Wild salmon and spinach pasta in sesame pesto
(all ingredients from the Farmer’s Market)
Click to enlarge
Another Saturday, another visit to the farmer’s market.
The Old Strathcona Farmer’s Market is easily my favorite thing about Edmonton right now. It’s one of those old-school food and craft markets, where hippie soapmakers rub shoulders with Ukranian grandmothers peddling pierogies. It echoes the food markets I’ve grown to love in Asia, and yet somehow it’s completely unique.
Helene and I have been there every Saturday for the last four weeks, and it’s quickly replaced the Planet Organic market as our source of high-quality ingredients. Not only that, but we’re turning into “organic snobs”, as we’re starting to consider organic certification of food as the second-best option. Who cares about an international QA company calling a tomato “organic” when you can talk to the man who grew it, and ask him questions about the process?
Bison & saskatoon berry bratwurst, red cabbage sauerkraut
and aragula & tomato salad
Click to enlarge
Michael Pollan, in his stunning book titled In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto called this practice “shaking the hand that feeds you”. Truth be told, I’m getting hooked on this ability to meet face-to-face with the person who grew my vegetables, and be able to talk about their produce with them. When I drink my coffee in the morning, I can picture the young, dynamic couple who roasted it three days ago, and who gave me an extra free bag this weekend. When I eat aragula salad, I see the kind grandmother who sells it to us. When I cook the grass-fed beef I now buy, I can remember seeing the pictures of the farm where they were raised.
How can you not prefer eating healthy and natural when you can meet the people who grow or raise or bake your food? I try to picture a McDonald’s burger after this, and I’m forced to imagine the long chain of artificial processing, not to mention animal abuse, that goes into it.
Compared to that, the simple life of a locally-grown cucumber makes for a much more compelling story.
Posted under Edmonton, Food by Daniel on 31.05.2008
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My Blood Elf Warlock and his trusty White Hawkstrider
(Drop from Heroic Magisters’ Terrace)
If you’ve been following my blog, or have had any insight at all into my personal life, you know I’ve been a WoW nerd for the past year and a half. I’ve accomplished quite a few things in that time: leveled two characters to 70, been elected a Guild Master (not that there’s any glory in that, trust me), and went from wiping on Attumen in Karazhan to one-shotting Hex Lord Malacrass in Zul’Aman. I even set up a pretty cool website for my guild, Elitist Jerks.
For my friends and especially for Helene, I’ve been going at it pretty hardcore. For one thing, it took a huge chunk out of my videogaming habit. To put it simply, I just stopped playing any videogame except WoW for a very long time.
But by WoW standards, my gaming habits are described as “casual hardcore”. Sounds crazy, right? The key distinction is this: when you go hardcore on WoW, you start scheduling 3+ evenings in your week to raiding in WoW. If you look at the raiding guilds that manage world-first kills of end-game bosses, these are guys who go at it for 30+ hours/week until they achieve their goals. This game is no mere videogame: if you want to see it through, it demands dedication. It demands monogamy.
In other words, there’s a wall between “casual” and “hardcore” in WoW, and I’ve just hit it.
I’ve raided the 10-man content with my guild. We haven’t downed Zul’Jin, but we’ve seen him. 10-man raids demand dedication, but nowhere near as much as the 25-man content you have to go through if you want to see end-content bosses, such as Illidan or Kil’Jaeden.
And so I’ve been faced with two options:
- I suck it up, and crank up the amount of time I dedicate to WoW. I go into 25-man guilds, and raid 3+ nights a week.
- I come to the realization there’s always gonna be something I can’t do in WoW, and relax my desire to achieve these.
I’ve decided to go with option 2.
And just like that, some semblance of balance has returned to my life. I still play WoW a bit, but it’s more of a time-waster on long afternoons, than a real hobby right now. I’ve looked at the Wall of Hardcore standing in front of me, and decided the price to pay to cross it was too high. Who cares if I don’t kill Illidan or don’t visit Tempest Keep? These make sense mostly within the context of WoW, but outside the game they are meaningless achievements.
Does it mean my WoW habit has been kicked to the curb? Possibly. But seeing as the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, offers 10-man content until the end-game, there’s a chance the next time around, the game allows me to go through the entire content on a “casual hardcore” rhythm. And it’s entirely possible this makes WoW grow again and eat up my videogaming habits.
In the meantime, though, it’s nice to see the rest of the videogaming world, whether it’s singing songs along with Helene’s mad guitar-playing skillz in Rock Band, finishing the delightful Portal, or trying out Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness.
I guess what I’m really trying to say is:
I love you, WoW, but I need to play other games. I hope you’ll understand.
Posted under Gaming by Daniel on 28.05.2008
2 comments »
Wow, has it been three months already?
You know how it goes… You see a friend every day, and you have tons of stories to tell them. But don’t see them for a year, and the next time you meet, you’ll be hard-pressed to find one interesting story to tell them. Know the feeling?
That’s a bit how I feel about this blog right now. Sorry for the neglect!
So… It’s been three months already since I last blogged. Last time I did, we were right smack in winter, enjoying West Edmonton Mall. So what happened in the last three months?
- Helene and I found a place to live, and promptly moved there beginning of May. To say I like the place would be a gross understatement. I adore it. It’s huge, and the balcony overlooks the River Valley, which is the huge park sinewing along the North Saskatchewan River. We have the best damn view in the entire city of Edmonton, I tell you.
- I love BioWare, and BioWare loves me back. Sure, work is stressful and filled with uncertainty, but that’s why they pay me the big bucks. We’re making great games here, and we’re pushing the bar up so much we have only ourselves as a reference of what to beat. The people here are awesome and hard-working.
- Most surprising of all, I’m growing fond of Edmonton. It’s not a dazzling city by any means, but there’s a kindness here that’s growing on me. Our new neighborhood goes a long way to make me feel better about the city, being that it’s far away from the mall-infested, pickup-littered parts of town. It helps me focus on the positive values of Edmonton: the kindness of its people, and their proximity to simpler, more wholesome values such as family and tradition.
- Speaking of which, my favorite new place in town is definitely the Old Strathcona Farmer’s Market. The market is open Saturday mornings only, and Helene and I have made a habit of visiting it every week. I’m just in love with the freshness of the products on sale there, and it’s inspiring me to eat better. Not only that, but I’ve started cooking on a regular basis; nothing too fancy, but fresh, simple and wholesome meals.
So that’s three months of catching up, in the least expeditive manner I can make it! It’s definitely a surprise to find ourselves liking Edmonton, although the sunshine and the warmer temperatures definitely help. I plan on enjoying as much of the summer as I can, so that when winter comes back around, the fond memories of summertime get me going.
I’ll write again soon, promise!
Posted under BioWare, Edmonton by Daniel on 27.05.2008
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