Guinness Floats!

At the last Whitecaps game I attended, Sparky and J-Mac and I were talking about Guinness Floats. Lately, at the Whitecap's matches, they have been serving Guinness in waxed paper cups that make me think I am drinking a milkshake. Or a float. And because I'm drinking Guinness, it makes me wonder what a Guinness Float would taste like. So, I decided to find out.



I really thought it might be good. I thought the sweetness of the icecream would balance out with the bitterness of the stout in a flavourful way. I thought wrong. It wasn't very good. Oh well, now I know.

My new balcony furniture...

Pizza of the Day!

This evening's pizza had mozzarella, Parmesan, tomato, red pepper, tofu, zucchini, mushrooms, green olives, garlic and pesto.

Shrovetide!

Today is Shrove Tuesday. I have no idea what a shrove* is, so I'm just going to say it's Pancake Tuesday. I will be having pancakes for dinner. But back to Shrove Tuesday, it is the time in England for the traditional Shrovetide football matches. For those of you who don't know, which is, I'm assuming, most of you, considering the readership here, the Shrovetide football games are massive games between towns or villages that involve, potentially, hundreds of players. These games date back to the 12th century. The ball will, typically, begin at a centre point and players will attempt to move the ball to their own goal, which could be kilometres away, kicking or hitting it, though more likely passing it man to man, like a rugby scrum. Anything goes, so long as it doesn't lead to manslaughter or murder. The game resembles more a mob or riot than a modern football match, but these games are one of the precursors to what we now know as football. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to eat my pancakes. Down wi' it!

*I actually do know, I'm just not telling you.

Pizza of the Day!

Today's pizza is...hey, wait a minute...that's not pizza. True, it's actually socca, which is a chickpea flour type flatbread from Nice (nice). There are other variants throughout southern France and Italy, such as farinata or cecina. The main ingredients are chickpea flour, water and olive oil, though the one I made has tomatoes, rosemary, and Parmesan, as per a recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's wonderful World Vegetarian cookbook.

Yummy yummy yummy!

I have food in my tummy. You're looking at what is one of my favourite meals available in this city. It's Vij's Portobello Mushroom and Red Bell Pepper Curry on Paneer with Beet Salad & Naan.
So good. Eat it. Unless you hate food. Or yourself.

A Late Christmas Gift...

I received the first half of my Christmas gift from a friend of mine yesterday. Yes, I'm aware it's now February, what of it?

Here it is:
It's a set of four Bob-Marley-Playing-Football table place mats. And really, I can't think of a more appropriate gift for me, as it combines three of my favourite things in the entire world:

1)Football
2)Jamaican Music
3)Food

If only we could work coffee and girls into it somehow, we'd be set. And now I need to get enough chairs for my dining room table so that I can actually have people over for dinner and show them off.

The Beginnings of Senility?

A couple of weeks ago, for dinner, I made a broccoli, tofu and udon dish. I often make this simple yet tasty dish. In fact, I made it again tonight. Stir-fry the broccoli, add the tofu and noodles and then the sauce. The only remotely complicated part of it is getting the sauce to thicken with cornstarch. This is not at all difficult, but if one had to choose the most difficult stage of the process, this would be it. And yet, on this night a couple of weeks ago the sauce just wouldn't thicken. The only thing I could think of was that I hadn't used enough cornstarch. So, I added more of it. Still no luck. No problem, I just decided I'd eat it with the runny sauce. Or at least try to...because for some reason it tasted nasty. And I mean nasty. Nasty enough that I threw the whole thing out. We're talking about a guy whose ex-roommates would be pleased when he was gone as it meant they didn't have to eat or could throw out the vegetables that they considered to be off but were well within the realm of edible for me. And to think I did most of the cooking for those ingrates. Anyhow, I digress. Nasty, nasty tasting business...the whole thing went into the garburator. Speaking of which, you probably didn't know it but the word garburator is a canadianism. I'm assuming you didn't know that because I didn't know that until a few moments ago and chances are that if I didn't know it, you didn't either. There you go, now this blog is educational. And yet again, I digress. So, I couldn't figure out what had gone wrong. Runny sauce wouldn't have altered the taste that much, certainly not enough to make it disgustingly inedible. The only thing I could think of was that perhaps the broccoli had been a little off. Anyhow, I ended up eating something else for dinner and didn't think much more about it. A few days later I was straightening up the kitchen a little, putting some things that I'd left out away, tidying up, etc. And I just couldn't figure out why the baking soda was out on the counter. But as I put it away it donned on me...it was sitting right in the spot where I might have left a box of cornstarch, had I had one out any time recently. And apparently I hadn't. Damn. Is it all down hill from here?

