Month: July 2009

Neat-O!

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 31/07/2009

On my way to meet an old friend (as in, we met at camp in grade 6) for lunch today, I got stopped at a long light which annoyed me at first, but then I got super excited when I realized what the car with the weird contraption on the roof was:

google!

Can you see it? It’s a Google Street vehicle! Luckily he had to wait to turn which afforded me the time to grab my camera and take a quick picture. Yes, I also waved :)

The street view hasn’t turned up on google maps for Toronto yet, but when it does I’m for SURE looking for my blurred out face! There’s a closeup after the jump if you care. More→

Filth! Smut! Carrots!

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 30/07/2009

I’ve become the farmer’s market queen, obsessively riding my bike from one to another almost daily. I never buy much, there hasn’t been much to buy…mid-August we should be up to our eyeballs in tomatoes and other wondrous things. On Monday I went to the Sorauren Market and picked up a sack of mini mutant carrots. Here’s a fun one:

carrot man

It reminded me of that parsnip of yore. Although, it seems, while searching for that picture, I found a LOT more funny parsnips.

Introducing the elusive Brenda Walsh

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 27/07/2009

She was out in the newly charcoal-replaced-in-the-filter super clear water so I snuck over and took a picture:

Aw, Bren!

She’s the black one in the middle, you can barely see her. But I think anyone with a speck of fish knowlege will appreciate her enormitude. Gigantic pleco, indeed!

More pics after the JUMP! More→

Art

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 27/07/2009

It’s been a long time since Shannon and I have gone stenciling together and I miss it. And that feeling was compounded a couple weeks ago when these appeared around the corner from our place:

Frank’s Bride   Space

They’re great.

I went to the Sorauren Farmer’s Market today and only bought some mutant baby carrots. I’m waiting for tomato season to hit, then I will be a happy camper. On the way home, walking past the Nestle factory (which Ari calls Mr Wonka’s) the smell of chocolate almost knocked me down it was so powerful.  There’s also a building on the way home that Ari and I have decided that it’s where we will hide out when the zombie apocalypse happens. Because it makes sense to hide in buildings that were abandoned years ago, rather than ones where people lived/worked right up to the end…

Birthday Cupcakes

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 23/07/2009

We’ve already established that I am no cake decorator (although not quite a wreckorator either) so these cupcakes, while cute, are not super duper. They tasted great and that’s all that counts, right? I used a box mix, one specifically for cupcakes that only used egg whites, rather than whole eggs. It was delicious. The icing is also from a container, cream cheese icing, that I coloured 3 different ways and used mini zip loc baggies to pipe the flowers.

nummy

They were for my old friend Michelle who’s birthday was last Friday but she has a new baby Ruby attached to her boob and can’t go out like we normal people do. So we took the party to her beautifully renovated house and drank lots of free organic beer, pigged out on sushi and I got to hold a teeny baby. A super afternoon/evening.

The paperbag puppet is Rose, made by Ari.

ps. the part that I forgot to mention is that I gave Michelle/Ruby the first toy I ever crocheted, about 5 years ago. Oh, maybe not the first, but the first of this pattern and the only one where I followed the pattern exactly.

little girl

It’s about 12″ tall and I did remember to tell Michelle to remove buttons before handing it over to a baby!

I also bake cookies

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 21/07/2009

Sort of. These were from a President’s Choice mix, Oatmeal with raisins and dates.

cookies

I rolled the first batch in coconut and the second in pignoles. Truth be told, they’re not that great. They’re an odd texture, crumby and grainy, and they fall apart easily.  They’re also oddly spiced, too much nutmeg or something. Eh. We’ll suffer through them somehow.

Cooking on Sunday

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 19/07/2009

I rode my bike to the Liberty Village farmer’s market and it was worth it. The market’s not huge, but it’s nice, a good variety and there was a band playing. Here’s what I got for about $20:

liberty booty

The gooseberries are amazing, and lucky for me, neither Shannon nor Ari like them. Ha. I made all the zucchini and some of the fresh garlic into soup using this recipe  (it’s bland and requires a lot of seasoning):

soup

Then I made all the cucumbers into bread and butter pickles using this recipe (sorta) and my pack of pickling spices:

pickly

They smell great, I can barely wait for tomorrow to eat them. All.

