by Margaret Swaine | Nov 1, 1996
Margaret Swaine
A Danish colleague of mine, Jorgen, who jaunts about the world covering the likely combo of wine and politics, never leaves home without it. “It” contrary to what you may be thinking has nothing to do with monetary concerns but rather digestive ones. In among his weeks’ worth of undies and socks are an equal quantity of paper-wrapped 20mL bottles of Underberg.
This natural tonic with herbs gathered from 43 countries and seeped in 44% alcohol helps him digest the pontifications or libations – whichever the case – of the day before and get ready for the next onslaught. As he hails from the land of the Vikings, he comes by his habit naturally. While we may have the loon and moose to love, Danes have their bitter dram. In Denmark, the local Gammel Dansk is the most popular. However after a visit in Aalborg to the country’s foremost akvavit producer, and an intensive sampling of their line of schnapps, I discovered when I headed into the local wine shop for a stomach settler, shelves of the stuff from various producers. I needed help that day with my selection, but I was hooked.
Bitters have a long and noble history in Europe dating back at the very least to the medicinal brews of medieval monasteries. The monks grew herbs, dried them and worked them into special elixirs according to secret recipes. The secrecy and even in some cases the connections to religious orders continues today. I can’t get a recipe from anyone or even a semi complete list of ingredients but that’s no surprise considering people have risked their lives to guard their particular recipe from greedy governments and invaders.
There are two basic categories of bitters; strong which are 38% to 45% alcohol with low residual sugar and medium (half) bitters with 30% to 35% alcohol and higher sugar. In North America we find the consumer friendly aspects of the latter more appealing, while many Europeans prefer the whack of the strong ones. Most were originally meant to be consumed straight like a tonic, though modern days many producers suggest adding sodas or other mixers. Angostura developed in 1824 to improve the appetite of Simón Bolivar’s troops who were suffering from jungle fever, is one of the few which you don’t drink but rather add by drops to your cocktails.
Underberg, developed in Germany in 1846 is a strong one, the secret of four generations of Underbergs, now mixed by Emil, current head of the family. It’s sold in small bottles which are the exact measure to most effectively aid digestion and promote well-being. As such it looks and tastes like a medicine, and makes no bones about it. You know, along the lines of mouth washes and cough syrups which take pride in their wicked taste. My friend can testify however that it works wonders.
Italy is the world capital of bitters consumption with over 10 million cases of amaro (meaning bitter in Italian) downed every year. They have invented over 300 different kinds of after dinner digestive drinks and it’s no wonder considering the endless courses of pasta, fish, meat and so forth of a traditional meal. Some of the popular amaro ingredients include quinine, anise, rhubarb, gentian, juniper, alpine yarrow, mint, sage, verbena, chamomile, hawthorn, citrus peels and thyme. Most of the leading brands of amaro such as Averna, Fernet Branca, and Ramazotti started as family businesses which grew into huge internationals.
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Fernet which originated in 1845, derives its name from a Swedish physician whose formula of herbs, blossoms and spices cured in oak casks was perfected by the Branca brothers. It’s a strong forty percent with low sugar, an up front bitterness and powerful medicinal menthol quality which I love. Unfortunately lately I have had to resort to buying it in European airports as it’s no longer on regular list in Ontario. Bring it back! We are not all wimps in this province.
Averna, the preferred elixir of the kings of Italy in the 19th century, is made from recipe handed by a monk of the Order of Capuchins in the early 1800’s to Don Salvatore Averna of Caltanissetta, Sicily. In 1868 after he gained fame by giving it away as Christmas presents, he set up a small factory to produce it commercially. Today the brand is the market leader in Italy and making headway around the world including Canada. It’s a blend of 60 Sicilian herbs infused with alcohol to 32% and mixed with caramel to give it a fair sweetness and a gentleness which has broad appeal.
Ramazotti Felsina , the other Italian amaro here is also smooth, with a sweet candied medicinal, orange peel taste. It sells at several dollars less (approx. $14. compared to $19.) than the Averna so it’s probably save to say that at least in Canada it’s fighting for market share on price. That said, Cynar, an artichoke based herbal liquor with syrupy, subtle licorice root type flavours, is the least cost at $14.45 but I find it more in the aperitif category along with Campari, than a digestive.
