more radical knitting and UK/Canada road relations

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Funnily enough, after I put up my post last Friday I happened to get a card in the mail from a colleague outside of Toronto, sporting the following image:

The knitter/artist is Lisa Anne Auerbach… and clearly I think that she is just fabulous. This sweater series had real gold knitted into it, apparently… the amount of gold influenced the price point as you will see here:

And I’ve got to make a pair of these driving gloves that I saw on her website as well:

WTF? you ask? Well, exactly. These are driving gloves that I could very much use in Toronto to illustrate some points:

In talking with Amy, however, we decided that we would have picked a different colour for the middle finger. My preference would be traffic cone orange, for that little authentic highway touch.

(photo from http://www.featurepics.com)

Now, I’m not certain that my UK friends will get the traffic cone reference. Their traffic signs are quite different from ours…

I still can’t stop laughing about this for some infantile reason, although I assume that my UK friends know what “humps” means in North America. As a result, here they are called “speed bumps”.

I must confess, however, that I find the UK/North America reversals about traffic direction a bit curious. It seems even to be evidenced in DVD covers. Viz. this, which is the cover of a DVD I just got from the library (and JJ is still hee-hawing as I type about it):

When I looked it up on Amazon, I was amazed to learn that the UK cover looks somewhat different:

So now I’m wondering… are all of the Britcoms we get over here flipped over before we see them?!

I’d best sign off before I get too far down that particular path. Wishing you all a very happy, tranquil and non-topsy-turvy Monday.

Cheers,

kb

PS. Oh, and if you’re looking for something to kill time at the office do today, check out Lisa Auerbach’s blog, The Little Red Blog of Revolutionary Knitting Whether you knit or not, I think you’ll get a kick out of it.

Marketing 101

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Oh, and before you go and hit the back button on your browser – no, not that kind of marketing.

This is just my shorthand for saying that JJ and I hit the shops and markets today… but, as a result, no doubt I will be announcing yet another career change shortly. I intend to become a master purveyor of fine preserves.

(JJ is sceptical.  But I don’t think he’s yet clued in that, as a newly retired person, he will be the ideal free labour force I need to start up my venture.  Do me a favour and don’t tell him – he doesn’t go on the internet, and so can just remain in blissful remote-control-commanding oblivion for the time being, I reckon.  I’ll give him a couple more weeks off…)

We hit Crappy Tire today on a quest for a canning maching. Once we arrived, I realised I don’t actually need one. I just needed this stuff:

…and this:

… and this:

(Oops – sorry – wrong photo… but then again, what Master Chef doesn’t need a little liquid inspiration from time to time?! And those who tell you they don’t – they’re lying.)

But I actually meant to say… and these:

JJ was a bit worried about the acquisition of three dozen mason jars. While we were in Crappy Tire, he had the nerve to ask me if I was planning to convert the contents of our burgeoning deep freezer into canned “guids”. I had no choice but to remind him that it was his bright idea to get a deep freezer in the first place, and that it is his wee fixation on “buy two roasts, get the third free”, family size bags of frozen potato products, and trips to the Scottish butcher that keeps the freezer overflowing.

And besides, I’ve already used six of the jars for my sour cherry jam – so all is not in vain!!!

JJ: Well, lassie, we don’t know if it’s in vain yet air noawt… as ah cahn’t even try the jam for another 24 hours!!!!

KB: Oh, skase (“shuddup” in Greek. The only three words that JJ knows in Greek are skase, skasmos [“shut the $#&*(@$ up”], and s’aghapo [“I love you”]. Not necessarily in the order listed, I hasten to say.)

I got the sour cherries for the jam at this local farmers’ market we checked out – a 10 minute walk from here, Saturdays 2-5.

I was also very, very excited to find huge bunches of basil at the market!

It was so fresh I couldn’t help but process it right away.   If you don’t have a recipe for basil pesto, feel free to use this one.  Six packed cups of leaves from the above (or two huge bunches), and 3/4 cup of these lovely pine nuts (I recommend toasting them in the oven at 350F for 5 minutes – NO MORE):

(oh, and if you’re me, you then add a pinch for guid luck!), and one and a half cups of this stuff:

(I hasten to say that ordinarily I have both this and the regular olive oil in stock in 3 litre metal cans.  But I’m almost out, and Loblaws wanted too much for the large quantity today – so I had to resort to their house brand which was on sale.)… and 10 cloves of this stuff:

(and don’t give me that “what do you mean, 10 cloves?!?!?” bit??  Try it – you’ll like it.  You’ll see.)

