Squash and Swirl

Pumpkin Bread with Toasted Walnut Cinnamon Swirl Like little woodland creatures preparing for winter, now is the time to gather your nuts. And like a human about to hibernate, bake a warm toasty pumpkin bread.   By Louise Crosby You don’t need me to tell you that squash is a superfood, packed with carotenoids, particularly beta carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A. And you already know that squash is high in fibre, potassium, vitamin C and magnesium, that it is important for good vision, bone growth and healthy reproduction, and that it helps maintain healthy blood pressure, lowers cancer risk, and boosts immune function. Bottom line, you’ll agree: we should all be eating more of it. So, in addition to turning squash into soups, adding it to stews and risottos, stuffing it into pasta, and just plain roasting it, squash can be a key ingredient in baked goods, such as this Pumpkin Bread with Toasted Walnut Cinnamon Swirl, tweaked ever so slightly from At ...

Dog by Dog points a paw at AKC

New doc exposes dogs as cash crop The American Kennel Club, big agri-business and -- surprise! -- the Amish emerge as chief enemies of the humble and lovable canine in a new documentary aimed at changing how the consumer purchases a pet.   By Katherine Monk VANCOUVER – It’s enough to make you burn your VHS tape of Witness and boycott the Westminster Dog show, because according to a new documentary film, the Amish of Pennsylvania and the American Kennel Club resist efforts to curb puppy mills. “It’s about money. Dogs are a cash crop” says Christopher Grimes, the director behind Dog by Dog, a feature documentary airing on PBS later this year. “Papering dogs is a big part of the American Kennel Club’s budget… and for the Amish, they will do what is most profitable, and right now, they can get $3000 for one puppy. They have no other commodity that they are raising that can command the same price.” On the surface, there’s nothing inherently ...

You can vote on climate films

Young filmmakers from around the world enter festival of short movies about the environment shot on mobile devices By Jay Stone There’s a film from France in which a man in horror mask chops down a tree — but it’s really a young girl. There’s an Indian movie that illustrates the coming crisis by showing the hands of a person paying more and more money for smaller and smaller bottles of water, until, a few decades from now, there’s none left. There’s a British film about a man who becomes so irritated by the “mad prophet” of climate change that he kills him, only to discover that he has in fact killed the very air he breathes. They’re all part of the Mobile Film Festival, a competition that challenged young filmmakers from around the world to make one-minute movies about climate change on their mobile devices. The organizers received 765 movies from 70 countries, and winnowed them down to 75 finalists. It’s an official event of COP21, the Paris conference ...

Mob Rule: Part 21

A Special Appearance Just when he's trying to be icy, Jack returns to the Compound to find Ethel, Bobby and a familiar face that's making him flush with warm feelings By John Armstrong It was near dark when I pulled into the big circular drive in Hyannis and the outside lights were already on, flying bugs and spring moths clustered around them, elbowing each other out of the way in their rush to be burned alive. I put the Buick back in the garage and hung the keys up. There were voices from the back patio and I walked back to say hello. Vanessa was sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs with a tall glass in her hand, talking to Ethel in the chair beside her. Then she looked up and saw me. She ran to me and I just stood there, dumb. Over her shoulder I saw Bobby laughing. “Close your mouth – you’ll swallow a fly.” I realized my mouth really was open. I’d been about to say something but nothing came out. I still couldn’t come up with anything better than, ...

Lest We Forget

First-hand history lessons Every Remembrance Day, reporters are asked to speak with those who witnessed history from the trenches, today, Rod Mickleburgh looks back at his personal archive and the stories that still haunt his Boomer-peacenik psyche By Rod Mickleburgh There’s nothing quite like the experience of talking to a veteran. They have so much to tell us of a time we peacenik baby-boomers simply can’t comprehend. Death and carnage and mayhem all around them, seeing buddies blown up or shot before their eyes, killing enemy soldiers themselves, and yet they carry on with the fight. Not quite the ordeal of finding a downtown parking spot. Over the years, I’ve interviewed veterans from the Boer War (no, I wasn’t there…), World War One (the worst of all wars), and the Second World War against fascism. Never have I failed to come away in awe at their courage in signing up, the hell they experienced, and their vivid recollections of a distant past. My own ...

