Illegal Seek error

I couldn't find this on the 'net so here's what "illegal seek"  error could mean on an ofstream write : no write permission!   That's too simple !!!   So just change the path to some place where the application has write permission.  Doh!

Menu Plan Monday

Last week was eventful : big snowstorm, no internet, and no oil!! But we came through okay and have oil now. I had a plan last week, but no connection to get to my blog, so I missed posting it.

Here is this week's plan for the orgjunkie.com MPM..

Monday - Roasted pork, macaroni with cheese, salad

Tuesday - Turkey enchiladas, white rice with corn, cheesy spinach

Wednesday - Ham in OJ, broccoli'n'cheese, boiled potatoes

Thursday - pasta and meat sauce, salad

Friday - roasted chicken legs, spanish brown rice, leek

Saturday - quiche or omelette , salad, potato salad

Sunday - lemon tilapia, rice with tomatoes, salad

Menu Plan Monday

I messed up... it's WEDNESDAY!!! It actually really does relieve stress so here's the orgjunkie.com menu plan...

Monday : Steak in Anchovy sauce, sticky rice, carrot salad with lemon-gahlic vinaigrette

Tuesday : Roasted curried chicken, mashed taters'n'turnips, asperge

Wednesday : Spaghetti with tomatoes, spicy Italian sausage, salad with balsamic vinaigrette

Thursday : Salmon steaks with cress, couscous, cheeeeesee brocolli

Friday : Stewy beef, roasted taters, plantain, salad

Saturday : Brrrrrgrrrrs, tomatoes'n'chard, fried roasted taters

Sunday : Beef tacos, quesadillas, corn, salad, ritas

Menu Plan Monday

I did my groceries with my assistant today. We visited 2 new shops in the neighbourhood : Produce Depot and Njieme ( a mediterranean grocery ).

The Produce Depot was exciting.. I got CRESS and they had 3 different types of eggplants, 4 types of zucchini and at least 10 different types of apples! The Texan flag on the box of Kohlrabi made me spin around and grab some.

I got some chicken and beef for great prices from the grocery next door and we had no line ups plus friendly service at both. What a great find!

Here's the Menu Plan Monday menu (cooked in replacement baking dish plus new roasting pot ... I been shopping.. )

Monday -roast chicken with turnips, chard with garlic

Tuesday - roast porc, brown rice pilaf, salad
OR ... (it's my B-DAY : we'll go out for supper :) )
Wednesday - porc and tomatoes, roasted stuffed potatoes, steamed zucchini with gahlic

Thursday -Either mediterranean baked fish, or salmon steaks and cress (if I can get to Farm Boy for salmon!!) , fufu, salad

Friday - mac and cheese (per special request), kohlrabi

Saturday - mac and beef, cauliflower gratin

Sunday - steak and anchovy sauce, rice, carrot salad with lemon vinaigrette

Menu Plan Monday

This is posted late, but was saved and ready to go since Sunday night...

Monday: roast chicken, red cabbage , brown rice with gahlic

-- This was yummy!! I used Bittman's recipe for chicken.

Tuesday: salmon , sweet potatoes , veggie sticks

-- Today I tried out Bittman's 10min salmon recipe. It was simple,but I will get back to adding gahlic to it next time. I skipped the parsley because we didn't have any
-- CATASTROPHE!! One of my 2 pyrex dishes EXPLODED when I pulled it out to flip the fillets over!!!
It blew all over the veggie stix that I had just finished chopping , so I had to throw out 1) a nice pyrex dish, 2) half of the salmon fillets, 3) all of my veggie stix!!!

I was feeling quite negative about the whole thing when I forced myself to admit the good things :
1) only 1 pyrex broke ( I had made 4 fillets, 2 in each pyrex)
2) it didn't break in the oven
3) it was the smaller pyrex
4) I had extra veggies for the veggie stix
5) I'm lucky that I can even buy such fine food

Then a miracle happened : Greg came home from Arnprior and ,even though he was tired and hungry, he did that wonderful vacuuming thing he does. Ain't I lucky ?


Wednesday : pate chinois and salad
-- G and D like this. I am looking forward to the salad.


Thursday : jambalaya with kale
-- There's nothing like homemade salsa to revive leftovers ;)

Friday : white fish with tomatoes , spaghetti squash, salade

Saturday : porc with tomato, leek , polenta
--If I can find some camembert for the porc, this will be super yummy

Sunday : Chicken enchiladas , rice with corn, salad

The Souls of Black Folk

I'm still reading this but it's been so interesting that I want to post about it now.




