thirty five burgers and the ballet

I’ve been… distracted. I apologize. Lot’s of things in the works, lot’s of things in the air - is it Christmas soon or something?

WHAT?

Less than a month? WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN?

Oh, right, the leaves turned, fell, then it snowed, then they started playing carols in the malls, and today is American thanksgiving, and next it’s Christmas. Right. Well, all I’m saying is nobody told me, and - dude… presents! I don’t have ANYTHING yet. Sigh. I don’t think this is the year I get all creative and make everything ahead of time… *sigh*

Oh well. On the upside, this week has been good.

On Friday we went to the ballet. I dragged Liam along (he went surprisingly willingly - probably because he’s supposed to take me to the opera sometime and has yet to actually do so - and because he was seeing a Raptors game on the weekend). It was alright. Not as good as the nutcracker. The dancing was kinda meh, and the sets were boring, although there were some cute costumes (bohemian, Imperialist Russia - good era for outfits). The ending was definitely anti-climactic, although I didn’t really expect anything less from ballet based on a Russian Drama.

On Sunday I had my sister over while Liam and my little brother went to the basketball game (his birthday was last week).

We gorged on wine and Qubecois cheese while they were gone…..mmmmmmmmmm cheese….

Anyways, when they came back I made pulled pork burritos and for desert we had banana gelato with home-made mars bar sauce. Yeah, I’m a pretty awesome sister.

Then, this week, a friend called inquiring about a burger place we had told him about called the Yellow Griffin so we decided to pay a visit. They have over THIRTY FIVE themed burger toppings to choose from, on EIGHT different kinds of meat burgers (beef, chicken, turkey, pork, lamb, vegetable, bison and salmon). AMAZING, right?

I decided to go for something really different this time, so I had the “New Mexican.” It involved some of my very favourite things - salsa, avocado, sweet potatoes, peanut butter - all smothering a nummy hand formed patty. I know what you’re saying - you’re saying “Peanut butter! On a burger! Sacrilege!” And you would be right. It was sacridelicious. In fact, I’ve decided peanut butter with a hint of cilantro is my new favourite hamburger topping.

Don’t get that look on your face.

Don’t pretend to yak.

That’s what you did the first time you heard about poutine*, and then you tried it, and it was heaven, so don’t knock beef smothered in peanuty goodness til you try it, ok?

*(note to self, must try new Poutine restaurant ASAP!)

taking a hike

I’m finding myself completely obsessed with blogs from Portland, and as such, going hiking. The state seems absolutely awash in gorgeous natural wonders, and delightful parks around every corner.

So this weekend, I decided, enough wishing and dreaming I lived halfway across the world, we were going to find the nearest, most picturesque place to go hiking, and then do so. There had to be someplace to go hiking that wasn’t a hundred miles away, right?

I remembered, growing up in Rexdale (yes really) that we often made field trips to the Humber Arboretum, and that it was gorgeous. Plus, who doesn’t love an Arboretum? It’s a museum of trees. An awesome word really, old-timey in the best possible way.

So we packed up a little picnic containing some seasonal treats (the last of my heirloom tomatoes chopped up in a cous-cous salad, some pesto-mayo made from my basil plant before the frost hit it in a yummy sandwich, and of course some of my pumpkin pie squares) and drove up. The arboretum isn’t exactly in our neighborhood, but it’s easy to get to, right off the highway.

It’s a pretty awesome place, especially considering it’s absolutely surrounded by urban sprawl - you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere. We even got a little lost at one point - and Liam sort of lost his footing in a swampy area (thankfully we were a few hours in at that point, so we were about ready to go home anyways).

It was a wonderful choice, and totally fulfilled my need to partake in the autumnal splendor. I’m kinda considering investing in hiking boots. I might want to keep doing this.

five fun things #02

This might just become a thing.

1. A friendly little tutorial for shooting “Through The Viewfinder”

   Which is a method of getting really neat, old-fashioned, artfully flawed images using a digital camera - along with a old twin lens reflex cameras’ viewfinder. I’ve always loved the way these shots looked, I had no idea producing them was so easy. If this works with my little Canon point and shoot (which it should - it has a pretty awesome macro setting), I’m totally gonna start searching for an old twin lens camera when I thrift.

