All you knead is...

...a good knife and a cool uniform to be a chef... oh yeah, and a sexy pair of black clodhoppers. Apparently chefs are known to be really big people that one should not offend, (they do carry large knives after all!), because the uniforms are HUGE! I do not consider myself an extra-small human being, but my chef uniform is size extra small and it's still too big! The darn things come in extra extra extra small all the way up to quadruple extra large. Clearly they want us to feel smaller than we really are. Oh well, at least it makes me feel like all this working out and eating well has been paying off.

But i digress... many people have been asking about school and how it's going, so i thought i'd give you the low down.

I'm heading into week 4 in Toronto, and amazingly i have my final Artisan Bread Theory class tomorrow night. I can't believe i'm already finished my first course! It's been an interesting one. A bit of bread history and lots of bread science and math. You know, stuff like the composition of grain, the ins and outs of gluten development and fermentation, the effects of various ingredients, temperature and saturation on bread development and so on. We were put in groups of four to do a group project and i got teamed up with three rather interesting dudes. When i say interesting... well, really i mean odd. Nice odd though. Anyway, we each had to bake 4 loaves of bread using different water temperatures for each loaf recording the kneading time and fermentation times, measuring how much each loaf grew during fermentation etc. Tomorrow night we present our results. I'll admit it's tough to make this sort of presentation exciting but since we're all a bunch of "bread heads" at least we can count on the audience being keen.

My other class is Rustic Artisan Breads and it's a lab class, which means we have to show up in full uniform and we get to bake stuff in the bread lab. Yeah! I love this class. Every week we make 2 different kinds of bread and whatever preferments we need for the following week. So far we've made Portuguese Corn Bread, Altamuran, Straight and Poolish Baguettes. This week we are doing Sweet Rolls and a Tuscan Loaf. I'm learning the proper way to knead dough (no punching, knuckling or adding additional flour as you knead people!), how to use industrial mixers, stone and conventional ovens, and how to get dough in and out of the stone oven on the wooden lifter thingy without ruining your perfectly formed loaf in the process. This is tricky stuff. The hardest part is waiting for the bread to bake while we smell the heavenly aromas wafting through the room. We always have a tasting session at the end of class, and we always eat the Chef's loaves so that we can take ours home intact.

This means i get to jump on the streetcar at 10:00 pm with hot bread in my arms... i meet a lot of strangers this way. ;) Last week we made 2 kinds of baguette and i brought 4 loaves home. My end of the streetcar was smelling mighty fine let me tell you. Now you would think my housemates would be super happy to have all this yummy bread hanging around, but no... it seems that they have all decided to cleanse for a few weeks... and as for me, I have been playing this "game" with my friend Kristy that forbids white bread so, as of right now i have a whole lot of bread sitting in the freezer waiting to be devoured the minute we are free of our current eating restraints. For me, this is tomorrow (heh heh) and there's a beautiful loaf of Altamuran in there with my name on it! (see photo above!)

A final note on bread... did you know that humans have been eating bread made primarily with wheat in it's various forms (spelt, kamut, einkorn etc.) since before the first civilizations? Back in those days we were a bunch of nomadic tribes boiling up grain and water over a fire. At some point some of it splashed on hot rocks and cooked and this sparked the idea of baking it. This would suggest that our digestive systems should be well evolved to deal with wheat and all it's cousins.

You know, there's something primal about bread. The aroma of baking bread triggers something within us that makes us feel good. Safe. At home. Cared for. Loved even. It's in our blood, our history, and has been a part of our culture since time immemorial.

So, it makes me wonder... what's all this fuss about bread being bad for us? Personally, I think it's a big over generalization and perhaps a factor of extremes. Unfortunately, with industrialization came heavy processing, and along with that white bread came to represent wealth and prosperity because the lower classes couldn't afford the highly processed flours. The trouble is, these days most white bread has been stripped of nutrients and fiber leaving little to fill you up. The stuff that's left is quickly converted into sugars by our bodies, and if not burned up by activity is stored as fat. So, with our increasingly sedentary lifestyles white bread may not be a good choice. Fortunately, there are many delicious breads made with whole grains and those are good for you. Just the other day i bought a spelt sourdough boule with walnuts at our local artisan bakery here in Leslieville that was absolutely yummy! And hey, if you're an active person i don't see a problem with the occasional loaf of white bread... especially if it's an Altamuran or Tuscan loaf baked in a stone oven... or baguettes lovingly shaped by hand...

