Chili Cook-Off in Uptown

I take my chili seriously. One of the nicest things anyone ever did for me occurred a number of years ago when a colleague brought a container of his chili to work - and his recipe. He used coffee, cocoa, beer, cumin and oregano in his chili. I have been riffing off that recipe ever since.

At today's 4th annual Uptown Waterloo Chili Cook-Off, the people's choice award and judge's award both went to Dana Shortt Gourmet. Here is my assessment.

Winner: Taco Farm
This was a sophisticated chili. Instead of simmering everything together for a long time, it tasted like some of the ingredients were mixed in at the last minute. The base was smoked beef shoulder in a light-colored, smoky-hot sauce. Along with that came crunchy vinegar-marinated sweet onion slices, fresh corn kernels, chopped jalapenos and fresh cilantro. The chili was arguably a tiny bit too sour when eaten with a spoon, but it was perfect on a homemade tortilla chip (which they provided). This is a recipe I am going to try to replicate.

The Taco Farm team dressed up like Mexican wrestlers:



Runner Up: McMullans
McMullans dished up a classic ground beef chili, heavy on the meat. It could have used some condiments: with some grated cheese, chopped raw onion and hot sauce, it would have been great. (Condiments weren't part of the cook-off however.) McMullans also deserves kudos for being the only establishment to have participated in all four years of the uptown chili cook-off.

Honorable Mention: Dana Shortt
Shortt made a braised beef brisket chili. The beef was cooked perfectly - moist and falling apart - but the chili was bland and did not have much depth of flavor. Worse, it was sweet (this is a particular bugaboo of mine). The main ingredient was meat, and other than sauce and a few beans there was nothing in it. To sum up: it was well-executed but not to my taste. It came with a peculiar deep-fried avocado ball.

Sad Regrets: The Red House
The Red House ran out of chili just before I arrived. The Red House is my favorite uptown eatery and my go-to spot on a Friday night, so I was very disappointed in myself for tardiness. Next year (shaking my fist), I vow to not be late...

Let's rethink the St Jacobs Farmer's Market

Waterloo woke this morning to the sad news that the main building of the St Jacobs Farmer's Market had burned to the ground. Already there is an outpouring of sympathy and support to the owner, Mercedes Corp. I am afraid that this post has a somewhat different tone. I see this tragedy as an opportunity to rethink our approach to the market - and make some substantive changes.

In a 2009 post (Market Memories) I was quite critical of Mercedes Corp. I wrote that post when Mercedes shut down the Waterloo Mennonite market and moved the vendors across the street to their tourist-oriented site, which locals historically called the Stockyards. That site is now our sole farmer's market - the St Jacob's Farmer's Market - and is the site of last night's fire.

A farmer's market is part of our heritage, an important part of our economy, and a vital link between the rural and urban parts of our community. It is much more than a tourist attraction. It is a resource for the community: for farmers and small businesses to sell their goods, and for people to purchase locally-made food and other items.

Mercedes Corp did not invent the market. We always had one. Mercedes Corp was somehow able to purchase the market, but many of the shoppers and best vendors predate Mercedes. Over the years I have increasingly felt that the market should not be in private hands, or at the least should be more influenced by the needs of its stakeholders.

My particular concerns are:

1. I am concerned that Mercedes Corp does not provide a fair environment for the vendors. The vendors seem to have no security - apparently they can be (and are) moved or kicked out without notice. I haven't asked vendors recently about the price they pay to have stands at the market, but a few years ago they said that the prices were doubling and then tripling. The vendors are rationally afraid to speak out, but the ones I talk to say that their sales have dropped as the number of visitors increase: the marketing strategy of Mercedes Corp has attracted too many non-shopping tourists, or people who are there for cheap sunglasses and tube socks. This isn't a new problem, but it continues to get worse.

