Food Truck fun!

I had some free time this week, as I've had a fair bit of lately now that the living room floor has been fixed, and decided to make a trip to some of Toronto's Food Trucks. There's a fantastic website and corresponding facebook page that highlights who is going to be where in the city, so I was able to find four trucks in one place!

Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaab.

I had a two course lunch that started with a crab roll with chips from Buster's Sea Cove. $10 of pure, crab-flavoured awesome. Period. The size was a good lunch portion, quite full but not overstuffed and manageable. The plain Miss Vickie's that came with it were a great side too, just enough salt! And I love Miss Vickie's anyway.

Strawberries in a sea of blue!

I was still a bit hungry and thought that the $5 fried pita chips with honey and fresh strawberries from the Blue Donkey Streatery would be a good dessert. It turned out to be a great dessert, to share! Holy crap it was a large portion!! Strawberries were a great choice for the fried pitas, fresh and juicy!

I've also discovered all four seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race online. I have lost so much sleep. Lawrd.

"And remember; If you can't love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an Amen up in here?" Photo stolen from here.

I love RuPaul. I saw her live at Pride years ago and it was amazing to see "Supermodel" performed live with a show of four costume changes. Her mother had the right idea back in the day, stating at her birth that "His name is RuPaul Andre Charles and he's gonna be a star! Cause ain't another motherfucker alive with a name like that!" Amen sista.

Yes, it's been awhile.

So. Yeah.

Predominantly sheer laziness, a bit of post first draft hand-in celebrations and a hint of severely fucked up sleep schedule have been what's going on that's caused the lack of blog posts. I handed in the thesis on the 1rst of June, and I'm waiting on the comments from my reader. She's taking her time, which worries me a little since I have to hand in a second draft at the end of the month. I know she's busy, but I may send her an email on Sunday to quietly remind her that she'll probably want me to change some things. We'll see.

The initial, immediate celebration of the thesis hand in started with having to mop up a swimming pool that had appeared in my living room. I live in a highrise. On the 14th floor. Yep.

Please ignore that hideous, pink rodent cage that's the size of a bookshelf. My roommate is planning on moving her girls into bigger digs, and paint that monstrosity soon.

See those slightly blacker parkay tiles? Not really attached the floor in this picture.

We had all our living and dining room furniture pushed up towards the front door to allow the contractor to come in and fix the floor that bubbled and popped as a result of the water. They've also been on the outside of the building, hopefully fixing the actual problem, whatever it is. There's a couple of theories about why this has happened, and none of them have to with me leaving a window open during a rain storm. We have a nice, shiny chunk of floor now from the varnish though, so you win some things.

I pulled an all nighter on the night before the first draft due date to try and edit the thesis a few more times, and my sleep schedule has been out of whack ever since. The bright side to that is that I've been super cleaning the room and going through some stuff to try and purge things. I've also been working through some craft projects at three in the morning, as a result of finding some supplies in my closet. One of them is a tutorial for a Moroccan styled tea light lantern that I saw ages ago on Matsutake. So far the glass paint is producing interesting results. I have a lot of really amazing patterns on real Moroccan lanterns online, so I may try something a little more intricate than the original tutorial.

Crafting with wine!

I have actually been doing some cooking, especially since I purged a bunch of my old or not ever used cookbooks (Blasphemy!). I'm trying to really try some more recipes from the books that I have, especially my Nova Scotia Cooking and my Easy Indian Cooking cookbooks. I've neglected to take pictures of most of them, so there are hints of them in the iphoto library.

 Honey Grilled Scallops from Nova Scotia Cooking.

Coorg-style Pork Curry from Easy Indian Cooking.

That's my update for now, but as a final thing, I just found an amazing steampunk photo shoot by Pixie Vision Productions for Clockwork Couture with Grant Imahara. Yes. Please.

 The eye patch... the leather... the manliner. What I'd do to be that sword. That sounded creepy.

 Cutest, thing, ever. Melt, etc.

Dear god this is hot in so many ways! The whole shoot is on the Pixie Vision Productions facebook page.

Christie recap

Oh, the random stuff you can find at an antique fair! I had a great time at Christie, and only managed to get a minor sun burn on my shoulders for a full day in the sun. Both my mom and I got some stuff, she was mostly looking for some supplies for a few crafts she's had in mind for a while now. Fortunately, both of us got small stuff, so the drive back to Toronto was nice and easy. Here are some of my spoils!

 It's a paper photograph,

 mounted in a brass matte,

 mounted onto a carte de visite. AKA, the chief reason I bought it. I have never seen this before. I could understand and almost expect a tintype in there, but the paper is different.

