Quite busy, lately. Working on the set of cable television show, and also doing some donkey work for a foreign trade mission. The rent will be late, but it will be paid.
One reflection on life in Toronto: No matter how poor you are, there’s no problem getting really good food. I may have trouble making the rent, but I eat like an emperor. Eating well is, as far as I can see, cheaper than eating badly. I can make a supper of curried channa, steamed callaloo, and chicken, brazed in yogurt and spiced with cumin, sumac and blazing mitmita, served on a filling Ethiopian njeera, for a total cost of $3.50. I can wash it down with thick, top quality guava juice for three dollars a litre. I can lunch on bagels and fresh salmon & dill cream cheese for less than what it costs in a supermarket, or find an aged herb gouda at one third the supermarket price, if I keep my eyes open in Kensington Market.
The trick is to keep a good shelf of spices. I buy them fresh, by weight, at House of Spice, a store that is more entertaining to walk into than any amusement park. By keeping the pantry stocked with staples (rice, pasta, potatoes, frozen peas and corn, wakame, njeera, crushed tomatoes), one can come across a cut of meat on sale and transform it into something special. Soups are my personal specialty. A hardy borsht with sour cream, a spicy shrimp and lemon grass in coconut or tamarind broth, a sturdy black bean and potato, a refreshing cold gazpacho. Anyone can make these in minutes. The skills involved are trivial.
I mostly shop in free market stores, not corporate ones, which in this neighbourhood means mostly Tamil, Pilipino, Somali, Ethiopian, Korean and Jamaican food shops. All of them are geared to feeding big families on small budgets. Between them, I have a huge variety within a five minute walk. But within a twenty minute walk, I can get to anything conceivable, in Kensington Market (chaos and mysteries and bargains), or in St. Lawrence Market (highest quality, rarest items, such as muskox steak and arctic char flown in from Nunavut, an entire store devoted to caviar, and another that sells only hot sauces and mustards). Chinatown, Little India, and Greektown, all within walking distance, each provide their particular delights. I probably spend far less on food than the average person, but nobody could call me deprived.
City life, with all its noise, rush hour chaos and carbon monoxide, does have some recompenses. Henry David Thoreau may have read the Mahabharata at Walden Pond, to fill his spiritual needs. But I find that a really good chicken tikka fills mine. I wonder, could I have lured Henry away from the pond with a really delicious kylbasa?
0 Comments.