Soup Time

I am not heavily into Facebook, but for various reasons it is difficult to avoid completely. Since the Trumpian dustup about Canada's sovereignty, I find tons of adds for Canadian products there. Many of them are for tees and sweats, and I may indulge in a few tees in due course when the weather warms up. However, one intriguing ad that I have kept seeing is for the Mitchell Soup Company.

It all started with our matriarch, Donna.

In preparation for the impending Y2K apocalypse, Donna stocked up on dried goods for the Lockhart family. But when the clock struck midnight and the world kept turning, she had to do something with her emergency supplies. So, she started filling them in cellophane bags to sell as ready-to-cook soups at her local farmer’s market soap stand—yes, soap not soup!—in Duncan, British Columbia, Canada.

Fast forward to 2008: Donna’s son Jamie inherited her humble soap-turned-soup stand. But what started as a family project to teach Jamie’s four kids life skills turned into a passion project: Jamie loved crafting products that nourished the body and soul, and so Mitchell’s Soup Co. was officially born. Today, hearty, dried meals are more than our business—they’re our heart.

I checked the website several times and, eventually, convinced myself to purchase: the Lemon Chicken and Orzo Soup Mix pictured below. I also purchased the Classic Chicken & Herb Soup Mix and the Fog Pea Soup Mix. I have since cooked the former; the latter two can abide in the pantry for the nonce. 

I had to google orzo and discovered that it is pasta shaped like rice.

Each mix comes in a plastic sleeve with most of the ingredients. In addition, we were to add the ingredients pictured around the edge: zucchini, lemon,  and spinach. Of course we had to add the chicken as well. The other ingredient on the edge is the orzo, and that was in the package. As you will see in the directions, below, we were to pinch out the orzo and add it to the pot later, after using the other ingredients.

Directions:

1) In large pot, sauté 1 onion, and 1-2 lbs cubed chicken in 3 tbsp oil.

2) Pinch bag of soup directly below the orzo; pour out just the orzo and set aside.

3) Add 10 C water, the rest of package contents (not orzo), boil and simmer covered for 30 mins.

4) Add 3 tbsp lemon juice, orzo, 1 C large cubed zucchini, and 1 C spinach; cook for another 15 min.

Season with salt and pepper. Serve and garnish with parmesan cheese.

Sue surprised me by doing the chopping whilst I was endeavouring, without success,  to have an afternoon nap. When I went down to the kitchen, I did the cooking. It is good for us to split kitchen duties since fussing in the kitchen affects both of our backs like nothing else.

The Verdict

It was tasty and will supply us for quite a few meals. It was also a diversion: something different as we continue to live through this interminable winter. If the other two soups turn out to be as good as this one, I would consider ordering again. 

Mitchell’s may be the only soup that we will consume for the foreseeable future. Campbells dominates the market here, but they are American, even though they have tried to fool us by inserting a maple leaf on the packaging. We were also fooled by the Habitant brand. We thought it was Canadian but found that it was subsumed by Campbells some time ago.

. . .  meanwhile . . . 

It's March Break this week. Last March Break we met up at the sugar shack with extended family on a very pleasant morning with just a few remnants of snow lying about. There is a ton of snow this year, and not a similar warm day in the offing, so our maple sugar trip will happen a little later this year. Sadly. I don't see much decent weather being forecast for the next two weeks. What a difference from last year!.

Now, just before I press Publish, I see a popup from Shauna, who spotted her first robin on the way to work this morning. It won’t be consuming worms for awhile, I can tell you. 

Sue's Photos

It seems to have been awhile, so I thought that I would feature some of the photo prompts that Sue has been working on. I should say that I will show you the results that she has captured although I don't always remember the actual prompts.

I do remember this prompt, so let's start here. The prompt was 'vibrant', and when we got to the checkout in the pharmacy, Sue asked this lady if she could take her picture. The cashier was more than happy to comply. Doncha luv her?

I forget this exact prompt, but Sue is holding a gift from her sister. The bag commemorates the day that the two saw Come From Away last fall in Toronto. Heather purchased the bag online for Sue, but between the delay in shipping from the company and the postal strike over the holidays, it took months to arrive. As you can see, Sue posed on a windy winter's day.

