fuck christmas, celebrate my birth.

this year i have baked, boiled, beaten, braised, brunched and barbecued more food than i previously knew existed. i've gone from blurry breakfast cell phone pics to post processed pig part pictures from a digital slr. alliteration almost aside, this has been a fucking fantastic year for food.

i'm going to be twenty seven in an hour and a half and, well, i'm stoked. getting older is getting better and i finally feel like i'm headed in a direction. i can't see which direction right now but i feel like i'm doing something right.

here's a link to the food i ate this year, people i got drunk with and stuff i rode past on my bicycle(s). thanks to the fellow gluttons, drunkards and well-wishers i've had over a hundred blog posts, a thousand photos on flickr and hazy memories of all of it. see ya next year, assholes!

goodbye, old friend.

you carried me home on drunken summer nights. you flew through ice and sleet like a fucking atv. your brakes barely worked and your chain fell off if i changed gears but, i loved you. thanks for the rides, the bails and all the ripped pantyhose. you will be missed, blue bike.

ah yes, another bike stolen at christmas. god rest ye merry thieves. i hope you pawned my only mode of transportation for cash... your crack babies and fat wife need presents!

gotta double bag those girls from oshawa

i have been eagerly awaiting the re-opening of stem restaurant on queen st. for almost a year. when they closed "for filming" and never reopened we were all worried the fucking croc store would expand or some other bullshit would move in but, last week a sign finally went up. when i saw the bqm logo i was a little disheartened. i mean, there's already two bqm's in toronto and neither is exceptional.

i ate at this location for the first time about an hour ago and it was alright. they aren't rocking the full menu yet but promise to have daily rotating blue plate specials (read: roast beef, meatloaf, pulled pork sandwiches, etc.) and all day breakfast seven days a week. i got the cheeseburger. it was bloody, tasted like meat and, in my carnivorous opinion, pretty perfect. the fries were thick but crispy and the staff was overly attentive (i was the only customer). if only those tattooed line cooks hadn't been making fun of "dirty" oshawa girls the whole time. i mean, i can say it because i lived there for twenty plus years and i have the right. you, sirs, do not... regardless of how many of us you've tried to fuck.

beet arthur

i'm often thankful for the neighbourhood i live in. i'm wedged between chinatown and kensington market so i've always got fresh goodies near by and the late fall/early winter is quickly becoming my favourite produce season! i bought three kinds of beets this week (who knew, right?). i roasted them all for awhile, ate a few burning hot chunks and threw the rest in with my brine mixture (getting better by the pickle, thanks for asking). the candy cane beet has weird colours like, uh, a candy cane and the golden one is a completely different taste than the classic purple guy. next up: local squash and apple soup. boom.

it's supposed to snow tonight, my phone told me so.

i bought a new phone yesterday. it's an htc magic. i'd been eyeing it for months and, honestly, couldn't be happier with it. i never thought i would have one of these cool, touch screen, smart phone, gps enabled, app downloading monsters but, hey, it's sleek and allows me to remotely download torrents, check the blogs i follow, learn about constellations, ensure shelves are level and make hilarious fart noises. who could ask for more? (actually, for reasons unknown the magic is incapable of caller display outside of my contact list. it's the one infuriating thing in an otherwise glorious device. hopefully a firmware update is in the midst.)

also this week, phil and i went out for ramen. i know what you're thinking (mr. noodles?) and you're half right. we were debating which ramen hut to visit and after an email from our mutual crushes, the food jammers, we stopped by their endorsed place, kenzo on dundas. the meal was simple but delicious. i would recommend it to anyone in the area with six bucks and twenty minutes to slurp, slop and savour the winter blahs away.

pho-pho-photura photos.

so, that camera i got for twenty bucks? it's pretty much the best! it really feels great to shoot film again.