Is my title obscure? Probably a little.

The moon was doing stuff with the clouds tonight so I took a couple pictures. I also took a picture of a random flower in the living room and then heavily post-processed the image. And, as a bonus, I'm posting a photo I took of the old Malting Company buildings early this past Spring.

The moon and the clouds

The moon and the clouds

A yellow flower with black and white background

Canada Malting Company buildings, random stairway

When I was little my family would always get delicious poppy seed buns and random European foods from Denninger's in Hamilton. It was always super yummy, but I haven't had food from there in a very long time.

So today Kim and I got a Zipcar and made the drive out to the Denninger's location on the mountain. I've never actually been to Denninger's myself, someone in my family always just picked stuff up and brought it home. So this was a fun new experience for me. The store was awesome and full of constant deliciousness including lots of free samples. There were so many random fun things too, and we spent a really long time just looking at stuff and trying to figure out what it was. One thing that made me laugh were the shrink wrapped frozen soups. They froze soup into a solid block and wrapped it in plastic. Weird.

Any way we got some fun stuff like currywurst mix, spaetzle, sausages, and chicken curry pot pies! I love chicken pot pie and curry is obviously awesome so I can't see how combining them can go wrong. We also got cheese, local blueberries, and lots of yummy chocolate based product. For lunch I had pork schnitzel on a bun with sauerkraut and onions and curry ketchup. Oooh, I also had a small chocolate milk form Hewitt's dairy! Hewitt's is a really awesome place that is based in Hagersville, the town my mom grew up in. They make delicious ice cream and milk based products. Mmmmm.

Denninger's was an exciting place to visit. But, the journey was equally entertaining because our Zipcar wasn't any ordinary Zipcar, it was a Toyota Prius! This was cool because the Prius is much cheaper to rent due to it's reduced gas consumption. The other way we could have gone to Hamilton was to take the GO Train, but that would actually have cost more than renting the Prius for four hours! Plus it takes longer by GO and I was worried about the perishable food getting home intact. We had a bit of traffic on the way there, but it was smooth sailing on the way back and we made it in about half an hour.

The Prius is pretty interesting to drive. Instead of turning a key to start it, you press a big button and it turns on. When you are driving, if you stop for more than a second it turns off the engine (starts instantly when you touch the gas). And it has a big LCD screen that constantly monitors your gas consumption and battery usage. It was a really fun car! Also, we drove over 150km, but as far as I could tell we used no gas at all. The gas gauge didn't budge. Good times!

We made the Beef and Broccoli tonight and it turned out great! I forgot to take a picture in my hurry to eat it though, so you'll just have to imagine how it looked.

Yesterday Kim and I did a bunch of grocery shopping at the St. Lawrence market in preparation for various food-makings.

For supper last night I made delicious delicious chili which we paired with yummy sourdough bread. I was intending to post the recipe but I realized that I don't really have a solid recipe and I generally make it up as I go. So I've decided to write a vague description of the steps and ingredients.

First, brown a bunch of lean or extra lean ground beef. I used somewhere between 1.5 and 2 pounds last night. Next chop up some sirloin steak and pork chops into cubes. Try to get a bit more of this "real" meat than of the ground beef. Now get a big pot. A really big pot. I had to buy a bigger one just for chili. Heat some oil in the bottom of the pot and then fry a big chopped up onion with a bunch of fresh minced garlic in the oil. Add the meats and sear them for a while before throwing in a couple chopped up peppers and a bunch of chopped celery. Mix this all up and let it cook for a few minutes. Then add a big can of diced tomatoes, a smaller can of tomato sauce (just the cheap stuff) and a can of tomato paste. Finally add the beans (with liquid; if it doesn't thicken up after an hour or two of simmering you can always add flour or cornstarch to fix it). One can of pinto beans, one of white kidney beans and one of red kidney beans. Mix this all up and then add the spices. There are a lot of spices, so it's better to prepare them in advance. I use 4 parts beef stock, 2 parts oregano, 1 part flour, 2 parts cumin, 1-2 parts paprika, 6-8 parts chili powder, 1 part cayenne powder, 1 part cinnamon and 1 part ground coriander (last night 1 part equaled a half tablespoon). Go easier on the cayenne, paprika and chili powder if you're concerned about spiciness. Although the chili powder is the stuff that gives it that "chili" taste so I don't like being stingy with it. Mix everything up, bring to a boil and then reduce heat to low and simmer for 1.5-2 hours. Taste it as it cooks and adjust the spiciness if necessary by adding chili powder or cayenne to make it more spicy or sugar to make it less spicy. Serve with delicious fresh bread and grated cheese. You can also add a dollop of sour cream if it's too spicy, the fats take the edge off.

We also bought food yesterday to make Beef and Broccoli sometime this week.

Today we walked through the rain to "Goed Eten" in Kensington Market to get a waffle. Matt recommended the place a while back but we didn't have a chance to try it out until today. The waffle was very tasty indeed. It came with fresh fruit, fresh homemade ice cream, and real whipped cream. I took a before and after photo using my new lens for my camera. It's a 50mm f1.8 fixed length lens and I quite like it. It's fast and sharp and fun to use. Anyway here are the photos:

Delicious waffle with chocolate ice cream, whipped cream, strawberries, bananas, and blueberries

Delicious waffle with chocolate ice cream, whipped cream, strawberries, bananas, and blueberries

For the Civic holiday long weekend I went canoe camping in Algonquin with Matt, my Mom and our family friends from Ottawa. It was an awesome time and I've posted a full trip journal with photos. It was fun having my camera on the trip, but I don't think I took enough time to be careful in the set up of all of my shots. I did get some good ones but I was also disappointed with how a lot of the others turned out.

