Black Creek Pioneer Village

The price was right (free) for Doors Open Toronto so we went for an outing to North Toronto yesterday.



The village was rather large and moderately impressive. Not quite as fun as Westfield Heritage Village (Hamilton) Maple Syrup Festival, but then again, it's hard to compare in fun-ness to that event.










Ian says...Mmmmm...bacon. Janice thinks the pigs are cute, but somewhat agrees with Ian's assessment of "tasty".









Mmmm...butter.












Janice goes to church!








Apple press for cider













Barrels for storing stuff












Old style muffin tin. Apparently the pioneers liked to use yeast in their muffins.











Water wheel at the flour grinding mill













Mystery fowl animal





















Perhaps a good job for Ian??

Funny stuff

Refer to a previous post to see Ian fighting with someone who obviously has some sort of connection to the hosters of the worst party ever - EQ3. Don't get me wrong, the couch we purchased from there is decent and $800 well spent.

The link!

ROM Fact or Fiction

Last night I scored some free tickets to a fundraising event for the ROM. The basic idea was there were 20 tables - each with 1 artifact. Each table had two curators - one telling the truth about the artifact, one with a fake story. Our job was to pick the correct one. Winner got a trip to Egypt!

I got 10/20, Ian got 12/20 and winners tied for 17/20!

The best part was the free food and drink - and I guess $500 worth of tickets for free! Caterer was "Presidential Gourmet".

Ian enjoyed the appetizers ...
-peking duck in rice paper rolls
-ice cream cones with melon balls and some meat
-bbq eel in sushi format
-shrimp on a stick
-deep fried eggplant on a cracker
-yellow tomato gazpacho in espresso cups

Food stations included:
- antipasto with lots of roasted veggies, bread, cheese, meat, salad etc - very tasty
- mushroom risotto with braised short rib - mmmm
- Japanese coated tofu with mushrooms - so so
- pickerel with squash - mmmm
- ricotta spinach pasta with tomato sauce- also mmmmm

Dessert included:
-chocolate, caramel, pecan squares
-raspberry square tastiness
-fruit
-petit fours

Also highly tasty. Drinks were ok - Ian sucked back a couple of his fav - vodka + fruity juice and later some rum and coke. I went with a white wine and a red wine. White wine smelled extremely alcohol-y, red wine was pretty good.

Woodbine Race Track

We had a little work related conference type thing-y this past Friday and Saturday. For Friday night, we headed over to the track for a buffet dinner and some racing. The buffet was pretty tasty - salad, roast beef that was actually pretty good, fish/seafood, chicken etc. The highlight was some squash that had an eggplant type skin. I was a little thrown off, but the tastiness level was quite high!

The gambling went alright - initially down $6, but made most of it back with a win prior to leaving! They only had the carts - it's a bit ridiculous - whoever can trot the fastest wins! That's like Ian winning $50 K because he can walk the fastest!

Ian is getting all upset by my comments. He said, "they are younger horses. Well, I don't know if they are younger - they just aren't as good." Sounds like an argument gone wrong for Ian!

Boston Pizza & Hockley Valley

Yesterday, we went on a little hiking adventure to Hockley Valley Conservation Area near Orangeville Ontario. Halfway through, the rain started, so we cut it short and took one of the short-cut loops back to the start and only went on a 2 hr adventure instead of 4.5 hours.

This seems like a pretty popular place. An old-people hiking group was there and a bus load of tourists seemed to be arriving as we were leaving.

For the last stretch, the hike went through a farmers field. The cows made Ian hungry, so stopped off at BP's so he could have an individual Meteor Pizza (3 kinds of meaty topping and meat sauce instead of regular tomato) and get his meat quota for the week. Actually, that is a lie, the gift certificate situation is a bit out of control and BP's was the original plan, even before the cows.

I had a half penne + tomato sauce with garlic bread. All food was sufficiently tasty and quick. Final bill with tax, tip, tap water x 2, cola x 1 was about $27...but only $7 for us after the certificate! Nice! The funniest part came on the way out the restaurant. This family was walking in front of us to the parking lot, and this little dude -about 2-3 years old - was walking slow and staring at Ian. Dad got mad and told him to hurry up, but then the kid points out "those big kids are following me!" Ha ha!

