Canadian girl out and aboot

Again, like I said, there have been few public posts around here lately. I'm writing a lot in a paper journal and have not been blogging as much.

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I haven't been on the Internet as much, because I've been actually going outside. Also, my sleep counsellor cautioned me against using the Internet at night. So I've been drastically cutting down my Internet time, and it's made a huge difference for me.!

Still, here's what I've been watching.

Season 1 of Pushing Daisies
Season 2 of True Blood


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Today I received a kick ass wedding invite from my friends Hanson and Danica. The wedding invite looks like a rock show poster, including a note about "doors opening", featuring, etc. It is seriously awesome.

The ceremony will be done in English and Cantonese and will be held at the Sun Yat Sen Chinese Classical garden in Vancouver. The reception is going to be held inside the main foyer of the Vancouver Public Library. On the 22nd, everyone is invited to a typical Chinese wedding banquet, which will feature the lucky 12 course Chinese meal, minus the sharkfin soup because of ecological concerns.

I can't wait!!!

I am reading a fantastic book called You couldn't ignore me if you tried . It's about the Brat Pack, 80s movies and John Hughes. I think it's going to inspire a little film fest over here :)

I attended my friend's wedding this weekend. This was pretty cool because it was the wedding of the first friend I ever picked by myself. I think we met at preschool when we were three. We lived in the same neighbourhood and were good friends throughout childhood. We stayed in touch over the years, even though we have not lived in the same city since we were 17.

I drove home to Saskatoon on Friday to go to the wedding on Saturday. It had rained really hard leading up to the wedding, but Saturday was blessed with good weather. The wedding was on an acreage outside of the city. I got to the site in good time, and met the groom and his parents who were waiting outside the house. I also got to chat with my friend's aunts and numerous relatives.

The ceremony was touching and personal. My friend wore her mom's refurbished wedding dress. The dress had been purchased in the 1970s and had a high neck and long sleeves. They removed the sleeves and neck and made a simple shift/slip dress using the original fabric. After the ceremony, which included personal vows, we drank champagne in the garden and mingled. There were only about 40 of us there.

The rest of us continue to mingle and ate appetizers while the immediate family had photos taken in the front yard. Later on, some of us (myself included) helped with the food preparation, mixing up salads that needed to be taken down to the dining tent set up on the lawn We then clustered inside a tent to eat food that was mainly prepared by the bride and groom! The day before the wedding, the bride and groom had made about 7 salads and a poached salmon with dill sauce. They also served roast beef and vietnamese salad rolls and three kinds of cheesecake, which were catered.

After the dinner, we sat around the bonfire and talked and people played Bocce Ball. It was a really a beautiful wedding, a great chance to visit, and a reminder that weddings don't need to cost an arm and a leg or be a huge, major production to be beautiful and meaningful.

I have not updated since the Alberta Farm Writers Tour last weekend. On day 2, we went to the University of Calgary veterinary school. I proceeded to get lost on the way there, but still managed to find it, which was pretty damn amazing. I am getting better at driving in Calgary. I've also come to the conclusion that I like Edmonton way better than Calgary. It is smaller, less corporate and artsier. Ah well.

Anyway, we got to talk to some of the staff at the U of C school and learn from one of the students too. One of the most interesting things we got to see were all the models used for learning. They had a stuffed dog who was hooked up to a computer. People could adjust his heart rate etc, so the vets would learn how to fix it. They also had a learning lab in which actors were hired to play owners etc. The vet students had to learn how to tell the owners that their cow was sick/dog was dying etc. These scenarios helped the would-be vets to develop some bedside manners and skills for dealing with owners and hysterical individuals.

We also saw some really cool models such as the model of a cow's backside, which could be attached to a uterus/cow reproductive system, so that the students could learn how to palpate a cow before practicing on a living model. I thought all the models were quite neat, and I've got pics of them to put up on my facebook and flickr, once I get around to it.

Following this, we went to Business Innovations, where we saw a software developed for equine vets. I wasn't too interested in the software, but we got a chance to tour the vet hospital and see a horse in surgery. The horse was completely knocked out on anasthetic.(sp). When they were done the surgery, hooks were used to move the horse off of his back and into a padded room, where he was allowed to wake up. It was really interesting.

