tasty surprise

I have three words for you:

pineapple

grilled

cheese.

In the Company's Coming Kids' Snack cookbook there is a recipe for such a thing. Feeling adventurous, I substituted real cheddar for the processed stuff, multi-grain bread for the fluffy white crap, and fresh chopped pineapple instead of canned.

Wow. Crazy and gourmet.

You just spoon 2 Tbsp. of crushed pineapple onto the first layer of cheese, then top with another layer. Then finish the sandwich in the usual grilled way.

It's my new favorite.

false advertising?

The other night we drove past a Chinese food place called Dynasty Restaurant.

The first quarter of the neon sign had burnt out so that it just read

NASTY RESTAURANT.

We went back the next day with the camera, but they had already fixed it.

great pretender

Funny anecdote from the weekend:

My sister has two vegetarian roommates. One had a BBQ for her birthday on Saturday. She bought special mushroom and cheese veggie patties that she knew roommate #2 likes, and tossed them on the grill.

We all had one, and I couldn't believe how veggie burger technology had advanced. This was the most realistic veggie burger I had ever had. We all exclaimed about how strangely juicy and delicious they were.

Then roommate #2 became suspicious.

"Where did you get these, again?"

"At Superstore. They're the portabello and cheese ones, like you always get."

"OK, I trust you, but I just want to have a look at the box."

It turns out that Superstore has two kinds of portabello and cheese patties. Roommate #1 had accidentally bought the kind with meat in them.

Roommate #2 had already eaten 2 burgers. Thank goodness she didn't get sick.

I'm glad you can still tell the difference between the two. As a vegetarian-friendly omnivore, I like my veggies to taste like veggies, and my meat to taste like meat.

She's got a nice personality

I started volunteering with Big Brothers, Big Sisters this year. I am a mentor for a 13 year old girl. Every week I go to her junior high school and we hang out for an hour. I really like getting to know her, and watching her warm up to me. This week we finished making a sock monkey.Her name is Monica Monkey. She's not the best sock monkey ever made - in fact she kind of looks like Frankenstein's monkey, but that's what you get sometimes with a collaberative, inter-generational project.

We still need to add earrings and a "tattoo" of her initial.

Balance

I would give up some of my physical safety to protect my other freedoms.

Takayama, aka Little Kyoto

Takayama is 2 hours north of Nagoya, in the mountainous Hida district. It is filled with wonderful museums and historical buildrings, and small enough (almost 70, 000 people) to get around to most of them on foot. It is very popular with Japanese tourists.They have an outdoor museum similar to the Ukrainian Cultural Village outside of Edmonton. Hida no sato was the only place we had to travel to by bus, but it was definitely worth it. The buildings looked so beautiful surrounded by the fall colours.
The town has it's share of gift shops and tourist traps, but they are of a high calibur. I enjoyed the shops, displays and morning markets.
The Hida district is home to the world's most expensive beef, which we sampled at it's best in Shabu Shabu.Other highlights included sleeping in a Buddist Temple (cheapest place in town!), eating Hida milk pudding (dairy is quite rare in Japan), and visiting a 1200 year old ginko tree.

I also found the convenience store next to the train station very entertaining. I recommend it for lunch on the way out.

lazy bread

The whole world needs to know about this recipe! Well, maybe just the people who don't have bread machines.

I heard about this no-knead bread recipe from Julie Van Rosendaal on CBC's 'The Eye Opener', who got it from the New York Times, who got it from Jim Lahey, of the Sullivan Street Bakery.

I am intimidated by traditional bread making, so up until now I have stuck with quick breads and steered clear of yeast in general.

I didn't get the consistency quite right the first time, but it still turned out delicious. Matt raved about it until he got annoying.

Watching the video on the NY Times site helped to clarify a few things.

I tried it with 2 cups unbleached white, and 1 cup barley flour. I used the liner from my crock pot to bake it in. Apparently you can use 1 cup whole wheat or rye with good success. I intend to try many other combinations.