Halifax Seaport Farmers Market

For weeks before I arrived in Nova Scotia, everyone was talking about how terrible the weather has been.  Rain, rain and more rain, with a good measure of cold mixed in.  My first day here I woke up to gorgeous sunshine and shimmering waters.  I spent the day in the garden and joined some friends for the Thursday night sailing races (as ballast!)--it was too nice a night not to go out on the water.  Friday was a bit less nice and then Saturday the reality of what people have been living with came home.  What a day!  Teeming rain all day and temps in the 50s.  Obviously, my golf game was not in the cards, so I decided to check out the Halifax Seaport Farmers Market, which opened last year.

I loved the old market (which is still open).  It is located in a former brewery in a neat stone building.  It was easy to get lost in there, with hallways jutting off in different directions and small rooms with only three or four vendors.  You always were turning a corner to a surprise.  I'm not sure why they decided to open the market at the Seaport, but it is definitely a much cleaner lay-out.  To call it a farmers market seems a bit of a misnomer, though.  It's really more of an artisans' market with some food products thrown in to round out the market's offerings. 

I did have a mission in mind when I set off on my outing.  I bought some belts at the market a couple of years ago and wear them constantly.  I was hoping that I could find the vendor and stock up on a couple more.  I made my way through the aisles looking at all the fun--and sometimes quite tempting--products.  Of course you can find flowers, produce, organic beef and chicken, and lots of sweets, including these beautifully displayed cupcakes.  You can grab lunch there, sampling some international cuisines that we don't get here in Chester.   I had a lovely Caribbean curry soup that really hit the spot on a cold and dreary day.
 
The market also boasts an assortment of more original products, ranging from doggie treats to pottery to handmade soaps.  I had to laugh when I came upon the "Weiner Man" display, and of course I asked whether this creation was in response to Congressman Weiner's recent indiscretions.  The vendor said it was not a new product, but that the controversy had certainly helped his business.  (There's always a silver lining!)  

I was just about to give up on my belts when I made my way up to the second floor where a few vendors are housed.  Success!     The belts are made from used clothing ("upcycled" is the favored term) and it was funny how some belts could be immediately associated with certain eras.  When I looked at some of the paisleys, I cringed, remembering some of the hideous dresses that we wore in the 80s.  After shaking it off, I bought a couple of belts to spice up my wardrobe and, mission accomplished, made my way to the door. 

On my way out, I noticed that there was a balcony to the outside.  I have to imagine that they have tables out there when it's nice, and I did see a reference to a rooftop cafe which was totally out of the question on this Saturday.  The rain had settled into a mist, so I popped out to check out the view.   Even on a dreary day, not too shabby.   All in all, not a bad way to spend my first Saturday morning in Nova Scotia. 

The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt

"Sometime after he said the word pause, I went mad and landed in the hospital.  He did not say I don't ever want to see you again or It's over, but after thirty years of marriage pause was enough to turn me into a lunatic whose thoughts burst, ricocheted, and careened into one another like popcorn kernels in a microwave bag."  And so we are introduced to Mia, our protagonist, who is a poet, a teacher, a mother, and a recovered-from-being-temporarily-crazy wife.  You have to admit, it's a beginning that packs a punch!

We quickly learn that "The Pause was French with limp but shiny brown hair" and that Mia has left the marital home for the summer to teach poetry to middle school girls and to spend time with her mother who lives in a retirement home.  This framework permits us to move back and forth between women at three very different stages of life, and Hustvedt captures the joys, sorrows and complications of each stage beautifully. 

We have the seven tween wanna be poets whose bodies and emotions are caught in the transition between childhood and adolescence.   Working with these girls gives Mia the opportunity both to witness and participate in the drama that is their lives and to remember herself at that age.  It is here that I first realized that Husveldt's book offers much more than a narrative of these characters' lives.  As Mia recalls being excluded from a circle of teenage girls, Hustvedt diverts into a brief discourse of ostracism in different cultures.  We learn that the Apache ignore widows because they fear their grief.  We are reminded of the Amish tradition of shunning.  And we are told that the animal kingdom has its own "'innate and adaptive' methods of social control."   In one paragraph, Husveldt puts the behavior of these girls into a much larger sociological context. 

We have Mia's 87-year old mother and her friends in the home, a true cast of characters.  They call themselves the "Swans," and I just now realized that it must be a reference to their swan songs.  Mia spends time each day with her mother and, in the process, gets to know the Swans as well.  Her favorite is Abigail, a woman who created "private amusements" for herself embedded in her handicrafts.   Take, for instance, the floral blanket Abigail made that had buttons sewn into the pattern.  Unbeknownst to the casual viewer, one of the buttons opens and inside is a fantastical needlepoint scene of a woman wearing only high heels flying a vacuum cleaner that is sucking up the town below.   A reminder that there's often more going on than meets the eye. 

And then we have Mia herself as she thinks back on her life and her marriage and tries to figure out what's next.  She considers the impossibility of "divining a story while you are living it...Time is not outside us, but inside.  Only we live with past, present and future, and the present is too brief to experience anyway."  Mia is a true intellectual whose musings wander from her relationship with her husband to physics to poetry to sexual stereotypes.  (Several pages are devoted to the historical "scientific" debate that women should not tax their brains with intellectual thoughts because this effort drains power from their reproductive organs.)  It is amazing to realize how many topics Hustvedt manages to touch on in this book, and even more amazing that they are in context with the story. 

At some points in the book it's difficult to differentiate between Mia and Hustvedt, who periodically speaks directly to the reader.  Mia/Hustvedt posits that, "A book is a collaboration between the one who reads and what is read and, at its best, that coming together is a love story like any other."  Like in any real love story, my feelings towards The Summer Without Men varied from time to time.   There were moments when I thought about abandoning the book because it had veered too far off into intellectual territory, leaving this reader behind.    At the end of the day, though, I wanted to know what happened.  Would Mia's summer without men become a life without men?  You'll have to read the book to find out.

Punta Gorda's Own Flash Mob

It's my last week-end in Punta Gorda before heading north to Nova Scotia for a respite from the summer heat.  I decided to bike to breakfast yesterday with the folks from the Yacht Club then head to the local farmers' market to check out the offerings and to have my first flash mob experience.  What????  A flash mob in Punta Gorda?  And what exactly is a flash mob anyway?  All excellent questions.

I read in the paper a couple of weeks ago that there would be a flash mob at the farmers' market on June 18th.  I truly wasn't sure what a flash mob was--despite having lived in New York all those years and my proclivity for wearing black, I'm just not that cool.  People patiently explained to me that a flash mob is when seemingly random people start singing or dancing or engaging in some other type of activity in a public place.  I then remembered seeing a YouTube video of people singing"Do Re Mi" from the "Sound of Music" in Central Station in Antwerp, Belgium.  (Here's the link if you've never seen it.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EYAUazLI9k  I wonder how many people missed their trains that day???)   Flash mobs are often organized through text messages or e-mails that instruct the participants to show up at a certain place at a certain time and start singing or dancing or whatever.  Sometimes flash mobs have a dark side, but I felt fairly confident that Punta Gorda's take on it would be fun and G-rated (especially since the mayor sent out an e-mail alerting people that something special was going to happen at 10:00 at the market.)

While waiting for the entertainment to begin, we spent some time in the booths, and I thought about how the farmers' market at the barn in Hubbards, Nova Scotia is different than the market in Punta Gorda.  Fruits and vegetables abound in both, but Punta Gorda's fruit has a decidedly more tropical flair.  The same goes for the flowers.  At the barn, there is a particular vendor whose bouquets practically fly out the door.  If you're not there by 9:00, your prospects of bringing a bouquet home are slim to none.  The Punta Gorda market has some great flowers, too, again of the more tropical variety.  (Note to self:  Get to the market when I return and pick up an orchid.  They are incredibly beautiful and very reasonably priced!) 

Then it was time for the main event.  First, a few people with push brooms started sweeping up the street.  Was this part of the act or was it just to clear the space for what was to come?  Performance art is truly in the eye of the beholder, so I'll leave it up to everyone who was there to make their own determination.  Then young people started emerging from the crowd and dancing.   It reminded me of a routine from "So You Think You Can Dance" (which I've been avidly watching this season for the first time) with the jumps and b-boy movements.  (Hey, I know about b-boy dancing--maybe I am cool after all!)  It was high energy and fun and the crowd enjoyed it.  After the dance was over, another group ran out into the street with signs that spelled out "We Love Punta Gorda."   My sentiments exactly!  I feel truly fortunate to have landed in this wonderful community and while I'm looking forward to spending time in Nova Scotia, I'm already looking forward to coming back home.

Cooking Up a Storm with Chef J

If you watched the commercials during this year's Superbowl, you might remember an incredibly politically incorrect ad for Groupon that featured Timothy Hutton.   (This might actually be advertising at its most clever because it has stuck with me since then.)  Groupon negotiates discounts with businesses and then advertises those discounts to people who've registered to receive notices of deals in their area.  My friend Dorrit first discovered Chef J when she received an e-mail with a Groupon coupon for a cooking class at Chef J's Bistro and Cooking Studio in Cape Coral.  It sounded like a fun birthday present for a friend and off they went to a class on Spanish cuisine.  They had a great time so we decided to check out his class on French cooking this week.   For $35, you get the class and dinner, so what did we have to lose?

Chef J is a real charmer.  He's from the Cayman Islands so he has that laid back Caribbean air about him--the perfect personality to make cooking something challenging feel accessible.  He's also an instructor at the Business and Entrepreneurial Academy at the Oasis Charter High School, so he knows how to teach as well as cook.  

We started off our evening learning how to prepare a great appetizer to serve in the hot summer months--cucumber provencale with French goat cheese and roasted red peppers.  Since you eat first with your eyes, presentation is important and he shared a great secret with us--balsamic glaze in a squirt bottle.   The plating converted this light, easy and delicious appetizer into something really impressive for your guests.  I have to say that cucumbers are one of the two or three foods that I have an aversion to, and even I really enjoyed it!

We then moved on to a delicious papaya salad.  Again, the idea was something light but full of unexpected flavors.   The first surprise was that he used iceberg lettuce for this dish, which seemed very unsophisticated with the more exotic greens that we are used to seeing these days.  There was a method to his madness, though--iceberg lettuce provides crunch and coolness without the flavor that other lettuces have so it supports the salad while letting the other ingredients be the stars.  Who knew?   Ultimately, the salad included papaya, toasted almond slivers, cherry tomatoes, asiago cheese, red onion and cucumber (which he kindly left off my plate since I had now shared my distaste with him).  The real star of the dish was the dressing, though--an extraordinary vinaigrette that took this salad to a different level.   While making the dressing, Chef J shared a secret with his students--you need to whisk the vinegar for three to five minutes to make sure it's warm before you add the oil to it.  When the vinegar is warm, it combines beautifully with the oil and develops a nice consistency rather than separating.  He also uses salad oil rather than olive oil to keep the dressing light.   Truly delicious.

We were now ready for the main course--sauteed chicken breast with an orange truffle beurre blanc and garlic basil fingerling potatoes.   Rest assured that any dietary credit that we might have gotten for eating light in our first two courses was wiped away with this sauce, which included almost a pound of butter for the 14 of us plus some heavy cream.   The potatoes were beautiful with their different colors and the smell of fresh basil wafting from the plate made them irresistible.   The chicken breasts were incredibly juicy after having been browned in a skillet and then baked until cooked through.  Chef J poured wine over the chicken before putting it in the oven to keep it moist, another great tip to file away.   The sauce was the star of this dish, though, and was truly to die for.  (Just ask our arteries!)  The combination of fresh orange juice, white truffle oil, butter, cream and garlic was a knock out, and would be great on a white fish as well as chicken.

Chef J knew that his students would be too full for dessert (although I could have used a taste of sorbet or a square of chocolate to round out the meal.)    Three hours after we arrived, we waddled out of the restaurant, having had a great dinner and an evening of entertainment.  Plus we have new recipes to try out on our friends and family.   During the class, we were studying the schedule of classes to figure out what we should try next.  Caribbean cuisine?  Seafood with an Asian flair?  Hawaiian night?   (You can check it out yourself at http://www.chefjcatering.com/.)    Whatever we decide, you can be sure that you'll read about it here.  Now I think it's time to head to the gym to work off some of that beurre blanc sauce!

Movies by the Pool at the Isles Yacht Club

I'm undoubtedly dating myself when I say that I have fond memories of drive-in movies.  I remember going to the drive-in with my parents and my sister in our family station wagon.  It was always so exciting.  You'd find your spot in the aisle, roll the window two-thirds of the way down and clip the speaker on.  We always got there early enough to have time to burn off some of our excess energy on the playground before settling into the car with plenty of popcorn and candy to watch the cartoons and feature.  It was heaven.  In high school, drive-in movies carried a somewhat different sense of excitement about them but enough said about that.  I will say, though, that I remember seeing "Saturday Night Fever" at the drive-in and thinking how incredibly cool and sexy John Travolta was in his stark white leisure suit.  Ah, those were the days!

Fast forward to 2011 and the Isles Yacht Club's take on the drive-in--movies by the pool.  When I heard the Club was going to round out its Memorial Day week-end activities with an outdoor movie, I was disappointed that I wasn't going to be around.  Happily, movies by the pool are on the IYC calendar over the next few months, and I was able to make last night's showing of "Dead Calm" with Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill and Billy Zane.   As the sun set, we settled into our chairs and before it was totally dark, Billy Zane had rowed his tender over to board S/V Saracen.   As we watched events unfold, Dominica came around with popcorn and your beverage of choice.  With relatively low humidity and temperatures, only one person chose to watch from her float in the pool.  (I can imagine this will be a much more popular option as the summer progresses.)  It's hard to imagine a more pleasant way to spend an evening.   In the words of the Governator and philanderer extraordinaire Arnold Schwarznegger, "I'll be back!"

"See How They Run" at Theatre Conspiracy in Fort Myers

Each week I pore through the Arts section of "Florida Weekly" looking for things to do that pique my interest.  Theater is always high on my list, but I somehow didn't get to any productions put on over the winter months by the Theatre Conspiracy in Fort Myers.  I rectified that situation last week-end when I went to see their production of "See How They Run", and I will definitely be going back.

The Theatre Conspiracy is housed in the Lee County Alliance for the Arts (so it's a "twofer" since you have the chance to view their current exhibit as well.) It is an intimate space, seating about 150 people. I arrived early because my $18 ticket gained me general admission and I wanted to make sure I got a good seat.  I was glad I did because this revival ended up being close to sold out.

"See How They Run" is a farce that was first performed in the West End of London in 1945.  The story is way too convoluted to explain but involved a bunch of vicars, a former American actress who is now married to one of the vicars, an American soldier, a drunken parishioner, an Irish maid, and an escaped Russian convict.  (One definition of "farce" is a "play based on the exploitation of improbable situations" so you can see that this cast of characters fits the bill.)  In many ways it was a standard farce with an extended (quite hilarious) scene with people running in and out of the room, mistaken identities and a terrific take on the Abbott & Costello "Who's on first?" routine (which coincidentally was introduced in their "Naughty Nineties" film that came out in 1945).  It reminded me in many ways of some Noel Coward plays that I've seen and which I count among my favorite Broadway experiences.  In fact, playwright Philip King more than tipped his hat to Coward with the play's subplot (using the term loosely) of the American actress and the American soldier being acquainted from when they performed in a USO production of Coward's "Private Lives."  (As an aside, I saw "Private Lives" on Broadway with Alan Rickman of "Diehard" fame and Lindsay Duncan playing the divorced couple honeymooning with their new spouses at the same hotel and it was quite enjoyable.)   One particularly clever--and again, hilarious--moment in the play came when, in the midst of the chaos, a vicar was asked to do a recitation and chose Rudyard Kipling's "If" which begins, "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs...."  Brilliant!   All in all, it was a very satisfying way to spend my Sunday afternoon.