Blend it all together in a blender or food processor.  Oh, and you might like to try a dash of this stuff:

(And yes, I do appreciate the irony of making pesto from ultra-fresh basil then adding bottled lemon juice.  But Loblaws today was demanding $1.09 PER LEMON.  Thieves!!!  I refuse to pay those prices, especially when the lemons in question have skin thicker than that of your average elephant.  Welcome to Canada, where the citrus comes from Vanuatu or some such place at this time of year, and the shops charge the gas price for the entire shipment in one $&#*(@* lemon.)

Oh, and don’t forget some of this, to taste

You will end up with approximately three cups of this lovely stuff:

…which, with the addition of parmesan, romano or asiago cheese and some pasta, gets very easily converted into this:

(I know, I know – the photo isn’t that appetising.  But it tasted so good I ended up eating it out of the saucepan.  All of it.)

So, it’s been a very guid day.  We even ended up with this stuff:

Good old Sandy McTire!!  The only downside is that, when having spent all my money before I bought new hair dye, I tried to use this at Shoppers, they wouldn’t accept it!! Bastards.  I got a haircut yesterday, and all the dye is now gone and I need some more quite desperately.  But, no go today.

So, with trepidation, I bring to you a very very rare photo of me with my natural hair colour:

I actually don’t mind this photo, as it doesnae show all the grey at the back.  Stay tuned for my new hair colour choice next week!

Happy rest-of-the-weekend!!

Knitting – it’s radical, man.

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OYes, yes, I know – my lingo is slightly behind the times. What exactly did you expect from someone who prefers musical selections from old dead British crooners a la Rat Pack?

However, I’m prepared to be wowed by new concepts, particularly when I’m in a bit of a knitting funk. So, I was very glad to come across some web pages yesterday with some fresh knitting ideas.

First, how about some radical lace?

This is a photo taken at an art show in New York back in early 2007 – the work is by Cal Lane. I wish I’d thought of that, frankly.

It reminds me of some of the art knitting in this book that I had bought some time back:

And no, they don’t mean this kind of New Wave:

Tainted looooove… doo doo… tainted loooove…

Sigh.

But I digress…(and hey, at least it’s not the Rat Pack!)

It all seems a bit closer to this, actually:

And, after all, what’s a little madness between friends?

Now I want to start working on some fancy lace creations, such as this one by Anne Wilson…

In my virtual travels, I also came across some funky knit “graffiti” type stuff by a group called Knitted Landscape. How about a tulip in the snow, for example?

Or, perhaps you prefer the idea of a day on the beach?

Now I’m full of ideas all of a sudden. So many, that I’m not quite sure what to do.

Ah – eureka! Given some of my obsessions, it should have been quite obvious, no?

A knitted rubber duckie! Although, is it truly a “rubber duckie” if it’s knitted??? Hmm….

Well, why not? I just found a website called Unifly Rubber Yarn Products!!!

I guess it’s official… the possibilities are, in fact, endless.

Sigh.

So, if you could knit any object you wanted, what would it be? Tell me… come on… don’t be shy!

Happy Friday!

duckie invasion?!

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My beleaguered mother, no doubt shaking her head about my wee obsession with rubber duckies, very kindly sent me the following scan the other day…

 

 

Although I couldn’t help but think that this image was cute cute cute, on some level I’ve since been quite perturbed about the abuse of the humble rubber duckie by the advertising industry.

I mean, the rubber duckie is not just a plaything for our use and abuse, you know.  It is an extraordinarily hardy and brave species. 

These are some rubber duckies and other plastic toys which crossed the Pacific Ocean from China and ended up all the way in New England, 11 years after falling off a container ship.  They were apparently quite the speed demons, travelling at double the rate that the water in the North Pacific moves.  They washed up back in 2003 and a reward was offered for a specific duckie which had gone completely white from its trials and tribulations at sea. 

I’m not sure the reward was ever collected.  But you can read about their journey here, if you’d like.

