I got a bee in my bonnet this morning

I read an article on the junk food war this morning, and had to say something. I emailed this to the writer.

Hello Gerry Bellett;

I want to make a few comments on your article "North Van school leads the way in banishing junk food from machines." As a teaching chef at Sir Charles Tupper secondary school in Vancouver, the healthy choices issue is a major concern. In our culinary arts program we have four major concerns:

the well being of all Tupper students
the education of students enrolled in our program
the cost recovery aspect of running the cafeteria
encouraging a positve working envirnoment by providing excellent products and service to staff and students

I enjoyed the article, but I am wondering what is being reported on regarding school cafeterias while the junkfood purge takes place in the hallways where the vending machines are. In many of the articles that I have read on this issue, the cafeterias are often blamed for the problem, or ignored as not having a stake in the war on unhealthy diets. It is important to know that teaching cafeterias provide a critical service to the school; we feed the hungry kids, offer nutritious meals at low prices, engage in school initiatives such as catering for special events, and provide an elective credit course option teaching needed skills for home use and for careers, offering early apprenticeships to aspiring cooks and bakers,

We do a lot more than vending machines, which I see as my enemy. Vending machines give nothing to our educational program, and have nothing to do with our cafeteria. The culinary programs are under constant attack by our school boards because they are expensive to run. If we got rid of all the vending machinces in the school, students would frequent the cafeterias, eat healthier, and our costs would be recovered further. When a student or staff buys something from us they support our program which means student's learning is enhanced.

Carson Graham is the only North Van school to have a teaching cafeteria, certainly a key player in the fight against junk food, so it is too bad that your article does not mention it. I wonder if Vancouver Coastal Health know about the program there. Like many teaching cafeterias, we at Tupper Culinary Arts have been working towards healthier choices for several years. We offer fresh nutritious items made by our students under the supervision of our kitchen team. Teaching cafeterias conduct important programs for the school community, and should be mentioned in articles concerning the junkfood issue.



Good Health!

Cecil Baird Teacher/Chef/Son/Father/Husband/Man/Rider/Ultimater/Canadian/Curler/Lover of Life/Sir Charles Tupper Secondary, ph. 6047138233 loc. 7212, or at home 6042550433

“Skilful and refined cookery has always been a feature of the most glorious epochs in history.”
Lucien Tendret (1825-1896)

My Government, Kyoto, and Why?

ecoAUTO Program - 2006 Model Year ecoAUTO Eligibility

This is the site where you can find out if your car qualifies for the Feebate. The great and stupid thing about it is that my 2006 Smart is on the list, but since the initiative was only announced in March of this year, it doesn't qualify. Here is my original email, the response from Transport Canada, and my folow up today:

-----Original Message-----
From: cecil baird [mailto:cecil_baird@hotmail.com]
Sent: Friday, April 06, 2007 8:41 PM
To: WEB Feedback
Subject: febates

Hello; I bought a Smart Fourtwo 2006 model. How can I know if the feebate has been attached to the original price that I paid? I do not remember anything coming from the dealer on that issue, and never knew that my car would qualify until I read a piece in the newspaper today. Now I wonder if I will get a feebate for being somewhat of an environmentally responsible car driver, if there is such a thing.

Please advise,

Cecil Baird

Mr. Baird

I would like to thank you for your e-mail dated April 6, 2007, regarding the new ecoAUTO Rebate Program.

Due to the fact that this measure was announced on March 19, 2007 as part of the Federal Budget 2007, only vehicles appearing on the list that are purchased or leased (12 months or more) on or after March 20, 2007 are eligible.

The list of 2006 and 2007 model year vehicles eligible for the rebate can be found at http://www.tc.gc.ca/programs/environment/ecotransport/ecoauto.htm#2007vehicleeligibility.
Best Regards,

ecoAUTO Rebate Program


This decision seems unfair to me. My car is on the list at http://www.tc.gc.ca/programs/environment/ecotransport/ecoauto.htm#2007vehicleeligibility .


I have been driving it and 'saving' the environment since long before the Feebate pronouncement, yet I do not qualify. This seems wrong; I wonder if there is any provision for those of us who have taken a different road, with the foresight and desire to change the way we do things, that is to say, to be proactive, not re-active as the Feebate policy turns out to be.

Cecil Baird

How do you say whisk in Spanish?

