Phoque!

When I was in Newfoundland, I saw a t-shirt that had I ♣ Seals printed on the front. It took me a few seconds to get it - I wish I had bought that t-shirt.

Time to publog the parliamentary dining room...

Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette has gleefully tweeted that the Parliamentary Dining Room will, for the first time, soon serve up seal on its justly-renowned silver platters.

Publog time! One simply can't turn down such an obviously-patriotic opportunity!

But in the spirit of full disclosure, one must warn fellow ESIs that one has actually eaten seal on occasion. As a practiced connoisseur of portable, potable furballs, I hafta say that, PETA-ensnaring terminal cutes aside, it is stringy, oily, dark, and more than kinda fishy-tasting. Maybe why they're doin' it sometime around the Ides of March.

You have been warned. And I hope the decadent mounds of chocolate-y desserts are especially good that day. . .

We Love Zoom, or The Canadian Culture, Eh! Game

Zoom, you've been concerned that Canadians have no culture. You have also mentioned in the past that you love playing games. So, today I took the photo above for you, so that you can play at spotting the five things that are part of our Canadian Culture in the picture (click on it to enlarge).

Have fun! And, yes you will get a prize out of this.*

*Contest only open to those named Zoom who own a blog named Knitnut.

ESI BeaverBalls™… Got Any?

Now we know that not blogging gets a coyote in a lotta trouble. Late this week I was whacked with a rolled-up newspaper and locked in the doghouse ummm, ESI Product Development Lab. To repent. Instead, I sat among early Mumumelon™, ChickUn™ and lingerie prototypes and had another (ahem) stroke of genius.

The Independent Observer's recent exposition of the disturbing eating habits of Canada's national animal got me thinkin' laterally: those guys in the beaver themed cook shacks on the canal sell huge fried pastries, in dozens of tasty flavours. What if a guy just wants smaller, budget- and diet-friendly snacks with his hot chocolate? Teeny noshes for lean times? Especially if they have the dim-sum-esque quality of being small and diverse enough to con you into overeating them outrageously encourage you to have another. Our marketing department is always thinkin' like that.

So this week, a brand new product introduction: ESI BeaverBalls™!* Deep-fried pastry so tastry, real beavers abandon their own nether regions for it!

And with them, a new ESI contest! Here's the deal: We need a full range of picturesquely-named product. BeaverBalls™ being a completely original concept, toppings like the other guys' Killaloe Sunrise - butter, castor(heh) sugar, cinnamon and a squeeze of lemon juice - are nonstarters. We wouldn't dream of ripping off flavours from our pals on the canal. I'm thinking lotsa maple syrup. Oh, wait...

So dear readers: suggest flavours for our new ESI BeaverBalls™, and Woodsy will whomp up a dozen for the winner(s) - in their winning flavour(s). (We originally thought her rare, collectors-item Hooters T shirt, but decided to save it for another contest...) Think diversity. The sky's the limit. And Aggie, who always gets it right, says we need savouries as well as sweets. Vegan, if you like - say tamari sauce and toasted sesame seeds. I'm personally thinkin' Calgary Coronary: Gruyere and tons of bacon bits. Betcha can't eat just one. We and our loan officer are counting on it…

BeaverBalls™. Got any? Show us!

*(Discarded) slogan suggestion: Not suspiciously similar to TimBits. And even more Canadian.

PETA + KFC = ESI opportunity

Yesterday's papers were all clucking over the news that PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - has finally twisted Kentucky Fried Chicken of Canada's drumsticks painfully enough that the company has pledged to: a) buy only what PETA deems to be humanely scragged poultry (which apparently means gassing it); and b) introduce what the Petfinder called "a vegan, faux-chicken flavoured menu item". How droll.

PETA and point-person Pamela Anderson, who by virtue of having surgically crammed her chest full of dangerously gratuitous plastic products, twice, is an ideal spokes-Barbie for the cause of cruelty to animals, have been after KFC for years on this.

