blork blog

Boy, you know your (sometimes referred to as “food blog”) blog is going downhill when the best you can come up with is a review of canned soup. But hey, I’ve been preoccupied with a lot of stuff that’s not really blogworthy, so spare me. You can always voice your displeasure by not voting for me at the Canadian Blog Awards, where I’m nominated in six categories:

• Best Blog
• Best Photo/Art Blog (for the Monday Morning Photo Blog)
• Best Personal Blog
• Best Blog Post (”The Tragedy of the Venetian Socialite“)
• Best Blog Post Series (”Of People and Places“)
• Best Activities Blog

Apparently it’s quite legit to vote once per day, so if you’re really disappointed in the Blork Blog I encourage you to go there every day and vote for other people.

In the meantime…

On my way into work the other day, someone shoved a plastic bag into my hand and blurted out “Free lunch from Campbell’s!” Free lunch? Sure, why not?

When I got to my desk I opened the bag and found a microwaveable container of Campbell’s Chunky Beef soup in there, along with a can of V8 juice and a coupon for Goldfish crackers. I think there was supposed to be a sample pack of crackers, but hey, even people who give away free lunches get hungry.

Fine. I like soup. I even like some Campbell’s soups. (The soups in their Gardenay line are quite tasty, for example.) But I’ve always been a bit skeptical about the Chunky soups, although I’ve rarely tasted them.

So at lunchtime I popped open the container, which is made of plastic except for the metal pop-top lid. I followed the directions and nuked it for the suggested time. Then I sat down and tucked in.

The verdict? Not bad, but not great. For one thing, it looks completely gluey and unappetizing when it’s cold. I checked the ingredients, and sure enough, that famous “thickness” comes from not one, not two, but three thickeners (flour, corn starch, and gluten). The hydrolyzed soy and corn proteins are probably thickeners as well.

Still, this is a can of soup, not a creation du chef, so who cares about a bit of corn starch? (Well, actually. . .)
I was pleased to see that a serving contains a mere 150 calories, which is important given I’m trying to maintain my girlish figure. But then I noticed that a “serving size” is considered to be 250 ml, just over half of the contents of this otherwise “single serving” 434 ml container. (Nobody said this was a free lunch for two!)

Oh well, no big deal. The whole shot is still under 300 calories, which isn’t bad for a lunch given that I never got my Goldfish crackers and I saved the V8 for an afternoon snack.

Still, I was underwhelmed. Like I said, the soup was not bad but not great. I doubt I’ll ever buy one, given that my homemade leftovers trump this stuff even on a bad day. But I appreciate the convenience factor, even though I was disturbed by the amount of plastic used in the packaging.

Below is a photograph I took of an old ad that was framed and hung in the bathroom of the B&B where we stayed in Cortona, Italy, last May:

Ouch! As someone who writes marketing copy for a living, I’m appalled at the text. All those sentence fragments, and its dire need for a few “Its”s make me cringe.

On the other hand, I should consider the context. It looks like something from the 1920s, a time of great stylizing in American English (think Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc., and the “oral mediaization” of English via radio). It was probably rather hip and cool to talk and write like that back then.

Here’s the text from the ad:

Over the net it zooms! Nicks the line—an ace! Takes
pep to smash those scorching drives across! Punch and pep
in racquet and wrist! Pep from head to toe!
…..PEP peps you up. Puts you on your toes! A ready-to-eat
cereal. With a delicious flavor.
…..PEP is rich in nature’s life-building elements. Brings
health. Builds strength.
…..PEP contains bran—is mildly laxative. Helps to prevent
constipation.
…..PEP’s fine for children—and they love its flavor! PEP
Promotes natural, regular habits. Puts roses in their cheeks.
Fills them with ruddy health.
…..PEP brings the pep of hearty health! Serve it tomorrow.
Your grocer has PEP!

the peppy bran food

Oh my. “Fills them with ruddy health?” It’s just so corny and contrived.
But you young ‘uns out there ought to see this as a warning. Just think how retrded yr txt spk wil lk a fw gnratns frm nw…

Le Commensal is a Quebec-based chain of vegetarian restaurants who have made a recent foray into Toronto). Apparently, 75% of its customers are not vegetarian, and I count myself among them. Despite being an omnivore, I like Le Commensal because the food is fresh and tasty, and the buffet style and pay-by-weight concepts make it easy to grab a quick plate of varied and reasonably healthy food for lunch.

