We Saw a Chicken …

Category: goatee-stroking musing, or something

  • Tasty noms with Kyle MacNeill

    at The Urban Element, Ottawa

    Meena Peruvemba (CanWEA), Kyle MacNeill and Derek Lim Soo (GE) prepare the veggies at The Urban Element

    The CanWEA board, and as many staff who could make it, went to The Urban Element last night for a team-building dinner. I usually shy away from team building things (I’ve have too many There is no I in team sessions, to which I usually respond, “Yes, but there is me, and also meat, so I think that says something”) but this one was good.

    The Urban Element isn’t your average resto. You prepare and cook your own dinner, with the direct supervision of chef Kyle MacNeill and his assistants. Now it helps a lot that they’ve chosen very fine ingredients, and measured them out just so, and also have a properly set up kitchen and utensils, but we had to do the mixing, marinading and cooking.

    What we made:

    • Grilled romain caesar salad
    • Kerr Farms flatiron steaks with asparagus and Yukon gold potatoes with rosemary butter
    • Toasted saffron couscous with chick peas, cashews, tomatoes and sweet peppers
    • Crispy fennel flatbread
    • Chocolate praline tart with frangelico sauce

    It was good; very good. Really amazingly good. Great atmosphere and a very pleasant evening.

  • 80, maybe 100, milliseegers

    We watched “Shut Up and Sing” last night. Pretty remarkable the amount of ire that was directed towards The Dixie Chicks for one comment.

    Still, if we define 1 seeger to be the unit of persecution suffered by Pete Seeger for his words and beliefs, the meter barely flickers by comparison.

  • Ema Tei

    I reckon for more than half the time I’ve worked in Toronto, I’ve been within a block of Ema Tei. Yesterday was the first time I went there. I wonder what took me so long?

    Kenn Cutts enjoys the wasabi at Ema Tei

    Kenn, my former colleague from EPCOR, took me to lunch there. I was impressed; tasty food, great prices, huge portions and a great atmosphere. There was a good amount of wasabi sneakily hidden under the fish in the sushi, so we both ended up suitably decongested.

    (and yes, the Technoid Balloon Gimp Script strikes again. While it does work nicely under Gimp 2.4, it’s hidden away in the very unhelpful Xtns/Script-Fu/Text/Balloon menu.)

  • beautiful drone

    The chill units in the new Loblaws Superstore in Scarborough make the most harnonious drone. I might just come here to listen.

  • farewell to the 13th floor

    Well, this was my last day at EPCOR. The last two and a bit years have been fun.

    It’s strange to think that I can fit my entire desk contents into one file box:

    all my desk stuff in one box

    I also made sure I didn’t break with tradition:

    the customary lone paperclip

  • you are what you eat… and you have obviously eaten something very stupid

    I got the Absolutely Everything box set yesterday; all four series of Absolutely. I hadn’t seen this for more than ten years, and it was absolutely (ha!) my favourite comedy show.

    The first season took a little while to get into stride. I don’t think I saw it ever, as I only caught it from series two in 1990. It is, in the words of Callum Gilhooley, “brilliant”.

  • the most hateful coining in the language

    … Is probably “snackinar”.

  • this is what I’m talkin’ about, yeah

    The Global Antigolf Movement.

  • i could do that

    They are demolishing the show home at the corner of Nelson and Simcoe. They are bashing at it with a big excavator, trying to smoosh down the pile of drywall and plywood.

  • goes up to 13, at least

    Got a mailing from The War Amps yesterday. Isn’t war loud enough for them already?

  • tat, too

    Props to the older gent in the Tim’s at New Hamburg. “What’s the tattoo on your arm? I can’t make it out”, asks the server. “It’s supposed to be a panther’s head, but it’s not finished”, he replied. “I was meant to go back the next day, but I sobered up.”

  • the cure for hockey

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    • • •

    • • • •

    The above is a pictorial representation of the 11 additional pucks required so that they wouldn’t need to fight over one. Please donate generously, and you can help Canada become a world-class country with a proper sport …

  • someplace no place

    In Calgary, and walked (likely illegal here) from the hotel up to a restaurant that Kenn had recommended. It’s called Oriental Phoenix, and it’s just off Barlow by Sunridge mall. (It’s really good, incidentally.)

    Walking through the colossal mall parking lots, I had a real sense of ‘no place’ – this could be Lebovic Dr in Scarborough, or Liberty, MO, or Richmond, BC, or Napierville (a town with better backs of necks). What makes is what to create identical beige industrial buildings with colossal setbacks? I’ll leave this to smarter folks like Byrne or Kunstler; me, I’ve got my pho to walk off.

  • I’m slipping

    The B-52s have had a new album out for nearly two weeks, and I don’t have it.

  • strike the (un)happy medium

    We have to fight it. If not, we will go back to the Dark Ages, where we will be persecuted and prosecuted.

    — a UK spiritualist, complaining that psychic services now fall under consumer protection legislation. Emphasis mine.

  • it doesn’t mean to me what it means to them

    Oh dear, tee hee: The Way of The Tosser.

  • consider the donut sprinkles of the field …

    donut

  • i wonder

    If Garlic’s of London (whose menu is fairly heavy on the eponymous) had a self-serve all-you-can-eat, woud that be called Buffet the Vampire Slayer?

  • sproing!

    It’s time to spring over the fire again – but not like Tiny the Toaster. Happy Norouz!

  • welly

    I’m not getting the fashion for trendily-coloured Wellington boots. Maybe it was my junior years spent squelching about in ill-fitting and malodorous gumboots that did it.