I was uploading pictures, when I realised I actually have a lot to share, even if I haven’t been sharing. It gets like that in summer I guess - too busy making up for our vitamin d deficiencies to spend much time on the internet.
Well, in between getting my hair-cut and a yearly physical (and having strange hands on pretty much every part of my body) I went into one of those discount housewares stores, downtown. They had a whole display of barbecue stuff, and mixed in with it was the cutest, teensiest little barbecue.
It’s a Sagaform bucket grill. It’s available from a bunch of different online retailers. Apartment Therapy recently gave it a pretty goood review. In fact, we had first seen it at an expensive gourmet shop around the corner from us here. It was 30 dollars there (not bad) and, being barbecueless we were considering getting it.
It was 10 dollars at the discount shop. There were also a bunch of pretty, matching, off-white, Scandinavian designed tools for it too. Also at a deep discount. Score. Altogether I spent 25 dollars, including tax on pretty much everything I needed. Awesome.
Last night was pretty hot. I did not feel like cooking indoors.
Instead we hunted down a bag of charcoal (not as easy as it sounds on the cusp of Canada Day weekend) and a terra-cotta tray to put the little guy on, to keep him from burning the wood on the top of my little cafe table (my genius idea BTW, and I highly recommend it - it holds the bbq in place and catches all the ash to boot - and it was cheap!).
Then we hunted down something to cook. There was not a lot left at the grocery store (again, Canada day weekend and all) but some nicely marbled striploin was on sale. Third score of the week!
The little bucket grill was pretty easy to light. There’s a bucket inside of the bucket proper that sits on top of a little second grill which is where you put the charcoal. This keeps the air circulating around the hot bits, lets the ash fall into the bottom of the bucket proper, and keeps that pretty off-white finish from burning (or from burning you - the exterior actually stayed suprisingly cool).
Altogether, it’s a deceptively simple, but clever design (them Scandinavians are good at that sort of thing it seems).
After doing a little research I learned that lighter fluid, beyond being scary, is also just generally no good. It makes food taste like chemicals. So instead we used these wax and sawdust things we usually have around when we need to start a campfire. I lit it and piled about a dozen bricks of charcoal on top of it, and that seemed to do the trick. After about 10 minutes I rearranged them to make sure they were all getting evenly singed, and then after another 10 minutes I mixed them all up, popped on the grill top, checked the heat with my hand (3 Mississippis and I had to pull it away - that means it’s hot enough) and started barbecuing.
A little while later, we had a delicious steak dinner, with some grilled asparagus and green-garlic couscous, and a salad of simply dressed tomatoes. It was pretty perfect.
Today I cleaned up the grill - everything washed right off him, good as new. I popped back the little legs on the bucket, and tucked it into a shelf. It’s like last night never even happened. He’s so compact, I’m thinking we can definitely take him camping with us later on in the summer.
If you’ve got a small deck like we do (and if you can hunt one down) this little barbecues’ going to be your new best friend. Even if you don’t have any outdoor space (in our last apartment we didn’t have any), this guys worth checking out to take camping, or to the beach.
He’s a bit more complicated than a gas grill would be, but the flavor and convenience (not to mention the price, and beautiful design) far outweighs all that in my mind. He’ll look cute sitting on your patio, but he can also be folded up and hidden away. Plus, he’s a whole lot of fun! I’m looking forward to using him all summer, but first we’re heading up to my family’s cottage for the weekend.
It will be nice to get away from the city heat - if it doesn’t rain on us all weekend.
I’ve made a few gentle upgrades to the blog - it should look a lot better in Firefox (3.0!) now. Plus I upgraded to WordPress 2.5 - and it’s pretty awesome too. Much more fun to use (of course much of the upgradiness is relegated to the back-end that I see - not the front-end that you see - so you’re just going to have to take my word on this).
I am actually up-to-date for once! We’ll see how long this lasts (likely, not very long - I am lazy when it comes to these things).
