Osaka Eclipse

By pure luck and no planning on our part, we managed to be almost directly under the shadow of the moon during the eclipse on May 21. This was the first time for any of us in the house to be so close to the path of total occlusion, and a bit of mania overtook us as the moment of totality approached.


Using my father's recipe, we set up a pin-hole mirror to project the image onto a darkened wall.
A mirror is covered with paper in which a single hole (the aperture) has been punched. The reflection is aimed at a wall/screen in a dark corner of the same room.


The size of the hole dictates the focus of the image. Here, the lower image is the one coming from our one-hole-punch "pin-hole". It is out of focus and over-exposed because the hole is too large and too close to the wall/screen. The upper image is coming from a tiny crack between the covering paper and the edge of the mirror frame. The focus is much better, but the room is too bright to see it very well.

With more time to plan this, we could have set up multiple mirrors to direct the image to a much darker room. The word for "room" in Italian is, of course, "camera".


Outside in the garden, the camphor tree was doing a better job, making pin-holes with the gaps between its leaves.

We took quick glimpses of the full corona through a darkened piece of x-ray film, in direct contradiction of the warnings being broadcast on NHK at that very moment. Luckily, we had a doctor with us, although he was just as excited as we were.

Vermont Things To Do, Things To Drink

Driving from Montréal to Stowe, Vermont, we took a scenic route down a chain of islands in Lake Champlain.


Aya had never seen ice fishers before, and had certainly never seen cars and trucks parked out on a frozen lake.

View Larger Map

We stopped here for a couple of photos. And then, to our surprise, we did this:

The Vermont woods still had very nice snow, especially in the first few days. This is from when it was wetter, but still wonderful.

This calf seemed warm with its long hair.

Its mother hovered close by with her long horns.

The hot tub was a real treat. When we got too hot we rolled in the snow to cool down, then jumped back in.

Aya and Dad teamed up in the kitchen and produced a rich, dark beef stew and some amazing cheese soufflés to replenish our strength.


Thirsts were met by Vermont's excellent selection of local beers. Here, in no particular order, are some that we remembered to take photos of.

Howl black lager by Magic Hat

Circus Boy wheat beer by Magic Hat

Raison d'Être Belgian brown ale by Dogfish Head was particularly good

Demo dark IPA from Magic Hat

Otter Creek's black IPA was a real hit

A straightforward, flavourful ale by Long Trail

As tasty as their beers were, you may notice that we did not provide links to Magic Hat's website. Designed by and for people who attend way too many outdoor concerts, we wouldn't feed its navigation system to our worst dog.

Suffice to say that the menu is a doodle-pad of incomprehensibility that refers to their beers as "Elixirs".

Never mind. The beer is really quite delicious.

Did we miss any Vermont brewing gems? What should we look for next time?

What Does Modern Wine Taste Like? Descriptor Statistics

We have mentioned British Columbia's governmental branch of liquor distribution before. One of their excellent products is their quarterly Taste magazine. Loaded with articles, reviews, recipes and information, it is a very well designed magazine that covers a lot of ground in 160-odd pages. And it is free.

They include a huge amount of product reviews in every issue, most of them squeezed into 1/12th of a page and reined in at a succinct 40-50 words. In the Spring 2012 issue, we counted 137 separate wine reviews (red, white, rose, sparkling, and sweet), not including beer and spirits.

Why did we count them? Because we read them all, and the concentrated blast of adjectives describing taste and aroma sometimes makes our heads swim. After a few pages, our minds swirl with images of black cherries, herbs, chocolate, mineral, honeysuckle and spices (Christmas, baking and Asian) and it can be a bit overwhelming.

We realized that knowing the frequency of the descriptors packed into each issue of Taste would give us an indication as to what wine styles dominate the market. So we counted every adjective in the latest issue to find out what BC is currently drinking.

We started with the aroma descriptors for red wines (click to enlarge):

Vanilla comes from oak exposure, so its strong showing is no surprise in the red section. Spice looks like the front runner, but notice how some entries were broken up, like cherry and cherry (black). They combine for a total of 19 mentions. Fruit (dried), fruit (black) and fruit (red) combine for 16.

Let's take a look at the descriptors used for red wine flavours:

Fruit flavours have a very strong showing. When combined, they outrank even oak and spice.

White aromas show a similar breakdown: vanilla, toast, oak, caramel and browned butter could all indicate barrel influence, but the fruit descriptors dominate.

White wine flavours also show fruit of all kinds leading the descriptor list.


So what does this tell us? Mostly it confirms what should be obvious: most wines on the market these days are made in a modern, fruit-forward style, often with some oak influence, and are intended to be consumed within a year or two of release.

And why not? Fruit-forward wines are generally inexpensive, popular and are easy to drink on their own or paired with simple meals.

These numbers could also suggest that some winemakers are following specific trends, creating products that meet existing expectations rather than reflecting regional or varietal flavour profiles.

