Many changes in the new year

It has been such a very busy few months, and indeed 2013 was such a whirlwind of a year artistically that I am really enjoying a little bit of breathing room to relax, get to know Maggie and the children again, and reacquaint myself with the rhythms of life here in our Brussels neighbourhood.  It's a little bit crazy keeping things organized as an itinerant singer, so I welcome a chance to plan the year ahead.

 

I had such a long blog post last time, making an summary of our Christmas activities, that I departed from my usual writing structure and posted the photos all at once, then quickly brainstormed the topics.  I liked this new structure and so am using it again this time.  Parenthetically Malcolm had to write (and memorize!) a four minute speech on his favourite season of the year (surprise: it's Canadian winter) for his English class at school, and we used the brainstorming of key words method to create an outline, so perhaps that is also why I am tempted to use the same method today.

 

Le roi boit! (Duncan finds the fève in the Galette des Rois)

 Alpine pathway

Swiss glacier

seared scallops

warm day in january

pacific northwest at the cinquantenaire

A big head

 moules frites chez Rosado

Raclette machine to warp factor seven!

 

melting a handprint in a glacier

beef fat in blocks

Switzerland

Maggie has been off in Switzerland all week.  I don't think that she was skiing much, given that she had knee surgery earlier this year, but I know she was enjoying herself and getting lots done on her marking, lesson planning and I hope her embroidery project.  I am jealous that she has had a third visit to the alps in winter, while I have never visited them to ski, and we haven't had any snow here at all; it's been very mild.  Last week it got up into the teens, and I took advantage of that warmth to put the roof down on our car for a little drive.

The lack of a proper winter seems like a small price to pay I know, for all of you who live in Eastern Canada and have been suffering under extreme cold, but the fact is that even with the rare warm day for top-down motoring in January, dark and damp winters here are a bit unsatisfying to me.  I happen to enjoy the more dramatic seasons that we enjoy in Canada, and find the Belgian weather to be a bit too levelled out for my taste.  It is strange though that the aloe vera plants on the window sill that I had no room for inside are still doing fine, as we haven't had a hard frost yet.  I am sure though that I will get my share of cold weather in one month; I fly to Canada one month from today.
 

Maggie has sent a few photos home, so I can see what she is up to; here are some photos from a tour inside a glacier!  Very cool, in both senses of the word.

cheesiness
 

One of the items that Maggie has been instructed to buy while in Switzerland is a half-wheel of raclette cheese, and that is because we bit the bullet this year and actually purchased something that we have had on the list since before we moved to Belgium almost seven years ago: a big wheel-o-cheese raclette machine.  Phil and Sue Kaegi had us over for raclette one night in Toronto in maybe 2005 or so, and I think we set a new record for the number of fantastic white wines we worked our way through over the course of the evening.  (There are benefits to dining on raclette when your host is a) swiss foodie and b) a wine importer, and neither Maggie nor I have forgotten what a great night that was).  The little raclette machines made by Tefal and others, with the heating element underneath a grill and little trays that you can put slices of cheese into work just fine, and we have one in Canada; we have improvised a raclette set with a small le creuset iron pan and fondue stand for several years, but this weekend we are going to get serious, and break in the big machine…  Interestingly this model also lets you order the heating element and cable separately so it will work with 110 volts as well as the european 220, in case we want to bring it with us to Toronto if and when we decide to come back.

house sale

To the topic of coming back to Canada.  we had some news yesterday that have to do with our plans to return, or our lack thereof… I've already written about our decision to list our house.  We contacted Kimball Sarin, a family friend and a realtor for Bosley, put our Toronto house on the market a week or so ago, and received a few offers; we accepted one last weekend, and tuesday their inspection was conducted without incident.  The rest is for the lawyers to deal with, but failing any major complication, come March 18th, it looks like we will no longer be Toronto taxpayers.  It is a great relief, given some of the headaches that we have dealt with over the last couple of years, to have our financial resources in something that cannot be burgled, flooded or burned up.  We have no plans to buy a house in Europe at this point, but it is nice to have that option should we decide to do so.  A lot of people have expressed both congratulations at the successful sale and regrets that we have "left", but this decision was more out of financial necessity than a desire to cut ties with Toronto.  Indeed we share these mixed feelings ourselves but are happy with the decision.  For me, the July we spent in Toronto in 2012 on a house exchange was a great example of how it is still our Canadian home town, despite the fact that we haven't lived in the house on Endean Avenue for almost seven years, and I am looking forward to staying in Bruce's house during my next working trip to Canada.

 

Many of the items that furnish our house are portable and will go into storage, but much of the large furniture like the boys' bunk beds, our dining room table and chairs, our leather couch, the IKEA PS couch/bed, various chests of drawers and so forth will be sold or donated.  I am planning to hold a contents sale on the first or second weekend of March, and will be posting a few items on Kijiji or craigslist, and will share that link here.

social time in Brussels: new year's day +1 dinner
 

On the second of January, after the dust had settled and everyone's livers had had a chance to relax a bit, we went to Andrew and Julia's for a great dinner and an evening of socializing with the Gardner and Simpson-Hall families.  Each family has two children so that made an even dozen at dinner.
 

I was responsible for the appetizer, and Maggie and I usually have seafood at this time of the year, so we chose to do pan-seared scallops in a white wine and shallots reduction, and my goodness they were fantastic.  I will definitely make this one again.  Here's the recipe I used.