So upgrading = picture of cat. I think this is part of the ritual at this point, right? Or they kick you out of the blogosphere? Or something?
Also gentle: Piglet’s eyes. They make me cry, they are so sweet. Look at them! Weep tears of cuteness!
I don’t get how the Euro’s are doing it, but it’s getting to the point where I’m not really bothering to listen to music if it didn’t come from a country where they eat a lot of smoked fish.
Alphabeat are makers of such music. There are pretty much a billion ways I could describe them, so I’m just going to mention the most fun ones:
A Scandinavian S Club 7 with Cyndi Lauper meets George Micheal vocals? Sure.
The Thrills - but from Denmark instead of Ireland and obsessed with New Wave instead of Surf Rock? Yep, that one’s good.
Infectiously-sugar-coated, eighties-pop-tinged, happy-music from the land of modernist teak furniture? That pretty much sums it up, actually.
They also have a pretty cool typographic motif going on, not to mention the cute outfit factor (them being Dansk and all, it’s pretty high).
I dare you to watch this video and not get into a cheery mood.
A well-dressed, well-sauced socialite with a equally well-sauced husband, who trade witty repartee like it’s going to be prohibited shortly, accompanied by the darlinglist dog in all of Hollywood while solving mysteries with aplomb.
We watched the Thin Man last night, and I want to be Nora when I grow up. Liam, you can be Nick (and don’t tell me being a booze-soaked private detective doesn’t appeal to you - it’s only your lifelong dream). Should I remind you that Dame Maggie Smith and David Niven parodied them in Murder By Death? Wouldn’t you like to be parodied by David Niven when you grow up?
I find the Fox Terrier especially dreamy. That little dog was twice a co-star of Cary Grant and is regularly an answer in the New York Times crosswords. That’s pretty much the finest pedigree there is as far as I’m concerned. When we finally live in a place where we can get a dog, I think I want one.
In my little post on being well-read and well-traveled, and the overabundance of value we’ve put on it (I’ve known people who’ve gotten better marks ’cause they taught English in Japan, and better jobs cause they’ve spent a year in Europe) I mistakenly typed contentious, when I MEANT conscientious. Quite the typo.
Really though, I think if you want to be an interesting person, both are pretty important.
You should have an open mind, yes, you should be a nice person, yes.
But you should also be willing and able to stand your ground, and question others grounds.
There’s nothing wrong with being critical. We (in North America especially) need to get over the fear of being “mean” when we decide to examine something’s merits - and losses.
More than the value of just being honest (which I have gained more loyal friends from being, than lost - at this point, people actually hunt me down because they know I’m going to tell them the truth) none of us will go anywhere, and none of us will succeed if we don’t look our own successes and failures square in the jaw and examine them thoroughly.
After all, if you don’t know how you’ve failed, how are you supposed to understand where those failures came from in the first place? How are you supposed to fix the problem? How are you supposed to make things right?
It should be noted, however, that a careful warts-and-all examination of something, is VERY different from just launching into something’s (or especially someone’s) perceived flaws completely unprovoked.
That actually is just being mean. And it’s usually only done in order to boost one’s own very low self esteem. Try to avoid that.
Do I even need to explain to you how awesome this is? Awesome. Buckets of awesome. Unfortunately it is also millions of dollars worth of awesome. Those are swanky digs, even without the fact that everything in every room is a custom designed clue.
My grandmother on my moms side was Scottish. So I feel some sort of kinship with my matrilineage whenever I make shortbread - which is probably one of the reasons (however subconscious) I made shortbread for my Indian themed, Mother’s Day tea last month.
In fact, my grandmother could be said to have been one of the biggest reasons I enjoy tea parties so much - I inherited her fancy dishes including a 20 piece tea service (including the cup and saucer I used in this picture).
