The Year in Revoise

I hate these lists that every news agency known to mankind makes at the end of the year . . . “A Year In Pictures” blah blah blah . . . so I hate myself even more for making one. But I guess as the proprietor of a website about food (or would it better be called “so-called proprietor”?) I suppose I have to comment in some fashion.

You just knew I had to, din’t ya, ya cynical bastards? So here it goes.

France. France was major, but on many levels it was majorly minor. They are the gods’ crème, swimming upstream, in their minds. But truth be told, I had some of my most mediocre food experiences in France. McDonald’s is still McDonald’s. Domino’s is still Domino’s.

The few places I actually went to were remarkable for their sheer mediocrity; the service, meanwhile, was remarkable for its general laxness. I have not been as insulted as I’ve been in France, and I SPEAK VERY GOOD FRENCH! Even French people probably couldn’t have told, with a few words from my mouth, that I was not French.

But need we go down the list?

That brasserie near the Musée D’Orsay, when I was delayed sitting down and my companion was already there (I was busy trying to avoid getting hit by a car) and the “waitron” asks me, BEFORE I EVEN FUCKING TAKE OFF MY COAT AND SIT DOWN, what I want to eat. I swear, I was standing there, flustered, trying to come to terms with almost dying and almost eating, and she fucking wants to take my order!

But the moment she realised I wasn’t French she got even more surly, pardon my French, the cunt.

Fuck that noise. FUCK THAT NOISE.

That place next to the Place de Bastille. I’d just gotten off the fucking plane and had taxied in and needed to find a phone number, which happened to exist only on my laptop. I was confused and anxious, but the only place to open the laptop was some café table. There were exactly ZERO customers. Middle of the day, rainy. But someone hurried over as quick as fucking mercury and said “Can I help you with something? Oh, you don’t need anything, then, I’m sorry, m’sieu . . . you can’t sit down here.”

Yes, you can help me with something. Go fuck yourself.

That nightmare dinner when I asked where the bathroom was and they told me “There’s always the sidewalk.”

I KID YOU NOT. Giggles all around.

Well, here’s what I have to say to France, and listen to me clearly: FUCK YOU. You made my stay in your country miserable, because your country is just crawling to stay afloat in its miserability. Every fucking time I came to your country you did your best to make sure I never came back, with your rudeness, your sense of self-entitlement . . . your pathetic egotism . . . yeah, well, guess what. I ain’t coming back, ya fucking Frogs. I may be American but at least I wake up every morning with the realisation that I’m American. You fuckers have to wake up knowing you’re FRENCH. I just can’t wrap my mind around that, that would be pure misery to wake up knowing I was French.

So . . . that was France. Hey, see, I’m just getting warmed up here! (Yeah, I know, “But how do you really feel?”)
Then there was being lacto-ovo-pesco-nonwheatanism . . . possibly the best experience of my life. It was incredible to not even eat an ounce of meat of any kind except fish, to not eat pasta, to really have to search on a restaurant menu for any alternative . . . frankly, now that I now eat anything again, I miss that time. I guess it’s like being Kosher . . . you’re heavily restricted but you get used to it, even begin to like it, prefer it.

So that was a mind-bender. But now I’ve graduated, somehow, with both experiences . . . I swear I will never be the same again after this year.

It was the best of times . . . and . . .

More Randomery

My moustache is bugging the hell out of me. I hate having a moustache and a beard but the trouble is, I seem to look better with them. Even my own brother said it lends me an air "of gravitas".

Fuck gravitas. These stupid fucking hairs everywhere . . . it's like a cockroach on my lip. Ohh, the angst . . . the duelling devils . . . do I keep it? Do I ditch it? Ahh, fuckit. My face will decide.

Word of the day: "Apotheosis". I have no idea what the fuck that means. But it sounds good! "The meal at Milos was the apotheosis of my career as a food whore." Doesn't that sound good? But I know it's not right. I think I mean "apex", but doesn't "apotheosis" sound so much more majestic?

It's snowy outside. I know that somewhere in this equation lies trouble, but there's fuck all I can do about it. Except hide. Should I hide? There are consequences for that, too . . . namely, clean, silky sheets, a piece of toasted country bread with garlic butter, sliced cherry tomatoes, gruyère, black forest ham and a fried egg on top . . . oh, there are consequences. Maybe I should hide . . .

But if I go out . . . ohh, the humanity! Hmm, wonder if Metro is open.

White Christmas Revisited (by me, of course)

I’m dreaming of a wild Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
With the kids all sangin’
And head bangs-bangin’
Falling drunken in the snow

I’m dreaming of a wild Christmas
With every snort of coke in sight
May your nights be hairy
Smoking dope to Tom and Jerry
Then to IHop for a bite

I’m dreaming of a wild Christmas
With all you fuckers at my place
With rooms all trashing
And tree-balls smashing
Kickin’ Santa into space

I’m dreaming of a wild Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
On a mattress lying
Mescaline be flying
Watching the Phil Silvers show

(Fade)

Viva Blogging!

I was just reading the letters from people to the Gazette and realizing just how liberating blogging (how I hate that term) is.

For instance, here is the (actual!) Gazette version:

================================================================================

"MORE NIGHT TRAINS"

"It would be really nice if the Agence métropolitain de transport would schedule one of their additional outbound trains later, for 11:10 p.m. for example."
================================================================================
Well, my blogging translation would be:

"ASSHOLES CONTINUE TO DOMINATE FUCKING AGENCE"

"When are these lobotomized twits at Agence métropolitain de transport going to wake up out of their drunken stupors and get a fucking clue about scheduling the goddamn outbound trains, the motherfuckers. Like, 11:10 p.m. would be good. Hello! (sound of knuckle rapping skull). Hello!
================================================================================
Uh, I think they'd have to cut down the word count a little. I'll try not to be so wordy in future, but you know, French is usually double English.

Do NOT Make Pizza . . .

. . . when you do not have your full attention on the job.

Of the possible food groups I can think of, pizza has to be one of the most complicated. There are simply so many things that can go wrong at any time.

Tonight I did not have my FULL attention on what I was doing. My son was buzzing around, wanting to put ingredients on it. At one point, Barry stopped by and we had a spirited conversation about what was going on in the Middle East.

So naturally I fucked up. All the prep was there, but I was so distracted that I lost track. I became sloppy. DO NOT TRY TO MAKE PIZZA if you are going to be sloppy.