2. Booty Juggler

   I may or may not have wasted a good half an hour on this cute little game.

3. Black Eiffel

   Just a new blog find filled with pretty-pretty things of all varieties. The kind of pretty that inspires rampant and uncontrollable urges to be materialist. But so do many of the pretty-pretty blogs I read. Sigh. It might be time take a break from reading those for a little while. Just until I stop hemorrhaging money.

4. Carnivale Lune Bleue

   A retro-revival nineteen-thirties-style carnival - complete with concessions, candy apples, carousel, ferris wheel, and circus show. I was very sad when I found out I missed this entirely this summer. There’s always next summer though.

5. Buddha Dogs

   We had some on the weekend. They were delicious - totally the best hot-dogs I’ve ever had (although, it should be said that they don’t really resemble traditional hot dogs all that closely, so consider yourself forewarned). They are little artisinal sausages (that taste a bit like teensy fresh salamis) accompanied by one of four (locally sourced) cheeses and a one of a dozen sauces (cooked up individually by the best chefs in the city using fresh, local ingredients). A lot of internet types seem to be upset that portions are small, and the concept pretentious. I would tell them that if they want street meat, it’s readily available. This is not street meat, it’s a culinary novelty (and a cheap one at that - certainly the cheapest way to have lunch made by Jamie Kennedy - via his 25 cent sauce offering). If you’re a foodie, you’ll love it. If you’re more of a steak and potatoes kinda person, feel free to steer clear. I, for one, found it delicious and delightful.

anniversary

It was our anniversary on the weekend, and we had a splendid day.

Rather than unnecessarily blow a wad of cash on fancy dinners and shows and things (as we sometimes do) we decided to have the nicest day around the neighborhood for under 100 dollars, and save up for a vacation later on instead. And as a result, I think we had one of the nicest days we’ve ever had.

For lunch we wandered around the Distillery.

We bought a coronation chicken sandwich and a tarragon chicken pot pie from the Brick Street Bakery. Both were astoundingly (astoundingly!) good. I am quickly becoming very fond of the rather retro combo of apricots, curry, cream and poultry that is Coronation Chicken. My royalty loving grandmother would no doubt approve, heartily. The pie was stuffed with juicy, spicy meat, and surrounded by pretty much the best crust I’ve ever had on a savoury pie. I am not a huge crust fan, but this crust made the pie. Perfectly flaky and crumbly and moist.

After some gallery browsing, we made our way to Soma where we had some gelato (a scoop each of: sour cream and lemon; raspberry, lemon and black pepper; and pistachio - all were dreamy) and some mayan hot chocolate. Soma has the best gelato and chocolate in town. It just does.

Then for dinner we went to a little restaurant down the street called Batifole. I had heard nothing but good things about it, namely that it is the best approximation of French bistro cooking in the whole city, and that it was astoundingly reasonably priced. Both were true. It was some of the best food I’ve ever had.

When we sat down we got bread accompanied by a little pat of butter sprinkled with grey salt - and it was some of the best bread I’ve ever had. I asked if they baked it themselves, and they said they had it made for them by the Brick Bakery. Of course they did. It’s the best bakery in town, it seems.

We started off with a brule of pate. Yep, that’s right, like a creme brule, in a little pot topped with a layer of crunchy caramel - but inside was chicken livers. For a creme brule addict like me it was a revelation.

For our mains, Liam had a blanchette de veau - a little rare veal steak covered in a calvados, apples and cream sauce. It was as wonderful as it sounds. I had a cassoulet. It was 3 kinds of meat (duck confit, sausage and gorgeous thick hunks of bacon) swimming in gorgeous melted pools of fat. I have never willingly ingested so much cholesterol in my life, but it was wonderful.

With our mains we got a little basket of frites with tarragon mayonnaise. They were perfection - I can not emphasize this enough - the best fries I’ve ever had, hands down. A rough crispiness on the outside, perfectly salted, meltingly soft on the inside. Perfection.

We didn’t get to desert. We would have liked to, but I was much too full of wonderful fats.

So yeah. Pretty much the best food day ever.

