Euphoric Vancouver

Just a small taste of what downtown Vancouver was like after the Game Five victory over the Sharks, (and how it will likely be for hours)

I always have this sense of joy commingled with fear when it comes to the Canucks, as if hoping for victory is enough to doom it to failure. But for tonight, I’m content to be happy with the win.

Having seen the celebrations of the Olympic gold medal victory, I can only imagine what it’ll be like if they take it all the way to the Cup!

Easter fun for grownups

When I was a kid, I LOVED Easter egg hunts — the thrill of running around outside, keeping my eyes peeled for a distinctive flash of colour signalling the presence of a jelly bean egg or chocolate treat wrapped in shiny foil.

That translated in my young adult years into scavenger hunts, Amazing Race-type challenges, even trying my hand once or twice at geocaching. Which is all to say that I don’t think that thrill of hunting and gathering ever really goes away — it just transmutes into other things as we get older.

Which is why I think it’s pretty darn neat that this year, the Easter fun isn’t just for the kids.

For instance, Marquis Wine Cellars has set up a city wide “Easter egg” hunt, starting today and continuing until Friday.

Take a good look at those (slightly ugly) Easter eggs up top, and then check out Marquis’ Facebook page (facebook.com/marquiswinecellars) for hints about five different foodie-oriented locations around town. Ie, the first one is “it’s a good read.”

When you’re at a place that fits the bill, look on the power poles near the entrance for a sticker with the images from above. Snap a picture and bring it in to Marquis for a one-time 5% discount off your purchase. Three stickers = a one time 15% discount, good until May 6th. (Check with Marquis for exact deets.)

Or if that doesn’t float your boat, try the celebration on Easter Sunday at Township 7 Winery in Langley. In addition to the Easter egg hunt, there will be birdhouse building, wine seminars, and live music. You can also snag a picnic basket to enjoy in the vineyard, while the kiddies do their thing.

Admissions are by donation, and how perfect is this — partial proceeds go to the Small Animal Rescue Society, which works with abandoned rabbits.

Easter egg hunts that lead to wine are a-okay in my book. Who says kids get to have all the fun?

The joys of being an early bird

An early bird chasing down the worm. Image courtesy of Ju-Fate at deviantart

I wrote last week about how having different sleep cycles was helping me tackle domestic chores, but wanted to also talk about the joy of being an early bird.

I’m lucky that I get really good quality sleep (except for when highly stressed), so in the morning, my eyes usually pop open and I’m ready to spring out of bed. The house is silent, save for B’s snoring, and the potential of the day is entirely unexplored. Anything could happen.

There’s a peacefulness about working in the morning. I can pop in loads of laundry and tidy up, or write an article as  I please. I can figure out my to-do list for the day or the week, knowing that the phone won’t ring and interrupt me, nor will my inbox be filling up with urgent emails. I don’t feel the need to hop on Twitter until it’s a more reasonable hour (although I confess, I do pop on and off sometimes in the wee hours.)

The agenda is entirely mine, and there’s a freedom in that. For this early bird, that’s much, much better than worms.

Special sweetheart times

A few days ago, I was brainstorming restaurant ideas with a friend of mine, who is very excited to be spending this Valentine’s with his boyfriend of four months. (Puppy love, so cute, right?)

Upon being told in return that B and I weren’t planning on doing much, he exclaimed “Lame!” Thanks, F.

But, as I readily explained to my lovestruck pal, it isn’t, really. B and I are so busy all the time — particularly with me being out at evening events — that just hanging together at home is a treat.

Plus, as I alluded to in my previous post, I’m a big believer in ‘just because’ or ‘anytime’ celebrating, not linking to a specific date on a calendar. While I love dining out, I also don’t feel like it’s something I HAVE to do on Valentines, New Year’s Eve, etc.

But, for you folks who do want to celebrate V-Day and may have potentially neglected to make plans or a restaurant reservation, I’m more than happy to share ideas from the Tickle Trunk for a romantic evening.

1. The “It’s All About You” picnic

For this one, it’s important to have a clear space somewhere inside your home, so if you can get your honey out of the house for a little bit or can scoot home from work early, get there and start shoveling stuff out of the way. Try and put it somewhere where it won’t fall on your head later.

You could cook, but this might create some mess that you won’t have time to clean up. Instead I recommend calling up your favourite restaurant and asking if there’s any chance they can make some takeout for you. Hopefully this is doable — many joints have very structured seatings on nights like this and may or may not be able to slide a couple more meals onto the burners.

