RIP Mrs. Patel

On Dupont Street, just a few blocks from the church and my home, there is a well-known Restaurant called "The Indian Rice Factory." Betsy and I have only been there once, but man did it make an impression! Some of the best Indian Food I ever had. Turns out the chef/owner, known as Mrs. Patel, is famous for basically introducing the city of Toronto to good Indian Food back in the 1960's and 70's. James Chatto has a wonderful telling of the story that he also related in his book, The Man Who Ate Toronto:

There were only two Indian restaurants in Toronto in 1967 (India House and Rajput) when Mrs. Patel arrived in Canada, a young nurse from Bombay. One afternoon, she decided to have lunch at the Inn on the Park hotel, at Eglinton and Leslie. The hotel’s restaurant, Café de 1’Auberge, was famous for sophisticated French cuisine, but it was the buffet of the day that aroused her curiosity – a culinary event entitled “From the Chafing Dishes of India.” In those dishes were examples of the curious travesty of Moghlai cooking that European chefs were trained to prepare: chicken, shrimp, or beef in a sort of bechamel sauce coloured with curry powder. Mrs. Patel called the manager and gently tried to explain that this was a little less than authentic.

When the conversation moved into the kitchen, executive chef Georges Chaignet listened politely and then invited Mrs. Patel to come back next day and cook him a meal. She obliged; he was stunned. As Stratford Chefs School instructor Jacques Marie, then Chaignet’s sous-chef, recalled: “She showed us what curry is really about. It was a new world to me.”

To the kitchen’s eternal credit, Mrs. Patel was hired to teach the team all that she knew. After a year, she moved on, first to Julie’s Mansion on Jarvis, working her magic in the casual upstairs dining room called the Bombay Bicycle Club, more famous in those days for the lissom beauty of its sari-clad waitresses than its buffet, and then to the Hyatt Regency.

In 1970 she opened her own place on Dupont Street, called Indian Rice Factory. The tiny room would be considered avant-garde even today. It seated barely a dozen customers who sat around an open cooking station, choosing from a short and frequently changing list of dishes on a blackboard tied to the back of the fridge. Slender, beautiful and always elegantly dressed, Mrs. Patel radiated a soft-spoken confidence as she worked, preparing many items à la minute, and explaining her recipes to anyone who asked. (Source)

By all accounts, she was a major force in the development of the Toronto Restaurant scene. She was generous with her time and recipes and something of an institution. You can find some of her recipes on the Indian Rice Factory's website.

It's telling that the website for the restaurant discusses the spiritual implications of Indian Cuisine. She had deep knowledge that craft to those places of art and truth. "Cooking is an art we savour and a ritual that we take seriously."

She died in August after a long battle with breast cancer. She had been the owner and chef of the Indian Rice Factory for 40 years. Her son had become increasingly involved over the years and now is taking her place.

A few days ago we had the planning team for the Music that Makes Community Conference at Church of The Messiah. I invited them over to the rectory, but had no intention of cooking for nine people on short notice, so I suggested that we order out. Many of the group were from San Francisco and complained that they can't find good Indian Food there.

I realized, then, that I didn't actually have any Indian takeout menus, so I googled the problem while Betsy got them drinks. As soon as I saw a reference to the Indian Rice Factory I knew it would be perfect, but it is not the kind of place that usually does delivery.

I called them, and they said they would make an exception since it was a relatively large order (9 people) and since the owner happened to be there with a car. The host helped me through the menu and made helpful suggestions about things that were particularly fresh or good that night. In the end, he also through in a few free dishes compliments of the house.

Forty-five minutes later or so Mrs. Patel's son, Aman, came to my door with a truly memorable meal. Our guests from San Francisco were impressed. Aman gave me a "Namaste" kind of bow after I thanked him profusely and complimented his restaurant. I didn't realize, yet, that his mother has passed on. I think I should send him a note saying that the meal we had was a great tribute to his mother.

I'll end this little obituary with one her recipes:

Butter Chicken in Three Easy Steps:

The Chicken

2 lbs boneless and skinless chicken

Marinade
12 cloves garlic
2 inches ginger
2 tsp coriander powder
Lime juice – 2 limes
4 tbsp canola oil
2 tbsp white vinegar
1 tsp cumin whole or ground
½ cup yogurt
1 tbsp red chili powder
Salt to taste

— all Marinade ingredients except the salt into blender and puree. Add salt to taste such that Marinade has a salty tinge. Put chicken in bowl, add Marinade, mix to coat thoroughly and refrigerate for 4 hours.