I took the picture, but Sue set it up. She calls me her tripod in such situations.

For the prompt, Corner, Sue gathered many items of memorabilia:. The chair was reupholstered by Sue's mother long ago. The table was given to us by Shauna. I am not sure of the previous provenance, but I know that my parents had tables like this, so I think of them regardless. The framed image on the table was her sister's, Heather's, retirement manifesto. The book beside it was from Shauna when she announced her pregnancy with Danica. The doily was crocheted by Sue's grandmother,  and the other items were gifts from the grandchildren. On the top shelf is memorabilia from our Down East trip, and the print on the stairway by Trisha Romance is the gift we gave each other one Christmas. Of course, being male, I didn't know all of this until Sue told me.

Sue tries to avoid grocery shopping, but I don't mind it, so it is my regular chore. One day, she came with me when we were already out together and I just had to pick up a few items. She took her time photographing tulips while I navigated the aisles. Gotta luv springtime photos when winter is still very present outside. I like the various compositions, certainly including the final one shaped like a bookmark. It is an unusual crop, which I appreciate for some reason.

This is one the sunset photos that Sue took when she was driving home from Ottawa with Danica after Danica's prom dress fitting. Shot from a moving car through less that sparkling windows, it is fuzzy. I'll keep it small to try to hide the fuzziness a little.

On one shopping, Sue asked me to bring home some flowers to replace the poor Christmas poinsettia that had a pretty good run but was no longer doing well. That was a few weeks ago, but they have hung in there fairly well. I think they are some kind of aster. Once again, I don't know what prompt she was fulfilling on this day.

I also purchased an inexpensive hyacinth on one of my grocery forays. What a beautiful scent! Sue did a double exposure effect and then added the text, which is a favourite quote of hers.

Caturday 79: The Buddies

Circa 1972, the two buddies gaze out the front window: Baron the fluffy Persian to the left, and Dusty that rambunctious domestic to the right.

We had friends who were cat fanciers, so we took Dusty to a cat show. She was just a house cat but they had a category for them, judged by local celebrities. Much to our surprise, one judged her to be second best, whatever that might mean.

Our friends had other cat fancier friends who showed a Persian kitten. Baron wasn't a high class Persian, but he did take home a fifth, but I don't recall the exact category, whether it was fifth among longhair kittens or all purebred kittens.

Baron may look big in the photo, but it was mostly fluff, for he was actually a bit of a runt. While Dusty wasn't a big cat, she was somewhat larger than Baron and quickly put Baron in his place — as second cat. Baron accepted his role happily, and they got on well together.

Fifty-four years later, we remember them, and by the way, we still have some of the little knick-knacks that decorated the window.

We Are Canadian and Funny

I don't do the Friday Funnies meme, but this is Friday, and these are funny . . . although also serious in a way. Note: if you are tired of political trauma, these are pretty well just fun although it is a bit of a message, especially in the second video. It's not hard to take, however.

More than a decade ago, there was a fun I Am Canadian commercial for Molson Canadian beer. It was carried off in the form of a rant, and was greatly loved. It's just over  minute long.

In these troubled times, the guy, Jack, is back with with a We Are Canadian rant. This time it is not a commercial, and there is a message, but it is mostly fun. (length 1' 42")

I am posting the auto generated transcript below. I looked for the original script but couldn't find a copy.

hey I I know it's in our nature to uh

cut a guy some slack give him the

benefit of the doubt like maybe he was

confused or just joking or just maybe

really needed a double

double but this isn't that guy these

aren't those people and those are not

the Rockies they make a lot of mistakes

they mistake our modesty for meekness

our kindness for consent our nation for

another star on their flag and our love

of a hot cheesy poutine with their love

of a hot cheesy Putin they think they

can bully us threaten us and push us

around but they do not know us that

artificially drawn line they keep

talking about not artificial and it's

not on a map it's right here this is the

land that ter ran the land the gourd

sang about this is the birthplace of

peanut butter and ketchup chips and yoga

pants it is the land of Universal Health

Care and the bench clearing brawl of

innovation and optimism and getting her

done this is the land of the Peacekeeper

and the shawinigan handshake are we

perfect no but we are not the 51st

anything we are the first to unite in

the crisis the first to build Bridges

not walls and the first to stand on

guard for the my name is Jeff and we are

Canadian thank you

Eel's Creek Cottage

In going through my old slides, I have come across photos of the cottage that was owned by Sue's parents through the 70s into the 90s. These are personal memories that I want to post, but I realize that they will hold little interest for my usual blog friends.