Best part is, since none of it was prohibitively expensive we can do it all again sometime.

fine and dandy

This has been a damn fine summer. Not too hectic, not too slow, not too hot, certainly not dry (which I don’t mind one bit - me and my garden like the rain).

I think one of the only bad things to have happened is the raccoons who eat my plants and poo on my deck. Annoying and unsanitary, but they’re pretty cute - especially when they shimmy down the drainpipes of the house next door.

By the way, you might have heard of the saga of Igor the bicycle stealer. He’s made his way to the front (web) page of the New York Times. He was a fixture in the old neighborhood but I - like pretty much every one else who’s ever visited Trinity Bellwoods - ain’t surprised.

His arrest makes me more excited to get a bike someday soon - hopefully by next summer. Now it might not get stolen!

Now, I’ve got to go - I’ve got to get ready to celebrate Liam’s birthday up at my cottage.

As per his request I’m cooking up a big pot of simmer-it-all-day, old-fashioned, Italian gravy (tomato sauce, for those without a Soprano’s Family Cookbook).

I can’t wait for him to open his present, go for a swim and play a game or two of Catan (he’s buying it with his birthday bonus).

Yep. Life ain’t too bad these days.

a bad scene

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.

warning: birthday approaching

My birthday is coming up in less than a month.

Since my birthday is in one of the more depressing months of the year (February - the only good thing about it is that it’s short) I’ve never really made a big deal about it.

For my sweet sixteen, I actually moved my party to June. For reals.

I’ve been trying to figure out some useful way of celebrating it this year. I was thinking of getting a new bike - a nice, old-fashioned, european-style thing, with a chain guard and fenders and a little wicker basket. Something to get to the beach in, or for going to get a few groceries. Something pretty, and girly, but quite functional for an urban neighborhood (such as the one I live in).

I would also like to go away for a weekend sometime soon. After being together for five years Liam and I have NEVER been away together alone (other than camping, and vacations with my whole family). So a little trip to Montreal (I’ve never been) or New York (Liam’s never been) would be ideal.

Both of those things are still options at some point in the future, I think, but I have a new more practical idea.

I want a food box.

Glamourous and exotic of me, I know.

I want a organic food box delivered once a week filled with all kinds of healthy and wonderful and seasonal and local things.

We haven’t been able to afford much in the way of organic foods as of yet, and less than worrying about the environmental cost of buying apples from New Zealand, I want to enjoy the intense flavors and unique varietals offered by organic, local, and heirloom farming. I have a pretty refined palette and I know that Organic food, in season, tastes better. It just does.

Specifically, I am falling in love with Foodshare’s Good Food Box, and their rather handsome political stances on poverty and food distribution (the essays on their website practically made me cry). They basically subsidize the food in an economically responsible way so that everyone (from the highest to the lowest income bracket) can afford to eat more veggies - even organic ones. Sounds right up my alley.

But I am worried: if I live in a co-op, wear a black beret, travel by bike and get my organic food delivered in a box - am I dangerously and perilously close to becoming a dirty, pink-o, commie?

and then it snowed more!

We had a busy weekend planned - but then this storm happened.

Oh well, it was fun to sit and drink hot chocolate and watch Christmas specials (The Animaniac’s Christmas Special, to be specific) in the middle of a swirly, whirly, winter wonderland.

a perfect winter day

I have to say, yesterday was pretty much the most perfect winter day.

Not only did it snow buckets of crunchy, sticky, white fluff, but my parents called to say that they had gotten last minute tickets to go see the Nutcracker.

I have never seen the Nutcracker, not even as a child (it’s sad, I know). Even though I’m not a very dancey kind of person, I thought it would be something I should probably experience, at least once in my life.

Even though the dancing was, indeed, a little much for me sometimes, the sets were soooooo breathtakingly sumptuous. It’s definitely worth going if you consider yourself at all the kind of person who enjoys some eye candy (even if you aren’t very dancey either).

Let me add that the ballet is set it in imperial Russia so the entire second act centers around a giant, gilded, Fabergé egg that is big enough for ballerinas to come pirouetting out of it. There was pretty much always enough going on on-stage to keep my dad and Liam entertained (and if you know those two at all, you know that’s a big deal - I mean, it’s ballet, and they’re dudes).

