June 2010 Review

June has been a great month and like most months – filled with a variety of interesting activities. My work schedule has been varied with the first part of the month still quite busy, but then things started to taper off towards the mid-end of the month. Here’s a quick recap of some of the more memorable things that happened.

1. Spring BBQ
My second annual spring BBQ got kicked off was a great way to kick off the summer. We had great weather, good food, cold beer (well it needed a bit of time to chill first), and most importantly good times with friends. I made some burgers (thanks to Costco =P), but also whipped up a grilled pineapple marinated with rum, brown sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla. Still warm and dripping with juice from the grill, this was a delicious finish to some of the other grilled food from the day. I think I’ll be making this again in the future.

2. A Cottage Weekend
For one of my weekends in June, I had the chance to spend it up at a friend’s cottage. It was a nice escape from the city, and I had the chance to do lots of open water swimming, catch up on some summer reading, and enjoy good food and time in nature.

3. Cherries
June was a month full of cherries. I picked cherries from 4 different trees, and probably came away with over 150lbs of cherries. Many of the cherries went towards our CSA participants, however the bulk of the cherries came from the tree in my backyard. It was definitely a bumper crop year, with the cherries seeming to be never ending. In fact, there is probably still another 20 or so lbs of cherries still on my tree waiting to be picked before they go overripe.

I think 3 of the tree were of the sweet bing variety, while the other tree was also a sweet cherry, but the fruit was not as large and not as sweet. Despite many similarities, each tree had several unique characteristics. For example, one tree had extremely flexible branches, meaning that you could literally pull the branch towards you so that you could reach the cherries at the outer reaches of the branches. Other trees had much more rigid branches, making it much more difficult to reach some of the cherries. For some trees, the growth of the cherries occurred mainly on the smaller branches, while other trees like my tree had cherries growing not only from the smaller outer granches, but also from larger branches. Finally, some of the cherries came in large clumps (8 or more per clump) on the branches while other trees had fewer berries per clump (but more spread out .

For the cherries from my tree, unfortunately because of the heavy rain we had the past week, this caused the cherries to really swell in size and burst their skins. While they are still great to eat, this means that they are more susceptible to go bad (since the skin isn’t intact) and that they aren’t as sweet (due to all the excess water). From these cherries, many of them have been eaten and picked by friends and family, many are now in my freezer awaiting some future use, some of the them have been juiced, some have been turned into juice, while still more have been juiced and are now fermenting in another experiement of mine to create some cherry wine. We’ll see the results of what of this are in about a year (yes it takes a while to age, but the majority of the work has been done already).

4. Garden update
I thought I’d take a couple paragraphs about the status of my personal garden. This year, I’m experimenting with a variety of new plants. I put in tomatillos, kale, lemon balm, arugula, lots of tomatoes, a hungarian sweet wax pepper, purple beas, beans, a couple kinds of basil, cantaloupe, and still lots more. Here are some pics of things are looking like

Overall June was a good month. July I think will be a bit of a transition month, but I’m sure lots more interesting things will come from another 31 days.

cottage

August 2009 review

Another month has gone by and it’s time for another month in review (though we’re almost into the middle of September already!). I probably sound like a broken record, but August has been another busy month. I’ve come to the realization that too often I try to over pack my schedule and don’t always have the chance to do everything that I intend. Unfortunately, that means that some of the projects that I’m working on tend to get a bit neglected and fall off my radar for a bit, but on the plus side, I am starting to get a little more organized in terms of tracking the projects I’m working on, deciding what the next tasks are, and most importantly, executing them. I think I’m learning to become less focused on always being in control, and accepting the fact that I need to be more adaptable to the changing situations. I think a pretty good summary of my approach to this month has been like that Nickelback song, If Today Was Your Last Day.

So without further ado, here’s a recap of some of the fun, interesting, and exciting things that happened to me in August.

1. Algonquin Backpacking Trip
In the middle of the month, I took a 5 day backpacking trip up to Algonquin. It was magnificent, being able to escape from the hustle and bustle of the city and relax after a hard day’s trek by a warm campfire and crystal clear, and calm lake. With the only noise coming from the crackling of the campfire and call of the loon on the lake, it was pure bliss each night, as we were blessed with warm, sunny, and beautiful weather, without nary a rain cloud in sight. This is what camping in Ontario is supposed to be all about, and it did not disappoint. In my opinion, I don’t think there’s too much better than hanging out by a campfire with good food, good company, beautiful weather, hardly another soul in sight, and feeling the calm and soothing power of nature. In terms of food, we packed in an enormous amount of food and paid the price for it on some of our 15k treks, but it was worth all the effort. In fact, we could’ve packed in a little bit more food in order to be fully satisfied on our last dinner, but we were saved by another camper in the neighbouring campsite who had packed in some extra cold cut sandwiches and graciously offered to share them with us.