This weekend I'm hopefully going climbing outdoors at Mount Nemo and I'll be taking more photos there.

This weekend was lots of fun! On Friday night a whole bunch of us went to the Madison for Jeff's birthday. It's a pretty good place and absolutely huge. Simone had reserved a whole section for us and we had lots of beer and wings and even a cake! It was really good times!!

Saturday was the annual Rib-O-Rama at my boss's house. They smoke ribs in smokers and there are lots of salads and desserts and stuff. Kim came with me this year and it was lots of fun. The thunderstorms went away just before it started leaving us with perfect weather. The food was great and the beer was cold. I brought a strawberry-rhubarb crumble pie from Dufflet and someone else brought homemade vanilla ice cream. I combined these two and received very positive feedback.

Also on Saturday I read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. This is a classic of science fiction (it won both the Hugo and the Nebula award) and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I found the suggestion of "morality of intention" a bit strange, but I really liked the emphasis on using children for morally difficult tasks because they are free from all of the preconceptions that burden adults. I'm not saying I think we should enslave children for all our dirty work, I just think it is interesting how much the world changes people and how settled you can get with your notions of the way the world works. This idea became most apparent to me when I read a couple critical analyses of the book and could see the essayist's world views and preconceptions biasing their work. Anyway, the sequel to the book also won both the Hugo and the Nebula (crazy!) so I'll be reading that one as well.

Sunday morning Jen and Jeremy made a brunch of delicious crêpes for all the Cityplace dwellers. They had all sorts of fruit and toppings and of course a lot of Nutella. We all had a good time chatting and eating and when we were done I took my bursting stomach out east on Queen to do some rock climbing. It was a good outing and afterwards I enjoyed a peaceful relaxing evening.

Tonight, for wing night, after years of failed attempts, we finally made it to Duff's for wings. Duff's is supposed to have some of the best wings in Toronto. I liked them, but they really made me long for Morty's in Waterloo. I think it might be time for a road trip.

This weekend is camping in Algonquin! I can't wait!!

Last weekend I did a bunch of stuff (see the next post) and one of the activities took me to Dufflet where I picked up this chocolate bar in addition to delicious pastries.

The bar is 85% cocoa and is made from beans from Africa. It is smooth like the other Valrhona bars I've tried, which certainly takes the edge of the increased cocoa content. However smoothness isn't enough. The taste was very flat and uninteresting and the aftertaste was bitter and unpleasant. I wouldn't buy this one again.

I'm just going to take a minute here to point out something I found on the Interwebs this morning. During the writer's strike it seems that Joss Whedon (of Buffy, Angel and Firefly fame) was busy on a personal project. The results are now available. Be sure to check out Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog for glorious, musical, Joss Whedon-esque content staring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day and Nathan Fillion. The first act was released today and the others will be released later this week.

Update: I should mention that these videos will only be online until midnight on Sunday. After that they disappear (although you'll be able to purchase a DVD). So watch them soon if you're interested!

Update 2: It appears that the rest of the Internet also enjoys the work of Joss Whedon as the interest appears to have killed his poor server. I looked around for a mirror without success so I guess just keep trying the main site and maybe it will become fixed by magic.

Final Update: Here are some mirrors to try: mirror 1,mirror 2, and mirror 3.

I did a few things this weekend...so I'll blather on about them for a bit here.

Friday Kim and I hit up Spring Rolls for some supper and then saw Hellboy 2. I liked the original Hellboy and I loved the style of "Pan's Labyrinth" and since the director of all three is the same guy (Guillermo del Toro) this was a must see movie. It was pretty good and the creativity and attention to detail used in the creatures and monsters was awesome. Good movie!

Saturday we went to a bakery on St. Clair in hunt of the best croissant in Toronto. I'm already partial to the ones from Thuet, but since they're the only ones I've tried I though I should broaden my horizons. Anyway, these were good croissants, but not as good as the ones I had recently in New York. These ones could have been just a touch more buttery I thought. The bakery ended up being in the middle of something called the Salsa Festival (which is in it's 4th year apparently) so after getting the croissants we explored that for a bit and got some empanadas. Then we went to the Loblaws that's right there and did a bit of grocery shopping before heading home.

Last night I installed the latest version of Ubuntu on my desktop and today I also installed it on my laptop. It's pretty good, same old happy Linux with updated software and a few new features. I can't complain. Finally, I replaced my never used Vista installation on my laptop with Windows XP (also likely to remain unsed).

This evening I went climbing for the first time in like 3 weeks. It felt good to be back and I'm looking forward to going again on Wednesday.

Lately I've been taking photos in RAW format with my DSLR and using UFRaw to post-process the images. It's not a bad program and it has an awesome batch mode, but I was starting to get the feeling that my camera was better at doing the post-processing than I was.

Anyway, today I found a new program that's a lot more solid and has a lot more features. RawTherapee handles a bunch of stuff automatically as well so it's a bit easier to work with.

There's still a lot of terminology to understand though, but I was able to get a pretty nice result on my first try. Check it out below. I was able to increase the brightness of this image which started out pretty dark and I was also able to really bring out the greens in the background. Finally I was able to soften the noise in background to make it look more like blur than random junk.

Pretty flower in New York City