Hot Chocolate Festival at Cocoa Nymph

Whoever thought of a hot chocolate festival in January/February is a genius. I stopped by Cocoa Nymph and tried the hazelnut drinking chocolate with crown royal whiskey marshmallows. It was deliciously rich, thick and boozy, the kind of hot chocolate you eke out in spoonfuls and sips. I had to have a Barnabus chocolate too for some crunch and even more chocolate.

Cocoa Nymph is a cozy, quiet place that is perfect for a hot chocolate meditation. I am one with the chocolate, OM. I am filled with chocolate OM. I will never have enough chocolate. Oh, oh, that's not very zen.

My sister sends me chocolates from Cocoa Nymph. She orders them online and they arrive by magic at my door. At first I assume I have a secret admirer. Especially that time they forgot to enclose the card. Then my sister calls and all is clear. She is so thoughtful.

Here are the chocolates they make displayed on their white grand piano, which is not made of chocolate. Trust me, I know because I gnawed on the keyboard. Be sure to check out a hot chocolate festival venue near you, or just have your own festival at home.

Winter Spaetzle

You know when you're shopping for groceries and you just feel an intuitive gut pull towards an ingredient? Today it was brussel sprouts. They're green, cute, and in season. I built a meal around them. I decided on baked salmon and baked squash. I had a kuri in the back porch which I operated on and put into the oven. Brussel sprouts have a bacon fetish, so I obliged them by baking some until crisp in the oven and chopping it up into bite-sized pieces. I sweated some onions and garlic, added the bacon and halved brussel sprouts and then braised them in a cup of chicken stock with a tablespoon of agave nectar mixed with about a teaspoon of sherry vinegar. Add a bit of lemon juice to preserve the green color of the sprouts. I fried up some homemade spaetzle I had in the fridge with more bacon and more onions. Then I toasted some lovely local walnuts, gave them a whizz in the old food processor and there's your garnish.

We had a 2005 Poplar Grove's "The Legacy" which is a rich, rounded mouthful of bliss. And for dessert, some of my own milky way sesame chocolate bark. A nice way to mellow into a Friday night deep into January.

I'm a Regular

I've just been reading a mystery novel by Martha Grimes with a character who has his own pewter mug at the local pub. It hangs on a hook on the wall and he and he alone uses that mug. Well, guess what? Today Maria and Tanya gave me my own mug at Shaktea. I'm officially a regular! It's a beautiful hand crafted cup made by a New York artisan.

Soon I'll have my own chair by the fire, like the pub cat. Woe betide anyone who sits in MY chair or uses MY cup. Arrrrr!

We're Breathing for You

I have a friend in Winnipeg who is very ill and has been in the hospital for several weeks. She caught a respiratory viral infection and ended up with a collapsed lung. It's been very upsetting as I have slowly realized through bits and pieces of revealed narrative how serious things have been for her. Her friends have set up a website and an e-mail list for her so now she has 72 friends in a shared vigil that spans several provinces. The language of the e-mails is upsetting, but also comforting. G visits Pranna D. at 10 am, N and B visit at 2pm. J and S pick up her partner to feed him dinner. "She is eating well," someone reports, "She had an egg, some yogurt and a piece of toast." My friend is a yoga teacher, so a couple of people visit her and perform the gestures of pranic healing. One friend e-mails and tells us to meditate on breathing. Take three deep breaths and tell yourself you are breathing for her.

I have met one of her Winnipeg friends who is a writer. The three of us sheltered in the rain at the Regina Folk fest four years ago in a tiny tent I used in my first appearance as Madame Beespeaker. We laughed and shared snacks. Now A. will take my e-mail letters and read them to our friend, Pranna D. She is getting overwhelmed by visits and is now asking for cards and letters. We have a long history of writing by hand to each other, but I like the idea of A. reading my e-mails to Pranna D. I can be chatty and au courant. My goal in sending these letters is to take her mind off her situation, if only for a few moments. I want to create a virtual window on the world outside that hospital room.

My friend is a fighter. I know she will build on the stability that she's already won in the fight to breathe and to keep her CO2 levels down. She will draw in the energy her friends are giving her and she will put it to good use. And it's good for us all to take at least three breaths a day and send them to someone in the world.

Taco Trucks and Tonics

On Saturdays Per and I had tacos at the winter market. The line-up and wait wasn't too bad, especially considering it was close to noon. (He slept in, not me!)


You get a choice of two tacos for just under $7. We both got a pulled pork one and the black bean and sweet potato option. I preferred the pulled pork with its eye-popping purple slaw. The vegetarian option tasted a bit soapy to me. I was wishing for three tacos with less filling so they would be easier to shovel in without getting sauce dribbled down your arm. I don't like over-stuffed tacos. Do you? I know, I'm being picky. The pulled pork taco was awesome. They put the salsa on for you, which also bugged me.

We admired the eggs and watched the market folk as we ate our tacos. You know what ticked me off? There were people standing because of a lack of chairs and just as we were leaving a woman who had been sitting and eating took her bags off a chair. We all assumed it was being saved by someone in line. How rude.

It's that time of the year when forced cheerfulness can quickly turn sour. I have a tickle in my throat, so I am feeling particularly moody and vulnerable. Tonight I made an awesome funky winter tonic. Please do not try this at home. It has: ginseng, linden blossom tea, propolis honey, acai juice, fresh ginger, a bit of "wise woman tea" that tastes absolutely awful, apple cider vinegar and cranberry to mask the taste. I hope this vile rocket fuel blasts away the cooties.

