Happy Age of Majority to my eldest; garden continues; bread is contagious; Hammock time

It's been more than a week since I posted; that's largely because I have been pretty occupied...

Malcolm was able to come home on Sunday, May 11th, for Mother's day, after being in Boom since the 15th of March.  The whole family has enjoyed his week with us very much, and was really happy to be here to celebrate his 21st birthday.  Now that he's gone back to Boom, we are all missing him.  Maggie was a bit blue yesterday in the evening after I came home from driving Malcolm back to his apartment, and this morning Duncan was moping around saying that he missed his brother and a week was just not enough time!  Wonder of wonders...

But absence does make the heart grow fonder, as the aphorism reads, and so we are all feeling extremely "fond", but then again, we all have to remember that it's not like we are plunging immediately into another enforced absence of two months.  At present there is every chance that he might come back for a visit next weekend.  I would personally discourage it, as he has only a few more weeks of working within the school structure to finish his projects.  He'll have lots of time in the summer to be here, if he wants to, so it's important for us not to distract him from his ongoing work.

Our week as a family of four (and sometimes five, see below) had lots of nice moments.  We shared a lot of meals together, laughed a lot at jokes and stories; Malcolm spent a good amount of time next door at Christopher and Isabelle and Camille's, as she was also at Christophe's after months of staying with her mother.  And we had Camille over here several evenings, so that that was very pleasant as well.

Malcolm chose to celebrate his 21st birthday on Thursday with a nice dinner of orchietti pasta with shrimp and asparagus and lemon, followed by osso bucco milanese, and then a chocolate marbled cheesecake courtesy of his mother.  It was definitely epic!  He received nice financial present from the extended family, a couple of bowties sewn by Camille, and a bottle of Arran sherry cask malt whisky from us.  A happy fellow.

After Malcolm's dinner on the Thursday, we were still sufficiently recovered by the weekend to enjoy some charcoal grilled ribs basted in my maple bourbon mint barbeque sauce, with oven frites and a caesar salad.  Needless to say Malcolm didn't leave home hungry.  As well I took some time to tutor him in some new-to-me sourdough techniques, and sent him home with two different cultures (wheat and rye) that he can set up his own system.  I also sent one half of the dough that we made together on Sunday morning, to bake in his own oven while I made a loaf in mine.  They both worked out well, and I hope that he continues to experiment with this artisanal process... his apartment-mate is french and eats a lot of bread, so why not make your own?

On the matter of bread-making, I have been experimenting with different recipes, ingredients, rising times, proofing baskets, and so forth.  I've managed to find caraway seeds to make a good rye bread, and also found pastrami at the local grocery, so reuben sandwiches were of course on the menu.

I also bought some of the wicker bannetons or proofing baskets that give a nice pattern to the breads and also dry out the outer layer of dough very slightly to produce a better crust.  These take some getting used to but I am encouraged.

Other than that we have been continuing much as before... the #LikeMe recording session for Malcolm and I went quite well, and we were happy with the result.  As well the producers shared with us the completed mixed songs from our previous recording session for season one, and we are really excited about how they turned out.  (I can't send you the new tracks as the CD hasn't been released yet, but when I get the all-clear I'll publish them).

The producers are very happy with our work, and have said that the show has been purchased for another two seasons (making four seasons in total) and the musical director is keen to have us sing the English versions of those seasons for our characters as well.  When that will happen, however, is anyone's guess: with the COVID-19 distancing policies, Fabric Magic, the production company, has had to cancel the live concert performances that they had developed to promote season two.  Also, it isn't clear when they will be safe to do the filming of the next two seasons: in the past they have been filming in the early summer, but that clearly won't be possible, so we will have to wait and see.

