Counting down the seconds now until Katrina’s and my #yff12 Road Trip to commence.  We’ve ditched the boys this time in favour of roamancing our way with the gals to Yorkton.  We know Erica Hargreave knows what she’s getting herself into and only has herself to blame, but Annelise Larson is another story.  Really though, at this stage of the game, all we can do is wish her luck (and maybe that you all show her a little love on the road @veriatweet).

Feel free to join in the shenanigans by following along with #yff12 and our tweets from @Katrinavision, @veriatweet, @EricaHargreave, @Roamancing and little ol’ moi @EmmeRogers.

Kisses from the land of the Golden Sheaf,

Emme xoxo

“SUPER CUTE and SUPER TALENTED!!! Emme Rogers”

I was just a little perplexed by the rest of the tweet though.

“(owners/handlers Beth and Mort) . . . what will you accomplish in…”

… so I clicked on the link before blowing kisses to the tweeter.  This is what I found …

Courtesy of TOPS Veterinary Rehabilitation

Seems I have a canine namesake and while I’ve never won a Beauty Pagent, she has. Hmph!

My friends came up with the idea to cook up some fresh crab and enjoy a night in with garlic butter and wine.  I had eaten crab legs before so I thought the whole thing sounded pretty good, except for the fact that crabs remind me of spiders.  Oh well, I figured my friends would lead the way, I would drink the wine and look the other way most of the time.  They did make me go shopping with them to buy the crab though.  We went down to a marina area so we could pretend like we ‘caught’ our own fresh dinner.  A lovely man reached into the hundred-leg tank and pulled out a huge crab like it was nothing.  The next thing that happened let me know this night was going to be more than I was prepared for; my girlfriend asked how to cook it.  I thought they had done this before!  When I heard the man say what we had to do I knew I was going to have to be involved, that this would be a group project and I could not hide from it.

Just Look At All Those Legs Crawling Around In There!

Learning How to Hold a Crab

It's Really Happening, A Fresh Crab For Dinner!

We ran through the plan all the way home.  Take the crab out of the paper…pick it up in the right way to avoid the pinching claws, hit it REALLY hard on the middle of the sink to crack the shell instantly and have it be over with…remove the top shell and discard the parts we don’t want…boil it…eat it.  Of course the kids caught wind of our excitement and gathered around, refusing to miss our attempt at this.

Take the crab out of the paper: The crab slid right into the sink and turned around to stare at us. I have never looked a crab in the face before and I think we all froze for a moment.

The Stare Down

Pick it up the right way: My friend’s husband was designated to do this.  He kept going for it, but could not commit.  Finally he made the move.  He did it all wrong and it was totally awkward, but he managed to get it into position.

Trying To Hold It Right

Hit it REALLY hard on the middle of the sink: We missed the REALLY part and ended up with a sort of tap.  The crab jumped out of my friend’s hands and back into the sink and ran around like crazy with it’s big angry claws.  Oh the screams! The kids were screaming, we were screaming, the kids ran away, and we kept screaming.  Eventually we stopped, drank a lot of wine, and composed ourselves enough to try again.  Success!  Then it hit us, we had to do it two more times because we had 3 crabs altogether.  We got smart and kept the other two in the paper until the deed was done.

In the end after drinking more wine to forget everything, I was actually able to enjoy our meal.  It was really hard to eat it after I just saw it running around.  I did spill garlic butter everywhere trying to get the meat out of the leg, but no one can dispute the fact that I was an active participant in a crazy dining experience.

And that’s just what they’ll do …”

Photographer: Liz Kearsley

It’s been a long time and many hints in coming, but I am pleased to finally introduce Roamancing in Alpha …

… the site ~ http://roamancing.com

… on twitter ~ http://twitter.com/roamancing

… facebook ~ http://facebook.com/roamancing

… youtube ~ http://youtube.com/roamancing

Just the beginning of what promises to be many a tale of shenanigans and debauchery from the likes of Brie Mason, Sir Von Ritter, Clippernolan, Hummingbird604, Thu Nguyen, Katrina Ham, Alyzee Lakhani, Richard Yearwood, Kelly Lui, Summer, myself and many more whose identies we are keeping undercover just for now.

Smooches from the road,

Emme xoxo

With this, we have found our writers have spread out across North America for the summer, which means opportunities for us to cover the Arts beyond Vancouver.  While our core team will still be in and around Vancouver this summer, I (Emme) will be based in Southern Ontario, Hamilton to be specific, and Brie will be in LA.

Stacey Robinsmith and I at the Canadian Premiere of Nixon in China at the Vancouver Opera.

So if you have an arts event (theatre, music, fashion, food & beverage …) that you’d like one of our writers to attend and weave a tale around, fire me a note at emme@emmerogers.com and I will see if someone is eager and available.

As for me, you know I absolutely adore theatre, music, the opera … and would love to check out this scene in Ontario, along with looking forward to checking out the Gimli Film Festival for the first time in Manitoba in a little over a week’s time.

Brie loves theatre and music too, but she also adores dance and fashion, and with Young Master Mason and Little Miss Mason in the wings, I know would enjoy taking in some events that are suited to families with 9 – 12 year olds too.

Vancouver – you are already, of course, familiar with the types of storytelling that our Vancouver Cats, like Rob Jones and Alyzee Lakhani, are capable of for music and theatre.

Hanging with Ron Sexsmith & Rob Jones - two of my music legends.

Looking forwarding to sampling a few new flavours this summer.

