tap my glass

So unless anyone can direct me otherwise, finding fresh(ish) soft corn tortillas in ottawa is impossible. You can get frozen packs from herb n spice and they are very affordable. However, a recent awesome puchase of a book called Tacos parlayed to avoid frozen corn tortillas at all cost. It also seemed to indicate making your own isn’t so bad… so i decided to try it!

And it is easy, theres just a few things you need, and some investment involved.

A skillet i believe is key. I bought cast iron as it has the best heat distribution (and i’ve always wanted one). And they’re not nearly as expensive as other stainless steel or fancy nonstick pans (this 12″ was 50$ from Grace).

Masa mix. This is basically ground white corn with a bit of preservative (calcium hydroxide in mr gouda, lime in the maseca brand). I used the goudas, but wasn’t sure if it was stale (it had been in my cupboard for a while) so i bought the other… it definitely was not stale. I think it was 4$ for these 2kg bags. I would recommend the maseca brand as it has a more complete “recipe” on the back.

UPDATE: Geez, i forgot to mention where to GET masa mix! Thanks to a local blogger (thanks Minty!) the Sultan Supermarket at bank and hunt club carries this stuff.

Tortilla press – this is a requirement. This one was the cheaper of 2 available from Grace (~20$ vs 30$). It was lighter, but larger, and larger and cheaper normally wins with me. Having something a little heavy may help to make flatter/thinner tortillas, but i think this one was fine.

I won’t go into the nitty gritty of how to make em (the recipe is on the back of the Maseca brand), but after a bit of practice i’m pretty sure i could turn out dozens of amazing tasting, fresh, and versatile tortillas within 30 minutes or so. Highly recommended!

The one thing i will need to work on is keeping them warm while cooking – i’ve never been very good at that. They need to stay moist so i’m thinking wrapping in a wet towel and leaving it in the over at 200 or so… any tips or ideas would be appreciated.

My cuurent lazy staple:
- reheated short grain brown rice
- thawed hot frozen peas
- good chunk of kimchi
- ground coriander
- glug of sesame oil

Mmm… am I weird, or just lazy.,.?

With placemat overlap, and a mish mash of chairs, we are now ready to
seat 10, and have dine party affairs!!!

So speaking of starbucks, recently i’ve been getting my love on for their coffee. It is rich and flavorful, and has a wicked jolt of caffeine. I used to drink the “bold” but now i just stick with the “mild” with a bit of whole/2% milk and i’m on cloud nine for an hour+ (ok i also add sugar on the weekend).

I had quit coffee for a while towards the beginning of the summer, but now that i’ve forgotten what insanity brought me to such a decision, i’m rediscovering my love affair… i mean, having something like a hot, practically intoxicating cup of coffee to look forward to in the morning makes everything ok, and provides adequate reason to get out of bed on otherwise unpleasant mornings. Coupled with a lazy saturday or sunday morning, or even a work from home day when you have “fun” stuff to look forward to, and its a massive motivation maker.

Having said all that, most days i work in kanata. I normally float up march road north to the “high tech mecca” of ottawa, and pass by the metro (formerlly loeb) to pick up a salad for lunch. Via this route to work, there is no official starbucks. There is however an incognito starbucks within the brookstreet, but its a minor detour, parking is slow, they don’t take starbucks cards, and service is also kinda slow. When i can avoid my morning salad, my alternative and preferred route is to take terry fox and hit the starbucks at the (of all things) canadian tire gas station… wtf!!

To give a point to what would otherwise be an endless rant, why the hell isn’t there an easily accessible starbucks in the kanata north high tech area? Not ONE. We have one dedicated tim hortons, plus a tim hortons at the esso, and thats it. Every morning that tim hortons has a line up of cars and a full parking lot, and they don’t even serve coffee!!! (ok some of you may call it coffee, i would have to call it a pseudo-coffee flavoured drink – it does NOT taste like coffee). If i ever loose my job and can strap together some capital, i’m going head to head with those mofo’s and opening my own starbucks in kanatas high tech area, where everyone is friendly and smiling, and we serve wicked product at a fair price. Not only that but we’d have lots of comfy chairs, some seating outside, and all the wifi you could get at so when you need to take a break from constant interruptions at work, you could settle down with liquid pleasure and actually get some work done.

What about this spot right here? (PS – Yay google street view!!! This is the absolute extent of it though, it doesn’t seem to work any further up march).

One note – i would definitely opt for a bridgehead instead, but they should probably keep their exclusive edge and stay in hip neighborhoods, starbucks obviously has no such exclusivity principals… or do they?

I really enjoy going running tuesday mornings as its a good opportunity to spy on what other folks are tossing out in their recycling. Normally all i’m curious about is who’s getting gluten free pizza, or how there is just as much soy milk being recycled as their is normal milk (i admit, this is all mostly a product of running through the glebe).

