Category: Food / drink

"I have just met you, and I love you."

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Well, I’ve had an enjoyable forty-ish hours. It started Friday night when we walked down to Front Street to see this year’s criterium. I have no real interest in cycling, but it’s fun to watch racing on a downtown street. Plus, it gave me a chance to test out our new camera: a Canon SX10 IS. We used to have an S3 but sold it when Nellie got her Nikon SLR. I still have a little Canon S230, which is fine for carrying around in my pocket if we’re out with friends, but it turns out there was too big a gap between that and the D40. This SX10 feels familiar (it’s basically just the update of the S3 we had before), is a pretty good mix of convenience and quality, and the 20x zoom will come in handy. For example:

These guys were way down Front Street when I took that. Anyway, we couldn’t stay long as we had dinner reservations at Canoe with Nellie’s mom, so home we went to get all gussied up. Canoe was magnificent, as one would expect, and lives so comfortably in their place atop the Toronto restaurant pile (according to Toronto Life, anyway). Nellie and her mom started with the chevre with rosemary brioche, I had the prawn & asparagus chowder with tarragon butter, and we shared a bottle of 2007 Fielding viognier. For our mains I had the caribou (which was amazing), Nellie and her mom had the prime ribeye and we took a 2006 a bottle of Domaine Gardies Mas Les Cabes. No dessert, just dessert wine for Nellie and I and a glass of white for her mom. Oh, and at some point the afore-mentioned mom took off her shoes and went for a stroll through the restaurant. Don’t ask.

The next day, after dropping Nellie’s mom off at the airport we went to see Up (imdb | rotten tomatoes) at Yonge & Dundas. I’m not a big animation fan, and while I did like the last two Pixar releases (Ratatouille and wall-e) I didn’t bother to see them in the theatre. However, a screaming 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and a lot of advance critical praise made this one my top movie theatre priority this weekend. And it was good. Really, really good. It was sweet, funny, entertaining and (of course) spectacularly animated. Fun story, too, like Raiders Of The Lost Ark if Indy were an octagenarian. In the end I think it might have actually been a mistake to see it in the theatre, since the kid and mother behind me who talked often — and loudly — occasionally “pulled me” out of the film. But I’m still glad I saw it yesterday.

The movies weren’t done there. We freed up a little more room on the PVR by watching Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which I kind of liked (bizarre mismatched music notwithstanding) but I felt it would have made a better short film than feature. There were so many repeated scenes and long tracking shots that nine minutes likely would’ve done it.

We also finally got around to watching the pilot of Glee (fox | onion a.v. club), which I found fairly funny, but if the singing keeps up like this I may struggle to keep watching. I can only take so much Amy Winehouse and Journey. While we watched that a killer rainstorm passed over Toronto, followed quickly by a brilliant rainbow (and another faint cousin):

Also, at some point this weekend I finished reading The Blind Side (amazon) by Michael Lewis. Only about a quarter of the book was what I expected it to be — an historic and financial look at the left tackle position in football. Instead it focused on a kid named Michael Oher, and told a very engaging story about his life. There is, in fact, a movie being adapted from it but with Sandra Bullock cast as one of the leads I don’t hold out much hope for it not sucking.

With that book done I’ve taken the advice given to me over the years by several friends, including those who’d just finished with my copy, and begun reading The Long Walk To Freedom.

Unfortunately it’s a bit too chilly out today to enjoy the sun the way we’d like, but that gives us a good excuse to tackle yet another chunk of the PVR’s hard drive.

"Hey Dye, rumour is you suck!"

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Yesterday was all kinds of great. I got up early and ran three miles. I went to my first Jays game ever, and a pretty good one at that. Rookie pitcher Robert Ray looked like he was going to take a 1-0 loss to the White Sox, but the Jays scored two in the bottom of the 8th and won it for him. It was fun, especially since we were clearly sitting in the rowdy section, taunting poor Jermaine Dye half to death. The low point was when some sadist decided to play a dance version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and send all the 30-somethings into fits of righteous indignation. High point: ballpark dog. Yum.

After a quick stop back at home to freshen up, we were off to meet CBGB and assorted family members, first for a drink at the Duke of York (where there was some unfortunate karaoke) followed by dinner at Fieramosca. I’ve had countless great meals there, but this one goes in the hall of fame. All three apps (gamberi, antipasti and prosciutto) were great, all the mains got rave reviews (especially the ones featuring pancetta…including mine), the desserts that showed up were wonderful as always, and the wine went perfectly. The service was, of course, wonderful. We all left feeling very full and very happy.

Unless Nellie buys the ~$49 million lottery ticket while she’s out, I think today’s gonna be a letdown.

"It's important that you feel through this."

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What a great weekend. Not because we did anything particularly dramatic or new, but because it was just so damn enjoyable. With work being the way it has lately (though it’s let up a bit for me in recent weeks, Nellie’s still hard at it) we’re usually happy just to relax and not feel guilty/worried about not working on the weekend.

Yesterday — easily the nicest day of the year so far — was a day to get out, stroll around, do some shopping at the market and visit friends. On the way over to see CBGB we spotted this little guy hanging out in a tree.

CBGB just got a new back patio and we helped them celebrate by taking advantage of their hospitality. They grilled burgers, served amazing cheeses (note to self: cranberry raincoast crisps + creamy applewood smoked cheddar = amazing), threw some beer in ice and welcomed us under the shade of the umbrella. The weather was perfect for sitting, drinking, laughing, eating and even hanging out with little LB, who was determined to get himself some beer. The oncoming rain forced us to wrap up, but not before we’d finished eating anyway. Inside we had more drinks and some delicious gelato — spiced chili chocolate mixed with blood orange, the latter being more of a sorbeto, really — before retiring once LB got his crank on a little bit. Awesome, awesome Saturday afternoon. I’ve been waiting for a day like that since, oh, October give or take.

