My Passion

Passion is what inherently makes you special. Passion is something unique to your character that it gives you peace of mind and knowing you can enjoy it in complete solitude. That's how I feel about cooking. Cooking is something which really sets me apart. The kitchen is a place where I can let my mind be free and creative. The kitchen is also a place for me to go when I'm having a bad day because I know it's always welcoming. I absolutely love cooking. As we speak I have an awesome pork roast on the rotisserie right now. I was going to make braised short-ribs when I woke up this morning, but I changed my mind when I was roaming around the grocery store. The thing I like most about cooking is that I don't need a plan. There's no stress involved and it's the one thing in my life that can never produce stress, because it's my passion.

I love walking into the kitchen with something in mind (i.e. I wanna have meat for dinner), and then I just start thinking and my mind is racing with so many different ideas. In a way I feel like an artist and food is my design. This all started from a very young age. My asshole of a father (aka sperm donor) used to overbook my mom's medical practice when my sister and I were growing up. He always had to make sure my mom was bringing in the maximum income as a doctor, instead of trying to create a peaceful and loving home environment. But I don't want to talk about my father and ruin this blog because I could be here for hours ranting. So my mom used to work until sometimes 8 or 9 at night. Well most kids like to eat at, I don't know, normal hours of the evening. So for the better part of my childhood if my sister and I wanted to eat at 5 or 6 in the evening we had to pretty much make it ourselves. That's when my creativity in the kitchen really took off. Well that and coupled with the fact that I clearly got the cooking genes. But my sister is a pretty good cook now. Her pastas are really good! So back to my childhood. Instead of sulking about not having my parents around to make dinner I took a stab at the solution. I would watch the Food Network (thank God that was created) all the time. I would literally watch something being made on TV and then go straight into the kitchen to replicate it. And if I didn't have all the ingredients at hand, well I would improvise. The improvising part of cooking is what I like best. That's the part where rules and conventions go out the window and anything goes. Don't get me wrong I do follow recipes all the time, but that's when I'm trying to make something I've never done before. I generally end up tweaking it anyways with a hint of moi. I have a whole bunch of recipes stored on my computer from over the years. My goal is to collect enough one day to publish my own cooking book. Or if anything make my own personal cooking book and distribute them as cheap and friendly Christmas presents! That would be so cool. So too would owning a trendy contemporary French-style bistro one day. French cuisine has got to be my favorite. I think it's because it involves a lot of cream and meat!

Alright well I better get back to the BBQ. The most god awful thing is overcooked meat! I just wanted to share this thought because the smell of BBQ smoke prompted me to.

By the way, here's the recipe for the short ribs I was going to do courtesy of the Food Network. Maybe that will be on the horizon for next weekend.


Bistro-Style Short Ribs

Ingredients

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 pounds short ribs, in 1 long piece or at least in pairs
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 medium onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1 large tomato, quartered
3 ribs celery
1/2 head garlic, peeled
1/4 bunch fresh thyme
1 1/2 cups dry red wine
2 cups low-sodium, organic beef stock
4 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

Cooking Instructions

Preheat a cast iron grill or outdoor grill.

Season the short ribs with salt and pepper, drizzle with a little extra-virgin olive oil, and brown on all sides.

Place the onion, garlic, celery, carrot, and tomato into a food processor and blend until you reach a consistent, smooth pulp.

Take a large Dutch oven and place over medium-high heat. Add a 3-count of extra-virgin olive oil and add the thyme to infuse the oil.

Next add the vegetable pulp, season with salt and pepper, to taste, and cook for about 10 minutes.

Pour in the red wine and stock and bring it to a boil.

Using tongs take the ribs and nestle them into the braising mix; the liquid should just about cover the meat.

Place the lid loosely on top, reduce heat to a simmer and cook until the meat is very tender, approximately 2 1/2 to 3 hours.

When the ribs are about finished, remove about 1 to 2 cups of liquid and strain into a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Heat the sauce until slightly reduced and thickened, about 5 minutes.

Serve that with some roasted garlic mashed potatoes and you're good to go. If you wanna add some extra protein to your meal, then saute some spinach with sea salt and fresh cracked pepper.