There is only you. You are the only person who is going to make the pie, make sure the oil is on the crust, cornmeal is on the peel . . . if you only forget one step, you're FUCKED. No one is going to help you. You're "Mr. Pizza", everyone has heard how "Nicholas makes the best pizza in town!!!" so you have a name.

So I got distracted. We were entertaining Barry and I just got fatigued; all the prep was done but I was getting too tired to go through with it, as he wasn't even going to eat it. I preferred sitting around and drinking wine.

I didn't put enough corn meal on the peel. The pizza stuck to the fucking stone. I was too tired to do all four pizzas. Thank god Brigitte rescued me and patted me and cleaned up the mess. When I yelled at her about where my long-handled tongs were and the pizza burned while we tried to find them, she kept her cool. I didn't.

So, Pizzas: 4, Nick: 2.

Update at 11.

You Haven't Lived

You have not lived until you have felt the feeling of being under a 100% silk Mulberry King duvet/comforter.

The sensation is so obscene it would be banned in many countries and is akin to being manipulated in a physiological manner by Someone Other Than Yourself.

To whit: when I perform a physical examination of my perfectly-formed (years of working out) rectus abdominis muscles through the 1-cm thickness of this quilt, stroking those hard abs up and down a bit for a test drive, ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE.

It feels like 10,000 silkworms were PERSONALLY working to satisfy my every need, that their ultimate sacrifice was not in vain, that EVERY OTHER FORM OF DUVET KNOWN TO MANKIND has now become obsolete.

Ouf.

The duvet ensconced in 100% Egyptian cotton Damask duvet cover. Click to enlarge

Post-Traumatic Christmas Disorder Victim (PTCD)

Too Oily to Tell, Really

Have you ever dreamed of slathering yourself in olive oil, just rubbing it into every pore, massaging it firmly into your scalp, working it lightly into your cheeks with smooth circular motions, then finishing off by drinking a delectable full 750ml bottle of it in etched Swarovski crystal wine goblets?

Well, this is what you'd sound like in the shower forever after.

Roast Chicken Recipe?

It's rare that I come to you peasants for a recipe, but it must be admitted: I've never made a roast chicken in my life.

But Brigitte dislikes chicken breasts (why?) so we decided to do some cut-up whole-chicken deal.

You can check out this recipe and advise me if it looks good or not . . .

Check It Twice

Here's a primitive but kind-of-neat system that will email you the grocery items you check off.

I have to go to Costco and I was trying to come up with a list (don't laugh, I know it's banal, but I might get some stuff at Atwater or J-T markets):
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nick's Grocery Check List

Pick up the following from the store:

__ Fresh Celery
__ Fresh Garlic
__ Fresh Onions
__ Fresh Peppers
__ Canned Tomatoes

__ Beef:
__ Hot dogs

__ Shrimp

__ Other Condiments:
__ Relish
__ Batteries
__ Italian Dressing
__ Potato Chips
__ Cheese
__ Spaghetti Pasta

__ Other Paper Items:
__ Ziplocs
__ Toilet Bowl Cleaners


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pretty cool, huh? Only something a geek could love.

Ultimate Kitchen Gadget?

Has anyone ever heard of or used the Gel Pro mat for the kitchen? We do a lot of standing there, usually in unshod hooves, so technically, wouldn't that be the ultimate in kitchen gadgets?

Just wondering if they're the be-all and end-all of mats for the kitchen, but these hooves ain't gettin' any spryer . . .

Open Letter to the Mayor of Côte-des-Neiges/N.D.G.

Dear Michael,

You're a disgrace. More specifically, your entire borough is a disgrace. In the old days, like under Drapeau, a snowstorm was a trivial thing. Just the sound of the constant snowploughs actually became annoying, but at least you could walk to the store the next morning.

Since at LEAST December 11th, the streets and sidewalks and all public areas have had pretty much at best a nodding acquaintance with a snowplough, let alone salt or gravel.

It is so dangerous out there that I have personally witnessed three adults fall down at random and I have fallen at least six times in my so-called high-grip boots.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, has been touched for two weeks. There is not a shred of gravel anywhere. I have not seen a sidewalk scraper AT ALL. Outside a friend's mother's residence, basically a home for old folks, you could easily hire a hockey team to skate around the entire building and they'd have a complete blast.

I'd have mailed this as an open letter to the Gazette, but then I wouldn't have been able to include some of the "colourful" language you're about to read.

When are you "elected" officials going to get your fucking thumbs out of your asses, or more importantly, when are the fucking "vieilles-souches" city employees who sit around drinking beer for most of their shift for $30 an hour going to GET THEIR FUCKING SHIT TOGETHER and make this city safe for its citizens?

Uh, Michael, it's called sand, gravel and salt. SAND-GRAVEL-SALT. At the very fucking least!

We as a collective community should be suing the motherfuck out of you and Marv and the rest of the Jack-in-the-boxes, except YOU'RE ALL LAWYERS ANYWAY and would be lining up to take our cases to pad your already astronomical incomes.

C'mon down, Mikey, and TAKE A STROLL IN THIS NEIGHBOURHOOD. We'll go out for some beignets and Boréales with the street workers, shall we, while they work so assiduously? Oh, wait, maybe not, because you might value your kneecaps too much.

Get your shit together, Mr. Mayor, or YOU might be lining up at the Old Brewery Mission with cup in hand NEXT YEAR.

All the photos below were taken in a two-block stretch of Côte-des-Neiges between Decelles and Queen Mary. Click for larger previews. Please click on good ol' Mikey's name at the top to send him some CHRISTMAS GRRREETINGS.

Nick The Knife

Uh-oh, hide your carbon-steel . . . Nick's on the lookout for a chef's knife.

But I found one! I already have a Kasumi but I's on the looksout for a nudder ones! (Sorry, too much time with my son). My Kasumi has been a faithful kitchen pet for 5 years . . . sharp enough to shave by, I swear, after I renew him with my sharpening stone. But now I have a chopping partner, and a second blade is needed.

So I bought this baby . . .

I just can NOT wait to use it. I swear, now I think my greatest pleasure in life next to being horizontal is to SLICE THROUGH A TOMATO SKIN like the atoms actually parted for my blade, in sheer fear!

Aren't ya happy for me, ya post-Christmas hungover toads who have nothing to do today but scour the outlets for sales?

I have a great Mimosa recipe for ya! Take a Magnum of Taittinger's and chill it to minus 545 degrees Kelvin! Take 24 mikan oranges from Japan! Use a
Breville JE900 juicer and demolish those motherfuckers!