Roses and Taxis

Fun times Friday night with Anankana Schofield and Helen Potrebenko, author of Taxi. I had a good time asking people about their own anecdotes relating to cabs and two separate stories related to taxis in Buenos Aires. Apparently the taxi drivers there are often quite interesting characters. Eleven people even bought copies of the book, which is part of what this performance is setting out to do. Helen was quite chuffed.

I read a Martha Grimes today, The Old Contemptibles, which was a good read for a cozy cat napping kind of day. Last night I watched an episode of Jericho of Scotland Yard called The Murder of Johnny Swan which I also enjoyed. If I was an academic, I think I would write a book about the role of food in murder mysteries. I love the way food often winds its way into character and plot in mystery novels--sometimes in quite disturbing ways such as in Norwegian writer Jo Nesbo's novel: The Devil's Star. A woman who used to work in kitchens realizes that the black drops coagulating in her boiling potato water are blood because her husband says it tastes like eggs (albumen). There is an even more disturbing reference to food later in the novel, but I'll leave that for you to discover. I am loving the Scandanavian mystery writers, as are many Canadians, according to this article: http://www.emb-norway.ca/News_and_events/News/Nordic-crime-novels---a-hit-in-North-America/

Tonight I had some Parisian Red Rooibus tea from Shaktea on ice with some cranberry juice which was really nice. You can really taste the rose petals in the tea. It would be good in a champagne cocktail, methinks.

Taxi Stand at Not Sent Letters

Tonight I am going to be an Insecurity guard at an impromptu taxi stand where Anakana Schofield is going to re-contextualize the act of reading and being read to with Helen Potrebenko's book called Taxi! This is the first of a series of interventions with the aim to making audiences aware of this Vancouver novel with the ultimate aim of inspiring people to read the novel, buy copies of it, and engage in critical dialogue about the work. I've never been to one of these events, but I'm looking forward to it, even though my feet are killing me today and I want to put them in nice warm booties and elevate them.


NOT SENT LETTERS & GUESTS
@ dharmalab
Friday Night, January 14, 2011, 8pm SHARP!
@ dharmalab, Vancouver, 1814 Pandora
(N. of Hastings, E. of Commercial @ Salsbury)
$5 suggested donation (toward production expenses)

Please join us for an evening of interdisciplinary works by

ANAKANA SCHOFIELD & LORI WEIDENHAMMER
KATHERINE SOMODY
LEANNEJ & MY NAME IS SCOT
RINA LIDDLE & NOLA SEMCZYSZYN
RON STUBER & COLIN McLAINE
SORESSA GARDNER & DENNIS E. BOLEN
JEREMY TODD w/ MARGOT LEIGH BUTLER, NATASHA McHARDY, DINKA PIGNON, YI XIN TONG, DENNIS E. BOLEN & ANDREW SHORT
w/ postlude music by CORNER & friends.

NOT SENT LETTERS & GUESTS form public constellations of engaged interdisciplinary and durational practice, uncompromised by the realpolitik conditions of contemporary art as a professional sphere. Artist Jeremy Todd organizes each event as an extension of his continuous Not Sent Letters project (see below). The interrelatedness of art, society & everyday life is critically explored amongst a diverse plurality of artists & publics.

ANAKANA SCHOFIELD & LORI WEIDENHAMMER (two Vancouver-based interdisciplinary artists & friends) expand Schofield's dialogue w/ Helen Potrebenko's 1975 Vancouver novel Taxi! through an embodied exploration of transaction involving readers/listeners. Weidenhammer's Security Guard examines these encounters by providing "market research" on various sitters.

KATHERINE SOMODY (part artist, critic, skeptic & cautious romantic) screens the first in a series of self-portraits exploring relations between music & video, memory & storytelling, textual & somatic language - while trying (perhaps in vain) to disentangle the personal from the socially prescribed.

LEANNEJ & MY NAME IS SCOT (two interdisciplinary artists engaging issues of class, identity & agency while living in Vancouver's DTES) screen Calculating 63: More than 15 years, over 63 lives, way too many excuses, endless questions, zero good reasons & only 1 perpetrator? Something in this equation doesn’t add up. This collaboration sifts through the statistics, looking for feeling & meaning behind the numbers and finding out that poverty, violence & exploitation can disappear just about anyone.

RINA LIDDLE & NOLA SEMCZYSZYN (two interdisciplinary artists exploring art making as a methodology for analysis & criticism of social structures) present DIY Lover, a performative inquiry into the material configuration of dating guides.

RON STUBER & COLIN McLAINE (a drummer/percussionist & visual artist/composer) perform Shed, a work composed in a Strathcona shed for electric guitar and drums that might also involve the shedding of light, skin and inhibitions.

SORESSA GARDNER & DENNIS E. BOLEN (a singer/composer/performance artist & novelist/editor/teacher/journalist) combine prose, poetry and electronica within a new collaborative work @ Not Sent Letters & Guests.

NOT SENT LETTERS is an ongoing series of epistolary detours by JEREMY TODD (an entanglement w/ practices of the self & the politics of meaning) involving online image/text posts, digital film shorts & multi-media performances. The dharmalab letters set will include live scores by ANDREW SHORT, image projection, & letters selected from the project blog & read by MARGOT LEIGH BUTLER, NATASHA McHARDY, DINKA PIGNON, YI XIN TONG & DENNIS E. BOLEN.

Explore previous Not Sent Letters & Guests events here: http://notsentlettersandguests.blogspot.com
Email Jeremy if you'd like to host or contribute to a future N. S. L. & G. event: jeremytodd@shaw.ca