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A little TLC for our friend

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On Monday one of our friends came over for a visit. He’d just broken up with his girlfriend and he was feeling down so we invited him over for dinner.

Poor Oliver. He’s been really stressed out lately. He works at the hospital with us and he’s been there longer than we have. Look at me, I’m already so sick that I can’t even work, and my husbands had health problems too. I think the hospital makes people sick.

In Olivers case it’s the stress. He had to take some time off due to stress, but he hopes to return next week.

I’m still not sure why he and his girlfriend broke up as he never did say. I think he was just happy to get together with some friends and spend some time talking and eating a very good meal if I do say so myself. Check out my main blog Tricia’s Musings if you want to see what we ate. The post is called – Disgusting! But it all turned out ok. Now if that title doesn’t get you to visit my other blog nothing will. LOL

Our friend was like a different person when he was ready to leave. He was kind of stressed and super alert when he arrived around four pm, but when he was leaving at midnight he was very relaxed. I really do think that his visit to our home helped him.

We drove him home since he only lives a few blocks away. Once we were there he invited us in for a drink so we went up to his apartment for a few minutes. I just love how he’s decorated his home. He has a studio RTA furniture style going on. Simple open concept design and most of his furnishings – well entertainment units etc are made of steel so it has a cool modern look. For a guy he’s got taste!

Now that I’m talking about our friend I’ve just thought that maybe we should give him a call later today and see how he’s been doing this week. He’s such a nice guy that I hate to think of him sitting around by himself feeling down in his home.





Taste of the Danforth

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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

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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.

I wish I’d planned our patio better

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When we created our lovely garden and patio we were planning more for the garden than anything else. While I love our garden I often wish that I’d made our patio area at least 15 square feet larger than it is. Why? Well, we have plenty of room for our really nice patio set, and we have garden beds around two sides of the patio creating a nice intimate feel … but we have no room for our barbecue!

Our barbecue is in the driveway chained to the wall. That’s where we cook. Then we either bring our food to our patio table or back inside if it’s too hot or if it’s raining.

We need to create an outdoor kitchen. With that extra space that I really should have planned for when we landscaped our yard we could have had a built in barbecue or even a stone stove. We could have even had cabinets to keep our various utensils and BBQ supplies in.

Perhaps I’ll redo our patio area one day. All I’d really have to do would be to move one raised garden bed back a few feet. Not as easy as it sounds but quite possible.

Do you have a landscaped yard? If you do, did you plan an outdoor kitchen into it?

Redneck Wine Reviews

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I think I’ve always enjoyed wine. In my early wine drinking years I stuck to mostly white wines as I didn’t like the taste or tartness of many red wines. Obviously as I’ve matured my tastes have changed and I now enjoy a good red wine as much if not more than a nice bottle of white wine.

I don’t actually drink a lot of wine. Perhaps a bottle or two between my husband and I once a month at the very most. Now, that our taste for wine has expanded we enjoy trying new wines. The problem is finding out which wines are good ones to try and which ones to stay away from at all costs! Usually we take recommendations from friends, waiters/ waitresses or when we are in the liquor store we’ll sometimes ask the staff which wine might be nice with whatever dinner we are planning.

I haven’t taken to reading many wine sites. They are often dry and don’t give me a good feel for whether I’d truly enjoy the wine or not. Now, having just said that I believe I might have found website that has Wine Reviews that I can trust.

The author of Redneck Wine Review proclaims to just be an ordinary person who doesn’t have any particular training in the tasting of wine and doesn’t have a refined palate. The “About” page on the site states “This blog is a down-to-earth look at a traditionally snobbish hobby of wine tasting and wine rating.”

I actually believe this is just the type of site I’ve been looking for as far as wine reviews go. I mean, look at my past behavior? When I’ve wanted wine recommendations in the past I’ve asked the average Joe who just might have happened to have tried some wines that I haven’t yet had a chance to taste. This Wine Review Blog seems to me to be just like getting a recommendation from the type of people that I’ve always taken recommendations from in the past.

The site is laid out nicely. It’s very easy to navigate and it has a search form at the top if you want to find out if a particular wine or type of wine has been reviewed in the past. I always give thumbs up to any kind of site that makes it easy for their visitors to move around the site easily and find things that interest them.

I don’t have any major suggestions for the site other than to keep doing what they are doing. The blog has been around since 2005 but it seems that it’s really only been a fully active site in the last two months. If the site owner keeps doing what they’ve been doing in the last while I think this could turn into a very nice review blog.

When I saw the title – Redneck Wine Reviews I wasn’t sure if would be a joke site or a real wine review site, but it most definitely is a very good wine review site.

The posts on the site are not all wine reviews. Some are stories about visits to Wine Country and their experiences in the small towns, restaurants, hotels and motels that they’ve stayed in as well as brief discussions of the wines that they had with meals. There are also reviews of wine tasting and wine making areas such as the review that’s currently on the main page of California Wine Hikes.

The wine reviews are short and sweet. The review and description ranges from the type of wine cork, to the make and year of wine, what food it was served with when tasted, it’s aroma, taste and the authors overall opinion of the wine. Some reviews also contain information about how the author came to be trying and reviewing that wine as well.

I believe that, like any food or drink, the taste of wine is subjective. Wines I love you may dislike. The Redneck Wine Review only proclaims to be one persons opinion of the wines reviewed on the site.

If you enjoy wine I think this site is worth bookmarking and visiting every now and then in order to see if a wine has been reviewed that you might like to try.

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