whipping couch potatos

  • The furthest you can get from a McDonald’s in the continental United States is 115 miles.
  • Costco now offers a 12 month survivalist food supply for 1 person, on sale now for for $800.
  • Neiman Marcus is selling edible life-sized gingerbread play houses, complete with interior lollipop tree, for $15,000.00.

    As part of a resolution to attempt to get more exercise, now that I’m an unemployed blob that hardly leaves the apartment, I’ve joined HealthMonth, a beta stage on-line game that let’s you choose customizible health rules and then tracks your progress as you follow them through a month, (or don’t). My rules are fairly simple: Exercise for at least 30 minutes three times a week; write 750 words in a journal four times a week; and Ride my bike at least 20 miles a week. My progress is a little spotty, as I forgot about it until now, a full week in, and I should have chosen one of my rules better, as due to my glasses, I can’t bike in rain, (one of the more unfortunate side-effects of Octoberism). Instead I should have made a rule about my diet, as all I’ve been eating at home are microwavable cup-a-noodles, an entire Costco flat of them. On the plus side, food has been entering my body at regular intervals, on the other, even I have to admit that’s an extremely shoddy definition of “food”.

    Speaking of food, Esme recently introduced me to the most pornographic food blog I’ve ever seen, Tastespotting, a Trendspotting for your mouth and belly. Just scanning the page starts saliva flowing, as well as the profound desire to push technology to the point where it’s possible to to reach through the screen and pick up delicious baked goods. Nom. It’s not as internet classic as whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com, or as useful as Recipe Matcher, which makes suggestions based on what ingredients you have, but it’s certainly more inspiring.

  • Blue-fin Tuner is extinct

    Via Stephen:

    Bye Bye Blue-fin.

    My announcement is premature but perhaps not by much. Up until a couple of months ago the blame was on fishing and particularly Malta. With the blue-fin getting rarer and the price for a fish up around a third of a million bucks it would hard to imagine that fishermen would stop going after this lucrative prey.

    However, it seems that BP will strike the final blow. Giant underwater dispersant and oil plumes are creating huge dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and … that’s where blue-fin tuna spawn – and it’s the ONLY place they spawn.

    So go buy a couple of tins and put them away somewhere cool and maybe in 50 years or so we can try to recreate the blue-fin from canned DNA – or just eat it when you get tired of soylent green.

    a moment about bread

    Just a note before I launch into this particular rave: I don’t really like bread. My infatuation with a good croissant, however, is not a passing flirtation, no, it is a fierce white-knuckle fucking love. When I was a child, my parents offered them to me as an ultimate treat, as fulfilling in their way as a the sugary deathbomb ambrosia in the center of a Cadbury Cream egg. Food of the gods, my overly literary five year old self would have told you, the cheap chocolate equivalent of the Norse apples of life.

    Most croissants are not up to par. They are substandard, greasy crescents of gluey, papery, crumbling pastry, not worth the hot chocolate it takes to save them. A proper croissant is a treasure, a warm, smooth bread, delicately crunchy to bite into, tender yet satisfying to chew. Buying them from a grocery store just isn’t going to cut it. Most bakeries, in fact, don’t even dish out. That said, the delectable croissants at Au Kouign-Amann, (322 Avenue Du Mont-Royal Est, MontrĂ©al), blew my head off. One bite and I was dissolved, transparent, lost in the buttery, flaky heaven that had just taken me hostage.

    Tony and I tried their cranberry shortbread tarts, blueberry shortbread tarts, chocolate croissants, and plain croissants, liking best the cranberry tart, as the sharpness of the berry contrasted well with the richness of the shortbread, and the plain croissants, as we found the taste of the chocolate too distracting from the flawless pastry. We would have tried the bakery’s namesake kouign amann, but we got there later in the day, and they were out.

    The red Au Kouign-Amann storefront on Avenue du Mont-Royal, right by St. Denis, in small and unpretentious and easy to walk by, but you mustn’t. You need to go inside and examine their tiny, pretty, shortbread cranberry cakes, their immaculate almond flake tarts, or their perfect croissants, pick out slightly more than you think you should eat, making certain to try one of each of the shiniest, most delectable offerings in the cabinet, then settle into one of the two cozy tables in the window, turn off your cellphone, and prepare to be transported to bliss by the power of warm, fresh bread alone.

    (and chevre. chevre fixes everything else)

    Secret Film School is presenting The Red Violin tonight. 400 West Hastings st. Doors at 6:30, Film at 7:00.

    Met up with Lung for lunch at the Art Gallery today, my favourite downtown cafe. (He’s selling prints cheap right now. I recommend you jump on it while you have the chance.) We talked about girls, boys, travel, the friends we have in common and left with the strong conviction there are very few ills that a perfect tiramisu cannot fix (or at least delay).

    om nom nom nom

    Something I can’t seem to get over is how much mind-bogglingly delicious food there is in Montreal, for incredibly cheap.

    Today I’m breakfasting on left-over’s from last night’s heavenly Turkish dinner at Avesta, (2077 rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest), and the lamb and the lavash bread, (that they make fresh, right in the window), and the everything is still so tasty that it’s shutting down my ability to process any other input. David apparently just said something to me, but I was too busy communing with my food to even notice. Oh. My. Mercy. Is it ever freaking good. The lavash bread, especially, is an entirely thrilling experience, which sounds insane until you try it hot from the grill. All dignity vanishes as you stuff it into your mouth, your eyes closing in appreciation.

    Yesterday we had the foresight to bring a Santropol Midnight Spread sandwich home to be breakfast. I’m not sure if we’ve ever had a better idea. I love Santropol’s sandwiches so much that I was actually disappointed that they were out of posters for sale. I want to be able to put up their advertising in my home. They are that perfect, that delicious, that absolutely addictive. If they catered a war, the war might end. “I’m going to shoot you. Mr. Enemy!” “Wait, have this sandwich first!” “Well, actually, this is pretty good. Thank you! You are my new best friend.”

    And I got to have it for breakfast. In bed.

    not gloating, celebrating

    Apropos of nothing, I’m making soup. Glorious soup. So tasty that I’m willing to say that the closest thing I’ve got going to a love affair is currently burbling to itself in my kitchen. It’s six kinds of cheese, (seven heaping handfuls of it, thank you abandoned party food), organic chicken broth, broccoli, and cauliflower, stirred in with with black pepper, cinnamon, and a touch of organic honey. It’s going to be delicious.

    charactor study, owmybrain

    I have an atrocious head-ache and it’s all my fault. I bought my dinner at Grade A Restaurant, a place on Grandville somehow left over from the early seventies, and without thinking, I ordered something with meat. Only fictional gods know what was in it. The Grade A Restaurant specializes in Chinese-Canadian food, like you only get where the railroad was built, greasy and cheap. It’s all formica topped tables, prints of hay bales, and prices five years lower than I feel are safe. The only consession to this century is an ATM machine in blue plastic that looks like it was designed in 1989. I love it there. It is never empty, but I am always the only woman and possibly the only customer under the age of Old. I don’t mean a number, like 16 or 35 or 50, I mean Old in that shabby craggy face sort of way, where hair only comes in two options, thinning or insane.