Dear Tastespotting;

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 18/07/2009

You used to be my favourite foodporn site. Then there was a battle about ownership and you went offline and someone started foodgawker so I started going there to satisfy my need for recipes. Then you came back online and I considered both sites to be equal.

That is, until recently.

Nowadays tastespotting has Patron Tequila ads on the top right corner of each page and that’s fine. Except when I click on a NON Patron ad (I mean, when I see a picture of a recipe I might be interested in) often it goes through to…a Patron ad. And then I have to go back and figure out which picture I clicked (because always I open a bunch at once) and try again and again until I get the actual recipe I want to read. It’s total bullshit.

I give up, you win. I’m done with your website. Goodbye forever.

Love,

Caitlin

ps Yes, I did email tastespotting to complain and no, I did not get any reply. Shocker.

Edit

pps I did get a reply from Sarah that runs tastespotting, which I appreciate, who explained that running that site is expensive and that the ads are the only way to make money AND that there’s an optional ‘no thanks’ button on the ad which puts you right through to the desired webpage. However, on my computer, that button is low enough that I would have to scroll down to find it AND it’s in a smaller font in very light grey, making it virtually impossible to find.

Obsessed.

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 15/07/2009

Now I know you all know how much I love my Sirius Satellite Radio subscription, and I know you all know that for the most part I listen to Howard Stern (who I adore). The portable unit I have is actually my second one because they’re not very sturdy. The first one sort of fell apart-the wheel thing would only go in one direction and the headphone jack died. It became un-portable. Then I got a new one, it’s fancy and black, much smaller and then when I went to Montreal I took it and the cradle so I could charge it but I decided NOT to take the aerial because it’s a crazy long wire and a pain if it gets tangled. But when I unplugged the aerial, something broke. Now I can not get it plugged back in and that means that I can no longer get a feed which means I can’t do my regularly scheduled recordings-nightly of that day’s Howard Stern Show, which I listen to the next day.  Now, I haven’t missed too much because I listen to the feed on my computer, and that’s fine because our tv remote’s kind of dead which means I barely watch tv during the day anymore, especially if I am alone.

ANYway. Sometimes I can’t get a live satellite feed when walking around in Toronto-when I am underground, or in a mall-so I have listened to old recordings several times. One of the neat features of the radio is that it does these automatic recordings of stations you listen to, they’re called Radio Replays, and because I occasionally listen to the Broadway station I happily discoverd a 6.5 hour recording of Broadway musical songs! On that station I love half the music, I’m familiar with a quarter of the music and the rest is new to my ears. Then I heard a song, near the end of the long recording, that I’ve fallen in love with and listen to over and over each day. It’s from the musical “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” and was originally sung by Miss Dolly Parton in the movie. And, trust me, it’s a great version of the song. But the one on my radio is infinitely better. Times a million, I wish I knew who was singing it. The song’s called “A Lil’ Ole Bitty Pissant Country Place”…I wish I could find a decent version of it on youtube, but feel free to enjoy a little Dolly Parton.

One day I will be able to remember the words…

Since nobody asked

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 11/07/2009

Sometimes I can be a little obsessive compulsive. Today I went through my Koolaid points to see what’s up because I’ve been saving them for YEARS. As you can see. I only drink it in the summer time. Anyway, I snipped each point thing out neatly and organized them by denomination. Lately they’ve done 100 point packs, but only on the invisible flavour-one that I love but that Shannon hates because he always thinks it’s water and gets mad. It reminded me of flavours from long ago, the special Spiderman called Rock-a-dile Red that gave 4 points, Pink Swimmingo, Incrediberry, Sharkleberry Fin, mmm. Usually I get the singles these days and I don’t think there are points on the box.

Anyway, now I get to pick stuff from the Kool-Aid website with my 1767 points. Wee!

ocd