The Sick Days: Part 15

Heart burn Contemplating the 'therapeutic value of style' while struggling with serious illness By Shelley Page While dying of prostate cancer, New York Times book critic Anatole Broyard wrote about “the therapeutic value of style.” In Intoxicated By My Illness, he observed: “It seems to me that every seriously ill person needs to develop a style for his illness. I think that only by insisting on your style can you keep from falling out of love with yourself as the illness attempts to diminish or disfigure you.” I’ve long envied literary men who write boldly about their various afflictions, fatal and otherwise, knowing that their ability to do their job is never in doubt and they relish the protection that their reputations afford them. This is not the case for shift workers, dishwashers, desk jockeys that fill boxes with numbers for a modest salary, or almost anyone else. And not for girl reporters trying to figure out how to work sick. I am currently ...
2.5Score

Movie review: The 33 trapped in a cave-in

The story of the 2010 Chilean mine disaster is told with many familiar beats and with an international cast that doesn't always fit together

Trainwreck lacks emotional carnage

Home Entertainment: November 10 Amy Schumer's blockbuster rom-com doesn't reinvent the comedy wheel but it does apply some rubber, while Ben Kingsley walks a mile in Ryan Reynolds body in Tarsem Singh's so so Self/Less   By Katherine Monk   Trainwreck 3/5 Starring: Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, Brie Larson, Colin Quinn, Vanessa Bayer Directed by: Judd Apatow Is it an Amy Schumer movie directed by Judd Apatow, or a Judd Apatow movie that stars Amy Schumer? It’s hard to tell, because Trainwreck is sexual, psychologically insightful, funny and, in the end, earnest with a very human message about being real, and putting love first. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Nice. But I was expecting something a little less conventional from Schumer, the woman who’s been able to “transform comedy” – apparently overnight – by referring to her genitals as often as men. But is that truly transforming comedy, or a case of pushing the boundaries of conformity far enough to include ...

Mob Rule: Part 20

What makes a Kennedy Revisiting the landscapes of his boyhood back in Boston, Jack wades through a flood of memories that take us back to the beginning By John Armstrong After our swim I was at a loss for what to do with myself. Bobby was organizing the kids for a touch football game on the front lawn but I’d already had enough exercise for one day. More evidence that I’m not a true Kennedy, I suppose. The genuine article can spend all day waterskiing, riding horses and playing tennis and then climb a mountain just for the hell of it after dinner. I can think of much better ways to get tired and in most cases I prefer to conserve my strength in case I might need it for something important. (I did play hockey and lacrosse at college, because there was no way to get out if it, and both those sports are really just street fights with complicated rules. The brothers thought it developed character. I thought it created practice cases for the interns at the medical college. ...

Viggo meets psycho villain?

Welcome to my lair... This guy from the new Chevrolet commercials — the one who likes to play funny little tricks like pretending to put your phone in a wood chipper, and stopping the elevator, and forcing kids to watch someone else play a videogame: He’s creepy. And not just because he’s looking at every one of those “real people not actors” like they’re a guinea pig in his latest subterranean torture experiment, but because he's a weird pastiche of traits selected at some over-caffeinated marketing meeting where at least one person present had a beard. He’s got the hipster beard that gives him a Viggo Mortensen meets bartender cool, the ironed retro Western shirt (also hipster) and the deadpan self-righteousness of Denis Leary. And what's with the clipboard prop? That's for doctors. You can see why they wanted to get away from the clean-shaven white guy in a suit to reach the target market, but this Frankenstumper gives us the willies — and every time that giant ...