But there’s a problem with the soup – at least at the restaurant at the corner of McGill-College and Ste. Catherine street in Montreal. The problem is the location of the self-serve soup station (say that fast, five times). It is the first thing you encounter after picking up your tray and cutlery, so if you choose to have a soup, you have to carry the filled bowl through the rest of the buffet, most likely spilling some of it as you load up your plate with other goodies. Worse, people with soup always move a lot slower, because they don’t want to spill as they go. Very annoying if you’re stuck behind such people.

The solution is very simple. Take a bowl, but don’t fill it. Go through the buffet and take whatever is appealing (for me that’s usually the quinoa salad, mint-and-curry chick-peas, and garlic spaghetti). When you get to the cash, tell the cashier that you will also be taking a soup. Pay for the meal (including the soup), and then go fill the bowl.

It’s a pretty easy solution. So darn obvious, yet hardly anyone thinks to do it that way.

Here is the latest with my kinda-sorta-maybe weekly reports of my favorite finds during the previous week’s tours around the photoblogosphere.

Donina posted a photograph of a ceiling in a rundown room. At first glance it doesn’t look like much, but as I take it in and notice the sad details, it brings to mind the lonely nights I’ve spent in strange and faraway places. Not that there have been so many, but when they happen I tend to spend a lot of time staring at the ceiling.

I like images like this that have the power to evoke memories in viewer. It’s a bit like in literature, when a story is not just about the characters or the narrator; when it evokes memories or emotional responses in the reader based on imagery that taps into something just below the surface.

Outafocus scored again, with an image that brings to mind the South African outback as described in the literature of J. M. Coetzee. In particular, it makes me think of his 1977 novel In the Heart of the Country, which describes the most bleak characters and landscape imaginable.

The photograph is another in another of Susan Burnstine’s “toy camera” shots, which means it has nothing to do with formal or “correct” techniques. However, the composition is right on, and the slightly tilted horizon adds to the overall surreal and slightly vertiginous nature of the image.

Julien Roumagnac of the J. R. Photoblog, scores a hit with this crisp image of a chunk of stuff lying on the ground near a Montreal highway overpass. It’s not just the timely nature of the image (given recent events in Quebec), but I like the way he mixes the formats of reportage and very formal landscape photography.

He appears to be using the HDR (high dynamic range) post-processing method here (and in his other image). That’s a way of processing an image in Photoshop so that it delivers a tremendous amount of detail in the highlights and shadows. Unfortunately, the method has become so popular that some people use it as an end in itself. Roumagnac, however, is quite the master of landscape photography, and he has a firm command of the technique. He uses it to enhance his images to great effect.

Mute posted a fun image last week that’s worth a mention. It’s a classic black & white, square format shot of a tricycle, take at what appears to be a street market. It’s not a profound image but it has a certain poignancy and it made me smile.

An old tricycle, probably with a lot of history but clearly on its last legs. It’s got a limp from a missing tire in the back, yet it is tagged for some reason, and marked “fragile.” I like the contrast with the bigger bicycle in the background, which is also old but seems fitter. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t really care. It’s fun to just look at, think to about the possibilities.

Click on the thumbnails to go to the original posts, where you can see the full images (recommended).

Someone I know . . .

. . . had a long conversation this morning!

The winter lights have been set up on McGill-College Avenue. I mentioned this on Flickr last week when I posted the image, below, and Frank mentioned that it was OK because it was within the “60-day rule.”