Pam, sweetie: Without even going in to the mental images I see when I hear the term "gassing chickens", for your own good I advise you to plan never to be around when I knock off a pheasant or partridge for tiffin. Not pretty. Yum. I mean, ummmm, now 'scuze me, I have to wipe the drool off of this keyboard thingie, so my claws stop skidding... Ahem. I digress. All better now.

Anyway, with this announcement, I believe I smell a toothsome business opportunity for ESI Global PLC. The Mumumelon® line is doing very nicely, and our new lingerie is taking off... so it's time to diversify. The Globe and Mail reports that KFC's vegan menu option will apparently be some sort of soy-based product, generically labelled 'unchicken'. Sounds inhumane to me, but I'm willing to roll with the market: a contract to supply KFC with this stuff could be worth a little scratch. So here's to dee-lishus ESI ChickUn®, served up on a foam platter with sides of fries, gravy and three-bean salad. By the time we finish breading it with eleven secret herbs and spices and deep-frying it, it'll be almost as healthy as the real thing.

Now. Somebody explain to me: why the hell would vegans want to go to KFC anyway....?

Buckyblog #4: sayonora

Roasted Cat Curry

- One large cat, deboned, roasted, cubed
- 2 1/2 cups coconut milk
- 10 cherry tomatoes
- 1 cup eggplant, cubed, or sweet spring peas
- 6 pieces of rambutan or pineapple, cubed
- 4 fresh kaffir lime leaves, shredded
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 2 tbsp Thai fish sauce
- 1/2 cup water or stock
- 1 1/2 tbsp vegetable oil
- 3 tbsp red curry paste

Preparation
Pour vegetable oil into a wok over medium heat and add red curry paste. Stir well. Add 3/4 cups coconut milk and stir to mix thoroughly. Add cat and stir well again. Pour mixture into a pot, add the remaining coconut milk, water, tomatoes, rambutans or pineapple, eggplant or sweet peas, kaffir lime leaves, sugar, salt, and fish sauce. Bring to a boil and remove from heat. Serve on a bed of noodles.

Ummm, ignore the above text. I can't seem to get rid of id... er, it. Must be a Blogger glitch. Don't know where it came from. Anyway, Bucky has left the building. No idea where he went. Nope. None. Inevitable, I suppose. I loved that cute little guy, but we got along like, well, cats and dogs. A teensy tiff last night, and when I woke up this morning, his closet was empty except for a pile of dirty brown socks. His suitcase was gone, and his bicycle wasn't in the driveway either. Didn't even leave a lousy goodbye note, the insensitive jerk.

We had plans for taking the Elgin Street Irregulars to the very edge of the kittyblogosphere. He coulda been a star! Who knows what'll happen now? The manner of our parting was deeply deliciou - ummm, painful. It has left me completely satisf - ummm, shattered. We shall not speak of it again, from this day hence.

Another Friday Night with Fourth Dwarf

"Care to see a flick Friday night?" a pretty pixie asked me this week.

Always liking it when the lady makes the first move, I happily agreed. "What are we going to see?"

"There will be Blood," she told me.

"Gee, sweety," I said. "I don't like vampire movies."

"Don't worry," she said, "it's not a vampire movie. You'll like it, I promise."

"Oh, ho!" I thought. "It must be a pirate movie!" (Wrong, but I'm getting ahead of myself.)

Dinner at the Buffet Moni Mahal

The Buffet Moni Mahal has the best Indian buffet in downtown Ottawa or the Glebe. (I've tried them all unless a new Indian restaurant has opened in the last month.) The price is lower than most and it has a wider variety of items. In fact, at least double the number of dishes you'll find at Haveli or the East India Company.

There is always butter chicken. There is always egg plant. There is always spinach.

We both enjoyed our meals. The staff said nothing about the number of plates I used.