Take a tall crystal champagne flute, add a 1/2 teaspoon of grenadine, fill 3/4 full with that Taittinger's, splash some mikan juice and top with a very thin slice of peeled kiwi and just DOWN THEM BASTARDS until the entire bottle is done.

That's how I like to box on Boxing Day.

Knife! Yay!

Amateur for Life

There are a number of good reasons I’ll always stay an amateur cook. I’m waaaay too obsessive and waaay too slow.

I can’t stand cooking with other people in the kitchen, let alone cooking WITH them. But I’m obsessive about a lot of things . . . taking the little green shoots out of garlic cloves; removing the stems from parsley before chopping it; taking out the top and bottom eyes on tomatoes, peeling every single brown spot out of potatoes, cutting onions by removing top and bottom, then peeling and processing them instead of those “pro” chefs who just cut ‘em in half, then peel them; making sure every single seed is removed from a green pepper; and washing EVERYTHING.

Plus, because I’m so methodical in the chopping, dicing and slicing that it takes way too long. I’ll do a large white onion in fine dice and the dice will be perfect, but it will take me five minutes. Rachael Ray’s handlers would do it in 30 seconds.

And then the cooking . . . I take my sweet time about it. The counter has to be constantly wiped down and the sink has to be completely empty. The stove has to be clear. There can be no dirty anything. No shitloads of water everywhere, either. My utensils have to be where they always are; my chef’s knife has to be cleaned before going on to the next vegetable, the scraper has to be hanging in the right place, the colander has to be cleaned between vegetables . . . *sigh*.

All pans have to be inspected before shoving stuff in them. I have a pot rack and don’t use some pans so often, so they collect a bit of grease fumes/dust. Must be WASHED. Must be DRIED before going on stove.

Food has to be timed. I’m not so obsessive about that, but I know I sometimes forget stuff and I need to be reminded about when a pot of pasta water is about to boil if I’m distracted.

I would not make a good chef. And I WOULDN’T MAKE A GOOD YOUR CHEF-INSTRUCTOR, either!!!!!

Aaahh, Fuckit

I am so not a nice guy, like Blork says. Well, don’t misunderestimate me, to quote Dubya, but I just had to lose it, it was just waiting to be lost, on my insane trip back from Japan to Montreal.

This was, hey, it’s a wrap, put it in the can, my absolute worst trip to Japan ever. I tend to downplay my little jaunts across the tiny Pacific pond but in actuality they’re quite huge. This time it was Northwest, not Air Canada. Okay, good. This time it was Detroit, not Vancouver. Good again. But I was beguiled into a false sense that all would be well on my way to Japan, and indeed it was. Then things fell apart. I stayed with my ex-wife’s parents, for about the fiftieth time in a row. But this time they were inexplicably hostile. Maybe it was the new Shogun-type beard. Hmm. Could it be that Brigitte moved in?

It was a nightmare of Monumental Deportions.

But when I got to Kansai airport, way late, it seemed that Taishi’s passport had gotten misplaced. This is the sort of thing that bureaucrats love; they kick into high gear because this is what they were created for. Thank god I had his Japanese passport but they weren’t letting me off easy. I’d made the reservation under his “me” name, ergo Taishi Robinson, but his Japanese passport had a different name, his mother’s. No matter that he was standing in front of them, his Japanese passport had been stamped a hundred times and mine too, it was undeniable that he was my son . . . they did what bureaucrats normally do and threw a shit fit.

Those motherfuckers.

I got around that with my usual cunning and we barely made the plane. But the worst was yet to come. The ass-numbing/hurting 11-hour ride was the least of my worries . . . Detroit was a madhouse. I said earlier that it was a great airport, with a million restaurants and bathrooms but I must have been in some mushroom-inspired fog when I posted that . . .

Yo, remember the days when “passing through” a one-horse town meant just that? Saddle down, feed and water the horse, no accounting to the sherriff, you has your drinks and a flophouse and you’re on your way. NOT ANY MORE.

60 goddamn minutes in line to go through customs, IN A PLACE WHERE I WASN’T EVEN GOING TO, just passing through, but get your bag, go through customs and security just to check in to go to another country . . . HOW FUCKING ABSURD IS THAT . . . no wonder the fucking world is going into global whoreming.

Fucking ONE HOUR in line . . . turns out that it was a newbie in my slot, JUST MY FUCKING USUAL LUCK. HELL—OH, ONE LINE FOR ALL BOOTHS, not one each for a million booths . . . nah, that’s too easy. Trust the bureaucrats to fuck a good idea up.

But the clinker was the ride to Montreal. Needless to say, I was not in the best of moods when I got on that plane . . . think Jack Nicholson in the Shining. “Wendy . . . I’m not home.”

So we sat. And sat. And the pilot, quite the comedian, did his best to reassure us that things were on track. There was a gaggle of Montrealers just next to me and they set up quite the back-and-forth, in Joual, about the delay. But it was clear, on this sunny windless day, that things were not on track. And when the four beefy security guards wandered into the picture, brashly swaggering as only cops can, one actually speaking in a HEAVILY ACCENTED QUÉBECOIS DRAWL, I knew our trip was doomed.

Turns out Motherfucker Four Rows Down had had a problem with our slight delay. I heard them talking, in the silence only an ear-bent crowd can provide, that the stewardess had neglected to provide him with orange juice, that it was “basic services,” that his needs were being denied. Cops saying, in the language only cops can have, in full view of the “customers” “Sir, you must calm down, the stewardess was only providing the services available” and the guy was arguing with them. Arguing with four big cops on a crowded plane.

I lost it. After hearing the conversation (in English) for about three minutes, I turned around to espy the cause of our delay. Some motherfucker, in his thirties. The plane, except for the cops and him, was utterly silent. Something possessed me, the Rage Inside, and I stared right in his eyes and said in a loud voice, “You asshole, if you lift again even a tiny pinkie to interfere with my getting home, I am going to come right over there and kick your ass so far to September you’re going to have hemorrhoids for a fucking year.”

I swear, it was not me talking, someone else took over my brain. But the cops were very alarmed and someone clapped somewhere but the motherfucker SHUT THE FUCK UP. He looked me right in the eyes and SHUT THE FUCK UP. A cop patted me on the shoulder and said “Calm down, sir” but by then my inexplicable rage was weirdly gone . . .

