Life in Cowtown

I work in a downtown office like thousands of people.  Sadly I’ve been in this environment for several years now, and soul-sucking as it may be, it pays the bills and indulges my many and varied interests. It also sucks away much time and energy to indulge those interests, but that’s a different rant altogether. Most of the time I’m a very laissez-faire person, pretty unflappable, and while others indulge in the exciting office drama of missing staplers and corporate take-over rumors, I just sit quietly and watch the action. But. There are some things that just escape my comprehension, and it’s just been a week where I feel the need to get it off my chest.

• People who lick their fingers before rifling through a stack of printouts: keep your mouth germs to yourselves please. I will go through the trouble of reprinting my work rather than touching the saliva tainted papers. Seriously, why?

• People who don’t wash their hands after bathroom breaks. I’ve read tons of blogs that point out that this is sadly rather prevalent in male bathrooms. Well, I’m here to shatter some illusions and tell you that it ain’t that different on the other side.  Most people at least have the courtesy to limit that behavior to when they’re alone, but several times in recent months I’ve heard the telltale flush, exit… and the door opening. There isn’t enough Purell in the world to get rid of that feeling of contamination.

• Office cleaners that don’t clean. At all. I mean, it’s a pretty common complaint all over offices. The property mgmt company hires some huge company, that’s staffed exclusively by new arrivals with more problems on their minds than making sure they diligently wipe down that sink for five bucks an hour.  I get it. But it has been my belief that they really don’t do anything other than remove garbage. They may push the vacuum down the middle of the hall, and lift up the toilet seats in the bathroom in an attempt to convince us of their cleanliness, but my office is certainly not graced with said vacuum very often, nor are the really gross bits ever touched, like doorknobs, faucets, and the bathroom floor.

• Stay home if you’re sick. No, contrary to your inflated sense of self-worth the world will not stop spinning if you’re not here to prop it up. But if you feel the need to drag your red-eyed self here and sit slumped in a cold drug coma, then have the decency to stay out of my office while you bond with your viruses.

Whew, it’s been a week. While often I marvel at the human diversity on this planet and ponder how people who share over ninety-nine percent of their DNA can be so vastly and uniquely different, there are many other times when all I can do is shake my head. Some unique snowflakes just have their own special place in their minds. And my patience for stupidity is getting weaker and weaker with age. God help me, I’m going to be worse than Maxine if I should live that long.

I’ve been too lazy to haunt the farmers markets for the last two weekends, which is rather inexcusable since fall is coming oh so soon, but I have not been too lazy to eat. Since my lazyness perfectly dovetailed with another Serious Eats Weekend Cook And Tell: Too Hot edition, I gleefully participated.

Many people suggested all sorts of delicious sounding recipes that don’t require a stove, like salads and gazpacho, but when true laziness strikes one cannot be bothered with chopping, washing, plating and all that other mundane stuff called cooking. Instead I went with my ultimate fall-back technique – shopping. I’m a champion shopper, and did not disappoint myself, by traveling to the wonders of Blush and indulging myself.

Blush Lane is a wonderful addition to the Calgary food scene, taking care to source local and organic foods that are reasonably priced as well as delicious. I’ve shopped at their farmer’s market stand before and was overjoyed when their store opened. To date I’ve seen small baskets of Hotchkiss tomatoes that were pure heaven and a source of local pride, organic apples that tasted like honey, summer and freshness all in one bite, and rainbow carrots that were so delicious we ate half before we had a chance to cook them.

But serious efforts require serious sustenance, so this foray included:

The best, sweetest, most tomatoey tomatoes I’ve ever had:

A wedge of perfectly ripe Brie:

Incredible dried beef Salami:

And people, I totally popped over to A Ladybug Café next door, for a loaf of rye bread:

And the single greatest lemon tart in the whole world:

When I got home, all I had to do was slice up a tomato, and artfully arrange a beautiful still life that makes for one of my favorite things to eat – a composed plate. Washed down with some red wine it was a wonderful repast – dried, spicy salami with an intense beefy flavor, perfectly smooth brie, incredible tomatoes and a dark, earthy rye.  Nothing could be easier or more satisfying.

James recently went out for a quick mid-week drive to visit his parents in BC, and returned bearing gifts. Seemed fitting to me, since I had to stay here and work and feed the starving hordes cats and all. He returned bearing the single largest squash I’ve ever seen (larger than my cat), and some wonderful, fantastic, frozen salmon caught by my father-in-law.

Here’s a photo of the squash:

I know that mature squash are supposed to be less tender than baby squashes, but James assures me that this is not the case. Apparently if hollowed, stuffed with chopped flesh, garlic and herbs and barbecued, it becomes an amazing treat. I’m adding some bread crumbs to test that theory. But the salmon sang to us with its rosy perfection, and was cooked that very night, served on a simple bed of rice.

With fish that good, you hardly have to do anything to it – a light sprinkle of salt, some slivered garlic, a julienned hot pepper, and some lemon juice was all we did, and really it was gilding the lily.

It was quite thick too

Baked for about twenty minutes it was  fragrant, warm silky perfection. We didn’t take a photo of the finished shot as we were busy drooling and dishing the rice.

It was awesome.