and things went downhill from there

To battle!

Sometimes I forget that I have toys on my desk at work. For having sworn that I would not decorate this desk, it seems to have collected quite an assortment of ponies and other little toys. Here are two of them joining forces to fight for good - or at least to speak sternly in its defense.


I am sure that when this chicken first hatched from its egg, it never envisioned ending up like this. I would almost feel guilty, but it's the chicken's own fault for being born so delicious.

I brined this overnight in a standard salt/sugar/soy sauce mixture before putting it in the smoker on Sunday afternoon. It got two and a half hours of apple wood smoke and another two hours of 240F heat. Although the skin looks nice and crispy, it was actually more leathery. Next time I will know to either finish it on the grill, or with a torch (or I suppose the broiler would work too) if I want crispy skin. Crispness (or lack thereof) aside, it was delicious. We stuffed a bit of rosemary and thyme from our herb garden under the skin, and then finished it with a brushing of olive oil and mixed, fresh-ground pepper before putting it in the smoker.


I have never been a big fan of iced coffee. I like a lot of the derivative drinks like Frappuccino, iced mocha and their ilk, but black coffee served over ice was never my thing. Then I learned of cold brewing and the world changed. I had heard of cold brewing, but had always filed it under things to try on a rainy day and never got around to it. I don't know why I hadn't tried it before, because it's not like it is time consuming or fiddly.

Even though this turned out good, I think that I can make it better so I am going to tweak the recipe a bit for the next batch

I guess this is why they call them butterfly bushes.

If we had not deviated from our usual route through the park this evening (opting to take the longer path) I would not have seen this little cluster of photogenic fungi. With the cool, wet weather we have been experiencing this spring I expect we will be seeing more of these.

They are not normally this orange, but the sun was very low in the sky casting a wonderful golden glow over everything.

If this weather keeps up, it should be a bumper year for chanterelles at the farmers' market this year. It might not be such a bumper crop for other things, though. Earlier this spring the farmers in the area were concerned because it was so dry - especially on the back of a very dry summer last year, and a lower-than-average snow fall this winter.

Now they are concerned about flooding. I feel for them.

Ocean King is quite a pleasant little Chinese restaurant just a few blocks from here. I would not rate it as the best Chinese restaurant in town, but it is quite good. I love it for its dated, 70s pizzeria décor. I also love that the owner always throws an extra treat or two into the bag when we package up the rest of our dinner to go.

I was born in the year of the rabbit (a water rabbit to be more precise). According to the Chinese zodiac, I pair well with a pig or dog, but even better with a white wine and a cream sauce.

After neglecting it for months, I am going to get back into actively tracking my calories and physical activity. That is not to say that I have been eating unhealthy lately, but I need to get back to watching the how much as well as the what.

For the past few months my lunches have consisted of stuff like this:


While that is on the right track, it does not do a lot of good when I combine it with things like this:


or this:


This is not to say that I will be cutting out treats entirely, because the best way to ensure that I don't follow a diet is to make it unpleasant. By tracking it all,though, it lets me strike a karmic balance. I will allow myself a muffin, or a doughnut as long as I can see on paper that I need to cut out something else to compensate.

I also need to get more active again. With the nicer weather we have started taking semi-daily walks, and we have hauled our bikes out of storage again. The first time I hopped on my bike last week, my first thought was, "Man, I missed this."


In other news, I have gotten a bit sloppy about posting new pictures here as I add them to my 2012 collection. I am going to work on updating here more often as well.

A new grill has been on our wish list for the past couple of years, but the old grill has been reluctant to quit working. The piezoelectric starter stopped working about a month after we got it, and the axles bent under the weight of the grill after the first year so that moving it became more an act of dragging it from point A to B than actually rolling it. Even though I tightened them after the third year, the bolts all worked themselves loose (or stripped themselves in some cases) so that the whole barbecue was rocky. Left to its own devices, it leans at about a 3º angle off centre. The drip tray (pop can, rather) holder blew away the second winter. The holder for the propane tank did not hold properly because of the grill's oblique angle of rest, so one had to be careful when moving the grill lest the propane tank fall off (which it did on more than one occasion).