Occasionally we see in vintages and the like other Italian bitters such as Braulio, made since 1875 from the alpine herbs of Mount Braulio in Valtellina and aged two years in Slavonic oak. Luxardo’s Amaro Abano, is 30% alcohol flavoured with cardamom, cinnamon, orange peels and much more with an unusual smoky, cigar tobacco note.
Hungary also has a bitter tradition and their Unicum (approx. $16. for 500mL.) from the Zwack family is particularly good. Its recipe dates to 1790 and like most bitters has had its share of adventures. During the days of the Hapsburgs, it was the official product of the court. Emperor Joseph II is said to have exclaimed when tasting it “Das ist ein Unicum” giving this name which means unique to it. For a period when the communists ran Hungary, the Zwack factory was nationalized and a forged Unicum produced there. (Janos Zwack had escaped with the original recipe sewn into his jacket lining.) Now it’s back in the hands of the Zwacks who have restored the original product and are now weaning the Hungarians off the sweeter fake that they had been drinking for 40 years. This oak matured tonic, brewed from over 40 herbs and sold in a bottle the shape of an anarchist’s bomb, is complex and classy. It’s recommended before, after and the day after. When I have been skiing in Austria and Switzerland, I have often warmed myself up with a “Jager tea”, a hot beverage amply fortified with Jagermeister. Jagermeister the number one selling bitter in Germany and is now taking San Francisco’s hippest bars by storm. In North America, the company is pushing the product to be consumed chilled and so its found in shooters and cocktails such as with cola, o.j., amaretto, bloody mary mix and so forth. Its taste has been called campari laced with cough syrup but in actual fact I find it lively, light bodied and quite sweet with a herbal, licorice root flavour. It’s 35% alcohol from 56 selected herbs, roots and fruits including saffron and rhubarb root. It sells about one and a half million cases worldwide and is among the top 15 growth brands in the globe in the nineties. In Canada where it sells for about $28., sales are up 35% in 1996. I like it or any other bitters in my morning coffee. Try it – if your experiences are like mine, it will take you back to the days when mother gave you a spoonful of multivitamin syrup with your cereal, which was after all preferable to cod liver oil.
by Margaret Swaine | Aug 26, 1996
Flap, Zap, it’s a Snap to See
by Margaret Swaine
As I sensed the blade cut through my cornea, I knew there was no turning back. The suction device which held my eye steady blurred my vision. Seeing only ghostly figures and pinprick lights, I felt like I was in outer space. For a split second of panic, I wondered what on earth I was doing here. But I knew the answer, and after decades of watching and waiting for science to advance enough, the time had come to go for vision correction surgery.
All of my adult life I have depended upon my “four” eyes to function. And like millions of other North Americans I longed to be free of this unhappy marriage to contacts or glasses. I became a medical report junkie, ingesting every scrap of information about surgical ways to vision acuity. Any decision to slice my eyes up couldn’t be made lightly. Correctable vision is better than none at all. Neither did I like the thought of GASH; the glare, arcs, starbursts, halos and other complications when eye operations don’t go as planned.
A surgical solution to seeing first crossed my mind in the early eighties. A skydiving friend of mine had radial keratotomy (RK) done for sporting reasons and was spectacle free. This procedure which involves making four to eight or more slits around the outside of the cornea, like spokes in the wheel, was the first vision correction method used on mass. I remember seeing news clips of Russians, who pioneered the procedure, lying on human conveyors, passing one after the other under the blade. The cuts are fairly deep, up to 90% of the thickness of the cornea, causing it to flatten enough to improve myopia. (The cornea, a clear dome, acts like a lens and provides most of the focus power of the eyes. When domed incorrectly, light doesn’t focus as it should for clear vision.)
While millions have had this done professing to be happy with the results, I just clipped the RK articles from magazines and held off for more advanced technology. RK weakens the cornea which can lead to progressive flattening hence increasing farsightedness, and makes it more vulnerable to rupture. Judging these and other troubles I’ve read, I feel fortunate to have stayed away from this procedure. Only one doctor in Canada still does RK, according to my medical sources.
