Chinese LLMs have been scraping my website. The country appeared in my analytics three weeks ago for the first time in four years and they sped up to number two spot in ranking. It’s made me think of the writing I do here as a weekly treat for a Chinese machine — every seven days something new for them to gobble. I don’t know how many of you know that the internet has turned into the underbelly of Vegas. It’s weird to think my work can be taken and I also know that most of creation is temporary.

I’m talking to my hosting and website companies. The security solutions cost big money (and are built for large brands). I’ve been trying to sort out if the same thing is happening on big blogging platforms — or have they made a back room deal with American AI. The class action lawsuits in this sphere will grow and I hope they are painful for the takers.

It’s only discouraging if I let it be that way. Nothing will stop me from creating. 
 
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I watched this Fifth Estate investigation on an addiction treatment centre and I could not shake it — there was no plan to write this. There are several shocking moments, but the allegations that they were taking clients who were detoxing with no medical staff on hand should be criminal. “Attempting a cold-turkey or at-home detox from alcohol, opioids, or benzodiazepines can be dangerous and even life-threatening.” It demonstrates a lack of care that makes me long for a landmark ruling with a penalty high enough to send shockwaves through Canadian recovery and treatment providers, who are not responding to repeat wake-up calls. 
 
I have sat with a few women in emergency rooms waiting to be seen on the first stop to detox. I have dropped essential items off for friends during their three days stay. I’ve spoken in several women’s detox centres, and have attended meetings in treatment facilities. As a participant, a complete neophyte, I know that the first three days of recovery are tenuous. Getting clean is hard. Have you seen someone in an alcohol-induced seizure? Do you know how many alcoholics die choking? Having no medical staff on site because the feds and the province don’t monitor it makes my blood boil. The allegations of misrepresentation by this facility are breathtaking. What is clear from the investigation is that it is the wild west out there, and it’s not limited to one facility or British Columbia.

I have been a long time sober, and you can’t imagine the work I’ve have done to get well enough to write this. And there is still more for me to do. I worry any time I hear a newly recovered alcoholic/addict express interest in working in recovery — less than one percent will be suited to it and some will never get certified. Substance abuse recovery is not meant to become a whole life. Only a precious few can handle it (it says that right in the blue book). 
 
As an act of service, this is my first pitch for legislation and mandatory certification for all substance abuse treatment centres, administrators, sobriety coaches, and interventionists in Canada. You can tell watching this there will be pushback. Only professionals insist on professional conditions. 

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This story on Punjabi Disco from the BBC is all kinds of fantastic — forty minutes of wholesome fun. Hearing this man talk of having his dreams come true while playing music with his mother is delicious.
 
The salmon were running up the Humber this week. I try to imagine what the run would have looked like over millennia.
 
I took the header image in an alley in Parkdale. Do you know the name of the artist? I was out on a Stroll with Shawn Micallef — master of words and walking — a Toronto urban advocate and flaneur.
 
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Some of the sounds of the last seven days. 

First a word from someone's sponsor:

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I’m judging emerging writers for the Irish Food Writing Awards and in reviewing the stories I missed something that a journalist would not have — some of the who, what, where, when, and why of the stories. I felt like an amateur momentarily, which I’ve already established I still am. I make mistakes and will make more guaranteed. The awards are in the competent hands of Suzanne Campbell, a woman I admire for her service to the Irish food writing community.
 
The path to the page for every writer is unique. I trained in creative writing, not journalism. Most of the people in my cohort at the Humber School for Writers were in the early stages of creating novels. I was not taught facts as much as story. I’m not suggesting journalists don’t write story, because I admire so many of them for how they do it. But my first preference is for the shape and spirit — the personality — of the writing. Finding and using your voice is a vital process. It scared the shit out of me when I was emerging at fifty. My writing mentor repeatedly told me not to be afraid of what I had to say. It takes time to find the aspect of a story that makes me feel in some way, and then try and convey that to a reader.

In grading or judging I review and ideate in cursive, and in the first read I search for a sentence I like, where I can see a glimpse of the person dropping letters on the page.  I make squares around them in purple highlighter. I do it everywhere I read when I get awestruck by the way words come together. Then I went back to the beginning to discern if basic questions are answered, and if the thinking reflects research.
 
The feeling of emerging should be a part of every new substantive project for anything involving craft.  Some call it beginner’s mind. I did a traditional French cooking apprenticeship, and a foundation principle is that you never arrive. There is always more to learn. Mastery is a serious and life-long pursuit. It was also ingrained in me that only rare women are masters, that most women arrive a polite few years after their male peers or never, so there’s that, too.
 
