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.....
 

With Aeroplan, "It's NOT that easy"

A key reason that we can afford to travel during our year-off  is that we've been collecting Aeroplan points for the past five years.

Tricia travels internationally for her work and thus has collected quite a few frequent flier miles. We've also found ways to collect points via credit card loyalty programs and other tricks -- although we've not gone as far as that George Clooney character in "Up in the Air" (e.g. ordering extra meals in a restaurant just to earn more frequent flier points). 

Our plan all along was to book what's called a "mini-RTW" or "mini-Round-the-World" trip in which you fly say from Toronto West over the Pacific to Singapore on a return ticket; however, instead of flying back the way you came (i.e. East), you keep going west until you get back home. This actually requires the same number of Aeroplan points as a simple return ticket, and you can have a stop-over on the way there (e.g. Hawaii) and one on the way home (e.g. Berlin) at no extra charge. 

It's NOT that easy

When it finally came time to cash in these points last Fall, however, we realized that unlike what Aeroplan's slogan claims, it's actually not that easy. Tricia must have called 10 times, spending up to 2 hours on the phone each time, trying to find a way to fly to New Zealand on points. Getting there was straight-forward,  but there always seemed to be a reason that they couldn't route the ticket out of New Zealand via Europe. This was probably due to some Byzantine rule about the maximum variation of mini-RTW distance vs. a simple return ticket, or perhaps they just didn't want us to squeeze out every last penny of value from our points. 

After call number 10, we realized that a mini-RTW including New Zealand just wasn't going to happen, so we dropped a visit to Middle Earth from our list of "pillars". But once we scaled our plans back, booking our actual ticket was fairly straight-forward.  After two more calls, we managed to secure the following itinerary (see the Prezi below), and we're thrilled to be able to do this for a fraction of the cost of paying regular fare.