I think it was the year that we married, 1969, that Sue's dad purchased a very rustic cottage. If not, it was the year after. For more than ten years, we often visited the cottage for a few weeks in the summer, even though it was at least a six hour drive.

The cottage was on a stream called Eel's Creek, which despite the name was a good running stream. It was a very cottagey cottage sans plumbing or running water. Although we had to make do with an outhouse, we have electricity. There is a corner of the building in the background (right) of the following photo.  That was the porch where we would eat and sit at night and read or play games. From the porch, we could see the stream, which you can just see a bit of behind Shauna and me in the photo. Just up the slope from the creek, there was a rural highway that could get quite busy. While one might think that having traffic going by the cottage would be a bad thing, we would sit in the porch at night and enjoy the stream of traffic going by, especially on a Friday evening as the weekend cottagers fled north from the city.

Baby Shauna with me in her first year, 1973.

There was a waterfall on the property which we may get to later. It was on a ninety degree bend in the creek and was a place where the logs would jam up. One day, Sue and I started pulling a few logs out. Sue's dad got inspired and rigged up a block and tackle to winch bigger logs out. He was very good at knowing how to jerry-rig whatever was needed to solve a mechanical problem.

Sue's dad sitting on pulled logs with baby Shauna.

Speaking of Sue's dad, here he is again (below) with Sue's grandfather. They were attempting to install a pump to get water from the creek to the cottage. It worked somewhat for awhile, but we would usually have to get washing water from the creek by pail. We could obtain our potable water needs from the Ministry of Natural Resources in the nearby village of Apsley.

Dad and grampa are making a holder for the eventual water pump while I watch keenly in my shorts and black socks. I had no memory of ever dressing like that and have thought black socks with shorts to be an assault on all that is righteous for as long as I can recall.

Getting back to the waterfall, I have two photos, one that I have shown previously of me and youngest sitting in the waterfall, so we are probably jumping ahead in time for maybe ten years from the previous photos. She wore a bathing cap to protect her ears that had drainage tubes inserted to help deal with her earaches.

A wider view of the Falls with lots of accumulation of logs. Although we pulled out a lot of logs, spring runoff would bring plenty more downstream.

Bathing beauty Sue getting some sun on the bank by the Falls.

Although it sounds ghastly, Eel's Creek flowed clean enough for a little swimming. However, it was over my head in spots and the the rocky bottom could be hard on the feet when one did find a spot in which to stand. We had a big inner tube that we would tie up. We could float down toward the waterfall and pull ourselves back up. Of course Allyson (now PJ) had to be held. We would go to a nearby lake for better swimming, particularly for our young girls.

Shauna might have been close to nine in the photo, and she'd had
swimming lessons, but of course we watched her closely.

Shauna playing in the creek with her cousin, Jamie, who,
sadly, succumbed to brain cancer several years ago.

What else should I mention? How about this little bridge by which we accessed the property? Sue's amazing dad, being the clever and industrious man that he was, built a sturdier bridge a few years later.

And there is this (below): the smudge pot. Whenever Lou was there, he kept it going, supposedly in a battle  against the mosquitoes, but I think he just liked doing it, and it was a way to clean the rubble and burn the trash. It was always an enjoyable sight, and it stirs pleasant memories all these years later, as do all of the pictures.

I think we first visited the Eel's Creek cottage in 1969. We would return when we could into the early to mid-eighties. By that time, it was getting more rundown and with the family growing up and with us living far away, we stopped going sometime in the early to mid 80s, but we did enjoy it for many years.

It stayed in the family for a long time and was enjoyed by Sue's siblings and their families. They lived much closer and could come and go more easily and frequently. We did go for a few years after we took this photo of the younger Allyson circa1980.

These were pleasant memories for me. If you kept reading, I hope I conveyed that.

Elbows Up

Elbows Up has quickly become a simultaneously humourous yet serious Canadian meme in these troubled times.

