What a year!! What a rich and complex elixir of grace and clumsiness. What an intoxicating blend of learning and aptitude! Not just music. Not just the poetry that makes my life an interesting read. Every facet of my every day has been like the finest cognac… and I'll pour it down my throat and smile. Wow, we've been blessed with the harvest of a fine season. I've had a couple of months off from my vigorous schedule of gigging, and it's been wonderful to scratch away at the lottery ticket of my layout and see what kind of gifts are underneath. Lately, cooking, drawing, wood-burning and house reno have definitely been my major creative outlets. Pouring gusto and a coy sense of risk into my projects. Trying new things. Bringing out the new flavors and edges. I've always had this desire to be able to create something extremely valuable out of nothing. A couple of years ago I did a series of drawings with nothing but a school-standard ball point pen and a piece of blank computer paper. After about 8 heavily rendered line drawings, my pen died, and I was excited with the results. Since, I've taken every opportunity when I have a few minutes here or there to spare to work on more drawings (which actually occur more often than not, considering ball point pens and blank paper are nearly always available). Now, with the kids running around and being such challenging yet exciting subjects to capture, I've been busy when I'm not busy. And our wall is FILLING up with pictures…. Lots of them. Some of them are kinda hideous facsimiles of the perfect expressions, and these are quickly turned into caricatures and abstracts, but I treat every picture like a piece for our "gallery" (the walls along our staircase), and I've NEVER thrown one away yet. Likewise, my wood-burning is generally 3-dimensional line work that I pull together usually during a movie that I can afford minimal visual attention (Reba episodes are particularly useful wood-burning sessions). I've created probably 40 pieces over this last year, including a massive coffee table for our living room with a horse under a tree. And at my last big show, I sold little keepsake ("hide your weed in it" sort of stuff) boxes with carvings and they sold and made me considerably more money than my cds do. Who knew?? I could easily devote a chapter or a whole slew of chapters to the subject of cooking. I've been seriously considering writing a book solely about nothing but my crazy allure to the increasingly more innovative and intriguing world of gastronomic creativity, and the offal wares and experiences of the everyday, fearless palette. I am drawn into this whole world of science and total freedom. The ethnic blending of the planet has stewed an incredible diversity that is only morphing into an endless list of possible meal varieties. And it's exciting! It's exciting even just to cook something like a Vietnamese lettuce wrap with Dutch goats cheese that my kids like (or, like I cooked for them this morning: chocolate almond milk crepes). Every opportunity where a faction of the community is drawn together is an opportunity to share some new small fraction of the palette and stir up the paradigms and sprinkle them with something fresh and unique. I've become obsessed with Iron Chef, and the writings of Anthony Bordain (recently, I tore through two of his latest offerings and have been mopping the drool from the corners of my mouth with each and every one of his hilarious yet textured descriptions). I've been getting cooks throughout the resort drunk enough to share with me their secrets on blanching the perfect stalk of broccoli or dredging, searing and plating the ultimate lamb chop. I've learned that there are the total nerds who follow each point of direction to the letter and spend much of their spare time tearing through practical guides to better gourmet. And there are the guys who start every shift with Sublime and Clutch compilations, who know how to make the best munch-quenching wrap and spend their spare time hot-kniving Invermere hash and playing Halo 3 and have never read anything more than Hustler editorials. Somewhere in between is where I fit in. Neither a chef or a line cook, I rip off some of my ideas between hash hoots or when I'm serving the boys in the back some hard earned lager after a long night of endless printer chits. But I get most of my inspiration from being at home. I want food that is going to make my wife really swoon with emotion, but at the same time is going to impress on her the fact that I took her protein preferences, allergies and calorie/fat/diet counts into account before executing dinner, and I paired it with some delicious wine that cost less than $12.90. Things I really took with me this year as far as culinary growth: plating passion, finding the spirit within bright pigmented vegetables, finding balance within sweetening dishes naturally with fruit, treating certain nuts and grains as meat proteins, incorporating Mona Vie tastefully into my dishes, simplicity and complexity. My perfect pizza dough (and I've tried just about everything)? Flour and yogurt. Period. Mona Vie. Our new business. It has taken us by storm. It is presently one of our 5-or-so incomes, and emerging as the leading opportunity in our financial forays. It is quite simply the business I've been looking to invest in and work for a long time. It's personal and it's perfect because I can make it happen at the rate I'm willing to work it. In short, it is a fruit juice blend composed from super high nutrient (and pigment) dense fruits, with a patent-pending processed acai berry at the heart of its foundation. It combines the elements, proteins and phyto-nutrients of superfruits like cranberries, blueberries, bananas and gojis into a fortified ribbon of conveniently delivered nutrients you drink in the form of a couple of shots a day. I've been getting excited about every aspect of the company, from it's marketing ideas (it has an extremely classy and sophisticated webpage if you think you'd like to check it out through my personalized site: www.jenandarineufeld.com) to its well-rounded compensation plan, to it's contribution to our society's need for convenient and organic nutrition. Jen and I are planning a trip presently to the Amazon, hopefully as soon as this next summer with the little ones to check out the base of acai harvesting operations and the company's charity outreach called the M.O.R.E. project in the Brazilian slums . And I just finished my first theatre project. After nearly 100 hours of rehearsing with an EXTENSIVE community cast and crew, we performed five sold-out shows of "A Christmas Carol: the Musical" to the applaud of the entire city of Penticton. And now I have the acting bug. Shit. It was BRILLIANT. I was gushing with my character's diversity and loving every challenge his complexity (Bob Cratchit). Happy, sad, scared, sickly, confident, fatherly, nervous. I also managed to kill 3 of my goals for this year's learning curve without shelling out copious amounts of dough by taking (inadvertently) acting/choreography, voice and dance lessons. The new music project? Wow. I have about 3 on the go. And a book that will never be written at least as long as I got kids in pampers. 2 music videos that may never be concluded or seen by the public (filmed with my kids). I've been throwing a lot of the time I have designated to music at my latest idea of a progressive fine-dining experience (with artisan wine-pairings) over a progressive concert. My second show will be commencing soon (tentatively the date is set for Thursday, Jan 31 at the Hooded Merganser, with executive chef Chris Remington presiding [my fellow Tony Bordain obsessionist]). Sorry to all of you fools who missed the great crepe show (my final summer patio gig, Sept 23 where I cooked the entire audience crepe suzettes live during my intermission). It was truly one of the most remarkable endeavors I've conceived. And bring on the traveling for this next year! Experiencing Ireland, Italy, England and Florida with my Jenny this summer was nothing short of all the beauty two people in love can experience. We want to travel extensively within the next 10 years of our lives, and fill up our children with a true and urgent sense of the world's diversity. Whether it's the Yukon or the Yucatan. I have 2 days left in 2007, and it makes me kinda sad that it's ending so soon. I'm bartending for the next 3 nights in a row (I sacrificed a New Year's gig to instead make my killing by serving obnoxious locals more than their legal limit), and it's a faint notion of what it all amounts to when it's all said and done. You gotta make a little bit of money to move forward. You gotta work a little bit with what you don't want to work with to squeeze out what you really want. If anybody read this whole blog, then you are certainly someone I wish I could share some of the new songs with. Until then….. see you in 2008.