Sheryl Kirby

Cupcakes For Daniel

I can’t remember the last time I baked anything from a mix. Greg had a passing fancy with a disappointing Boston Cream Pie mix at one point when I had a broken arm and he was attempting to do some of the cooking, but it was a sad affair that we agreed never to repeat. Besides usually being not very good, cake mixes have the uncanny ability to suck absolutely all the fun out of baking. Dump powder, add water or milk. Stir. Meh. I get that this is exactly the amount of effort that is desired by people who do not like to bake but for some reason want to “make a cake”, as opposed to going out to a nice bakery and buying something. But for those of us that dig the process, it’s not a lot of fun.

Which is why this particular box of cake mix is such a conundrum.

When Greg’s uncle Daniel passed away at the end of November, he left an apartment full of stuff that needed to be dealt with. Daniel wasn’t a hoarder, but he definitely had some packrat tendencies, and his tiny little apartment often felt like a delicate dollhouse to my lumbering built-like-a-brick-shithouse frame, exacerbated by the fact that there was so much stuff everywhere.

As Daniel spent most of his adult life working as a chef, much of what he collected was food-related. Every time I saw him, he gifted me with cookbooks, or baking pans or little gadgets and utensils. Many of these he’d pick up at thrift shops and yard sales, treasures that he couldn’t pass up but likely knew he’d never need.

Continue reading “Cupcakes For Daniel”

Hell Is Other People

So we seem to mostly be dealing with the chaos that life has handed us these past couple of months. I think we’re actually over the hump. I can look at a picture of Bowie without crying; that’s something at least.

And in trying to make some sense out of it all, to accept all that has happened, I keep playing various scenarios over in my mind. Particularly ones with other people. That is, remembering who stepped up and who got in the way. None of the “getting in the way” folks did so intentionally, I don’t think, but there’s a real social cluelessness that seems amplified when it comes to death. I don’t know if it’s simply that I am/was more sensitive to it, or if it’s because people are just uncomfortable dealing with grief in general.

But some of the things people said or did with regards to our situation are just mind-boggling.

The worst had to be the questions. Bowie was a neighbourhood fixture. And when he was gone, people noticed. Some people noticed and said nothing, aware that the answer to what they were thinking was none of their business, and using their brains to conclude that if the lady with two dogs is now seen with only one dog, that it might not be the best time to ask her where he had gone.

Continue reading “Hell Is Other People”

Goodbye Daniel

It is said that funerals are not for the dead but are an event wholly for the living – a way to mourn, celebrate and accept the passing of a loved one. And the people who attended the funeral of Greg’s uncle Daniel most definitely did all of the above.

If I had to come up with one word to describe the event, I’d have to say “Toronto”. Not that Daniel, or the event to celebrate his life, was all about civic pride, but rather that the event and the people who attended it represented everything that is good and wonderful about this city. Daniel was the hub for people from so many different cultures and walks of life to come together. Coming from a family who are Catholic and having lived for some years as a monk, Daniel moved to Toronto in the late 70s when he accepted that he was gay. I’m not a religious person, so I can’t speak to what compels a religious type of spirituality, but his dissatisfaction with the Catholic church and their stance on homosexuality provoked Daniel to explore other religions and methods of spirituality, and with that, other cultures.

He planned the service himself before he passed. Held in a United church and encompassing prayers from the Dominican friars from the University of Toronto (he worked as their personal chef for many years), it also included passages from the Koran, the Torah, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead as well as meditation and other prayers and hymns. One of the Dominicans sang the most beautiful a capella version of Ava Maria I’ve ever heard. After the service the reception included Indian sweets like jalebi and burfi – Daniel had always dreamed of going to India so Indian sweets were a perfect fit.

Continue reading “Goodbye Daniel”

Stress Cooking

If there is one phrase, one turn of words that is guaranteed to drive me insane, it is the well-intentioned but patronizing assurance that “there’s nothing you can do about it, so there’s no point in worrying”. Again, I know that this is meant with good intentions, as a way to help the person in question stop worrying and calm down. But in a genuinely dire or horrific situation, who among us is able to quiet our minds and turn our attention to something else? It’s possible, but not easy, and if you’re a type A control freak, damned near impossible. Situations where there is nothing I can do are exactly when I worry the most, because I am helpless to create a positive outcome. It’s why people are sent off to boil water when a woman goes into labour – gives them something to do to keep them from being underfoot and lets them think they’re helping in some way.

In the stressful situations where there is nothing I can do to achieve a positive outcome (which, by the above theory, makes me even more stressed), I cook. Lots. Mass quantities of things – restaurant quantities – just to keep my hands and mind busy, so that I might, for a short while, stop worrying. It seldom does stop the worrying completely, the issue is still there at the back of my head, throbbing like a migraine dulled by pain medicine but not completely cured. But at least I’m not just sitting there fussing. At least there’s something to show for my nervous energy.

Back in my concert production days, I’d manage my way through the lead-up to shows by cooking. In 1998, when we presented Convergence and had 500 people from all over the world coming in to Toronto for the weekend, Greg and I threw a BBQ in our backyard as a pre-festival party for the bands and selected guests. This was less of a huge gesture of hospitality and more of a way to find people to eat the mass quantities of food that I was churning out in the days before the event as I waited to see who cleared customs, whether the venues were able to meet our technical specs or if I was going to have to find a legal pyrotechnic set-up at the 11th hour (and does our insurance even cover pyrotechnics??)?

Continue reading “Stress Cooking”

Routine Changes

One of the prerequisites of living with dogs is that you have to like routine. Dogs are creatures of habit; they like the important events of their lives (walks, dinner) to take place at the same time every day, and can get easily stressed if the schedule deviates. Losing a dog can mean that a human’s schedule, previously based around the dog’s schedule, can go a bit loopy.