Run for the Cure and Aroma

Thanks to the faithful blog readers that sponsored us on the run this past weekend. Those who thought they were sponsoring us on a 5km run will be pleased to hear that it was actually 5.6 km according to mapmyrun.com (the route was very different than previous years). That's a bonus of over 10%! For free!

Anyway it was a relief to see that it was longer than expected. I took 28:01 minutes and Janice was 30 and change. Somewhat disappointing as it ends our multi-year streak of continuously getting better times. Also disappointing is how much faster some people ran than us on Sunday
- the fastest marathon on Canadian soil happened in Toronto (2:09:30)
- the fastest marathon ever was run in Berlin (2:04:26)
so if I had run 5km alongside any of those people during their races they would have beat me by 10 minutes while still going on to run for almost another 2 hours.

After the run we broke with tradition and skipped fressen. Instead we went to Aroma for lunch. It lived up to it's usual standard except for gulab jamon which was awful. All of my gulab tim bits were rock hard. Disappoint but of course we'll likely forgive and forget.

Muppet Wedding Extravaganza!

This was a few weeks ago, but since Ian has turned into the world's laziest blogger, I have to pull stuff out of the brain archive to keep the content "fresh" as they say in internet land and at the grocery store.

Anywho, gist of the whole thing was, my mom was in charge of the drink tickets and they served perogies. How can you go wrong with that? And I guess my cousin actually getting married - that was alright too.

Venue was Shalom park waterski club outside of E-town (Edmonton for those in live in ontario).

Random Stuff

A few fun topics for the limited number of readers we actually have:

1. On Friday night, we went to the veggie food fair. Some of the magic from other years seemed to be missing for some reason. It could be that I'm no longer a veggie. Perhaps it was Ian in tow? Could have been the King's Cafe ladies trying to upsell me on my dumpling/sticky rice purchase. Maybe the lack of power bar type items to sample?

2. We went to Aroma yesterday for buffet lunch. Tasty as usual, and a deeeelightful new curry cabbage dish. As you walk in and leave the joint, they have a glassed in tandoori area with a guy making naan bread. In the last year or so, it's been my thing to wave at the guy and he usually waves back. Yesterday, he got to the wave before I did! Ha ha! We've got quite the little thing happening.

3. The original plan was to go camping, but we ditched it due to rain and a leaky tent. Instead, we planned to go for a picnic to Bronte park. The Gardiner was closed so we made alternate plans to go to Cherry beach. All was deelightful, but they had half of the park blocked off with a chain link fence. Ian speculated that it was due to some sort of contamination. I tell him to not be silly. But alas, we get home and he checks the web and he appears to be correct!




Anywho, had some veggie burgers with hummus, avocado, cheese, ketchup on Pita Break cooked on old school coleman stove. Pretty tasty. Ian wants to upgrade to a hibachi so we can do meat in style.










The back was slightly burnt in the parents day, but the real damage happened earlier this summer with a scrambled egg/overpressured fuel cylinder incident.











Ian puts away lawn chairs.



















4. T&T asian food markets come to town off Cherry Street across from the Cirque near the Docks.

Stocked up on dumplings, buns, fried tofu, seaweed and veggies.

Run For the Cure

Ian and I are running again this year. If you love or even remotely like us, you'd donate something to the cause. Go to this website! If you are torn about who to donate to, just go with me (Janice). It seems like the easy way out of dilemma!

Thanks to all the parents + Ian's favorite E-town aunt and uncle.

Fast and Slow Lanes

Well this isn't directly food related, as I was eating my Pita Break apple Cinnamon breakfast pita with PC Dark Chocolate Spread and PC Decadent Chocolate chips (yes both) cooked on my George Foreman Grill, I noticed an interesting article in the Globe and Mail. London (the real one) is considering adding slow and fast lanes for pedestrians on Oxford Street which is apparently Europe's busiest. Now if only the Taste of the Danforth would be consider doing the same as I suggested.

Royal Ontario Golf Club

My company had their annual golf tournament last Friday. Not only did we get the day off, the whole thing was one incredible deal for the cheap person!

$40 got us....

Round of golf and cart ($109 value)
Driving range beforehand
4 pack of balls & tees
Royal Ontario Hat
Nike dri-fit golf shirt
Dinner with wine
Winners and big losers got a $25 gift card to LCBO!

We'll be back next year for sure!