Basting
2 tsp ghee
1 tsp dry fenugreek leaves
1 tsp dried mango or lime powder
1 tsp roasted black cumin powder
Salt to taste

Garnish
Pinch of Garam Masala
½ fresh lime

— mix all ingredients together and have basting brush ready
— Prepare the marinated chicken either by grilling, broiling (cover with foil so as not to burn) or baking in a hot oven (350°F) until done. Baste regularly with Basting. Once done, set aside and garnish with sprinkle of Garam Masala and light drizzle of fresh lime juice.

The Butter Sauce

Butter Sauce
3 oz unsalted butter
2 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp fresh lime juice
4 green chilies – slit
6 tomatoes – cut into wedges
2 tbsp whipping cream – unwhipped
— in a pot, melt butter and sugar over a medium-high to high heat until brown (not burnt); add lime juice (watch out for splutters and splashes!!) and quickly follow with green chilies and let cook for a minute, add tomatoes and reduce to medium heat and cook until tomatoes break down, add cream and reduce to a slow simmer. Set aside.

The Chicken Goes Into the Butter Sauce

2 oz unsalted butter
1 tsp red chili powder
4-6 green chilies – fine cut
6 firm tomatoes – quartered
2 inches ginger – grated
— in a pot, melt butter over medium-high heat, add red chili powder and Butter Sauce, bring to boil, reduce to medium heat, add the chicken, tomatoes green chilies and ginger. Simmer for 10-15 minutes.
— Remove to a serving dish, add small specks of butter, pinches of roasted cumin powder and finely chopped coriander as garnish.

Serve with plain Basmati rice or Naan (or both). (source)

Namaste!
-t

Bath Time for Henry

Betsy and I both love giving our Henry a bath. We used to do this with a little plastic baby bathtub, but lately we've switched to using a full-size tub. In fact, I often take a bath with Henry, which is great fun. The little guy just loves the bubbles and toys we give him. Johnson's "Baby Bubble Bath & Wash" is awesome stuff. Works well on grownups, too! Tonight I even shaved in the tub while Henry played by my feet with some toys.

One of my favourite things to do is lie down in the the bath and put Henry on my chest, facing me. He likes to push up and arch his back so he can look around. Such a cuttie. Holding your baby like this makes it hard to think about anything else. It just makes everything right, you know?

Since we switched the full-sized tub he has a lot more room to move around and explore. Baths are lasting a lot longer.

After his bath Henry typically gets some skin lotion and then PJ's (with feet, of coure) and then milk and then bed. Sometimes he gets a story or I sing him Compline. Last night he slept for a whopping 12 hours! Go Henry!

-t

Splitting Wood

A busy Monday. I tackled a couple of projects around the house--the most ambitious being to split and stack a bunch of wood left over from a tree that fell last year. It has been drying for the last year by the side the house since our landlord and his son-in-law cut up with a chainsaw. The landlord has been suggesting (for months and months) that I should split it up and use it for our fireplace. But, honestly, I've split wood by hand before, and it's one of those jobs that is best done with your shirt off to impress the Mrs. If your real purpose is to get wood ready for winter, than you ought to simply rent on buy a hydraulic wood splitter (IMHO).

The weather is turning in Ontario. Time to start packing up the deck furniture and get ready for the snow. If that wood is going to get split, I decided, it was doing to be me that does it! So I bit the bullet.

First stop, Canadian Tire. There I picked up a little 4-Ton Log Splitter. I don't think they sell many of these downtown in Toronto, but they managed to find one in the back! I took it home and was pleased with the performance--it had no trouble splitting everything I through at it. It has a little 1.74HP Electric Motor that runs a hydraulic pump that moves the ram. Bigger models are probably faster and can handle even bigger pieces, but this little guy is perfect for home use. But even with this little beauty it still took me about 3.5 hours to split the pile and stack it on the back deck. Ah, well.

I was inspired to tweet some Haiku:

A new power tool
Splitting wood in Autumn Air
Fall in Ontario

There is something very distinct about Fall in Ontario. I really need to get going on getting some apple cider fermenting in the basement. I also want to make some more apple sauce--I'm just using up the last of last year's batch and boy is it good stuff. And easy, too!

After I picked up Henry at the Daycare I got some take-out from my favourite Thai place: Flip Toss and Thai. Those of you living near the University should know about this place--terrific Thai food at a cheap price. The folks that work there are clearly a family, and enjoyed see Henry with me.

-t

Tailgate Eucharist

The Rev'd Canon Dan Webster from the Diocese of Maryland has started doing a Eucharist in the parking lot before Ravens (NFL Football) games.

