I know I’ve already featured one of these brilliant mashups from Accordion Guy, but it’s Halloween and these images are unutterable shadow-paintings from beyond the veil. So there.
Category Archives: Canada
fundraiser at Rare and Welcome to the blogroll Urban Diner
Background on the event is here.
The MC: Tamara Taggart, CTV
The Music: Adam Woodall
The chefs:
- Robert Belcham (C, Fuel)
- Brian Fowke (Rare One)
- Sean Heather (The Irish Heather, Salt, Pepper)
- Colin Johnson (Parkside)
- Neil Wyles (Hamilton Street Grill)
The catch:
- All local ingredients
- All items made from ingredients procured the same day
The menu:
- Champagne & canapes
- cauliflower & truffle shooter
- pumpkin ravioli • beurre noisette emulsion • amarettini-sage crumble
- fenel risotto • neon squid • malt-cured oak-smoked bacon
- duck soup • black beluga lentils & evergreen organic autumn vegetables
- butter-sauteed sablefsh • tarragon • chantrelles & porcini • apple puree
- Blue Goose organic beef • Dungeness mashed potatoes • red wine reduction
- Okanagan apples five ways • Gala • Ambrosia • Granny Smith
- local cheeses & charcuterie
Thanks to my good friends and sugar-daddy and -mommy Raj Taneja and Nina Sohi I was able to get to this, the finest meal I have had in many years. I’m cross-posting this from the Waiterblog forum because I am A) sick and B) lazy, and because I want to welcome Waiterblog‘s parent site Urban Diner to the blogroll. Like you didn’t know both of those fun facts about me already! But I’m already running into problems, as I imagine much of social and single Vancouver will be (before the latte hits) trying to keep my synapses routing me through the Urban Jungle of Urban Mixer, Urban Diner, and Urban Fare. We need a new word, yo, for verily, we are easily confused.
It was a fantastic event. Tamara Taggert was an enthusiastic and friendly emcee, and every one of the silent auction items was sold. The event raised a truly useful sum for a very good cause, and it was, quite frankly, the best meal I have had in years, course after course of it. An example: I could happily dine on the pumpkin ravioli with beurre noisette daily until June. The wines were up to the same rarified (ha!) standard, and were an education in themselves: I thought I didn’t like Chardonnay! The matchings were outstanding, and the Muscat comes in for special mention.
A big shout out to the Urban Mixers Nina Sohi, who bought me a ticket, and Raj Taneja, who bought me wine, for lo I am way poor; without these two I would never be able to sample the delights of a meal like this. I just had to get that out of my system.
Tina looked beautiful, and it added so much to the evening to have her there. Neil and Brian should have their own tv show: why not cut out the middle man? And it was delightful to share a table with Tara and her friend (whose name escapes me…did I mention the wine?).
Trivia for fans of the Neon Squid: It’s actually a flying squid! It was marvelous, of course.
Tina’s family will now be able to hire a full-time nanny, enabling her to devote her vitality to fighting both the disease of breast cancer and the side-effects of aggressive chemotherapy, which can be dangerous and draining in themselves.
new Michael J. Fox hospital story
Well, it’s not new if you’ve been to Gawker or Defamer recently and trolled through the Fox-related comments, but it’s new to the larger world, and it’s original to my mother, so here it is, straight from the foal’s mouth.
My mother used to work at the Children’s Hospital here in Vancouver, and the story she heard (and she heard it the same day, from people in the room) was that Michael was getting a tour and saw one of their scanners. He was told that there was a several months long waiting list for scans, because they couldn’t afford to buy a new one.
He asked how much it was…something like $20,000 (this was in the Eighties).
He wrote them a cheque.
Also, his sister(? or in-law, can’t remember) gave Greenpeace $200 when I was doing door-to-door for them. She was very nice.
monster chiller horror theatre with Count Floyd presents Ingmar Bergman’s Whispers of the Wolf
So it’s not Doctor Tongue, so what. Here’s my Canadian Content for the day. Remember Count Floyd? The only Transylvanian vampire with a Torontonian accent and a turtleneck. They couldn’t afford a werewolf, so he did the howling, too.
Hit Play and enjoy your trip in the Wayback Machine; also, join me in wondering why Andrea Martin isn’t swamped with work. She owned Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
strangers in the night
from the Archive
Once, I went out in the middle of the night for a long run. I stopped by Shanghai Alley to do my stretches. There I was, huffing and puffing with my face a nice rosy pink like the nether parts of a slutty baboon and bent over in any number of undignified and unflattering poses, thinking about the way my greasy hair was sticking to my forehead and the way I looked in my baggy sweats. Along came a hooker, skinny the way they all are, with the bones sticking out and that look like they would shatter if you gave them a sharp rap. She was very reluctantly following a customer into the bushes in the little park and when she saw me she called out,
“Way to go, girl, way to be healthy. Not like a sick junkie hooker!”
I replied, “Yeah, but I’m fatter than you,” to keep the interaction going. I mean, I wasn’t going to take her for dinner, but you can’t just drop it; that makes people feel so small. When they reach out of The Life you have to support them and not turn your back. Hell, it’s the least you can do.
“No, no, you look good, lookin’ healthy! You keep going, girl!” and she went. Never seen her since.
raincoaster 