Dinner was pretty decent - roast beef with all sorts of other good stuff. Dessert table was especially tasty!

Ottawa River Road Trip

Sorry, but this post has nothing to do with waffles.

This weekend, I went to the Ottawa River for some kayaking action. At 4.5 hours, it is certainly not the closest destination, but with extreme low water in Ontario, there's nowhere else to go :(

Usually we make food on these kayaking/camping trips, but for a few reasons we decided to make it an eating out adventure.

-We only got organized on Saturday afternoon for a trip leaving 5 am Sunday morning

-Three of us, three boats, three sets of kayak gear, 2 tents and numerous sleeping bags etc meant that we had very little food/stove room in Milton's civic

-What I like to call the "L" factor - for those that don't know, this stands for laziness

Anywho, we went to the "Schnitzel Haus" in Enganville on Sunday night. I was expecting the worst, but it was reasonably classy, tasty and surprisingly packed. I had some tasty fish and chip - came with potato, coleslaw and veggie instead of chip by special request. $12 all together including a gigantic glass of german beer. Others said the schnitzel was super tasty and very hearty for about $12 per main course (including potato and veggie).

Then it was off to the local eatery for breakfast this morning (sorta near Cobden - just down from River Run). I had the breakfast special (3 eggs, 3 slices bacon, 2 slices toast and home-fries) all for $4.00!!! How can you go wrong with that??? There was a rather crusty local dude that we started to chat with and then he professed a real hate for Westerners, in particular Albertans. He didn't seem to have much back-up upon further questioning, so I said that I knew quite a few rude Ontarians...

A Post for Jackie - Boston Pizza, Dundas Valley, Waffles

Jackie likes posts that have a story. This post doesn't.

Boston Pizza. I signed up for the mailing list to get a coupon for a free starter. We went last weekend. Janice had potato skins and I had ribs and spaghetti.

Waffles. I rose to the waffle challenge and made two terrific waffles.










It looks like this concludes the waffle war.


The Dundas Valley trail centre sells some random food. I had an ice cream sandwich. Janice stepped up the spending a notch and had a drumstick. Both were tasty. I wouldn't recommend getting much else there because the "warm" food looked a little sketchy. I haven't had any street meat hotdogs since 2002 but I will definitely eat one of those dogs before I hit the DVTC for a hot dog.

Bonus - Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies - look for news about these once I eat one today.

St Andrew's Club

Thursday I hit up an almuni event at the St Andrew's club. Having to dress up is a little annoying but free food makes it worth it for me. The food was pretty good. There were two stations: an italian and an asian. For the dinner part, the Italian station was the weaker one - a pork thing, some gnocci and some random meat. The asian one was terrific - sushi nigri and maki, pad thai (chicken or shrimp) in the fun little boxes that these fancy places seem to like to use, salad rolls, spring rolls and a few other things I don't recall. It was great particularly the sushi. It would have nice to see the sushi chef there instead of a pad thai attendant but that's me just being picky. For the dessert portion, the stations reverse. The asian consisted of chocolate dipped fortune cookies (I'm supposed to stick with my passion according to the cookie). To make up for this weakness, I had some more maki. Tasty as well. The Italian station had little cake like squares. They were fairly tasty although they seemed a little oily (of course that didn't stop me from having quite a few).

In terms of entertainment, there was the formal program which is interesting. But the humour portion came from some of the alumni who inhabit a different non-engineering or science plane of existence. This one person was excited to talk to engineers as she felt she had this brilliant idea that instead of emergency vehicles using sirens they should vibrate the seat in your car.
Maybe I'll be proven wrong but I don't think that idea will be taking off anytime soon.

Misc. Pictures

Ian cooks some risotto











Me on the mission to figure out where the deer ran off to at Dundas Valley Conservation Area








At the apple ochard in Dundas Valley









Ian's PC bento box

Ian cooking risotto

Ian and the hideous x-box hat during the hike.

