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Posted by zoom! on August 4, 2006, at 10:34 pm |
A month or so ago, Janet and I met at the Shanghai Restaurant on Somerset Street for one of their dangerously delicious world-famous Lychee martinis.
“We should ask them for the recipe,” Janet said.
“Absolutely,” I agreed. And then we both forgot.
Since then, I’ve been trying to re-create the Lychee Martini. For some reason – maybe it actually said so on the menu – I believe they used vanilla vodka. So I combined some vanilla vodka with some Soho lychee liqueur, tossed it in the cocktail shaker with ice, shook like crazy, and poured it into a martini glass. It was okay, but it didn’t compare to the Shanghai’s Lychee Martini.
The Shanghai’s dangerously delicious Lychee Martini doesn’t taste like booze – it tastes kind of like pear nectar.
I did a little research and discovered it’s advisable to use lychee syrup rather than lychee liqueur, so I went to five different specialty shops and large grocery stores looking for lychee syrup, but I couldn’t find any. Just raspberry syrup and strawberry syrup.
 Tonight I tried again. Vanilla vodka, lychee liqueur, a couple of ounces of diet ginger ale (to cut the boozy taste), ice, all tossed into the cocktail shaker and shaken, into the martini glass, and garnished with a cherry. It was good – and pretty in a simple sort of way – but it still didn’t compare to the Shanghai’s dangerously delicious lychee martini. It was still too boozy-tasting.
So tonight I’m sending out a plea for help: I’m asking you to please give me some ideas for creating a dangerously delicious Lychee Martini.
(And while you’re at it, if you’re so inclined, many years ago I invented the NAME of a drink: the Tequila Mockingbird. I asked the bartenders at Irene’s Pub to invent the drink for me. They worked tirelessly for days – and the regulars drank and judged tirelessly for days – but we never came up with a satisfactory Tequila Mockingbird.)
Posted by zoom! on August 3, 2006, at 9:07 pm |
I went back to work this week, after 2 weeks of holidays. (Seventeen days, including weekends, but who’s counting?)
It was good to see my colleagues again, and I hate to admit it, but it was great to be in air conditioning again.
It wasn’t much fun looking at my inbox, though. Jesus. It took me an entire day to sort through my email. At the end of the day, guess how many messages I had deleted?
Eleven thousand three hundred and five. I’m not kidding.
Posted by zoom! on August 1, 2006, at 9:36 pm |
I think we hit 48 Celsius with the Humidex in Ottawa today. That’s what? (48-4) x 2 +32 = 120 Farenheit. When I stepped out of my air-conditioned office at 4pm, I felt like I was instantly swallowed by intense heat. It was so hot it almost hurt. It was alarming. On a day like today, it’s hard to believe Ottawa is the second-coldest national capital city in the world (Mongolia’s capital is a little colder).
It’s definitely not hat weather, but Fiona sent me photos of her kids wearing the strawberry hats I knit them for Christmas.
This is Gavin wearing BOTH hats.
Here’s Jonas, wearing one hat.
And here’s Fiona and her boys.
Posted by zoom! on August 1, 2006, at 8:06 pm |
Posted by zoom! on July 31, 2006, at 5:29 pm |
Poof! Just like that, Aylmer disappeared from the face of the earth yesterday afternoon.
Pierre and I climbed 1100-foot King Mountain in the Gatineaus to take a look at the panoramic and picturesque view from the top. I wonder if anybody ever falls off the edge of the mountain into the little toy world below?
At the top of the mountain we found some explanatory plaques and panels and a cairn, which commemorates Canada’s first Triangulation Station.
From the cairn, you’re supposed to be able to see Ottawa, Hull, Gatineau and Aylmer. We could see Ottawa and Hull, and if that white oak hadn’t been in the way, we think we could have seen Gatineau. But where Aylmer should have been? Farmland. Bales of hay. Forest. Trees. Somehow a bustling little town, home to 36,000 people, had inexplicably vanished. And nobody seemed to notice.
Here’s Pierre, searching for Aylmer.
See the big river in the background? (Not the little one in the foreground; the big one in the background.) That’s the Ottawa River and it geographically divides Quebec and Ontario. Aylmer, Quebec is supposed to be on this side of that river. It’s not there anymore.
King Mountain is on the Eardley Escarpment, which is a sub-microclimate. We walked through three different kinds of forests and saw Red Oaks, White Oaks, Hemlock Trees, Go-to-Sleep-and-Never-Wake-Up-Berry Bushes, chipmunks and a soaring bird of prey which was probably either a hawk or a turkey vulture.
We even saw a tricycle truck when we got back to town, parked in the lot behind Pub Italia.
We saw a lot of things, but we never saw Aylmer. I wonder if its disappearance had anything to do with the UFO sightings in Aylmer earlier this month?
