A dinner a child could make -- and almost did

My granddaughters visit often and, for this reason, I find myself playing kid's games. I hate kid's games. Why mess with Play-Doh when you can mess with cookie batter? Why make pretend cookies when the real thing is so easy. Both activities take the same effort but doing something real carries a bigger payback.

When not cooking, Fiona like to draw.

With this in mind, I let my five-year-old granddaughter, Fiona, help with dinner the other night. Amazingly, she was a lot of help and she had great fun being adult for twenty-five minutes or so. Working around a hot stove, one doesn't play at being adult; one has to be adult. Fiona was.

So, what recipe did my granddaughter and I tackle? A skillet dinner featuring penne with broccoli and chicken. I got the recipe from Cook's Illustrated, a magazine produced by America's Test Kitchen. With everything cooked in one, large skillet, it was easy to keep an eye on Fiona. That said, the kid rallied to the moment and stayed amazingly focused as she stirred the penne to keep it from sticking.

I like both the America's Test Kitchen television show, it could be alternately titled "Cooking with Sheldon" as they approach cooking using the scientific method. It is high school science class meets home economics.

There were four ingredients eliminated from our take on the recipe: onion, garlic, red pepper flakes and white wine. And Fiona and Isla also skipped the grilled tomato served on the side. All five ingredients are on the grandchildren's don't eat list.

Using a kitchen scale, Fiona weighed out the eight ounces of penne while I quick fried the chicken strips. Fiona measured out the chicken broth. We used two cups. And she also measured out the water. I added both to the skillet. She sprinkled a quarter teaspoon of dried oregano over the pasta while it simmered and she took a break from stirring to snap the broccoli flowers apart. No knife was involved. Minutes before the penne was done, Fiona added the broccoli to the almost cooked pasta. Then, just before serving, Fiona added Parmesan cheese grated earlier.

Amazingly, the pasta turned out al dente and the broccoli was a rich green with just a hint of crispness. In other words, nothing was overdone. And the chicken broth added extra flavour to the pasta which both Fiona and Isla appreciated. My wife, Judy, also appreciated the dinner. She declared it winner and said it appeared to be Weight Watchers Friendly to boot.

I posted this in mid February, 2015. The Cook's Illustrated magazine with the recipe may be off the shelves by the time you find this post. You can try finding the recipe on America's Test Kitchen online site but you may find it difficult. These folk are not into simply giving their knowledge away. You may be asked to sign up for a free two week trial. I can't fault them. Giving info away has not been a profitable tack for newspapers and others in the information business.

And lastly, I may have cooked up a monster along with a dinner. Fiona, all of five remember, told Judy, my wife, not to worry about dinner in the future. She (Fiona) and I would be making all meals from now on. I've got to find a way to let this kid down gently. It is that or finding more recipes she can tackle.

What Brian Williams brouhaha and UFFI have in common: Torquing.

Years after the damage was done, Harris Mitchell told the rest of the UFFI story.

It seems the media are appalled that NBC news anchor Brian Williams embellished a story. Yes the story involved Williams himself and this puts a little extra wobble in the usual spin but pumping up stories is all-too-common in the media. It even has a name: torquing.

As everyone now knows, Brian Williams claimed that while he was covering the war in Iraq the chopper in which he was riding was hit by enemy fire and forced to land. It's a great war story for a journalist, unfortunately his harrowing first-person account isn't true. Williams was in a following aircraft. His aircraft drew no fire. As Mark Twain said: "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."

A fellow with whom I worked at The London Free Press in London, Ontario, left the paper rather than torque a story. Sent to cover what the editorial department heads believed would be a sensational trial, he returned with a relatively dull tale. The courtroom drama failed to gel. With lots of space set aside for a front page story, a non-story wasn't acceptable. The reporter was ordered to torque his piece, to inflate it and fill the space. He refused. Rather than knuckle under he cleaned out his desk and bid the paper adieu. Another reporter, a more malleable one, was assigned the task of torquing the story.

I can't tell you how many times I watched reporters twist stories. One occasion that still roils me up involved a small child lost over-night in a cornfield. The little girl wandered into the tall, mature corn at sunset. Police were called and the field searched. When the police left sometime after midnight, the child had not yet been found.

At daybreak a helicopter arrived and flew over the corn field still cold and damp with early morning dew. Inside the chopper a passenger aimed an infrared thermographic camera at the field. Soon the high tech tool, normally used to detect heat loss in buildings, had pinpointed the location of the child. Despite mild hypothermia, the sleeping little girl's cool body was still much warmer than the surrounding soil.

