Tampa’s airport — where I’m writing this article — is a pretty nice one. It’s easy to navigate, well-organized, has lots of facilities and it’s pretty quick to get around. The passenger reviewers at Skytrax agree with me, having given it a 9/10 rating.
In its honour, I present this blast from the past: a 1971 promotional film documenting the then-new terminal built to accommodate the new larger jets of that era.
I’m in Tampa right now, but I won’t be for long. Later tonight, after a quick bite at the Cheesecake Factory (a guilty pleasure of mine), I’m boarding a US Airways flight and heading…somewhere…until Friday. I’ll go into more detail later, but it should suffice to say that the local climate calls for a hoodie and the trip may or may not be concerned about changing my funemployed status. I’ll be back in Tampa this weekend, when I have a visit to a giraffe farm on the agenda.
I know that life and death really don’t care about how old you are, but I can’t help feeling that Canadian Celebrity chef Anthony Sedlak died too young at the tender age of 29. He got his start in cooking by accident; he wanted to snowboard for free, and the easiest way to do that was to get a job at the restaurant at Grouse Mountain. As a busboy, he liked what he saw in the kitchen and worked towards becoming a chef. A series of sous-chef jobs including one at London’s La Trompette led him to Food Network Canada’s Superstar Chef Challenge in 2005, which he won, landing him his first Food Network show, The Main.
The Main was one of those Food Network shows that was both fun to watch and still useful. It was about main dishes for meals, and none of the dishes he showcased were out of the reach of anyone with even the most basic of kitchen skills. He delivered his message simply and very enthusiastically, with a couple of “I grew up in Vangroovy” trademarks: a west coast accent and a tendency? to? uptalk? I’m one of those people who really believes that when choosing a career, you really have to follow your passion, and watching The Main, it’s clearly evident that Sedlak did just that.
In addition to his TV shows, he’d been busy working on his restaurant, The American Cheesesteak Co., which has some great reviews and some really good-looking food. I’ll have to check it out the next time I’m down Vancouver way. He’d also been in Toronto for the past little while, revamping the menus for the Don Valley Hotel and Suites.
He was a slightly tubby when he got his start on The Main, but in the past couple of years, he’d become more fit after discovering a passion for cycling and lost a fair bit of weight in the process. This and his youth make it a little more surprising that he died on Friday. The reports say that he had an undiagnosed medical condition, but no specifics have been given out as of this writing.
Requiescat in pace, Mr. Sedlak.
My cousin suggested that while we were on the island of Bohol (which I talked about earlier here, here and here), we should visit Bohol Bee Farm, a small agricultural project that combines beekeeping with sustainable farming, ecotourism and support for a local crafts industry.
Since bees and pollination go together, many apiaries tend to either place themselves close to a farm that grows plants or operate as part of one. At Bohol Bee Farm, they grow a number of flowers that bees prefer to pollinate, but they also grow herbs and lettuce.
Romel, our tour guide, gave us samples of the herbs they grew and challenged my nephews to identify them. Among the herbs they grow are cilantro, mint, basil and lemongrass.
They also grow arugula, romaine and other varieties of lettuce here. I was a bit surprised by this, as leafy green salads aren’t traditional in this part of Asia. Romel said that they’ve been catching on in recent years and that we should try their house specialty salad at the restaurant, which is made with the lettuce and other fruits and vegetables grown on the farm.
You can’t visit a bee farm without actually getting up close and personal with some bees, so here I am doing just that. Note that I’m not wearing a beekeeping hat or any protective gear.
The bees were pretty mellow, concentrating more on their work rather than us. If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you, Romel assured us, especially since these were European bees, which have a reputation for being less agressive than their Africanized counterparts.
There’s a lot of hype about Africanized bees that comes from disaster movies like The Swarm, the way they’re often referred to a “Killer Bees” and the familiar tropes of good peaceful Europeans versus bad violent Africans as well and the discomfort some people have with interracial dating and marriage. The term “Africanized bee” has little meaning today because there’s no generally-accepted genetic definition for what one is and because they’re hard to identify — you can only tell the difference through statistical analysis on micro-measurements of their wings (Africanized bees have slightly shorter wings) on a reasonably large sample.
They practice organic farming at Bohol Bee Farm, so they produce their fertilizer through the use of animal manure, composting and vermiculture.
In addition to agriculutre, Bohol Bee Farm has a number of arts and crafts projects where they produce goods made from local materials such as raffia palm, coconut and seashells.
They’ve also opened up a hotel on the property. The farm is pretty close to the ocean and some good places to go diving (the water’s quite clear and warm, and a “shorty” wetsuit is all you need), so they’re taking advantage of it.
As with the arts and crafts, they’ve taken great pains to built the hotel out of locally-available material wherever possible. It’s not just green, it’s also a good way to stretch their limited budget.
Pictured above is the side wall of the hotel. From a distance, it looks like stones set in mortar. But take a closer look:
They’re actually coconut husks!
I have no idea how long they last, but it’s a pretty interesting way to set up a facade for a building. It looks much better than simply having a pre-stressed concrete wall.
Looking out from the hotel grounds, you can see the Bohol Sea.
It provides a great view for the restaurant.
The menu offerings looked pretty good, so we decided to have lunch there.
In the farm’s spirit of “we make as much our stuff as we can”, even the menu was produced by the craftspeople on site.
The salad was one of the standout parts of the meal. It was made with greens, fruits, edible flowers (flowers pollinated by bees are generally edible) and goat cheese, all of which were made on the farm, and served with a honey mustard dressing made with the farm’s honey. It was excellent, and we all had seconds.
The other standout dish was their homemade squash bread, a sweet, hearty loaf served with three kinds of spreads: a mango spread, a pesto spread and a honey spread, made with their own honey.
Before I left, I picked up a few items in the gift shop. One of them was bahalina, a wine or arrack made from coconuts. On my home island of Luzon (where Manila is), there’s a similar drink called lambanog. Bohol Bee Farm’s bahalina is reddish in colour thanks to the inclusion of mangrove bark and has a fair bit of honey in it, making it rather mead-like. I brought a bottle back with me to share with Anitra, and it goes really well with Chinese food.
If you’re going to Bohol to enjoy their beaches and diving, make sure to add Bohol Bee Farm to your itinerary. It’s an interesting place to visit, a great place to take the kids (they’ll even learn a thing or two), they’ve got a great restaurant with a nice view, and their shop has a lot of crafts and food that make excellent souvenirs or gifts.
It’s been just under two months since I’ve gone on summer vacation and it’s not over yet. In fact, I’m about to start Phase Three (the first phase being hanging out in Toronto and Tampa and the second being my trip to the Philippines).
A mere 36 hours after returning to Accordion City following a two and a half week stay in the Philippines — a trip that took over 24 hours — I’m boarding a plane again. I’m going back to Tampa to see Anitra and be her guest at a wedding on Saturday.
Oddly enough, the weather in Tampa will be about the same as Toronto’s. The predicted high is 36 degrees C (97 F), and with the humidity, it’s expected to feel hotter than 40 C (104 F). This is normal for Tampa, but unusual for Toronto. Toronto’s humidity is such that it might feel like 50 C (122 F).
I’ll need to take a little side trip to a mystery location next week. I won’t say where or why just yet, but there’s a good story behind it that I’ll tell when the time is right. Once the side trip’s complete, I’ll return to Tampa, where I’ll spend about ten days with Anitra, after which I’ll fly home on July 25th.