Year In Pictures: 2010/04/25
Apr. 25th, 2010 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plonqIt's amazing what you sometimes fine when you clean a basement or a garage. In this case I found my old dice bag from my D&D days. It was hand-sewn with a gold draw string (though the faux-gold inlay in the string is mostly worn away now). The dice are laid out out on the back of an old school yearbook, but if I had been thinking I would have come back into the house and fetched my old die-rolling pad, which is a 1x1' board covered in the same black velvet.
The materials for the rolling pad and bag were all pilfered at my former place of employment - well, not exactly stolen so much as rescued from the trash. One of the fringe benefits of working as a janitor in a furniture factory was that I had access to lots of surplus raw materials when I needed them. There was sort of a friendly competition in our D&D group to try and one-up each other by making things like this. You'll notice that some of the dice had some custom paint work as well. What worked well for miniatures also worked well for dice. My black D6 of doom was saved for special occasions.
Most of my good dice are in the house, languishing in a drawer in the living room. This includes my set of skunk dice that I found at a game shop in Ohio a few years back. I was playing a skunk character in Ironclaw at the time, and I thought the dice would be appropriate.
We went back to The Tallest Poppy again, but this time for brunch.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
atara grabbed some of her cash reserves with the intention of treating us both to brunch. I hadn't seen a posted price, so once we were seated in the restaurant and the waitress had brought our beverages, I asked about the price and it turned out that we had brought only enough money between us to cover the bill, with nothing for the gratuity (we learned later that it was covered in the price). I left atara to watch our table and double-timed it up the street to one of our bank branches to grab some more cash from the ATM. I encountered a somewhat crazy older gentleman about half a block from the bank, and he accompanied me the rest of the way, bathing me in the radiance of his insanity.
I learned about his bunions and blisters, and how hard it is to walk. He was out of ointment, and as a result he could barely walk, though he was walking much better yesterday. He explained the science of shoes, and friction, and how blisters are formed. I suppose I make it sound halfway rational when I describe it that way, but you have to understand that this is only what I managed to glean from his endless stream of meandering blather. I smiled, and replied with commiserative pleasantries since, bat-shit crazy aside, he seemed nice enough and as far as I could tell he wasn't trying to hit me up for money or cigarettes.
Brunch itself was a fixed menu in the sense that you simply ordered Brunch and got the same courses as everybody else. On the other hand, I think the menu changes every week, so it is hardly a fixed menu in that sense. They tend to favour local ingredients, so it depends somewhat on what is available at any given time.
This morning we got four courses. The first course consisted of fresh fruit skewers with a yogurt dip. The skewers had blueberry, watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe, orange, grapefruit, and a grape. For some reason I want to say that it had kiwi too, but I wouldn't swear on it. The dip was home-made yogurt with honey, poppy seeds and a bit of fresh strawberry. The next course was potato latkes with two salads (and a bit more fruit) and some apple sauce and sour cream as dips for the latke. The salads were a cabbage salad with raisins and apples, and another salad of mixed greens (including local dandelion) with dates and blue cheese, and a balsamic vinaigrette. Let it be stated for the record that dates and blue cheese go together very well.
The third course was mushroom, potato and spinach quiche in a phyllo crust, with honey-cured bacon, herbed farmer sausage, ham, and some very nice little breakfast sausages. It also came with delicious toast with a topping that I could not identify. It wasn't garlic butter, and it had black bits in it that were too small to be poppy seeds. In any event, its flavour was subtle and very good. Also more fruit. Finally they served dessert in the form of little pastries filled with chocolate pieces and topped with neapolitan ice cream and a fruit jelly.
About midway through our meal, my old friend I had met on my way to the bank wandered into the restaurant. He approached one of the serving girls and explained that he had no money, but would really appreciate a coffee. She gave him a warm smile and told him to head up the counter and see what they could do for him. They fixed him up with a coffee and sent him on his way. Given that this restaurant is set up in a fairly sketchy part of town, it would not surprise me if they had a reasonable amount of that kind of walk-up traffic.
