Early August is the beginning of summer mellowness. Time slows, the swallows swoop, the summer lawns hiss and whisper. The full-fledged season now stretches before us. It lasts only a few weeks, but in the end, it will seem like months.
Upbeat July fades away like an old postcard; the preparation and rush to the beaches and road-trip holidays, lawn furniture and picnic hampers loaded in the trunk.… Continue reading
“Call me Ishmael.”
Those immortal words begin Herman Melville’s epic novel, Moby Dick.
Those and many other passages from the novel have been running through my mind these past weeks. I’ve finished listening to an audiobook version (borrowed online through the Libby iPhone app) and am now reading e-book passages on Kindle. It was high time!… Continue reading
When Penderites say, “I’ll meet you at Medicine Beach,” they usually mean the shopping area parking lot, right?
Not to be confused with the beach itself or the Medicine Beach Nature Sanctuary.
I’m referring to the conglomeration of three Pender Island favourites at the foot of Schooner Way: Slow Coast Coffee, the Medicine Beach Liquor Store and its newest addition, Truss Farm Foods.… Continue reading
In February, I purchased four 10 kg bags of “fine grey sea salt” for Happy Monk bread production. That’s eighty-eight pounds of beautiful salt harvested off the west coast of France.
Don’t worry. Your Happy Monk loaves aren’t going to get saltier. They’ll taste the same as ever. I’ve been using this brand, Maison Orphée, for nearly three years; I got a reasonable price on this batch, and it will last well into next year.… Continue reading
“What do I find wrong with America? Everything. I begin at the beginning, the staff of life: bread. If the bread is bad, the whole life is bad.”
from The Intimate Henry Miller, by Henry Miller, Signet, 1959
In his scathing essay, “The Staff of Life,” Henry Miller suggests that bread, and the way it is consumed, is the primary measure of a country’s “goodness,” or at least of its citizenry.… Continue reading