These statistics certainly reveal the bell in the curve: red wines overwhelmingly taste like cherry, plum and spice, whites like apple, citrus and mineral.

Knowing this, we can start to hunt around the edges of the data for wines whose flavour profile is out of the ordinary, maybe even surprising, rather than aiming for familiar territory.

Montréal Food

Breakfast in Montréal, and we wanted good smoked meat. We had heard, like most Canadians, of Shwartz's reputation. However, on-line reviews warn of hour-long line-ups and of the effect that a reliable stream of tourists (like us) has had on the quality of the food.

Main Deli And Steak House across the street seems to be where the locals are going instead, and that is where we headed.

Smoked meat, eggs and grilled latkes.

These latkes weren't much to look at, but the density is something to be respected, like the beginnings of a black hole. Smokey from the grill, they are absolutely incredible.

The smoked meat pushed all the right buttons; salty, fibrous, soft, juicy, peppery... On the last day we rushed back to Main Deli before heading to the airport to grab some sandwiches for the plane ride home. We would have got latkes, too, but they probably would have put us over our weight limit.

Montréal has got the old European sense of making coffee; if it came out of the espresso machine and has milk and foam, it must be a cappuccino, so tais-toi and drink it. Perhaps the cigarettes have dulled everyone's taste buds.

Never mind the coffee, though, the croissants are, more often than not, out of this world. Crisp and flaky while the interior is still a soft spiral of buttery feathers. These two chains of bakeries make excellent croissants at surprisingly reasonable prices: Au Pain Doré and Juliette Et Chocolat.

Even a cafeteria-style spot in La Marché Jean-Talon produced a delicious lunch, like this gratin of asparagus wrapped in ham. The tourtière was delicious, too, although oddly (?) served upside down.

Rotisserie Romados makes, without a doubt, the best rotisserie chicken we have ever had. A long, but rapidly moving line-up showed that many Montréalers feel the same.

Forty chickens on the grill at once, and the warming trays are kept full. This is a busy shop.

Just down the street is Patati Patata. We found them  on a blog devoted to Montréal poutine. Run by a young, hard-working couple, this place is busy because they get it just right; proper proportions of crisp fries layered with hot gravy and half-melted cheese curds.

We dragged our haul of roast chicken and poutine back to the hotel where we devoured it all with cold bottles of Ephémère apple. One of the best travel meals ever.

We liked the logo and the brew-pub-like feel of this local chain, but something had gone a bit off the rails.

The menu strikes a good balance of local/popular and their in-house brand beer is available in six varieties, but something is missing. The onion, bacon and raclette pizza was very good, with a thin crispy crust, but everything else seemed to be reconstructed by looking at photos of something much better. The beers looked great but lacked any distinctive flavour, and even we west coasters knew enough to be embarrassed by the poutine: pale, powdery fries, thin gravy and still-cold bits of cheese (not curds). It's like a corporate accountant has gone through every item, making cost-effective replacements everywhere at the expense of flavour and character. "Ersatz" was the word that kept coming to mind. Too bad.

BC Liquor Stores App

Sir Oliver Mowat, great great uncle of that Mowat, was Premier of Ontario from 1872 to 1896 and one of our Fathers Of Confederation. He was instrumental in wresting control over rights to natural resources and other goods away from the federal government in favour of the provinces.

One of those "other goods" was alcohol and this decentralization of powers meant that the provinces could make up their own rules when the Temperance movement started influencing politics in the early 20th century. Each enacted legislation that kept tight control of what the people could drink, and when and where, in the hands of the provincial governments.

Since then Alberta is the only province that has completely privatized retail of alcohol and although it operates through a private contractor, it still has a monopoly on wholesale distribution.

Why is this interesting?

Because it is another example of Canada's essential conundrum: the delicate balance between what the people think they want and what the government thinks they should have.

From the number of Alberta license plates in the parking lots of Okanagan wineries, we can assume that some Albertans are fed up with the shelves full of Yellowtail and Molson Canadian in their local liquor shop.

In BC we love to complain about the Liquor Distribution Branch and their retail wing, the BC Liquor Stores. Their monolithic policies and control of imports and distribution can be maddening. That Rhône red you wanted to try? Only available in Prince Rupert. That 90-point Mosel-style Ontario Riesling selling for only $18? Not going to see it here.

But they do many things very, very well, too: their Signature stores are a pleasure to visit (and are open on Sundays, which hopefully infuriates a priest somewhere), they give lots of shelf space to BC wines, and their website is excellent.

Another thing they do alarmingly well is the BC Liquor Stores iOS app.

Free from iTunes, the app is stable, well-designed and updated regularly.

The landing screen ties in to the content of the latest issue of their in-house magazine, Taste, which is handy if you're trying to find a product you just read about.

Here we are looking up a Wild-Ferment Chardonnay from Errazuriz. Text-recognition finds the product after typing in only a few letters.