Then in 1991 I started to read about laser vision correction. The excimer laser, developed by IBM to etch computer microchips, was discovered to be an excellent tool for removing corneal tissue. It precisely breaks their molecular bonds, thus vaporizes layers of the cornea away without heat damage to the eye. The excimer laser first came into Canada in 1990 as part of a five year national trial approved by Health and Welfare using a procedure called PRK or Photorefractive Keratectomy. One of my clips from an issue of the now defunct Ontario Medicine, wherein I wrote a wine column for doctors, announced this as a Canadian coup as the States chose to withhold approval. This farsightedness on the part of our government gave us a five year head start on the Americans and helped to make our surgeons the world leaders in excimer laser procedures. When the VISX (the first U.S. FDA and Canada Health Protection Branch approved excimer laser manufacturer) recently invited the ten most experienced doctors in the world to a special focus group in France, four were Canadians including Toronto’s own Dr. Sheldon Herzig and Dr. Ray Stein.
I didn’t know this four years ago when I first met the curly haired, boyish looking Dr. Stein at his home in Rosedale. His wife was hosting a “wine” shower for a couple I had brought together in a stroke of match making genius. However after he picked my brain about wine, upon learning he was an ophthalmologist, I picked his about vision correction. He was enthused but I thought I detected a hint of caution about the new procedures.
Then the big boon to public information on medical issues happened. The internet. I went to town around the globe, punching the words PRK and laser eye surgery into a multitude of search engines. I found an incredible amount of information on the net, including many blow by blow testimonials of surgery patients. Or should I say clients – this is elective with costs running $2,000 to $2,700 per eye. One cyber chatter detailed his research into PRK (Photorefractive Keratectomy) versus the newer Lasik (Laser assisted In-situ Keratomileusis). He chose Lasik surgery and filled cyber-space for months with a daily diary of his progress. This lead me to the Herzig Eye Institute’s site. Dr. Herzig who has his practice in The Colonnade on Bloor, is a major proponent of Lasik, the latest technological advance in laser surgery. He began using this procedure in 1994 and has since treated thousands of patients with it.
As fate would have it I bumped into Dr. Stein this spring at the Summerhill LCBO. By this time Dr. Stein had performed over 10,000 laser vision procedures with 150 of his patients eye doctors from across North America and published the first text book on the use of the excimer laser. Finally I felt confident that vision correction was safe enough for me. I booked into the Bochner Institute on Prince Arthur to see if I was a good laser candidate.
My eyes clocked in at left -2.50 diopters and right -6.00, well within the treatable range. (Doctors differ in opinion, but Dr. Stein believes the range to be +6.00 to -12.00 D using Lasik.) Refractive errors are measured in diopters. (Diopters do not have an absolute relation to a Snellen eye chart in that 20/40 does not necessarily mean an error of +/-1 D.) The lucky souls with no refractive error (emmetropes) have a diopter of 0. The range for vision errors is between +15 and 0 (hyperopes or the farsighted) and 0 and -25 (myopes or the nearsighted), with the +6 to -6 encompassing over 96% of the over 70 million North Americans with a sight problem. Lasers are now capable of treating myopia, hyperopia and some astigmatisms. Other tests were done to ensure my eyes were healthy and without irregular astigmatism.
Inflammation Is The Causal Link Between Psoriasis brand viagra canada And Cardiovascular diseases becomes apparent. The drugs start acting cialis generic canada within 30 minutes of intake. Simply put, this is the misalignment of our spinal column. viagra store in india Atria are the blood receiving chambers and the order viagra prescription ventricles are full, an electrical signal travels along the ventricular nerve branches and causes them to contract. With up to 6 D of myopia, there is a 96% chance of obtaining 20/40 or better vision within 2 to 4 weeks with PRK. However with over 5 D, Lasik is often recommended over PRK because there is less chance of haze. I was glad of this. I’m also a big sissy and knew from reading testimonials with Lasik there’s no pain, while with PRK discomfort ranges from a grit in the eye feeling to outright hurting for several days. With PRK the epithelium, or top layer of cornea, is scraped away and for many this causes some pain (controllable with anesthetic drops) until it grows back. With Lasik a flap is cut in it which is folded back into place once the laser has done its job. However this procedure is much more dependent on the surgeon’s operating skills, than the computerized precision of PRK. Dr. Stein as Chief of Ophthalmology at Scarborough General has spent years doing cornea surgery and transplants. I certainly felt safe in his hands. And if anything went wrong he’s the guy who knows how to fix things.
