A Blessing of Friends

As keen as we are to go #thataway for the next year, we know that we will miss our friends and neighbours while we frappez la rue. So it seemed fitting  that we throw a party ere we depart. 

Trish and I have been married now for something like 19 years, which I suppose is long enough to call some of our odder habits "traditions".

One of these traditions is to open up our house for big parties. This started back when we were grad students with the De-Alienation From Your Labour Day Salsa Making Collective Party, and it continued with Monster Potlucks of 70+ people when we lived at The Blob, a two-year experience of living in intentional community.

More recently, our fetes have included the Biannual Waffle Extravaganza on New-Year's Day, and a super-secret-surprise party for Trish's 40th party in which we demonstrated our great love for her through skullduggery, deception and covert acts of catering.

Through these exxperiments and double-blind, randomized control trials, we've discovered that the formula for a great party is really quite simple:  good lighting, a great playlist, an electic mix of amazing friends of all ages, some simple but yummy food, a wee bit of something to drink, and a Grandiose Title -- preferably with a #hashtag :-) 

This time for our #thataway bash, we invited singer-songwriter, Craig Cardiff to play. Craig tours all across Canada, peforming at bars, concert halls, churches and festivals, but in between he loves to play smaller private functions like this. I first heard him play at our neighbour's house concert and his songs have been on high-repeat on my shower-serenading set-list ever since. 

Craig's poignant songs, solid guitar work, sing-along-choruses and father-daughter dance smack down competitions, together with technical, logistical and moral support from some friends, turned our back yard into a Mid-Summer-Night's Dream. It was lovely to see so many folks together and to say goodbye; we will miss you.

Ahh, yes, to misquoteth the Bard, Partying is such sweet sorrow. 

Here are a few pictures from the bash. 

Operation Mother Hubbard

As we prepare to go #thataway for the year, we've been busy fixing up our house for our tenant, decluttering all the extra "stuff" that accumulates in closets, shelves and basements after 10 years in a house.  It has been an interesting exercise in deciding, detachment, and ditching. 

We've also needing to decide what to do with the remaining food in our pantry and freezer. This includes:

• a surplus of Italian tomato sauce that we've canned over the years;

• a surfeit of tomato soup stock -- a by-product of the aforementioned tomato sauce production process --- that we canned or froze, but somehow never got around to using; 

• several kilograms of various dried beans and sundry lentils at the back of our pantry -- carbon-dating test-results revealed that they may have migrated here from our last apartment, circa 2003...

• umpteen bottles of exotic Chinese, Thai or Mexican sauces that we probably aren't going to finish before we head off on August 1;

• still more lentils, pulses, peas and beans -- what we're we thinking?; 

• remnants of baking ingredients: flour, chocolate chips, shredded coconut, some unidentified seeds that probably boost your something or other;

• 20 kg of Thai rice that we had cached in the basement in anticipation of either Y2K Part 2 or the Harper-Zombie Apocalypse, I forget which...

• spices, spices and more spices!

So as not to waste these still-useful foodstuffs, we've undertaken Operation Mother Hubbard -- a multi-sectoral, all-of-household approach to cooking, using or other-wise disposing of these treasures from our cupboards.  This operation began initially with a festival of pasta and minestrone, until the kids asked us to stop.

It continued with Trish dutifully inventorying all the items in our pantry on a "DO NOT under any circumstances buy more of these items" list. Whenever we finish any item, we gleefully cross it off our list. 

But of course, as this list gets shorter, the menu combinations get weirder: What, pray tell, can we make tonight using oyster sauce, bread crumbs, split peas and dijon mustard?  

Other items have been "re-gifted" to appreciative (or otherwise) neighbours, and the remainder has been consigned to that great-big-compost-pile-in-the-sky -- well, actually just at the back of the garden. With this rich legacy of lentils, we currently are buying only fresh food items -- milk, cheese, yogurt, fruit and vegetables, etc.   

So if you happen to be passing by and would like a bottle of Sriracha sauce, do let us know.....