Posted by zoom! on July 28, 2006, at 10:55 pm |
One of the appealing things about knitting is that it doesn’t require a lot of tools or accessories. A couple of pointy sticks and some string, and Bob’s your uncle. If we were scrapbookers, we’d need whole rooms and craft tables and boxes and special totes and filing cabinets to hold all the scrapbooking papers and stickers and edgers and scissors and circle-cutters and lettering templates and adhesives and so on.
One might wonder how so many knitting stores do such a flourishing business, given that it takes us a long time to knit anything and our tools and supplies for each project are absolutely minimal. I’ll tell you how they do it: all knitters are compulsive yarn hoarders. While we are knitting a humble pair of socks, our minds are already working on the next sweater. A yarn sale will inspire us to buy more yarn than we could possibly knit in five years. A visit to a new or distant yarn store will yield a crop of ideas and we’ll stock up on several irresistible yarns in case they get discontinued. If we can’t decide between two luscious colours, we’ll buy both. If we’re bored with a knitting project, we’ll take a break to shop for luxury yarn on Ebay. We’re knitters. It’s what we do.
What we DON’T do is buy goofy knitting gadgets. Like these $40 LED knitting needles:
Posted by zoom! on July 28, 2006, at 5:06 pm |
Posted by zoom! on July 26, 2006, at 9:39 am |
Yesterday afternoon, Junkyard Gary – whom I’ve known since the beginning of time – knocked on my door to see if I wanted to go get a cup of coffee in the market.
“We could sit on a patio and watch the world go by and pretend we’re part of it,” he said.
How could I refuse an offer like that? So Gary made some room in the truck for me, and we rattled off down to the market.
On Albert Street something caught our eye:
We circled the block and came back for a better view. “I think it’s a Marilyn Monroe contest,” said Gary.
“Male Marilyn Monroes,” I observed.
“I don’t think so,” said Gary.
I got out and took a couple of pictures.
After I got back in the truck, Gary said “It’ll just be our little secret that I thought they were women, okay?”
“Sure Gary,” I said, “I won’t tell anyone.”
We then continued rattling towards the market where there was no place to park, so eventually we had to park in a lot.
Here’s Gary sitting at a patio in the Market, drinking coffee, watching the world go by and pretending to be part of it.
Afterwards he dropped me off at my place and he went to play pool at his friend’s place who lives in a bungalow with 101 pianos and a 75-pound girlfriend who is currently in Africa teaching people how to style hair.
Posted by zoom! on July 25, 2006, at 10:05 am |
I saw this house yesterday. It was the first day it was listed. I was the first person to view it. I put in my offer by early evening. Then I learned that there was another offer on the table. I upped my offer to $3300 higher than the asking price. And then I waited. My realtor called me late last night to tell me I didn’t get the house.
I loved this house. A lot. It had three bedrooms, a basement, a vegetable garden, a washer and dryer, an orange dining room, an attic, a garage, ceramic floors, great big windows, everything. Today I’m trying to be philosophical about it but I can’t help but feel that SOMEBODY STOLE MY HOUSE!
Posted by zoom! on July 24, 2006, at 8:23 am |
I finished knitting a pair of socks last night! Is it just me, or do socks take everybody forever? They just go on and on and on with endless rounds of their tiny little stitches on their tiny little needles, and then when you’re finally finished, it’s time to start all over again because of that bi-ped issue. Nonetheless, eventually I finished, and I’m calling them my Morning Glory socks because they are a perfect match for the morning glories on my balcony. (Note: there will be no sitting in the extra balcony chair until after morning glory season, because as you can see, the morning glories have decided to climb that chair.)
 It’s not always easy to motivate yourself to knit in the summertime, so I’ve been renting cold movies. I watched March of the Penguins and Eight Below. They have a lot in common: they’re both set in Antarctica, they both have leopard seal villains, and they both made me cry. I was in the mood for something heart-warming to knit by last night, but I forgot that Disney can make you cry buckets of tears before you get your heart warmed. Why is it that even when you KNOW you’re being emotionally manipulated by obvious cheesy ploys, you still fall for it? (Or maybe it’s just me…maybe the rest of you sit dry-eyed through this stuff. My son used to think it was funny when we’d watch a sad movie together…)
 I’ve already cast on the next pair of socks. I’ve been looking forward to these ones for months. It’s my first foray into the decadent, luxurious, self-indulgent world of Lorna’s Laces yarn. This is Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock yarn in the Child’s Play colorway. I bought it on Ebay, along with a pattern for Slipped Rib socks by Lorna Miser. For some reason, last night this pattern looked outrageously complicated…today it doesn’t.
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Tonight I tried again. Vanilla vodka, lychee liqueur, a couple of ounces of diet ginger ale (to cut the boozy taste), ice, all tossed into the cocktail shaker and shaken, into the martini glass, and garnished with a cherry. It was good – and pretty in a simple sort of way – but it still didn’t compare to the Shanghai’s dangerously delicious lychee martini. It was still too boozy-tasting. 
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