Do you know that there is no word for 'whisk' in Spanish? How do the Spanish chefs do it then? What do they ask for when they bitch out their apprentices to "Hey, bone-head! go get that thing that we use to make the Hollandaise sauce get all frothy and stop from coagulating that you hold in your hand and make go real fast around and around! Now!"

So my students tell me, but there must be a name, Si?

ChefsLine - Cook live with professional chefs

ChefsLine - Cook live with professional chefs

Hey all you struggling cooks out there, wondering what to have for supper tonight, or for that weekend party, or do you just plain SUCK in the the kitchen all the time? Then maybe you should try this website, and for a fee you can call up and get advice from a chef. While this may seem strange to some cynical chefs (me) or anyone with an ounce of interest, energy, and desire to try cooking something different, it may just work out as a positive experience for the culinarily challenged. When I first saw this site, I thought it was silly, and doomed to become a failed experiment created by some money grabbing exploiters of wanna-be epicurians, but after a bit, I asked myself: "What would Sulu do?" and I have decided to just say -Good luck!

Rouxbe - The Recipe to Better Cooking

Rouxbe - The Recipe to Better Cooking
Diane, one of my classmates showed me this site, a clever play on food words, check it out!

Public Library Geeks Take Web 2.0 to the Stacks -

Public Library Geeks Take Web 2.0 to the Stacks - Wired has some great stuff. Go here for this topical article on some of the material that we have covered in LLED 462. Definitely check out the Learning 2.0 site, and the 23 things. A vast majority of all the tech things from web 2.0 is here. If you do not know about 2.0, you may be outdated. I remember many years ago before I bought my first computer, which was a 10 meg 086 processor Samsung in about 1990, I heard a guy talking about the coming age of personal computing. He stated at the time that if you could not perform basic computer functions in ten years time, you would be considered illiterate by the standards of the day. This frightened me because I did not want to be a dummy to the upcoming new reality of learning and communicating, so I got the 086, since surpassed by the 286, 386 486, Pentium, etc. It can be tough to keep up. Also, I wonder if our students in 2007 feel literate because they have awesome computer skills but may not have great reading skills as teachers define them, that is, book reading and learning skills.

I will try this html code for a podcast mp3 player and hope it works:

Developing Confidence with Technology : or, Now that I have done this, I feel on top of the world!

I became interested in doing the weblog option of this assignment for several reasons. In the summer of 2006, I took a Language and Literacy Education (LLED) class at the University of British Columbia (UBC) called 449 Teaching Adolescents Literature, as part of the Diploma in Librarianship (http://www.lled.educ.ubc.ca/courses/summer2007/449-951.htm). Our teacher Peter Hill had developed a weblog component to his subject English class at University Hill Secondary, and I was very interested in how it worked. He told us that students who do not always take part in class discussions sometimes engage in online academic chat, which intrigued me. The idea of creating my own blog has also been fueled by my daughter Rachel’s blog (http://rachellynnseoul.blogspot.com/). She lives in Seoul Korea, and teaches elementary school-aged students English language. While her blog is personal, she often posts pictures of her students and stories about them. My wife and I journeyed to Seoul this past Spring Break and had a wonderful time visiting and experiencing the city and the food, and Rachel showed me the evolution of her blog. I hope to help the librarian at Tupper Secondary, where I work, develop a blog in some kind of capacity. I am not sure where it all will lead just yet, but with a little experience I am getting more comfortable with the technology and I have found blogging to be good fun. Although the learning is often frustrating, the successes are quite rewarding.

I started with Blogger because it is convenient for people using Google, who have fairly recently bought the company (http://www.google.ca/). I have Google set as my home page, and customized it with a button that sends web sites and pages straight to Blogger, so easy! Up until the buy out of Blogger (old Blogger) by Google (new Blogger) this was not possible. Rachel has had many difficulties with Blogger as they changed over to Google, and she has learned a different way of posting, that is by using code. She experimented by finding view source on the page pull down menu on her browser, and copied the code into her blog until she got the format she wanted. I have not had to do this because I started on the new Blogger. I am now practicing uploading pictures from my travels; I just have to click the picture icon button on the posting menu in Blogger to post pictures. The hard part was getting the icon to appear, which I found after reading posted messages from other Blogger users in the help feature of Blogger. I also posted some links to http://www.flickr.com/ to see pictures that I put there, just to try it out.