2. A Relaxing Weekend at the Cottage
The weekend after my Algonquin trip, I got a last minute invite to a friend’s cottage for the weekend. Again, it was a pleasure to have a chance to get away from the city, leave whatever projects, thoughts, and work behind in the city, and just enjoy a simple life of swimming, eating, napping, and reading. Unfortunately, when I got back Sunday night, it was right back into the grind of work, but the escape was definitey worth the trip.


3. End of summer BBQ
Summer is slowly coming to an end, and I had the opportunity to host another successful BBQ. Again, I tried to do too much, and cook too much food and too many different kinds of food, but overall, it turned out great! Some of the most popular items (to be included for the next bbq included:

  • grilled corn with homemade chive butter
  • Korean short ribs
  • mini brushetta burgers
  • Cheese and crackers
  • Grilled veggies
  • Sangria
  • homemade lime gelato (recipe here)


4. United Way Rouge Ball
Earlier on in the month, we were contacted by a classmate of ours to become a sponsor for the upcoming United Way Rouge Ball in November. It seems like a great event, and so I’m giving it a bit of a plug here: What is Rouge and who is GenNext?

A masquerade ball: “An evening of mystery in mask” with an unmasking at midnight. There is music, an extensive silent auction, and a lounge which provides the opportunity for education and additional musical guests.

GenNext is a program of United Way Toronto with the mandate to engage people in their 20s and 30s with United Way through giving and volunteering. Led by a Cabinet of volunteers who are GenNexters themselves, and supported by a United Way staff person, the group is committed to raising awareness and supporting the work of United Way Toronto, its partners, and member agencies, by developing and participating in volunteer and fundraising events. Read more here.

 

5. Fairlawn Healthy Living Show
Here’s another plug for an event I’ll be participating in, this time for those in the Lawrence Park area at the end of September (26th).We’ll be setting up a booth at the Fairlawn Healthy Living Show to promote our business and also get some reaction and feedback to our educational curriculum. Read more about it here (pdf).

 

6. Toronto Bicycling Network bike ride
At the beginning of the summer, my uncle had given my family a membership to the Toronto Bicycling Network and I’ve been meaning to go out on a ride with them for a while. Well the opportunity finally came around and it was a great experience getting out there for some exercise, meeting some new people, and check out this organization. If I get some more time in the future, I’ll definitely be heading out on some more rides with TBN.

 

7. Visiting an organic farm
As part of exploring new opportunities for my business, I had the chance to visit an organic farm a little outside of Toronto. It was a neat property, and I think we may be trying out a new supplier for some organic seedlings for next year. Nancy and I took a nice day trip out to meet this guy, and it was interesting talking both about farming, and business as he had quite an extensive business background and experience before venturing into the farming world.

 

8. Reading More Interesting Books
Despite all the projects and activities on my plate in August, I still found some time to get through a couple of books. For those of you interested in business and sports, I would recommend the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis. For the more business and marketing oriented, I would highly encourage you to check out Seth Godin’s The Dip, and Tribes, as well as Martin Lindstrom’s book, Buy-ology

 

9. Gavin ‘Fun’ Chan
As August wound to a close, that also meant the end of the ultimate season. To wrap up the season (before playoffs), some of the people on my Tuesday team went for a “fun” run. And what was supposed to be a short trail run, followed by a team dinner ended up turning into quite an adventure as Gavin “fun” Chan lived up to his nickname. We were supposed to go on a short run from Riverdale park, up past Bloor and then back down to the park, but for whatever reason, Gavin decided that he wanted to keep on running. So he ran, and he ran, and when he hit the Lakeshore, he decided that the run wasn’t fun enough, and kept on running! Despite hitting a fork in the road, not waiting for us to catch up, and not knowing which direction to go in, he decided to keep on going all the way to Ashbridges Bay! Luckily, as we stopped various other people on the trail to see if they had seen Gavin or not, one of them had the foresight to take down our cell number, and then by a stroke of luck, came across Gavin and called us so we could arrange to meet him along the trail.

 

10. Interesting Toronto nightlife experience
Also this month, I had a fun and interesting night out on the town. I’m all for trying out new things, and was able to go to a place I would normally not have a reason to be going to. One of my friends was in town for the weekend from D.C. and brought with her a bunch of friends and her new GF. They had their schedule mostly planned for the evening and so another friend and I had arranged for us to go out and meet them at the bar where they were hanging out. While it’s not often that I’m one of less than a handful of guys in the bar, it was really an interesting experience being around a different group of people than I would normally interact with. Thanks for visiting Kate and I’m sure I’ll see you soon, be it in T., D.C. or ADK.

