Saunderson Still Won’t Do the Right Thing

Collingwood / Conflicts of Interest / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Saunderson's MPP campaignLeave a comment

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Mayor Brian Saunderson swore an oath at the council inauguration in 2018 that included the promise to “truly, faithfully and impartially exercise this office to the best of my knowledge and ability.” And yet barely halfway through his term, he announced he wanted to get out of that commitment and leave town for a better-paying job as an MPP in Toronto. What sort of “best” is that for Collingwood?* When someone is actively campaigning to get out of one job and into another, I doubt anyone else would consider they can or will do their current job to the “best ……… click below for more ↓

Finding a Breakfast Cereal With No Added Sugar

Eating / Food & Drink / Health & Medicine4 Comments

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Why is it so difficult to find a breakfast cereal without added sugar? Even your basic, unadorned bran flakes have added sugar in them! And not just a small amount. While I’m sure there are commercial brands of cereal without sugar or some alternative sweetener, I’m struggling to find many (if any) on local grocery store shelves. I’m not against sugar per se. It belongs in desserts and candy. I like some ice cream or frozen yogurt for dessert at times. And I sometimes enjoy a few slices of candied ginger after dinner. I even enjoy ginger marmalade on toast ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Making Pizza

Alcohol / Cooking / Eating / Food & Drink / Pizza2 Comments

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I have to admit that I like pizza a lot. Well, I guess most of us do. I like cheese, and I liked cooked cheese even more, and I like vegetables, so pizza is up there as a mealtime favourite. We don’t eat it frequently, perhaps once month or less often. These days I make it myself: we don’t order it from a restaurant or pizzeria, although we’ve had it from them when we went out for dinner (back in the pre-pandemic days). Nothing against anyone else’s pizza, but I like the process of making it, so I seldom buy ……… click below for more ↓

The Cancer Diaries, Part 26

Cancer / Daily life / Personal Reminiscences / TVLeave a comment

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Cancer changes everything — and nothing at all. Rabbi Skillman That’s a profound comment, coming from a TV character. The “rabbi” in question is a fictional patient in hospital, played by George Wyner in the TV series, New Amsterdam (Season 1 Episode 8). He is talking to the hospital’s medical director, Dr. Max Goodwin (played by Ryan Eggold).  Cancer — its diagnosis, treatment, and impact on people — plays a pivotal role in the series, and offers some food for thought for viewers. This episode stayed with me for quite some time. Skillman suffers from terminal pancreatic cancer. It’s a ……… click below for more ↓

Let’s Play “Spread the Virus!”

Collingwood / Conflicts of Interest / Council / COVID-19 responses / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Hospital / Publicity & Communications / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Staff and administration2 Comments

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I see Collingwood Council wants the province to end the lockdown, but hasn’t said anything about improving public safety or accelerating the vaccinations if that happens. That suggests to me they are okay if the coronavirus spreads again, and strains our hospital’s already stretched capacity to deal with it. At least, that’s the message I got from the latest facepalm-worthy discussion and motion by council this week. As reported on CollingwoodToday: Collingwood council is demanding an explanation from the province for the local lockdown and asking for the town to be returned to red zone (or lower) restrictions effective immediately.  ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Making Pasta, No. 5

Cooking / Daily life / Food & Drink / Pasta / Personal Reminiscences3 Comments

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I was back at making pasta this week, trying a slightly different recipe, and working on honing my skills with the pasta machine. As well, I  was hoping to get my recently-acquired mafaldine cutter attachment operating correctly (you might recall reading about the problems I had with it clogging in the previous post on pasta making). My usual mix for pasta dough is a ratio of about two-to-one tipo 00 flour to semolina. Thinking about that, I wondered if the gluten in the lower-protein tipo 00 flour was not working very well with the different, tougher, and less elastic gluten ……… click below for more ↓

Berman’s Cowardly Comment

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryLeave a comment

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Late last month, Collingwood council heard from the town’s inquiry legal team* justifying the cost of the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI), which many residents feel was an exorbitant waste of our tax dollars. The Collingwood Connection reported that Councillor Berman engaged in a to-and-fro with Will McDowell (of Lenzcner Slaght**): Coun. Steve Berman asked if the parties involved had been more forthcoming with information, would the cost have been less. McDowell said there were many opportunities for those involved to lay their cards on the table, but “they didn’t do that. “I don’t think you and I ……… click below for more ↓

The Inquiry Cost $250,000 More? Were We Lied To?

Censorship / Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry5 Comments

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Hidden costsFormer councillor Tim Fryer is back on the agenda this coming week, making another delegation to the Strategic Initiatives Standing Committee about the true costs of the judicial inquiry (aka the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry, or SVJI). I admire Tim’s tenacity at trying to get the truth out to the public about this debacle. My respect for him has risen considerably since he’s been off council, but I wish he had been such a bulldog for the truth when he was at the table (I wrote about Fryer’s last appearance in front of the committee here).

