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Taste of the Danforth

August 9, 2007 by Tricia

Did you know that this is the weekend that the Taste of the Danforth is on in Toronto? It runs from Friday evening until Sunday at 6 pm.

Part of the Danforth is closed off and all the stores and restaurants have sales and sell food outside of their premises. Oh it’s great! There’s also rides for the kids and beer tents for the adults.

I love just walking the Danforth during this festival. Stopping at one restaurant for a shisk kebab paying on $1 for it, then stopping at another place for a barbecued corn on the cob, another for a small bowl of chilli and finally near Broadview there’s a place that makes home made ice cream. I always get a waffle cone there. It’s the only time of year that I tend to eat ice cream let alone in a waffle cone. Yummy.

The walk through the crowded 10 or 12 blocks of the Danforth takes an hour or two one way between the crowded streets and stopping at the various stores and restaurant stands.

I’m happy that we live close too. It’s only about a 10 minute walk to the Danforth so we don’t have to deal with parking. I think last year close to 2 million people attended the Taste of the Danforth!

I’ll take pictures if I go! We’ve got guests this weekend and they stopped us from going last year. I’m determined that we’ll go this year.

Foodsnooper Canada’s Food Delivery and Takeout Guide

August 9, 2007 by Tricia

My husband and I don’t order take out too often, but when we do we think of it as a treat for ourselves. Perhaps we’ve had a great day or week work wise or maybe it’s been a terrible and exhausting day – it’s still a treat when when we order take out or have a meal delivered.

I’ve just heard about a new website called Foodsnooper. It’s billed as Canada’s Food Delivery and Takeout Guide. This is fantastic because I live in Toronto and this site will make it that much easier for me to find some great new restaurants to order food from when we’re in the mood.

The site is just about to fully launch so I don’t think they have quite as many restaurant listings yet as they should. I say this because I live in the heart of the Danforth in Toronto and when I typed in my Address and postal code it only came up with one restaurant for my area. The results probably should have shown at least 100 that delivered and maybe another 100 that were just take out.

Once they get more restaurant listings I think it will be a great site to use. I mean, just type in your address or postal code and a map comes up that shows you all the restaurants in your area. From there you can specify which type of food you are interested in and narrow your choices. Once you select a restaurant you can click on the magnifying glass and the map will zoom in to show you where the restaurant is located. You’ll also have a bubble that shows the restaurant address and phone number.

It looks like you’ll be able to view the restaurant of your choices promotions and menus too. I think that’s great. I hate calling a place that I don’t have a menu for and taking a lot of time on the phone asking the person who’s answered what’s on the menu. I’d rather know before I make my call. In fact, when a restaurant has a website that allows ordering to be done on line I’ll often make my orders right from my computer. Perhaps they’ll include restaurant websites soon too.

If you’re Canadian, keep an eye on this site. I’ve bookmarked it and I’m hopefully that they will list more restaurants in my area soon.

Fading Romance

August 8, 2007 by Tricia

Wordless Wednesday

This is a Romantica Rose – Yves Piget. I thought the petals beginning to wilt and dry up on top looked kind of cool. Obviously this rose is on it’s last legs but it’s still very pretty with it’s raspberry colored petal tips.

I don’t know why, but this kind of reminds me of a desert. What do you think?

I can’t take a bad photo of this rose

August 6, 2007 by Tricia

This rose, Breath of Life, is so gorgeous that I don’t think it’s possible for me, or anyone for that matter to take a bad photo of it:

I’ve been growing this rose at the entrance to my backyard for the last 5 years and as I’ve said I don’t think a single one of my photos of this rose has ever not turned out well.

I suppose it’s a combination of the color and perhaps even where the rose is in my garden – lighting wise as we know those are often factors that make or break a photograph. I mean, I’ve got some lovely red flowers that up until I got my SLR camera I had to struggle to take a decent photo of just because the color red can be so difficult to photograph.

The rose looks more pink than coral in this photo but for the most part it’s usually a very light coral. I love the rose! I also love having such a spectacular rose at the start of my garden as it hints at what visitors might encounter.

Do you garden or do you enjoy taking photos? Have you found that some colors are easier to photograph than others?

If you’d like to learn more about growing lovely roses like this one:

Taylor’s Guide to Roses: How to Select abd Grow 380 Roses, Including the New Hardy Ever-Blooming Varieties – Flexible Binding (Taylor’s Gardening Guides)

Or if you’d like to learn more about the art of photography:

Learning to See Creatively: Design, Color & Composition in Photography (Updated Edition)

Storm Watch – unrealistic movie

August 6, 2007 by Tricia

Last night we watched a movie about a hurricane hitting New York City. Well I say we watched, but I wasn’t feeling all that well so I had a nap in the middle of the movie! I saw the beginning and the end and unless something really remarkable happened in the middle I wasn’t all that impressed with the movie. I think it was called Storm Watch.

First, I can’t imagine NYC getting hit with such a forceful hurricane in the first place – not a direct hit anyway. I mean, even Toronto was hit back in the 50’s by a hurricane but it was the remnants of a very powerful one and it did a lot of damage. So yeah, tail end or side effects of a powerful hurricane but not a direct hit.

Watching the movies end and seeing all the damage and injured people made me think that all of the New York personal injury lawyers were about to get a lot of new business!

Did anyone see that movie? If you did, what did you think of it? Obviously I wasn’t the least bit impressed so I’m giving it a thumbs down.