But still it grilled on. It worked pretty well, with a minimum of hot spots.

When I hauled the grill out of storage this spring, I discovered that virtually all of its lava rocks had turned to powder over the winter and collected in a pile on the bottom shelf. What had not collected there had settled on the gas jets, blocking all but 3-4 of the holes. Now we not only had hot spots, but we had little but hot spots. The time had come to put the grill out to pasture and replace it with a newer model. We shopped around at the usual assortment of big box stores, but none of the grills there impressed me. The nicer ones lacked features that most of the literature had told me was required, and the cheaper ones were flimsy. Finally, when we were checking out the Home Expressions Show at the end of March, one of the vendors there sold me on the merits of one of their grills.

It was a little more than I had been planning to spend, but after we discussed it later we decided that this one would probably last a good fifteen years if we bought it, so we went back to the vendor on our way out and found that the salesman had mysteriously disappeared. One might think that we would take that as a sign. We left the show grill-less.

Fast forward to a week ago last Saturday. I had done a bit more research on grills, and decided that the place with the best selection of good grills was the same vendor that we had seen at the show, so we drove up to their main store over in the west end of town. Initially we drove out there to look at the grill we had seen at the show, but we ended up buying the one that they'd had opposite a the show because it was on sale. We ordered the grill and a cover for it, and then when we made noises about taking it with us when we left the salesman said, "Oh, our warehouse isn't open today, so you will have to come by sometime during the week before 4:30." atara and I discussed it some more, and decided to have them assemble and deliver it instead. The last thing the salesman told us before we left was, "They will call you to set up a delivery date, but you should have it before the end of the week."

On Friday I called them and said, "Yo, where's my grill?"

Call 1: The receptionist blind-transferred me to somebody's voice mail.

Call 2: I called the warehouse directly this time, and got hold of somebody who was very polite and helpful. He took down all of my particulars and promised that he would get the information to the guy who handled shipping and they would contact me back.

Call 3: I called again on Tuesday the following week and got another helpful guy in the warehouse who actually took the phone over to the right guy this time. He told me that the grill had been sitting there since the previous week, assembled and ready to go. When I asked him when we might expect to see it, he said, "Well, it's usually up to the salesman to arrange delivery." I told him that I would call the salesman if that's what was required, but he said, "No, that's OK, we can set it up for you. I'll talk to the delivery guys and find out when they'll be in your area next then call you back to set up the time either later today, or tomorrow morning."

Call 4: On Thursday I had heard nothing back from them, so I called the office again (but I had learned how their business was set up, and called the preferred number this time -- apparently they are two business units operating under the same name, and I had called the wrong business unit the first time. The guy in the warehouse had lectured me about that on my third call.) I got hold of the salesman who had sold us the grill, and he seemed nonplussed to hear from me, until he found out that we had not got our grill yet, and that the warehouse was not returning my calls. He said to let him take care of it.

About an hour later the warehouse called and asked if it was OK for them to deliver it between 1 and 3 that same day. At 2:55 we had one of these behind our house:


I was pleased until I discovered that they had not shipped the cover with it. We had ordered a cover. The driver was mortified when he discovered that they had not included the cover, and he apologized personally saying, "It's my fault for not checking the order more thoroughly against the invoice." He swung by on his way home from work to deliver the cover. Of all the people we'd dealt with in that company, the driver and his helper were easily the most professional.

( An hour later. )

When I first came to this city back in 1994, two of the things that I bemoaned to anyone who would listen was that it lacked good coffee, and good beer on tap. The beer is still a little sketchy, though we have a pretty good selection available in the liquor stores, and some wonderful micro brews. The coffee situation has improved a lot though. While the bulk of the coffee is from chains like Tim Hortons and Starbucks (who had not yet entered the market here when I first came out this way), we have a few decent places now, and a couple of real gems like Parlour Coffee down on Main.