Free Pizza

Free pizza always gets a few thumbs up from me even if it is from pizza pizza. Today thanks to the Blue Jays 7+ strikeouts on Friday, I scored two slices of pepperoni pizza at Pizza Pizza

The positive points
- it's free
- the first slice was ready right away

The negative points
- the second slice took quite a while (since they had to make a new pizza)
- the delay meant I had to walk home in the rain

I guess the rain isn't completely Pizza Pizza's fault though. While I was there some people brought their tickets in and then paid extra to get pizzas that are better than pepperoni. In the past they've been dead set against such practices so it's good to see this new found flexibility. Of course I couldn't upgrade to the much loved meat lovers because of my well known cheapness issues

Leaside Curling Club

We had the year end banquet dinner for the "Ladies of the Night" curling section that I play in. We used to be the "Business Women" but we merged with the "Ladies team entry" section and now we are "Ladies of the Night".

Dinner started off well with some appetizers - california rolls, chicken nuggets...I had spinach and mushroom tart things. Then some salad with raspberry vinaigrette. Lots of fruity tastiness on there. I ordered the veggie meal and that was where it went wrong. I got a HUMONGOUS plate of spaghetti with pesto. Was alright, but really only ate 10% of it. Others could have chicken or stuffed pork tenderloin - definately looked tastier. Came with potatoes and side veggie.

Then some tasty chocolate mousse for dessert. Also had two bottles of Pelee Island wine for the table - the white was better than the red.

Check out this very stylish pepper mill that I won for a door prize! Wow! With this kind of winning, the $400 I payed to curl this year was a fantastic deal!!!

Amsterdam Brewery - World's Worst Tour

I was trolling the i-net looking for something to do and I came across Amsterdam Brewery Tours. The place is across from Fort York on Bathurst so we thought we should go and check it out.

We arrived at 4:52 and just in time for the 5 pm tour (we thought). We ask the guy if there is a tour going down and he barely sets down the newspaper to say "yeah at 5". So we hover around awkwardly and then finally the guy gets up and tidies up the very messy looking sampling bar (basically 8 taps). He then says to help ourselves so we do.

He said that the sampling/tour is actually free and they just have the $8 tour thing for university dorks.

5 rolls around and nothing, he just keeps reading the paper. So we finally grab the beer from the case and buy it. As we are leaving, he says "just the beer?". Yeah, I guess so????

World's Most Akward Tour!!! Go to Steamwhistle, they actually run a semi-professional operation.

Quaker Oat Farms

Today I went on a little kayak adventure to the Lower Head River near Orillia.

The river was not super exciting, but alright for the first run of the year.

Here's me in action in my hot new Dragorossi creeker. Ian says that I'm a big spender, but I don't think so since I bought the boat on sale for less than 1/2 price! All I had to do was melt down some latches and straighten them out!

Anywho, the whole point of this story is that at the put-in there is a small farm that takes in abused animals and stuff like that. They have a small cafe/bakery/candy/gift shop that has lots of very cool gifts. For a mere $1, I picked up a super duper tasty buttertart! Mmmm.....just like Lana B's tarts. So if you are ever in the area hit up highway 45 towards Seabright. You won't be sorry.

Great, Good and Neutral

This week has been a bonanza of eating out.

Monday was a reception for scholarship winners at some company's headquarters. The tour of the facilities was only moderately interesting but the food was amazing. This was definitely the great. Reasons follow:
1) Open bar
2) Kobe Beef Sushi
3) Regular sushi
4) Lobster Maki
5) Massive sautéed shrimp
All items were very very tasty.

Thursday was the end of year party for the union. I've missed out on the last two so I was determined to go to this one. It was looking bad initially with only two drink tickets but the union came through for us in the end and gave us a basically limitless supply. The party was at the Duke of York. I think people like this place but I unfortunately am not one of them. As pub-style places go I think it's pretty good. They had these "neat" mini fish and chip servings. A tiny newspaper and a fish stick sized piece of fish. Pretty tasty. Overall this was the good.

Finally today was Swiss Chalet day. We had a coupon (of course) for a free appetizer. Janice had the appetizer (perogies) and I had the main course (chicken and ribs). That's definitely a split I could live with. Janice liked her stuff reasonably well but probably wouldn't get them again. I on the other hand would definitely the chicken and ribs again. It was tasty as always. I don't know if I'll go back to this swiss though because I didn't like the waitress at all. It's probably worth the walk up to king street to get people that have adequate social skills? For 20 bucks for 2 it wasn't a bad deal but I'll still have to say this is at best neutral because of the mean waitress and the fact that I got used to eating for free earlier in the week

Sorry readers, this was a weak post