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.

Looking Where you Walk

At yesterday's Blue Jays game Janice snagged a foul ball (Snag may not be the correct term - she apparently ran away from the ball as it neared her and then managed to recover and grab it after it hit a seat. Surprising behaviour because when I go with her to games she wants me to be always ready to jump and run towards the ball).

That's great but even better was that Burnett picked up the seven strike-outs that earn us a free slice from Pizza Pizza (The deal is that if the Jays get 7 or more strikeouts on a Friday or Sunday home game you get a free slice of pepperoni on the subsequent Monday). Anyway we headed out at lunch today to get our free slice and we were going to blow the bank to buy another slice of cheese pizza for Janice. Quite the meal. As we were walking out of the building though, I happened to see a Jay's ticket on the ground. Luckily I stopped and examined it and saw that it was for Sunday's game! Another free slice. So we ended up having a completely free lunch! It seems like the moral of the story is that it pays to look where you walk.

For the record, I agree it is mildly disgusting to pick up dirty paper from the ground but, hey, for 3 bucks, who wouldn't.

Island Foods

On Sat night, Ian and I went to the Ex and ate at Island Foods. Ian claims that they have a store in Village on the Grange area (apparently Dundas & McCaul area), but it is generally lined up outside so he keeps on walking.

At the Ex, this seemed to be one of the more popular joints in the "food building", but we didn't have much else to do so we waited. I had the veggie meal for $5.25 which came with rice/beans, and various curried veggies - cabbage, potatoe, cauliflower etc. It was ok, but I was expecting some more variety. Perhaps some squash or spinach and maybe some chickpeas. Alright value for my money. Decent levels of tastiness. The rice was a bit weird tasting.

Ian has a boneless chicken roti for $6 something and his direct quote was "It is alright, smaller than I would have liked."

So that's the story!

Avocado's I have eaten in the last week or two

Here they are pre-consumption

The Ex

Ian waiting in line at the Island Foods Roti joint like a champ!

I was saving some seats....also champ like!











Ian goes to the casino














Mmmm. Dinner.


















The Ontario Pork Association's slogan was "From Farm to Fork"
















Baby cow














Wonder if this little guy is going to make it past Thanksgiving?





































View from Ontario place across lake towards Hamilton.














Ian carrying my stuff home! Nice work!

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!

Taste of the Danforth

I've tasted the Danforth a few times but it was Janice's first time when we went last Saturday. There isn't a lot to say about it. It was packed and every restaurant selling anything greek seemed to have massive lines. So we ended up hitting up some sushi places and thai places initially. They offered tasty food without the endless wait. I'm not sure why the lines were so long because as I've discussed before Greek isn't all that exciting. We couldn't leave without getting anything Greek in the end so we picked up a Gyro from some place whose name I have forgotten. It was more like a neighbourhood pub style place than a place focused on Greek food.

The big disappointment was crowd management (well the second biggest after the 8.40 in transit fare we had to shell out to avoid the traffic nightmare). In many (most?) places particularly around the Greek lines, the walking slowed to snail's pace so not surprisingly this drove me crazy. A collector and express system with some fences seems like it would be useful but I could see that not being a widely supported concept. Just like people think that baseball players shouldn't be replaced by robots. When will the masses learn?

The World's Easiest Chocolate Cake Recipe!

This is seriously easy and foolproof....try it tonight!

You should even have the ingredients on hand. From Moosewood Restaurant New Classics Book.





Oven - 375 F

In square cake pan mix:

1.5 cups flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 cup sugar

Mix wet stuff:

1/2 cup veggie oil
1 cup cold water or chilled coffee
2 t vanilla

Add to dry and mix well.

Then stir in 2 T vinegar - cider or white. Stir just till mixed.

Bake 25-30 minutes till done!

The Keg

On Friday night Ian and I went all out and went to the Keg on York between Queen and King. Ian started with some deep fried calmari which was alright. I had a piece and was not a big fan.

Then we both had the 1/2 lobster and steak special done medium well. I had baked potato and Ian had some rice.

I have never really had lobster (due to the long term veggie thing) and I thought it was ok. It seemed like a lot of work for how much you really get out of it. The steak was alright, but seemed a bit tougher than I would have expected from the keg. The price was the biggest pitfall - $35!

We were not planning on having dessert, but the $5 brownie sundae convinced us to! Very tasty and about double the size of the equivalent DQ $5 treat.

In the end, the bill was about $100 including tax, tip and after my $20 keg shareholder gift card that came with the annual report.

For a similar price, I would just go to North 44 or equivalent next time. The entrees and appetizers are in the same price range, but North 44 is must tastier and nicer!

Ho Su

Ian and I went for a quick dinner tonight at Ho Su on Queen. All was delightful and cheap except for the tempura. Ian had some california roll/chiken teriyaki type item. I had veggie sushi combo. Total bill was $26 including t,t,t,s,s,e,m,b,k (tax, tip, tap water, soup, salad, edamame, mystery saucy veggie, beans, kimchee).