Alas as we age, sometime after we hit forty, most of us have to don reading glasses. This natural hardening of the lens with age, called presbyopia is not reversable. I chose to deal with this eventuality by leaving my left eye untouched. Its more moderate myopia gives that eye a natural focal point good for reading. (The optimal myopia range for forestalling reading glasses is approximately -1.5 to -2.5. This is the singular advantage we myopes have over the 20/20’s.) Around 10% of myopes, elect like me to have monovision, where one eye is fixed to focus well in the distance and the other left untreated or deliberately undercorrected for reading.
The decisions made, I booked a surgery time. One week before I had to remove my soft contacts to allow my corneas to stabilize in shape. That was the hardest part. Glasses just don’t correct my vision sufficiently. I was covered in bruises from encounters with walls and furniture by the time I returned to the Bochner on the appointed day. I wore comfortable street cloths but no make-up as advised.
My eyes were checked again, including the computerized keratography to check for astigmatism. Then I sat down to a cookie and coffee as I read the consent form. It drove home the risks I was taking, almost driving me home. I knew Dr. Stein hadn’t had seen an infection in five years and only had a 2 to 3% retreatment rate for his tens of thousands of laser procedures. That’s what kept me there. But in the hands of the wrong guy, the flap could be incomplete, separated, too thin, too thick or otherwise messed up and so my vision. Then from the laser, GASH is a possibility. I signed, then swallowed my valium. Finally after drops were put into my eye, the moment of reckoning.
Walking into the laser room was like going to the dentist. People in white coats gathered around me while I sat in a reclining chair. But instead of a rubber dam popping up my teeth while my mouth strained open, a suction ring exposed my eye, Clockwork Orange style. Then the slash, followed by 54 seconds of zaps. It sounds scary, but in fact took two painless minutes. I was awake and listening to the doc gently explain his every motion, while asking me to watch a pin of light. I walked out of the room able to see better out of the operated eye than I could when I walked in.
All post surgery patients are advised to go home to rest. The heady mixture of part relief all had gone well with part valium made me feel too good for that. I joined my friends who came by to take me home after the operation for pasta at Fieramosca next door. A few hours later I took the Tylenol #3 I was provided with just in case, and crashed.
It was the post operative days which were the most frustrating. My vision tested the next day at between 20/30 and 20/40 (around – 0.75 D) which was a vast improvement but still too blurry for me. My poor car sustained an appropriately bright red injury after an encounter with another in a gas station. Anything at reading distance was completely washed out of focus. These temporary problems can all be expected but until actually experienced it’s hard to imagine the impact. Vision, depth perception and focus can fluctuate for days or weeks. It was fortunate I had only one eye done. Reading is as necessary as water to a journalist.
Finally two weeks later I tested 20/20 with a + 0.5 overcorrection. While I could read the Snellen charts perfectly well, Dr. Stein looked fuzzy, albeit happy in my eyes. The eye can be expected to regress slightly over the two to three months it takes to stabilize. My vision was exactly where the doctor wanted it. (The flap itself takes about six months to complete the scar tissue that adheres it solidly back in place.) Meanwhile when I get up in the morning I don’t bump into walls.
