle!

So yeah, I'd definitely recommend Canoe if you're ever looking for fine dining in Toronto.

The only thing linking the twenty-one short stories contained in this collection is the pedigree of the authors. Side-by-side are works by the likes of Margaret Atwood, Gabriel García Márquez, Arthur Miller, Salman Rushdie, Christa Wolf, Woody Allen and John Updike.

But there is no central theme. The stories have been donated for use royalty-free by the authors and the proceeds of the sales of the book are being donated to HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment.

And with no central theme it is difficult to write about the collection as a whole without discussing each story individually; a task too large for a single blog post.

So I'll just say that it is an excellent little book with stories that take you all over the world while touching on a huge range of the aspects of human life.

Margaret Atwood recently released the final book of her speculative fiction trilogy that began in 2003 and with "Oryx and Crake." In order to properly prepare myself for "MaddAddam" I reread the first two books and so I should be able to talk about them here all at once with some level of clarity.

I use the term speculative fiction for the trilogy because that is how Atwood sees it. A less considered classification would file the novels as science fiction but that would be a disservice to the work. Atwood explicitly points out in the afterword that, "Although MaddAddam is a work of fiction, it does not include any technologies of biobeings that do not already exist, are not under construction, or are not possible in theory." She has tried to paint the story of a plausible future, a task for which she is well-skilled (see "The Handmaid's Tale" for example). The trilogy is intensely dystopian for sure, but at no point are the events unimaginable.

MaddAddam follows a similar format to the other two books, tracking the trials of characters in a post-apocalyptic world while in parallel reliving the events leading up to the apocalypse through flashbacks to the characters' past. MaddAddam sees the characters of "Oryx and Crake" and those of "The Year of the Flood" meet up in the present and struggle to find safety and security in the new world. It provides a satisfying end to the trilogy without giving easy answers to the problems of the protagonists. It's not clear they will survive, but it is possible to see how they might.

Like the human protagonists, the future of the Crakers (a genetically-engineered species of neo-humans) is also left uncertain. They are peripheral characters in all three books, but even in that role it is possible to see them evolve and change. Their progenitor intended for them to be perfect and to avoid the mistakes of humanity's runaway intelligence, but it's not clear he succeeded.

I think all that is left unsaid is part of what is so great about the books. Atwood strikes a nice balance between explicit exposition and leaving things open to your own imagination. The unanswered questions are not frustrating, they are intriguing. They stick around in your mind for days.

This trilogy was excellent and I think it would appeal to anyone.

I went to the Bay Area in October and I had an absolutely fantastic time. But it wasn't the sort of trip that warrants an entry on my trips page. It was a trip of fun times with the best of friends. But there's no real cohesive narrative and not many photos so it wouldn't work well in my usual style.

Half-way through my trip I realized that everything I had eaten to that point was special so I started writing it all down and continued to do so for the rest of my time in California. I meant to make a quick post of it all upon returning home, but time gets away. So I'm doing it now, better late than never.

Saturday was the beginning. Mike and I hit up the Ferry Building where I had this epic turkey and avocado open-faced bagel sandwich thing from Wise Sons Deli along with a slice of Pluot-blackberry pie and a bunch of free hummus samples. Oh, and also what have to be the best tomatoes I've ever tasted. Seriously, it was like summer in my mouth. Is produce always that good in California? Later on we went to La Boulange Bakery and I had quiche, a really good almond croissant and this amazing mango pop. Finally, as if this wasn't all good enough, Mike and I went for dinner at the Nihon Whisky Lounge. We had an array of Japanese-style tapas dishes including a mushroom tempura that was so good. And I hate mushrooms. Plus I had three different new scotches which were all pretty great too (Nikka 21yo, Caol Ila 16yo, Ardbeg Corryvreckan). After dinner we got hummus, beer and mochi ice cream from Healthy Spirits, a speciality liquor store near Mike's house. All three of these things were great.

On Sunday we got up and met Frank, Jess and Michal for brunch at Gussie's where we had fried chicken with waffles, cheesy grits, buttermilk biscuits, deep fried cheesy grits and candied yams. This was served with brown sugar syrup and it was all totally delicious. Like stupid good, and incapacitating. So we rolled on home and didn't eat again until supper when we had homemade salad with more hummus and mochi ice cream as well as an ataulfo mango and some fresh guava. To drink we had this brilliant tea made by TWG in Singapore especially for Dean & Deluca. It was a mix of green and white and is possibly the best tea I've ever tasted.