The poor customer service "Diet"

So this week I was in Hawkesbury working at a very exciting steel plant and thus had to frequent the local restaurants for meals.

Poor customer service prevented me from procuring some tasty fast food.

I stopped in at pizza pizza in town and there is one lady cleaning the bathrooms and the other guy cleaning out the drink cooler. The dude says something to me in french, I don't really speak but the gist of it was, just a minute. I say ok, but then wait about 5 minutes and finally walk out. It's been a while since I worked at DQ, but I think that serving customers in a timely fashion if more important than cleaning the joint!

One night I went to the Valleyfield River for some kayak action and stop in at McD's across the street for a drink. I wait about 5 minutes to get my order in, but then the pace is 1 car every 8 minutes or so. There was conveniently no porkchop between the order thingy and the food giver so I took off! It would have been like 5 cars x 8 minutes = 40 min? After 2 cars and 16 min wait I was fed up!

Caribana Disappointment

The city of Toronto seems to like to ruin weekends by shutting down major thoroughfares early and often. This week's reason was Caribana. After eventually making it back home from groceries despite the traffic chaos, I decided to check it out to see if it was worth the inconvenience.

The official website for Caribana is sparse on information like times and locations so I set out on Lakeshore until I hit the action. One of the primary motivations for going was to get lunch in the form of Roti. (This is a blog about food). Anyway I walked and I walked and eventually found a range of vendors set up and there was roti. But that's not the only thing that was there, they had also brought high prices. Now I guess the location is nice and convenient for watching the parade but I am fundamentally opposed to paying prices that are greater than or equal to restaurant prices. At the restaurant, the level of sketchiness is likely to be lower and they provide seating. Here there's none of that - no nice yellow or green dinesafe signs or any dedicated seating. And the final straw, many places weren't that busy. If it's not good enough for the locals, it's not good enough for me.

Non-food related notes of interest

• The parade itself was not stellar. "Floats" with prominent signs explicitly saying that "unauthorized personnel can not go on the float for insurance reasons" take a little bit away from the atmosphere. The thing that kills it more is that a bunch of floats would have this convoy of U-Haul's trailing behind. I'm not sure how these were connected to the main event. I guess we'll never know
• There seemed to be a complete lack of corporate give-aways aimed at buying my brand loyalty. My loyalty was left untouched so it looks like I'll have to stick to double bubble and milk-2-go.
• Advertising should consist of more than just whistling. A lot of the water sellers seemed to think using whistles was key and they were using them constantly. If I want overpriced water I'll stick with the quiet vendors

And where did I eat in the end you ask? I picked up a large pepperoni at Domino's. Total price 9.12 which is less than I would have paid at some of the stations and I'm having it for lunch and dinner.

Free Milk

For those who know where we live, come and pick up some milk! Seriously...please come and get some.

St Louis

Yesterday Ian and I were rather lazy post nap and decided to hit up the St. Louis rib and wing joint basically attached to the building across the street from us. Despite the rather limited menu, the place is always busy..even when the Jays are out of town.

Ian and I both had the half rack of ribs with fries special for $10.95. It was a decent amount of food, although not enough bbq sauce. Ian had a pint of steamwhistle, but felt that due to the shape of the special steam pint glass, he got kinda ripped off.

The mints at the end were tasty and equally delightful were the plentiful hand wipe thingies.

That's about it. Sorry nothing funny to report.

The best things in life are ...

free!

A few weeks ago, I took some candy from a stranger. It's ok it was free













Today was the real score, milk 2 go. Faithful readers will not be surprised to learn I made multiple trips. Don't worry in the later trips I got closed cases so I could stack them! Needless to say the fridge is full. I still feel I should go back but I'm trying to restrain myself

Ribs in the Oven

Ian and I walked over to the St. Lawrence Market yesterday and found some meaty looking pork back ribs for about $4.50/lb. The only problem was, the butcher wouldn't cut in half for us and we didn't want to buy $35 of meat for the two of us for dinner. We walked over to the next meat shop and bought a full rack of baby back for $7.50. Here's the little guys stacked up.




The marinade/rub had some brown sugar, soy sauce, oil, garlic, cilantro and chinese five spice powder...mmmm..








The home-made sauce wasn't so hot, so I ended up doing a blind taste test with Ian. The half home-made, half PC sauce won out!


Here's the final result.

Kit Kat Summerlicious

Ian and I decided to partake in some cheap eats and went to Kit Kat on King for the Summerlicious festival. It's basically three courses for $25 to $35 depending on the restaurant.

I started with a not so tasty asparagus soup - way too bland. Ian has mussels with a tomato wine sauce that he seemed to enjoy. For the main course Ian has chicken with prosciutto in a creamy white sauce with mashed potato and random veggies. I had pan fried sole with wild rice and the same veggie. Ian's portion was huge, but while it excelled in largeness, it lacked in tastiness.