The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. But let me say that if that fuckwad had said ONE MORE WORD I most assuredly would have painted him a brand new asshole.

Contra indicatory . . .umm, somethings like that

Japan is a conglomerate of contraindications. Nah, ya mesmerised mass o’ martinized malingerers, not CONTRADICTIONS, I mean the stuff they put on Celebrex bottles to tell you what will happen to you should things go wrong.

Anyway . . . to be a gaijin here is automatically suspect but to be a gaijin here in this corner of Nara is tantamount to a crime. That being so, everyone prefers to ignore the criminal in their midst. If the Japanese could whistle, I’d be surrounded by a group of whistling people, all looking at anything else except me. The Japanese are experts at making things they don’t think should exist invisible . . . a young secretary sprawled on a bench at a busy rush-hour subway station, still clutching her Gucci handbag, a pool of vomit next to the bench. Doesn’t exist! (sound of mental whistling!)

So naturally I like to fuck with them. It's like being completely sober and fucking with someone who's smoked two joints of BC Gold. The nervous clerk in the convenience store, barely out of high school, when I, in my near-perfect Japanese (not only near-perfect, but in his dialect) say “Will this do?” (in this case, "Kore de ee'n yarou ka?") holding out a ten-dollar bill.

I can see the thought processes: “omigodomigodomigod it’s a gaijin I’ve never in my life met a gaijin what shouldIdowhatshould I do? He asking me in perfect Japanese if he can pay with this strange money but this is a conveniencestorewhatshouldIdowhatshouldI DO will I get fired if I don’t take his moneymaybe I should get the manager ohmyGOD” and then I let him off the hook. “Just kidding! This is CANADIAN money. Here’s your thousand yen.”

He doesn’t get the joke. But I didn't expect him to.

There are exceptions. In this corner of Kansai (a region loosely associated with Osaka) they speak a very specific dialect with many intonations and verb-endings and phonemes and glottal stops that differ from "BBC-Japanese", so to speak, so they kind of freak, in their own ("Don't-freak-out-DON'T-freak-out") Japanese way when they hear me speak an utterly perfect sentence or have a conversation, with, say, my mother in law about how I forgot the milk and I'd pay for the groceries this time, she'd get it next time.

In English I imagine it would sound something like "Oh christ, I forgot to get the milk . . . do we really need milk? Look, I only have a thousand yen on me. Can you get this one today? What? Of course I'm good for it!" and these people and the cashier are staring at me like I'm some visitor from Beeblebrox and I have magic powers.

Hilarious.

On the plus side, professionals easily recognize that I can speak Japanese and they don't demean me by practicing their English -- unless of course their English is better than my Japanese. But it takes one to know one, and all too often, no one knows anyone around here . . .

Randomery

I just had an odd thought . . . just who do you tell if your pee smells like milk? I mean, is it something you should be worried about? Well, milk is good, good, but why does your pee smell like milk when you haven’t drunk it in several days? Is it some kind of vociferous men’s breast cancer that happens to attack the milk glands? Do men have milk glands? Why do men not have gynecologists? I know I sure as hell don’t EVER want to see a urologist. It always means only one thing . . . fuckin’ widdit. And there is a part of me I do NOT want fucked wit.

Acch, so many questions. So much time!

You know who’s funny? The least funny people in the world. The gangbangers, the mafia. Sure, they kill, maim and steal, but god loves ‘em. YOU love ‘em. They’re so dumb . . . I’m sure the jokes abound, but see, they HAVE to be dumb because otherwise they’d be lawyers. Oh, no wait . . . bad metaphor.

I mean, do you know what a typical mafioso conversation goes like?

I am just not kidding:

“Didja talk to him?”
“Sure, like I toldja, I talked to him. He said it’s off.”
“He said it’s off?”
“Yeah, like off. As in ‘off.’”
“You mean no deal?”
“No deal. Whadda you, harda hearing?”

This to me is divine comedy.

Or in other circles:

“Whatchou fuckin’wit, man, how come you got yo’ fingers in yo pockets like, seven-eeleven?”
“Dude, go be humpin’ Charlie and jive yo’ black ass outta ma face.”

Or:

“Fait-tu quoi, quoi? Que fait-tu?”
“Va te faire.”
“Oh OUEEEH? Va me faire quoi?”

Ah, the banality of humanity, the spokes that make the wheels turn around. They don’t always have to be straight, do they?

Ahh, for the old days, when two atoms went into a bar and one atom said “Huh? I think I lost my electron somewhere!” and the other atom said “Are you sure?”

And the first atom said, “Yes, I’m positive!”

In our world it would be “Fuhgeddaboudit”.

On Books and The New Media

I am not an intellectual. I know what intellect is, just not the “-ual” part.

I’m a well-read guy. But most people read me completely wrong. Like I’m hard to read? I like books, don’t mistake me. I like how they feel, like, hard with lots of soft pages. Just, I don’t like to read them. I look for the remote control but they always forget to put that in the bag.

People say crazy stuff. Like in the store the other day, this guy says, “You want fries with that?” Why, do I look like I want fries? What do I look like, a fry type of guy? I look sharp, no tux, maybe, but I know I don’t look like a fry guy.

Oh yeah, books. How come they print the print on both sides of the pages instead of one side? Then I don’t have to turn my head every time. And who needs page numbers in a 500 page book? Like I’m going to remember I stopped reading at page 246 six days from now? And what’s with dog ears? Dog years I’ve heard of, but dog ears? When you fold a corner of a book page over it’s a triangle. How is it a dog ear? Seven times bigger than a regular triangle?

I’ve had it with this intellectualizing. It’s like I’m downsizing. See? It rhymes even.

Walt Whitman once wrote . . . “ . . .” oh, okay, I forget. But he wrote something.

Seven-year Old Restaurant

I've often wondered what my son would do if he owned a restaurant. I took it upon myself to write him up a nice menu (without prices, of course!)

