December 23, 2009
comments 6

After a long day at the salt mine…

…I stopped into a certain European food store to pick up a few things we need for Christmas. We often buy our Polish sausage there since our old fave kielbasa place closed a while back. It was bedlam in there, bumper to bumper.

The first thing I noticed as I walked through the veggie section was a display of chanterelles with a sign “product of Ontario”. Now we haven’t seen chanterelles in this part of Ontario since perhaps early September. Maybe in SW Ontario the season is a little longer, but it’s all over and it’s been all over for months. Last I heard, you can’t cultivate chanterelles, so my question is, where did these grow? By the way, you can buy a bag for only $30/pound – yikes. I took a pass.

At the sausage counter, I was #390 and they were serving #364. There were a lot of employees behind the counter though, and I only had to wait twenty minutes or so. I bought some Goralska sausage and another kind that looked good and was on special. Over to the meat counter and I find some pork for patychky and a batch of sticks.

Another ten minutes of shopping, and I head for the cash. The line-ups are long and heavy-duty. I hear an announcement above the din: “mumble mumble mumble debit and credit cards mumble mumble mumble sorry for the inconvenience. I push through the crowd and ask a cashier, “Is there some problem with using debit or credit cards?” “Oh, they might work….if you’re lucky…something is wrong with the readers.” Great. I have $20 in cash in my wallet and a closer to $100 worth of food in my cart. I feel like I’m at Casino Niagara.

The woman in front of me in line is up to bat. Her cart is a Tardis – it doesn’t look like there is that much in her cart, but she keeps on pulling more and more stuff out of it. She hands the cashier her VISA card and crosses her fingers. Everybody waits as the technology considers weather this woman gets to buy her groceries or not. Approved. “I’m approved!”

I thought, no, I’m sunk. How likely is it that the fickle machinery will approve two customers in a row? I decide to try VISA rather than debit. “This is a chip card sir, you need a PIN number. A pin number? Oh geez, what’s my pin number. I can’t formulate it in my brain. I simply don’t use it that much. I depend on my fingers to figure it out independent of my mind. It works. I get approved too!

I get to the door and there is an employee shouting at incoming customers, “CASH ONLY…CASH ONLY…CASH ONLY” People are streaming into the store. I don’t know if they hear her or not. I get safely to my car and zoom off home.

Memphis is waiting for me at the door. She doesn’t care what kind of day I’ve had. She’s just thrilled to see me. I’m pretty happy to see her too.

December 22, 2009
comments 8

Meat Sticks (vegetarians and vegans cover your eyes)

Patychky for Christmas

I’ve posted mother anchovy’s recipe for patychky back on the old blog, but seeing as I’m making a large batch for Christmas this week, I’m going to post it again for those who are interested. Patychky are also known as ‘meat sticks’. They can be made with pork or a combination of pork and beef and veal, or even with chicken, but I usually use pork, and I’m going to show you my way. I’m sure mother anchovy made them just like this, but my sister says I have some parts of this all wrong, including the marinade. Yet, all who try them say oh my God they’re just like your mother’s. Trust me, make them this way. They rock.

Start with an inexpensive pork roast.
Cut it up into cubes that are a little bigger than 1 cubic inch. Some people use smaller chunks but I find the bigger ones are juicier and just perfect.
Chop up an insane amount of garlic – 30 or 40 big cloves is not too much.
Toss the garlic in with the meat.
At this point you have to add some booze. There are a couple schools of thought on this – some folks use sherry – others use beer. I think beer makes the best patychky and I get to decide. So, beer and garlic is your basic marinade. Toss it all together, cover and put the whole business in the fridge overnight. In a pinch you can marinate for a couple hours and it will be OK, but I believe the overnight marinade makes them extra yummy.
Break some eggs in a bowl and lightly beat them for a few seconds. In another bowl, toss in some bread crumbs with salt and pepper. You can add a little cayenne too if you like, but I don’t usually add heat to these.
I should have mentioned earlier that you need the right sticks. They have to be sturdy wooden sticks, about 6 inches long. I get mine at Starsky’s on Dundas St. in Mississauga since Czehowski’s at Queensway and Islington in Toronto closed. Starsky’s has piles of them back at the meat counter.
Take the meat from the fridge and start skewering the meat cubes on the sticks such that you basically cover the wood. Once you have them all done, dip them in egg and roll them in the breadcrumb mixture.
Meanwhile, add a generous portion of oil to a good skillet and heat it up on medium-high. For this, don’t use olive oil. It has to be an oil that can handle more heat, like canola or corn oil.
Brown the patychky thoroughly, 4 or 5 at a time. Don’t put more than that in the pan at once or they won’t brown properly.
Meanwhile, take a roaster and line the bottom with sticks of celery. These are to keep the patychky off the bottom of the pan. I learned this trick from Tuffy P’s mom. Preheat your oven to about 350 f.
As you take the patychky out of the skillet, lay them on the celery in the roaster. It’s OK to have two or three layers of meat sticks – don’t worry about them touching one another.
Bake the whole business for 45 minutes to an hour. After 45 minutes, take one out and eat it. Then put them back in for a few minutes, before testing a second one. This is chef’s privilege. Always observe chef’s privilege.
I have never met anyone who likes meat who does not go crazy for these things. My mom used to make them for every big holiday occasion – and later I found out that Tuffy’s mom did too – basically the same approach.