I know that sole is kind of bland so I was expecting some sort of crust or sauce on there, but it came with neither. Overall very bland :( Sadly, my cafeteria at work makes better sole.

The desert was alright tiramisu but this time was a puny portion. With the summerlicious special we ended up paying $64 including tax, tip and tap water.

The real entertainment here were the tables on either side of us. To my left and Ian's right, there was the first date with the young guy and old lady. Neither seemed to have much to say, and the old lady admitted that her mom likes to cook for her so she doesn't really know how to cook anything. Sounds like a real catch! Awkward times all around for those two!

To my right, there was a three generation girls night out kind of event. The two older ladies got all upset about cold veggies with their meal and made a big stink about it. The waiter was extremely rude and made them feel like it was all in their head. Kind of comical. I think the waiter felt bad, so he came by every 5 minutes thereafter with awkward tidbits of what he thought was amusing anecdotes! Ian and I, as impartial judges, gave the effort a D. Awkward at best!

An Outsider's Guide to the Insider Report

I started this post a while ago (it looks like on 2007/05/24) after the Summer insider's report first arrived. I held off posting to make sure I had a chance to try everything that caught my eye (prefix PC to everything)

Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies - these are very tasty. Like the old school Dad's Oatmeal Cookies I used to eat but even tastier. Checking out the nutritional information was sort of a let down because if you care about your heart and saturated fats you'll have to scale back the cookie consumption. Tough but necessary.

Naan Chicken Tandoori Pizza and Pita Chicken Souvlaki Pizza - These were on for $4.49 when the report first came out. Supposedly each box will feed multiple people - I elect to eat the whole thing in a sitting. The Naan chicken tandoori pizza is the better of the two

Field and Grove Juice - There's a mango "based" one and a berry "based" one. "based" because there are a lot of other juices in there besides the one that forms the theme. These are $1.69 currently for 1L. For juice I think that's not bad. I'm a fan of both of these although the mango is my favorite. The concept is similar to the V8 Fusion that as far as I know isn't in Canada yet but was very tasty when I've had a sip down under (in the US).

PC Bento Chicken Yakitori & PC Bento Salmon Teriyaki - No real surprise Salmon is the winner here. They're both pretty good. It's pretty wild and crazy - the instructions say you should heat it up without lifting up a corner to let the steam escape. I followed the instructions and it turned out well. The gyoza is in a little too much sauce and it's sad you only get one. The rice is sort of weird and it wears on you but overall the meal's pretty good. Sure we use some of reusable bags Galen Weston is nuts about to bring the meal home but I still feel like maybe this massive fake bento box and chop sticks (which are a nice bonus that we save) might not be the most environmentally friendly meal. Oh well, the price again is the main deterrent that prevents me from getting these more frequently.

Start Digression
This is also part of a bigger rant (that I may continue late) I have that if food is packaged like it should be a complete meal then there should be enough calories for a complete meal. I'm tired of seeing all these "meals" with less than 500 calories. "Healthy" meals are the worst. It's not healthy to slowly starve to death and if it defeats the point of healthiness if I need to have multiple cokes to get enough calories. If it's a snack sized portion label and price it as such. I'll rant more about this some other time
End Digression

Those are all the products I seem to recall trying. Here's the full listing of new products. I may try some more so faithful blog readers can look forward to that!

BBQ Rib Showdown

Now that I am carnivorous, I am always searching for tasty bbq ribs. The Americans seem to be hard-core and use the word BBQ as a verb. What the Canadians call bbq is actually a grill.

Anywho, I was in Birmingham last week and went to Dreamland. It is quite the mini-chain down there and anyone who likes BBQ seems to be obsessed with this place. The first thing they bring is a plate of wonderbread and some bbq sauce. I didn't quite know what to do with this, so I dipped some bread into the sauce - it was alright - about as good as you would expect wonder bread to be. Then the 1/2 rack of ribs came out. I was a bit disappointed. The actual rib part of it was ok, but I'm not really sure what the other meat was that was clinging to the ribs. It was a combo of fat and gristle. Good thing I ordered the cole-slaw and banana pudding or I would have walked away hungry. Decent value for about $13 I think??

Then, Ian and I went on a camping adventure in the Adirondacks this weekend and spied the "Tail of the Pup BBQ" joint near Saranac lake. It was quite the monstrosity with about 10 buildings in the log cabin style, 3-4 huge tents, live band etc. I started with a Saranac Lake Pale Ale for $4. I had a full rack of ribs for $16 came with choice of two sides - I went with baked beans and cornbread. Beans were a little cold and cornbread was puny! Ribs were ok, as with dreamland - hardly any meat on them. Again some mystery cartiledy stuff on there.

Ian ordered the "meat lovers" plate - came with a piece of chicken, 1/2 rack of ribs, pulled pork and beef brisket. He ordered corn of the cob and cole-slaw as his sides. A fantastic deal for $19!! He seems to have gotten lucky and got some really good ribs - probably more meat on his half rack than my full.

All in all pretty decent and I would go back again but this time order the meat lovers plate!