In my opinion, it started off good, but not great. If I were less ignorant of American history, I might like the beginning better.







In the first 2 chapters , DuBois soulfully recounts the history of emancipation. The flames, famine, hardship and suffering of this story left me with a heavy heart. There are a lot of details about the Freedmen's Bureau and the bills and the struggles that were only partly overcome. It's good, but it would have helped to have a mini-encylopedia on hand to make the dry details a little more lively.




The book picks up quite a bit after pulling us out of the trying sad history.


It pulsates with scathing anger at Booker T Washington, so of course, that chapter flew by. I read it with a look of shock and finished it with a gasp. How did we miss all this in history class?

DuBois continues by writing warmly and lovingly of his first students and their families when he teaches in the South. There's nothing quite like a first hand account of life in Jim Crow days.

Now I'm reading his chapter on Atlanta... wow.. He compares Atlanta to Atalanta who loses the race because of her love of gold. He then explains how this impacted the development of school and life for all of the South, not just blacks. He says something about how the pursuit of Bread overtook the pursuit of Life. It seems like much hasn't changed. Those who have the most bread end up with the power to run our schools.

Menu planning ?

We have no internet and no phone at home until FRIDAY (if we're lucky...)

I love the new home. It's so cozy!! And close to parks. The neighbours are great but we'll miss our pals in Barrhaven.

I whipped up a menu plan while heading back from Barrhaven with the car full of pots, pans, fridge leftovers and plates. Then I got to test out the new grocery store (The Independent at Alta Vista/Bank ) . It's not anywhere near as nice as the one in Barrhaven but we got enough groceries to get us partway through the week. I'll still have to get bread, milk, salad from Farm Boy on Wednesday.

Monday - chicken nachos, broccoli and cheese

Tuesday - roast beef, roast potatoes, salad

Wednesday - fajitas, rice and corn, purple cabbage

Thursday - spicy salmon, fried rice, salad

Friday - ham, mashed potatoes, spinach

Saturday - breaded baja, egg noodles in rose sauce, chard

Sunday - spaghetti and meat sauce, carrot salad

Menu Plan Monday

If I can commit to this puppy, I'll be a monkey's uncle!

My pal Jen of allthingsedible.ca has a cool habit of posting up her cooking adventures. It rubbed off on me a bit and so I'm going to try to do this Monday Menu Plan thing.

I've been doing menu planning for the past 2 months and I like it , so this might stick...

Monday : Jumbalaya , Sweet Potatoes, Swiss Chard

Tuesday : Roast Chicken , Broccoli, Rice

Wednesday : Trout, Mashed Potatoes, Salad

Thursday : Fish and Bean Tacos, Corn, Rice, Salad

Friday : Lamb chops, Boiled Potatoes , Green beans

Saturday : Quiche, Vegetable soup, Crusty Bread, Salad

Sunday : Spaghetti + meat sauce, salad

We're moving on Friday, so Sat and Sunday will depend on the condition of the range at the new locale..

How to clean off the crap from your non-bio food!

I got pretty huffed up last night when Greg came home with bags of food, where only 2 or 3 of the items were organic. I've not really been militant about eating organic, but I've changed my ways since a very close and dear friend was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer. I know that cancer is mostly genetic, but I'm sure that pesticides, toxic home cleaners, pollution etc all increase our chances of getting nailed by cancer.

Greg insisted that Farm Boy just didn't have much organice produce to sell. I was sure he was wrong, so I headed right back out and came home with organic apples, but not much else.

Then we discussed whether or not it would be worthy to wash them.

Voila ! I found a site that says how to wash them. It's a funny read too.

Enjoy :
http://www.doctoryourself.com/pesticides.html

Samba how-to that actually makes sense!

After fighting with Samba for too bloody long, I finally found a decent site that got it up and running for me!

http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/Deployment_Guide-en-US/s1-samba-configuring.html

SSH Logins without Password

I just found this link and it makes my life just that bit better..

http://www.linuxproblem.org/art_9.html

The only thing I had to change was to use "ssh b@B" instead of "ssh b@B hostname" .