However this morning during my run all i could oogle at is how many ottawa citizens were in the paper recycling. All the bins appeared to be FILLED with ottawa citizens, dwarfing any insight into new gluten free pizza joints. I am also victim of this, as i guess the citizen is doing some promotion where they are giving it away free for two weeks (at least in centertown and the glebe).

Assuming they don’t already, i think the citizen (and all newspapers for that matter) should pay some sort of tax or kickback to the city to help pay for increased recycling costs. I don’t think its fair that all they need to do is pay to have their product PRODUCED, but its the city and our taxes that have to pay to throw it out, something we didn’t even solicit. Again, perhaps they do already, so hopefully someone can educate my ignorance if thats the case.

I don’t think newspapers are useless, and occasionally enjoy them myself. Every once in a while i enjoy leafing through one over breakfast or a coffee, but maybe only once or twice a year. I’m definitely of the “new media” mind in that i can find all the sources i care about online, can read them on my computer or phone, and don’t need to print anything to access it. Newspapers days are likely numbered as we all know – i think the best way to deal with it is to raise their prices and turn them into a premium product – when i want to read the paper i would gladly pay 5 or 6 bux for it as opposed to less than the price of a tall mild from starbucks (which i’ve been enjoying a lot lately). I think anyone in the news or that does enjoy or need to read the paper on a daily basis could likely afford to pay a few bux more for all the content contained within. That, and the cost really should include some of “total” costs for creation and disposal of the paper, i can’t imagine that <2$ per paper is cutting it (again, i could be very wrong here).

One other thing that bugs me about the citizen is that they released an article a few weeks ago about how they’re going to have this great new mobile frontend – still haven’t seen it. I actually think their current interface is fine on my iPhone, i just don’t like hearing about something new then not actually seeing it or hearing anything about it ever again. What gives citizen??

Hell ya, I love breakfast in front of the computer!!!

As i can see by this post in feb, i think my poaching skills have improved, although i still have a long way to go. Its true, vinegar IS the key. Yay improvement!!!

I had a strange dream last night that as i woke up reminded me of pink floyd’s “the wall” (the movie). But it was nothing like it.

I was with others in some remote amazonian village. There were strange locals there but for the first while we had to hide from from them because we thought they’d kill us or something. We came upon a sacred river crossing that was supposed to be “the place” where some things would happen, and sure enough they did happen. I’m just not exactly sure what but within a short period there was loud noise and thunder as the locals, seemingly hundreds of feet tall came upon us. Then they were normal size, and I was asked by some chief local some very poignant questions in a language i knew nothing about. I answered, wisely i gather, as some music went off and she riffled up a todo list of things i needed to do and collect from the surroundings. I made no effort to remember them because i knew at any point in the future i could access my inventory for a complete list… this is when i realized i was in some sort of video game.

A short while later i was aboard some boat on one of these rivers, likely out performing some of the quests. The boat was made entirely of logs and 2×4’s and had a flat surface, kind of like a barge but made entirely of wood and really high off the water… like a floating “deck”. I remember having one of my accompaniments flinging skateboards off the deck into the river below. I annoyingly asked him why he was doing that, and he seemed perfectly justified in doing so, even though the last skateboard he threw off belonged to me. I was determined to skate on top of the boat, but he wouldn’t go fetch my board, and somehow i was incapable of doing so myself. Then finally i remember thinking that the whole amazon/quest thing was some movie that often reminded people of pink floyd’s “the wall”. Then i woke up.

I like the occasional weird dream, but have been absent from them for some time. I find if i’m not reading or generally exploring some sort of creative pasttime, i don’t dream. Well after many months of being incarcerated within work and duty, i realize its time to let myself out. I picked up a copy of William Gibson’s “Spook Country” and started reading it last night, along with Neal Stephensons “Anthem” – both came highly recommended, but considering how slow and pathetically i read, i should start with the shorter one.

So much butter!!! I didn’t think you could put so much butter in one
dish!!! The risotto by initial uncooked volume definitely had more
butter than rice. Tasty, but when you see so much butter go in it’s
kinda gross.

Good class though, good chef, decent Ontario wines, and a good eve all
around.

As seen on Kent St., at the whalesbone’s sustainability laboratory.

A few nights ago i had the pleasure of experiencing 2 very new and exciting sense related experiences in the large, fair, garbage filled city of toronto. The first was a restaurant called O Noir, and the second, a cocktail lounge called barchef.

What to say about O Noir… if you haven’t heard, its not the first “in the dark” culinary experience in the world, but it is the first of its kind in our vicinity, and it had to be tried. Basically you walk down a set of stairs into the subterranean. You walk into a dark, dankly lit but classy hallway, and are greeted by very friendly people. You then navigate a little further and have a seat at the bar where you make your choice on 3 courses and initial drinks (32$ for 2 courses, 39$ for 3). Once all the decisions have been made you are led through a door “into the dark”.