2. I am concerned that Mercedes Corp does not provide a safe and convenient environment for shoppers. The aisles are too narrow for the crowds. That means that people waiting to buy on both sides of the aisle leave only a narrow space for people trying to move down the middle. The problem is compounded by the many enormous baby buggies. The overcrowding isn't just inconvenient; it's unsafe: God forbid something happen during market hours. (The new building should have wider aisles or it should have bollards that prevent non-pedestrians from entering the shopping aisles.)

3. I am concerned that the business model of the current market allows only for vendor-businesses, and shuts out homegrown initiatives. I remember one summer buying sweet peas from two teenage boys who had created summer jobs for themselves by planting a lot of flowers and renting a table at the market for part of the summer. You used to see a lot of that sort of thing, but the current market seems to have no amateur or short-term vendors.

4. I am concerned that the market is no longer Mennonite-friendly. There are fewer and fewer Old Order Mennonites there, although there appear to be some vendors who impersonate Mennonites (heavy eye make-up under a bonnet is a suspicious clue).

I'm 55 now. I've been shopping at Waterloo's farmer's markets since I was 7, and I still go to the St Jacobs market weekly. I do hope that the building will be replaced speedily, for the good of the vendors, the shoppers, and Mercedes Corp. I strongly believe that the new market needs to be more attentive to the needs of its stakeholders, but I fear that Mercedes Corp will use this opportunity to make the market even more commercial and take it even further from its roots.

See also my 2009 post: Market Memories.

Woolwich walking trails

There's a lovely trail in Woolwich township, about a five minute drive from the Waterloo market (and from my workplace). It's at the first bridge on Three Bridges Road.

The bridge is an old Mennonite horse bridge. It isn't fancy but it's a nifty design. Low and flat, when the river is in flood the water flows over the top. Horses can cross through the water, and there are poles that make the boundaries of the bridge visible to them.

In the 19th century there was a Mennonite mill near the bridge, but all that's left is the waterfall and mill race. The trail follows the old mill race all the way to St. Jacobs and beyond. It's a charming walk.

Here are some shots from the trail.

Three Bridges Road starts at Lobsinger Line (the road that runs between Heidelberg and King Street). Just a couple of minutes drive down Three Bridges, the road takes a 90 degree turn and you're there... there are pull-overs for parking right before the bridge. Here's a map. The red dot marks the spot:

Uptown Waterloo: Where trails go to die

The Iron Horse Trail officially ends at Caroline Street. A few years ago, the Trails committee managed to get the trail unofficially extended along the west side of Caroline as far as William Street: the narrow sidewalk was replaced with a smooth, three meter wide asphalt trail. But even that bit of the trail lacks any signage. And at William it peters out altogether. If you know what you’re doing you can carry on down Caroline for two long blocks and cross Erb Street, where the trail starts again and goes into Waterloo Park. What we urgently need is to:

• Finish the part of the trail on Caroline, with trail signs and safe crossings.
  
• Create a trail from William to Erb along the west side of Caroline, with at least three meters width of smooth pavement, and with signs.

See also: Laurel Trail Interrupted

The Iron Horse Trail in Uptown

There’s a minor uproar in Waterloo over city council’s decision this week to sell a portion of the Iron Horse Trail. I have some concerns about the sale, but I also see some positives.

In terms of the usefulness of the trail, this change offers some improvements:

• The minor route change will not cause inconvenience. The new trail meets Park Street at the same point as the old trail, so there’s no need to jog along Park street. (See diagram.)
  
• The old portion of trail between Park and Caroline is not great. Yesterday, for example, there was a huge puddle across the entire trail at Caroline Street.

There are some things I regret about losing the old trail:

• The portion that is being replaced is a pretty, treed, curvy bit of the trail. The new trail will run alongside the SunLife parking garage.
  
• It rankles that the developer (Mady) seems to have pulled a fast one on us. Had they announced both development proposals for the site (144 Park and 155 Caroline) at the same time, the city could have had some say in the site development to preserve the trail. By announcing 155 Caroline only after 144 Park was well under way, they forced our hand: either sell us the trail or lose the entire 155 Caroline development.

