I was doing well for a long time. IÂ was not feeling stir crazy, actually enjoying the pace of my days, like being on holiday and having the luxury of quiet afternoons to read, nap, write, or even make cookies. Then it all shattered. But first things first.
I made the vegan peanut butter chocolate chip cookies I learned to make at Cake or Death. I had enough for four nights of cookies. Each time I got a slightly different result. I think perhaps there was not enough flour or perhaps Krish mixed them too vigorously. But they were still delicious.
Vegan peanut butter chocolate chip cookies
There were the usual casual dinners. This was the fish finger tacos we eat quite often. Help yourself to all the toppings!
Fish finger tacos
And old favourites like matzo ball soup. So comforting.
Matzo ball soup – I love lots of carrots in it
I even had a go at chicken congee. It wasn’t too bad, considering I had the wrong rice and cooked it only ninety minutes. I’d like to try it again with short grain rice and cooking it for much longer.
Chicken congee with extra ginger and green onions
It was interesting to watch people responding to social distancing. I had a lot of fun looking out of the window to see the spaced-out queues outside the Little Local, and people ‘meeting’ at safe distances in the houses opposite.
So ‘everyone’ is in the same boat. It would be interesting to find out more about what people are doing differently than I am and learn from it. I’ve read some great Tweets, Instagram posts, articles, stories, and blogs but I’d like to look behind the public face and see the private realities.
I’m apparently ‘vulnerable’ due to age so I have stayed indoors since the afternoon of March 15th.
But my day is getting up, taking the pills that stop my stomach from quaking, standard two cups of tea and the usual breakfast, do some online work or don’t, exercise my knees, a short meditation, one or two hours of cleaning or tidying, prepare a simple meal, watch some TV or streaming, email or chat with friends near and far.
On my list – not yet written on the board propped by the lamp – brush up my French, improve my Italian, start a new doll that symbolises my dreams, attack my worrying backpile of taxes, clear out my clothing drawers, actually read the books I haven’t opened enough, start collecting important things so people (and I) can more easily find them – let me get back to you when I wrap my brain around getting that board written on. This seems a pathetic list, looking at it now. Where’s my great novel? Where’s the bodybuilding, the study of something amazing, the saving of humanity from my upstairs flat? Sigh.
Tell me the ideas will come.
But truth number one – I actually have enough to do. See above.
Truth number two –Â I don’t care all that much about my hair. I am a curly girl. My hair and how it curls (or doesn’t) consumes a lot of my time. Well, maybe not that much, but more than it does yours…I think. Sitting here, though, in my living room, not even on camera for any reason, I’m paying it no mind. It’s pinned up on my head out of my way, ignored, not for anyone’s eyes. And who cares what I wear? Not me…yet. There are more important things to do with my time.
Once a day for 15-20 minutes I sit outside getting some ‘fresh’ air. Note my coordinated outfit.
We decided to go to Hackney Wick to see how things were progressing there. Hackney Wick is an artist’s community, with an overground station, near the Olympic Park at Stratford. It’s always been a mass of old buildings, factories, industrial parks, and warehouses and over time the artists and visitors have littered every wall, every door with art.
At one time, the art was glorious. Those days seem to be gone. A new entrance to the overground station has changed the orientation of the area and it confuses me. In the process of the change – where homes and factories have been torn down, the art has been sacrificed. As well, the old station entrance, which was always a bit of a dump, hasn’t been torn down yet. The day we arrived, we saw that several of the new buildings had been completed, the fancy office buildings, the luxury flats with names that were supposed to recall the area’s heritage – The Bagel Factory, Stonemasons Yard, Ceramic Works – they’re highly priced in this obviously deprived area. I wondered how many would just be owned rather than lived in. It made me that familiar mixture of curious, excited and sad to think about it and we cut our walk short since Krish was now motivated by the nearby Well Street Fish and Chips.
A rather ghostly and scribble-littered Hackney Wick – The new, the old, and the very quietA car crash in Hackney Wick near the estate. I didn’t photograph the onlookers. Notice more construction
A visit to the little Tesco and another to Lidl, then on to Vietnamese Supermarket.