It's a hockey term. When players go into the corner to fight over a loose puck,  they will jostle for all that they are worth. The elbows may come up aggressively in such scrums and can cause damage to tender jaws.

Hockey is a tough sport, and Canadians can be a tough lot. Expect us to keep our metaphorical elbows up in the coming days.

Just as hockey players are willing to take a beating to gain possession of the puck, so are Canadians prepared to take a beating to stand our ground in the face of unwarranted aggression, for stand our ground we will.

I hope you didn't miss Prime Minister Trudeau's speech yesterday. He demonstrated intelligence and steadfast commitment and determination. It's not anything like the rambling and ranting we are accustomed to from the senile 47. 

It is below and only 13 minutes.

Morning Translations

I was a boy in Montreal, the largest city in the French-speaking province of Canada. However, it was the time of two solitudes in which the English did their thing and the French did theirs. Living in English was very easy, and young AC and everyone he knew were unilingual. Too bad, but that it the way the it was.

There were three English elementary schools fairly close to where I lived, and in 1960, they built a new English high school for me and all of the baby boomers as we began to enter that phase of our lives. A year later, they built another English high school for my friends who lived on the other side of the imaginary school border. That is where my closest friends went.

Even though we took French in school from grade 3 onward, it was just a subject, and I didn't become very adept. In fact, when I transferred to school in Ontario at the age of 15, I found they were ahead of me in some ways, certainly in reading. This was the case, even though, at that time, they didn't start French until grade 9 or maybe senior elementary.

Of course, that late start in Ontario hasn't been the case for a long time, and most schools and boards also have a form of French immersion from first grade and onward for those who desire it. My grandkids continue to take some subjects en francias, even in senior high school.

I also hasten to add that by the time I started teaching, 10 yeas after I left Montreal, English kids who moved to Southwestern Ontario from Montreal could speak French very well.

I have been sorry to not have learned Canada's other official language better. I did have the notion to makes amends in retirement. I remember signing into Duolingo, but the problem was that my hearing was compromised enough by then that I could not pick up the nuances of pronunciation. I soon threw in the towel, right after throwing my hands up in despair.

Even though I moved away more than sixty years ago, my favourite hockey team is still the Montreal Canadiens. I almost bleed the bleu, bland et rouge (their colours). In fact, the Canadiens (or Habs, as in habitants) are now my only sports interest at all in all sports. I guess tennis is an exception, but it isn't a team sport, and I cannot follow it in the same way.

There is very decent coverage of the Canadiens in English. I can watch the games and read many articles. But the French press (not the coffee-making kind) is very active, and I cannot read those pieces. Oh, if I struggle, I might be able to get the gist of a short social media snippet, but long articles elude me. Could I have improved my French reading comprehension skills despite my hearing difficulties? Possibly, but I can't see that it would be worth the struggle if I can't speak the language. Besides, I don't really have anyone to speak it with, other than my grandkids, who both do English much better than French although they do have basic French competency.

Back to hockey: I really wrote all of the above to get around to explaining how useful the internet is in keeping tabs on my team. Google provides me with an instant and automatic translation. The app is built right into my Chrome browser. It's set up, so that if I click a French sports page, and I guess any French page, the English translation is instantly there for me. I do not even have to make a separate click to tell it to translate for me.

Here is a sample paragraph in both languages.

Sur le second, il a pratiquement traversé la patinoire d’un bout à l’autre avec la rondelle sur son bâton, battant de vitesse deux rivaux et profitant de l’espace entre les deux défenseurs pour orchestrer un jeu de passe qui allait mener au 10e but de la saison de Josh Anderson.

On the second, he practically crossed the ice from one end to the other with the puck on his stick, beating two rivals and taking advantage of the space between the two defenders to orchestrate a passing play that would lead to Josh Anderson's 10th goal of the season.

Oddly, sometimes if I click a sentence, I will be asked if it was an accurate translation. The answer in my head is always the same: "How would I know?"

Being able to read these pieces helps to occupy my time when I get up cold and achy at 2:30 in the morning, as happened today. It is now almost 6 o'clock, and I will add this piece to my ever-expanding queue to publish . . . whenevah.