There are some safeguards that need to be in place:

• The developer must not be allowed to do whatever they want with the new portion of trail. The new trail will be very close to a parking garage exit, and sightlines must be very safe (this is a trail used by children!). The trail must be clear of hydro poles, and must be a clearly marked, dedicated trail – not a section of paved space used by the building.
  
• The trail currently continues along the west side of Caroline to William, with wide asphalt replacing the old narrower sidewalk. That must be continued to the 50 meter portion between the old and new trail. (Trevor Hawkins, the city planner working on this brief, assured me yesterday that that would be done.)

There are some process issues that really need to be fixed:

• We need some protection for our parks and trails. City Council shouldn’t be able to sell off part of a trail. Now that the precedent has been set, who knows what developers will start angling for.
  
• There was a time when developers were required to provide greenspace in consideration for getting zoning approval for large projects. Sometimes public art was required instead. We have now flipped to the opposite situation: they get to take over public greenspace. Something is not right here. The way some councillors were talking after the vote, they think Waterloo needs to lure developers to our core. Nothing is further from the truth: development is booming, perhaps even too quickly.

And there are some troubling related issues:

• The Uptown is supposed to be a mixed-use development environment, with condo buildings having retail and commercial aspects at street level. However, both 155 Caroline and 144 Park are residential-only. That’s the case with all the other condo developments in the Uptown recently, with the exception of the Bauer Lofts – despite the recent adoption of the Uptown vision and Official Plan, which clearly state that new developments should be mixed use.

The Trouble with Buskers

Before I start in with the griping, I need to say that I love the Uptown Busker Festival. I like the pulled pork barbecue and the cheesey kiddie rides. I love the two guys dressed as mounties wearing puppet horses marching around looking serious. I love the whole carnivally feel of the thing. But I have a beef with the buskers.

It seems to me that when this event started in Waterloo a number of years ago, the buskers did full performances. But now they all seem to have about one minute worth of material to fill up 20 minutes of routine. I get that they want to do some patter to attract a big crowd, but it needs to be better patter. Or more tricks. Or a better split between filler and performance. Pulleeze.

(As Carrie Fisher said, "Instant gratification? Instant gratification takes too long!")

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Beware Oktoberfest

I was lured out to Oktoberfest events twice last week, once by free sausages
(yum) and once by free pancakes and sausages (alas, the line was too long). I had a good time at each event, but... there was the music. I enjoyed it at the time. I enjoyed watching the crowd bobbing up and down to polka time. I even enjoyed watching parents teach their kids the chicken dance.

But it's been over a week, and I still have the Pennsylvania Polka stuck in my head.

I made the mistake of emailing my brother about it, and he cruelly emailed back the lyrics.

Strike up the music the band has begun
The Pennsylvania Polka.
Pick out your partner and join in the fun
The Pennsylvania Polka.
It started in Scranton, it’s now No 1
It’s bound to entertain you
Everybody has a mania
To do the polka from Pennsylvania

I sing out of tune even in my head, and I really can't hit the notes on that last line.

I'm a little paranoid about ear worms because I once had Hail to the Chief stuck in my head for two years. That was a rough time. When the Pennsylvania Polka knocks around in my head I have tried displacing it by thinking of the scene where it's played in Groundhog Day, one of my favorite movies, but that has just made it worse.

A cautionary tale.

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Barrels

Oktoberfest is set to begin again, and with it our annual barrel race (Saturday, 10 am, Waterloo Public Square). This will be the first year we've had the barrel race since we lost our last barrels. The remaining ones were purely ceremonial, piled in a pyramid in front of the CIGI building (formerly the Seagram distillery) at Erb and Caroline. Last year City Hall said the pyramid was rotting and gave the barrels away. Now the spot is part of the new Balsillie School of International Affairs.

(A local theater group has started the Barrel Project to commemorate the barrel diaspora. "While the wooden slats and metal rings may be scattered all over the county, their memory remains..." I kid you not.)

