Everyones doing these new food and manga face memes over on LJ, so I figured I’d participate for once, since they’re actually kinda neat.
So to start off, here’s my cute little manga avatar:
Here’s the link to where you can get your own
And here’s that food meme:
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.
1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros (I don’t really get how you could have NOT eaten this - it’s sooooo yummy!)
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (Seriously guys. One of the best meats I’ve ever had!)
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp (I may have had this, but I can’t remember for sure - this is what you get when you have gourmets for grandparents - a faulty memory of things you may or may not have tried when you were four)
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush (there should be a separate way to indicate things I make really good at home - this is one)
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras (Gah. I’m missing out on all the good stuff. Somebody rectify this!)
24. Rice and beans (One of my favourites, actually - all though I prefer to call it rice and peas)
25. Brawn, or head cheese (This grosses me out. I will not eat it. It’s almost more the gelatinous consistency than the actually head-meatiness though. And the fact that I once saw a whole pigs head encased in one once. *shudder*)
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper (not that bad if you stay away from the seeds)
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters (This is a recent one, thanks Vivian!)
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi (I’ve had lassi - just not salted)
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (I love cognac - but I have never, nor will I ever, smoke)
37. Clotted cream tea (I fell in love with clotted cream in England)
38. Vodka jelly (Jello shots. We were all teenagers once.)
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat (One of my favourite childhood memories is delicious Jamaican curried goat at a friends house)
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu (Too much risk involved. Read too many horror stories. No thank you.)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin (it is the main ingredient in Kaopectate guys. We’ve all probably had it).
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs (I feel like I have had this, and that it tasted like chicken - I can’t be sure though)
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette (I’ve had wild boar sausage, in natural casing - that’s intestines - which is very similar, so I’m going to count this one).
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini (I’m kinda sad about this one. I’ve had roe, of course, in sushi and tarmosolata but not caviar, and no blini - anybody know a good Russian place in Toronto?)
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill (It’s not so much the concept, as the possibility for nasty parasites. No thank you.)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. (I wish! - although I have been to a 5 diamond AAA restaurant - which is actually almost the same thing)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa (I want to change my status on this one ASAP! - anyone know where to get it?)
94. Catfish (not that great. Kinda fishy)
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor (I’ve had Lobster, and I’ve had Thermidor, just not both at the same time)
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake (I would actually love to try this!)
I got 67 or 70/100 - depending on how many points you give me for things that I have only half tried. Yeah, that’s right. I rock.
Other than the four I crossed out, I’m planning on trying all of these, at least before I die. Probably (hopefully) way before then.
UPDATE! Liam reminded me that we had Lapsang Souchong at a Tibetan restaurant a couple years ago. I am up to 71. Liam says we probably also had sea urchin in sushi, which is possible. So it’s a tentative 72.
My first little garden harvest has come in, and I’ve found a couple of collections of recipes in the last couple of days that are going to be indispensable for cooking up my fresh and (very) local produce.
They are both by the New York Times’ Mark Bittman who first came to my attention when he proclaimed that the best chefs don’t need a fancy kitchen filled with pricey gadgets to cook great food - a thesis me and Alton Brown can totally get behind (I’ve actually given away bread makers, George Foreman grills and food processors - they just take up too much space).
The first is this handy compilation of 101 quick and easy picnic recipes. Each recipe is about 2 sentences long and they all sound either deliciously unconventional, or at least, painless in their simplicity.
I think I might just start making my way through them - they sound perfect for avoiding actually ‘cooking’ in this heat that’s finally decided to come and stay.
Then there’s the smaller collection of recipes attacthed to this review of a delightful sounding vegetarian restaurant in the south of France. Good, hearty veggie recipes are so hard to find, but these sound incredibly comforting and satisfying.
In particular, the recipe for swiss chard stuffed with risotto is going to get some use, I think, what with my bumper crop of beautiful, neon-tinged bright-lights chard.