Finally Some Warm Weather

This week has to be the nicest week in terms of weather we've had since the ugliness I term winter. The skies have been beautiful and the sun's warmth is always welcomed in this corner. This week has been kind of a whirlwind for me. I had a great long weekend. However, I think I tried to do too much, as I was exhausted all day at work on Tuesday. I did slug it out though and hit the sack a bit early that night as a reward. Work has been insane. For those of you who don't know, I work for a market research and consulting company in the pharmaceutical industry. It seems that the pharma industry is meant to be for my sister and I. I've just started out my career there and my sister has been in the industry for I think about eight years now. Anyways, my company can be extremely fast paced most of the time. Okay, well all of the time and this week was no different. In a way it's awesome because quite frankly the time flies. I've been with my company for just over a year now and it really just seems like I started there a month ago. But I'm learning lots and developing myself each and every day, and that's all I want right now in my life.

As hinted at, I'm in that learning and discovery phase of my life in terms of my career and personal development. I try to do different things to keep my life interesting outside of work. For example, I found myself kind of wanting to do more after a year out of university. Now I didn't want to go back to school, but I just needed some 'extra-curricular' activities going on. I'm the type of person who likes multiple tasks on my plate. I may complain about this sometimes, but I still love it and wouldn't want to have my life any other way! So then I thought about community involvement. And then I thought about getting involved with my undergrad school, the University of Toronto. That was the one thing I always wanted to eventually do, so what better time to start right? Just after the new year I got involved with the alumni department at UTM (Mississauga campus), and in particular the Management Alumni Society. Basically this society just got off the ground last year and I'm trying to help build it and hopefully take it to the next level. So I volunteered to be the Interim President because the former President, one of my friends from undergrad, has just too much going on with law school right now. So my mandate for the remainder of this academic year was to help coordinate a year-end event for existing management alumni, which is in the works! I'm contemplating continuing in this position for the next year or so. I'd really like to be a part of building this network for the benefit of existing and prospective alumni year after year. I think there's no better feeling then that of accomplishment.

But there's other volunteer stuff I'd like to do to. Maybe coach a kid's soccer team this summer. I'm definitely considering hanging out on the streets downtown Toronto on Christmas Eve and giving out food to the homeless. I read about an individual in the Toronto Star last Christmas who did this and it really inspired me to join in their efforts. I figure what's a couple hundred bucks to me around that time. I can take that money and buy a bunch of pizza for people who need it and hopefully put a smile on their face for an evening. I'm surrounded by endless amounts of food and drinks every Christmas, and I never really sit there and think how lucky I am to have that. Not that I don't appreciate it or take it for granted, but it's kind of unconscious behaviour I think. We always take without processing circumstances. That's just how we're hard-wired in my opinion. I think, and you can put in your two sense if you wish, that all human beings are naturally self-interested individuals. We kind of have to be to ensure our own well-being. I don't think that this is universal across all individuals and cultures, but I think in general it's a close description of the average person and what motivates them. But I totally think it's possible and compatible to be self-interested and selfless at the same time. I think there's plenty of room for both of these sentiments in our lives. It's all up to what you do with your time and the type of life you want to lead.

Wow, I started off talking about the weather and ended up talking about feeding the homeless. You gotta love blogging! This is what it's all about. Alright, time to get some shut eye. I have to give a presentation to a client tomorrow so I need to be all perky and fun in the morning. I'll probably continue reading the book beside my bed until I fall asleep. FYI- I'm reading Leaving Microsoft to Change the World by John Wood. It's basically about how John's life took a transformation after trekking in the Himalayas. He discovered how much thirst the Nepali children had for books and how underprivileged they were. John wants to change all this and help out any way he can to educate the children of our world. I like reading books like that because they're inspirational and they provide a blueprint of what is possible.

Here & There

Today was a pretty busy day. I wasn't exactly doing a bunch of things per say, but I was a parent for the day trying to buy a new car at the same time. And you know what, I liked it. I currently have a 2000 Honda Civic and it's getting up there in kilometers now. Instead of injecting more money to maintain it, I figured it was wise to get a new car. So that was my task at hand today. When I left the house in the morning, I told myself I was gonna make something happen before coming back home.