Today wasn’t nearly as nice — cold, windy, grey — and started out a bit odd. The old gent next to us at breakfast seemed to be having his own one-man coot-off, yelling to his wife about how young people can’t do simple math anymore, and so on. No matter, it’s been more than satisfactory since then. We caught up on some TV. We got groceries and did laundry. We talked to our parents. We watched Snow Angels (imdb | rotten tomatoes) which, as with most David Gordon Green movies, was an excellent and textured slow burn leading to a few moments of raw violence. We lazed about and read. Nellie made pizza. Good, good day to cap off an excellent weekend.

Should work let up for both of us at once it’ll be nice to actually do something outside the city, or even explore something within it, but for now we’ll take these kinds of weekends no questions asked.

Garbage in, garbage ou…uh, actually, I guess in this case garbage stays.

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Not long ago, on the way home from work my Zen randomly played “Eat Junk Become Junk” by Six By Seven. While I listened I studied the subway ad in front of me. It was an ad for an MTV reality show. I couldn’t help but make the connection.

“Eat junk become junk” is just another way of saying “you are what you eat”, something we’ve all heard since we were kids. No one really doubts that the badness of what we eat affects our overall health. It’s not the sole determining factor, obviously, but it does matter. Doctors, medical studies, common sense…they all tell us so.

So why doesn’t the adage apply to music? Why not books? Why not movies or television? Aren’t the worst of these just empty calories, the Twinkies and triple-bacon cheeseburgers of culture? Aren’t people just jamming the same crap into a different orifice? I would think we would consider these toxic materials as harmful to the mind as we consider toxic food harmful to the body.

And yet, we hear people describe the benefit of vanilla TV (Two and a Half Men, anyone?) being that they don’t have to think, they can just have a laugh. They describe “beach books” the same way…something you just read but don’t have to think about. Worse yet, “reality tv” deliberately misleads viewers, making them think these shows are actually happening unscripted, trying to warp the viewer’s idea of reality rather than try to find entertaining reality to film. Music so banal and oversampled there’s no shred of musical innovation or feeling left at the heart of it. Movies slapped together to lampoon scene after 30-second scene of fleeting pop-cultural references funny mainly, and especially, to those whose news-gathering begins and ends with TMZ. At best these are vapid space-fillers; at worst, mind-numbing distortions. Alone they do not make you stupid. But they certainly lean that way.

Let me preempt the usual cry: that I’m arguing against fun. That’s a weak case, unless you would suggest “fun” can only equal “stupid”. Millions of things are fun, and funny without being weakly, patronizingly so.

Let’s maybe try showing this graphically. FlowingData recently posted a chart titled “Music that makes you dumb” courtesy of a CalTech grad student. It doesn’t show that listening to crap music makes you dumber. It just shows that people who listen to music like Lil’ Wayne, Carrie Underwood and Taking Back Sunday do worse on their SATs than those who listen to stuff like Radiohead, Bob Dylan and Beethoven.

Look, I’m not saying people should stop watching American Idol or listening to Nickelback any more than I’m saying they should avoid eating at Carl’s Jr. three times a day. I’m just saying that everyone knows they shouldn’t eat at Carl’s Jr. three times a day. For some reason they just haven’t figured out that it’s harmful to put other kinds of junk in their bodies too.

That apt description

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Ever since it last October we’ve enjoyed the restaurant at the corner of Front & Jarvis called That Corner Spot. After our first visit I blogged about the good beer (all local: Amsterdam & Mill Street), good food (good breakfast, excellent veggie burger), good produce (all procured from St. Lawrence Market across the screet) and good music. In the last month or so, though, it’s really taken a turn. Granted, it’s probably a turn for the more profitable — there are far more people in there now than before — but it’s also a turn for the generic. Gone is the small, local-focused menu; there’s now page after page of food available. The local beers, though still available, are now relegated to a small, mis-printed subsection of the menu. The simple tables, arty decor and interesting music have been replaced with generic tablecloths, Audrey Hepburn prints and light jazz. It hasn’t become a bad place; it’s just become every other place and lost what made it interesting. Like I said, it probably means they’ll survive a little longer, but I won’t be going back.

I always thought the generic name seemed out of place for a cool spot like that. Now I guess it fits perfectly.

The first single from Born To Rind

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Somebody needs to stop us from going shopping around Church and Wellesley. Between the meat we bought at Cumbrae’s this morning and the cheese we bought at About Cheese (Le Mont-Jacob pasteurised cow milk from Quebec, Parmigianno Regianno raw cow milk from Italy, Thunder Oak gouda) we’ll be well-fed, but much poorer. We also got some tasty bread at About Cheese, as well as some spruce beer and maple beer. Very interesting indeed.

Crazy shakes

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I had a lot to do. I was supposed to work out. 30 Rock was on. The apartment’s messy. I have stuff to read. The cats are (presumably) feeling neglected. I had all this to take care of and much more, and yet…

We had dinner at beerbistro. And a drink. Or two. And “two” might have been Delirium Tremens. Which might have been tasty.

Evaluations

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The new Neko Case album is excellent. The new Alela Diane album is fantastic. The new Dan Auerbach album is pretty good, but the song “Heartbroken, In Disrepair” is kickass. Listen.

Watchmen (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was ok but not great. I didn’t read the comic so I can’t judge how well they translated the story, but I do know they forgot one cardinal rule: make it fit the medium. 2h43m was just too long…it’s hard to sustain interest and excitement over nearly three hours with a story that dense and jumpy.

Innis & Gunn oak-aged beer is very tasty indeed.