If not, head to a high end grocery store like Urban Fare or Whole Foods, and see what they have in their ready made/hot meal counters. You could also hit Big Lou’s, The Dirty Apron’s deli, or Meat and Bread.

The idea is to replicate a summertime picnic menu, so fried chicken, sandwiches, potato salad, some cake, or whatever is normally on your picnic list is good. A little lemonade wouldn’t hurt you either, or, if you’re looking for something alcoholic, I’m incredibly in love right now with Innocent Bystander’s moscato. It’s pink, a little bit bubbly, a little bit sweet, and incredibly well priced at ~$14 per half bottle at the BCLDB.

Spread a blanket and pillows over your cleared space, and — THIS IS IMPORTANT — turn off all of your electronic devices, except perhaps a source of music. Sit down with your valentine and take the opportunity to talk about your hopes and dreams for the future, or maybe just about the funny and best parts of your day. (If you don’t like to talk to each other, you’re SOL and maybe you shouldn’t do this one. Or date each other.)

2. The “Lazy Sunday on a Monday” scenario

You know that feeling of deep and utter contentment on a weekend morning when you’re eating breakfast in bed with your BF/GF, and don’t have to go anywhere by any time or see anyone in particular? That’s actually pretty romantic to me.

So I say bring on the scrambled eggs and bacon, and set them up on a bed tray. Cuddle up with some classic movies on a laptop, or read bits of a favourite novel aloud to each other. You could hop out midway for a bubble bath, but I’m a big fan of staying in the bed as much as possible. Any other activities that you might get up to, other than those listed above, are your own business, as this is a family blog…

3. The “Keeping Each Other in the Dark” dinner

I was very lucky to snag tickets to Dinner in the Dark recently — I’ll post more fully about it shortly, but essentially it was a lavish meal eaten while the guests wore blindfolds.

They say that when you can’t see, your other sense are heightened, but I think it’s more of a case that you concentrate more fully on experiencing something. I was very cognizant of the flavours and textures of what I was eating and drinking, but at the same time, I was also focusing more on listening to the conversations around me. It was a very intimate thing to share with fifty or so other people.

That’s why I think it could be a good option for V-Day if you haven’t anything else planned. Take turns wearing a blindfold and shaking up mystery cocktails for each other, to see if you can figure out what’s in the mix. Cut the food up into bite size pieces, and savour every morsel to discover what they are. Dessert’s an opportunity to play around with hot and cold, sweet and salty, etc. Discovery is pretty damn fun when you do it with your sweetie.

Okay, hope that’s enough in the way of suggestion. Wishing you all a day of love today, and every day.

It’s beginning to look a lot like the Olympics (again)

I don’t know what it is about Vancouver, but we seem to have this extreme navel gazing nebbishy thing about whether or not we are indeed fun. It’s been a subject of public debate for at least the last decade, after The Province published a screaming headline of “NO FUN CITY.” (Punctuation Geek in me wants to play with that. “NO FUN, CITY?” “NO, FUN CITY!” “NO? -FUN CITY.” Okay, I’m done.)

The debate leads to questions about permitting/licensing/bureaucracy etc, which is all well and good, but it also leads to this dogged De-Ter-Min-Ed-Ness around other events, in the vein of “We are going to celebrate these, damnit, and we are going to have a GOOD TIME!”

Cue various celebrations around the one year anniversary of the Olympics.

Timed to coincide with that date, the Yaletown Business Improvement Association has re-launched its Illuminate Yaletown campaign, which involves a number of light/video/sound installations around the nabe. They’re expecting about fifty thousand people to check it out tonight. In the pamphlet, they describe the event, which includes ‘roving fun teams.’

Then I somehow got myself hooked into participating in a “celebrity” ball hockey game on Granville Street on Saturday afternoon. It benefits the food bank, so please:

1. Attend and laugh vigorously at me

2. Bring canned or dried food donations, or better yet cash. $1 = $3 in purchasing power, in the oft-repeated mantra for the food bank.

Bob Kronbauer from Vancouver Is Awesome has the full list of participants for the game, as well as a link to other Oly-versary events. Keep in mind I haven’t played ball hockey since Grade Five, so I think the only strategy is to play dirty: hooking, tripping, and copious use of elbows. #sarcasm

Look, I don’t want to sound like a world weary cynic, because I’m not. I’m actually by default a pretty upbeat enthusiastic person. I checked out some of the light displays last night, and thought they were rather nifty — especially the Frozen Patio Party at Section 3 — and I fully expect I’ll have an uproariously good time at the hockey game.