So we got back yesterday - that last day of driving is always a real doozy. Going up can seem like a breeze, but no matter how long the drive home is (and admittedly Thunder Bay is 15 hours away from Toronto - that’s a very long drive by anyone’s standards) it always takes way, way too long.
Sooo…More pictures!
This is Liam’s parent’s big doggie (she’s half border collie and half poodle). I think she looks exactly like Sprocket from Fraggle Rock. She doesn’t ever stop moving, and has a serious oral fixation. She’s only trying to tell us about them rascally fraggles though.
We spent much of the week helping to get things ready for a good friend’s wedding on the weekend. These were the crafty little centerpieces - button flowers - I spent a good few hours making dozens of them (they were also the brides bouquet and the grooms boutonniere)..
Besides the buttons, and a gnome theme, there was also a Finland meets Scotland thing going on at this wedding (the groom being of Scottish decent, the bride being of Finnish).
This is one of my favourite shots of the day - a group of ‘Finns’ (denoted by their Nokia boots, fur hats, and ski gear) kidnapped the ‘bride’ (or in this case, the groom, who everyone was calling the bride, since he had the much more expensive outfit on - traditional highland garb doesn’t come cheap).
Nothing to worry about though, simply an old Finnish tradition called “the stealing of the bride”. All the bride had to do was prove herself worthy of marriage to her groom - by answering a bit of trivia about him - and he was returned safe and sound.
Then we broke out a bottle of 12 year scotch and passed it around.
Yeah, it was a pretty good time.
We’re alive and well in Northern Ontario. Here’s some proof:
I think every person in Canada should drive up the spectacular Trans Canada Highway once in their life (it’s our version of Route 66 or, even California’s famous #1). We’re lucky enough to have taken the Toronto to Thunder Bay stretch multiple times at this point.
That, my friends, is a persian. Regional Canadian cuisine at it’s finest (and reason # 1 why I laugh when editorials try to claim we have no - culture here in this country).
I’m pretty sure there’s nothing better on the face of the planet than finding finely crafted brews and burgers, at a local roadhouse - after a long day spent floating down a crystal-clear, clean, northern river on a raft made of inner tubes. Did I mention there was not a cloud in the sky? No? Well, there wasn’t. Um, yeah, perfection.
More proof of us in our natural state to be found on Flickr.
One of the best things about moving into an old house, is being pleasantly surprised by what pops up come spring. The downstairs neighbor told me that there were lilies next to the sidewalk leading to the laneway - but that didn’t really prepare me for what started blooming this last couple weeks.
This is some crazy collection of multi-coloured lilies - colours I’ve never seen before like lemon yellow, and crimson red. There are at least ten different varieties of them - many even have beautifully contrasting stamens - and there’s yet more that have yet to bloom (I’m really hoping I don’t miss anything interesting when we go on vacation - but I inevitably will).
Well, we’re still pretty busy ’round here, especially since we are leaving for a bit of vacation soon (nothing too exciting, just returning to Liam’s hometown for a week to attend one of his oldest friend’s wedding).
We spent the other night on the set of a TV show, which was pretty cool. Even cooler was seeing a good friend, an old friend, take charge and kick ass like the awesome producer she is.
Sometimes it seems like just yesterday that I was just a kid, and now my friends are lawyers, and producers and doctors. It’s weird to know real, live, important grown ups. It means I must be one myself (scary).
Anyway, I might try apprenticing on set in the art department - which has always been one of my (admittedly many) dreams. I even took a course or two in set design.
Talk turned to the completely unglamorous work that goes on behind the scenes of these things, and it was mentioned that one should be prepared to get covered in all manner of messes at this particular shoot.
Of course, only I would turn that conversation into an opportunity to wear a cute outfit… But of course I did.
People are always surprised to find that I have no fear of getting messy - but you can’t do things like art or cooking or gardening without getting a little dirt under your nails, a little flour on your collar and a little paint in your hair.
You just have to prepare yourself for a mess - and that includes wearing proper attire.
