Poutine is Keen

I know this has become somewhat of a travel blog recently but I'm afraid that's about the only interesting thing we've been doing or thinking lately. So here we go again.

Toronto: adapted from the the Mohawk phrase tkaronto, meaning "where there are trees standing in the water," a reference to a place where Hurons and other natives drove stakes into the water to support fish nets. Radiocarbon dating of some of the surviving stakes reveals that they were in use more than 4,000 years ago. Today, it is a place where we went to to last weekend. There, we visited our friends Missy and Rob from the last blog post and went to the Twins season opener. So I guess you could say we were trying to catch the fish of cross-border friendship with the stakes of...baseball bat, something, something, metaphor, metaphor.

We hit the CN Tower on Friday afternoon and took an elevator to the top. You could see far, both outwards and downwards.





Here is the view from Missy and Rob's condo, they live on the 42nd floor facing the lake and have a much nicer view than they did at their previous place in Harlem.



That night, we "went" to the Twins Blue Jays "game" at Rogers Centre. I say "went" because we were behind glass in a party room in the attached hotel, which made it hard to get into the "game." I say "game" because, well, if you watched you know. But hey, the "tickets" were free and I met a guy from Scotland. It's always interesting to see how the hometown fans react to people in visiting team jerseys. In Toronto, their demeanor could probably best be described as "surprised."

Missy, a fitness juggernaut, had mentioned that she was training for a triathlon and suggested I bring my gear and join her for a run. I said sure, but that my max would be about 10 miles. Assuming the distance was negotiable, I failed to mention that I'd never run that far outdoors and hadn't done so in over a year. Unfortunately, there happened to be a bridge over a river that dumped into Lake Ontario exactly five miles down the shore from their building. A physical landmark made it harder for me to just say "well, you keep going, I think I'll turn around now." Running a lot faster than my normal pace in order to keep up with little Miss afterburners and having forgotten my non-chafing running skivs, I was ready to turn back well before the bridge of return. But hell, I figured I'd just gut it out to the center of the bridge then slow way down or even walk on the return trip while Missy got in the extra four miles she wanted to do. Instead, Missy said she'd just turn around with me and continue on once she returned me to home base. "Shit...I mean, great!" I thought. So I tried to forget my severe case of red rider and let my manly pride carry me to the finish. I made it, which I probably wouldn't have without someone to pant/talk to. Although I would not have won any sexiest crotch competitions (that trophy case is getting full anyways), my chafage was not life threatening and I was able to sight see on foot the rest of the afternoon and evening, albeit with a slight hobble and a pronounced pirate gait.

It helped that our first stop was a busy public market where Liz found us a deli specializing in peameal bacon, which is sort of like Canadian bacon but waaaay better. On a wonderful kaiser roll with cheese and a fried egg it was life saving. Afterward we noticed a framed magazine cover showing said sandwich with the caption "One sandwich you need to try before you die." They were not kidding.

After a nap, we headed back out to a poutine shop called "Poutini." I'd often read about Canada's (in)famous fry-gravy-cheese curd combo but had never tried it. I didn't know how good something could be that nullifies the inherent crispy deliciousness of great fries with a gravy bath, but we were surprised how much we liked it.

Liz even had some, which likely comes as shock to those of you who know her feelings on cheese curds. And gravy.

I thought a place called Poutini was missing a golden opportunity to have a signature namesake cocktail:

The Poutini
3 oz vodka (you know, for potatoes)
1/2 oz beef gravy
2 cheese curds

Fill a cocktail shaker half way with ice. Add the gravy and swirl to coat the ice cubes. Pour off any excess. Add the vodka and shake, vigorously for eight seconds. Strain into a martini glass and garnish with the cheese curds. Plug nose and chug immediately.

After poutine we went to an exhibit of Tim Burton's artwork at a museum. It was really neat and creepy. No photography was allowed but he had this one sketch of this guy with this weird skeleton head with some tentacles and other weird crap coming out of it...trust me, it was awesome. Then we had a second, non-poutine dinner and then some superb Canadian IPAs at a neat little bar with a vast selection of beers I'd never heard of. There was a table of young people behind us that were obviously hammered, one girl was crying, glasses were getting broken, and some guy fell off his stool and would have ended up on the floor if Rob hadn't caught him. Then, out of the blue, one guy in the group turned around and quite lucidly asked us how we were doing and wished us a pleasant evening. Seriously, binge drinking? Is there anything you Canadians don't do politely?

All in all, it was a nice, clean, green, international city, with a quaint and convenient street car system, a fun little "hippy" district with second hand stores, ethnic markets, and bakeries, and poutine. Did I mention poutine?


After a heated Sunday afternoon of Dance Dance Revolution, we took a turboprop Bombardier back to Boston and called it a weekend. This weekend: Birmingham and the Florida panhandle. Hey I know, I'll blog about it.