Although it made a great story in the morning edition — high tech saves child — the high tech angle wouldn't save the story in the afternoon edition. And so the reader-pleasing slant to the story was born. According to a later edition, the child could have been found earlier if only the insights of an area psychic had been followed. While television and radio were still hawking the high tech angle, the paper ran with paranormal angle.

Of course, the psychic story wasn't true. Both the reporter and I were at the farmhouse all night. There was a reason the reporter hadn't given the psychic much weight in the first story and I hadn't spent time in the darkroom printing pictures. The psychic had been of no help whatsoever.

But, as the day wore on, and interest in the high tech angle wore thin, the psychic saviour looked better and better. The paranormal story got torqued.

Which brings us to one of the best known torqued stories in the history of journalism: the UFFI scare story. Admittedly, more was at work here than simply pumping up the dramatic value of a story. There is an unhealthy amount of Steven Colbert's "Truthiness" at work here, as well.

Urea formaldehyde foam insulation — UFFI — was forced off the market in Canada decades ago. Yet, even today folks selling homes in Ontario are asked if their homes contains UFFI. Banned in Canada in 1980, UFFI is occasionally still used in Europe. And after briefly being banned in the States it is back in limited use there as well.

Fear of Foam: Harris Mitchell

Why is a product deemed unsafe in Canada legal everywhere else? The E.U. is well known for being quick to hit the "ban button." Think of genetically modified foods, pesticides for increased food production, bovine growth hormone, chlorinated chicken, food dye and more. UFFI is not quite ho-hum in Europe but neither is it a scare-you-out-of-your-pants story either.

The reason for the continuing Canadian UFFI scare story is simple. The media loves a good story and one about killer insulation is a beaut. It is not true but it is still a beaut. Sadly, the story has hurt a great many Canadians — both home owners whose homes lost value because of the story and small, private business owners who lost everything when their insulation businesses closed after the foam, installed using expensive specialized equipment, was made illegal.

I'm not surprised the UFFI story is now known by many to be false. I was certain the story was torqued when it originally broke in Canada. CBC Marketplace still brags on its Internet site that it "did several groundbreaking reports on it [UFFI] 20 years ago."

Why was I certain? Because I had insulated a fifty year old home with the foam. After reading everything I could, I settled on UFFI. In use in Europe for years, it was a proven product.

From the brochure for Insulspray by Borden that I was given.

I had the Borden Chemical Company product, Insulspray, injected into the hollow walls of my home. The installer told us that the UFFI would not damage our wall by expanding and forcing the aging plaster off the laths nor would it cause any other pressure related damage. He assured us that the foam would shrink as it dried. This would reduce the insulation value a little but insure a damage-free installation.

After tens of thousands of Canadian homes were insulated with UFFI, many with government assistance, insulation horror stories began circulating. I recall being incredibly angry about the attacks made by Marketplace. For instance, Marketplace made a big deal out of the shrinkage. It was great television but poor science and poor news reporting. They acted as if the shrinkage was unexpected and a problem. Neither was true.

Three metal fasteners in UFFI for years and no corrosion.

Newspaper editors saw the Marketplace story and felt scooped. Newsrooms across Canada scrambled to retell the Marketplace story but with a local angle. The scare spread and politicians caved to media pressure. UFFI was banned. More than a quarter of a million Canadian homes required the removal of the foam from hard to reach exterior wall cavities where it had been injected, often with government assistance.

I recall one story on which I worked. Since being insulated, a local home had had a string of residents taken by ambulance to the hospital and the indoor air had a hazy quality.

When I visited the home I learned that the home was being used as a defacto old age home. All those taken to the hospital were seniors. The health emergencies should have come as no surprise.

And why was there hazy air? Hazy air that the paper made such a big deal about. The answer is simple: The home, draft free since installation of the foam, had all windows sealed with tightly taped plastic. As most of the residents were smokers, the home was filled with a haze of tobacco smoke.  

The energy saving measures had cut air infiltration to almost zero. The smoke was no longer being diluted by outside air. The haze was no mystery.
  
Most news stories are good stories but not all are true. The Brian Williams Iraq War fable is not out of place in the world of journalism. Torquing a story has a long, well respected history.
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For more on the present thinking on UFFI, read: Urea Formaldehyde Foam Insulation (UFFI)

It is hard to go wrong with good ingredients

It snowed yesterday and the city failed to plow our street. We were stuck. I had planned on going to the nearby grocery store but with the deep snow I decided not to walk nor to drive. Too cold to walk and too difficult to drive. I decided to make do with the ingredients in the house.