So at the moment, I’m dreaming of cute kerchiefs and cuffed coveralls, worn Rosie the Riveter style. Something like this gorgeous little pic from this months Marie Claire (found via Jezebel, of course):
I’ve even found a company that makes adorable coveralls, specifically fitted for women, named after Rosie (which is pretty awesome).
Of course, Bluelines loves a good coverall too, and actually did a more stylish spin on them, turning an old pair into a cute little shirt dress.
Which is probably more the route I’ll take. Particularly the scrounging thrift and surplus stores for a deal part - because I’d rather not get cement, and mud, and wood glue, and paint all over something I paid more than twenty bucks for. It’s kinda the point of wearing coveralls in the first place.
People in this town keep talking about gentrification.
The tendency is to automatically decry it as a very bad thing.
Of course it’s not exactly all that bad. It can actually be a very good thing. There are many areas that could use a little gentrifying here and there. I don’t see what could possibly be wrong with taking a dangerous, decrepit neighborhood and turning it on it’s head. What’s so bad about taking something that’s broken, and fixing it?
That was why, when we moved back to Toronto 3 years ago, we moved to the edge of Parkdale.
It was an up and comer, a place that had potential, but was still rough around the edges.
Artists lived there, it was cheap, it was cool, it was filled with young people, there was lots to see and do - there was always something interesting going on.
Unfortunately, we weren’t the only ones who noticed something interesting going on there.
In the two years we lived there, we saw that neighborhood turned on it’s head - and the problem was, it was already gentrified enough when we got there. There was already a Starbucks. There was already some fancy lofts. There was already a Drake hotel. Realtors were just beginning to snap up empty lots to develop into boutique condos.
I think the thing is, there’s a possibility for a neighborhood to go beyond just being gentrified. There’s a possibility for it to just turn into a different version of what it was in the first place - a dangerous place, where you don’t want hang around - let alone live.
Which is why I sighed when I read this article about my old digs - complete with a picture of the nice lady with the cute dog (a fox terrier, just like Asa from the Thin man movies) who ran the vintage furniture store down the street. It pretty much sums up all the reasons we moved away from Parkdale (or Queen West West or as they’re calling it now “Beaconsfield Village” - not that I ever heard it called that when I lived there 9 short months ago - which makes me pretty sure it’s solely a Realtor invention for marketing purposes, just like nearby “Liberty Village”).
We saw it happen. We saw the suburban twits drive down from the suburbs in their SUVs every weekend and turn a friendly, bohemian community into a coked-out, drunken orgy (and I do mean that literally, as there’s now a swingers club on the block). Now that it’s started, there’s pretty much no way of stopping it.
I guess the only hope is that once the condos are built and filled with people, some actual infrastructure starts being developed to prevent the place from going to blight (although I’ve seen brand new condos go to blight before, on the cusp of the last economic downturn).
But, for the moment, it’s a bad scene. The neighborhood has become, once again, a place that’s not very livable.
And even if we occasionally miss some of the vibrancy (and the Black Dog video store) we’re pretty glad we got the hell out of there.
The complete opposite side of town is seeming like a pretty nice place to be, at the moment.
A couple weeks ago we cleaned out my grandfathers house (he died earlier this spring).
I dug these two awesome vintage fans out of the dumpster because I loved their art-deco lines - and you know how I am with beautiful vintage machines (typewriters, alarm clocks, transistor radios…). We plugged them in when we got home and found: they still work! They work so well, we won’t need to get an air conditioner anytime soon. I feel pretty good about rescuing them from becoming landfill.
It’s very hot today, so me and the cats are taking full advantage of them.
The two chairs you see (one danish teak, and one velvet club) are also inheritances. Also pretty awesome.
It’s strange to have had grandparents with such good taste. Stranger still that they’re no longer around.
Well that was a pretty good weekend.
One of those spur of the moment collections of days that just comes together perfectly.
What made it so good?
-
Seeing Wall-E. So good. Soooooo good! I am actually going to go ahead and say: best Pixar film ever. Ever!