I do tend to think that most holiday lighting appears too soon and stays around too long, and I think Frank is being generous. If it were up to me, I’d modify the 60-day rule to be a 30-day rule. In fact, when it comes to decorations in shopping malls, I’d even cut it down to 15 days if I could.

But these lights on McGill-College are different. They aren’t explicitly “Christmassy” or “holidayish.” They’re just really pretty. I love those lights, and I always look forward to seeing them at the end of a winter day when I leave the office. It’s a beautiful and refreshing illumination in the otherwise dark and cold evening. It’s always kind of sad when they take them down in January (or is it February?)

I therefore grant these lights a reprieve from the 60-day rule. If it were up to me (or if I were blessed with the seemingly autocratic privileges of Mayor Tremblay), I’d leave those lights up until the end of March. (After that we’re too eager for spring to find anything wintery even remotely appealing.)

I’ve been looking at a lot of photoblogs lately, and have seen some pretty interesting work. Therefore, I’ve decided to present, on a kinda-sorta, maybe or maybe not basis, a completely subjective choice of my favorite photoblog images each week.

Generally speaking, each Monday (or so), I’ll point to two or three images that I had spotted the week previous in my tours around the photoblogosphere. I’ll show a thumbnail with a link to the full image at the originating photoblog.

So check it out. Below are some of my favorite photoblog images I saw last week. (Click the thumbnail to go to the original image on the owner’s photoblog.)

Susan Burnstine has a photoblog called “Outafocus,” which is aptly named considering most of her images are fuzzy and often a bit surreal. She uses a variety of cameras and techniques (judging by my quick tour around her photoblog), including a “Diana” toy camera with a plastic lens.

So-called “toy camera photography” is quite popular among quirky people, and I consider myself one of them. I like the unpredictable results and the fuzziness. Unfortunately, a lot of toy camera photography comes off as just a gimmick. Burnstine’s work with toy cameras is, however, outstanding.

I like this one because of it’s spooky undercurrent. At first glance you might think it’s a bit sentimental, but with the perspective from behind the girl, down low, there’s a sort of otherworldly character to it, as if we’re seeing the scene from the grave, or some other otherworldly dimension. There’s a sad nostalgic feeling inherent in the image, as if we were witnessing this image through the fog of time.

Here’s another fun one. Carlos Carzurro publishes daily life and travel photos from Spain. I like his straight-on, documentary approach, which is very rooted in geography, and his formal arrangements. I particularly like this photo he published last week showing two metal benches pushed up against a crumbling old wall. The photograph has a lot of symmetry as well as a lot of contrasting elements. The benches are quite elegant, but they are presented against a beat-up wall that has seen better days. The sign in the middle of the frame is hilariously incomprehensible. The balcony at the top of the image, which we see only a little bit of, shows signs of life in this otherwise very static tableau. Very nice.

The next image is by Travis Ruse of New York. There’s something about views through urban pedestrian tunnels that always catches my eye. Perhaps it’s because I walk through such tunnels every day and I find them infinitely fascinating. And when I travel to other cities I am always drawn to their underground built environments.

I saw quite a few “tunnel” shots last week, but this one keeps coming back to me. Perhaps it’s the nostaglic feel from the sepia-like toning. Perhaps it’s the stillness of the scene, devoid, as it is, of people. Whatever it is, I like it.

When I make lasagna, I try to make two or three of them. We eat one right away and freeze the others. I also make plenty of extra tomato sauce, and I freeze a bag of sauce with each lasagna.

When it comes time to cook the lasagna, I warm up the extra sauce with it. At serving time I spoon some sauce into the bottom of the plate before I put the lasagna on top. It gives it some extra zing, which is nice if you like your lasagna very saucy (like I do).

This roasted vegetable lasagna was made about a month ago, but cooked last night. As you can see, it freezes well. And (if I do say so) it tasted great – especially with all that extra sauce!

Tonight being Hallowe’en and all, I thought I’d do something easy when it came time to make dinner. After all, the doorbell was ringing every three minutes (in the end, we had about 85 kids drop by).