We got there just after their posted opening time, but a good number of the tables were already filled when we arrived, and there were only two left that were not reserved, so I think their hours might be a bit flexible. The place filled up the rest of the way shortly after we were seated, so our timing was pretty good. I think if - no, when - we do brunch there again we may consider calling in reservations earlier in the week.
The materials for the rolling pad and bag were all pilfered at my former place of employment - well, not exactly stolen so much as rescued from the trash. One of the fringe benefits of working as a janitor in a furniture factory was that I had access to lots of surplus raw materials when I needed them. There was sort of a friendly competition in our D&D group to try and one-up each other by making things like this. You'll notice that some of the dice had some custom paint work as well. What worked well for miniatures also worked well for dice. My black D6 of doom was saved for special occasions.
Most of my good dice are in the house, languishing in a drawer in the living room. This includes my set of skunk dice that I found at a game shop in Ohio a few years back. I was playing a skunk character in Ironclaw at the time, and I thought the dice would be appropriate.
We went back to The Tallest Poppy again, but this time for brunch.
atara grabbed some of her cash reserves with the intention of treating us both to brunch. I hadn't seen a posted price, so once we were seated in the restaurant and the waitress had brought our beverages, I asked about the price and it turned out that we had brought only enough money between us to cover the bill, with nothing for the gratuity (we learned later that it was covered in the price). I left atara to watch our table and double-timed it up the street to one of our bank branches to grab some more cash from the ATM. I encountered a somewhat crazy older gentleman about half a block from the bank, and he accompanied me the rest of the way, bathing me in the radiance of his insanity.I learned about his bunions and blisters, and how hard it is to walk. He was out of ointment, and as a result he could barely walk, though he was walking much better yesterday. He explained the science of shoes, and friction, and how blisters are formed. I suppose I make it sound halfway rational when I describe it that way, but you have to understand that this is only what I managed to glean from his endless stream of meandering blather. I smiled, and replied with commiserative pleasantries since, bat-shit crazy aside, he seemed nice enough and as far as I could tell he wasn't trying to hit me up for money or cigarettes.
Brunch itself was a fixed menu in the sense that you simply ordered Brunch and got the same courses as everybody else. On the other hand, I think the menu changes every week, so it is hardly a fixed menu in that sense. They tend to favour local ingredients, so it depends somewhat on what is available at any given time.
This morning we got four courses. The first course consisted of fresh fruit skewers with a yogurt dip. The skewers had blueberry, watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe, orange, grapefruit, and a grape. For some reason I want to say that it had kiwi too, but I wouldn't swear on it. The dip was home-made yogurt with honey, poppy seeds and a bit of fresh strawberry. The next course was potato latkes with two salads (and a bit more fruit) and some apple sauce and sour cream as dips for the latke. The salads were a cabbage salad with raisins and apples, and another salad of mixed greens (including local dandelion) with dates and blue cheese, and a balsamic vinaigrette. Let it be stated for the record that dates and blue cheese go together very well.
The third course was mushroom, potato and spinach quiche in a phyllo crust, with honey-cured bacon, herbed farmer sausage, ham, and some very nice little breakfast sausages. It also came with delicious toast with a topping that I could not identify. It wasn't garlic butter, and it had black bits in it that were too small to be poppy seeds. In any event, its flavour was subtle and very good. Also more fruit. Finally they served dessert in the form of little pastries filled with chocolate pieces and topped with neapolitan ice cream and a fruit jelly.
About midway through our meal, my old friend I had met on my way to the bank wandered into the restaurant. He approached one of the serving girls and explained that he had no money, but would really appreciate a coffee. She gave him a warm smile and told him to head up the counter and see what they could do for him. They fixed him up with a coffee and sent him on his way. Given that this restaurant is set up in a fairly sketchy part of town, it would not surprise me if they had a reasonable amount of that kind of walk-up traffic.
We got there just after their posted opening time, but a good number of the tables were already filled when we arrived, and there were only two left that were not reserved, so I think their hours might be a bit flexible. The place filled up the rest of the way shortly after we were seated, so our timing was pretty good. I think if - no, when - we do brunch there again we may consider calling in reservations earlier in the week.