All we have left of barrels is the name of the Barrel Yards development on Erb at Father David Bauer Drive. The Barrel Yards used to be the Canbar lands where whiskey barrels were made and stored. The land is soon to be a complex of apartments, office buildings, retail space and hotels... or at least it will be if reported water table issues can be resolved.

Canbar shut down in 1992, and I can clearly remember when barrels were part of the culture of Waterloo. When you drove down Erb you could see the barrels piled high.

The best part was that after Seagrams was done aging whiskey in them Canbar practically gave the barrels away. Cut in half, they were used in backyards all over town as planters.

If you got a fresh one it would still have whiskey soaked into the wood. When I was a grad student at UW, a popular party drink was called swish. We'd buy a barrel, add some water, let it sit a bit, swish it around, and voila - a large supply of half strength, nearly free, blecchy tasting whiskey.

My dad aged a batch of homemade peach wine in a Seagrams barrel once and brought the whole barrel out for a pig roast. The problem with the stuff was it was delicious and didn't taste nearly as lethal as it was. A large crowd of respectable people became completely blotto very rapidly. (I watched it all, completely sober, because that was my first day of work as a waitress at the Kent Hotel... once again, a story for another day.)

The distillery (and brewery) dominated Waterloo in other ways. All the time I was growing up in Waterloo, you could tell what day it was by the smell - and they were nice smells, or at least I thought so. Certain days of week we could smell the Seagrams distillery at Erb and Caroline, and other days we had the smell from the Labatt brewery (formerly Carling, and before that the Kuntz brewery) at King and William. Everyone had a different description of the smells: some days it was bread, molasses, oatmeal or Raisin Bran, and some days it was martinis.

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Waterloo's Burgeoning Club Zone

On King Street in the block north of Erb, we already have two bars catering to heavy drinking: the Vault Lounge and Chainsaw. Around the corner on Regina, the patio of the Royal Canadian Legion is another noisy, boozy spot.

New Year’s Eve, 2008, I walked by the Vault with my 80 year old mother about an hour before a massive brawl broke out on the sidewalk. The police called it a riot as dozens of drunken patrons fought; people were stabbed with broken bottles and bones were broken. Last summer the Vault was the scene of another late night brawl.


Now, directly across the street from the Vault and next door to Chainsaw, the Waterloo Theater seems poised to become a nightclub.


Here's some local buzz about the plans for the Waterloo Theater, which apparently will be called Beta. I'm not sure there's anything to be done to prevent Beta at this stage. A local resident has asked the Alcohol and Gaming Commission to withhold the liquor license, but it's doubtful that that approach will work. If the City of Waterloo had funded the arts to a decent degree (and not thrown so much of available funds into the pit that is the Clay and Glass Gallery), perhaps the previous attempts to make the theater a cultural center (Theater Athena and the Waterloo Entertainment Center) would not have failed.

As a long-time Waterlooian, I'm a bit paranoid about Waterloo suffering the fate of Kitchener. When I was growing up in Waterloo in the 60s and early 70s, downtown Kitchener was a wonderful, vibrant area full of interesting shops. The main attraction was the string of movie theaters along King Street. One of the downfalls of Kitchener was when those theaters got turned into clubs, with all the drunken brawls, public urination and vandalism that goes along with nightclubs.

The core of Uptown is King Street from William to Erb. Uptown needs to expand north up King, and our new nightclub zone is the first block north. The area is slated for streetscape improvements next spring. I'm really concerned that this concentration of booze cans (as the Chronicle likes to call them) will mess up the development of other blocks to the north.

Some of our city councillors believe that any criticism of bars is due to teetotalling tendencies that must be ignored. I disagree. Local politicians may have heard out-of-line complaints about bars; that doesn't mean that all concerns about bars are invalid.

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Ice Dogs

Today was our annual Ice Dogs festival, which is a bit of a goofy concept. People are invited to bring their dogs for all kinds of doggie fun, and then there's also ice carving. And once again, free food! A highlight was free hot chocolate courtesy of Starbucks.

