Life in Cowtown

There’s a neighborhood in Calgary that’s called Marda Loop, named for the owners of Marda Theater demolished long ago.  It’s a pretty area, one of the few non-homogenized pockets of the city, owing to old houses and independent businesses. Every year Marda Loop hosts the Marda Gras Street Festival – a one day event that riffs on the culture of New Orleans, and is a fun outing aimed at families. The streets are shut-down, traffic re-routed and kids and dogs get equally excited.

I haven’t been in a few years, and this year a friend and I went over, spurred by her proximity to the festival and the gorgeous weather, something that’s been in short supply this summer.

Every store was spilled out onto the sidewalk:

There were booths everywhere, selling absolutely everything:

Clothes:

Shoes:

Sunglasses:

There was tons of entertainment too, like belly dancers:

A mime:

Sidewalk chalk:

And the largest cutest dog I’ve seen in ages – the size of a small pony:

And of course, the food.

Oddly enough there weren’t that many food vendors out, we only saw about five or so, but the set up was great, with each vendor having small, fixed price dishes that you could enjoy at one of the many outdoor tables.

First we saw the Red Tree:

Where we had some amazing ribs. Very flavorful and moist, they were a sweet and tangy treat.

Then we moved on to Rasoi:

Where we had great veggie samosas. Crunchy with a delicate filling, they were full of potatoey goodness.

And some beef kabobs, seasoned with masala and oven roasted peppers.

These were a mild disappointment. The kabobs were made out of some overly-ground beef and had a very mushy texture. The seasoning overpowered the meat and the sauce they were slathered in was simply not very good. The ‘roasted’ peppers were barely broiled on the bbq, and didn’t really offer any roasted flavor or texture.  But washed down with some Kingfisher Beer they still went down like a breakfast of champions, to the tunes of Santana played by local musicians on the patio.

And of course, the festivities weren’t complete without some mini-donuts.

All in all it was a great way to spend a Sunday, and I look forward to going back again.

J and I frequently have fridge arguments. Specifically over expiry dates. More specifically, he looks at them and I don’t. Perhaps it’s my heritage – never have I lived in a country where milk lasted more than two days in the fridge before going bad, bread could sit on the counter for a week and supermarket sausage still look pink a week later, and never has there been an expiry date on anything other than prescription medicine. 

People could tell when food was going bad just by looks and smell and it’s worked just fine for hundreds of years. If you can’t tell when milk has gone bad, bread is going fuzzy or cheese is growing fur then an expiry date probably can’t help you either. It’s not foolproof after all – the package could have a small leak, could be sealed improperly or any number of things and the onus is on you, the consumer to ensure you don’t kill yourself.

Ever wonder what people used to do before some marketing genius decided to dramatically increase turnover by telling people when to throw food out? Yep, they used to have to rely on their senses to tell them that gosh, them blueberries are growing spores or the orange juice is green. Nowadays cans of soda and croutons have expiry dates, and the biggest joke – salad dressing. Why joke? Well because typically it’s so packed with vinegar, salt and preservatives to begin with, that in the event of nuclear armageddon it would likely be the one item standing, besides the Twinkie. Sour cream and yoghurt are already curdled products and chips get stale when opened, not poisonous.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know there are all sorts of contaminated foods out there floating around as it is – from salmonella tainted spinach to listeria covered meats, but reading the expiry dates didn’t keep anyone from getting sick anyway.  My precautionary measures are pretty simple – keep food cold, cook the surface thoroughly, keep work area clean and decontaminate miscellaneous surfaces, like knobs and such regularly. So far so splendid – I’m pretty much the only person I know that has never had serious food poisoning. Although to be fair, most people get food poisoning when eating out, but maybe my blithe lack of concern about expiry dates primes my immune system to fight off minor contaminations. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

When my family and I immigrated to Canada we happened to arrive in Newfoundland in December. I won’t even attempt to recoup the shock of coastal cold after three years of basking on a tropical island, but needless to say it was formidable. After being installed in a temporary apartment, we waited for the courts to hear our case and decide whether we’d be an asset to this fine young country. A new country is always a very exciting place to explore, especially if you haven’t seen too much of the world and become thoroughly jaded. Culturally, climatically, and historically Russia, Cuba and Newfoundland were very different indeed.

One of the first things we did, after unpacking our few suitcases, is go to the local grocery store. If memory serves it was a Dominion, and it was a small supermarket, the kind that thrives in many urban neighborhoods. I clearly remember the awe of that first trip. The bright lights, the sheer amount of food, the choices and the selection were simply overwhelming. I think we wandered around the store in a kind of happy daze, just window shopping and having the pleasurable feeling that no matter how long you shopped you could never try all of it.

We purchased some staples – milk, bread, eggs, cheese, potatoes, pasta and a few condiments – ketchup, mayo, sour cream and the like. Having never seen any of the brand names in our lives, my parents guided their decisions strictly on cost so I’m sure we ended up with some variant of a store brand for many things. We also bought some veggies – some year-rounders like potatoes and onions, and some items that seemed wonderfully absurd in December – melons or strawberries or something. Hauling all the bounty home we settled in to prepare our first few meals and compare these newfangled packages of shiny colorful labeling to the stuff that we’d previously only seen in paper, colorless tubs or in bulk.

Soon a slight puzzled look was exchanged by us as first suspicions and confusion set in. As we chewed and tasted there was a definite disappointment in the air as slowly the realization came that all this wonderfully packaged, shiny or out of season bounty simply tasted bad. The dairy was flat and bland tasting, as anyone who’s traveled to Europe and had European dairy can vouch for. (In fact the only Canadian dairy brand I’ve had that compares so far, is the justly renowned Liberty). The mayo had none of the rich, eggy taste that we later discovered in Hellmann’s, the cheese was also – well like every overprocessed, supermarket cheese. The out of season fruit were woody, tasteless and watery and the bread was fluffy and sweet. Somewhere along the line we realized that the food we’d eaten all our lives had way more taste and we should not feel bad over the opportunities we missed not having a supermarket nearby all our lives.

Over many years we discovered some fine supermarket brands, farmers markets for fresh fruit and vegetables, went to eating more seasonally again and for me, at least, found other wonderful local food producers that cared enough to deliver a delicious product. There were other compensations too – the rice no longer had to be picked through to weed out the debris and weevils, the flour came pre-sifted, new spices could be explored and wonderful new condiments to be discovered – hello soy sauce! Not to mention the foraging – oh the foraging. Every single summer without fail finds us in the woods near Calgary foraging for wild mushrooms. Since most of the population fears getting sick or dying (cause driving is not way more dangerous), the only foragers out there are fellow Europeans who can’t believe the bounty. Some years the forest floor teems with mushrooms that grow as thick as carpet and you can fill your trunk within a four foot radius. Forest berries though less frequent, can also be found and wild saskatoons, raspberries, blackberries and currants round out the wild pantry.

We’ve come a long ways since that first supermarket shopping trip, and some days I still think that someone should print a small guide to supermarket brands so that newly arrived Canadians have a hope in navigating the morass.