On Monday I had mini bananas (so cute) with almond butter for breakfast and then went to this cool Mexican restaurant for lunch with some people from the Autodesk San Francisco office. The place was packed and I could tell why given the food. Dinner was with Mike and Sivanny at a Chinese restaurant called Spices 2 where we shared a bunch of dishes, the best of which was a basil and eggplant plate that was just so good. For dessert Mike and I shared a Blueberry Cheesecake crepe which was as good as it sounds.

Tuesday breakfast was a repeat, but for lunch I went back to the ferry building and had a pulled pork sandwich with coleslaw and a really good (but pricey) apple. For dinner Mike and I went to Super Duper Burger and had garlic fries and pickles in addition to one of the best burgers I've ever eaten. Then we went to a free Macallan Scotch tasting event where we got to try the 10yo, 12yo, 15yo and 18yo Macallan's while a Scottish MC led us through with tasting notes. Super amazing. After that we had spanakopita and some Stalk and Barrel whisky back at Mike's place.

On Wednesday I switched from staying at Mike's house to staying with Matt and Adrienne in Cupertino. For breakfast I finished up the mini bananas and then didn't eat again till I got to south bay. First I had some homemade fig newtons from Adrienne which were great and I hope to make myself soon. For dinner we had stuff from the Apple cafeteria including a really good salad and this thai-style soup along with a chickpea noodle dish. The Apple cafeteria is kind of glorious. For dessert we had some awesome apple cake Adrienne made using four different types of apples along with some "Sea Salt and Turbinado Sugar" dark chocolate almonds and some chile-spiced dried mango, both from Trader Joe's.

On Thursday I had toast with fig butter for a quick breakfast and then met some co-workers back in San Francisco for brunch at Brenda's French Soul Food. First we shared some apple beignets which were basically the ideal form of doughnut. Then I had pork belly and a poached egg on top of cheesy grits with onion relish. I could eat that breakfast every single day and never tire of it. It was that good. I had lunch in the ILM cafeteria and it was sushi and seaweed salad prepared fresh in front on me by an actual sushi chef. So friggin' good. To drink I had raspberry-chia kombucha which seemed properly San Franciscan of me. For dinner I went back to Super Duper Burger with Matt and Adrienne and then I finished the day with the same food I started with: I took them back to Brenda's for more apple beignets. Oh, and later on we had the most gingery ginger beer I've ever tasted and it was great.

On Friday I had some yogurt and berries for breakfast before heading to the Cupertino Farmer's Market where I got to sample the best strawberries ever. They were fresh...on November 1!! Crazy. We bought a bunch of fresh produce to make a really good salad which we topped with a Meyer lemon and chile dressing. I also tried a sample of raw milk (tasted like normal milk) and a sample of persimmon. For dinner we did Mexican and I had a really yummy pork dish with a fresh strawberry-mango agua fresca. For dessert I had an excellent imperial stout from Stone Brewery and a chocolate-peanut butter malt ball from Whole Foods.

On Saturday I had fancy Jersey Cow milk yogurt from France out of a ceramic jar with fresh berries and sprouted almonds for breakfast. To drink I had fresh squeezed orange juice which was even better than the fresh orange juice I had in Florida long ago. In Monterey I had an apple galette and a double espresso at this excellent hidden bakery. Then for lunch we ate corn chips with homemade roasted hatch pepper salsa, fancy old cheddar, fig butter, roasted honey peanut butter, crackers, almonds, strawberries, salt water taffy (bacon maple flavour and chile mango flavour) and more of the fancy salt and sugar coated chocolate almonds. For dinner we found this great Thai restaurant in Morgan Hill called Siam Thai where I had a seafood eggplant curry dish with really good spring rolls. For dessert we had a Kouign amann which is croissant-type pastry with caramelized sugar on it.

On Sunday, for breakfast, I had more of the fresh orange juice along with...a pumpkin croissant! So good! Also we shared a pomelo which is like a mild grapefruit that is super challenging to peel. Lunch was a stupid amount of amazing food from Oren's Hummus, including the best hummus and best baba ganoush I've ever eaten. The baba ganoush was so smokey, like a good scotch! I topped it off with a Turkish coffee and then went home to Toronto.

So yeah, there is my trip as told by the food. As epic as the food was, I had an even better time with the people I visited. So yeah, really good trip.