At the very end of the agenda, you can read Tim’s letter, starting on page 161* and continuing through page 166. What’s most interesting is that he included a letter from the town to EPCOR, included on pages 163 and 164. That letter shows the town agreed to pay EPCOR’s legal costs over the SVJI of $250,000 or more. Yet those costs do not show up on the town’s most recent official accounting of the costs for the SVJI (read it here) **

For a council eager to censor “fact-check” residents’ comments and letters so they conform to the party line, it seems highly hypocritical to find that the town itself isn’t forthcoming about the facts. Yet we now learn that $250,000 was mysteriously left out of the calculations. As Fryer writes,

I figured if a $4 Walmart or $8 Tim Horton’s expense charge could be included then certainly something like the $250,000 or more of EPCOR’s legal expense coverage, as per the Side Letter Agreement terms established with council after the CJI was initiated, should be too.

Continue Reading“The Inquiry Cost $250,000 More? Were We Lied To?”

More Musings on Tea

Daily life / Food & Drink / Personal Reminiscences / Tea & coffee / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Back in 1946, while England was still recovering from the deprivations of WWII and under rationing, the prolific George Orwell wrote his essay “A Nice Cup of Tea” with his eleven-step instructions for making what he considered the perfect cuppa.* But do they still stand today? Certainly, his notion of what makes a “strong” tea would be considered very strong by standards today. As the BBC noted in an article that debunked many of Orwell’s notions about making tea almost 60 years later, “The great critic of Hitler and Stalin, was not above a bit of teatime Totalitarianism himself, it ……… click below for more ↓

Still Can’t Escape the B.S. (Brian Saunderson)

Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Saunderson's MPP campaign2 Comments

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It’s late February as I write this and still our mayor, Brian Saunderson, refuses to do the ethical, the moral, and the RIGHT thing for the town and resign his office while he openly hunts for another, out-of-town, better-paying job.* It’s been more than a month since he admitted he doesn’t want to be our mayor and instead wants to be the riding’s next MPP. Seems to me he desperately wants to be somewhere else, getting more money and out of Collingwood as fast as he can. But he’s still, brazenly taking the mayor’s paycheque while he campaigns for another ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Making Bread and Chili, No. 1

Bread & Baking / Cooking / Daily life / Food & Drink / Pasta / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

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Longtime readers here know that before my surgery last summer, along with my pasta making I was an avid, if not always entirely competent, baker. I mostly made bread from “scratch” but sometimes for convenience used an electric bread maker. I made all sorts of bread in previous years, including soda (“quick”) breads, as well as the occasional scone, tea biscuit, and muffin. I’ve always looked upon my baking (and cooking in general) as a sort of living chemistry experiment. I play with recipes, tweak them, explore different ingredients and processes. I have produced some spectacular loaves, a lot of ……… click below for more ↓

Another Sad Day for Collingwood

Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry4 Comments

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It’s sad to see any council devolve into pettiness and paranoia, but not surprising when this thin-skinned group does. In a story on CollingwoodToday, council voted 4-3* to censor “fact-check” letters or comments from the public. It’s so very Stalinist of them that they need staff to ensure the public’s comments march in step with the party line. What next? Purges? Gulags? Show trials? Oh wait, we already had that with the SVJI. And what qualifications do staff have to read and censor “fact-check” public content? Are they trained for this in any way? Are they educated in journalistic investigative ……… click below for more ↓

Review: The Ultimate Pasta Machine Cookbook

Books & Reviews / Cooking / Food & Drink / Pasta / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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The Ultimate Pasta Machine Cookbook: 100 Recipes for Every Kind of Amazing Pasta Your Pasta Maker Can Make, by Lucy Vaserfirer, Paperback, 208 pages, Published in 2020 by Harvard Common Press, Beverly, MA, USA. I am disappointed. At almost $40, I don’t believe the book delivers what the title promises. I expected a book with “ultimate” in its title to have a LOT more information on actually using the machinery, and about the various types and styles, with plenty of photos and explanations, but there is very little of that. It’s mostly recipes. Nothing at all on the differences between types ……… click below for more ↓

Should Children be Recruited in Party Politics?

Collingwood / Council / Entitlement / Saunderson's MPP campaignLeave a comment

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I found these lines in Brian Saunderson’s latest job-hunting email somewhat tone deaf: It is also interesting that a 14-year-old can purchase a membership and vote in the Nomination process. If you have any family members who live in Simcoe Grey Riding who are interested, it is an opportunity for our youth to get involved in the democratic process. I think it’s a questionable tactic to appeal to underage kids as if politics were a video game with no consequences. It also suggests a certain desperation: perhaps he’s not getting as many adults to back him as he wants, and ……… click below for more ↓

Musings on Making Pasta, No. 4

Cooking / Daily life / Food & Drink / Pasta / Personal Reminiscences2 Comments

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I made another batch of pasta this weekend to test my new mafaldine cutter, but it proved problematic . The dough jammed in it against the blades, so I had to switch to my lasagne ricce cutter, which worked perfectly. Because it got so deeply stuck, I had to remove the blade piece on the new cutter and spend some time fishing tiny bits of dough from the teeth. I will have to contact the seller and manufacturer to see if there is something I can do to prevent this in the future. I plan to do a test in ……… click below for more ↓

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