I think I'm onto something here:

Appetizers

Pineapple nachos platter
Grape slushee chocolate chip cookie ice cream mountain
Mars Bar scatter with Gummi Bear syrup
Aged (five-day-old) Graham cracker with peanut-butter/cherry ice cream dip

Mains

Deep-fried bacon-wrapped frankfurters with ketchup-strawberry salsa served on lightly toasted jelly doughnuts with chocolate sprinkles

Free-range barbecue potato chips tossed in Betty Crocker Festive Fudge frosting with freshly-grated chocolate sprinkles

Dora The Explorer-oven-fried Cheetos, layered in slices of Kraft American cheese, with Callebaut ganache and toasted chocolate sprinkles

Angus burger on the half-roll with real tomato ketchup and garnished with Thai-style chocolate sprinkles

Thin-crust sourdough pizzelle topped with whipped cream “Fondante”, Jelly-Belly ice cream, fried banana and chocolate sprinkles

Dessert

Chocolate sprinkles surprise

Dawg Ate Mail

Damn, can’t leave anything well enough alone, but being cooped up in this perfumed heavenly Nipponish temple of a tatami room got me to thinking . . . and you know that in my case, that can never be good . . .

But I was thinking of Djou’s hate mail . . . and why I don’t have any. Well, let’s take a look at the firewall, the block-anonymous, the locktite slider thingy that I have on my computer, so I just don’t get any! I’m actually kinda jealous! And it can’t be this cherubic, garden-gnome-like face protecting me, either!

So I was driven to imagine the hate mail, as I would assume would be pouring in if I didn’t have Gandalf and his Elvish gang protecting me:

(Ingrid, Branson, Missouri): I came across your blog and what can I say, can’t you stop saying the f word? It just makes you look stupid.

(Anonymous, via Internet) what’s with the contant curse words and you never talk about food, isn’t that supposed to be what your sight is about? you disgust me

(Anonymous, via Internet) how dare you rag on mr steer its a really good place, you probably just got there on a bad day, there burgers are the best in montreal. and Im not just saying that because I own it or my freinds do. just get a clue and stop writing lies like that, dont you have better things to do with your life?

(webmaster@ vitalis.com) Want your website to be in the top ten? Click now for your limited-time

Whoops, sorry, that wasn’t supposed to be there.

(Aarin@gmail.com) I know you consider yourself a good writer, but pretty much all you write about is complete blather. Why do you think anybody could possibly be interested in what you have to say? You just go on and on about the same old things, you say you like food but you can’t really write about food, can you? Face it, you’re a wannabe, failed food writer. Give it up, my friend.

Oh, BTW check out my blog at bondageaarin@blogger.com. Have a nice day.

I Know What You're Thinking

I'm sorry. There is nothing to do here except to think, drink and post. But I know what you're thinking! "You're in JAPAN, for gods' sake, land of sushi! Geishas! Neon! Bullet trains! What the fuck, how can you sit in your little room for six days and not go out and get blasted in some yakitori-yasan, how can you not explore all those cool temples in that cradle of civilization in Japan, Nara, the former capital, the place where history was made, how can you resist the urge to go to Kyoto and gaze upon the Dai-Buddha, stay in a minshuku and eat cold seaweed and dashi?

Simple. Fuck you, I'm staying right here until my ride to the airport is due.

Fuck

Ouf, my neck and ass are just goddamn killing me. Christ, wait a sec, my legs are too. Yeah, right . . . there.

Fuckin' A. Anyone got some Codeine-Tylenol? FedEx would be good. My last goddamn post about waking up every day and being happy about feeling no pain is a far, far distant memory. Like, Alpha-Centauri distant.

Just a thought. Meantime I'll just try to get paralyzed from the feet up.

Mate Hail

I don't usually blog about bloggers, but Djou's last hilarious couple of posts were just outstanding.

Poor her; she actually anticipates the hate mail when she writes about Lamajhoun . . . I know why she does, because her sister wrote a similar piece and got all sorts of weirdo fuckwads from all over the world screaming about how she was WRONG, it was made in ULAN BATOR and of camel dung, not wheat, so I laughed when Djou kind of tried to head the assholes off at the pass.

And similarly, when she writes about Mister Steer (my semi-famous review from many years ago being here) and still anticipates the hate mail.

What the fuck is up with people who write hate mail? Would they stand in line behind you in the post office and say the same thing to your face? Well, let me tell you that they'd have to be very well acquainted with a good maxillofacial guy if they ever did that to me.

But her posts are hilarious. Why is it that everyone is getting good heah and I'm just getting glum?

A Gang Magazine for the Rest of Us

I swear, humanity just has this tendency to form into gangs. Doesn’t matter . . . gangs, tribes, cliques, you name it. And there always has to be a magazine about it.

I haven’t been in Japan since July but somehow one of the magazines I bought on the plane is still floating around . . . “Vegetarian Summer”!

Actually, it’s quite interesting, the recipes are great, but it brought me to thinking about what magazines gangs would have . . . the Bloods and the Crips would have their own, well-styled ‘zines (well, can’t call them MAGAZINES) and instead of the usual “100 Fresh New Flavors For Summer” and “Foods You Never Knew You Could Make” you’d have “Massimize Yo Drive-By” . . . How To Beat Yo Ho Wit’ No Marks Visibles” . . .

Of course they’d be competing, each editor trying to outdo the other . . . and on many levels, they’d probably be shooting at each other, part time.

“Why Da Snoop Got Pinched: A True Story”. “Why Da Crips Keeps on Liesing Bout the Devon Hit.”

“Yo.”

Hmm . . sure beats “Pick and Mix BBQ.”

Nippon redux

Japan again. Same old goddamn Japan. It never changes. The flight was okay. I tried as much as possible to sedate, sedate, sedate. Two white wines in Montreal after driving through the aftermath of a bazillion snowstorms. At the usual bar. No one I knew there any more (do you know how many times I’ve done this?)

Plane to Detroit. That was unusual, as I usually go to Vancouver with Air Canada but they don’t fly to Osaka any more so it was Northwest.

It was okay. Detroit is a very nice airport and it wasn’t a big hassle to transfer to the new plane. But . . . the prospect of 14 hours in a too-small seat was pretty paralyzing, to say the least. Slamming two white wines before boarding had the desired effect of allowing me to “sleep” and I only stirred intermittently to adjust positions, all of which were extremely painful after about ten minutes.

So that’s how I killed 14 hours. There was a shy Japanese kid in the middle seat and I sparked up the laptop and booted Chopper so he was able to play a couple of games (he was good!) but it was then that it was established that they had seated him and his father in totally different seats, so I went to where his father was sitting and practically ordered him to take my seat. I only regret that his father wasn’t in first class.

So here I sit in tatami-ville, just wanting to be anywhere but here, preferably my own bed but looking forward to another six days of this.

Maybe by then my ass won’t be so goddamn sore and I’ll be able to sit in an airplane seat for 17 hours again.