Tula is still with us, of course, and we’re working hard to keep things as normal as we can for her, because she’s still very stressed at Bowie being gone. Keeping our lives as similar as they were before helps us too. We need that 7am walk every day to wake us up and prepare ourselves for the day. We need the system and the regularity of having to be home to feed or walk Tula at a certain time, just because it helps us to organize our days better.

There are little things that are missing, though, little scenarios we’d play out with Bowie that Tula doesn’t do. For instance, after the morning walk, Bowie would wait impatiently while I removed my coat and shoes, washed my hands, put my hair back and put on house shoes before feeding him. Every single morning he’d bark at me to hurry up, follow me into the bedroom while I put my shoes on, stomp around, bark at me some more, and then finally herd me out into the hallway and through the dining room to the kitchen to dish up his breakfast. We’d see the border collie in him at this time – he’d have nipped at my heels to get me to move faster if he thought he’d have been able to get away with it.

Continue reading “Routine Changes”

Chefs Versus Bloggers

In pretty much every conversation I’ve had with a chef in the past, oh, month, the topic of bloggers has come up. Usually it’s the bloggers who show up on the first day of a restaurant opening and trash the place in a review because things are not perfect. Chefs and restaurateurs seem not to know how to handle this kind of criticism, and when they ask me for advice (like I’d know!) I’m at a loss as to what to tell them.

I mean, it’s not as if I’m anti-blogger. I really believe that the future of food writing exists online; I run a number of blogs myself, run a blogging network and somehow convinced myself that creating the Canadian Food Blog Awards would be an easy thing to do to promote food bloggers in this country (umm… yes, I did pretty much just make a 2nd full time job for myself). But I still don’t have the answer.

What I really want to do is give the bloggers who do these (usually poorly written) too-early restaurant reviews a smack in the head. I mean, there’s one school of thought that says that some person on the internet with no qualifications or expertise isn’t going to be able to affect the business of a restaurant, that most people don’t even pay attention to blogger restaurant reviews, instead relying on long-time experts for the major dailies and weeklies who have the experience and writing skills to back up their opinions. But I’ve also seen (and talked to) a lot of restaurant owners and chefs who are mighty worked up about a shitty review or comment on some site like Yelp or Chowhound.

Continue reading “Chefs Versus Bloggers”

Stirring the Pot with Chef Doug McNish

Chef Doug McNish began cooking at the age of 15 and immediately fell in love with the kitchen, which he describes as an environment like no other in the world. At the age of 21 he had ballooned up to 270 pounds and needed to make a change in his life. After watching a video of how animals are treated in slaughter houses and learning to understand health and nutrition, he became a vegetarian and 6 months later a vegan. He lost almost 100 pounds and completely changed the direction of his career. He went from working the grill at The Air Canada Centre to tossing salads in Kensington Market, which he considers to be the best choice he ever made. He is now the Executive Chef of Raw Aura (94 Lakeshore Road East, Mississauga).

What inspired you to become a chef?

I fell in love with cooking because of the honest hard work, creativity, teamwork and the ability to make people happy by feeding them. I knew I would never be out if a job, because everyone has to eat right?

Continue reading “Stirring the Pot with Chef Doug McNish”

Chicken Math (With Some Physics Thrown In)

The question:

Sheryl has a deep freezer full of food, which includes 4 frozen chickens. She needs to make room in the freezer for for 5 bags of Christmas cookies. She removes 1 chicken and cooks it, resulting in 8 servings of meat, 4 of which are eaten and 4 of which are placed in containers to become part of a chicken pot pie. If she returns the 4 uneaten portions of meat to the freezer, along with the chicken carcass to use for stock at a future date, how many bags of cookies will fit in the freezer? Note – Show your work or points will be deducted.

Students unable to complete the question through standard mathematical formulae are welcome attempt to solve the problem using physics. Those wishing to attempt to find a solution using Freezer Tetris™, please contact the professor to book an examination date.

There’s (Tasty) Magic in the Fair

Okay, it’s sort of the same thing every year – but there’s something about the Royal Winter Fair that just makes us so excited. Sure, there are parts we don’t get, like why many of the food competition winners are hidden away in the Upper Annex where most people never see them, and how McDonald’s has weaseled their way into the Journey to Your Good Heath section (sure, they pay lots of money to be there, probably, but come on!).

On the other hand, for ten days every November, the Royal is where city and country come together in a celebration of Ontario’s harvest – from giant pumpkins to many varieties of apples to jams, corn, produce and some of the most beautiful animals you’ve ever seen. Those cows bathed and fluffed up like giant teddy bears will one day be someone’s dinner, but not before they’re bedecked with ribbons to show just what good quality beef they really are.

Continue reading “There’s (Tasty) Magic in the Fair”

Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes

Greg went and picked up Bowie’s ashes on Thursday night. I didn’t want to go do it because I was sure that I would break down, but when he brought everything home, and we looked at all the stuff, we were oddly cheerful. Not because we were happy he was gone, far from it, but that there were parts of the process that were amusing, and that brought back wonderful memories. The pet cremation company, Gateway, makes every effort to be as classy and inoffensive as possible in dealing with people’s beloved companions. We opted for the cedar box as opposed to an urn, and it comes packed in a gorgeous blue box. If not for logo on the front, you’d swear it was something from Tiffany’s. 100 pounds of dog is still pretty heavy when it’s converted to a bag of dust, and the cedar box inside weighed about 8 pounds.

Continue reading “Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes”