Koorookookoo

Extra points to anyone who knows why I’ve entitled this bloggie the way I have…less points if you’re Canadian and/or born before 1975 (which I definitely was).

Well, I’m not sure how Snobby feels about being an International Canadian Symbol (see yesterday’s comments). I am, however, greatly flattered to receive comments from people as far flung (from me) across the world as the UK, Sweden, and Pakistan (who else is out there? Show yourselves, even if you think you’re not from anywhere all that exciting). That the parts of my little bubble I choose to write about – in a modified form, of course – should prove interesting to anyone other than Snobby is greatly gratifying. Unemployment can be very tough and this is one of my many strategies for remaining upbeat (maybe in a couple of years you’ll all get a chance to purchase one of my other ways of remaining upbeat). Groovy, daddio!

And now I should stop contemplating this before I grow one of those humble ego heads, as in: “Gosh golly! Please! Not another compliment! I couldn’t bear it! I beg of you! Don’t say one more nice thing about me! Hush!” Heehee…

So, I think Ice Queen was complimenting me (or at least not insulting me) when she said I’m not typically Canadian. Unsure of what she meant exactly, I toyed with the idea of asking her to write a guest spot on my blog. But then, as I do take the occasional request, I decided to tackle the issue myself. Ice Queen, feel free to add or subtract.

Why Snobby Isn’t a Typical Canadian:

• Snobby’s parents are American.
• Snobby loathes hockey (and most other sports – they pre-empt “The Simpsons”!).
• Snobby cannot ice skate.
• Snobby cannot ski.
• Snobby understands and agrees in part with many of the reasons for Quebec separation, even if he doesn’t believe it to be the correct course of action.
• Snobby tells those who annoy him that they annoy him, and not always with a smile on his face.
• Snobby tells those he likes that he likes them.
• Snobby does not make stupid American jokes while talking about how much fun he had in New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, etc, while using his American computer, American TV, American movies, American music, American cell phone, American clothing (made in sweat houses in India, the Philippines, etc) because he finds that hypocritical – although he hates the current administration and their foreign policy.
• Snobby actually is bilingual, not the pretend bilingual they teach in school.

Why Snobby is a Typical Canadian:

• Snobby was born and raised in Canada and has lived nowhere else except for one year in Rhode Island, one year in Poland…and several years in Quebec, as some already consider that “somewhere else” ;-)
• Snobby doesn’t think –20C is such a big deal; he’s experienced –45 several times.
• Snobby prefers beer to all other forms of alcohol.
• Snobby was caught in the confusion of Canada’s conversion to metric and therefore measures his height in feet and inches and his weight in pounds. However, he measures distance in kilometres, food in grams, liquid in litres, and temperature in centigrade (except for when he’s cooking when he uses farenheit to set the temperature on the oven).
• Snobby writes with a mix of British spelling (colour, centre, programme) and American spelling (tire, memorize) but knows both systems and therefore scoffs at British versions of American books and American versions of British books (like those loathsome Harry Potter “translations”. The Magician’s Stone? Gimme a break.)
• Snobby owns several toques, although none with a pompom.
• Snobby is pretty lefty in his political leanings, in comparison to our average neighbour to the south, although not as much as I was when I was younger.
• Snobby automatically compares everything Canada does to the States to see how we measure up. C’mon admit it. We all do it. Especially when we can show ourselves to be supposedly superior. Why else do we fly into such a tizzy of Canadian pride when our pop stars make it big down there?
• Although Snobby would like to have the opportunity of living abroad again, I would always return to Canada because this is where I’m from and I’m happy to have grown up here.

Tomorrow I’ll try to be funnier. Now I get to do my taxes that are due in a few short hours! Yay Canada!

Snobby’s Pot Pourri

How many of you knew that pot pourri means “rotten pot” in French?

I just stepped out of the Horrifying Shower of Agony and Lava and am therefore still a little cranky, plus my throat hurts a little from screaming at my neighbours to let me take a shower in peace, ferchrissake! Cleanliness may be a virtue, but it comes at a high, high price in Snobby’s apartment. Yes. A high, high price …

Let me say that you people are no help at all! 50% say I should go to my stupid interview this afternoon and 50% say I shouldn’t? Good thing I can think for myself. I had to tip the balance myself after receiving an email from someone I’d never met before that basically said “You go girl!” on the subject of Snobby’s unemployment. I extrapolated and voted on her behalf against the Inane Interview of Wasting Life Force, and then replied to her email informing her of my action. Well, she wrote back admitting that she had been drinking heavily at the time and that I must never, never write her again lest her family discover she’d been communicating with an odd Jewish pansy from the Colonies (I am of course exaggerating, Anonymous Email Lady; you must always take with half a grain of salt whatever you read on Snobby’s blog).

(PS – Anonymous Email Lady, I did go to your blog and yes indeed you are an odd little duckie, but I don’t think you’re as far gone as you think you are…you want me to link to your site or do you prefer anonymity? And since you like badgers so much, check this out – turn your computer’s speakers on.)

Now, let me state that I do not want the job I am interviewing for this afternoon, no matter how dire my finances are getting. So put that in your engine and rev it!

Finally, to all you book lovers out there…check the link to the right called “Award-winning Chandra”. Then read this review. Now go out and buy the book. And if any of my hundreds of thousands of loyal readers in the GTA are looking for something cultural to do on Tuesday, May 4, come to the Cameron House (408 Queen West) at 7:30 for her book launch. I’ve known Chandra for almost half my life and I’m immensely proud of her.

Plus, I need to stay on her good side so I can have a t least one good contact for whenever my snaggin fraggin novel is baggin maggin ready! ;-)

Be well and think of me conversing with the Sucker of Souls this afternoon.

My First Meme

I want everyone who reads this to ask me 3 questions, no more no less. Ask me anything you want and I will answer it. Then, I want you to go to your journal, copy and paste this allowing your friends (including myself) to ask you anything.

Via Super Rad Woman

This is how I procrastinate from preparing for the interview for the job I don’t have the slightest interest in.

Sanctity of Marriage

This is why around 50% of Canadians and even more in the States think marriage is a sacrosanct institution into which only they and Barbie & Ken should be permitted to enter? A hilarious and apparently true rebuttal to the overrated sanctity issue. Enjoy.

Security Blanket Letter

What’s the best way to prepare for an interview for a job you really don’t want? Write your cover letter for a job you really do want in which you remind yourself how great you are and why everyone should be clamouring to have you in their employ. Since I don’t want the job I’m interviewing for tomorrow, all I have to do is show up at the interview with some references and some set speeches on how great I am, and the absolutely worst thing that can happen is that I get an offer. Right?

Happy Happy Joy Joy

If I move away I will miss my beautiful, spacious apartment that was built in 1917. However, I will not miss the plumbing of my beautiful, spacious apartment, which was also built in 1917 that drenches me with no warning with scalding water whilst I shower every time someone, anyone in the building turns a tap or flushes a toilet…or even contemplates turning a tap or using the can. It is not good to start one’s day by howling in pain and swearing.

Caffeline

Even my cat likes me better only after I’ve had my coffee. He doesn’t come out of one of his many hidey-holes (so far, I estimate I’ve found about half of them) in the morning after I’ve fed him until I’m about half-way through the first cup. He’s very intuitive.

Poutine au foie gras

I think the universe is really trying to get something important across to me. In my state of Montreal confuzled befuddlement, my friend Hyper-Educated Muscle Man, who is as yet unaware of recent events in my life, sends me this article from today’s New York Times on poutine. Snobby is not afraid to admit that poutine is his most favouritest food of all time and that the best is still to be had in Quebec…

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

MONTREAL, April 21 – Poutine, Quebec’s favorite fatty fast-food concoction, is like a voluptuous mistress. It is loved passionately in a province where eating is virtually an art form, but in public it is often acknowledged only with embarrassment. Recently, however, the shame has been ebbing.

Quebec’s signature dish, made of fried potatoes covered with melted cheddar cheese curds and gravy, is slowly spreading beyond Canada and winning fans as far away as New York City and Florida. But the really big culinary news is that poutine is becoming haute cuisine.

Martin Picard, the owner of the popular bistro Au Pied de Cochon, known by local critics as the enfant terrible of the Montreal food scene, has begun adding foie gras to the dish. He has also reinvented poutine sauce with a blend of pork stock, egg yolks, still more foie gras and a touch of cream for texture.

For Mr. Picard, poutine is a cultural statement whose time has come for the proud people of Quebec. Their history had been marked by cultural disruptions, including an 18th-century British conquest, various protests against church and state and, most recently, an elaborate struggle to carve out and preserve their cultural identity within the confines of English-dominant Canada.

“People are just beginning to be proud to eat poutine and understand it is about becoming more confident in ourselves,” said Mr. Picard, an ebullient 37-year-old chef whose specialty is southern French cooking. “We’ve had this inferiority complex, but we have grown up the last 10 or 20 years.”

Mr. Picard’s wild head of hair and scruffy beard mark him as an iconoclast. But his nouvelle poutine is what is really revolutionary. Before he reinvented it, poutine was the mainstay of bowling alleys, greasy spoons and late-night bars.

Still, chefs at some of Montreal’s finest restaurants are known to prepare it, but only behind the closed doors of their kitchens to feed their staff members. They would not be caught dead putting the dish on their menus. Intellectuals swear they have never tried it, though some have been known to be too embarrassed to admit they eat it.

A few years ago, chefs here started experimenting to make the dish socially acceptable by introducing duck stock into the sauce and replacing the fries with baked potatoes. But that effort never caught on.

“People were ashamed to say, ‘I want to go to a restaurant to eat poutine,’ ” said Mr. Picard recently in an interview at his restaurant. “You’d eat it at 3 in the morning when you are drunk or after a party. I didn’t like the hypocrisy.”