We’d passed Lennox House on Cresset Road, approaching Well Street. The architectural notes read ‘These flats were built in 1936-7 to the designs of J E M MacGregor for Bethnal Green and East London Housing Association. There are 35 flats. The three bedroom flats were on the first floor, one bedroom flats on the top floor and two bedroom flats on the other levels. The original idea was that the central portion of the building beneath the stepped flats should be used as a covered market. The income from this would be used to subsidise the rents of the flats above. However, during the building period, land in the area was designated for residential use only. The Housing Association was also committed to providing a garden for each flat (apart from those on the ground floor).’ We noticed local brewery barrels on the main floor – did they brew in here, or just store the barrels? I think just store.
Lennox House, by Well Street, is a fantastic buildingThese balconies seem well-suited to creating the towering gardens we saw in Turin and MilanThe original plaqueBarrels from the 40ft brewery- a Dalston success storyAt the bottom of Cresset Road, Well Street is under construction – how long till this gentrifies completely?
And then, on the bus home, I discovered I didn’t have my bus pass. I looked through my entire bag and checked all my pockets. It was gone. The pass office told me that it would cost £12 to replace it but that my renewal was due to be sent out. I decided to wait and pay full price until it arrived.
I was going alone to see A Passage to India at the Tower Theatre that night so I left early and visited Lidl and the Vietnamese supermarket first – no pass had been found. I phoned the Tesco and the fish and chip shop – no pass. I was scuttled.
The play was very good. I’d seen the Masterpiece Theatre series years ago. My memory of it was nothing like the play I saw. I enjoyed the fact actual Indian actors were playing those roles. I felt that British imperialism was probably fairly represented too. The xenophobia, the bigotry, the superior attitude, the refusal to accept something different by considering it unclean, barbaric. un-Christian so heathen…and the fear. Each side underestimated the other really. And at the end the anger was real.
I shouldn’t find it so hard to write about Toronto. I know it very well, even as it changes. Perhaps it’s the familiarity that stops me in my tracks.
But what is different…in Toronto?
So I’ve been lazy about blogging and perhaps the plan needs to be to see things differently. There’s always something new and interesting everywhere…if you look for it. I’ll do some catch ups with photos for a while until I get into the groove. There’s likely more to say than I imagine.
It’s a different look around here. The streets have smaller trees but during May, after a hard winter, the rain comes and the sun shines, and things get very lush and fairly wild. This to me is what Toronto in May is. I’m not sure how different this is from anywhere else but it’s certainly not Hackney.
The architecture in Little Italy and Little Portugal is…well…quaint! It veers between hideous, garish, practical, and pretty. I remarked it’s like a mini Garden District at times….all the verandahs and gingerbreading…the mix of styles could be disconcerting but it flies in the face of a city I’ve often called too homogeneous. What’s remarkable is how very close to the centre these streets are. Less than a couple of kilometres.
For me, nothing beats London for street art. Toronto likes a lot of script type art (Wikipedia reminds me that the writing style is the true graffiti and everything else is street art) but there are some gems if you keep looking.
There’s a huge foodie scene in Toronto but you have to know where to go. For me, it’s always the simple, hidden gems that I’ll come back for.
Very many years ago I got a temp job on Spadina Avenue at a tailoring factory. At lunch time, everyone stopped work and ate lunch on the factory floor. Someone gave me a taste of their sandwich (bun) one day, when I asked what they were eating. It was amazing. I thought about it for years but could never remember what it was or where to get it.
Then by accident, when my sister was living in Little Italy years later, she took me for a sandwich. And it was the same one! What was it? A ‘hot veal sandwich’ from San Francesco Foods, a tiny Italian grocery store that made sandwiches in the back room for the locals. A pounded veal cutlet is fried, dipped into tomato sauce with added peppers (as hot as you choose) and piled onto a Kaiser bun. And you have a Toronto institution. (You can also choose the eggplant, chicken, meatball, steak, or vegetarian options. For me, it’s always veal.