This woman was waiting to be judged in the pet look-alike contest...


This is a kid on the ice slide (it was long and fast)...


This is a woman making an ice sculpture...


This has nothing to do with the Ice Dogs festival but I noticed that the public square has new permanent tables and chairs. Pretty cool...


btw, I'm pretty happy with my new camera. It's a Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS Digital ELPH. It's smaller than a deck of cards, easy to use, has a good zoom, and has some nifty autofocus features like the ability to detect faces and focus on multiple people. I seldom carry my big SLR but all of a sudden I'm enjoying taking pictures again.

Update: Alex Black has a good post on comparing cameras.
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Holiday in Waterloo

To celebrate our new holiday Family Day today, Waterloo's new public square was a great place to be. The rink was open as usual, with music, but was ringed with tents with food and crafts. There were people handing out free pizza, popcorn, and maple sugar candy; a stand selling Thai food at $1 per item; and an espresso/hot chocolate tent. There was Cirque de Soleil face painting, craft tents, a Big Bounce, and people dressed up in wild costumes. And, of course, the highlight was watching little kids pushing chairs around while they figured out how skates work.

The public square is shaping up to be just what it was intended to be: a central attraction in the heart of uptown. There's something to do there almost every day of the year. (Programming details here.) And don't forget that next Saturday, February 20, is the Ice Dogs festival!

Market Memories

I went to the Waterloo Farmer's Market yesterday to find out what my favorite vendors are going to do when the market closes in a couple of weeks. I bought some amazing smoked cheddar from Mickey McGuire and some sausage from Stemmlers... there wasn't much else left beyond tube socks and Tupperware. As I was leaving I picked up some apples from the guy with astronomical prices and a sign saying he doesn't use chemicals. When I got home I realized he had conned me; the apple on top was in good shape, but all the rest were wizened and rotten.

I'd forgotten that I'd seen that guy try to pull the same trick before. One Saturday a few winters ago I was looking for pears and noticed at his stand that the baskets were full of rotten fruit with one or two good ones on top. I walked across the sidewalk to where a guy had a truck backed up, the back open, with tables of pears and potatoes laid out. I saw the kind I wanted and lifted the top pear to check the rest were okay. The farmer, an old man, was sitting in his truck; he started yelling at me in a strong German accent to not touch his fruit. I put down the pear but stood there, sort of stunned, and that somehow made him madder. He not only yelled louder, but came towards me in a threatening manner... at which point I assembled my wits and took off.

I grew up in Waterloo in the 60s, so I have some experience with being yelled at by men with thick German accents. Back then a lot of stores in the area were German-speaking, and non-German speaking kids were frequently met with some abuse. Maybe the market was the last vestige of Old Waterloo.

Don't get me wrong: I love the market. I'm a regular shopper, and I stayed loyal even as most of the good vendors moved across the street to the stockyards while sellers of miracle supplements and cut-rate throw rugs moved in. But my final purchase seems sort of fitting, given the shady commercial history of our farmer's markets.

When I was growing up there was a very successful farmer's market in Kitchener, in a wood building not unlike Toronto's St. Lawrence Market. In 1971 the Eaton Company won a fight to tear down the market building and Kitchener City Hall to make way for an Eaton Center. Eaton's did this in small towns all over Ontario, replacing historic downtown buildings with featureless red-brick malls. Saturday market vendors were moved into the parking garage of the new Eaton Center. While the old market had outside spots with hitching posts, the new market was not Mennonite-friendly, and so the old order Mennonites who had sold at the old market refused to move to the parking garage. Thus was born the Waterloo Farmer's Market.

The Mennonite Market (as we called it then) was built in the country just north of Waterloo, across the street from the stockyards (where live animals were sold at auction). Market-goers started wandering over to the stockyards, and so a few vendors set up there, selling things like cheap broken cookies.