Cloaca

We all went to see this at UQAM on Berri for Valentine's day. http://www.cloaca.be/

Aside from the long drive from Ottawa and the odour on arrival the outing was romantic.

The best part of the trip was spending time with my beloved friends Pierre and Isa who took us to UQAM on the metro.

The metro made my heartache... especially after having spent about 3h a day in traffic in the interminable OC transpo strike

Kiki was pretty impressed with the metro and with the poop the machine had freshly popped out. Isa gave her a good play-by-play of all the processes involved in making it. I sat with her , about 1 m away from the freshly baked loaf, until she decided to look at other things.

Montreal was at its most charming, when there is still enough snow to cover the debris and yet enough sun to lure us out on the streets. I love it and am not-so-secretly plotting to move us back.

Cours Sagueneen 101

I heard this on the radio on my way to the Lycee today.

It ressembles the francais I learned in la belle ville.

http://www.lebonheurdepierre.com/SAG/index.html

GEESE!!

Mark the day ....

I saw
TWO GEESE
yesterday
in the fields by Fallowfield and Greenbank.


Spring is coming.

THANK YOU!

I need a Thank You card from Lisa's collection for the ducks I saw in the fields at Fallowfield and Greenbank on my home from work today.

It would say ..

THANK YOU
FOR
THE VERY FIRST
SIGN
OF
SPRING

And it would accompany lots of warm wet mud and all the things those beloved ducks like.

There were hundreds of those lovely ducks swooping up to the bright blue sky. It was too pretty : a wave of small brown ducks,rising and sinking , wings spread, out of deep horizon of golden yellow corn stalks against a huge bright blue sky.

I had all sorts of emotions then. Of course, I felt like I had just witnessed a miracle or one of the great mysteries of the world, but I also felt like I was finally hitting the last run on a long brick workout, or like I had just finished scrubbing the last of the sticky vegetable skins from the vegetable crisper or maybe even the end of a horrible a novel that I couldn't stop reading because there was still some small part of it that was interesting or because it wasn't nearly as bad some other novel that I had thrown out. It was definitely a sense of relief.

So... spread the good news : Spring is on its way!!!

Waiting for Spring

I'm afraid to admit it : I'm tired of winter.

The outdoor rinks are closed because the weather is too warm during the day, yet there is too much snow on the ground to be able to wear regular shoes. I'm tired of wearing my heavy boots, my big jacket, warm hat and snug scarf. Worse, I'm sick of clearing snow off the car.

Winter was great just a few weeks ago when I went skiing with my pal Paula from Toronto.



Then it got icy...



And then one winter storm came ..


And then another one ..




Then the time changed.

Now, The sun is up before I am and that makes me expect to see crocuses and buds on the trees. Whenever I hear the crows caw , I search the clouds for the smallest of V-formations and imagine that I hear that familiar honking that means spring is on its way. I'm still waiting..

In the meantime, Easter is coming to distract us from the delay.

We went to a fundraiser breakfast for Renee Stocks, a little girl with a unfortunate disease. Her experimental medicine costs $200 a day , so some of the local businesses have been hosting various events to collect some money for the cost.

Breakfast was great : pancakes, ham, hashbrowns, egg sandwiches, juice and coffee all free! And you could meet the Easter bunny, who was giving out some pretty chocolate Easter eggs or get your face painted. One butterfly did just that!



Another nice thing about Ottawa this time of year is Cabane a Sucre. Today, we went to a local historic farm with D's playmates. The farm offers a big brunch followed by a horse drawn sleigh ride and maple taffy , but we got there late so we just walked around the farm, toured a historic house, and saw a big dirty pig and some horses.




We have at least 2 more weeks of snow. Perhaps if I get my skis out one more time, I might not begrudge its bountiful presence everywhere.

Canada Disappoints

Please remind me not to listen to Canada Reads next year. I remember now why I stopped following it years ago. The conversation is lame and the selection is disappointing. Thankfully, the popular choice redeemed our nations readers : Icefields (Wharton) won!

Canada Reads-2008

I was quite excited about Canada Reads this year. I read all of the books and have been eagerly awaiting the start.

Finally, the panel discussions have started airing every night at 19h30 on CBC. I have been playing them from the podcast on the webpage on my laptop , after Kiki goes to bed.

Well... it's been disappointing...

Is it just me , or are they all gettiing all of the books wrong ?
Except for maybe Steve McLean...