Our prayers follow the form on pages 400-401 of The Book of Common Prayer. It is similar to a Eucharist you might experience at an Episcopal camp but without the music. There was plenty of music coming from the stage at the Ravenswalk. Some of that music seemed to be particularly meaningful to those faithful gathered in the rain to break bread and pray before kickoff. ...

We weren't the only religious folks there that day. A local Chabad House of Lubavitcher Jews was celebrating Sukkot, the Feast of Booths. They had rented a pickup truck and built a sukkah in the truck bed. They asked people at random if they were Jewish and if so then invited them into the sukkah to pray. (Source)

When this went out on e-mail among some clergy types, one of the bishops said that this be a great idea for Argos (CFL Football) games--perhaps we could get season tickets on the Diocesan Dime (not likely).

This is actually a great idea. Talk about putting the church into the world! I like the way it claims the festival, food-drenched atmosphere of tailgating and plants our sacred meal firmly in that ground. Reminds me a lot of battlefield Eucharists done by military chaplains.

-t

RIP Greg Giraldo

Greg Giraldo, a well-known Comedian, died of an accidental prescription drug overdose a few days ago. Here is a clip in which he discusses, among other things, God and Gay Marriage. He was in Canada for this. Probably not safe for work or young ears, but very funny.



As a comic, one of the things to notice about Greg was that he was very disciplined in his delivery. The content is sharp and bit transgressive, but carefully honed. It seems like an improved rant, but it's not. Notice how carefully he controls his timing and rhythm.

Some other facts about Greg:

• He was a graduate of Harvard Law, but only did one year of practice before becoming a stand up comic
• Greg was married with three children
• Greg gave up drinking in 2005

After he was found in a hotel room he was rushed to Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He died four days later. I did my CPE Chaplaincy Summer Internship at that Hospital.

-t

Possible Life Sustaining Planet?

Scientists are announcing that they've discovered a planet that appears to be the right distance from its star and the right mass to possibly support life. The NYTimes reports that Gliese 581g (that's pronounced GLEE-za) is about 20 light years from earth. One scientist estimated about a 90% chance it has water on it. Which sounds pretty good, except that you don't want to spent a bazillion dollars on a probe to a planet with only a 90% chance it will find water when it gets there. Just as important as the finding of this planet is that was found relatively easily, but astronomically standards, and they therefore expect to find a bunch more.

The whole thing reminds me of the Drake Equation, which is really an interesting thought expirement. I've blogged about it before, but here it is again:

The Drake Equation:

where:
N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;

and

R* is the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
fp is the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne is the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fℓ is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc is the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L is the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.
(source)

The Drake Equation, named after Astrophysicist Dr. Frank Drake, is an argument for the existence of life on other planets with whom we could communicate. The argument is based on probability, essentially arguing that if conscious, communicative life could develop on earth, than the probability is greater than zero that it could have developed elsewhere in our galaxy. While the parameters for the equation are somewhat speculative, we do have plausible value that yield a current estimate of....

N = 7 × 0.5 × 2 × 0.33 × 0.01 × 0.01 × 10000 = 2.31

In other words, the best guess is that there are 2.31 civilizations in our neighbourhood of the universe capable of communication with us. Of course, if you give different values to the parameters you can make this number go up or down, but it can never be reduced to zero because, in fact, there are people to ask the question!

How cool is that?

-t

District 9

This is a great movie. It's a sort of scifi thriller with strong themes about racism, colonialism, and even a bit of spirituality. I recommend it, and am wondering where I can find some informed theological reflections on it.

-t

Another Day, Another Batch of Beer

Mondays are supposed to be my day off. So why did I end up spending about four hours doing church stuff? Probably because the rest of the week is jam packed. Still, I felt like I got some important things done today--including another batch of beer. It's fermenting away in the basement. Of course, I ended up being awake to 3.30 AM to do it, but it was either that or let another week go back with the ingredients and tools sitting patiently in the corner of the dining room!

Another thing I accomplished today was looking after Henry after Daycare. Betsy has a class on Monday nights, so I was in charge of picking him up and feeeding him supper and getting him ready for bed. Normally Betsy and I divide up many of those tasks.

Henry loves bath time, so I tried something different. Instead of using our little baby tub, I used the big tub. Not only that, but I took a bath with Henry, rather than just bathing him. He enjoyed crawling on my chest and chewing on the wash cloth. It felt good to be with my little son, playing in the water. He is such a delight.

On Sunday we tried a square layout of chairs with the altar in the middle. It was a great success. I see a few small things to tweak, but that is almost always the case. The square says that we are gathered around God. It has a very warm and communal tone to it, even more so than choir-style seating. I definitely appreciated having people so close!