Maybe.

My New Girl

I dropped my guitar yesterday and it smashed the bridge at the base of the neck, so I just bought my new girl.

Sexist, I know, but what a steal at $79.95 . . . .

Here, Julie

Here, Julie, you wanted to know what it looked like from my window . . . well, THIS IS WHAT IT GODDAMN LOOKS LIKE . . .

I walked to the SAQ last night (a ten-minute horror each way) just because I wanted a Bloody Caesar (there's your goddamn comfort food!) and seriously feared for my life. I had to gauge whether the gamble of walking into oncoming traffic was worth the security of not slipping and knowing that if I did slip it would be curtains or for sure breaking my elbows and wrists by walking on the sidewalk. It was a tough decision.

I am SO not going anywhere today. It's minus 275 degrees Kelvin and it's snowing methane flakes with a minor tornado to boot. Jack in the Coriolis Effect for good measure and THIS IS THE VIEW.

Happy now, Julie?

Go We Here Again

I fell down not once but twice on my way to the grocery store and just after I took this picture. Wrists are hell of sore but I guess no harm done. I just love my non-slip boots.

God, I would hate to grow old in this city.

Gadget Alert

I'm always on the lookout for idiotic telemonkey cookware. Anyone ever used this?

Duh Food Network

My dear friend Arlette, whom I do not know, with whom I have yet to communicate, she of future culinary wizardry, commented on the Food Network in this post.

Well, I've been meaning to comment on that for, whoa, the longest time. Since I started airing my foodities online, like, say, around 1996, things have sure changed. I, at least, got no Food Network, though I think it may have been available; no, all I got was the Saturday and Sunday PBS afternoon cooking shows: Bibi Cooks Italian, Jacques Pépin et Fille, y'know the drill, maybe a little Julia here and there, maybe some Martin Yan.

God, how times have changed. I was one who literally bought the digital channels JUST for the Food Channel. But as Arlette so succinctly pointed out, it's all background noise now.

I watched Iron Chef when it WAS Iron Chef, in Japan, in 1991. In Japanese! I watched it as it suddenly exploded into North America, communicated with the original owner of ironchef.com (who knows where she is now, probably exorcised by Fuji TV or maybe Alton Brown's army of lawyers) and I've seen them all come and go. Jamie, from idiot British twit to ultra-superstar, met by prime ministers. That fuckwad Rocco di Spirito, with his own fuckfest reality show (God, how ancient history is that?)

Yep, seen 'em all. And while I admit that, like Arlette, the default channel is still the Food Network, by gum 'n' by gracious, the years have not been kind. Not in the goddamn least.

The pantheon of idiots is legion. She mentioned Paula Deen. Don't worry, dear, you don't have to even TRY to understand Paula Deen. There is simply nothing to understand. When there is nothing there to begin with, cue the cute music, cue the shaky camerawork, cue the lookatme factor. In her case, some absurd Southern schtick. But guess what: now everyone has a schtick.

Survivor begets "Survivor Vanuatu". CSI begets "CSI/Conakry." Forget it, Arlette, it's a losing battle and we're not winning it.

Face it, we'll always get dumbed down in the end with the Rachael Rays and the Anna Olsons and may god rest her soul, whatever the hell happened to her, Nigella Lawsons.

It's just the Law of Entropy, Arlette, dear; we're all doomed. The worst always comes to the surface and subsumes the weaker, more talented efforts. Blockbusters will always trump small films. The Arts & Entertainment Channel will always descend into Dog The Bounty Hunter over Captain Cook.

It is our fate and I accept it.

It is our fate, but I still despise Rachael Ray.

Japan

Oh God, it's Japan on the 15th. Faithful readers will shake their heads sadly.

Do you know just how much I do NOT want to go to Japan?

Tomorrow

I love this place called Parthenon, just off Cote des Neiges, on Van Horne, I think.

I love to cook, but there are just simply things that you can’t do at home. I wander the aisles at Tzanet and gaze at the industrial ovens and grills and believe it or not, I scheme privately to myself, wishing there were some way to get one into my house (Christ, with my kitchen about as big as a Windjammer Cruiseline’s, you KNOW the best I’m going to be able to put out is a fairly tasty grilled hot dog).

And Parthenon simply makes the best grilled shrimp . . . as I type the words the smoky piquancy, the lemon aftertaste, the sheer knowledge that it should be accorded its own Food Group in the Pyramid . . . well, it makes me Lust.

And when I lust, it usually means, can I make it at home, myself?

So naturally, I tried. First off, I recognized what I don’t have, namely, a wood-burning oven, or charcoal, or whatever. No grill. So how to get that smoky taste, that indefinable shrimpicity?

I’ve become a tiny expert in these things because I’m so doomed in this pathetic apartment kitchen . . . I HAVE to find workarounds for this stuff. I know it’s not going to taste identical but I have to try my damndest to make it as close as possible because I simply can’t afford to go to Parthenon every time I need their shrimp.

So here is what I did, and I have to admit, (unseen hands patting back) it turned out okay. In other words, I’ll do it again.

First off, I had to duplicate the sleekness. There were Things on the shrimp which I can only interpret as batter and spices. Plus, the shrimp have to be gigantic. Like, mega-shrimp. (You might want to substitute small lobsters, but do shell and devein them nicely).

So here is what you do:

Ingredients

10 -12 very large shrimp, 12-14/lb.
Two eggs, lightly whipped
1/4 cup shallots, minced
1/4 cup garlic, minced
1/4 cup corn starch
1/4 cup flour
Salt and cracked black pepper (in the flour and corn starch)

Method

Shell and/or devein the shrimp. Brine them for an hour or so. Rinse and drain thoroughly. Pat dry. Dredge each shrimp through the eggs, then through the flour/corn starch mixture. Skewer the shrimp on a wooden skewer so it doesn’t curl while cooking. Proceed with all the shrimp. Now sprinkle the shallot/garlic mixture on the shrimp and turn to encrust thoroughly. Don't worry, those bastards had a marriage agreement with the eggs so they'll stick, trust me.

Heat a grill pan on medium for six minutes. Place the skewered shrimp on the grill pan, watch carefully, turning every three minutes for about nine minutes, or until all sides of the shrimp are no longer translucent.

Drizzle with lemon juice. Serve on Greek rice with tsaziki and toasted pita (sheesh, you want me to give away those recipes as well? Tomorrow. As they say in Athens, tomorrow).