We once asked an Italian, my friend Esmeralda’s then boyfriend, if he’d ever heard of such a thing. He was horrified – that’s not Italian! No!  But In Toronto, that is Italian.
San Francescio has become a slicker chain and I don’t like their sandwich any more. So this time Krish and I went to nearby California Sandwiches and shared their monstrous sandwich between us. It’s always with a Brio, which is the Toronto version of Chinotto – slightly less bitter, more sweet, but perfect with a spicy meat sandwich.
Little Italy has that distinctive Canadian-Italian touch, with its own community. It even has its own radio station, which has its own enormous annual picnic. Johnny Lombardi was a pioneer of multicultural broadcasting in Canada and his shadow looms over everything. And it’s a great place for a time warp. Maybe more about that later.
Statue of Johnny Lombardi, pretty much the King of Little Italy, for so many years (Amusing touch from Krish in his hand)Time warp in Little Italy
Toronto now has a Toronto sign. Try getting anywhere close to it with all the tourists and photographers, though. It’s in front of New Toronto City Hall (the old one is beside it, across the road);.The new City Hall was built in 1965 and is iconic for the city – also appearing twice in the Star Trek franchise so you may recognise it.
Nathan Phillips Square (City Hall) and the new Toronto sign
And about the cannabis culture. Now it’s legal, it’s lost its grass (haha) roots. So shiny. I can smell it everywhere. No one mentions it, no one thinks about it. And no one looks intoxicated.
Toronto is becoming denser and more populated, thanks to the mega new development everywhere. New condos are squeezed between older condos. I have no idea how this compares to London but it feels worse. The skyline is disappearing, parking lots are gone, small buildings are being razed and replaced by two, three, four towers.
Toronto The Good may be good (polite, measured, modest, orderly) but, despite its much quieter pride of place in the world, it’s trying to catch up in other ways than the condo culture and growing population reflects. It’s quietly proud. People like Drake have helped that.
Also helping is sports. This year the NBA team (Canada’s only basketball team) The Raptors have reached the finals and have won their first game. The city, as always, has come alive.
Canadian pride in a muralCanadian (Toronto) pride – reflecting the Raptors win
I’ve been much more conscious of Canadian pride and Toronto community spirit on this visit. People hang together, not standing apart. Perhaps this was always there but right now I do feel it.
I make no secret of the fact that Toronto disappoints me in many food (when it comes to shopping) arenas. There are lots of reasons for this, and the price point is probably the least of these….maybe. But we can talk about prices – sure we can! They’ve skyrocketed.
I do expect, after being away for a while, to find prices higher. However, this time the trajectory has alarmed me. I’d say that most things are about 50% higher than I found them in 2016. So the pork tenderloin i bought for $3.75 in Chinatown this week cost me about $2.25 when last I was here. Of course, this price is pretty fantastic, no doubt of that. However, to find lettuces at $2.99, cauliflower at $6.99, asparagus at $4, bread at $4-5, chips at $4 a pack – these things do alarm me.
However, I do have to eat so here’s a bit of a pictorial essay of my shopping experiences so far. There’s enough time to document more!
These shops at the North West corner of Spadina and Dundas are slated to go. No idea how long they have sat there but it looks really scruffy and neglected so far. New condos on their way?Abnormally quiet day outside the supermarket in Chinatown. Rain keeps the crowds away and there’s been a lot of it.Inside the Chinatown supermarket. I got a pork loin, some hot sauce, and some frozen shrimp and pork dumplings for dim sum. Oh, and these tomatoes (next photo)I don’t like buying the much-picked-over things in Chinatown but there were freshly placed, reasonably priced, and actually looked good. Tasted OK too!
I’m not fond of the readymade food in Toronto on the whole but there are certain things I can’t get elsewhere or they are ethnic foods that Toronto somehow does so very well.
I’ve missed this sort of readymade food – a variety of Portuguese snacks in Little Portugal – takes me back to Lisbon