The ongoing evolution of the blog is interesting, as the importance of design and function become evident to me. The process of determining how to combine these two elements is important but takes a great deal of time, going back and forth between the blog’s template and the published page to see how it looks. Next, I practice using the blog as if I am not the creator, trying to step away and regarding it as a casual net surfer, an unimpassioned viewer. This seems to be the logical way to go, but it is hard for me to be too critical of my own work, and I often seek the thoughts of others. For example, I wanted to show off my blog one day to my wife and daughter. On first view they both let out a groan because the lime green title was not a good pick for contrast with the background red and therefore tough to read. Being stuck in the idea that it was pretty, I was not thinking about the functionality of it. I changed the line to black for easier viewing, having realized the error of my ways.

I recently added two links to http://www.youtube.com/ showing curling and ultimate Frisbee videos, a search link to Canadian food news, and a feed to http://www.newyorkislanders.com/rss/topStories.asp, a hockey news update. These links will be constantly updated by the original sites, keeping the blog current and adding interest for viewers.

I picked the layout and colour after reviewing several blogs during this course. I found that the most successful ‘serious' intellectual and academically focused ones had a cool look to them, which tended to accentuate the writing, not the design. Blogs for young children had a lot of different colours, moving parts, and generally very interesting visually. I hoped to build something in between. I favoured sites that have a large amount of content on the front page versus ones that had “Enter” signs which you still have to go through before you know much about it, or ones with only links to other sites because it makes the viewer work too hard to get anywhere. There are so many resources on the internet that viewers must scan quickly or get bogged down, which means for me that a web page must be user-friendly immediately or go by the wayside. That is why I added the raison d’blog at the top of the page. Hopefully people will know quickly if they want to continue reading further, and will not be wasting their time.

The El Jefe picture in the right side bar should also give an indication of the blog’s content, as will the sidebar (Canadian Food News) below it. I wanted a solid colour that would provide contrast to the text for easy reading, and since I love earth tones the deep brownish red fit well. It is almost the perfect match for El Jefe’s facial hair, not dissimilar from my own.

A note on El Jefe: It means The Chef in Spanish. My wife and I were in Mexico during winter break, and so Spanish is on my mind, plus Espagnole is one of the mother sauces of French cookery. These little items are amusing to me, so they are included in my blog, which is a reflection of me. El Jefe was copied from Clip Art online, which is allowed for educational purposes according to the information at http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/permissions/default.mspx.

The challenges for this project are mostly to do with learning the software and being willing and able to spend the hours necessary to create something of quality. The blog development is perpetual. Since starting the assignment, I have learned much on the technical side. On the design side I also learned a great deal, most importantly, to identify what I liked and why, but it is always the content that makes a good blog good. The content must be what the author wants, since even professional blogs are very personal, and must be something others will want to view. A blog can be simply a journal or diary, but to be interesting to others in your discipline, it must benefit them as well.

When I began this project I thought I had a clear idea of what I wanted and I knew it would take time to develop the blog. I changed my mind several times about the design, but the basics stayed the same. I have changed the content a lot so far, and expect that will continue. The choices a blogger makes as to what goes on the page should be reviewed often. I have enjoyed building it and may keep the blog current after the course is over. The assignment asked for ten entries, which I made the very first night I started, and were all about food and literacy. Since then I have done quite a bit more, including some casual random muses and other things of interest to me. I hope they will generate some discussion at school, but they certainly are fun for me.

In the future the best advice I can offer new bloggers is to try to have fun with it, and do not be afraid to experiment. It is a little disconcerting putting your personal or professional life out for public view, and I know there are many of us in the class who are wary. There are ways to limit access to the blog which I am still learning. To allow students to post to your blog and interact with each other is a whole other issue and bunch of knowledge which I am continuing to explore. In my current job teaching cooking, I am not sure how to build blogging into the curriculum. I may just encourage them to read it and respond in some way to any of the links, articles, images or personal thoughts of mine, and hope to establish a deeper rapport or conversation electronically than we generally have in class. Time will tell how the next stage of Scootermcbaird takes shape.

Dolores Claman

I am watching the CBC. They are doing a feature on the "Hockey Night in Canada" theme, written by Dolores Claman of Vancouver, in 1968. I love that song. She also wrote “A Place to Stand” about Ontario (ari-ari-o). She has built her place in Canadiana with those two beauties. They also have story on their website about how she is suing them for overuse according to their contract. Maybe they are trying to sooth her by doing the feature.