Why so good? The characterizations, I think, mainly. The gifted animators managed to squeeze emotions out of very limited creatures (simplistic robots with incredibly small vocabularies).
And what emotions! These simple little characters with big personalities made it easy to tell a very small, simple story - with an epic, intergalactic, post-apocalyptic scale - and that gave the movie a huge emotional impact. Don’t be fooled by the cutesy robots in the kiddie cartoon: the movie is intense.
-
Shopping! Yes, I’m a girl… But this has more to do with some rather male-like efficiency in procuring what I needed (an outfit for an upcoming summer wedding) in a minimum amount of time, for a minimum amount of money.
It’s sale time, pretty much everywhere, which meant after only an hour or two that mission was accomplished, which is especially impressive given that I needed a new bra to go under a new dress. Bra shopping is probably the single most depressing regularly occurring event in a girls life (with the possible exception of swimsuit shopping), so getting it over and done with in record time was pretty satisfying.
-
Impromptu dinner party! We threw one at the last minute (we gave people like, 18 hours facebook notice) and: People! Actually! Showed! Up!
Liam made vast quantities of sushi, we all drank plum wine and sake, hundreds of edamame were popped out of their pods, I got to make new friends and catch up with some old ones I hadn’t seen in too, too long, and a good time was had by all.
-
We finally met our neighbors. Meeting new people is always hard, especially for us (me and Liam are both kinda shy - Liam especially).
We were the only childless couple, which was a little odd, and meeting and befriending all those hip, young Torontonian parents I’ve read so much about in Toronto Life was a little surreal, but cute toddlers and frisky dogs are the best icebreakers, as is a good cheeseburger, and friendly people. Plus, I’ve learned that a love of good food is universal, so my knowledge of the 100 mile diet, organic food boxes, and my own little organic vegetable patch came in handy.
Really, I think we came to the realization that we had more in common with these new people (minus the many, many, babes-in-arms) than we do with many of our friends right now. We love our friends, but we’re kinda on a different life path than many of them are right now.
We are building a home, and a life together, where most people we know are still focusing on the next concert, the next party, the next new toy. It’s kinda nice to be around people who don’t think it’s crazy to be looking inward, instead of out; to throwing dinner parties at home, instead of getting drunk at a club. It’s no judgment call on the people who like that sort of thing, but I know that I get so much more enjoyment out of sitting at home in front of a good movie, piled next to loving kitties and boy, tummy filled with a home cooked meal. I can’t imagine wanting anything else.
You’re probably wondering what my garden looks like right around now.
Pretty good, actually!
That’s my side of the garden on the right there (the other side with the big potato plants are my downstairs neighbors - and I didn’t think to plant potatoes, so I’m pretty jealous).
We’ve been getting a lot of rain, so I haven’t even had to do much work. Just the occasional weeding.
The only veggie I worry about is my heirloom carrots, as they got a little trampled, but even my heirloom tomatoes (which I was worried about, because I started them indoors a little late) seem to be getting big and healthy and growing flowers.
My deckside, container-bound cherry tomatoes are doing even better - they already have tons of fruit on them that should be edible pretty soon.
My little strawberry plants are having a bit of a struggle though. We have raccoon visitors, at night, and one of the plants has been dug up a couple times now. I’m keeping it inside during the night time, but I think some stronger measures might have to be taken for when the tomatoes ripen.
I’m already growing mint, which is supposed to deter raccoons - but it doesn’t seem to be working at all. Next up is tucking rags soaked in ammonia around the place. I don’t want to use cayenne, even though it seems the cheapest, easiest option, because it can irritate the eyes of animals - cats in addition to raccoons, - and my catnip attracts the occasional kitty visitor, so that would be no good.
My pink champagne scented geranium is blooming though, and as you can see here, the blooms are as bubbly a pink as the name implies. Gotta love a double duty plant that smells as good as it looks!
There are even more pictures of growing things on flickr, if you’re interested. Just click through any of the above photos to see more.
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