(Can you hear me justifying my addiction?)

Life in Leslieville

Ah Leslieville, my new hood. I have to admit that after 6 days, 4 hours and 23 minutes it's starting to feel like... well, not home exactly, but definitely a familiar place to get off the streetcar at the end of the day. I promised a few pictures so here's my best shot. Mid-day, full sun, exactly what Regan told me specifically NOT to do. Ok, so i'm a rebel at heart. But you already knew that. It was a warm day, relatively speaking and i could actually bear to take my gloves off long enough to work the camera. If you look closely you'll see my hand trying to provide some shade to cut the glare. Sorry Regan.

The house we live in is over 100 years old so I was curious about the history of Leslieville. I decided to do a little research and was surprised to learn a few interesting facts about my new neighbourhood. Leslieville was originally a village that was built near the brick factories east of Toronto and most of the original inhabitants were working class. Not so surprising since most of the homes in the area are small duplexes built so close together that you can barely squeeze a refrigerator between them. I know this because I had to hang around the house for a bit yesterday waiting for our new fridge to be delivered, and when it arrived the delivery guys were fretting over trying to get it down the walkway and through the back door into the kitchen. They made me sign a waiver, just in case they might happen to scratch it, and they even had to take the doors off the fridge AND the house to get it inside. Scroll up the page and there is photo of the house i live in. Well, half a house. Our side is on the left, with the white downstairs and the brown upstairs. Nice digs eh?

Leslieville was also home to some other major industries over the past century or so, mainly tanneries and metal fabrication and these have left their legacy of contamination. According to Wikipedia "In 2000, the A.R. Clarke Tannery went up in flames, burning for days and unleashing toxic ash on the surrounding neighbourhood. Almost all these industrial areas have now been abandoned and are awaiting redevelopment." Great. I was a environmental planner long enough to know what that means. In planner-speak that sounds like brownfield site awaiting cleanup and approval from the contaminated sites board. There is still at least one industry left in Leslieville. It's right on Queen Street and is highly recognizable to those of us who grew up eating Chinese take-out. Ah, China Lily. It's quite a lovely old brick building actually, and the smell of soy sauce wafting through the air is far more pleasant than other factory odors known to tickle the olfactory.

Speaking of which... Leslieville is also home to Canada's largest sewage treatment plant. Yup, i know, this place is sounding better by the second. You really want to come visit me now don't you? Patrick and i had a good laugh about the fact that we live next to this massive plant. He and i spent the summer of 2007 making personal visits to all the STP's in the Okanagan and then wrote a paper on them. It was definitely for work, not pleasure. I'll never forget the unmistakable smell of raw human waste on a hot summer's day. Fortunately I haven't noticed any odors drifting our way yet... but then, it's still winter.

All this unsavoury history and yet, Leslieville is considered the newest up and coming neighbourhood in Toronto. Seems crazy, but it's true. A stroll through the Leslieville section of Queen Street East takes you by several catering companies and small bakeries, a number of fancy restaurants, yoga studios, meat shops, a cheese market (yum!), coffee shops, niche furniture stores and not one but three "pamper your doggie" stores. All this intermingled with pawn shops, second hand stores, corner stores, a strip club, and even a Value Village. The streetcar runs on Queen so the bell of the cars going by is a pleasant addition to the general din. Leslie Street crosses Queen and heads south a few blocks to Lake Ontario where it then turns into a walking/cycling path that extends on this spit of land out into the lake. My friend Brian (who relocated from Toronto to Vernon a few years ago) told me it's a man made peninsula, formed of waste material that was dumped into the lake over the years. These days it's a nature preserve and Patrick likes to go running there. So far it's been too cold to bother checking it out, but when the weather warms up... oh yeah, baby... man made nature preserve here i come!

Sean mentioned tonight that he finds the neighbourhood quiet. I guess it might be compared to Cabbagetown where he used to live. For me, it's a busy, urban, eclectic mix of people and curiosities. It has a nice blend of ethnicities with no single one standing out above the others. I really like that. I've never lived anywhere quite like this. The small town girl really has hit the big, stinky city.

