Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Anopheles Mosquito, Stagnant Pond

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Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: And the Heads of a Whole Bunch of People

In the latest episode of our ENnie-winning podcast, Ken and I talk gaming homework, Bram Stoker, recommendations and Marie Antoinette.

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Someone Will Break Out Into Recipes

In the latest episode of our ENnie-winning podcast, Ken and I talk official vs. popular religion, Dracula Dossier, food writing, and Margaret Murray.

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Live from Gen Con 2014

In this week's very special episode, Ken and I talk live from Gen Con!

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Stabby Detective Stories

In the latest episode of our ENnie-winning podcast, Ken and I talk Gen Con, Gen Con, and more Gen Con.

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: It's Like Football Camp

In the latest episode of our ENnie-nominated podcast, Ken and I talk memory hunter scenarios, recommendations, post-rehab Rob Ford and saving the bodhi tree.

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Those Punk Magicians Killed My Elephant

In the latest episode of our top-hatted podcast, Ken and I talk voice work, mob magicians, prehistoric drinking and Franz Anton Mesmer.

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: The Marshy Aunt

In the latest episode of our exquisitely marinated podcast, Ken and I talk backstories, August Derleth, chef cheats and the roots of Nazi Occultism.

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Driving Bananas Around

In the latest episode of our delicious podcast, Ken and I talk RPG illustration, packaged foods, playtesting and the Trail of Tears.

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Possibly an Anagnorisis

In the latest episode of our 100% pure podcast, Ken and I talk Dundracon, smuggled horsemeat, structure, and the last days of Fields.

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: That Time We Burned Down the White House

In the latest installment of our eponymous podcast, Ken and I talk food, imagined worlds, Kenneth Grant, and the War of 1812.

Consider That Stolen, Music Fan

As one would hope and expect at an establishment where all the sandwiches are named after Wilco songs, the chat between counter guys and customers at Sky Blue Sky usually revolves around music.

(Come to think of it, they may actually pay the guys who hang around passing the word on cool new bands. Like the performers who wander amusement parks dressed as cartoon animals.)

The other day, as I was waiting for my Kingpin, I overheard the following revelatory exchange.

Counter guy: You’ve never heard of Jack White?

Music fan: (shaking his head, but smiling) Nah, that’s not my real flavor.

“That’s not my real flavor.” It’s what you say when you want to indicate your lack affinity for something without dissing it. A friendly acknowledgment of taste’s essential subjectivity.

The complicated die mechanic in that story game? Not my real flavor.

I tried to watch that adaptation of the classic ghost story last night, but it was not my real flavor.

It carries the same meaning as “not my cup of tea” but without the aging pedigree, and the unspoken connotation of withheld condemnation.

Now, that saying, music fan, that is my real flavor. Thank you. And consider it stolen.

Tragedy of the Meaty Commons

A Chicxulub-intensity extinction event is headed for my dinner table, and it lands on April 7. European Quality Meats, the butcher shop I’ve been frequenting for the last fifteen years, is slated to close, a casualty of gentrification. Established half a century ago, it’s a fixture of a key Toronto location, Kensington Market. This matrix of independent shops shows the marks of successive waves of immigration. For a hundred years it’s been the place freshly arrived communities gravitate towards, leaving stores and restaurants behind even when they become prosperous and move elsewhere. From Jewish to Portuguese, from Caribbean to Tibetan, its businesses are the Toronto I love in microcosm. Kensington likewise mirrors the history of alternative culture in the city, from the used clothing shops of the 80s to the artisanal coffee and charcuterie joints of the present moment.

With one or two exceptions, chain stores have failed to gain a foothold here. Despite the odds, Kensington remains a vibrant oasis of local culture. Two things about oases: they’re delicate, and people fight over them. Conflicts bubble between residents and park squatters, between proponents and opponents of car-free summer festivals.

Were I cruelly tricked into telling an evil mastermind how to wreck the market, European Quality Meats is exactly the jenga tile I’d tell him to knock out. The nabe is served by a few other meat purveyors, from the cutting edge to the poky and old-school, but none can handle EQM’s volume, or deliver its balance of value and, well, quality. What happens to Kensington’s shops of other categories, like produce, seafood, cheese, bulk food, and manifold national specialties, if you can’t really buy everyday meat there anymore?

It’s hard to begrudge any owner of a longtime family business for cashing out, selling the property, and pocketing $1.8 million—even when they aren't septuagenarian Holocaust survivors like European Meats founder Morris Leider. A business isn’t a heritage site, no matter how much it may anchor the neighborhood around it.

That building is worth nearly two mil because it’s in Kensington. And Kensington is Kensington because of its key commercial institutions, European Quality Meats foremost among them. You couldn’t ask for a more frustrating example of gentrification’s core irony.

[Classic Post] Christmas Pudding

As a backstop against information catastrophe, I assign to Internet posterity the ineffable taste of the season.

Grandma Hannaford’s Christmas Pudding
1/2 cup shortening
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup flour
3 eggs
1 cup soda cracker crumbs
1 tsp salt (scant)
1/2 tsp soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp allspice
1/2 cup Welch’s grape juice
1/8 cup brandy (plus plenty to soak fruit in)
1 1/2 cup raisins
3/4 cup currants
3/4 cup dates, cut up
1 cup glacee cherries
1/8 cup mixed peel
1 package slivered almonds
10 oz. can crushed pineapple

The night before, soak raisins, currants, dates and cherries in brandy.

Cream shortening, brown and white sugar.

Beat in eggs.

Mix dry ingredients: flour, cracker crumbs, salt, soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice.

Add dry ingredients to wet.

Mix in brandy and grape juice, then soaked fruit and almonds.

Spoon mixture into greased cans, leaving a couple of inches for expansion. Place cans on racks in a pan of water. Cans should not be immersed. (As with so much else in this extremely forgiving recipe, the size of the can doesn’t hugely matter; I tend to use 19 ouncers.)

Cook at 300F for 1 hour, then 275F for 2 hours. Replenish water as needed.

White Sauce For Pudding
1/2 cup white sugar
1 generous tbsp flour
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
2 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp vanilla

Beat egg white to stiff peak.

Thoroughly mix sugar and flour in heavy saucepan. Stir in milk and egg yolk. Add butter. Bring to a boil on medium heat, stirring constantly to prevent scorching. Boil for 2 minutes. Remove from heat. Add vanilla. Fold mixture into beaten egg white.

Can be served hot or cold. However, the former choice is, in the opinion of the transcriber, utter blasphemy.

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There is also a hot caramel sauce. In the words of my mother, “That’s just brown sugar melted in water, isn’t it?” Unless I'm completely mistaken, there's now no one left in the family who prefers the hot sauce on the pudding, though my dad always has it on its own.