Happy Father’s Day

Happy Father’s Day to the man who taught me how to be a man, my role model in life. I’ve been lucky to pick up my dad’s athleticism, sense of adventure, mischievousness, and frugality. I wish I had more of my his musical ability and entrepreneurial spirit, but you can’t have everything.

I spent a lot of time with my dad as a kid. He coached my baseball team and taught me everything I know about sports. He dragged me along on car rides as he ran errands around the city. I was bored but he kept me amused by playing ‘guess the song’ and offering up math and logic puzzles. I remember spending late nights curled up in front of the tv with chips and salsa watching Star Trek. I also remember the lectures against eating meat and smoking – health advice I’m happy he brainwashed me with.

One day, I hope to be as good of a father as he is.

I’m also thinking about my father-in-law today. Sadly, Tom passed away away recently. We miss you.

Vegan Carnitas

Emily made these amazing vegan carnitas with jackfruit substituting for pulled pork, plus Daiya cheese, shredded beets, tomatoes, peppers, and salsa.

Delicious.

Emily used the second recipe on this page, with canned green jackfruit in brine (make sure you don’t get the jackfruit canned in syrup).

Improved Cambie Bridge Cycling Connections

The engineers working at the City of Vancouver are awesome. Check out the proposed redesign for the north end of the Cambie Bridge. A two-way separated bike lane is planned to connect with the bike lanes on Beatty. Currently, the only connection for southbound cyclists is along the sidewalk. These improvements will make the route much safer for cyclists and pedestrians.

There’s also improvements planned for Richards Street and the Canada Line Bridge. The details are buried in this report to city council (PDF).

Ups and Down of a Canadian Kickstarter Backer

I’m still addicted to kickstarter. I love the quirky videos explaining the projects. I love the creativity being showcased. I love that for a small price you can help make the projects a reality, influence the design, and get early access to the finished product. Too bad the projects never seem to live up to the hype. Yet, for some explainable reason I keep backing more. The only cure for the inevitable letdown of the final product is to back a new project.

18 months ago I backed my first kickstarter projects. One never got funded and the other two ran into problems shipping to Canada. The Bicycle Portraits books eventually arrived, but the project creators ended up spending as much on shipping as I paid them for the books. I had high hopes for windowfarms and it still looks like an excellent product, but they refuse to ship it to Canada. Apparently there are issues with the cost and concerns about moving agricultural products across the border. 18 months after they took my money ($118) they won’t answer emails, they refuse to give me a refund, and there’s no timeline if they’ll ever be able to ship windowfarms to Canada. Needless to say, I’m pissed off. The fourth project I backed cost me an unexpected $20 to get it through customs.

I should probably stick to funding digital download games (like Republique and Banner Saga which are both close to shipping, and Massive Chalice which is currently raising funds). However, I’ve been tempted by a few fascinating board games. Urbanization was a huge disappointment, but Viticulture will arrive next next week and based on the positive experience I had with the campaign I also ordered Stonemaier Games 2nd project – Euphoria. Hopefully these games help redeem kickstarter for me or I might have to go cold turkey. There’s only so much abuse I can take from kickstarter.

Pescovegan – Adding Oysters to My Diet

Flexitarian diets seem to be all the rage these days. Vancouver has proclaimed June 10 as Meatless Monday. Bill Gates thinks the Future of Food is in fake meat. Mark Bittman, New York Times food critic, recently created the VB6 diet (Vegan Before 6 pm). So I might as well jump on the bandwagon and declare myself a pescovegan – a vegan who occasionally eats oysters and possibly other seafood.

I got the idea after reading 13 Tips for Vegans by Raw Food SOS. There’s also this Slate article, Consider the Oyster – Why even strict vegans should feel comfortable eating oysters by the boatload.

The general idea is that oysters check all the main reasons for going vegan – they’re healthy, ethical, and environmentally friendly. Oysters are high in the nutrients hardest to find in a vegan diet (mainly vitamin B-12). Anyone vegan for animal cruelty reasons will be reassured that oysters don’t have a central nervous system. Farmed oysters are considered sustainable seafood and they’re grown locally here in BC.

I grew up on a pescetarian diet, but I largely stopped eating seafood when Emily and I started dating. Ironically that was soon after moving to the West Coast. I think seafood can be part of a healthy diet, but I have a lot of concerns about over-fishing.

From a personal health perspective, my body has taken well to a vegan diet. I’m in the best running shape of my life and haven’t been sick once since going vegan. However I have concerns about my B-12 intake. I was having problems with fatigue in 2011 and blood tests showed elevated levels of bilirubin, which can be caused by B-12 deficiency (among other things). Since then I’ve switched to fortified almond milk and try to eat more nutritional yeast, and that seems to have helped. Oysters might be another solution.

I’ve had oysters twice in the past few months. Fresh oysters and smoked that I bought at Whole Foods. I wasn’t enamoured with the taste of either. They fresh oysters didn’t taste like much. Maybe I’m eating it wrong. I’ll have to go to an oyster bar and try them prepared at a restaurant.

I leave you with an interesting video about oyster farming in BC.

Why I Can’t Work at Home

Chai loves sitting on my laptop.

5km in 17:56

I have no plans to run another marathon anytime soon. I can’t commit to running 3-5 days a week. But it does seem like a shame to stop running when I’m in the best shape of my life. I ran a 5km race last Sunday in 17:56, finishing 5th overall, a huge personal best for me.

Photos by janheuninck and the PMC Science Fair Run.