Traditionally when I think of a fancy coffee shop, I think of French presses, steaming espresso machines, and cups made from 100% recycled left-wing literature. This place is more like a science lab. The coffee and water - which is kept at a precise temperatures - are both carefully weighed for just the perfect blend, and then double-filtered. This is the coffee that you would find at the opposite end of the coffee wheel from your Bodum coffee. The latter is rugged and full-bodied, often with a fine sheen of oil on the top and a small layer of sludge at the bottom. It is raw, bold and intense. The Chemex process produces coffee that is smooth and incredibly refined. The coffee is reduced to its flavour essence. We were sipping an African roast one day when Dave looked thoughtful for a moment and then said, "I have been trying to come up with a description for the flavour of this bean, and I think the best description I can come up with is that it tastes like coffee. When I think of coffee, I think of a definitive taste, and this is it." Pretty much nailed it.

I took this picture on full manual. I rested the camera on the counter for the shot, though I at 1/1000 of a second it hardly needed to be braced. I just liked that particular angle. We managed to get the last two seats in the coffee shop that was full to overflowing. In spite of the moderately chilly temperatures and brisk breeze outside, a small crowd had gathered out front to visit and enjoy espresso from elegant little demitasse cups.


Right after I took the previous picture, Dave reached for the camera and said, "I think I might have a good shot for you." Before I could warn him that it was set on full manual mode, he lined up a shot looking down into his mug. He took a couple more at different angles and settings, but in the end the first picture turned out the best. I have found that it often works that way. There is something to be said for spontaneity.

I cropped the shot, and did some modest colour-balancing (which you almost always need to do when you are using the raw image). The Canon software that came with the camera has a "click to balance" feature that I have started playing with lately. I usually just use one of the pre-sets (Daylight, Florescent, Tungsten, etc.) but the click-balance gives some nice granular control when none of those quite do the trick. I did not bother to colour-balance the picture above for, well, obvious reasons.

Sharp observers will notice one other thing that I edited in this picture - well, actually it's pretty obvious when you look at it, but I think it looks better this way.

We live in a wonderful time when many of the mundane chores of the past are automated. Our modern cameras border on being magical - if I could ask for one more feature, it would be a delayed shutter that would hold the shot until the picture was well-composed. I envision being able to set it for "scenic", "comedic", "touching", etc.

One would expect that being the lazy, ease-loving blob that I am, I would treat the camera like a point-and-shoot, but this afternoon I disabled as many of its automatic features as I was able and took a picture of my rechargeable speaker. The only part of this picture that I left as automatic was the colour correction, and that is because I was more interested in examining the picture for noise and distortion than for colour integrity.

Also the automatic colour correction in this little camera is remarkably good.

You can check the Exif data for yourself since I uploaded the unaltered Jpeg image as it came from the camera, but I shot this with the following settings:

Flash: off
ISO: 80
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 2.0 seconds



I am going to play around with the RAW image when I get home, but here are my initial thoughts on examining the Jpeg.

The colour-correction on the foreground subjects is darned near spot-on, which is pretty impressive with the terrible lighting conditions in this office. The displays on the monitors in the background are both very cool, but that is to be expected when it is compensating for the lights in here, and I probably would not have noticed that they were pushed into the blue if I did not have them both right in front of my nose while I was looking at this picture.

While I am very pleased with the detail and clarity of the foreground objects, you can really see the error correction and Jpeg artifacts in the background. They are especially apparent at contrast boundaries. The light rings of the speaker almost seem to have a halo against the dark monitors. One of the reasons that I seldom post pictures in full resolution is because down-sizing the image helps to mask the noise and detail lost by the camera's attempts to reduce the noise.

That said, I think that this level of noise and artefacts is acceptable for about 90% of what I tend to shoot on a day-to-day basis.

Don't judge me, lots of people do it.

I started with some cheese and tofu.