Moni Mahal Buffet
164 Laurier Avenue West, Ottawa, ON K1P 5J4
Tel: 613-234-8882

[Many online references have the Moni Mahal on Laurier Ave East. This is wrong. And may embarrass you if you take a taxi from Slater Street.]

There will be Blood

It's not a vampire movie and it's not a pirate movie. It's a mining movie! To be specific, it's about the early days of oil drilling, but it starts in a gold pit. It brought me back to my youth, I tell you.

I was fascinated because I've had little experience with oil. Sticking mostly with salt, coal and of course, the precious gems and minerals. But I can tell you, the scenes in the pits were realistic.

The movie also had lovely music from the London Philharmonic except that a lot of the time you could tell that something horrible was going to happen just because the music was so loud and screechy. Can't they hear those violins? Don't they know that she's about to blow?

Favourite quote: "I'd like you better if you didn't treat me like I was stupid."

Noteworthy credits:

• Standby Greens - Ryan Bust [He has an entry on IMdb; And this article says "The greensman is a specialist who decides how and where to place plants and greenery in the film scenes."]
• Albert Chi as himself [How can a movie set between 1899 and 1929 have someone playing themself? But on IMdb, I see that he is listed as "assistant: Mr. Anderson" and Paul Thomas Anderson was the Director.
  
• "This motion picture was carbon neutral" [Which is quite an accomplishment given that they had an oil well fire and some cool explosions. On the other hand, Industrial Light and Magic had lots of credits, so maybe that was all animation. Still, I had to wonder, if ILM was involved, why couldn't they make it look like the wheels on the old cars were rolling forward instead of backward?
  

Thank you, thank you. No. Really!

I understand from early reports on CBC Radio One this morning that City Councillor Dog (Sic. Hah.) Thompson held a raucous little public meeting about the coyote problem in Greeley last night. Seems my brethren in the 'burbs may have eaten three smallish dogs and spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) among many not-so-rural-savvy residents out there. Although many other predatory suspects are just as usual. Good luck with that project, Dog, it's a sure-fire vote-getter.

And thank you, thank you, for the unsolicited accolades, everybody! Only (semi) legendary coyote modesty prevents me from taking a well-deserved bow. Oh, and maybe the fact that I'm four-legged...

Image: Lifted by the ever-reliable FoxNews (Hah again) from a throwaway tab in the Chicago 'burbs...

A franchise opportunity for Coyote

Say it ain't so, Pho. . .

Oh my... chagrin (deep) and despondency (utter). How could they? Post-last-call gourmets, gourmands and fur-bearin' varmints alike among the ESIs demand to know the meaning of this! For goodness' sake!

After we waxed all exuberant about Mr Pho on Elgin Street's felicitously diverse menu, they deleted poutine from the sign.

If this was the other side of the Ottawa River, perhaps we could see the twitchy hands of the infamous Language Police. But those particular officious bureaucratic twits do not patrol here. Yet. We have plenty of others.

And anyhoo, if I recall my colonial-era geopolitics correctly, Viet Nam and France once had a close relationship, such that decades later, the (heh...) lingua franca of that country is still pretty much French. It's a French Fact.

So why is there not room on Mr Pho's shiny new sign for peaceful coexistence, a diplomatic detente for the two great solitudes of Pho and Poutine? Tasty, tasty solitudes.... I digress.

One hesitates, in these benighted times and in this context, to stir up the currently-loaded term 'reasonable accommodation'. Yet it seems to my dust-glazed approximately-amber prairie eyes that, indeed, nothing on that sign replaces the deliciousity that is poutine. Except, well, a sad, sad blank space, pretty much exactly the right size for the word 'poutine'...

Why can't they all just get along again? I mean, it's not like the remaining Pho (...well, 'noodle soup'...), Pad Thai and Shawarma are exactly kissin' culinary cousins. So what happened? Enquiring minds need to pho... ummm, know...

