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Halloween is my favourite holiday. Unfortunately, this year Dave has decided that he's too old to dress up. Which means we'll be doing something lame. Oh well. Next year I'll have time to change his mind. ;-) We will be carving pumpkins and handing out candy though. So drop by and you can have some Rockets.
Posted by Me @ 03:35PM [Link]
should just serve 12 people
You can either buy a bag of mixed greens, pick a pre-mixed bunch or buy the different kinds individually and mix them yourself. I prefer the latter as it allows me to pick and choose flavours I like. If I'm buying individually I get the following:
and the dressing:
Directions:
Posted by Me @ 03:12PM [Link]
December 6, 1917 dawned clear and sunny in Halifax. Before darkness fell, more than a thousand people would die, with another thousand to follow......In the early hours of Dec. 6, the Belgian relief ship Imo, rushing to leave the harbour, collided with the Mont Blanc, a French munitions ship carrying a cargo of extraordinarily destructive power; 600 barrels of aviation fuel and thousands of tons of TNT. The ensuing explosion leveled the north end of Halifax, leaving 2,000 people dead, 9,000 injured and hundreds blinded by flying glass...
...Some pieces were tiny; others were huge. Part of the anchor hit the ground more than 4 kilometers away on the far side of Northwest Arm. A gun barrel landed in Dartmouth more than 5 kilometers from the harbour...
...The explosion sent a white cloud billowing 20,000 feet above the city. For almost two square kilometers around Pier 6, nothing was left standing...
Buildings within a radius of half a mile of the explosion were totally destroyed and that up to one mile they were very largely rendered uninhabitable and dangerous. No section of Halifax city escaped serious damage…
More or less severe damage was caused as far away as Sackville and Windsor Junction, 9 or 10 miles (away from) the explosion… At Truro, 62 miles, and New Glasgow, 78 miles, the shock was sufficient to jar buildings very appreciably, and even to shake articles from shelves. Even as far away as Charlottetown, 135 miles, and North Cape Breton, 225 miles, the explosion was distinctly felt or heard.Source: Prof. Howard Bronson of Dalhousie University, in a paper for the Royal Society of Canada, 1918.
The Halifax explosion was the largest man-made explosion until nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's amazing to me that so few people know about it; so few in Canada, let alone the rest of the world. I know about it because my grandfather is a survivor and he's told me stories about it. The explosion and it's aftermath are his first memories.
The CBC has been running a drama based on the fictionalized stories of some of the survivors and it's also got a documentary on tonight about the disaster. The Halifax Explosion web site on the CBC is also amazing - it has some great background material: clips from radio and film, old photographs and letters etc. I spent a couple of hours going through it last night. It's a fascinating story - even if you don't have any relatives that were there.
Photography credits:
Street of Destruction: The National Archives of Canada - C-003625B
Explosion Cloud: Maritime Museum of the Atlantic Collection, US National Archives - print # 16S-11-1S8A-1S
Posted by Me @ 11:22AM [Link]
This is especially for Patti who requested it, but also for all you people looking for yummy recipes to cook for Thanksgiving (the American one). Most of the recipes would work for Christmas too, or any nice dinner party.
This is basically a borscht recipe. It's from Alvin and Glenna Rebick's Cookbook Bistro: Trade Secrets from a Life in Food.
makes enough for 4-6 people
There you have it. A good winter/fall soup. And when you mix it with the sour cream it's bright pink too! What more could you ask for? Yummy.
Posted by Me @ 12:08PM [Link]
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published a guide on for all you P2P fans out there entitled "How Not To Get Sued By the RIAA For File-Sharing (And Other Ideas to Avoid Being Treated Like a Criminal)". It's an important read for any of you out there who are into that kind of thing (you know who you are - nudge nudge wink wink).
And in related news...
Apple has come out with iTunes for Windows. I can't wait to get the new OSX so I can use iTunes 4.1. By then the rumours that Apple is going to open the iTunes store to Canadians should have come true and I'll be spending all my spare cash in 99¢ chunks.
Hat tip to the Tourbus newsletter.
Posted by Me @ 11:19AM [Link]
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving again this year. It was at my parent's house, a lot of people were there (13 I think). It's wonderful to spend an evening stuffing your face while surrounded by friends and family. My sister, Julia, did a lot of the work and organization, but Mom and I chipped in. The menu was:
Sabrina has been posting recipes and we've been chatting with others who blog about food. And considering that American Thanksgiving is around the corner, and some of you may still be looking for recipes, I'm gonna put together a bunch of them here over the next few days for you to peruse.
Ingredients: 1lb of cranberries (picked through), 2 cups of sugar, 3 tablespoons of orange zest (about the amount from 1 large orange - make sure you don't get any of the bitter white bits from the peel), 1/2 cup of orange juice, 1/2 cup of water.
Posted by Me @ 10:42AM [Link]
...old Wired mags that is. I know you've got a stack of 'em sitting around your house somewhere. Maybe you're saving them for a rainy day. Maybe there's some articles in there you'd like to keep. Maybe you like the way stripey spines all line up colourfully on your bookshelf. I won't ask you to deprive yourself of those small pleasures. But do you need the covers? No. Absolutely not. So in the name of helping you get rid of all the junk in your house, I'm asking you to take out an exacto knife and slice off the front covers of all your old Wired mags and send them to me. Come on, I know you want to ;-).
Okay, so you might be wondering what on earth I'm going to do with all the thousands of Wired covers I'm going to get in the mail. Am I slowly turning into a Martha Stewart-esque rodent and I'd like to shred them all down and build myself a brightly coloured nest in all the latest colours? Am I going to slice them into strips and leave them next to the toilet in a mad wish for environmentally friendly re-used (although probably too shiny and too stiff) loo roll? Am I planning on composing a freakishly bright ransom note? No. No. No. You've guessed wrong.
However, I am planning on wallpapering a small bathroom with them. A photo of said bathroom is to be found on the left. You can click on it to see it in all it's super big, checked glory.
So hurry, while the mood is striking you, slice off those covers and send them to:
Wired Covers
1059 Shaw Street
Toronto, ON
M6G 3N4
Canada
The best one will get a "prize" of some sort... haven't figured out what yet. Oh. That might discourage you, given that you don't know what this "prize" would be... okay I promise it won't be anything that rots or smells. Okay? Hurry now. Slicey slicey. Good reader.
Posted by Me @ 06:01PM [Link]
Some things I've picked up over my journeys across the digital world:
That's it for now. You can go home. There's nothing more to see. Move along. Move along.
Posted by Me @ 11:42AM [Link]