I left it in a bit longer than the recipe called for because it was cold and windy, and I was afraid that I was losing a lot of the smoke to the elements. In the process I learned that this smoker does not appear to be affected by wind, so I will know for next time. The cheese was really good when it first came out of the smoker, but after being bagged up in the refrigerator for the past few days it has grown stronger and stronger, to the point where it is smoky to the point of being slightly bitter.

Live and learn.

I have found that if I shave off the smoky outside of the cheese, the interior is still pretty strong, but without the bitterness, so I will call this a qualified success.

I did not marinade the tofu or prepare it in any other way before I smoked it, other than patting it thoroughly dry before I put it on the rack. I had a bit of it for dinner last night, and it was pretty good as well, if also a bit strong. I sliced it thin and sautéed it in a bit of butter before adding some diced ham, peas, and finally stirring in an egg and soy sauce. It did not quite come out like soy bacon, but it was OK. I have some ideas for the next time I try this.

The main problem with the cheese and tofu is that they stink up the kitchen when I open the bags they are sealed in.

On my "to do" list this spring: maple-cured, apple-smoked bacon.

I know this is not supposed to be "a year of things I ate", but one of the beautiful things about owning a small camera now is that I can pull it out on a whim when I get served something as lovely as this. Also today's picture is in two parts, since my meal arrived in two parts.

atara and I had originally planned to have dinner up at The Round Table this evening because we'd heard that Half Pints would be tapping a keg of their Black Galaxy beer for the event. It turns out we got our days mixed up and that happened yesterday. With that unexpected change in plans, we decided to go all-in with changed plans and went over to Clay Oven for dinner instead.

While we will usually end up ordering three things from the menu (atara picks one item, I pick one, and we agree on the third), we had agreed in advance that we would each order ourselves a thali platter this evening. Their thali platters are a pretty good deal, and even if you both order drinks with your meal you can do dinner for two for ~$30.00.

The last time we had these for dinner, I ordered the chicken and atara ordered the vegetarian one. This time she chose the chicken, and I ordered the Masala Dosa Thali. Its description on the menu sounded intriguing, and it promised to come with lentil soup and Dosa. I ordered it because I had no idea what Dosa was, and I looked forward to being educated.

The platter arrived as you see it pictured here. I assumed that the odd little doughnut at the front must be the Dosa, though I was a little disappointed that an item that was specifically mentioned in the name of the dish was so anticlimactic in appearance. Then the waitress announced that the Dosa would just take another minute or two before it was ready for me, and I became intrigued anew.


This is what arrived about a minute later. It is as large as it appears in this picture, and weighed enough to serve as a passable weapon. It was delicious, but it could have served as a meal by itself.


The verdict on dinner: it was very good. Clockwise around the plate (starting at the top where there is an empty space that was far too small to hold the Dosa) there was a cardamom/rice pudding dessert, followed by Idli (which is a savoury cake). The best description I could come up with when describing it for atara was that it was like Ethiopian flat bread formed into a little cake. It was pleasant, and did a decent job of soaking up juices. The little doughnut was Vada, and as nearly as I could tell it was made from dal. It was quite nice as well. Next up were a coconut chutney (with oodles of cardamom in it) and a tomato chutney. Finally there was the yoghurt and puffed-rice dish that seems to pop up in almost every Indian cuisine. I can't remember the name of it, but I think it's primary function is to help remove heat after you eat something spicy.

The centre piece in this platter was the bowl of lentil soup. I don't know what I can really say about this soup, other than that it was the highlight of the meal. It packed a few pleasant surprises in it, the biggest of which was 1/4 of a poached pear. It was a complex mix of flavours and textures that all worked well together.

The platter with its slice of naan, or the Dosa would have made an adequate meal for me. If I had been smarter, I'd have saved about half of the Dosa and brought it home for lunch tomorrow. Alas, that did not occur to me until I had fought my way more than two thirds of that food baton. I will make a point of skipping lunch the next time I know I might be ordering this platter for dinner.