Pizza of the Day

Today's pizza, my first in a while, has zucchini, red peppers, onions, mushrooms, and gouda and brie cheeses. I should have put the brie on later, as it turned into little puddles of liquid. Still tasty though...

While we're on the subject of pizza, the pizza contest will be ending soon. The entries thus far are undergoing a very stringent and rigorous testing process, and a winner will be announced before too long, but any entries I deem acceptable and worthwhile will still be admitted. Oh yeah, whoever it was that entered a pizza anonymously (no, not you Sparky)...I still don't know who you are.

Pizza of the Day & Contest Time

Today's pizza has big chunks of tofu, red peppers, green onions, olives and a whack of garlic. Oh yeah, and Mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. And, it's almost round. And there's dried basil baked into the crust. Which brings us to the contest. My pizzas seem to have been lacking a certain flair and creativity of late. I don't mean to say I haven't been enjoying them, just that they're lacking a certain level of excitement. This is where you come in: In the comments section make recommendations of new pizza ingredients or combinations of ingredients that I haven't thought of or tried yet. The only rule is no meat. I'm the judge so I decide who wins. The prize: I name the pizza after you, post it on my blog and you get the public recognition you so obviously desire.

Pizza of the Day!

Today's pizza has jerk tofu, mushrooms, red peppers, green olives and green onions. Oh yeah, and some Gouda cheese too. Has anyone else noticed that I can't make a round pizza?

Breakfast!

Cheddarvision!

Alternate Title: Why the internet is a beautiful, wonderful, and mysterious place...

I was reading an article on the Guardian website about some of the most boring webcams on the internet today and learned of what must surely be the cream of the crop. It is called Cheddarvision. The Cheddarvision website has a webcam that is focused on a wheel of cheddar cheese that is aging. It is aging. You can go to the website and watch a wheel of cheddar cheese age. That is even better than watching paint dry, which you can do at www.watching-paint-dry.com. If you're the impatient sort and don't want to watch a wheel of cheddar age in real time, you can watch the time lapse video of the first 3 months of aging here. It gets very exciting when someone puts a sticker on the cheese which later falls askew and then later still is re-aligned and so on and so forth . Also, I think at one point someone stuck a red clown's nose on the cheese. Everyone, even the cheesemaker, is a comedian apparently.

This has got me thinking of the webcams I could set up around my house. I could have the moss-growing-on-the-deck-cam. That would have been very entertaining last Saturday as I scrubbed some of it away. Or the dust-collecting-behind-my-bedroom-door-cam. Dust collection punctuated by me sweeping it away every few days. Or even the what-is-in-my-fruit-bowl?-cam. Right now, it has two navel oranges and two spartan apples. Two days ago it had an orange, an avocado, and a tomato. See the possibilities? I think the best one, though, would be, and this would take some fancy engineering and a tiny transportable camera, the how-big-is-the-cyst-on-my-eyelid?-cam. Yes, I'll work on that one.

Pizza Of The Day!

I like pizza as much as Sparky likes prime numbers, which is a lot. Happy 37th muchacho!


Today's pizza has marinated tofu, spinach, tomatoes, green olives and garlic. And if you'll excuse me, I will now go eat it.

Too much cold!

For some reason that I am unable to figure out my refrigerator is much, much too cold, as evidenced by:
I have it turned as low as it goes and by low I actually mean high which could be confusing. Let's say instead it is as close to cold as it can be without being off while coldest is at the other end of the dial. I've even turned the freezer down. I just don't know. All of my leafy green things, my tofu, and now my yogurt is frozen. It's too much.

In other ice related news, today being NHL trade deadline day, I freed up my morning in case any teams were trying to get in touch with me, but the deadline has passed and I've heard nothing.

Pizza Of The Day

Today's pizza has tomato sauce, mozzarella, jerk tofu, red peppers, mushrooms, garlic, green olives, parmesan, and, yes, capers.

Emasculation

The best insult I've been had thrown my way in the past couple of weeks:

"You're a vegetarian? Oh, I thought you were a man."

Salty goodness!

I'm addicted to this stuff right now.

Soup Is Good Food!

Anyone who has seen enough of my photographs knows that I have a thing for taking pictures of place settings with food or drinks. Anyhow, to counter this crappy, cold, drizzly weather, here is a yummy bowl of garlic soup served in a loaf of bread that I had in Český Krumlov last January.

Dessert!

Introducing the little bit of heaven that is the lava cake. At first it doesn't look like much more than a simple little chocolate cake. But wait, oh just wait, until you take a spoon or fork to it.

Yes, that is warm chocolate oozing out. Simply divine. Thanks for the recipe, Mom.