As well as the price, details, tasting notes and pairing suggestions, it tells you the nearest open store that actually has the wine in stock. This is the best use of government funding we've seen in since paved roads.

You add your own rating and notes about the wine and then organize them into lists of Favourites, Recommendations, Under $20, Never Again, or anything that makes sense to you. You can share these lists by e-mail or you-know-what.

One excellent feature is that the lists are stored on your device so you don't need to go on-line to review them (like when you are standing in a shop). This is very helpful for people like us who are using an iPod Touch that relies on wi-fi access.

Got a bottle and wondering what to eat with it? Scan it with the iPhone's camera (or type in the bar code number) and check the tasting notes for pairing recommendations. There is also a Pairings section that works the other way, showing suggestions based on a variety of typical dishes.

The Pairings section could use a little improvement, we think. One option in the "Meat" category is "Pork or Veal in Cream Sauce with Mushrooms". Why mushrooms, in particular? Strangely, one of their four wine recommendations for this specific dish was "Pomino Bianco" which actually yielded no results in the product list. Oops.

Here is another issue: if you don't spell the item correctly the search feature doesn't help at all. By now we are used to Google interpreting our typos and suggesting what we really meant, so this old-school, "Chardonnat? Does not compute!" kind of result is no longer acceptable.

Over all, this is really a very, very well-done app and the LDB should be congratulated. However, there is one glaring omission: 

Where is the Android version?

While it is not always easy to decipher the stats (Google counts in units shipped and doesn't sell phones (yet), while Apple counts retail sales), by many reports the Android platform now outsells Apple's iOS.

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/android-vs-iphone-share-2011-10

There is no longer any rationalization for not developing an app for Android devices, especially if you are a publicly-funded branch of a provincial government, awash in tax revenue.*

*Edit April 25/12: We just received a call from someone at BC Liquor Stores who tells us that they do have plans to make an Android version of their excellent app. There is no release date yet, however.

How does BC Liquor Stores' app compare to those offered by commissions and boards in the rest of the provinces?

Alberta has LiquorConnect which doesn't seem to have a mobile app at all, which is what happens when you privatize retail.

SaskLiquor  doesn't either, but for different reasons.

From the design of Manitoba's Liquor Marts Online it looks like apps of any kind are still a couple of decades away.

Ontario's LCBO is on the iPhone but doesn't have an Android app.

Quebec's SAQ does.

New Brunswick's ABNL leads the maritimes with apps for both platforms.

The NSLC in Nova Scotia has a series of podcasts and videos, but no mention of mobile apps.

Neither PEI nor Newfoundland seem to have a mobile app between them.

Nunavut Liquor Commission... well, you can read their annual reports.

Northwest Territories Liquor Commission...
 
The Yukon Liquor Corporation isn't doing much better.

So congratulations to BC's LDB on a job well done. We look forward to reporting here that an Android app is on the way soon. Can't let New Brunswick out-shine us, can we?

And to our northern brothers and sisters, we offer a hearty ᐅᒥᐊᕐᔫᑉ ᐳᓪᓕᓕᒫᐸᒐ ᑕᑦᑕᕐᓂᖅ ᐊᒻᒪᔭᖅ (Umiarjuap Pullimmaqpaga tattaurniq nimiraq.) and we hope you can find a good bottle of wine this summer.

Ottawa: Still Cold

Returning to Ottawa after 22 years, Keith was quickly reminded of a certain kind of March that we just don't have in Vancouver.

However, it also has buildings like no-where else out west. The blowing snow and the stubborn, dramatic structures, like rock formations crystallizing out of the cold ground, were beautiful in a way that they never had been to a busy student.

Byward Market doesn't really compare to Granville Island, but that's just not being fair.

It did offer up a delicious Atlantic salmon pie for lunch.

Bourgeois' Mother spider at the National Gallery.

Roxy Paine's 100 Foot Line looked like a crack in the flat grey sky.

Just outside the front door, the National Gallery has an unintentional piece of light sculpture on their hands. Perhaps we can get a grant to name it and point it out to them, since it's already installed.

Sushi Go has great interiors and logo design. The ramen was okay.

With one word this became our favourite café. We're suckers for Futura anyway.

Aya grabbing $750,000 at the Canadian Mint.

On a completely unrelated note, we went directly to prison after that.

These are the cells converted to dorm rooms in the Ottawa Jail Youth Hostel. (We had a nicer room upstairs).

Chicken breasts from the market, one stuffed with Camembert and cranberries and the other with mushrooms and shallot butter. We cooked them up in the hostel kitchen.

A cold bottle of the ever-reliable Friexenet Cava, with its fine bubbles and citrus-mineral flavour was the perfect match. Prison food is not what it used to be.

The evening train to Montreal, another city full of beautiful buildings and amazing food.

We really did not expect to have quite so many posts about trains.