And, I mean, really – could you cross the Pacific without a raft? Think about it.

But not only is the humble rubber duckie brave, s/he is selfless and giving, working tirelessly for charity.

S/he is also athletic, by the way (far more so than I!):

 Rubber duckies, as you know if you’ve read this blog for any length of time, are capable of forming strong loving relationships:

Yet they continue to be used and abused by Evil Corporations such as Adidas to sell products and make rich fat men even richer and fatter!!!

 It all makes me want to weep, really.  Plus, it makes me afraid.  It is only a matter of time before the rubber duckies stage a revolution and take over… just last night I had a nightmare about this.  Click on this link to see it in full colour.

Scary, eh?

Well, we have the power to stop this abuse of the Rubber Duckie and the ensuing rebellion, revolution and takeover which will lead to the end of life as we know it.  Education, I feel, is key.  To learn more about the honourable rubber duckie, you can click here.

And next time you see a cute little ad featuring a rubber duckie, please spare a thought to the abuse and degradation that led to the ad, and boycott the product… would you?

(Yippee!  Another excuse not to have to shave my legs!!! Huzzah!!)

Happy Thursday!

stampeding into shamelessness

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I’m well and truly off the wagon now, folks. Yup. Yesterday, I made yet another trip to one of the local Houses of Worship – on the pretext that I needed one of these:

For some reason I keep losing these. This is probably my fourth this year. I’m sure that one of these days I’m going to bump accidentally into a secret portal in my apartment and be faced with a whole pile of single socks, good wooden coat hangers (as opposed to crap wire ones from the dry cleaners’) and knitting needle measuring ruler thingies, all pointing and laughing at me.

So, of course I decided today that I was in huge need for one of these $3 thingamabobs. But did I go back to Romni, which is just down the street from my workplace? Hell, no.

Why not? Well, I felt the need to take a 25 minute walk (each way) in 30C/150C with the humidex (don’t know what that is in Fahrenheit, but “damn hot” will about cover it), that’s why.

It certainly wasn’t because Lettuce Knit (quite a hike away from my office, in the Kensington Market) is the only yarn shop in the city that carried Blue Moon Fiber Arts yarn. No sirree Bob. Nope.

OK – so now you know the truth. I am a big fat liar.

But, really, how could I resist!

Oh – and while I was there I had to pick up a lonely little skein of Bobby Blue (as in “No Sirree Bob”, I guess!) Malabrigo laceweight as well:

But I don’t feel so bad about this – because Amy told me: “Malabrigo doesn’t count”. I’m a very gullible person, and I do hope that she has not led me down the garden path toward bankruptcy….

What makes me feel a bit better about all of this is that I’m apparently not the only one who’s getting up to hijinks this week, apparently – and mine are far cheaper than some. You see, this week the Calgary Stampede is taking place. Now, I’ve never been to Calgary but if you have ever lived in Canada and watched any news programme during the month of July, you’ll know all about this WestFest, where all the oil millionaires/billionaires, politicians and other high rollers turn up to watch some rodeo and eat some high-priced beef.

Now, according to CTV News the other evening, that’s not all these guys do. They actually had a segment on the late news discussing how some of these guys also come to gamble and pick up women. They even quoted a pro female saying it was by far the most lucrative week of the year.

I think they did, anyway. You see, I cannot find this story anywhere on their website – I do remember seeing it though, if only because it really really hurts to spit Vex alcopop out your nose when you start laughing with your mouth full. JJ confirms that this was on.

But instead, all I could find on the CTV website was this: Calgary drops suits for Stetsons during Stampede.

More like “drops trou”, no?!

I mean, really – let’s face it, these prime ministers must get up to all sorts of nonsense when they’re on the road – and especially when they get to dress up in cowboy drag. Why else would Pierre Trudeau have been showing his stuff there, for example?

Now, as for Jean Chretien, I’m not so sure:

Now, I must say that I really like his wife’s cowboy boots – in fact, I want them. But what was up with those puddlejumper jeans, Jean?!? Did the Prime Minsterial budget not extend to a pair of jeans that actually fit, or did you spend it all on the 10 gallon hat?!?