It was also Back-to-Church Sunday. I had asked people to invite a friend, and many did! Attendance was high. We had BBQ afterwards to celebrate.

Nancy, my new Theological Intern, did a splendid job. She's eager to learn and picking things up quickly. She wants to learn about liturgy, so I am attempting to teach her the esoteric secrets of our craft. Sure, everybody knows about picking liturgical texts to use and reading well and all that. But I'm teaching her how to pray in the Vestry before the service, how to set a table, how feel the congregation. It's all very Zen and terrific fun.

As usual, many of the most pressing things on my mind cannot be shared here. In the ebbs and flows of parish life energy flows around this way and that. I have many parishioners on my mind. I don't know if people in parishes realize how much we clergy think about them. One just got Tenure. Another is celebrating a big birthday. Another is growing up fast. I look out on Sunday morning and think, "What on earth does that person need to bring them closer to God?" It's so much easier one-on-one.

I'm feeling very much pulled in different directions. Even when I devote crazy amounts of time and energy it doesn't seem like it's enough. I think everybody probably feels that way, and I feel guilty about it because I ought to know better. Is it time for a vacation, yet?

This next week is going to be crazy busy and a hellafun. Pray for me!

-t

A Perfectly Obvious Observation

The pace of my life has significantly accelerated since Henry entered our lives. Months are simply flying by. My perspective of time is starting to shift. It feels like that trick in cinema where they pull the camera back and zoom in at the same time (known technically as a "Dolly Zoom"). Then I think about all the undone projects that have accumulated and I get really scared!

But, in truth, I'm having some very productive days and have the calendar to prove it. Next week, for instance, is going to be insanely busy. We are hosting a Music that Makes Community Conference at the church (regular blog readers will recall that Eric and I went to one of these in Atlanta about a year ago) next week. I'm looking forward to that, especially since I don't have to travel this time. I'm also doing ten other things that week. Over-committed? Definitely!

Naturally, Henry requires a lot of time. I'm finding that I'm having to get up earlier everyday just to make sure we get him to daycare and me to work and Betsy to school at a reasonable time. I'm starting to think that I should take my showers at night to give myself some extra morning time. Amazing how many little things have to happen everyday for him--feeding, washing, cleaning, and playing. He loves to play. He needs to play. One of his favourite games right now is crawling to a piece of furniture and then pulling himself up to standing. He can manage to keep himself standing for a minute or two, and then will topple backwards with delight.

Funny how quickly our lives can change. I feel like a different person than I was a year ago. And yet I'm the same, too. Weird. Koan like.

-t

Rumi: This World

This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness

Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence:
This place made from our love for that emptiness!
 Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.
 Praise to that happening, over and over!
For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.
 Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.
 Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.
 The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
blown off into emptiness.
 These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:
 Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.

-Rumi

Wendy's

When I was a teenager I worked at McDonald's and Wendy's.... at the same time. It was a real learning experience. I greatly preferred McDonald's, to tell the truth, because it was a much better work environment. The Wendy's management was pretty terrible. When they scheduled me to work on a particular day that I couldn't, they told me I had to find a replacement. When no one on the call list would swap, they said I could either show up on the given day or get fired. It's the only time in my life I actually got fired, and I didn't mind at all. I remember the manager telling me that this would "teach me a lesson" about the "real world." Joke was on him, McD's was paying me a lot more, and so all he did was make it easier for me to take more shifts there.

I could say a lot else, but I think these training videos will give you the picture of what it's like being a Wendy's employee. They actually made us watch this crap.




McDonald's fact: the number one customer complaint about the french fries: "Not Salty Enough."

-t

Ode to Pseudophedrine

O Pseudophedrine, for a thousand dry mouths to praise your excellent character, your superb effectiveness, your quick action. Thou clever diastereomer of ephedrine, you indirectly affect the adrenergic receptor system to make my nose dry and snot-free. Indeed, thy elixir-of-dryness powers prevent fluid from leaving all my nasal blood vessels to fill inflamed tissue.

My heart doth quicken in response to thee, O Pseudophedrine, whether thou commest under the name of Sudafed, Actifed, Contac, or partnered with other muses of cold relief such as your coy friends guaifenesin, dextromethorphan and acetaminophen.

But thou art a fickle mistress of the drippy nose, and art known to inhabit dens of ill repute to be transformed into thy wicked cousin, Methamphetamine. Be true to me, O greatest phenethylamine, my nose doth drip without thee.

-t