Category: toronto

Awesome Thing – Funky Festive Gourds

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Festive gourd season! I know. It brings up images of dusty gourds, arranged in a basket, maybe with some Thanksgiving or Halloween tat to dress it up. But these are not the festive gourds of Grandma’s autumn table setting. These little guys are way cooler.

I came across this collection of festive gourds in a produce shop on Roncesvalles Avenue. $4.99 for the lot, they’re from a company called Sunrise Greenhouses and are marketed as “living decor”. They come packaged in a bubble tea cup and when arranged in a dish look like a cross between a bowl of fruit and a terrarium. They’re actually a selection of gourds, cucumbers and melons, and each container includes a red one, a white one, a green one, and five spiky/fuzzy ones. No, I couldn’t discover what each of them are called and the Sunrise website, sadly, has no info.

Why they’re awesome: because at any point, one of them might hatch an alien, or at least a small dragon. Also, because it’s a fun twist on a terribly twee tradition.

Bonus awesome: the fantastic green pressed glass dish that I scored for $2 at the big yard sale at Trinity Bellwoods park back in the spring.

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Awesome Thing – The Bristol’s Chicken and Waffles

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Sure, you can get chicken and waffles lots of place. The southern delicacy is pretty much ubiquitous in Toronto these days and the quality varies greatly. So what makes a dish that has otherwise been done to death stand out? Well, you’ve gotta put your own twist on it.

At The Bristol (1087 Queen Street West), Chef Davey Love has come up with a uniquely British way of presenting this dish. Let’s call it “Empire-inspired”. Rajcoe’s chicken and waffles is 3 pieces of tandoori chicken in an onion bhaji batter atop a waffle made with chickpea flour and spiced with cumin, coriander and green chilies. The maple syrup is mixed with mango, coconut and tamarind.

Why is it awesome? The chicken is super-moist and flavourful, with a double-dose of Indian spices in the tandoori masala and bhaji batter. The chickpea waffle is crisp – not soggy –  and the flavours (while there are a lot of them) are wonderfully balanced. Probably the only breakfast dish that you could justify drinking an IPA with.

You Can Call Me Shithead

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First, some background – I am a fat lady. I am okay with being a fat lady, but like everyone, I need clothing. I am lucky in that I work from home, so I can spend my days in cheap yoga pants and t-shirts, and don’t need a lot of “work clothes”. I’m also lucky in that I sew reasonably well, and make about half of the clothing that I do need for functions outside of the house.

Occasionally, though, I need to buy an item of clothing from a store. And Toronto has a mere 17 places where a woman wearing plus sizes can do that. Ruling out the ones that are beyond my budget, or that cater to certain demographics (office wear, club wear), the number of places I have to choose from is very small. Which is why I do, occasionally, much against my will, end up at Addition Elle.

I don’t have an issue with the clothes at Addition Elle. They’re decently made, decently priced, and for the most part, are on trend. (As an old punk lady, this isn’t something that appeals to me personally, but for the majority of people, that would be a positive thing.) But I will do my damndest to avoid going into an Addition Elle store.

This wasn’t always the case, but in the past year or so, the chain has started a practice of asking a customer’s name as they are escorted to a change room. The customer’s name is then written on a small chalk board on the door of the change room, and the salespeople all make a point of addressing each customer by name… frequently.
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My Friend, Steven Davey, aka Frank

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image: NOWToronto.com

I first met Steven Davey, restaurant critic for NOW magazine, more than 10 years ago. I was running a monthly dining group called Gothic Diners in which Toronto Goths gathered for dinner at local restaurants, usually in all their black finery. Davey heard about our group through a friend of a friend and invited Greg and I, along with our friend Siobhan, to join him for dinner. He took us to the newly opened vegetarian restaurant Fressen, because it tickled his fancy to take a bunch of Goths (and our supposed vampire-inspired blood lust) to the one place where there would be no meat.

We hit it off and I soon found myself in “the rotation” – a group of Steven’s friends and acquaintances who were restaurant-positive, and who he would invite to join him for restaurant visits when he was doing reviews. That is, we liked dining out, enjoyed trying new things and could follow his detailed directions on what to order and how not to blow his cover.

He would book reservations under a false name, usually “Frank”, but on occasion he’d forget, and I’d find myself at a hostess stand, perplexed. No “Frank”. Or else I’d be seated, and watch him across the room, listing off the various names he might have used to book the reservation. One night I ran into him in line at the Drake’s BBQ take-out shop, and stood in line yelling “Hi Frank!” repeatedly until I had to walk up to him and poke him.