And then there’s always my favourite, the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, our current fearless leader who allows Geo. Bush to address him as though they’re hanging out on a street corner somewhere (I mean, really. “Yo, Harper“??? WTF???? When he pulled this stunt a few years back with Tony Blair, the British were reportedly offended. And, to my view, the British were right.) and simply giggles and blushes smiles. I’m not so sure, however, that it’s wild women he’s after…

I mean, first he poses for this cheesecake photo back in 2005:

Is that lipstick he’s wearing?!? I mean, really. Doesn’t he look as though he just stepped off the cover of a Village People LP?

So, then he hid I was not able to find any photos of Harper at the Stampede in 2006 – but this is what he turned up in in 2007:

So, what’s up with the pink shirt?? Well, apparently he said it was to show support for fundraising efforts for breast cancer. Well, that’s heartwarming and all, Steve – but if you really cared about people who suffer from breast cancer (or cancer of any kind, for that matter), you wouldn’t be doing your bit to destroy universal health care as we know it. But I’m ranting digressing now.

Suffice it to say that, sported by an arch-convervative like Harper, the colour pink speaks volumes. But this year, his image consultants have he’s decided to go butch:

Now, I haven’t been in a women’s bar for a while now – but the last time I went to one, this was pretty much the uniform.

So, Steve, I’ll be waiting with baited breath to see what cute little outfit you come up with for next year’s Stampede! How about something like this, for example?

Fetching, isn’t it?

Happy Wednesday!

and on the eighth day…

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… she succumbed to the siren call of Romni Wools.

(OK, OK – I know that the people who frequent here knew it was only a matter of time. But I had managed to delude myself that I could make it through July at least without hitting a yarn shop – as is evidenced by this rather heartfelt post last week. Damn this blogging thing, anyway – it means I can no longer fully delude myself about promises made after they are broken!)

But it’s not my fault. Really. You see, I was stupid enough to misplace my 2.5mm lace needles (which I need for the Year of Lace Blueberry project…

GOOD KRISTINA: But you’ve just started two other lace projects! You won’t even start this one for another month or so…

EVIL KRISTINA: How do you know??? I knit faster than you do, you lazy wench. You’re too busy being goody-goody and doing things like working and being sociable.

GOOD KRISTINA: You can’t finish two full lace stoles by the end of July! That would be impossible.

EVIL KRISTINA: Besides, whose fault is it the needles are gone anyway?!? I wanted you to hold onto all that Dale Svale lightweight stuff but no… you had to clean out the stash room and take the whole bag of it to the Goodwill box. And that’s why the needles are gone – they were in that bag, you twit!!!

GOOD KRISTINA: But there’s no more room in the storage locker!!!

EVIL KRISTINA: Who said anything about the storage locker??? What’s wrong with the living room floor? We don’t even walk in that corner where all the stuff was stashed…

GOOD KRISTINA: (holding head) I … I … oh, never mind.

… and besides, the evil people at Romni have moved the Malabrigo to the front of the store, instead of hiding it in the back where I actually had to go and look for it.

Malabrigo? you might well ask. Didn’t I say just last week I already had 4 kilometres of the stuff in my stash?!?!

Well, yeeeeees… – but not in the Molly colourway:

Shocking pink! And, in yesterday’s ultra hot weather, it reminded me of a refreshing watermelon ice.

Or, for that matter, of my new favourite beverage:


So, how could I resist, really?

GOOD KRISTINA: Hey – have you forgotten it’s JJ’s birthday?!? We should be buying stuff for him, not for us!! Today of all days!

EVIL KRISTINA: Whatever.

GOOD KRISTINA: I mean, at least I bought him that fancy $90 bottle of malt whisky from Cape Breton – and you never even chipped in. So, what did you get him? Huh??? Huh???

EVIL KRISTINA: OK – NOTHING.  All right? Satisfied????

Well, I probably should have resisted, actually. Why? Because, on the way home from work yesterday, I was all of a sudden plagued by a recent memory – something that I had not only actually come across in the stash just last week but documented in that dreadful “I’ll never ever ever – and I mean NEVER – go to the LYS again!” post.

I hoped that perhaps my memory was failing me (as it seemed to have while in Romni earlier – but then I can hardly be blamed for that, can I?!?).

But no. Sigh.