All my four eyed friends have stopped, at least temporarily, asking for my advice on wine. They want to know about laser surgery instead. I say with mild myopia (under -2.5D) leave well enough alone or try monovision. Don’t like it, it’s easy to do the other eye. It’s optimal for old age – you could avoid reading glasses well into your sixties. For those who see less clearly, definitely go for it and pick Lasik. But don’t buy a bargain special, like I saw advertised in the Globe. Make sure you pick a skilled surgeon with plenty of practice with the blade. Lasik is several hundred dollars more per eye than PRK but since it leaves the epithelium intact, the eye heals faster, vision improvement is almost instant and there’s less GASH hazards with higher corrections. (There’s a site on the internet “EyeKnowWhy Refractive Surgeons Wear Glasses” chock full of gory details about these two surgeries.) If you’re a perfectionist, forget all of this. The goal of this surgery is to decrease dependence on corrective lenses. No doctor will guarantee you can throw them away. If you can’t live with uncertainty don’t. Though prognosis is good, PRK with only ten years of results and Lasik with but five don’t yet have long-term human subject results.
Bottom line. After all I have experienced and learned, would I do it again? Absolutely. Same doctor, same procedure. My vision’s a far sight better.
Dated August 26, 1996
by Margaret Swaine | Aug 1, 1994
Southern Spain Surprises (first appeared in Ontario Medicine)
by Margaret Swaine
I spent the first night in southern Spain in a five star golf resort on the Costa Calida or “hot coast”, the next in a cave in the hills of Galera. In this part of Spain, once you are off the beaten track of beaches and seaside resorts, the diversity is a surprise to even a as seasoned a travel journalist as me. I was hoping to unearth the unusual, and I wasn’t disappointed.
After a long overseas flight, followed several hours later by a shorter hop to Murcia, arriving at the Hotel Principe Felipe at the Hyatt La Manga Club Resort is like stepping onto an oasis. It’s a 1,400 acre resort with three 18-hole championship golf courses, including one of the largest and oldest in Spain. La Manga also has an 18-court tennis centre with a gymnasium and spa, a beach club for water sports, a soccer field, crown green bowling and equestrian centre.
Along with the deluxe hotel, there are 72 apartments ranging from studios to three bedroom for those who want to do their own cooking and entertaining. Within the hotel there is Amapola, an all day restaurant serving Spanish and seafood specialties, a lobby bar, pool bar and Spike’s Jazz Bar for dancing and video entertainment.
However it largely for the golf that people come here. It serves as the base for the Professional Golfers Association of Europe and its courses have been the setting for many PGA and Spanish Open events in recent years. Its South Course was redesigned in 1993 by American golf star Arnold Palmer. The latest acquisition, La Pincesa was designed by golf architect Dave Thomas to provide the thinking golfer with a new challenge amongst the pine forest.
As Spain is the host country for the 1997 Ryder Cup, La Manga is offering pre and post golf packages surrounding the event. Included in the packages is complimentary transfer to or from Marbella (close to the Ryder Cup site), lunch in Granada and entrance to the famous historical monument La Alhambra.
I found the room I stayed in to be top class and the view of the pool and golf courses from the window absolutely lovely, especially as the sun settled down on the distant Mar Menor. For anyone bitten by the golf bug, this place is a must visit. Unfortunately for me there was no time for the links, but on my wish list is a return trip during the Ryder Cup.
Next day started with the 60 kilometre drive to Murcia, the capital of the region and a commercial centre of shops, government buildings and the like. It’s an easy town to walk around and has touches of charm in the older areas with their cobble stone streets and lively restaurants. Just 23 kilometres away is the Archena Spa, specializing in treatment of rheumatism, respiratory and dermatological problems. The oldest Spa in Spain, it dates back to the Romans who discovered its thermal spring, which soldiers, knights and saints have bathed in throughout the centuries to cure their ailments. Today the Spa has a medical team of specialists in hydrotherapy and physiotherapy and it attracts many European seniors on government sponsored treatments. With all its naso-pharyngeal spraying machines and sonic sprays, I was surprised to see outside the treatment rooms, much smoking. Seems you just can’t separate Europeans from their cigarettes for long.
Below ground where the waters emerge at 51.7°C are steaming passageways leading to rooms where people are plastered with mud, massaged, bathed and blasted with water jets. In the hot foggy air, attendants marched about in whites while their patients drifted around in towels. As an outside observer, it appeared to me as surreal and medieval though I was quite tempted at the thought of spending a few days having stress pounded out of me.