On the way home, we passed by the park a block down the street and noticed they had a real live outdoor skating rink with real live skaters playing hockey. It was too surreal. Toronto has not had Winters that were cold enough for that in a while (at least, not this early in the year). I had forgotten it was possible.

Coming back home and looking out over the moonlit, snow covered eaves of my little Toronto neighborhood pretty much cemented it as the best winter day ever.

yummy week

I’ve been having a good food week. Right now I am sitting here with a (natural) peanut-butter and (concord) grape jelly sandwich and a big, tall glass of chocolate milk. I don’t think it gets more nostalgic than that (*sigh*…grade two… bag lunch… twenty five cents for a carton of the good stuff *sigh*). I bet it’s a meal that people across North America remember and cherish in the same way I remember and cherish it, and that’s sort of neat.

I’ve also been exploring exotic, not so familiar, tastes.

We finally ventured out to little India last week (also known as one block down the street) and bought some spices, paneer (fresh cheese), jellabi (basically funnel cake soaked in syrup), daal (spiced lentils) and the most yummy, fresh, delicious naan (spicy flat bread) and had ourselves an authentic Indian feast!

One of the stores down the street sells samosas at three for a dollar, so I think I’m pretty much sunk. I could eat a bucket of them, and actually I have.

Last night I made a cottage pie, which is something I had in England. It’s basically what we know as Shepard’s pie, but in England a pie with lamb is a Shepard’s pie, and a pie with ground beef is a cottage pie (and it comes smothered in cheddar!). I don’t know what it was about the “Shepard’s” pie I had growing up, but it was not as flavorful as the one I had in England. So I attempted to re-create it.

I cheated and used a lot of “Montreal style” steak spice to season the meat (which is basically just sea salt and cracked black pepper with some cayenne, corriander, dill, garlic, and onion), and it seemed to do the trick in the flavor department. I ran out of corn starch to thicken up the gravy for my stew, so I had to improvise. I thought about what a peasant living in a small cottage might do in my situation. I decided to toss in a few cubed up slices of stale, oatmeal-honey bread into the pot to soak up the stock and it worked like a charm! It thickened my sauce, gave it a richer flavour than starch or flour would have, and bulked it up enough that it could stand up to being covered with mashed potatoes.

For the stew:

• 1 pound ground beef (whatever cut you prefer - nothing too lean though)
• 1 tbsp “Montreal style” steak seasoning (or an equal amt. of a mix of salt, pepper, and your favourite herbs and spices for beef - thyme, rosemary, dill, and coriander being quite good here).
• 2 carrots (diced)
• 2 sticks of celery (diced)
• 1 onion (diced)
• 1 clove garlic (diced)
• 1 cup beef stock
• 3 slices whole wheat bread (chopped into 1 cm cubes)
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

For the mash:

• 2 pounds of potatoes (chopped into 1 inch cubes, un-peeled - potato skin is flavourful and nutrient rich, and you don’t even notice it when it’s mashed)
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1/2 cup milk
• salt and pepper

Topping:

• 1/4 cup old/aged cheddar cheese (grated)

1. Steam or boil the potatoes.
2. Saute the meat with the spices and garlic until it is browned. Add in the vegetables and continue to sauté until they soften.
3. Add the sauces, stock and bread to the meat mixture, stirring to make sure the bread absorbs all the liquid and begins to break down and thicken the stock.
4. When the potatoes are fork-soft, drain them, and mash them with the butter and milk, seasoning well with salt and pepper.
5. Layer the meat stew into the bottom of a casserole dish, and then cover evenly with the mashed potatoes. Give the top of the potatoes some texture by using a fork to draw a pattern into the mash (I like a big spiral). Sprinkle the top evenly with the grated cheese.
6. Broil at 400 for 5-10 minutes, or until the cheese has melted.

In the end, my pie came out of the oven golden and crispy on top, and rich and comforting in the middle. It was quite perfect. You should try it! It makes a lot - at least enough to stuff 6 people - or two people 3 times, as the case may be.

There was one blight this week though. The less said about my fish-ball pad-Thai the better alright?