One thing very clear in my failing memory, however… the image of me tossing the Romni receipt blithely away into the bin at St Andrew station on the way to the train.  After all, I wouldn’t need it, right?!

GOOD KRISTINA: heh heh heh heh heh.  Serves you right.

EVIL KRISTINA: Ah, shuddup already.

Hmph.

Happy Tuesday!

I’m a poet and don’t know it…

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“The productions of all arts are kinds of poetry and their craftsmen are all poets.”
– Plato

Well, it’s great to see that the Greeks are again leading the pack with the bon mots.

So, tell me if you think that this is poetry or not:

Yes, I’m back in the Good Housekeeping mode yet again – at least as it involves production of fancy flavoured oils and vinegars.  I’m sick and tired of seeing and coveting bottles of them at Ye Locale Overpricede Food Emporiume, so thought I’d best get off my lazy @$$ and make some of my own.

(Er… plus, JJ and I went rather crazy at Fiesta Farms last weekend and then didn’t end up cooking everything we had planned, so I had lovely fresh herbs that were going off.  Sigh.)

So, from the left, there are: Oven-dried tomatoes in olive oil with oregano and garlic; basil olive oil; mixed berry white wine vinegar; fresh oregano olive oil with lemon zest; lemon and lime olive oil; and red pepper wine vinegar.

This, although pretty, I must confess does not feature local produce:

But the blueberries are now with us, so stay tuned for some experiments with white balsamic and blueberry!

And doesn’t this look yummy?

Time will tell – I’ve got to wait three weeks or so to crack into these babies. Patience is a virtue, they tell me…

Oh – and before I forget – today is the birthday of the oh-so-fabulous JJ!!!

Please join me in wishing him a lovely day – he well deserves it for putting up with me!  We will be having the real celebration next weekend… and I’m under strict orders not to tell you how old he is but if I could afford it, I would buy him a LeXXus I (if that is indeed a type of fancy car… heh heh).

So, in advance celebration I decided to knit JJ a cover for his lovely petunias!!


(“What are ye doin’ now, lassie?  Have ye gone mad????”)

Allow me to introduce my version of Seascape!

I’m knitting this on 3.5mm needles with the lovely Handmaiden Lace Silk – I have no idea which colourway but it seems closest to Popsicle.  So far, so good – the pattern is fairly easy to follow thus far.

And, I’ve decided to add beads to highlight some of the curves:

But… that’s not all!!  I’ve been suffering from a bit of knitting ennui of late and so decided to follow Tracy B‘s excellent suggestion to try two projects at once.  Also, this lovely Posh Yarn “Cecilia” that lace goddess Clarabelle so kindly sent to me was sobbing loudly from its place of honour on my bookshelf, feeling neglected.

Celia, you’re breaking my heart!! (but hopefully you do not shake my confidence… sigh).

I had decided some time back that the ideal project to go with this yarn would be the half-circle shawl from Victorian Lace Today:

This is a rather scary project, as it involves lace knitting on both right and wrong sides with no “rest row”.  However (deep breath)… here goes!

So far, so guid, I think!

Now, I don’t know if I’m a poet or not – but I do think all of the above is looking a-ok.  So, that’s a start.

Sadly, it’s now time to leave for… work. Happy Monday to all!

reward for PayDay forbearance!!!

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No, no – I did not rush out and buy something else. Instead, I got a lovely surprise in the mail today – the latest package from my Year of Lace 2008 subscription! And lovely it is indeed!

However, since some people have still not gotten their kits in the mail, I feel obligated to put up a spoiler warning…

… and also to engage in a wee digression (that’s today’s excuse, anyway). So, bear with me for a minute or so.

I know it will be very, very difficult to believe this – but on occasion I do get accused of having a rather narrow outlook on certain things. I can be prone to rather myopic behaviour sometimes, as it were (not to mention “obsessive”, but that’s a topic for another digression). It is a trait that serves me well in my vaunted profession of top notch hard working lawyer …

JJ: Ah, go oan, sell me a bridge, would ye, lassie?!?!?! D’ye actually think your blog readers will believe ye tae be hard-workin’?!?

KB: Um… er… (searching for witty response, then muttering) Ah, shurrup, wuid ye?

