works of wanderlust

Category: cast iron guy

  • Holy Molar!

    I didn’t get much chance to focus on writing anything better than a short personal update for today.

    Anyone who has been reading my posts regularly might know that blogging, cooking, and enjoying the outdoors is a stress-relief valve for me…. though apparently not enough of one.

    According to my dentist I’ve been grinding my teeth.

    “Are you stressed about anything?” she asked.

    Hmm. Let me think… while I adjust this facemask and re-sanitize my hands for the sixth time today nearly a full year into a global pandemic.

    It wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but all that stress grinding meant that I cracked a filling and needed two hours of emergency dental work yesterday morning after an ivory chunk clinked into the sink basin Sunday evening.

    I slept a lot yesterday and went to bed early. My face hurts. My newly capped tooth and my morning coffee did not get along at all. Zing!

    I think a nature walk is in order.

  • What counts as a “visit” when traveling?

    I have a rule about traveling.

    Specifically, I have a rule about how I talk about traveling.

    When someone asks have you ever visited a place then my response is often… well… technically, that depends… sorta… kinda… here let me explain…

    A night shot of a European hotel.

    So, here. Let me explain.

    I’ve been poking through a lot of travel blogs lately. Thanks to the Twitter algorithm and the types of things I post I get recommended so many accounts that are hashtag-travel, and (I assume) vice versa, because that’s a good fraction of the folks who follow me first. Those blogs tend to fall into two categories:

    a) bloggers for money, who are (or who are trying to be) social media influencers, posting lots of gorgeous photos and extensive articles on very specific vacations, and

    b) bloggers for passion, who are (often) folks or couples in their 20s living their best life and writing about it while having this goal of “visiting 10 new countries every year” or “visiting 100 countries before I turn 30!”

    This second group tends to make me think about my own definition of what constitutes a visit.

    To clarify, an example: about five years ago the family and I spent 10 days travelling through Iceland, stopping at numerous small towns and moving on the next morning, eating, drinking, spending, taking lots of photos. Two years ago we had a layover at the airport in Iceland, ate some breakfast at the restaurant there, bought some snacks, and left a few hours later. In my mind, we’ve only visited Iceland once. I don’t count an airport layover as a visit.

    Another example: In 2006 or so we did a bus tour of Eastern Europe, one of those Contiki party trips where they shuttle you from city to city, hotel to hotel, bar to bar, and you take lots of pictures, drink yourself silly, and remember the blur twenty years later. Between a hotel in Budapest and a hotel in Krakow, the bus stopped for lunch in a small city in Slovakia. Can I tell people I’ve visited Slovakia? I had a delicious pizza lunch in an old town patio that I still don’t know how we successfully ordered from the waitress who spoke almost no English, but I honestly don’t claim that I’ve “visited” Slovakia. I don’t tend to count it on my list of visited countries.

    So this brings me back to my rule about how I talk about traveling.

    What counts as a visit for me?

    Personally, it’s a basic rule: an overnight, a meal, and time on feet in the street.

    If I count a place visited it means I’ve slept there, eaten, and wandered about. None of this “I drove through and stopped for coffee” or “I had a layover at the airport there once” stuff.

    What do you count as a visit?

  • Why do I need to put so much work into my cast iron?

    Can’t I just beat it up and use it how I feel like?

    I was reading a r/castiron post over on Reddit recently and someone asked this simple question. It was along the lines of why y’all putting in so much work to your frying pans? I don’t and it still mostly works. Who cares!

    I have so many questions myself.

    First and foremost, whose wasting the most time? Someone looking after their possessions to get the most from them, or someone reading a forum about something they obviously don’t care about?

    I didn’t reply.

    Instead, I made a note to myself to add this terrific question and answer to my website because it’s a complex question with a simple answer.

    Do you need to put in a lot of work to your cast iron pans?

    No, of course not.

    Just like you don’t need to change the oil in your car. It just helps your engine run better and longer.

    You don’t need to clean your bathroom, but people might avoid your house if you stop.

    And bathing and brushing your teeth is completely optional, but when you start to smell, get sick and lose your teeth it’s your own fault.

    So, no, you don’t need to put in any work to your cast iron cookware. But if you do it helps it cook better, last longer, and make delicious, healthy food for you and your friends for a long, long time.

  • #RunClub : New Season, New Plans

    Sunday Runday, and for my #RunClub approaching spring is usually a time of ramping up our training, distances, and intensities for all those summer races.

    By mid-March of 2020 we were swimming in a kind of moving goalpost of uncertainty. Races were being cancelled without much warning. There was always a sense of… well, we’ll see how things look in a month or so.

    As mid-March of 2021 approaches, nearly a year into the local reaction to the global pandemic, our uncertainty is a lingering aftershock of the past twelve months… mixed with hopeful optimism… sprinkled with a dash of we’re all kinda used to this now, right?

    Last summer our “coffee club with a running problem” moved our weekly meetings to the parking lot of the recreation center (closed to general access) where we had been meeting to run for nearly a decade.

    A club that was usually twenty to thirty members strong, accustomed to weekly Sunday morning takeovers of the local café, found itself instead quietly gathering in lawn chairs over asphalt drinking take-out coffees near the bumpers of our vehicles while we observed social distancing rules.

    Then winter hit.

    ….and the deep, dark, cold lockdown happened.

    Me out there running solo was a thing for at least three months. Coffees were virtual, hugging a mug at home and staring into the familiar glow of my iPad for a visit via screen. It’s only been in the last couple weeks that the weather has cracked through the zero degree barrier and made resuming the coffee club meetings in the local parking lot a real possibility.

    Which is the noteworthy thing about today, I guess.

    This Sunday last year was normal: races being planned, training being sorted, coffees being shared in close company.

    Next Sunday last year was when all that normal-ness shattered.

    We sat in our lawn chairs in the parking lot this morning after a ten klick run, wrapped in blankets and huddled in hoodies, sipping take-out coffees. It felt normal… which is the strangest part, because it still is so not normal.

    A new season of not normal.

    And I don’t know how to plan for that.

  • Suburban Fire Craft (Part One)

    I have been making big plans for how I’m going to spend another summer of limited travel and quasi-lockdown in my little suburban backyard.

    See, for at least five years we’ve had a small fire bowl set up in our yard. It has served the purpose of gathering friends and family around some burning logs, roasting some marshmallows on warm summer evenings, and sipping cold beers under the autumn twinkle of a clear night and the glow of a warm backyard fire.

    We even kindled it up this last New Years Eve, sipped hot chocolate in the winter chill and ceremonially burned our 2020 calendar. Good riddance!

    But after five years, and yet another long cold winter in the harsh Canadian elements, our trusty portable firepit is probably due for a replacement.

    I’m looking at this an an opportunity rather than a loss.

    The current bowl is simple and meant to be nothing more than a safe way to have a small fire. We’ve cooked hot dogs or made s’mores with it, but anything more substantial would be pushing it’s functional limits. It’s just not meant to cook over, for example.

    As a kind of “Saturday Projects” series, and as summer approaches, I’ve got a few big ideas about how I’m going to bring some of my wilderness adventure to my suburban backyard. First on the to-do list is a series I’m calling “suburban firecraft” where I’ll be upgrading my fire bowl situation with a new set-up that will allow us to build safe, useful, and (of course) legal bylaw-compliant fires right out our back door.

    I’ll be figuring out a way to not only cook marshmallows, but make use of some of our cast iron to cook campfire meals and test out some recipes before we take them out to the wilderness.

    How would you build a backyard fire pit: a portable fire bowl that can be moved and stored or a permanent fire pit?

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