Not Paté Chinois

Comfort food . . . I’d like to shoot the progenitor of that term. Some savvy marketer, no doubt. But what it implies is that French Fries, for example, are uncomfort, but that macaroni and cheese is comfort. What do they mean? Foods that Mother made us? My mother was a lousy cook. There was nothing comforting in her food, love her though I do.

Could they have meant “simple”? As in, not foie gras or feuiletté de ris de veau au sapins crû? Doh. We get it. Anyway, I hate that term, so I won’t tell you this recipe is comfort food. It’s just goddamn food.

But Brigitte commented that it was Paté Chinois (before I made it). It is most definitely not that Québecois abomination, I can assure you. French Canadian food is usually some bizarre hybrid of fur trappers’ roadkill and some odd food idea from Ancient France, but it sure don’t have a lot to recommend it. Poutine? Yecchh.

So, this is Shepherd’s Pie, people, a dish with a very old provenance, and it sure doesn’t come from China. Plus, I made sure I put my goddamn stamp on it — after all, I’ve made it about a thousand times and I just keep improving it.

Ingredients
Sauce

1 1/2 lbs. stewing beef, ground in grinder or by the butcher
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
30-40 small pearl onions, peeled
5 large shallots, thinly sliced
4 tablespoons worcestershire sauce
5 large cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup chopped oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons crème fraîche
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup demiglace sauce or substitute Knorr demiglace sauce powder
1 can corn niblets
Parsley
Salt and pepper to taste

Potatoes
3 large russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 2-inch cubes
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1/2 cup of shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup of grated parmigiano-reggiano
1/2 cup of crème fraîche or sour cream
2 tablespoons compound herb butter or butter/parsley/thyme/rosemary mix
Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Sauté pearl onions in some olive oil on medium until browned and slightly soft, about 10 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside; sauté shallots until translucent, about 6 minutes. Add garlic and sauté a further two minutes. Remove shallot-garlic mixture and place with pearl onions.

Grind beef, or if already ground, stir in the garlic, worcestershire sauce and sun-dried tomatoes, combining thoroughly. Heat more olive oil in the pan and sauté the ground beef mixture until it begins to lose its pinkness. Add the wine, crème fraîche and chicken broth and stir well. Cook on medium heat until the liquids have reduced by half. Add the demiglace or about 4 tablespoons demiglace powder and cook until slightly thickened, about ten minutes, stirring constantly. Add shallot/onion mixture and combine well. Add corn niblets and about 1/4 cup corn juice from the can (for the sweetness). Add chopped fresh parsley and salt and pepper. Taste often during the cooking; a bland and/or salty filling will not make a good pie.

Place filling in a large rectangular Pyrex baking dish. Pat down into an even layer. Place in the refrigerator or freezer to cool down to a cool/cold temperature.

Put the cut potatoes into a large pan of slightly salted water. Bring to a boil. Set timer for about 20 minutes. At the end of the 20 minutes test the doneness of the potatoes with a fork. They should be completely soft with no resistance.

Drain in a colander. In a large metal bowl, combine the cheeses, garlic, crème fraîche and herb butter. Using a potato ricer, rice the potatoes into the bowl. Combine thoroughly, adding salt as necessary. Add pepper.

When the sauce is completely cold, smear the mashed potatoes on top very carefully with a fork so that they form an even layer. Use the tines of the fork to make attractive patterns. Preheat the oven to 450 and place the pie in the oven on the middle rack. Watch it carefully; it should start browning within 20 minutes. If it starts browning too quickly, reduce the heat to 350. If it’s not browning quickly enough, increase heat to 500, but watch carefully. It only takes 60 seconds to burn.

After about 30 minutes, remove from oven and carve into rectangles. Serve with a good Girondin from Bordeaux.

Thoughts on No Longer Being a Vegetarian

I was a vegetarian for, I think, at least six months this year. Not only a vegetarian, but I didn't eat any wheat as well. No pasta. No bread!

It was completely by choice, but how did I feel then and how do I feel now? Do I feel like a prick because I eat hot dogs, the messier the better? Do I feel less healthy? Well, yes and no.

I recently had a steak sandwich and I was so fucked up the next day that I realise that it's a stomach-learned skill to eat stuff like steak. But I love steak! I had a steak blog, ferchrissakes!

But, mark my words, I also had a vegetable blog.

You can gaze at these two extremes of the pendulum and you can ponder. How has it affected my eating habits? After all, I'm living proof of both experiments. I have to admit that I'm still parsing the data.

One thing I can say is that for me, giving up meat and wheat was not hard at all. It was very interesting. I discovered many things that I had ignored in my omnivore days, namely lots of rice dishes, but also rice noodles, quinoa and cooked fish, which I used to hate (love sushi, hate cooked fish, go figure).

Did I miss stuff like hamburgers, pizza, pasta, bread, steak and hot dogs? Sure. But it was not insurmountable at all. I think one thing that was on my side was that I didn't have any issues with those foods. I wasn't out to make any statements or go on any diets. I just simply gave them up to just give them up. No agenda at all.

So it was just as easy to slide right back into omnivore-mode. Yes, now I crave hot dogs at 4 a.m. or am jonesing to make some fresh-pasta XtravaGanZa but it wouldn't bother me if it all went away tomorrow and the vegetable blog came alive again. Or the steak blog, for that matter!

Wouldn't bother me at all.

Anyone for a shrimp blog?

My $450 Recipe

When I was in France earlier this year, I had it in my mind that I would write a cookbook. I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of a cookbook I would write, but I had in mind something that reflected how I liked to cook; namely, all day, with sometimes quite complicated recipes and hard-to-find ingredients.

I’m the type of cook who will either abandon a recipe right in the middle of cooking it because I’ve forgotten a crucial ingredient, say, galangal, or I’ll just march right out there in blowing snow to go get it. Aside from pastry and dessert making, I love to go to the ends of the earth to find ingredients. I hate substituting “in a pinch.”

So my modus operandi was usually to cook on a Saturday, doing the shopping that morning and then cooking all the rest of the afternoon, watching cooking shows while I cooked and leisurely sipping Cuivrée, and that’s what I wanted this book to reflect. It was to be called The Saturday Cook.

To this end, for a month in France, I was busy assembling recipes from everywhere; the Internet, my own cookbooks, and then I went out and bought cookbooks in French at the bookstore in Bordeaux and started picking recipes that I liked and translated them into my MacBook laptop. I made a few, too, and sometimes the results were spectacular. I even went as far as to design the first few pages with my own food photography; I was well on the way.