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Coming Up – Small Press Festival

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We’re doing it again, this time with no blizzard. More than 50 authors, comic artists, zinesters, poets and paper goods creators take over the main floor of the Gladstone Hotel for a celebration of small press and indie publishing. Of course, I’ll also have a table of Stained Pages Press titles.

A percentage of admission totals at the door will be donated to The Children’s Book Bank.

Coming Up – Toronto Indie Arts Market Spring Fashion Extravaganza

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Yes, another post where I blather on about neglecting poor old blog. This place never gets any love. I should change that, I know, but in the meantime, my energies have been elsewhere. Specifically, putting together the super cool Toronto Indie Arts Market.

And even better – the Spring Fashion Extravaganza event on March 15th that features 50 local artisans, designers and makers of beautiful clothing, jewellery and accessories.

If you’re in Toronto, please come check it out. It’s been a long winter and we all need a little something pretty and sparkly to make us hopeful that Spring will come soon.

Also, we’re donating 40% of the admission sales to The Corsage Project – an amazing organization that puts together prom outfits for under-privileged teens.

Go check out the TIAM website for a full list of participants. Plus, members of our mailing list will have a chance to win passes.

The 2-Song Rule (aka. Turn Your Goddamned Phone Off and Watch the Show!)

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In 1991, I stood in the middle of the Guvernment nightclub, house lights blazing, the crowd so silent you could hear a pin drop, as Blixa Bargeld, lead singer of the German Industrial band Einturzende Neubauten screamed at an audience member for filming the performance. Back then, pre-Internet and pre-Smartphones, bands had a genuine fear of people filming and bootlegging their shows for profit.

The guy in question was technically filming the show “for profit”; he was John Dubiel, a local videographer and curator of the infamous Industrial Video Show, a monthly event that showed, well, industrial videos, from official band videos, to old Irving Klaw S&M footage, to blazing robot wars, to the concert footage that Dubiel would film himself as he travelled around North America to attend concerts.

In some cases, he was performing a public service, filming and showing bands that wouldn’t or couldn’t come to Canada. I once travelled with Dubiel to Detroit to see Foetus, an artist who refused to come to Canada because of Customs issues. Other than the few of us from Toronto, hunkered in the balcony of St. Andrew’s Hall in downtown Detroit, keeping Dubiel out of view of security, Toronto Foetus fans would have to make due with the footage Dubiel shot that night. It would be their only chance, in that era anyway, to see Foetus “live”.

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Where to Eat in Toronto on Christmas Day (2012 Edition)

Heya – Updated version of this list for 2014 can be found here.

 

Despite the pervasiveness of the festive season, not everybody gives a damn about turkey and stuffing and sitting around with the family listening to some pop singer butcher the holiday favourites, for a whole variety of reasons. Some folks might want a more low-key celebration (one in which they don’t have to do the washing up) and for others, it’s just, well, Tuesday.

I’ve been putting together a “Christmas Day dining for heathens” list since the first year we ran TasteTO, and it was very popular last year when I was writing for Toronto.com. So here it is again, modified and updated and fact-checked for your dining pleasure. (Parkdalers – the Beaver is closed on Christmas Day this year, so check the list below before heading out!)

As usual, I’ve not included a lot of Chinese restaurants because they are usually open on Christmas Day as a default. However, because Christmas falls on a Tuesday this year, and many Chinese-owned businesses are closed on Tuesdays, do yourself a favour and call ahead if you’ve got a favourite spot in mind.

Also, reservations are required for all of the options offered at hotels.

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The People the Internet Forgot

For people of my generation or younger, basically anyone born in the mid-60s or later, it is expected that we all have some level of internet presence. Whether it’s a Twitter or Facebook account, or a history of posts made back in the days of usenet, our activity, our lives, has all been documented. Facebook’s Timeline even encourages people to go back and add photos and events from their pre-Facebook years to create a full picture. Pretty much everything we do is documented in some way.

But the generations before us, from the Boomers back, do not really exist online unless someone else puts them there. Either through genealogy resources, or someone who has taken the time to post old stories and photos, unless people are really famous (and thus deserving of continued adoration), we have no recollection of them other than our own memories.

I’ve been thinking of this recently because I’ve been trying to track down anything I can find about someone I used to know – someone who should, by rights, be famous enough to warrant some historical respect – but the internet continually tells me No.

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