Talking to Mom

I am talking to my Mom about food in 1949. She is looking at this blog, and we are discussing the ethics of eating meat, and 'alternative' cuts, such as heart. In 1949, when she was a young bride and her and my father had little money, she had to be careful to stretch the food dollar. One whole beef heart cost 25 cents! She learned to cook tongue also, since no one else used these cuts they were cheap, as well as being nutritious and lean. Later, as immigrants came in from post-war Europe who also had little money to start with, the demand for offal increased and prices went up. I often wonder aloud to my students about the difference between eating bugs, innards, or other 'yucky' things and eating 'normal' muscle meat of beef, pork, veal, lamb etc. It is my opinion that once you have made the decision to be a meat eater, all bets are off, it is wide open; the idea that eating a heart, a veal, or what have you is less ethical than any other food such as free-range chicken is odd in my view. However, since my daughter Rachel took Mr. Raoul's Environment class at Kitsilano Secondary when she was in grade 9, our family has eaten only free-range eggs and chicken.

New York Islanders Top Stories

New York Islanders Top Stories
This is my first attempt at connecting an RSS feed, and although it is all about the hockey team with the best jerseys in the east, and not an educational, culinary, or literacy site, I thought it would add a significant dash of class to my blog. The mighty lads from Long Island now have the handsome and eloquent Ryan Smyth amongst them to lead the charge, so all is good on the Isle.

How to do it right

This is a sesame leaf, which has a unique and lovely flavour, with a piece of raw fish, and some spicy bean paste. It is a wrap. We bought a plate of sashimi, -Korean name unknown to me, at the fish market and then went to one of the restaurants there for dinner. We ate a huge plate of the various raw fish, so fresh!

Bandagi!

These are the bandagi, or silk worm larva, that we saw in a big wok being cooked and sold on the street in Seoul. We were surprised when they came to our table as a side dish at the makkali restaurant. We ordered a kimchi pancake, yummy, some makkali, not too bad, and then I had to try one bandagi so that I could get the whole Korean experience. I think they taste like a boiled kidney bean, with the same texture.

the Korean rice wine in prison cups

This stuff is the famous rice wine, makkali. It is served cold in a banged up tea pot, in these tin cups, and is excellent for washing down the silk worm larva called bandagi, as well as getting rid of the taste of bandagi.

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/player.jhtml?ml_video=84396&ml_collection=&ml_gateway=&ml_gateway_id=&ml_comedian=&ml_runtime=&ml_context=show&ml_origin_url=%2Fshows%2Fthe_daily_show%2Fvideos%2Fmost_recent%2Findex.jhtml&ml_playlist=&lnk=&is_large=false
this link is also available through the OCA site, specifically the piece by Rob Riggle on cloning beef for food from the "Daily Show" The video is extremely funny; Riggle is a comic genius who follows the style of previous daily 'reporters' Rob Cordry, Stephen Coderre et al. Their off colour interviewing techniques have revealed some pretty odd behaviour amongst our largest trading partners, the elephant to the south. Lucky for us the show is fairly Canadian friendly.

little octopi

We went to the biggest fish market I have ever seen and wandered around in a bit of a daze looking at the multitude of products, some live, some filletted, some just gutted, but all fresh and fascinating. These little guys where very poular.

Michael Pollan on Sustainable Meat Eating

Michael Pollan on Sustainable Meat Eating Pollan has written tons of thoughtful pieces on the subject.

Organic Consumers Association

Organic Consumers Association Campaigning for Heatlh, Justice and Sustainability! Not just about food, many neato articles regarding good things you should think about to make the world a better place.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

bandagi on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

bandagi on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The Culinary Institute of America Presents CIAprochef.com

The Culinary Institute of America Presents CIAprochef.com
The great cooking school online; this site is a must for professional culinarians. The educational value is very evident here, with lesson plans, news, student information and a lot more. The NY campus Hyde Park is one of the prettiest schools I have ever seen. When you enter the CIA, you feel the passion for cooking immediately.

Pro Smart Chef Stuff

http://www.smartbrief.com/cia/index.jsp?campaign=prochefsite%20 is the link to the lovely news letter from the Culinary Institute of America, the vaunted CIA. It tells a great amount of culinary news from the US.