Alas, when I got back to Montreal, one day I was playing the guitar along to some jam tracks on my laptop and it started stuttering, so I did what I normally do to balky machinery: I hit it. The rest can be guessed.

I trashed the hard drive. All was lost. I replaced the hard drive but the guy who replaced it said there was no way he could get any data off the old one. All that effort, all those translations, that whole month: gone. But I wasn’t about to give up. I took the hard drive to a data-recovery service in Montreal operated by a really nice Russian guy. But data recovery is not cheap. It took him a month and in the end he was only able to rescue 27 text files. It cost me $450, and there was only one recipe that was recovered that I either didn’t already have duplicated somewhere else or that I could track some version down of on the Internet.

Here’s the list of some of the recipes (that I had miraculously emailed to someone before the hard drive crashed) that I intended for my book, and at the end there’s the recipe that I made in France that was so spectacular that I wrote it down. It’s the only one that survived . . . a $450 recipe.

Asian Tomato and Mushroom Chicken (à la Marengo)
Asian Vegetable-stuffed Beef Rollups in Teriyaki Sauce
Balinese fried chicken
Beef Rendang
Bucatini with Prosciutto and Feta
Burmese beef and potato curry
Burmese chicken curry
Chicken Jalfrezi
Chile dogs with homemade chili sauce on Knackwurst or Frankfurters
Chile-garlic dip
Cucumber-Garlic Raita
Cucumber-Shallot-Chile Salad
Farfalle with roasted cherry tomatoes, goat cheese and kalamata olives
Fresh homemade pizza å la Luzzo’s in New York
Ginger Beef
Hmong curry
L'Express Raviolis Maison (fresh raviolis in a hunter’s mushroom sauce)
Late-night Leftover Pasta with prosciutto and parmesan
Linguine with Prosciutto, Gorgonzola and Basil
Magret de canard with honey dijonnaise
Nachos with four cheeses, pancetta, garlic, olives and jalapenos
Thai Green Chicken Curry
Pacific Rim Kobe Steak Salad with Sesame-Ginger Dressing
Penne with Chicken, Feta and Dill
Pita Rapture with chicken or beef, peppers, onions, lettuce and cilantro with a Caesar dressing
Quesadillas with three cheeses, bacon, jalapenos and cilantro
Seekh Kebab (ground beef on skewers)
Sri Lankan Cucumber salad
Sri Lankan Mulligatawny
Sri Lankan pork curry
Szechuan-style Chile Shrimp
Tandoori-Style Chicken Burgers with Cumin Yogurt Sauce
Thai Beef “Mussaman “ curry
Thai Beef and Basil Flat Rice Noodles
Thai Spicy-sweet Roast Chicken
Tomato-Onion-Chile Salad
Yang Chow Basmati Fried Rice

And the $450 recipe:

Asian Tomato and Mushroom Chicken

Ingredients:

6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, halved lengthwise
1 medium onion, cut in thin crescents
4 medium very ripe tomatoes
8-10 shiitake or matsutake mushrooms, thickly sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup cilantro, finely chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons Sambal Oelek
3 tablespoons Mirin
1 cup chicken broth
5 tablespoons sesame oil
3 tablespoons peanut oil

Method:

Brine chicken in 4 cups warm water with 4 tablespoons salt and 3 tablespoons sugar for 15 minutes. Remove from brine and pat dry.

Heat 3 tablespoons sesame oil and 1 tablespoons peanut in large nonstick frying pan on medium-high. Brown the chicken one one side in hot oil: about 7 minutes. Turn and brown other side for an additional 4 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.

Add 1 tablespoons sesame oil and 1 tablespoon peanut oil and sauté mushrooms until water has completely evaporated and mushrooms have reduced by half and are browned on both sides.

Remove from pan and set aside. In remaining oil, fry onions until limp, about three minutes. Add garlic, sauté two minutes. Add tomatoes. Sauté about 5 minutes; add back mushrooms. Sauté another 5 minutes, then add chicken, Sambal Oelek, mirin and chicken broth. Stir to combine. Simmer covered, for 10 minutes. Add cilantro and simmer for 5 minutes.

Serve over basmati rice.

Notes On A Cold Day

Note #1
Went to Basi tonight and reviewed it. It was amazing. We were the only people in the place and it was like being in First Class. I'd feel bad that the business was slow but the owners (Maurizio and Lynn) assured us that during the summer, everything explodes. So it's like owning a ski shop . . . you just have to learn how to twiddle your thumbs for six months of the year . . . the other six, put on the battle gear.

Review to follow, with pictures, on montrealfood.com.

Note #2

I sold an electronic device on eBay today to a fellow in Italy (I'm a huge eBayer with now 690 transactions and 100% good feedback to my credit) and I found he didn't quite understand my emails, though his English seemed pretty good. So I went to the machine translators, because although my French is pretty good, it's sometimes hard to extend that to Italian. But he was amazed at what I came up with. I had to parse out all the machine-translation crap by translating into Italian, then translating that back into English, then figuring out what the machine had fucked up (like "the my PayPal account") and, using my knowledge of French grammatical structure, correcting it. So, here's an example email, translated entirely from English into Italian, which I don't speak, by machine, then corrected by me:

"Il prezzo di conquista era dollari US (US $365.00) ed il prezzo di trasporto è Canadese $85, quale uguaglia l'americano $67, così, viene nei complessivamente Stati Uniti $433.00.

"Sono spiacente che il costo di affrancatura in Italia è così costoso ma è oltre mio controllo.

"Mio PayPal indirizzo di posta elettronica è tonbo@montrealfood.com.

"Mi auguro che tutti ha senso!

"Ciao bella

"Nick"

I don't know, I had no idea how to end the email since "best regards" or "cheers" rendered nonsense, so I said "ciao bella", which I thought I heard Jamie Oliver say a few times. However, the machine translates it back as "Hi, beautiful . . ." Hope Guido (his real name!) doesn't get any ideas.

Well, he seemed to understand . . . do you? (Copy and paste into your favorite machine translator and find out!)

Note #3

I've become the owner of an Architectural Digest spread. Since Brigitte moved in with her furniture and impeccable taste this weekend, this is what my living room looks like now. Sorry, don't have a before picture, but you wouldn't have wanted to see it anyway . . . (click on picture for bigger version)