I spent last Thursday and Friday in Calgary at the Alberta Farm Writers Association conference. First off, I have to congratulate myself for my success in driving around Calgary. I still don't know the city that well, and in my mind, it is a big mess of urban sprawl. But I was able to drive around and only got lost once!

On Thursday, I drove myself to the hotel to meet up with the other farm writers. There were about 40 of us on the bus, and we took off the Cattleland, a feed yard with about 25,000 cattle. It had rained and snowed a lot, so the feedlot was kind of gross looking and the cattle were walking around in mud. They do a lot of fairly interesting experiments with private companies at Cattleland and we drove around the feedlot on a bus while the owner talked to us about what he does in his operation. It started to rain a bit during this portion, but we were warm and dry. From there, we went to Fieldstone fruit winery where we sampled 4 fruit wines and learned about fruit wine making. Apparently, you have to use 75% Alberta grown fruit in Alberta fruit wineries. This is to protect the Alberta industry and ensure that people are making Alberta made products. Some of the fruit wines were quite delicious. From there, we went to the Strathmore station, which was an old railway station converted to a restaurant. The food there was pretty great and the ambience was fun.

After that, we went to SemBios Systems, which is a biotech firm that is working on genetically modified organisms. They are making safflower plants that can produce insulin. This was a very scientific part of the tour and some of the info went over my head. We did get to look at lots of safflower cultures and bits of plants. We also toured their sister company, Botaneco, which is completely natural. This company extracts safflower oil for cosmetics and the product can be found in Burt's Bees and Spectrogel.

After this, we went back to the hotel for the banquet and got to listen to a speech and have a question and answer session with Ag Minister Jack Hayden. This was pretty interesting, and he's definitely a better speaker than the previous ag minister. The highlight of our meal was definitely the Vodka Caesar soup, which had a great tomatoey taste and was like a Caesar but in soup form. I would definitely have that again.

The whole day was a great opportunity for me to talk to other ag writers, network, meet new people and learn a whole lot of info. This year I will be going to my first Calgary Stampede, and I now know a lot of people on the ag media organizing committee. Networking with others really made this conference valuable for me. I'll write more about the second day of the conference in a bit.

Last week, I did a little trip out to Sylvan Star Cheese Sylvan Star Cheese . I'd heard a lot about this cheese, which is made in a small town just outside Red Deer. The man who makes the cheese is an immigrant from the Netherlands. He was a cheesemaker for 30 years before moving to Canada and then opened up shop when he moved with his family. The cheese has been so successful that John and his family were able to create a new cheese making place, complete with a great farm store and an educational room. The milk for the cheese is supplied by the farm's 140 Holsteins. I was not able to visit the farm, for food safety reasons. Generally, if a food manufacturer lets you go inside their plant, they won't let you go on the farm, in order to cut down on the possibility that you could contaminate their food.

The educational room is quite cool. John and his family are making a video about cheese making, so people who go to tours at the farm will be able to learn more about cheese without going into the actual facility. There is also a window in the educational room which will allow people to look directly onto the floor to watch people making cheese.

The cheese is made once or twice a week. Milk is brought up from the farm and then heat treated, not pasteurized. Live cultures are added and then the curds are pressed into molds. Eventually, the mixtures are dipped into brine (salt water) and then allowed to cure. The curing process takes A LONG time. Sylvan Star is known for their Grizzly gouda, which is aged up to a year. Old Grizzly is several years old. The cheeses cure on shelves. They are rotated daily and coated with a breathable wax, which must be applied every day. It's very labour intensive and takes a long time.

Before visiting Sylvan Star, I didn't know that lactose can be destroyed in cheese making. When cheese takes this long to make, the lactose goes away, which means that people who are lactose intolerant can eat this cheese.

Sylvan Star is known for their gouda, but they also make Gruyere and Edam. The Edam is cave aged. Everything must be completely controlled- temperature, humidity, light, etc. It's a very precise process.

Sylvan Star has won numerous awards for their cheese. They make about 20 kinds of cheese including a smoked gouda and various spiced goudas. I got some of the Grizzly and the smoked gouda to take home, and both of them were exquisite.