My recipe is usually pretty plain and traditional, but a little touch of spice never hurt anybody, and the same could be said of shortbread. The little decoration of brightly hued fennel candy (which might be a bit hard to find, but check your nearest Little India) is what really makes it special though.
chai shortbread
1 cup soft butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup rice flour
2 tbsp chai spice mix
2 tbsp candied fennel
Cream butter, sugar and vanilla.
Mix flours and spice mix in a separate bowl.
Combine butter mix and flour mix and knead with hands until it comes together into a crumbly dough.
Refrigerate for at least half an hour.
Roll to 1/2 cm thick and cut into desired shapes (I used a small juice glass to get rounds).
Sprinkle each cookie round with a few candied anise seeds and bake @ 300 F for 15 minutes.
chai spice mix
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 tsp fennel seed
1/2 tsp coriander seed
1/2 tsp dry ginger
1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
1 cardamom pod
4 peppercorns
Put all ingredients in a spice grinder, (clean) coffee grinder or mortar and pestle and grind ’til fragrant and powdery.
Well, it’s the first long hot weekend of a long hot summer, so we are going to take advantage of it.
Our weekend is going to be positively packed with farmers markets, and golfing, and shopping, and eating, and probably a little bit of gardening (although, other than a little watering, things are looking pretty self-sustaining at the moment).
To celebrate, you should watch this clip of a pretty good old movie (with a script by Billy Wilder, and opening credits by Saul Bass - how can you go wrong?) about the beginning of another long hot summer in the city (just ignore the slightly racially offensive bit in the middle - kinda hard to find an old movie that doesn’t have a couple moments like those, unfortunately).
And then Marilyn Monroe shows up. You should really hunt this down and watch the rest of it though. It’s one of those classics that’s a classic for a reason.
This is the best outfit I have ever seen on a celebrity (Lily Allen, BTW).
Pink!
Turquoise!
Sparkles!
Bambi!
Who’s her stylist? Hello Kitty?
It’s all sooooo cute! If i had gotten married at the age of 11, I probably would have worn exactly that, pink hair and all. Actually, I will probably still wear something like that when I do get married in the next couple years. I just can’t help it, when I see vibrant pastels like that all in one place, it just makes me happy. It must take me back to some childhood place where Rainbow Brite and Jem and the Holograms still scamper about.
Also adorable: the apology she put on her blog for gettting drunk that night
And I Quote:
“Last time I wrote here, I was defending my honor and dignity, explaining my innocence and also outrage at the press for insinuating my behaviour was embarrassing. This time I’m putting my hands up, I got very drunk last night, too drunk. It’s not cool getting that drunk, I feel awful and I have to thank my little brother Alf for getting me home safely.
Kids, drink responsibly or you’ll end up looking like this, not pretty! Was quite fun though, from what I can remember. Need fry up now.”
I don’t get to go to Europe this year (which makes it sound like I usually spend my summers on the Riviera, instead of the Haliburton Highlands).
So I’m reading this instead. Which is a terribly good read.
On the other hand, I must admit that a big lesson I have learned recently is that traveling the world (much like having read a lot of books) does not automatically make you a good, or even an interesting person. Some of the crankiest, meanest, most horrible people I have ever met are well traveled. Much like some of the stupidest people I have ever met have been “well read”.
Just because you read a book, doesn’t mean you understood it.
Just because you went to France, doesn’t mean you appreciated it.
Really, all being well read and well traveled makes you, is a person with too much money and time on your hands.
Being a conscientious, open minded person is so much better.
So I’ll keep planning yet another exotic vacation to exciting downtown Thunder Bay, with some possible detours to glamorous Deluth, sparkling Kitchener, bustling Prince Edward County and of course the Haliburton Highlands (where the family cottage is situated). Because that’s what we can afford this summer, and dammit, I’m going to make the most of it.
Besides, I’m betting the vast majority of people who have toured Europe have never known the joy of a Bon-Bon Sparerib while sitting atop a curling rink. And for that they are the lesser.
