Do you like to cook or enjoy learning about cooking or watching food being prepared? Check out Culinary Frank.
Nobody speaks in these videos, which are referred to as ASMR cooking. They progress at a steady, chilled out pace. The shots are beautiful. Ingredient amounts and any comments about approach are given in subtitles in English and Vietnamese. I deduce that Frank is a Vietnamese guy living in Australia. His videos cover lots of numerous Vietnamese dishes but also Korean and Chinese dishes and even things like French Toast. I love the care taken filming these videos. Without anyone talking at you, each of the shots is beautifully framed and easy to understand.
I’ve watched several of these so far, and eventually, I suppose I’ll catch up.
Issue 4 of the Squeeze Box Man graphic novel is now available. For those of you who have subscribed to the whole set, I’ll be sending out the new issue to you this week! Anyone interested in copies of the new issue or back issues, please email me. Issues are $12 each + shipping. Payment for Canadian orders will be by Interac transfer. For those of you in USA or other parts of the world, email me and I’ll figure out the cheapest way to ship to you and the best international payment method.
Here are some sneak peeks at Issue 4…
Lazy cleans up his act! He gets his haircut at the same place I do, The Nite Owl. We even have the same barber, the fantastic Steph.
History and fiction come together in Issue 4 of Squeeze Box Man. In the story Staashu vs Modern Art, we feature Toronto artist Andy Fabo and a fabulous true-life exhibition called CHROMALIVING. This was a really important art show at the time. Were you there? Maybe you saw Staashu and Lazy.
Also in Issue 4, NPK get a manager, the irrepressible Bananas Foster. Is the big time just around the corner for the guys?
The Squeeze Box Man graphic novel is based on a book of stories I wrote called Squeeze Box Man – The Lazy Allen Stories. This book is still available on Amazon if you want to get a copy, OR…..if you order any 3 issues, I’ll include a copy of the original stories with your order.
When Toronto artist Jacob Yerex read the stories, he told me he thought they were well-suited to the graphic novel format and offered to do the illustrations. The graphic novel features some of the stories from the original book plus a group of new stories. Jacob has brought my characters to life and has helped develop them further, sometimes in ways I hadn’t anticipated.
We really appreciate Steph at Nite Owl and Andy Fabo for being great sports and allowing us to insert them in our fiction. Thank you!
Vox won 3/5 games last night. The first one was the most interesting in that it was a big come-back kind of game. Vox took a big moyo on the bottom and the situation looked grim for me. However, he left a good deal of aji on the board. I was able to exploit it in 3 areas, killing enough stones for a 25.5 point win. Here’s one of my attacks….
Game 1 white attacks from within
My move at G11 exposed the weakness of Vox’s shape in this area.
I’ve been giving Vox 2 stones handicap and taking a half point komi. If we had been playing our previous handicap in which I take 6.5 points komi, game 3 would have been mine. I think right now the appropriate handicap is either where it is or where it was just previously. Vox will be trying to change that in the coming weeks to be sure.
Do you call them Saskatoons or Serviceberries? Either way they’re delicious. We have a bush in the front garden and today was my first berry-picking of the season. Judging from the number of berries on the bush, I’d say I’ll get at about 2 weeks of picking the ripe ones each day.
If you’re thinking of growing some berries, I can tell you that these plants are fast-growing and require little to no care. They seem to like growing anywhere you plant them and they produce loads of berries.
We also have blackberries out back and we’re going to get a good batch of them this year as well – after the Saskatoons are done. Saskatoons are great as a snack, with cereal, in baking, whatever you like. I read that some varieties are better for eating than others, but I read that after planting the one out front, which happens to produce great fruit.
We have some instant noodles in the pantry. We don’t eat them often, but I thought in a pandemic, when you don’t want to go shopping any more than necessary, they will come in handy. This afternoon I decided to try jazzing them up a little for dinner.
I picked a spring onion and some basil from the garden and found a hot pepper in the fridge. These hot peppers are cayennes – just the perfect spiciness to be sliced up raw.
We have a bag of shrimps in the freezer. I took the shells and tails off several of them, seasoned them with cayenne and garlic, then sauteed them up. They only take a couple minutes to cook.
We usually have some hard-boiled eggs in the fridge (in our case hard-steamed eggs). There was one left so I sliced it up. I’ll have to steam up more tomorrow.
Here it is after cooking the instant noodles and assembling….
I finished it off with a squirt of hoisin sauce, just because. Very tasty.
27th Street 