After dinner we had several games of Loup-Garou or Wherwolf; if you've never played it, you should as it is absolutely amazing and a lot of fun…  I must recommend it to my Aunt Lorraine for the next big Zadow family gathering, if they haven't played it already, as it works best with a large group of people.

visit to the Cinquantenaire
 

On Wednesdays the boys have the afternoons off.  Duncan has a quick lunch at home and then goes to karate class, so Malcolm is usually on his own for a bit in the afternoon, drawing or catching up on his homework and studying before he has a solfège class in the evening.  The first Wednesday back I met him at school and we took the Metro up to the Merode stop, bought a sandwich at the kiosk, then walked through the park of the Cinquantenaire to go to the Museum there, where I wanted to see the temporary exhibition of Henry Van de Velde before it closed.
 

Henry Van de Velde was a pivotal figure in the Art Nouveau scene at the end of the 19th century, and although he was born in Antwerp spent much of his life in Weimar, Germany, where he established a school of arts and crafts which was the precursor of the highly influential interbellum Bauhaus movement.  He was just as influential as Hankar and Horta, but his artistic expression was all-encompassing, and extended through painting, architecture, furniture design, textiles, wallpaper, jewelry, china, cutlery, sculpture, bookbinding; all aspects of functional and decorative art.  The exhibition was really fascinating, and I was glad that Malcolm also enjoyed it.
 

I am really ashamed to say that I have never been to the Cinquantenaire Museum before, and as our tickets granted us access to the permanent collection, we had a brief tour of the rest of the building.  The museum is huge, with multiple display areas, and according to the website includes "archaeological artefacts from prehistory to the age of the Merovingians, as well as finds from Egypt, the Near East, Iran and Classical Antiquity."  Sounds pretty good?
 

We walked through the atrium to the permanent exhibits, and were initially greeted by a North American first nations section, dramatically arranged under a large oval rotunda.  I was really happy to see some beautiful Pacific Northwest Coast carvings from British Columbia, and to show Malcolm the exhibits on the different first nations clothing, tools, and artifacts.  There were even a number of video screens showing several National Film Board of Canada classics documenting the Inuit practices of building igloos, making lamps from whale or seal blubber (from the 1970s), Mohawk healing dance ceremonies (1950s), birchbark canoe building (1960s) and so on.  I remember these films very well, from my own childhood, and it was a very pleasant surprise to see these films here in Brussels, and to share them with Malcolm.
 

I hope to return another time to see the many other pieces that are stored there, and to take Duncan also; there is a travelling exhibition on Ferdinand Porsche that closes on Sunday; maybe we can make a trip together on Saturday early afternoon?

string quartet plus one, or two
 

Ann Engels is a cellist that I first worked with on the Johannespassion of Bach back in 2009, and since then we have been trying to find some other opportunities to do some concerts for baritone and string quartet, or piano quintet.  This has meant exploring the repertoire to see what kinds of pieces are already set for this instrumentation, and also looking for other arrangements that could work.  I fondly remember singing the Vaughan Williams Five Mystical Songs in Kingston with piano quintet, and it was in my opinion preferable to the orchestral version because of the tight ensemble and clarity of the individual parts.  As well, Dover Beach (Barber) is a great piece for baritone and quintet, and I've only done it once, in Toronto at Eastsminster United Church, and always wanted another crack at it.  I am looking forward to building a good programme of pieces that suit this ensemble… this weekend Ann and her quartet we will try a few of arrangements out as part of a funeral service for a musician from Leuven as a precursor to building a larger programme.

thomas hampson concert
 

I was to go see the famous American lyric baritone Thomas Hampson at the BOZAR this past week, but he cancelled his concert due to illness.  I had seen that he was also planning a performance with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and have booked a ticket.  It is a happy accident that they will be premiering new arrangements of pieces like the Brahms Four Serious Songs, which I have done a few times before in Canada and Belgium with a piano accompaniment, but arranged for strings, and the Mahler Songs of a Wayfarer which I will debut this spring in Canada with Dina, so I will be listening and watching very carefully.  It will also be the first time I hear this very talented artist perform in recital, so I am looking forward to it very much.
 

We seem to have an embarrassment of international baritones in Brussels this winter, as Bryn Terfel will be performing with the Belgian National Orchestra at the BOZAR in early February, in music of Wagner, Verdi and Berlioz.  He's another famous baritone that I've never heard live, so that's something I'll definitely do, and perhaps if I'm very lucky I'll get a chance to add a Bryn and Matthew photo to my collection.

home with the family
 

It's been great to be home with the family so far this month, even despite the fact that Maggie has been away this week.  The chance to reconnect with the kids is great, and I value every moment that we get together.  They are certainly happy when they get some of their favourite "dad" dishes, like moules frites, liver, bacon and onions, and so forth.  Last year Maggie had french class on Wednesdays so they are used to getting these dishes that she doesn't particularly like to prepare on those nights when dad is home and mom isn't.  This week the pommes de terre farineuses looked absolutely great, and so I decided to buy some blocks of beef fat, and we made homemade frites, and moules steamed in their own juices along with a little celery and leek.  Fantastic.
 

Frying in a small dutch oven worked ok; I am thinking that a friteuse would be a good idea, but only if I used it outside on the terrace…  The apartment doesn't smell like a friterie because of the good range fan and the small amount of frites we made, but I can only imagine what regular use would do to the atmosphere in our european-capital-sized apartment… and it would likely also have a negative effect on my attempting-to-be-european-sized waistline… 
 

I don't mean to only write about food, but I am happy to be back in my kitchen again after so long away, and with Maggie gone it has been a parade of "dad's greatest hits".  Last night the boys tucked into a big tagliatelle bolognese, and at the same time I put a "bio" rabbit into a marinade of celery, carrots, onions, juniper berries, thyme, bay leaf, wine vinegar and two bottles of Westvleteren trippel, to rest for a day or three.  Perhaps I will make it for tonight for her return?

... à bientôt!