Meanwhile, a man called Milo Shantz started a company called Mercedes Corp that aimed to make money off of tourism based on old order Mennonites. They bought up much of the town of St. Jacobs and turned it into a tourist center. Eventually they bought the stockyards and started to market it aggressively to tourists. They rebranded the stockyards "The St. Jacobs Farmer's Market and Flea Market", and it became a second produce market, plus a lot of other junk. It always had a very different feel from the Mennonite market: the vendors aggressively shout to shoppers; there is a wider range of goods and kitsch; there are a lot more tourists.

Everything was fine until about five years ago, when Mercedes managed to purchase the Mennonite market. Immediately the market changed. The very first Saturday, Mercedes closed down the stand that sold Oktoberfest sausages, hot sauerkraut and cups of local apple cider, and replaced it with a concession stand that sold Italian sausage and canned pop. Then they started harassing the vendors. Rates would double or triple with no notice. Vendors who had been in a spot for decades were suddenly moved. There were so many moves that it started to be difficult to find vendors. My favorite bread seller was moved into a remote corner and lost so much business that he had to give up. One by one, most of the good vendors either gave up or moved across the street to the stockyards, while their spaces were rented to the tube sock crowd.

Then last week Mercedes announced that they're turning the Mennonite market into an antique mart. Vendors got only three week's notice. Some have the option to move across the street to the former stockyards, but they were told there will be a delay of several weeks until they can set up. (I believe Mickey McGuire is going to be able to start selling there in April.) Some chose not to move - Stemmlers has recently built an expanded store in Heidelberg, and will give up its market presence.

It's not clear what the old order Mennonites are going to do. For over 20 years I've been buying assorted garden goods from an old order woman who backs in her small buggy and sells from a table behind it. She picks lettuce and other vegetables from her garden on market mornings, and sells them along with some hooked trivets that a relative makes and some other homemade stuff. It's a small operation, and I can't imagine there's room for her in the bustle across the street. I meant to ask her yesterday, but her spot had already been eliminated to expand the car park.

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Kitchener-Waterloo's Oktoberfest - Time for a Change

Article in today's Record: Bavarian Festival is at a Fork in the Road.

Indeed. The Oktoberfest festival, which runs every year around the Canadian Thanksgiving, is a travesty. It's all about tackiness and drunkenness. It attracts people who like tackiness and drunkenness - and it attracts a lot of them. There's a tacky beauty pageant, there are crappy beer halls selling mass quantities of cheap beer, there's a parade. I can't comment on the quality of the parade even though it passes less than 100 meters from my home because it starts at some ungodly hour on a Saturday morning (8 am?) and I don't like parades.

Kitchener-Waterloo has loads of Germans and loads of German culture. German culture is fabulous - there's so much we could be celebrating: good beer, German white wine, the wide range of German cuisine beyond the Oktoberfest sausage, Mozart, Wagner, Beethoven, on and on and on. What does the K-W Oktoberfest festival celebrate of German culture? Oompapa music, lederhosen and cheap beer. It's not a cultural festival: it's a parody.

A long time ago there used to be an Oktoberfest operetta. I recall a charming performance of Der Rosenkavalier. It was sold out. Why was the operetta cut?

My guess is that the problem with the festival is the management, and a focus on short-term profit instead of building a community organization. For example, the operetta was popular among local residents, but wasn't popular with tourists, which is probably why it was cut - and which is completely wrong-headed. That focus probably also explains why we don't have little independent Oktoberfest events sprouting up around town during the festival: restaurants and community groups would be widening the appeal of the festival if the festival's organizers reached out to the community.

Keep the tacky beauty pageant if you want. Keep the beer halls that sell only Blue or Canadian in pitchers. Keep the early-morning parade. And especially, keep the polka music. All this stuff is wildly popular and it brings lots of tourist dollars to our town. But give us something more. Make it part of the community and something that the community can be proud of. As it is, I try to leave town during Oktoberfest. I think its extreme tackiness and focus on a cheap drunk diminishes our German heritage. It diminishes our whole community.

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