Theatre Conspiracy is in its 17th season and its mission is to "produce and promote the work of the next generation of talented American playwrights."  Each year it runs a New Play Contest, and this past year it fielded close to 300 entries from fledgling playwrights.  The play that is selected becomes part of the next season's line-up, and Paul Lawrence's "Cynthia's Lament," a story about a successful male romance novelist who pretends to be a woman, sounds like it was quite funny and very well-received.   In early July, Theatre Conspiracy will host three evenings of readings of plays on next season's schedule that interested theatergoers can attend for $5 a pop.  I'm almost sorry that I will have escaped the summer heat by then.  It would be great fun to "see" a play go from this early iteration to a full production.   Suffice it to say that this is one conspiracy that I will be a full participant in going forward. 

Tying the Knot

June is the traditional time for weddings or, as they say, "to tie the knot."   What does that expression mean, anyway?  I started wondering about it when I signed up to attend a session of the Admirals Club at the Isles Yacht Club on, you guessed it, tying knots.  Having done a bit of research, there doesn't appear to be a definitive answer as to the genesis of this idiom.  The most painful suggested provenance was the practice in the days of the Roman Empire for brides to wear girdles that were tied in knots.  In order to consummate the marriage, the knots had to be untied so I guess you "tied the knot" in anticipation of the marriage.  Another possibility is that the expression refers to the tradition in certain Japanese marriage ceremonies of tying the couple's hands together with a rope in order to bind them together.  Less painful than the girdle but still not so convenient.  In the Hindu culture, the bride and groom tie knots of flowers together and place them around the other's neck to indicate that they are ready to consummate the marriage.  At least now we're in the realm of the romantic.  My favorite possible source of this idiom, though, is the practice of lovelorn sailors to propose to their sweethearts by sending them a rope through the mail. If the woman accepted the proposal, she would tie a knot in the rope and send it back to the anxiously awaiting seaman.   If she didn't accept the proposal, well, they don't go into that. 

Now that that that's been cleared up (or not), we can move to the Admirals Club meeting that led to these ruminations.  The Admirals are a group of women who get together every other month to discuss practical issues relating to boating.  The topics range from safety issues to quick and easy recipes to boat handling.  This week we got a primer on dealing with ropes (which, when taken aboard a boat, magically become "lines").

Each "Admiral" arrived at the "SS IYC" with a 6' + piece of line, as instructed.  After a quick overview, we started our hands on experience with a knot that is made from a clove hitch and two half hitches. As you can see from the action-packed picture, with no pilings or posts in proximity, we tied our lines up to chairs, table legs and pretty much anything else that was stationary.  Once everyone had more or (in my case) less mastered this knot, we moved on to the bowline.  Before I go further,  I have to tell you that I have difficulty understanding nautical terms.  I thought for quite some time that people were referring to the "love curve" of the sail rather than "luff curve."  (Perhaps that should have been my first clue that sailing doesn't come naturally to me!)  On this occasion, I was surprised to learn that what I had thought was the Boleyn knot (as in Anne, which would make sense since the bowline is called the "king of knots") was spelled "bowline."   Why it's not pronounced with a long "i" is beyond me, but it's not.  Anyway, this knot is one that I've worked with before, and I did catch on after a couple of tries.  The easy way to remember it is that "the rabbit comes out of the hole, goes behind the tree and goes back into the hole."  (See how simple that is??? Trust me, it actually does work!)  At this point, we were getting short on time, the collective aptitude of the Admirals not being quite what had been anticipated.   After spending a few minutes talking about strategies and the associated knots for tying up to a dock, we adjourned for lunch.  As you can imagine, after tying ourselves up in knots for 90 minutes, we had worked up quite an appetite.