By into the dark, i mean into the absolute PITCH BLACK. It is complete sensory depravation. You are led in by very friendly, completely blind wait staff who keep chanting “careful” every 5 seconds as you are linked up, hand on shoulder with the person in front of you. A few minor bumps along the way and you sit down to be instructed where your cutlary are, put your bags on the floor, and start soaking in the feeling that you are completely BLIND. It is CRAZY weird, and i was honestly freaking out for the first 10 or 20 minutes (until the wine arrived).

The wait staff was very nice and frequently stopped by to bring the courses, and/or take requests. I ordered the octopus for my app, pasta for the main dish, and “the surprise” for dessert. Any course could be a surprise, and we were told it would be something distinct from the menu. Other options were calamari on greens, stuffed portobello caps, steak, risotto, chocolate cake and ice cream, mousse, and sorbet (and a few others). The menu was, well, less than amazing, but i’ll get to that in a sec.

Dishes came and went pretty quickly actually, as did the wine. We initially ordered one bottle, then another, but we didn’t actually pour anything – the server would just bring you glasses as you asked for them. The 2nd bottle went really fast, but without seeing it its hard to know how that actually happened. Eating in the dark takes some serious getting used to. As does talking, drinking, and well interacting in general. Having a conversation without observing the mannerisms is totally bizarre. We spent a good chunk of the meal simply discussing the experience of being without sight. It is remarkable, and i highly recommend it. I am a claustrophobic, easily anxious person, and i worked through it and had an amazing experience.

The one downside, which was only really realized upon reflexion after the meal was over, was that the food really wasn’t very good. The meal options were quite standard, and the tastes were not overwhelming. It could have been SO much more. I would not have minded the standard options so much if the food actually tasted amazing. Now perhaps this could have been because of lack of sight, but if so, the proprietors should get on that and mix it up to have a more potent selection. The octopus had a very nice flavour, but the big chunky pieces were really chewy, and frankly not appropriate for eating in the dark! The pasta, same thing – flavour was really mild, and pieces of rigatoni in the dark – not remarkable. How about an orzo? Or even spaghetti with a creaming sauce? Or cannelloni even? Just SO standard, it could have been so much more!!

I think for this reason you should probably go to O Noir while you can – the price is right for this amazing experience, and i don’t think it will last forever. Its a gimmick, one thats great, but unless they overhaul the culinary portion of it they will have very little repeat business, and likely not last forever.

Now on to the second, and actually more amazing experience of the night – barchef. Its this new, also dark abode where they serve from very classy, to ridiculously amazing molecular beverages (plus some delightful sounding apps, but we weren’t there for the food).

The atmosphere of barchef is very appealing (to us anyways). Gorgeous wallcoverings and frames, amazing light fixtures, huge comfortable and roomy chairs. Its first come first serve with apparently no standing room so get there early. The place smells amazing and apparently all the ingredients are fresh/local/organic/whatever. There is a hunk of ice on the bar – no cubes here, just a pick and a bit of muscle!! There is an absinthe decanter/pourer on the bar too, ask the owner dude to tell you about it (he picked it up for 20$!!). Its just really nice and comfortable in there.

All the “recession” drinks are their “standard” drinks, but they are anything but standard, and at 8$ its a standard price at a decent club/lounge making it win win, and perhaps the best mixed drink you ever had.

My first drink however was off the molecular menu, and because of my lack of decision making and newfound risk taking desire, i ordered the “cocktail du jour” – i didn’t even think to ask what it was coming from o noir and surprises and all. Everyone elses drinks arrived first amidst ooo’s and aww’s. My drink arrived on a plate/saucer 3 wide, and it was actually 2 drinks, with a ravioli in the middle. The drinks were, well, absolutely amazing – they were a gin base, had funky foam, one was burnt (a la creme brule), had chartreuse, mint, coriander, and i don’t even know what else… holy crap, amazing. But the most amazing thing was the ravioli. Now this is not the typical ravioli, its some chemically created hunk of concentrated drink (in my case, mojito) in a little nugget shape, with a mint leaf and a little something else. When you put the spoon with the ravioli into your mouth, your supposed to slurp it onto your tongue (like an oyster), let it sit, then press down. And boy, it was a taste/flavour explosion!! It was literally the most concentrated most amazing taste type experience ever. It was fleeting, but i’d do it again in a heartbeat. Coming in at 20$ for the 2 cocktails + ravioli, this was highly worth it. All of the molecular drinks ranged from 15->45$ so they are not cheap, but everytime i can guarantee it will be an experience like no other. My other drink was caramelized banana which also had the most unique taste you could imagine – i wasn’t a huge fan as it was quite strong and i’m a bit of a wus when it comes to strong hard liquors, but it was an experience nonetheless (that was easily polished off by others at the table).

Anyways, if you’re in toronto anytime soon, and looking for a new experience, something truly different, i highly recommend checking either/both of these places out. I really enjoy my occasional visits to the T dot, they definitely have more of a range of neat places to shop and visit and eat and drink at, and its worth soaking them in from time to time as its very close to the O dot.