I had a cauliflower I got on sale at Metro and some cherry tomatoes from Costco. First, I fried the tomatoes in a little olive oil in a large wok. After a couple of minutes I added some minced garlic. When the tomatoes began to split, I put them in a small, colourful roasting pan. I put a dab of tomato pesto on each, spread some sun-dried tomatoes and grated Parmesan cheese on top and put the pan in the oven to bake at 350-degrees.

While frying the tomatoes, I lightly cooked the cauliflower in the microwave. After moving the tomatoes into the oven, I added the cauliflower to the remaining olive oil in the wok. I also added a little more minced garlic. I fried the cauliflower until it started to brown while taking care not to burn the garlic.

While frying the cauliflower, I partially cooked some butternut squash in the microwave. Before the cauliflower had browned, I added the squash to the wok. Then, I added about 18 coarsely chopped cashews. When the cauliflower browned, I mixed the cauliflower, squash and nuts thoroughly together before spooning all into a small rectangular Emile Henry roasting pan. I sprinkled some chopped broad leaf parsley and grated Parmesan cheese on top and placed this dish, too, in the oven to bake.

With two pans roasting in the oven, I baked the remaining butternut squash in the microwave with a little butter. Actually, I used Becal margarine as my doctor has ordered me to forgo butter. The squash may seem redundant but actually it adds a much needed focal point to what had to be a meatless dinner -- more directions from my heart doctor.

A big slice of butternut squash looked great on each plate. The cauliflower and squash mixture also looked nice. And the tomatoes not only looked great but they tasted absolutely wonderful. Hot, full of flavour, with a taste nicely accented by both pesto and dried tomatoes.

Leaving meat out of the dinner made it healthy for me and point-friendly for my Weight-Watchers-attending wife. Buying the ingredients on sale and at Costco kept the price low. As I've said before, there is no reason to spend a lot on food in retirement unless you want something expensive and special. (And often even those ingredients can be bought on sale. Here I'm thinking of lobster.)

When reporters warn seniors about the possibility of eating pet food in retirement, I shake my head in disbelief.

Mixed use development coming to London

Near the end of a discussion about a rapid transit development plan for London, the city’s planning chief John Fleming asked: “Why not us? Why can’t we have what other cities have?"

The London Free Press reporter, Randy Richmond, continued on the same tack, asking in his recent story, "Why can’t we be one of the cool cities?" Richmond openly wondered why we can have what Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton and Ottawa have and London doesn't.

Why stop with the usual short list of similarly sized Ontario cities? Why not find inspiration not just from cities within the province but from cities outside the province, even outside the country? If we are going to dream, let's dream big.

Think of City Crossing in Luohu, Shenzhen, China with its dramatic mix of uses: retail, commercial and residential. City Crossing - RTKL. Done right, a mixed use development like this would give the London downtown some competition as a destination spot and this might be good. A richer, more vibrant city benefits everyone.

In Calgary, the site of the historical Dominion Bridge steel foundry is slated to be transformed into possibly one of the most vibrant mixed-use developments in the region. The site promises to be a dense, mixed-use district incorporating smart growth with sustainable strategies to create a walkable neighborhood. Dominion Bridge at Ramsay Exchange - RTKL

Makes one wonder what could be done with the former Galleria Mall in downtown London. Built for more than a 100 million it last traded hands for a fraction of its original value. If ugly, former industrial sites can be transformed what could be done with the former Galleria Mall?

Actually, it is half way to conversion today after changes including the name. Both former anchors, one an Eatons and the other a Hudson Bay, have been repurposed with the city's Central Library in the one.

Add an apartment tower, possibly condominiums, drop a grocery store into the mix and could the old luxury mall become a successful mixed use destination? 

If Calgary can do it with an old foundry, why can't London do it with an old mall?

Attention The London Free Press: Bring back the editors

When it comes to writing about urban planning, there’s a lot of stuff Randy Richmond gets wrong. Richmond is clearly a good writer but he sorely needs a good editor.

Richmond gets more than names wrong in his story on urban transit.

For instance, Richmond quotes Yonak Freemark. The name is Yonah. Oops! A good editor checks things like the spelling of names.

And despite the column inches Richmond devotes to transportation analyst David Hartgen, the reporter fails to mention it is no surprise that Hartgen is critical of the Charlotte, N.C., LYNX system. A good editor would find a way to tell the reader that the analyst is not a supporter of expensive, expanding public transit in general.

Hartgen believes a community can build its way out of a transportation mess, a traffic congestion nightmare. How? By adding road capacity. For Hartgen, the car is the answer.

Popping the ideas of David Hartgen into a story without telling readers that Hartgen is not just a simple transit critic but he is a promoter of one particular transit approach is not telling the whole story. As I said at the beginning, The London Free Press needs to hire more editors. Good editors keep good writers good.