*I'm having some troubles with the photo uploader, so unfortunately all the photos i took couldn't be uploaded... i'll keep trying so stay tuned!

Shades of blue and grey

Day 2 in toronto... time for a first blog post! Hello friends, you will be happy to know that i am here in Toronto, cozied up in my bed with my bundled up pj's between my head and the freezing cold wall... all is well. I've unpacked and settled into my room, navigated my new hood and even managed to take the streetcar to my school today to purchase my chef's uniform. But let's backtrack a little, i'm getting ahead of myself.

Yesterday, my first day here, was brilliant! I awoke and was greeted to perfect blue sky and sunshine, and Sean made me a cappucino with his little countertop espresso maker that was just lovely. He may even be a rival for Kimmie's Espresso Queen title. I love it when my roommates make me espresso. It's so sweet. I really have no idea how to operate one of those machines and I love keeping that a mystery so that i can justify spending 3 bucks on a cappucino every couple of days.

Happliy caffeinated, i took a walk in the blue sky (and freezing cold) to the closest grocery store, Loblaws. They can't fool me, i know it's really Superstore. Why is it that Presidents Choice stores are called by different names across Canada? Is Superstore not cool enough for Torontonians? Or does Loblaws just sound ridiculous to British Columbians? Anyway, it's a nice store, close enough and near a Canadian Tire and a Mark's Workwearhouse so i decided to kill a few errands in one trip. Except, then i bought too many groceries and had to go home and drop them off so i could come back and get the rest. I can only carry so much at once after all. I was wishing i had a few extra arms... or a bigger backpack. Or a car.

Anyway, Sean decided to come along on trip #2 because he had to go to Canadian Tire too. It was the nicest Canadian Tire I've ever seen, all slick and swanked up with the store on the second floor so you had to take an escalator to get to it. Coooool. I decided to buy myself a little 3 drawer plastic storage thingy because i couldn't fit all my stuff into the small wardrobe in my room. 9.99 was a steal, but i had to carry it all the way home, in addition to all the groceries i picked up on my second trip to Loblaws which turned out okay because it wasn't very heavy, but it was bulky. I actually debated buying one of those wire trolleys that old ladies use to pull their groceries home and had one almost all the way to the till at Canadian Tire before changing my mind. Sean convinced me that there are way cooler ones and that i should hold out for a canvas one that doesn't rattle and squeak. He's lived here 12 years without a car so i trust his judgement on this. Not to mention his fashion sense.

Did i mention that this was trip #2? Also on trip 2 i stopped at Mark's and bought a pair of black, non-slip, steel-toed shoes for school. It's part of the chef getup. They are anything but sexy, but i noticed a few of the students at George Brown wearing them today so i guess i bought the right ones. Yessss!!! and on sale too! Sean found them while i was eyeing up some nicer looking, more expensive ones. When i was in the campus bookstore today picking up the rest of my chef uniform i noticed they were selling the exact same shoes for 20 bucks MORE. Thanks Sean!

Ok, skipping ahead to today which greeted me with bleak grey sky, slightly warmer temps and flurries. Yuck. I can handle the city when it's sunny but days like this really are blah. They make everything look ugly. Yesterday i was noticing that there are lots of trees in Leslieville it's just that they are all deciduous and it's winter. Today i didn't see the trees. I just saw a lot of old grungy buildings with a few nice ones strewn in for good measure. I decided to get off the streetcar at Broadview and walk the rest of the way home with the hope of stopping at Bonjour Brioche for a coffee. Bonjour Brioche is this fantastic little coffeehouse/bakery that makes these amazing croissants and things that are to die for. Patrick took me there on my last trip. But... it was closed and i didn't find another coffee shop that appealed to me after that. What is it, Monday or something?

Anyway, walking back through Leslieville along Queen Street East i noticed some funky street art, including a portrait of Jimi Hendrix painted on the wall of a building, that i would love to photograph sometime. Maybe i will. Maybe the next blog post should be all about Leslieville with photos and stuff. That could be cool. I may have to wait for another blue sky day though.

My first class starts in 2 1/2 hours. I'll have to ride the streetcar back downtown in time for.... Theory of Artisan Bread! yeah baby!! but first... i need a nap.