Patychky are great right out of the oven, cold for breakfast, re-heated in a toaster over, or even zapped up next day in a microwave, if you must use one.

If any of you make these, please report back and let me know how you liked them.

December 22, 2009
comments 2

Captain John’s up for sale

Captain John’s, that restaurant on a boat at the foot of Yonge St, a Toronto landmark for many years, is up for sale.  You can pick it up for $1.5 million. A while back I wrote about another Toronto landmark disappearing – The Big Bop. I was never in that one, and interestingly enough, I’ve never been in Captain John’s. In fact, I not sure if I know anyone who has actually had dinner there. If you’ve eaten there at some point along the way, I’d be interested in your comments. What was the experience like?

Now if you could have a ship like that to play with, what would you do with it?

December 21, 2009
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Sunnyland Slim

I posted this song, Why’d you put that thing on me over at SqueezemyLemon, the blues blog I sometimes post at.

I liked it so much I thought I’d better share it here too.

Here’s Tin Pan Alley

And finally Here’s Sunnyland, with Little Hubert. The fellow doing the intro is the great harmonica master Sonny Boy Williamson (II). I love the hot guitar licks in this piece.

December 20, 2009
comments 5

Glass factory to become film studio

I was driving past the old glass factory on Kipling Ave the other day, wondering what is to become of the site, since the plant closed last year sometime. I found out with the help of a little googling that Cinespace Film Studios has bought the property. Perhaps we’ll have a film industry happening soon here in the former South Etobicoke!

December 19, 2009
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Making a Better Dog Park

The other day, Tuffy P had Memphis out to the leash-free area at Jack Darling park in Mississauga, taking Memphis for a run, and found out the volunteers who keep up the park needed help Saturday spreading mulch. We visit Jack Darling regularly, so we decided to help out.

We started at about 8:30 this morning. They had a few loads of mulch and wood chips  that were destined for the paths going into the main leash-free area. The paths tend to get muddy and icy in the winter and the mulch helps out a lot, making the park a friendlier place to be through winter weather.

Quite a few people were out there helping and in an hour and a half, the mulch was spread out. It’s great to see the community get together to make a better place for the dogs to play. Memphis and a number of the other dogs did a great job supervising the humans.

December 18, 2009
comments 3

Cowboy songs

With all this talk about films in that genre we call The Western, I have a hankering to hear some cowboy tunes.

Here’s Dan Reeder’s Cowboy Song. This one’s not for the kiddies.

Here’s Tom Russell, one of my faves, performing Tonight we Ride. (I love the line “You don’t need no teeth for kissin girls or smokin big cigars”)

Here’s a great little interview with Ian Tyson from 1991, followed by a sweet version of Summer Wages. My father used to sing this tune around the house. He only knew two lines, but how many lines do you need anyway? Even after all these years, this song sounds so fresh.

December 17, 2009
comment 1

Residents Fight Demolition

The 100-year-old house was designed by John Lyle, the architect who designed Union Station and the Royal Alexandra Theatre, and it was built for John Bayne Maclean, founder of Maclean’s magazine. There are few surviving Lyle structures in the city.

Residents want to save this historic building. The owner wants to demo it. Yesterday, workers apaprently started picking off the historical elements, possibly in a move to make the building harder to designate as historic. The owner of the property claims the building was merely being secured for winter.

“Everything that was done today was in our rights as the property owner,” said John Todd, president of 1626829 Ontario Limited. The company purchased the property for $2.3 million in October 2008.

The building was not designated as historic when the developers bought it, but it seems they knew that the designation was being sought. I heard a representative from the residents’ association this morning on the radio. She said they would be satisfied with a redevelopment that respected key historic elements of the building, and that similar redevelopments had been carried out elsewhere in the area.

I think the developer needs to stop messing with this property until the matter is settled. The community and the City have some say here. If the developer knew going in that designation was being sought, I think they have some responsibility to work with the community and the City to determine a mutually acceptable outcome for this building.

Come on, 1626829 Ontario, it’s time to do the right thing.