At the same time that the Belgian Security Council loosened restrictions on movement and assembly on the 11th, they also allowed some stores to reopen, provided that they strongly restricted the number of customers allowed in at a time.  In many places the entrances have been organised for one-way traffic so as to allow a wide berth between customers, and masks are mandatory.  As well the downtown streets in Wavre have been converted to one-way traffic, and the sidewalks have been extended temporarily into the liberated space so that pedestrians won't get too close to each other.

a whole wheat levain, proofing before breadmaking

Duncan and I were happy to visit the Petits Riens, where I found some things for the kitchen, including some inexpensive vintage Val St. Lambert glassware that is perfect for levain-making, and also some Indian tabla drums... I first heard these on the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper record as a kid, and they have fascinated me ever since.  They are less noisy than kit drums, and I think Duncan will find them a bit easier to start on, as you play them with your fingers not with sticks.  Also they pair well with acoustic guitars, and are nice and portable.

In other activities, Duncan and Maggie and I bottled the Special Belgian ale, which completed primary fermentation after a week, but we are still waiting until the Saison finishes; it has been dropping in sugar content more or less steadily, and should be finished in another two or three days, which should mean over two weeks' fermentation instead of a week for the Special Belge... but that's probably because the Saison uses a different yeast variety, and also has a different amount of starting sugar: the Belge had a starting sg of 1.050, while the saison was a bit lower at 1.042.  That's what those numbers written on the lid of the barrel pictured below mean.

(In case you don't know what specific gravity means in this context, it just means how dense the liquid is compared to water.  For example, the initial gravity of the Belge at 1.050 means that it was 1.05 times the density of water, due to the dissolved sugars and other compounds in the starting fluid.  This density is compared with the density after fermentation is completed, and that difference is used to estimate the alcohol by volume in the finished product.  Since we dropped from 1.050 to 1.010, the alcohol by volume (ABV) is estimated to be around 5.25%.  By contrast the Saison is expected to drop from 1.042 to 1.000, with an ABV of more or less the same, at 5.5%).

As well we started another batch of the Abbey Dubbel, which we had good success with last year.  It has already dropped halfway to its destination sg in three days, probably because of the higher starting sg (1066) and the warmer weather we've been having.

The garden is doing well: I see that the bean plants are up, which means that now I have:

• snow peas
• carrots
• spring onions
• large yellow onions
• beets
• pickling cucumbers
• english cucumbers
• zucchini
• corn
• rhubarb
• butternut squash

... and I'm waiting for the dill and sunflower seeds to germinate.  Other herbs we have in the ground are bay laurel, rosemary, thyme, taragon, and chives.  Maggie divided up the parsley into little blocks and put them in between the onions and carrots.

corn in a circle with two climbing beans just sprouting inside at left  

We still have had almost no rain, so I'm watering every day.  The cistern is empty so I'm having to use the municipal supply, but I do still fill the cistern near the garden so that it warms up and any chlorine evaporates out before I use it on the plants.

I got fed up with trying to find a hammock frame, and considered building one, but then decided for an experiment that I would try to hang one on the older elderberry and lilac trunks on either side of the garden.  Will a little rope work I managed it, and it has been great in the late afternoon to relax in the back of the garden.  It is nice to not have to spend the money on buying another object of lawn furniture, and also to not have to take it apart and store it every winter.

Speaking of saving money, I improvised some new insoles for my garden shoes out of a sheet of cork pad and duct tape.  It worked ok but already the cork is breaking a little, so I am thinking that I'll have to spring for the twenty-five EUR for another pair of garden shoes.  These ones have only lasted me about six or seven years.

I had two lessons already this week that went quite well: both were young baritones and they seem to be excited about the progress that they are making.  As well today I think I have one with my remaining soprano; it is technically a holiday today, so it's possible that she will ask to reschedule, but I will go upstairs now and get things set up in the studio just in case...

In other jobs, Duncan submitted his resume today for student work at the Pain d'Antan bakery just down the street.  He has to get going on the job search, and has made a list of other places to apply to for summer employment.   Maggie's work continues as before, with all of her classes still be taught from here.  She's making up for at that sitting at the computer by doing online Zoomba three times a week and also has started added the online yoga class, which gives her a little more socialising time with colleagues.