So the parenting part I mentioned was picking up my two little nephews, E and C, from school today. They were so excited having their cool uncle pick them up. It really makes a kid's day when someone different shows up to get them, or it seems so anyways. This is the second time I've picked up E, and I got the same reaction from him the second time as the first. I got a big hug and huge smile from E right away when he saw me, and C was doing cirlces around me the whole time. So this is where it gets fun. Last time I took them to McDonald's for ice cream, but unfortunately I was kind of tight on time today so I owe them one. Step one, picking them up, was completed. Now for step two, strapping them to the car seats in the back of my two door Honda Civic and jaunt back to the dealership. I don't think they have ever been in a two door car because their comments we're hilarious. C said, "this is so small" and "it's the worsest car I've been in". I burst out laughing, because well it's so true. I'm really happy I'm getting out of a two door and something more 'adult-like'. At least I won't have to bear the insults from E and C anymore!

So I get back to the dealership and my brother-in-law, T, showed up with my other little nephew B. B was running around all over the place. When I was in the office with the Finance Manager, every now and then I would see B pop in with a big smile and a B-sound. So I get the car I wanted and surprisingly got a dealership to take my car as a trade in for a really sweet price. I pretty much had to pull the trigger on this deal, it was a win situation for me all the way.

Now I'm off to bed, because tomorrow's another fun-filled day!

Finally...

Alright, so I've been meaning to enter the blogging world for quite some time now. Rather than try and account for reasons why it took so long I won't. Let's just say I'm here now and I'm excited about sharing my thoughts with you. Why did I choose to? Well, first off I like to write. I think that's something that sort of blossomed in university for me while taking philosophy courses. Reading mindless papers produced a pretty decent writer in me. Sometimes I'll dust off an old philosophy paper I wrote in university and wonder how the hell I ever sounded so clever.

Another important reason why I chose blogging is to simply vent. I conjecture it can be an extremely useful and interesting medium for letting stem off on to you, my Internet audience, versus the extremely important people in my life such as my family. Not that I'm targeting you, it's just that you're impartial to my life. As such, you can play the role of quasi-therapist! Which brings me to another important reason for this blog; my life growing up.

In this blog, here and there, you'll eventually read about my life and the experiences that have brought me to the place I am today. I hope some of these experiences will enlighten you and maybe provide some instances in which you can easily relate to. Amongst some of these experiences, but experiences I'm not too sure I'll write about in any great length, is my childhood and teenage years. Just like a lot of you out there, nothing was easy growing up. Sometimes it was difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel. This is called adversity; and I owe my life and everything I am to it.

Sometimes my friends would ask me, "do you wish you didn't have it so hard growing up", to which I answer, "honestly, no". It's pretty hard to trade past experiences when you (a) can't, so why talk about it and (b) they make you who you are. Would I have rather been spoon fed versus fending for myself a lot of times? Would getting everything I wished for given me stronger values than which I possess today? These are interesting questions which will have strong arguments in favor of either side. But you are who you are, and there are no take-backs in life. There was an old wise philosopher, Sarvepalli Radakrishnan http://www.iep.utm.edu/r/radhakri.htm, who once wrote about freedom and determinism. He drew an analogy between choice and a game of bridge.

“Life is like a game of bridge. The cards in the game are given to us. We do not select them. They are traced to past karma but we are free to make any call as we think fit and lead any suit. Only we are limited by the rules of the game. We are more free when we start the game than later on when the game has developed and our choices become restricted. But till the very end there is always a choice. A good player will see possibilities which a bad one does not. The more skilled a player the more alternatives does he perceive.”
Karma & Freedom by Sarvepalli Radakrishnan

I really like this passage and it really draws a distinction between a complacent person and a determined person. Complacent people tend to attribute past experiences as some sort of handicap on their current life. I fell prey to that thinking early on in my adolescence. What I didn't understand was the power of being able to control your destiny. I didn't understand how powerful choice is. Lucky for me I have a pretty cool sister who was such a great mentor for me growing up. She helped me to understand these sorts of things. It seems so trivial when you first talk about it, but really it's difficult for people to comprehend. It's almost like when we're children we're the most rational beings. We think so straight without any complications. We know what we want and we try and get it. But as we grow older our minds become so convoluted by societal pressures and what not, that thinking rationally becomes a far-fetched idea. It's almost like we need to reverse ourselves and think like children again when we're adults to follow our hearts. I don't know, that's kind of how I think about it sometimes. But that's the whole point of blogging isn't it? To have no inhibitions of the mind and to create your own opinion on anything and everything!