Kisses,

Emme   xoxo

I learned something very important while making this salsa.  It’s really lousy to be a slow chopper!  I don’t mind that I had to hunt down all the ingredients (well, a really nice grocery man helped me-I think I looked lost), or pay a lot more than pre-made, store-bought salsa, but I felt like a real let-down that it took me 23 min just to chop the tomatoes.  I thought I would serve it up during some family TV time, but instead I was running to the kitchen on commercials to chop the onions and herbs and ended up having the whole salsa ready for bedtime.  When everyone went to sleep, I stayed up and ate my salsa. I loved it, and everything turned out for the best, as it tasted even better for the family the next day after all the flavours had hung out in the jar in the fridge all night.  I now have a new side focus though.  I am going to learn how to chop fast.  I want to invite Emme to join me but she is a real danger in the kitchen.  I need Bob to give me some tips!

Photo Courtesy of Roland Tanglao

At any rate, Brie’s and my new Monday night tradition is curling up to the Food Network Canada to watch Bob battle it out on Glutton for Punishment for yet another Foodie World Record.  Now, neither of us have really ever been couch potatoes.  We like to be a little more engaged, and as such, we decided to take Bob on at his own game and see how we’d fair at the competition for this Monday’s episode – the Onion Peeling World Record.  We’re both pretty decent cooks, so really how hard could this possibly be.

We’ll we found out just that on Friday night, as we reverted to high school (…umm … I mean university) with rum and cokes (in Brie’s soap opera glasses) and a series of tricks up our sleeves.  You see, we were set to compete with each other in peeling onions, and unlike Bob, WE didn’t need 3-minutes, 1-minute would do.  Now I say ‘tricks’ to be polite, as in reality, Brie is a CHEAT. She snuck a few onions in the freezer as apparently that makes peeling them easier and bites back on the tears.  I on the other hand, did not cheat, but rather did a little research being a conscientious student and all. What I learned was that soaking onions in water is suppose to make peeling them easier.

Maybe I should have listened to that onion peeling video a little closer – those tips were for pearl onions and garlic, not walla wallas.  Have no clue how Bob is possibly going to peel 50 pounds of onions in less than 3 1/2-minutes.  I guess we’ll have to tune in on Monday.  Glutton for Punishment is on the Food Network Canada at 7:30 pm EST and at 4:30 pm and 11:30 pm PST.

Special thanks to our pro video team – Young Master Mason ( aged 10 ) on camera and Little Miss Mason ( aged 8 ) on the timer.

Kisses,

Emme xoxo

So Raul … what were you saying about George Stroumboulopoulos?  Dish my dear hummingbird604!  I’m waiting!

Wishing you a year of delight and adventure!

Kisses,

Emme xoxo

PS With extra sloppy kisses to Jeremy Lim for his great photography and Burnaby Village Museum for an inspiring location.

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time in airports. Most recently I saw a friend off on her way to Switzerland for six weeks to learn French. (People do these things!) Before that, I was on six flights in three weeks, four of them over five hours in length. That’s a lot of hours not only in airplanes, but in airports. All those long hours of purposeful, anxiety-fraught sitting that manage to be more exhausting than running a half-marathon have got to be filled with something. I usually choose a steely yet non-threatening expression on my face (ideal message: not a security threat, but not a potential new friend either), the entire Weakerthans discography on my iPod (including John K. Samson’s 1993 Propagandhi-era solo EP “Slips and Tangles,” complete with the bitterly brilliant track “Airport Lounge”) and a new Shitty-Irish-Chick-Lit novel. It passes the time.

Lots to look at. (Photo by myself)

Sometimes I send annoyed emails to friends, reporting the (non-)action. For example, from last month: “So here I am in yet another airport lounge, listening to a blaring television that’s on a loop of death off to the right. Every ten minutes or so a commercial comes on for something that must be sad and child-related (I can’t see the screen) – a woman’s voice plaintively singing “Head and shoulders, knees and toes…” over a subtly swelling string section. Jealous?”

But, you know – those lost hours add up. And sometimes you have one of those moments when you think, “these minutes are as much a part of my life as any other minutes.” Two choices remain here: panic at the impossibility of living a spontaneous, carefree, world-trotting life when so much of that life tends to be spent sitting in relentlessly uncomfortable seats, or…eavesdrop. (Which may also induce panic. But really, if you eavesdrop on a plot to hijack a plane in an airport, rather than fear the ineffectual plotters you should probably move away in all haste so you don’t get knocked over as the plotters get bodily taken down by lumbering security officials.)

Traveling can be tiresome. (Photo by myself)

During one of my recent stretches of time spent in an airport lounge, I turned the tables and eavesdropped on some security officials. Very satisfying. One female official was standing behind a desk, desperately trying to look busy, as another, older male guard regaled her with his best war stories:

“Tell ya, had two tire totals in one day. Both in the same day! Like, two tires were totaled in one day. So I got myself a four-set of 10 ply plymouths, never had a tire problem again. Can you believe that!?”

Then, he unveiled his real corker:

“Got a couple kayaks, down at Jericho…oh yeah, I go there every week. I’m a member. One for someone your size. Well, originally for my daughter. One bigger one. For someone like me. Think fate’s telling us something? Haha…yeah, I’m an atheist too.”

Next time you’re in an airport, don’t close yourself in a bubble of pointless travel-induced-tension. Eavesdrop instead! You’ll be amazed at the intelligence, kindness, and sheer idiocy of the human race. You may also get a few funny looks. Please don’t sue me if you get taken down by security for staring at people and writing down everything they say.