For my part, I worked a very long day yesterday with Christopher, leaving at 6:50 to do a cabinetry installation in Brussels, and then returning at 17:15 just in time to teach a lesson.  The same thing is scheduled for tomorrow, so it will be an early night for me tonight...

Clyde with embroidery and mojito

Together again

We had a busy weekend.  On Saturday the weather was very warm, in the middle 20s, so Duncan and I brewed up a couple of different types of beer: we did a "Special Belge" ale, which promises to be an amber beer of medium strength, and a lower alcohol "Belgian Saison".  These are showing signs of fermentation, and I will be checking the specific gravity every 48 hours or so until primary fermentation has stopped.  We checked today and there has already been significant change in the specific gravity, which means that the sugar has already started getting digested by the yeast, and is being converted to alcohol.

The weather on Saturday was condusive to working outside, so I took the large dining room table from the garden apart and repaired the legs.  Last summer while Maggie and I were in the UK for Bethany and Tim's wedding, the boys had some friends in, and one of the partygoers sat on the edge of the table and cracked one of the legs, so I had to saw out the broken tenon and replace it with a biscuit of new wood, and then glue and pin the legs back into the feet.  It is not a very sturdy design, but it does the job okay, and gives us lots of dining room surface in the back yard... we need the extra space, because we have a visitor!

The Belgian government has eased back the travel restrictions just in time for Mother's Day, and so I was allowed to go and pick Malcolm up from his apartment in Boom.  Yoshi came along for the ride and we checked out his projects in person, including his Wappen harp guitar reproduction.  It is really beautifully done and is getting quite close to completion.

As well I had a first look at the closed "box" of the L5 archtop jazz guitar that he has been building for me.  It already has a great sound which one can test by tapping, and I sang a few notes into the soundhole; it has a very strong resonance centred around an Aflat, with quite a bit of strength on either side of that note.  That is actually a pretty good key for jazz or swing: Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode was first played in B-flat (not very far away from A-flat).  A-flat is a good key for trumpets and saxophones: they are transposing B-flat instruments so when they play a note on the page, it sounds a tone lower than written.  So that means that a song in A-flat (four flats) would look like it was in B-flat (two flats) for the horn.  The neck is also more or less done, and is just waiting to be joined up with the body, and then the fingerboard goes on.  It's looking great.

I had made english muffins the evening before, and returned with Malcolm by around 10:30.  We had eggs norvege to celebrate Mother's Day.  (Maggie is wearing an apron in the photo, as she did volunteer to make the hollandaise.)

One other aspect of the new regulations was that we are allowed to go see a few close friends again, as long as we maintain appropriate social distancing, and if possible stay outside, in a well-ventilated area.  Maggie sewed up a bunch of different colourful face masks for the Hammers, and so we decided to go and deliver the masks, pay them a visit and have a late afternoon beer and snack together for the first time in two months.

Then it was home to make some phone calls to the boys grandmothers/our own mothers, and then we settled in for a big meal of roquette, tomato and avocado salad, followed by roast lamb, baked sweet potates, and broccoli.

Today Malcolm and I are going to work a bit to prepare the songs for the recording session tomorrow, and Maggie is back at work.  Duncan has a school meeting tomorrow via teleconference so perhaps we will receive some news about his future assignments and projects.

The weather here has turned quite cool and extremely windy, with powerful gusts up to 65 kph, so I hope that the house handles it ok, and that the garden pavillion doesn't topple over again.  According to the forecast, the wind gusts will be at their strongest around noon, and then things should calm down a bit.  Unfortunately we are still looking at dry conditions for the next week, after a very tiny amount of rain over the weekend.  I will have to keep watering the garden, unfortunately...