Back to Murcia for a typical lunch (the mealtime starts at 2:30 or so and runs until 4:00) in the Meliá Hotel of rice or “arroz” dishes, one with snails, one with asparagus and other vegetables and the third with rabbit. While I know Paella, the rice dish of Valencia with meat and fish cooked in a large pan, these were new to me, and equally delicious. The chef paraded the three enormous frying pans around the restaurant for all to see and then served up customers’ requests. Chef Juan Antonio Herraiz Herraiz kindly gave me the recipes – now I just have to brush up on my Spanish and buy a paella pan.
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It was a further 37 kilometres to Anguilas, a small seaside resort with subtropical climate, volcanic outcroppings and 35 wild but unpolluted clean beaches. A pretty town with its Spanish flavour well maintained, I saw little of the tourist overrun which affects many places on the Costa del Sol.
The thrill of the day however was arriving in Galera, a town where the Spanish have lived in caves since 1492. (It’s said the Moors dug out the homes and lived there first.) I was greeted by Miguel Rodriques Gomes and his wife Dolores Venteo Quiles, a good-looking, couple in their late thirties, both musicians, who decided to fix up the family caves for tourists to rent. The rock here is very hard and to add even a bathtub took them a week with a pneumonic drill. They spent four years to get their “rural apartments” up and ready for business putting in electricity, running water and a road which leads from the town up to the top of the high hill where their caves are located.
I road up on donkey through the steep narrow streets, and while I have done plenty of horseback riding in my younger days, I did feel a little trepidation. As the lights of the town twinkled below, darkness grew, and temperature fell, I finally arrived at the whitewashed walls of my cave. Inside were five small rooms – a kitchen at the entrance, a small living room with fireplace and couch, one double bed room, one with single bed and a bathroom. Despite the low ceilings, the space cozy and I soon dispelled the damp by lighting a fire. It was a romantic setting with its hand carved walls and furniture, perfect for snuggling up to a partner (which unfortunately for me wasn’t part of the arrangement). The silence was as solid as the walls.
Later that evening (Spanish dinner rarely starts before 9:30) I walked down to the restaurant Zalona run by the couple to sup on lata, a leg of lamb cooked for in a wood oven hours in a pan with potatoes, garlic, olive oil, thyme and lime. It was accompanied with roasted peppers, tomatoes, a sampling of the ham hanging aging for one and a half years in the door frame, and house made rosé wine. The joint, dark timbered, white walled with a fire burning away against the chill, was packed with ruddy faced town folks. Their lined faces told of toll in fields which had scarcely a drop of water in two years.
The next day I travelled to Gradix, another town, much less rural, with a cave hotel run by Tony Requena, head of the tourist office there. He was born in a cave like the Galera couple, and after living a stretch in England, decided to return to cave dwelling and expand his father’s nine caves into a modern hotel called Pedro Antonio de Alarcón after the writer. When completed there will be 52 caves of one to three bedrooms for rent. The windows of many look onto the Sierra Nevada ski resort an hour away by car.
I took the Gradix express, a little Disney style train, which runs for the enjoyment of tourists and school children through the old town and past the cave dwellings. The town was more fascinating and unusual than any fantasy world. Lunch at Hotel Comercio restaurant featured typical dishes of migas (fried bread soaked in vinegar water), conjeo en ajillo (rabbit in red pepper garlic sauce) and lomo en orza (pork cooked in a clay pot).
Most of my final days on this trip were spent in Granada. I wanted to hear authentic Flamenco and of course visit Alhambra, a monument of Islamic art, buildings and gardens which sits on top Assabica hill dominating the city. Even the rain didn’t dampen the appeal of the military citadel or Alcazaba built in the ninth century, the intricate artwork of the inner courtyards and the colourful gardens across the bridge in Generalife, the leisure and recreation area of the Nasrid Kings.
In downtown Granada I walked the old streets of Alcaiceria which once were the Arab market, and shopped. Later I wandered along the cobbled slopes of El Albaizin into the street mazes of Sacromonte.
When it finally came time to take the drive to Malaga for the flight home I took a route by whitewashed hilltop towns, such as Salobreña and then passed the string of seaside towns. The mad tourist bustle of Torremolinos, where I overnighted, made me long for a cave.