I just wish that we would have events like this more often, and a little more organically. Let’s foster fun and creativity and general awesomeness by having it around all the time. ‘Just because’ events are just as good, if not better than ‘things we must celebrate’.

After all, that’s what I remember most about the Olympics one year ago — the spontaneous eruption of bonhomie, neighbourly spirits, the national anthem, oceans of red shifts, high fives everywhere. That was incredibly fun.

If we have to keep asking if we’re a fun city or not, well, that in and of itself is an answer.

Sometimes you surprise yourself

Image courtesy of www.backgroundpictures.org

A funny thing happened last night when I was out for dinner. (I realize a lot of my stories start off this way, but what can you do.) I was with a group of media folks touring around Vancouver’s Chinatown — more details on that next week — and we ended up at Bao Bei Modern Chinese Brasserie.

If you’ve never been there, it’s a funky little boite with diners almost elbow to elbow, decorated with touches of Shanghai Victoriana salvage shop. At night, there’s dim overhead lighting and candlelight flickering on each table. It’s almost tapas style dining, with wave after wave of white plates arriving in a constant stream.

On the tables are silver canisters that you often see in hole in the wall Chinese restaurants, with spare chopsticks, toothpicks, and napkins — they’re usually there in the hole in the wall joints so that you’re a minimal bother to the very busy wait staff. Here, they’re kind of a retro wink wink, as well as being useful.

There are also ‘candles’, or more accurately, small glass vessels that you can refill with flammable oil, with a removable wick. Either way, it’s open flame, which will become relevant shortly.

Our big group was scootched into a big booth at the back, having lovely conversations, and totally digging into the food (shortrib mantou, holla.) Some of the food requires hands-on eating, which also means grabbing napkins every so often to clean off your digits.

At some point, the entire stack of long rectangular napkins got partially pulled out of the canister, and flopped over, bending in half. Not a problem, until the next time someone reached to snag a napkin, and one trailing edge of napkin slipped just far enough to touch the edge of the open flame.

I was engaged in a very interesting chat with the person on my right, and only turned my head when I hear someone calmly and not particularly loudly say “Oh.”

Within a heartbeat though, the entire stack of napkins went up and the flames were at least four inches high, and it changed to “Oh!”

Now, I’m not normally one of those people who freaks out in a moment of crisis, flapping my hands ineffectually and wailing, but I also wouldn’t say that I’m the first person to jump in during an emergency.

For some reason, in this particular instance, time almost seemed to slow down. I saw the fire and was processing everyone’s reactions to it, but another part of my brain was already working on the problem. The bottle of water on the table jumped out at my eye, and I calmly reached out and grabbed it.

I even had time to tell everyone what I was going to do so that no one would get splashed or accidentally knock anything over, and slowly reached out and poured a small stream of water on the fire until it was thoroughly out.

Disaster averted! Well, except for mopping up the excess water on the table, but such is life.

I’m writing this not as an attempt to self-aggrandize, but just to say that I was surprised at myself and my capacity to rise to the occasion. It’s a sign, I think, that everyone has hidden depths and strengths that can emerge at the times they’re most needed.

So go be your best self today, and see what happens.

People are amazing

I was at a Tourism Richmond event on Tuesday and by chance met Joseph Wu. In addition to being very well versed on Chinese cuisine and Japanese culture, he is an amazing origami artist based in Vancouver.

Joseph appears to keep pieces of paper in his pocket at all times. As the evening drew to a close, he randomly pulled out a pink piece and started fashioning something, his fingers moving neatly in precise motions.

In a matter of minutes, he had made a lovely butterfly, which he very kindly allowed me to give to the adorable 14 month old girl who had been charming all of us from the next table over.

Then it was on to a dark green piece of paper, handled with nary a fumble or a pause to remember the next fold, made into an awesome velociraptor which Mijune Pak quickly called dibs on. You would have too.

It just so happened that Joseph lives on the way I would be taking home from the event, so he and a couple of other food writers jumped into my car. Before he got out, he handed me the gorgeous blue butterfly you see above.

“To say thank you,” he said. Um, looking at how awesome the butterfly is — look at the symmetry, the curve in the wings suggesting motion, and clever use of both sides of the paper to introduce colour variation — I’m pretty much sure I’m in his debt. I have a Joseph Wu original!

Joseph’s work has all sorts of unexpected applications. Check out one such thing below.