Happy Friday

rhubarb, rye sourdough bread, and fresh eggs

onions and snow peas

corn plants sprouting

Things are going pretty well here.  The corn plants have almost all sprouted, and the peas are getting quite big.  I have thinned out the beets and carrots rather aggressively, so I hope that they will do well.  I have planted all of my climbing pickling cucumbers, and they look fine, but the butternut squash and zucchini seeds didn't sprout very well, so I will maybe go over to the Aveve around the corner and see if they have some plants that have already been started.  If not, then I'll just start some more seeds.  The rhubarb is kicking serious butt and I may have to split it out again to give it more room to spread.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away... I received news today that the Coffee Cantata that was to take place in late September is no more.  That would make it strike two on this particular cantata... not a big surprise, really; I am steeling myself for the eventuality that Canada and Japan won't happen either.  We'll just have to wait and see.

That's the "taketh away" bit.  On the "giveth" side I received a call from the producers of that Flemish television programme #LikeMe: they are ready to record the songs for the second season, and wanted to know if Malcolm and I were free for a session next week.  The travel rules have now been relaxed a bit, and so he was planning to come home this weekend anyway, for Mother's Day, and to celebrate his 21st birthday next week, so we will go together from here to the recordig studio on Tuesday, and do our session.  His school is discussing some limited opening hours starting next week, but I really wonder why he would even bother to go into the building, when essentially all of the tools and materials required to complete his work are already in the apartment/studio.  We'll have to see how that develops.

The recording studio wanted to reassure us that they have some protocols in place to protect the actors: they have restricted the number of people in the building, and suggested that we bring our own headphones, and will be disinfecting everything diligently between each voice actor.  I'm quite pleased to be asked to make the new recordings, because at this rate, it seems likely that it will be the only income from performing I am likely to make this year.  The singing teaching is very satisfying artistically and it brings in some income, but it doesn't come close to replacing the lost concerts.  And of course for Malcolm it is a big chunk of money that he can really use for his studies and projects.

Thank goodness that Maggie's work at St. John's International School is still stable, and she has already learned of her schedule for next year, which is the same set of courses as this year.  The enrollment forecast for her school is more or less flat, which isn't a bad result given the global economic situation.  I do have some other options for earning money: Christopher next door will continue to do kitchen, dressing room, and other cabinetry installations when it is safe to do so, and I'm happy to help him out with the larger jobs, so we should be okay.  It's a bit funny to think that cabinetry work has been something I have returned to on and off again for about thirty years now... 

Tonight we made a very delicious dinner of Japanese gyoza.  These are the Japan version of Chinese pot-stickers, or dumplings, or ravioli, or pierogi, really.  I saw some Ardennes ground pork reduced to clear so bought a bunch of it.  This recipe is super easy, especially if you buy the gyoza skins ready-made, which I have read is actually the preferred method for most Japanese households.  I used the recipe of Namiko Chen, from Just One Cookbook, but you can use anything you like.  The basic idea is pretty simple: make a filling of ground pork, shredded cabbage, scallions, garlic, ginger, shiitake mushrooms; flavour it with a little bit of soy sauce, sake or sherry, black pepper, sesame oil, and salt.  Then stuff a tablespoon of the filling in a wrapper, wet the edges, and pleat-seal them up.

The interesting variation of this recipe that makes it different from how I cook pierogi is that you pan-fry them in oil first to brown up the flat bottom, then add some boiling water and steam them for
a few minutes with the lid on, and then take the lid off, evaporate the water, and then drizzle a little more sesame oil on for flavour.  Pure magic! 

While I was winding our mantel clock this evening, Maggie and I were reminiscing a little about the various lacunae that we've experienced together, prior to the current one.  You might not have heard this word before but it is the latin word for a gap, or a pause; in anatomy it's actually a hole or depression in the bone.  You might be more familiar with the word hiatus... which also means a gap, but a lacuna is sort of the same thing.  There have been a number of times in our lives when time has just stopped, the forward rush is stalled, and everyone sees the people around them for what feels like the first time, and then you basically sit around being good company with each other, waiting for the situation to change.

Me personally?  I love those moments.  I am a very busy person normally, and I relish those situations where I am off the clock, and am not supposed to achieve anything, because then I can really relax and do things that are unusual or improvisational...  The campcraft boy scout/volunteer fireman/ambulance attendant in me also really enjoys the challenge of "making do".  Maybe that's why I bake sourdough bread, raise chickens, plant a garden, have kerosene lamps, and enjoy owning a mantel clock that I have to wind?

