Good Tastes

We had Matt and Oana over last night for dinner and Scrabble. I’m happy to report that the Cassoulet was enjoyed by all. It’s rich, but smokey and herb-y. The various meats (Duck confit, duck sausage, Toulouse-style pork sausage, smoked pork chops) all worked together with the white beans. After some cream of broccoli soup (got some great fresh stuff from my ‘celery’ guy at the market), we ate it with baguettes, red wine, and roasted asparagus and tomatoes. For dessert, there were strawberries and figs with warm custard. I can’t take credit for the Cassoulet, but I feel like I’m really getting the hang of this kitchen.

Oh, Oana beat everybody in Scrabble, although according to one set of rules, she and Matt were really tied. Pam and I challenged each other’s words (i still say there is such a thing as a ’sealiner’) but effectively knocked ourselves out of the game. A fun thing to do when you play Scrabble, we agreed, is to try and make up the words you put on the board into a sentence. Try it the next time you play for a laugh or two.

The Culture Crawl
Today we decided to take advantage of the last day of the East Vancouver Culture Crawl. Rather than a Pub crawl, were you go from bar to bar, the Culture Crawl is a few days in November each year where the artists who live in the bohemian neighborhoods east of Vancouver downtown open their studios to people who wander in from the streets. So, in the fog, we ambled from sculptor to painter to potter in a charming residential area which I’m sure would be absolute paradise on a warm summer day. We didn’t buy anything, but it was great to see so much good art made locally. It reminded my that Richard Florida wrote on how Vancouver has one of the highest ‘bohemian indices ‘ of all cities in North America. Funny thing, but I noticed that about a week after we left Boston, The Boston Globe published an article citing Florida’s work about the flight of creative types from Cambridge to places abroad. Go figure.