JJ: Ah telt ye, stop makin’ fun of the way ah talk.

And so on, and so forth.

Man, a digression within a digression. I’m really firing on all cylinders today!

… but it can tend to be a rather unlikeable quality, or so I’m told.

However, I intend to demonstrate to you that tunnel vision can sometimes be a beautiful thing indeed. The other day I took these photos of a field…

Isn’t that pretty? Let’s zoom in just a wee bit more, shall we?

But in fact, I just lied to you above (and yes, yes, I know – lying is another unlikeable quality in a person. However, I’m Greek. It’s genetic. I can’t help it. Really.) when I told you that these were pictures of a field. It is actually a photo of the garbage depository area of my building.

See? Far better, in this example, to take the narrow view, don’t you think?

Well, enough of that… time to show off my latest yarn acquisition!

First, a wonderful pattern by Joan Schrouder!

Blueberries!!!

And – my first ever skein of Lorna’s Laces laceweight (half silk, half wool):

I suspect it won’t be my last, though… look how soft it is!

And the yarn even comes with its own free shawl pattern…!

But now I’m torn!! Should I make the fan shawl, or Joan’s creation with the Lorna’s?

Help!

Oh – I forgot – I still have this radiant Claudia’s Handpaints in the stash…

I think the fan pattern would look very flash in this colour – perhaps I could call it “Daedalus“?

Yes!  Yes!

Oh – but another dilemma.  What to do with my other fabulous blueberry coloured yarn?!

And no, none of you can have it.  Sorry.

Hmm – I guess tunnel vision is not my only unattractive quality.  Apparently I need to work on generosity as well.

Sigh.

Wishing you a wonderful, wonderful weekend – and a happy 4th of July to my American friends.  The Tenant Advocates and I will be raising several glasses to you this evening…

the litany of the wiseguy

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WARNING/ATTENTION/ACHTUNG/EKTIMISI: The post you are about to read contains references to drugs, addiction and other generalised bad behaviour. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

I have a deep dark confession to make. One of the reasons I find it difficult to knit of late is that I have become readdicted to one of the darkest forms of music ever: the rembetika (Greek blues – and believe me, the Greeks are experts at being blue. It’s a national condition for us – even here in the diaspora – it’s inborn and we can’t really do anything about it. Combine that with extreme fatalism and I’m surprised the Greek race has actually managed to last this long without indulging in mass cultural suicide. But I digress…)

I blame the Eurocup, actually. This passion for evil music reignited in me when I attended at the Danforth to watch the game where the $#*(@$&(@#* Greeks got themselves put out of the Cup. As it happened, the place we were watching the game was right next door to Greek City Video. I had promised myself I wouldn’t go there (Mom – stop laughing NOW!!!)… but on the first smoke break (I guess I could also blame the ubiquitous “smoke outside” by-laws or, for that matter, the tobacco companies which keep me addicted to the demon weed…) wandered in and spent … oh, slightly more than the average PayDay haul’s worth of yarn.

Amongst the booty – one of my favourite ever movies:

Yes, yes, I know – you’ve never heard of it. And, for that matter, I don’t really know why it is one of my favourite movies. It is very, very depressing – about a Greek rembetiko (blues) singer who basically gets treated like a whore, becomes drug addicted then dies, over the course of 30 years. Every Greek movie ever made, by the way, is either “I want to slit my wrists now I’ve watched this” morbid or along the lines of a really bad “Carry On” comedy – if “Carry On” had featured horny priests. But anyway…

Another terrific score was this new CD by George Dalaras, the hottest Greek singer going:

The title of the CD is “Songs about Drugs” in English… and features primarily Rembetiko music again. It was recorded at a concert in Greece in 2007 which was held someplace that looks like this:

This is Dalaras himself… I’m only posting this photo for my mother, as she thinks he’s cute! (And here’s a video for you as well, Mom! And another one.  And if you want more, just search “tragoudia me ousies” on YouTube…Don’t say I never gave you anything!!)

So, why am I going on about this “Rembetiko” stuff, you might well ask?? Well, it’s bad boy music from the 1920s in Greece. SERIOUSLY bad boy music. Rappers had nothing on these guys and the few women that they allowed into the circle). People got arrested for playing and listening to this music. If you’re really, really bored, there is a great explanatory newspaper story from the Guardian here.