An emerging writer not too long ago might have had more exposure to editors. On most blogs — business and personal — there is no one with the metaphoric “red pencil.” I was able to hire people right out of school to edit my work, and considered it a good investment. Writing at this point is a business still largely without mentorship. Only a very few find good guidance. There are gatekeepers who operate like there’s not enough and turn everyone, including junior colleagues who are hardly competition, into threats. One of them told me when I was in school to give it up because there wasn’t enough work in Canada. Those were facts from a journalist. What they didn’t know is how many times as a woman I’d faced some version of you-don’t-belong working in restaurant kitchens. It taught me to not put a lot of weight in the opinions of others, except for those of people I trust. 
 
Every project and every piece has a tone, usually dictated by the subject. The trick is to express the experience of another, and let it carry your shadow. It’s taken time to find my voice, and I have some way to go.
 
The reason why “today,” my “blog," is public is to demonstrate process. That is the priceless factor for me. I like it all from the first draft to fresh-off-the-press — from the messy kitchen to dinner on the table. I like the thud of chopping onions, the sizzle of butter in a black pan, and the clink of cutlery coming to rest on a plate. 

There are tender green days when the learning curve is steep. I have been laid low a few times by hard lessons. You need a backbone. Are there writers who have never had that happen, whose success has tumbled over to more success and a million followers? Mythically, yes. 
 
I admire the writers stepping up for this award. You have to be brave from the start and put yourself out in whatever way feels good and right. And knowing how many stunning stories exist without a governing bodies stamp of approval will keep you humble. So will the understanding that hierarchical approval is a patriarchal construct and fades fast, like lipstick and duck fat. The magic is staying with a trade for long enough to find your voice and your people.
 
That grade two photo currently hanging out on my desk is an image of me as an emerging writer. :)

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Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing is the book about process I most relate to. It is full of so many practical lessons from his years of teaching creative writing at American universities. To me, it reads like an apprenticeship. For a while, and under its influence, I practiced writing four- and five-word sentences. It’s brilliant for working on cadence, but string too many of them together and it’s irritating to read. A good human told me to dial it down over an ice cream cone — my preferred style of editorial meeting.
 
 
“How could the man who wrote “in a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” have failed to tell the truth about his own wife?”
 
Why I Write, by George Orwell found me this week. He captured a period in history and wrote about power in an original manner that speaks to us vividly right now. I’m massively late to the fact that Eileen O’Shaughnessy, his first wife, had a big hand in the creation of Animal Farm and 1984, and received no credit. Orwell was a standard-bearer socialist twat.
  
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Prince is everything Alicia Key says about him off the top — he was open as a creator. When it was released, I played 10cc a lot.

​Pumpkin pie is a close second to cherry as the best in my books, but I’m not one to turn down any flavour when it’s homemade. I adore pumpkin for breakfast the next day with a heap of soft and sweet whipped cream. 

Making the filling from scratch is easy, but the flesh of the squash must be dense and meaty. I went looking for a Hubbard squash but came up short so I bought a big buttercup and roasted it with butter and citrus rind. I made the yeasted puff pastry from Chez Panisse Cooking. That recipe is so impossibly good, it’s the place where my hardcover binding has split. 

A friend sent me a text Saturday morning saying they love seeing my social media posts about baking nice things for myself. I like baking for others too, but I never let living alone get in the way of making a good meal or dessert. I’ll rattle all the pots just for me. 

May the knees of good people be under your table this weekend. Happy Thanksgiving.

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This is the season of shrub roses, asters, and dahlias. I always stop and smell the roses. 
 
Hold on to each other.  
 
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I wore the grooves off the first song on our home stereo. I found a clip of Minnie Riperton attached to a post on social media. The floral theme fit this week.

The closest I got to L’Oustau de Baumanière was peering through the dining room windows when it was closed for the season. The French elegance was seductive. If I had a time machine I’d go back and dine. I was visiting the medieval Provençal town of Les Baux. There was a scattering of tourists. It was winter in Canada and locally it was Mistral season. In March, and under the winds surreal influence, the Luberon was dark, wild, and moody.  

Research has helped me replace old ideas with new opinions about some of history’s great French chefs. It’s a good feeling to look out over four decades and see it as a mature woman. I’m grateful that one of the lessons from a traditional French apprenticeship was to play the long game. The subject is alive again for me.

I have fallen for some of those figures but it’s early days and there’s more to learn. Idealizing humans comes with problems. I read about Raymond Thuilier in chef school in 1990. He was an understated and elegant chef. I didn’t think much more of him. But I’ve discovered a staunch individual, whose life was culture manifest. He had a fierce Provençal backbone and was from a time before attention-seeking. 

Someone please get me a t-shirt with that image of him in his bachelor-button blue manteau de peintre. 

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Part of the pleasure of walking is noticing the buckwheat honey-coloured ribbon of fall debris between the grass and asphalt or the disco-silver paint peeling on a garage door in an east end alley.

Kate McKinnon on Hot Ones. 
 
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His vocals are distinct and playful. Incroyable.