But since Mr. Picard first put it on his menu along with standards like confit de canard and crème brûlée in November 2001, popular demand has spiraled to the point where he now sells 30 to 40 plates of poutine a night.

Montreal food critics have embraced the experiment, if somewhat fitfully.

“Did you know a foie gras poutine exists and that the plate is delicious?” wrote a critic in the Montreal daily La Presse. “We met that weird creature recently at Au Pied de Cochon.”

Québécois food is French, of course, although many dishes have sprung up here that are firmly rooted in Canada. There is tourtière, a spicy layered meat pie popular at Christmas, and ragout de pattes de cochon, a stew of pigs’ feet, pork meatballs and potatoes, also popular in winter. But nothing matches poutine in popularity, particularly among the working class.

The origin of poutine is the subject of debate. But food commentators say the dish was probably invented in 1957 in the Quebec dairy town of Warwick.

As Warwick residents tell it, poutine was first cooked by Fernand Lachance, a quiet churchgoing man who with his wife ran a restaurant called Le Lutin Qui Rit, or the Laughing Elf. Mr. Lachance was actually not much of a cook, his friends say, but he successfully sold fried potatoes and cheese curds separately in paper bags. One day, a man came in and asked that he mix the potatoes and cheese in one bag.

Mr. Lachance prepared the concoction and shook the bag up until the warmth of the fries melted the cheese. When he opened the bag, as legend goes, he exclaimed, “this is a poutine,” roughly translated in local slang as “a mess.” A local cheese-factory owner came by the restaurant soon after, and when he tasted the dish, he immediately recognized it as a way to increase his sales. He spread the word to restaurants across southeastern Quebec.

The dish began appearing across the province, and today is even served in Burger King and McDonald’s restaurants in Quebec. Numerous variations of the dish have emerged, including an Italian version, using ketchup or spaghetti sauce.

People in Quebec concede that the high fat content of poutine could be a health hazard, but Mr. Lachance’s family and friends note that he ate the dish at least once a week until he died in February at the age of 86.

“He looked good and he was fit till the end,” noted Claude Desrochers, the mayor of Warwick, who is now considering an appropriate way for the town to memorialize Mr. Lachance and his creation.

As for Mr. Picard, he has bigger thoughts about poutine than its calorie count.

“When you go to a restaurant for a salad, you have a problem,” he said with a stern look. “I just love foie gras. I think I was born with a foie gras in place of a liver. And when you eat poutine, it makes you happy.

Confusement

The universe will never cease to amaze me with the little twists it throws about to make life so very mysterious and wonderfully astonishing.

I got a job offer in Montreal today. It’s a very good job.

Nothing is definite, but Snobby may be employed and a born-again Montréalais by autumn.

eep!

Adolescent Metropolises

Off I go! The wondrous palace of Host Who Prefers Anonymity in drizzly Montréal awaits! I will get my fill of poutine, bagels, and Boréale and then I will return.

I will write a mopy bloggie or two about the good ol’ days, and then I will begin to write again about my cat, my large, gorgeous, sunny, downtown Toronto apartment, some cute guys maybe, my wonderful multi-faceted Toronto friends, and maybe even a job interview or two *knock on wood*

And to that silly person who asked me why I don’t move back to Montreal if I love it so much (what is this, 1950s McCarthy-terrorized USA?), I promise to write something nice about Toronto when I get back. Geez! Lighten up and enjoy the comedy!

Toronto has two big chips on its shoulder: 1) not being perceived as A Real World Class City, 2) ex-Montrealers who still love Montreal even though they don’t want to live there anymore.

Montreal has one big chip on its shoulder: Toronto (although it is lightening up at a rapid pace on that one). And, despite what people may think, language issues are not shoulder chips for Montrealers; they are a way of life.

And for fun, just use the words “small”, “provincial”, “sleepy”, “boring” about that other great Canadian metropolis I know well and love, Winnipeg, and watch the dander fly! You’ll hear all about ballet, music, art, two big lakes named after the city, various festivals, and the Crash Test Dummies. In fact, I went to the very high school from which Neil Young had been expelled a couple of decades earlier. Am I now not so much cooler in your eyes?

I’m just goofing around. I wrote a chapter in the novel I’m working on comparing the provinces to teen-aged siblings with Ottawa as the bumbling, ineffective single parent. This imagery could just as easily be expanded to intercity relations as well. I eventually took the chapter out because it didn’t fit well with what was around it, but I’ve kept it on my hard drive, waiting for a rainy day. Maybe I’ll post it here one day if I expand the scope of this blog and of Snobby’s persona. What do you think?

All packed, almost fully caffeinated, and in full guilt mode for leaving kitty alone (worry not! Cigar And Leather Sex Man will be coming to feed him) for a few days. I’m sorry cute kitty!

Bonne fin de semaine à tous!