(At around the same time in Greece, by the way, the fashion for these “manges” or “spivs” (or, for want of a better word in US/Canadian English, wiseguys) was to wear very pointy shoes with toes extending four inches out from the real toes on their feet. The cops went around at the time with machetes and would just chop off the toes of the shoes. If they happened to hit the real toes in the process, too bad.)

But why were the rembetiko musicians and the characters they attracted treated so badly? A sampling of the song titles from the Dalaras CD should give you a clue:

– Alcohol and Nicotine
– The Castaway Cigarette
– Rumba of the Drug Dealer
– Clink Clink Go The Glasses
– Hashish
– I’m an Addict
– Heroin and Hash
– In the Basement
– The Tobacconist
– Five Spivs
– Bring Drugs So I Can Get High
– Ouzo and Hashish
– I’m a Flirt
– Why I Smoke Cocaine
– I’m a Cocaine Addict

Well, now finally I understand why this guy always looks so damned happy:

…while his wife and daughter slave away at home:

But seriously, what is not to like about this music?!? Perhaps I was just deprived as a child. The Greece painted through this music is certainly not the Greece I was raised to think ever existed, let me tell you. I mean, the one little rebellion I tried in high school – wearing head to toe black – resulted in my father’s telling me “Black is for Funerals” and grounding me for a year or so.

Plus, my (very lovely and extremely youthful looking) mother used to refer to this stuff as “migraine music”. To an extent, she had a point… especially when I hauled home the authentic 1920s recorded versions which featured singers coughing their heads off on tape (there’s a lot of tar in that hash, you know!!), whiny Greek bagpipes and violins which sounded like two cats in the backyard – um, well, you know.

However, they sure seemed to have a lot of fun!!!

So, now I’ve decided I’m going to quit my day job – finally – and resuscitate the Greek blues in Canada. First, all I need to do is learn how to play this:

Now, I don’t want to tell you just how long I’ve had this in my possession… it’s a bit embarrassing. But, I will learn.

Also, the renewed interest in the Greek Blues, plus another addiction to the fabulous music of Cape Breton, has led me to dust off the old keyboard and start practicing again:

So, doubtless I will very, very soon catch the eye of some impresario who likes cocaine music, and will be appearing very soon at a major concert venue near you.

Stay tuned… and in the meantime, a happy Thursday!

Canada Day continued…

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Look at these fabulous pies for Canada Day to take to Robert’s place:

I must confess that I had great assistance from the very American Amy, who, when I was whining on Email about trying to make a quiche without being able to make a crust, reminded me that Bisquick exists.

So, here’s how the cooking began.  I made up a batch of Moonblush Tomatoes courtesy of Nigella Lawson (rough idea – preheat oven to 450 F, meanwhile cut your small tomatoes in half, sprinkle over then a bit a sugar, salt and pepper and some olive oil.  Put them in the oven then turn it off and let them sit overnight.

This was the result (although I’ll confess that I added oregano):

I made two batches of these, actually, and canned the first bunch:

But back to the tart recipes.  I just added this magic ingredient:

I also made a yogourt/egg quiche mixture for the one pie, and threw in a whole bunch of parmesan cheese for the next pie.  If you want the separate recipes, do contact me!

I also made a salad to take as well… with pineapple.  I know it sounds strange.  However, one of the big TV chefs up here did it, so I thought I could manage as well.  Here’s his recipe, by the way.

It called for a couple of grilled fruits/vegetables, including pineapple:

… and onions grilled until they were caramelised and nice and sweet:

I also threw in some roasted red peppers, and used lime and lemon juice and zest instead of only the lemon called for. This was the end result:

Now, this was popular, but the pies really, really went over quite well:

I was quite happy to be at Robert’s place today with all of these food offerings, and he responded by putting my Canada Day mosaic in the pride of place:

But it seems that I can’t escape from the duckies after all.

Sigh.  But this is a photo I took from Robert’s balcony, well, well north of the waterfront:

… and here is another picture from his balcony:

Clearly it pays to live on the 19th floor facing south in Toronto.  I couldn’t myself live above floor five or so, but I’m clearly missing some great views.  Sigh.