I adored Mavis Gallant's The Fifteenth District, but I wonder why Lisa(defender) couldn't understand Not Wanted on the Voyage. I think she named herself the authority on feminism and decided to brand Zaib (NWOTV defender) a misogynist. I bet she's worried Jian so much that he's treating her with kid gloves. I can almost hear her complaining that no one lets her finish. But then again, he is rather patronizing sometimes.

There's too much interpersonal stuff going on.

Zaib seems too pompous and to suffer from a severely limited imagination. I got the impression that he expected no one to dare question him after he spoke with such dramatic flair.

Although I very much loved Brown Girl in the Ring, Jemeni (defender) couldn't appreciate the beauty in Icefields (Steve) or The 15th District (Lisa). She thinks novels have to be high-drama. Does she watch too much TV ? She surely lacks any appreciation of the subtle. And that's why she can't defend this wonderful novel.

And finally, I made it through King Leary (defended by Dave) but only with great discipline. Unlike NWOTV , there was little reward for reading it. Yet the panel seems to really like it.

Sometimes, the panel discourse sounds like a bunch of teenagers who go to Alternative High School are dissing their English reports after too many iced lattes.

Maybe these people are not the sort with whom I would spend my evenings?

I'm very glad that I read all 5 books, but I'm not sure I'll do the same next year. I might just do the French edition.

Fat to Fit?

First , my confession :
I put on 20lbs between American Thanksgiving and Christmas!!!

So of course, I wasn't too happy and promptly went for a run and did sit-ups. I lost 5 lbs almost right away. Even my belly started to pull up a bit!

But that was the end of it. For one month, no weight loss, no muscle gain despite
1) changing my diet,
2) swimming 3 times a week and
3) doing some weights at the gym!!!

So... I hired a trainer.

My husband immediately offered alternatives, because after all, I've done this before and simply wasted hundreds of dollars. I could eat more protein, cut out the sugar, go to bed a tiny bit hungry... But I was tired of stabbing in the dark. I was willing to work hard, but I wanted to see results.

I did some research first(online mostly) and decided that the plan was to meet the trainer every week and get a workout plus nutritional guidelines every week.

Well, I found a trainer with experience and certification who worked out of my gym. It's been about a month since I started and I have lost about 5 more pounds, but more importantly : I actually fit in some of my old clothes again!!! CRAZY but true! I'm not starving either. In fact, I eat quite a bit!

Here's what I've been doing :
Swim :
1h 2x a week, and 1.5h on Sat morns
Weights :
2x a week : brutal, high rep, low weight.
It's all about form though. I have no injuries in spite of the workout!!

1. squats till my legs burn
2. more squats,
3. lunges with my legs on fire.
   
4. stagger to do chest press,
5. flop to the bench for lats,
6. glue myself to the mirror for shoulders,
7. stick myself to the wall for biceps ,
   
8. yank on a cord until my triceps lockup,
   
9. yank on the rope for more triceps
10. core, core, core for about 5min.-- I'm completely whipped and lifeless now

I am just adding cardio now, in tiny bits of 15-50 min cruises with nothing in zone 5. I won't venture there until next week, I think..

The Kite Runner

I listened to a tiny bit of a clip of Dion's opinion on the extension of our stay in Afghanistan and it reminded me of The Kite Runner, which I finished last week.

I couldn't put the book down soon after starting it, which was wonderful relief from The Secret River. It left me with vivid images of beautiful Iran and Afghanistan, of deep family love, of hardships and challenges overcome. It's not a poetic novel, but the writing flows between colourful scenes and one gets to love the characters. As an added bonus, one gets a brief overview of modern Afghani history. It is told in a tone that I would call "typically arabic" because all elders and family are deeply retvered. Few words judge or condemn them. Instead, the author seeks to understand the wisdom of his father. Initially, rit is palatable because it is after all being narrated from the eyes of a young boy. As the novel progresses, the narrator shows how he doubts his father at times, feels pressured by him and so on, but in the end "Father knows best" or at least most of the time. But this tone is just in the background. The boy grows up and faces his demons. Of course, the novel hints at a happy ending. It is a bit too Walt Disney, but I do recommend it. The best parts that remain with me now are : the escape from Afghanistan, the flea market, the general, the secret he bears, the kite races, Sohrab and especially the way he describes hearing about the war in the news. It could be inspiring enough to make it to Oprah's book club.