 And speaking of tintypes, check out this super bent number! My mom thought it looked like someone had run over it with a tool or something since the bends look really uniform and part of a pattern. I was just impressed that the emulsion held up so well to being attacked like that.

Cheese box! Bit hard to resist, and so utilitarian. Practical antiques!

Thesis induced insomnia...

I cannot wait for this thesis to be over with.  Ugh.
I'm pretty much done the draft of the chunk I need to hand in to my reader tomorrow... I need to pack for something far more important now.

The Christie Antique Show!!!
This is one of the biggest outdoor antique and flea market shows in Ontario, held twice a year and I have never been able to make it for the past several years. I've been either out of the city/country or been working and not been able to get out of it. I'm so excited to finally go. I'm heading out to the parentals house tonight so we can drive in in the morning from there.

Pictures all lovingly stolen from an Apartment Therapy post about Christie, which can be found here.

I'll try to actually take pictures of my own for once at these types of things...

Cooking and Planting

So it's been a while since I've posted. I'd like to blame school but I can't really do that anymore since classes are over. I'm still writing my first draft for the the thesis, so that sort of counts. The nice things about classes and Bedford being over is the amount of real cooking I've been doing! It's been glorious.

This past week I made a dish involving several ingredients I either don't use a lot or have never tried to use. The results was pretty fantastic, and even the leftovers were good for days! I found the recipe in the Longos Experience Magazine, which can usually be found in the LCBO Food & Drink Magazine. I love honey crisp apples, but I've never really put them in much other than pies and crisps, and this was a great way to experiment with them in a main course for dinner!


Chicken and Apple Salad in Phyllo Cups
Makes 8 servings.
Ingredients
2 cups of diced cooked chicken
1 apple (Pink Lady, Honey Crisp or Cortland), cored and finely chopped
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/3 finely chopped radish
1/3 finely chopped celery
1/4 diced red onion
1/4 cup of mayonnaise
2 tbsp chopped fresh tarragon (I used a 1/4 tbsp of dried tarragon, and that was more than enough. It's pretty strong stuff)
1 tbsp dijon mustard
1, 1/2 tsp lemon juice
Pinch or salt and pepper
1/4 -1/2 cup of melted butter
5 sheets of phyllo dough

Phyllo cups:
-Brush muffin pan with some of the melted butter and set aside.
-Place one sheet of phyllo on work surface and brush with melted butter. Top with another sheet of phyllo and brush with butter. Repeat with remaining sheets. Using a sharp knife, cut phyllo stack into 8 squares.
-Take each square and press into muffin pan. Bake at 350 F/ 180 C for 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from oven and let cool completely.

Note the lack of squares in this instance...

-Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine chicken, apple, yogurt, radish, celery, onion, mayonnaise, tarragon, mustard and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and divide amongst the baked phyllo cups.

I completely forgot to add the yogurt to this recipe and it tasted great anyway. The phyllo loses its crispiness in the fridge over night, but they still perfectly edible.


To celebrate the opening of gardening season here in Canada, and even though I can't get on my balcony yet due to the construction, I decided to break out the upside down tomato kit that my roommate gave me for my birthday this year.

It does seem to have a few problems, chiefly being that the "lid" that snaps on the top doesn't actually snap to anything. I taped the hell out of it for now, and once I turn it over that hopefully won't be a problem. We'll see. They're on the windowsill for now, and we'll check back in 2 weeks to see if they've sprouted.

Covet, etc.

Things I'm looking at that I want to buy or make to save the money.

Zipper top from Forever 21 (which is no longer on the site, so no linkages). At first I thought "that's cheap enough" and then remembered I have a similar top in my dresser that I haven't worn in a while and could use an update. I just need to work out how to use a zipper foot... or commission my sister to do it for me.

Paint splatter shorts from Forever 21, again. This should be an easy DIY; I know I've got a pair of jeans that are probably going to become cutoffs very shortly, and finding some fabric paint within my family shouldn't be hard. These are a bit light for me, I do like my dark washes.

Fabulous chandelier from Urban Outfitters! I'm wondering if I could collect old chandelier bits and paint them up to decorate my hideous dining room chandelier...

The poor grad student in me thinks I can probably find some cheap foam letters somewhere and mod podge the maps unto them to recreate these map letters from Urban Outfitters.

Roosters and spices! *sigh*This I'd buy... if it weren't for the price and shipping.
From the Captain Cat Collective on Etsy.

I'm on a massive nautical kick lately... anchors, seagulls, boats, you name it: love it!

From Eclectica Vintage on Etsy.

I should probably get back to writing my intro draft... back to the thesis.