Some things last too long

"Valet" AutoStrop Safety Razor

One of my nephews, along with his wife and young daughter, stopped by for a visit recently. I'm posting this ad for the Valet AutoStrop safety razor for him. He'll be interested in this as he is very concerned with waste. I can understand his concern as I've been against waste all my life.

When I was in high school I used a Valet AutoStrop razor. I sharpened the blade on a strip of leather which had belonged to my dad. He had used it once to sharpen a straight razor; my mother used it to spank her son: me.

I still have the razor along with a box or two of blades. The blades are single sided with the name Valet completely punched out. The metal missing from the blade leaves letters which overlay raised bits of metal in the razor head itself. This interlocking system holds the blade firmly in place.

The company that made the Valet razor stopped producing the razors in the late '40s, I believe. But the blades were available in stores until the mid '60s. When I worked at a drugstore in the early '60s, I can recall selling the red packages of blades to diehard Valet AutoStrop users. They swore by these blades. Some claimed to get two months of shaves from one blade. It was important, though, to keep the blades sharp by correctly using the unique leather strop which by the '60s was no longer available. A box of five blades, which cost less than a dollar, would last the better part of a year, according to these users.

When Wilkinson-Sword came out with the stainless steel double-sided safety razor blade, the market for the Valet product began to dry up. The stainless steel blades seemed to last indefinitely compared to the common Gillette blue blades which were prone to rust between uses. Often, one got one shave, and one shave only, from these carbon steel blades. The rule for Gillette users was "If it's a new morning, it's a new blade."

Some men tried to prevent the rust by submerging used blue blades in a small glass filled with rubbing alcohol. It was a lot of trouble and there was the constant risk of the tumbler being knocked to the floor and broken. Squeezing more shaves out of Wilkinson blade was a little easier. Some users stropped the shiny blades by rubbing them back and forth on the inside of large glass.

The Wilkinson blades didn't last as long as the Valet blades but they gave a closer shave when new. Sales of the the old blades softened and the blades once famous for their longevity disappeared from stores.

But the longevity record does not go to the Valet blades with their AutoStrop technology. No, this award may go to the Personna 74 tungsten steel blade released in the early '70s. These blades lasted so long that there was no money to be made in making them. With a microscopic layer of titanium protecting the edge, Personna took the concept of reusable too far. The carbon steel blades simply lasted and lasted and lasted. The Personna 74 was removed from the market.

I understand that the razor industry is worth $30 billion worldwide. Whether it is an AutoStrop system or superior blade technology, lasting too long isn't the goal today of manufacturers: It's sales. The inventor of the Valet system would be appalled by today's disposable razors sold in huge packages containing a dozen or more big, plastic razors. What a waste!

Food for fun and entertainment

Thanks to a poor heart, a lot of travel is out of our reach. No insurance; No out-of-country travel allowed for me and my wife. It is just that simple.

One advantage to this is that one big retirement expense has dropped from our budget. We are flush with unspent cash that was once budgeted for travel: plane fares, hotel rooms, expensive restaurants. Well, restaurants are actually still in our budget. London, Ontario, has some nice places to drop a dime. We especially liked our recent visit to the Spring Restaurant in an old church on Springbank Drive.

Still, my heart doctors have me on a Mediterranean diet and a lot of restaurant meals do not answer my dietary needs. Dining at home is a fine alternative. It is fun. Challenging might be a better word when I am in the kitchen.

The other day I saw some dark green rice ramen in Winners. Ramen is that noodle stuff many of us ate when single and in a hurry. It came in a noodle-filled box with some flavorful powder. It was flavorful if you count lots of salt as flavor. Peel back the foil covering the bowl shaped container, pour in some boiling water and within minutes one had a meal. I haven't had ramen in years.

When I saw the dark green ramen, it brought back memories and thoughts of I-can-do-better. I bought the package. I boiled it and a little too long, I might add. Then set it aside.

I fried some chopped red and yellow sweet peppers in a little olive oil in a large wok. I added some green onions to the mix and when the onions started to show signs of cooking, I added some chopped broccoli, diced cashews to the mix and four ounces of chopped cooked chicken we had leftover from a previous meal. I had some Indian sauce in the fridge, so added that with a little finely chopped garlic. With all nicely mixed, I added the still warm ramen noodles.

The dinner was tasty and healthy. It had lots of vegetables and very little meat. I overcooked the noodles slightly but I'll know better next time. All in all, a very good dinner with interesting ingredients. It was fun to make and a pleasure to eat. It went very nicely with our the five ounces of red wine we have each evening at dinner.

And it was inexpensive. Our budget is still awash with cash.