The perfect potato ode to Thanksgiving

Yukon Gold and Sweet Potatoes Anna The fancy potato cake first made famous by Julia Child is a tasty alternative to the standard holiday mash slathered in gravy By Louise Crosby Thanksgiving in my extended family has become a huge affair. That’s because we now number 25 people, plus any others who happen to be in the picture. The brave household that offers to host must find enough tables, dishes and cutlery to seat everyone, and usually cooks the main event, in this case a turkey. The rest of us bring appetizers, mashed potatoes and other vegetables, and a few desserts, typically involving pumpkin or apples. Pot luck, it’s the only way to go with a crowd like this. Notice I said mashed potatoes. Feeling like a change, I offered to make Duchess potatoes this year. Admittedly, these are labour intensive. You start with mashed potatoes but then add egg yolks, cream and butter. This mixture is spooned into a pastry bag fitted with a star tip and piped into swirly mounds, ...

Mob Rule: Part 8

Dinner at Number 4 Patchin Place Voltaire said ‘the finest system would be democracy with the occasional assassination,’ and New York's established mob families couldn't agree more By John Armstrong Don’t ever get Joe started on his apartment, if you can still call it that. Every time he buys a few more paintings or sculptures he ends up buying the next unit over and knocking out a few non-essential walls. It’s more art gallery and warehouse now than it is living space. It’s beautiful though, don’t get me wrong; just that I wouldn’t want to dust it. Number 4 Patchin Place is in a gated cul de sac in the Village just off West 10th between Sixth and Greenwich, 10 or so three-story row houses in red brick and black wrought iron in close proximity to the coffee bars and galleries of the bohemian district. That would have been enough for Joey to buy it but it’s who lived there before him that sunk the hook. The poet e.e. cummings lived at No. 5, long ...

Mob Rule: Part 7 – continued

We met the Goombah The date with the lovely Vanessa continues, but after surveying a history of violence, she asks her suitor some tough questions By John Armstrong I’ll leave out the details of our trip to the Museum of American History. Everyone’s seen the wing devoted to the Big Takeover a thousand times anyway, either in person or onscreen. That said, I still get choked up when I stand before the towering statues of the Great Outlaws – Dillinger gleefully burning the mortgage records after emptying a bank vault, or Pretty Boy Floyd delivering Christmas dinner to a starving family on welfare - and then the massive 20-foot painting that summarizes the Second Revolution, starting with the Bank Crash and Depression and then the breadlines, the Hooverville riots, and the government troops firing into hungry, unemployed, desperate crowds. I’m always drawn to one section that shows union busters clubbing men and women on a picket line while fat, cigar-smoking politicians ...
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Movie review: Hyena Road lacks destination

Paul Gross's war movie attempts to tell the story of Canada's involvement in Afghanistan with a shotgun not a sniper's rifle

Review: Peaches pushes the body politic

The performance artist, composer and electronic musician hit the stage accompanied by dancing labia then took a walk over the crowd encased in a gigantic condom By Katherine Monk October 6, 2015, VANCOUVER, BC -- Katy Perry has dancing sharks. Peaches has dancing labia. There’s a good argument to be made for the merits of each mascot sidekick – an uncoordinated shark made Perry’s Super Bowl performance a viral sensation, and Peaches plushy vulvas have brought the Toronto-raised, Berlin-based performance artist international acclaim as a gender activist with a sense of humor. But even without the shock value of gigantic stuffed genitalia prancing around the stage, there’s a clear difference in showmanship and intent that makes a Peaches show more than a night of entertainment. The woman born Merrill Beth Nisker is able to straddle disparate worlds through her weird mise-en-scene that uses the tricks of arena rock theatrics while mocking their phallocentric ...

The Sick Days Part 5

Prednisone 101: What the doctors didn't tell me 15 prednisone-fuelled moments from journalism school By Shelley Page 1. I’d only been back in Ottawa a few days and my face was like a pregnant woman’s belly. People couldn’t keep their hands away. Walking with a purposeful bounce across the Bank Street bridge, I waved at an approaching  classmate. She looked at me oddly and didn’t wave back. By the time we were face-to-face, she leaned in, squinted, and then gently poked my face with her finger. “Shelley? What’s the matter with your face?” she squealed. “Are you sick? Did you have your wisdom teeth out?” I imagined my neo-cherubic cheeks popping, squirting prednisone juice all over her. Others simply didn’t recognize me. While sitting in a campus pub, I noticed my former roommate Jen waiting tables. I prepared to launch into my brief explanation that I was on a medication called prednisone and it caused Fat Face. But she served me hot chocolate and ...

Mob Rule: Part 7

Meet the Goombah Looking to impress his new lady friend, Jack takes her on a ride in his boss's deep purple Packard before giving her a tour of the family business, where the faces of dead dons hang on the wall and a counting room the size of a school gym sloshes over with cash     By John Armstrong I stood outside on the sidewalk smoking and double and triple-checking my reflection in the doors, compulsively smoothing the brim of my hat and adjusting the knot of my tie like a teenager. I was considering a quick polish of my spats on the back of my trousers when I heard the horn. Horns, I should say. Somehow Frank had gotten instructions out for them to use his pride and joy to taxi Vanessa, his 1933 Packard Touring Sedan, a great 12-cylinder beast of a thing whose massive chrome prow makes it look more like an ocean liner than an automobile, as if one had sailed up to the docks and then just said, “the hell with it, what did you say the address was?” ...

Plum delicious!

Unpretentious, homey, rustic, yummy... Upside-Down Polenta Plum Cake is a concoction without affectation but plenty of taste thanks to caramelized fruit and just enough crunch from cornmeal to complete the caky texture By Louise Crosby Let me say right off the bat that I’m not that fond of fancy cakes layered with fillings and covered in sweet icing. Nor am I mad passionate crazy about chocolate, in a cake or otherwise. I prefer plain, simple buttery cakes fragrant with vanilla or citrus or spice, possibly containing poppy seeds, nuts or fruit, possibly with a nice caramel glaze. Unpretentious, homey, rustic, delicious. This Upside-Down Polenta Plum Cake, from Melissa Clark’s Cook This Now, is one such cake. A batter with a touch of crunchy corn meal is spooned over a syrupy plum compote, then baked to saturate the two layers together into a kind of pudding cake deliciousness. Once out of the oven and cooled slightly, it is flipped over onto a plate, a thick jammy layer ...

Ex-Press Exclusive Video – Grey Whale in English Bay, October 2015

A member of The Ex-Press skeletal staff happened to be looking out the window just in time to catch a glimpse of a grey whale surfacing outside the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club in English Bay, Sunday, October 4. We apologize for the short video. We were just happy to get it.

The Sick Days – Part 4

Getting the scoop of my life The rheumatologist increases the dose of prednisone to 80 mg, enough to medicate an asthmatic elephant, but fails to mention the life-expectancy side of a lupus diagnosis By Shelley Page This is how the cover-up began. I showed up for my summer newspaper internship, signed some papers, found a desk, took an assignment, only cried in the bathroom. And after writing 1,000 words for a sidebar on a school board matter that should have been just 400—the Province is a tabloid–I slipped out to await my mother, driving up Granville Street in her Ford Pinto. That first week, and many after, my mom spent three hours each day as a chauffeur driving to and from the Province. She deserved a medal for driving; me, for acting. I didn’t tell anybody, editor or the veteran journalists sitting on either side of me, that I’d just been tentatively diagnosed with a serious autoimmune disease. Operating instructions, please The truth is, I had ...