 

Looking Forward
Looking forward, September is going to be another super busy month (in a good way). There will be lots of changes happening both personally and professionally, and I’m looking forward to whatever the future holds for me.

elderbery black_beauty flower

The Busy and Interesting Month of May

May has been an extremely busy time for me and a whirlwind of new and interesting experiences. I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to experience all these new things and hopefully will have many more interesting experiences to share in the future. And so without futher ado, here’s a brief recap of some of the interesting and unique experiences I had over the past month

1. Ontario Food Terminal
This was almost a surreal experience paying a 5am visit to the Ontario Food Terminal which is Canada’s largest wholesale fruit and produce terminal. This is where all the restaurants and grocery stores go to buy their produce, and where convenience stores, nurseries, and other retailers go to buy their flowers/plants. Apparantly all the action happens around 2-3am for the big buyers and it’s just a hive of activity, produce, and plants. Thanks to some inside connections, I was able to go and pickup some plants for my business.

For more info, check out http://www.oftb.com/info.htm

2. Visit to a local flower/vegetable farm
Not many people know this, but farming runs in my family. My mom grew up on a farm up near Newmarket and today my aunt continues to run the same farm growing flowers and vegetables. With several HUGE greenhouses, it was incredible seeing rows and rows of flowers and vegetbles as far as the eye can see. I had the opportunity to go and visit my aunt’s farm a couple times this month to pickup most of the veggies and plants needed for my business.

3. The inaugural Lemon/Herb camping trip
This trip can be summed up in two words – epic failure! Our reliance on only a flint/steel, fishing rod, and our wits for dinner on this camping trip ended up in failure. Granted we didn’t really do any research before attempting to fish, it was our first time attempting to fish, and we were using my dad’s 30 year old equipment which wasn’t in the best working order, we weren’t really setting ourselves up for success. We did manage to get and keep a fire going despite a massive downpour, but the fish and our lures were not cooperating. Despite that, it was an awesome trip and great chance to spend a weekout away from the city out in the woods.

4. A 10 hour teeth cleaning experience
And before you get too shocked, the entire 10 hours isn’t spent cleaning my teeth (my teeth aren’t that bad – promise!). One of my friends is in training to become a dental hygienist and needed some volunteers to help her get some practice and experience. And despite the extremely long time commitment (which isn’t finished just yet), it turned out to be the most thorough and comprehensive oral checkup and assessment I’ve ever had. I learned alot about my teeth, proper brushing technique, and a whole slew of technical jargon that I didn’t really udnerstand, but seemed interesting regardless.

5. Leading a focus group
I had the chance one weekend to lead a couple of focus groups for my business and it turned out to be a very interesting experience. I learned alot about moderating, leading and guiding a discussion, and soliciting input from a variety of different types of people. Thanks to Yafa for the help in creating the discussion guide and general tips on leading/moderating.

6. Visiting a friend’s photography gallery
The month of May was also home to month long Contact photography festival. It features local photographers to showcase their stuff and one of my friends hosting his own gallery during this festival. He’s got some amazing work and I had the priviledge of going to check out his gallery on opening night. Unfortunatly the gallery is wrapping up tomorrow, but you can go and checkout his website here. www.esmondlee.com

7. Spring kickoff BBQ
Spring is in the air and that means BBQ season. It was great having some friends over, sharing some good food and good company. With that being said, I think I’ll host another BBQ in the future.

8. Start of ultimate season
While not so unique, frisbee season has started – and for those who know me, know that I love to play frisbee. It’s a great chance to get some exercise and hang out with friends after a hard day’s work. It’s a great sport for veterans or for beginners and I encourage everyone to at least give it a try!

9. The JC Iron Chef competition
Right at the beginning of the month, I battled Jing in a cooking duel a la Iron Chef. The secret ingredient: BACON! The unexpected dish that I served to wrapup my meal – bacon ice cream! Yes that’s right, bacon ice cream. And it was delicious. Please allow me to explain. It’s not bacon-flavoured ice cream, it’s ice cream with bacon bits in it. Here’s the rationale. You start with your smooth, cold, and creamy ice cream (I used a base of vanilla ice cream). Add in some homemade shortbread cookies for a bit of chewy-ness and a change in texture, and to top it off, finely chopped bits of crispy bacon for an unexpected sweet salty surprise. Sure you may think it sounds unappetizing, but tell that to everyone present who decided to try it and like it enough to finish the entire bowl!

 

That’s all for the interesting/unique things in May. We’ll see what June brings in terms of more interesting/unique experiences.