Anyway, here are a few of those moments that we were reliving this evening:

• my year off from Queen's, and my layoff from cabinet-making in 1997-1998 (personal)
• the ice storm in Sharbot Lake, January 1998
• the World Trade Centre attacks of September 2001
• our shared parental leave for Duncan's birth in 2003 (personal)
• the Eastern Seaboard Blackout of 2003
• August to December 2007 when we were both getting to know Belgium (personal) 
• Maggie's cancer diagnosis in 2010 and subsequent treatments and recovery (personal)
• the 2010 volcanic eruptions in Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland (yes I had to look up the spelling, so what)...

So really we were kind of overdue for some sort of pause.  In some ways there is a kind of freedom in this type of situation; it has its own kind or particular beauty, or at least power of memory, as evinced by the tendency of people, years later, to say in a gathering, "Remember the time that..."

I'm looking forward to looking back.  How about you?

Have a good weekend!

Happy Birthday, Duncan

Happy Birthday to Duncan!

Seventeen years ago, in 2003, we were welcoming you into the world in the midst of a global flu-like pandemic caused by a coronavirus called SARS CoV, that had originated in China and quickly spread to a number of other places, including Canada.  Maggie's pregnancy looked to be going according to plan, and as there were no complications, we decided not to go to the hospital, which was under rather frightening protocols, and the midwives agreed to attend us at home in Toronto.  Everything went swimmingly and you arrived in the wee hours of April 30th.

And this year, your birthday present is... SARS CoV2!

(Here's the link in case the embedded video above doesn't work.)

All kidding aside, while this pandemic has been orders of magnitude larger than the one in 2003, my loss of concerts aside, we personally haven't been hurt too badly by it, not yet at least.  Of course it is hard for Duncan not to see his friends, not to have his classes, and to miss his karate, but then again he is able to spend a lot of time working on painting projects, and helping out around the house.  He did receive generous financial presents from grandparents and other members of the family, so that helps ease the pain...

He is playing D&D with friends regularly and also hanging out in the MineCraft worldspace with Malcolm, which means that they get time together every day or two.  I am a bit worried about his schoolwork, as his teachers didn't really provide him with that much to do, and he hasn't been terribly motivated to buckle down and do the work.  If classes were to resume I am sure that he would not be well-prepared, so I am encouraging him gently to try to do some of that work, and asking for him to give me a status update once in a while to try to show an interest.  Still, I understand that it is difficult for most 16-17 year olds to see the point of schoolwork at the best of times, let alone when so much in the near future is uncertain...

We celebrated his birthday #18 (technically speaking) starting with buttermilk buckwheat pancakes with chocolate chips for breakfast, and then in the evening with a nice big meal of BBQ Irish Angus picanha steaks, frites from our newly reopened favourite friterie, and a caesar salad.  After I had grilled the steaks and set them to rest, Duncan and I went out to get the frites ourselves, just before a short rainstorm happened.  On the way back the rain cleared up and there was a rainbow visible, which is a very good omen...

In fact our meal was so good and indulgent (maybe we ordered more frites than we should have) that we were not interested in the birthday cake that Maggie had made (a dark chocolate pomegranate torte).  So we woke Duncan up with a song the next morning and he had chocolate cake for breakfast...

Maggie had an extra-long weekend, as Friday was International Worker's Day (Labour Day), and so she didn't have any classes.  She spent quite a lot of time on the weekend marking though, which is a real drag: the online teaching plans involve a lot more marking than would be required in normal classes, and it's very hard to think about evaluations when you've already been staring at a computer screen for the whole day already, teaching classes.  There are some plans for certain grades to somehow return to the school in person, in some way, in another week or two, but her grades are not included for now.

