Jananas

The Melissa is a store that opened up at Queen and Dovercourt (1080 Queen St W, open Wed thru Sun for typical Queen W hours, 416.399.5557). From their postcard they sell “eclectic stuff at recession prices” – vintage drapes and tablecloths, kitchenware, jewelery, toys, and board games. and other quirky finds. Basically they have a window that always catches my eye whenever I walk past it. Up until today though, that had always been when they were closed so I hadn’t had a time to check ‘em out.

Today they were open! Yay, schedules collided and I got to check out awesome. Seriously, they even had copies of Sorry! and Stock Ticker (one of my favorite games during summers at the cottage as a kid). They had some lovely pyrex mixing bowls and a fancy pants card catalogue that I was tempted to buy for my crafting storage needs. I resisted! I could not, however, resist this awesome fitted Rainbow Brite sheet or the two ridiculous pattern books. The one on the far right is a scary book of patterns for (barbie) dolls. For $1 I couldn’t resist. I also grabbed two teeny tiny antique crochet hooks – originally meant for lace, but darling for picking up dropped stitches.

We decided to have another root beer taste test this evening. This time it was two diet root beers. For some reason we only had the diet versions of these two so we decided to have test them at the same time.

First up – Saranac Diet Root Beer. This had a nice minty smell and then followed up with a creamy taste. I was a little off put because of the disconnect between smell and taste. There was also a slight aftertaste that put this into the ‘wouldn’t buy this again’ pile. Strangely its sweetened with both high fructose corn syrup and aspartame – the worst of both worlds?

Next up is Gray’s Diet Root Beer. This was pretty terrible – no smell and no taste = coloured water! We both took one sip, looked at each other and dumped the rest out. Yup, officially a don’t buy. In fact, I’d suggest running the other way if someone tries to tell you that this is even remotely passable (i.e. if its on the menu).

Today I had a long list of ‘to do’s’ and managed to get through most of them (and then some!). One of the big things is playing with our dehydrator and trying out some raw foods. Right now I’m playing with recipes found online, but I have a couple of raw food cook books coming in the mail – I’m excited to try more stuff out!

Today’s adventures were apple chips and raw bread. First picture is the apple chips. Its most of a bag of organic Macintosh apples we picked up over the weekend, peeled and cored and cut into little pieces. These apples weren’t structurally sound, so when I tried to core them they just fell apart into sections. The end result was that I didn’t end up with perfect little apple rings. Rather I have a bunch of smaller pieces. Good news? They all fit into this jar!

Next up is some raw bread – I used this recipe as a baseline. I’m terrible at following recipes, so mine wasn’t totally the same. I ground up golden flax seeds myself instead of using ground flax (didn’t have any around). I substituted a banana for the apple, as I accidentally used all of mine in the above apple chip experiment. Things didn’t grind up as easily as I thought they would – although that’s probably just more about learning how to use our food processor more effectively.

I made myself a sandwich this afternoon using this bread – organic ham (hey, I’m not vegan!), spinach, and dijon mustard. This bread has an awesome wholesome taste and a dry enough texture that it easily passes for what we would normally think of as bread. Although that may be partly because over the last few years I’ve made the switch to organic, whole grain-type breads (you know, the extra small loaf kinds) and this bread is more in line with those.

I’ll definitely be making more of this!

I’ve been dutifully knitting away. On my way to job interviews, on the TTC, standing on buses, waiting for job interviews, in the car, at home, while meeting with friends for drinks or coffee or meals. You name it, I’ve probably knit during it. I think that I have a fair amount of progress to show for it too!

I’ve knit 2.5 balls of yarn and so many repeats of the pattern that I’ve actually memorized it at this point (as someone who typically doesn’t like knitting lace, I’m pretty proud of this!). In fact, I’ve knit as many repeats as the original pattern suggests and have enough yarn to do another 1-2.

If you’ve spent any amount of time at Mazinaw, chances are you’ve jumped off a cliff of two. The highest I ever did was 20′, but my brother (and friends) have definitely gone off some of the 60′ levels. To be fair, my dad snorkeled underneath the cliffs where we jumped to ensure that the water was clear and safe, with no giant rocks.

The Provincial Park has big problems with visitors climbing the cliff face (and thus damaging the rock paintings and disturbing local ecosystems) and jumping (normally dangerously as they don’t really know what’s underneath ‘em).

My dad passed along this youtube video. I struggled with whether or not to post it as I can’t make it any more clear than to say that these people are fucking idiots. What they did is extremely dangerous and highly illegal. I do not suggest that anyone do this. Ever. (insert legal I’m not responsible if you choose to do stupid stuff to cover my ass from lawsuits bit here)

But it does give you a pretty good reference about how high the cliff really is.