It started with the onions. One big Spanish onion, cut in fairly thin slices (less than 1/4 inch). They went into a big pan with some olive oil, where I kept them moving over medium heat for five minutes or so. Then I covered the pan and dropped the heat way down – like way down, barely sizzling.

I let it cook like that for 35 minutes or so, lifting the lid every five minutes to give it a stir. Then I melted a knob of butter in a smaller pan (an oven-proof skillet), and transferred the onions to that pan, along with a scratch of black pepper and salt. The photo below was taken a few minutes after the transfer.

I kept the onions cooking in the smaller pan for another 15 minutes, then I stirred in a tablespoon or so of maple syrup and took it off the heat.

In the meantime, I took two salmon filets, gave them a quick rinse, and patted them dry. I used a sharp boning knife and removed the skin, then dusted them with some Moroccan paprika (you can use any type of paprika, really, although I recommend not using a very hot one so as not to overwhelm the fish).

Tucking the thin ends underneath, I placed the salmon on top of the carmelized onions, gave it another dash of salt and pepper, and plunked it into a 400°F (200° C) oven for about 15 minutes.

The photo above was taken just before it went in the oven. Yes, they are pretty big pieces of fish, but one piece was just not enough, so I bought two. I was thinking “leftovers.” (There were no leftovers.)

Unfortunately, I don’t have an “after” shot. By then the lights were down, the door was quiet, and the stomach was impatient. Just before serving, I plopped three drops of balsamic vinegar glaze onto each piece of fish, and plated it with some steamed broccoli.

It was pretty tasty, I do declare. The fish was quite fresh (and “organic”) so it was nice to have it a bit rare.

For your convenience, here’s the recipe (which I made up) in an easier-to-follow format:

Ingredients:

2 servings of fresh salmon filet, skinned and boned

2 tbsp mild paprika

1 big Spanish onion, sliced thinly

A glug of olive oil

1 knob of butter

1 tbsp maple syrup (maybe a bit more, but be careful as the onions alone are very sweet)

Salt & pepper to taste

1 tsp balsamic glaze, or balsamic vinegar

Method:

In a very large skillet, heat the oil and sauté the onions over medium heat for 5-10 minutes, stirring constantly. Do not let the onions brown – you only want them to soften.

Cover the onions and reduce the heat to a low simmer. Stir every five minutes or so for 30-40 minues.

In a smaller, oven-proof skillet, warm a knob of butter.

Transfer the onions from the large pan to the smaller buttered pan, and add salt and pepper to taste.

Cook low for another 15 minutes, or until the onions are very soft (almost goopy). If the onions are very wet, leave the cover off. If they are not too wet, keep the cover on.

Turn off the heat and stir in the maple syrup.

In the meatime, rinse and pat dry the skinless salmon.

Dust the fish with the paprika.

When the onions are ready, place the salmon on top (folding the thinnest part of each filet under itself so as not try overcook the ends).

Pop into a 400°F (200° C) oven, uncovered, and roast for 12-15 minutes. (Leave in longer if you like it well done, or if the filets are thick – but be careful, as fish cooks pretty quickly at 400°F!)

Enjoy!

I’m walking on Ste. Catherine Street, heading east towards McGill-College Avenue. I’m almost at the corner when I hear the siren screaming two blocks away. I turn and squint into the sun. A red fire truck is barrelling towards me on Ste. Catherine Street, lights flashing and siren wailing. Its horn goes graa-boooonnnk as it crosses Mansfield against a red light, zig-zagging from lane to lane around the stopped cars.

It hangs a hard left on McGill-College, barely slowing down. A block north at de Maisonneuve, it takes a right again, and stops. I quicken my pace, curious as to what’s going on. Forty five seconds later I’m almost at the corner but by then the fire is out. I see a fireman pull a portable hose from a trash can, curl it up, and jump back on the truck. By the time I reach the corner it is gone.

Nothing to see here folks. Move along.