A number of stores that had been closed for weeks did reopen today, including fabric and craft stores.  Maggie made a couple of masks (which I wrote about last post) but she will make more as it seems likely that mask-wearing will be a common thing for quite a while, and the whole point of fabric masks is that you don't keep using them but wash them daily.  She has tons of cool fabric here, but she is short of elastic, so I have been keeping my eyes open at all of the groceries.  We walked by the fabric store here and they indicated that they also were out of elastic for the moment but were expecting a shipment soon.  I have a friend who uses shoelaces to tie masks instead, and when I think back to the surgical masks that were part of the costumes of the M.A.S.H. tv show, modelled after what surgeons were actually wearing at the time, I am pretty sure that they were tied with laces instead of being secured with elastic...

I find the ones that hook over your ears to be quite uncomfortable anyway, so prefer the two loops behind the head method.

In gardening news, I am happy to report that yes, our Sussex hens are finally producing eggs.  We expect three eggs a day: two brown, and one pale beige one from the Sussexes.  You can see the difference in the photo below:

They must have heard me muttering darkly to Maggie that I was planning to call the butcher soon if they didn't start turning all of that bird feed into eggs, and decided to change their tune.  The other possible explanation was that they were stressed out from mites: I found an infestation in the coop a few days ago and so had to burn their bedding, clean the chicken house out, spray it down with a chemical insect deterrent and then sprinkle a lot of diatomaceous earth around the coop.  This seems to have worked at knocking the tiny blood-sucking mites down, but I will keep my eyes open for any resurgence.  We never have had any such problem in the past, so I am wondering if they brought the mites with them from the chicken farm?

The garden is looking good: we've had a second harvest of rhubarb and are about due for a third.  The climbing snowpeas are looking great, and I finished my trellis for the cucumbers and transplanted the seedlings into their places on Sunday.  The corn plants are still coming up, almost all six hills have sprouts in five pockets each, so it won't be too long before I thin those out, plant the climbing beans, and the squashes.  I went and got the adapters needed to use my new submersible pump, to bring rain water up from the cistern under the cellar floor, and arranged the hoses to reach the 320-litre water barrel that I have next to the garden, and ran that for the first time to fill the reservoir.  It makes watering the garden with a can much easier, and also the water is free.  To be honest, a cubic metre of water in Belgium (1000 litres) only costs something like four EUR, so it's not that big a cost, but why spend it when you don't have to?

I have students again this week, one each on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so that is keeping me occupied a little bit.  It is hard for me to play the warmup exercises on the piano for the kids because of the time lag, and I am not much of a pianist, so Bruce has offered to record the vocal warmups using his telephone, and his piano in Toronto, and he has emailed them to me to share with the kids.  This way they can hear the notes on their end, and I will also hear the notes and their singing on my end, without any lag or delay.  It will be a very cool thing to have his playing helping these young singers, my students, warm up their voices, just as it did for all of my lessons.

This weekend we also had a family singalong again for our Aunt Judy, who is home again after some more cancer treatment.  As before we had people from many different locations tuning in, and had lots of cool songs.  Because of the same delays that make it difficult to teach lessons, it is clear that if this type of thing is to work, it's more of an "open mic night" than a real sing-a-long, so that means that people are choosing lesser-known songs as well as the familiar ones.  To me that is much more interesting than just playing the old favourites.

The weather has been cooler this last week and a half, so I have got in some good runs.  I forgot to write in the last blog: the weekend before last was a nice cool day, and so I ran a half-marathon distance for the first time since the 12th of September, 2018... I felt pretty good too, and Yoshi ran the whole thing with me on the leash, so that is probably his first half-marathon too.  This past week I have had a couple of shorter runs, 14km and 9km, but am having a little trouble with my left calf muscle, so it's going to need a bit of rest before I resume.

It has been a bit of a bummer to realise that this past week I would have been in Toronto preparing for the Vaughan Williams concert, and then would have been spending this week getting ready for the Johannespassion in Brussels.  But I just have to accept that those things are not in the cards right now, and hope for the best in the future, and focus on the things that I can control in the moment.

Okay that's about it.  I hope that all of you are doing well, and keeping safe during the confinement...