My Latest Rant

WELCOME GOOGLE SEARCHERS:
Your search probably brought you here because you were wondering what that LCBO/RAO means on your credit card statement. Don't worry it's legit. When you were in Ontario, Canada do you remember going to a Liquor Store? Yes. Well, you put your purchase on a credit card. Now get back to your AA meeting.

Every year I do the mature and responsible thing and add up all my expenditures for the past year just to find out where my money is going. To help track such matters I tend to put everything on my credit card. Using cash requires too much day-to-day tracking of spending and I’m too lazy for that. This brings me to one of the more common line items on my Mastercard statements this past year: LCBO / RAO #0212 OTTAWA ON.

Ontario’s Crown-owned liquor distribution retailer, the LCBO, was one of my biggest suppliers of goods and services this past year – to the tune of about $1,000. At first, I thought that’s a lot of spending, but I found out through Statistics Canada that I’m about average for a full-time employed male when it comes to spending on booze. No need for an intervention just yet.

Having conveniently parked the health issues related to my consumption in the closet of denial, I turn to the economic issues. Though $1,000 a year is a fairly typical expenditure for a typical Joe, it’s still a lot of money. This is where I get my back up against the wall when it comes to the LCBO’s pricing. According to their last annual report this monopoly paid a “dividend” to the Ontario government of over $1 billion (this is above and beyond any taxes collected on booze). Not a bad profit for a retailer. In fact, hands down, the LCBO is probably the most profitable retailer in the food and beverage industry in North America (maybe even the world!). Their net “profit” is about 33% of net sales. To give you a benchmark, Walmart, considered one of the best retailers in the world, had a net profit of about 5 % last year. And that was with a labour force paid close to minimum wage, whereas the LCBO provides a good union job (north of $20 an hour last I heard). I don’t mind that the price of my booze supports well-paid union jobs. That’s fine by me. What I don’t like is paying for monopoly profits above and beyond those well-paid jobs. And by my calculation, it’s costing me an extra $250 a year.

But maybe there’s hope.

The LCBO recently started to market affordable, yet classy-looking foreign beers that can be purchased one can at a time. Lately, I’ve been buying Holsten Premium at $1.95 for 500 ml can – a very good deal that can be paid for with a toonie. The downside is that I’ve reverted back to paying with cash – coins no less. So not only am I losing track of where my money is going, but every time I stop by for a purchase, I’m appearing more and more like the beggar outside the store who pays with quarters and dimes. And yesterday, he and I had the exact same purchase.

I’m ready for that intervention now.

A restful pre-Canada-Day interlude...

This restful pre-Canada-Day interlude brought to you by Canada's latest UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Elgin Street Irregulars and me. The coyote. I figure if that silly putz, John Baird, can take credit for it, then so can I. As a semi-mythological coyote from a certain foothilled region of the prairies, I have, after all, had some previous experience (2), (3), (4), (5) with UNESCO heritage designations...

Cat-ered lunch

I'm not sure what it was that tipped Aggie off. Coulda been the sudden manic red gleam in my yellow eyes. Coulda been the unseemly fountains of drool. Coulda been the not-sotto-voce-enough, "Oh yeah, you betcha I'll take care if it for you. . . !" Or maybe she knows me a touch too well from previous experience.

But after she asked me to tend to her sizeable cat for her while she's off at her family reunion, she eyed me narrowly and mentioned that if said sizeable cat disappeared in her absence, certain coyotes would suffer. Greatly.

Damn. "What possible good is a sizeable cat that one cannot eat?" I asked myself.

Since then, though, the cat and I have discovered unspoken mutual interests in Dame Agatha's back yard. 'Unspoken' because cats and dogs do not really speak with each other much. . . it's kinda genetic.

Full detente is a way off -- I interpret my agreement with with Aggie to mean that all bets are null & void after she returns, 'specially since I felt it was made under unseemly duress. And crossed my toes whilst she extracted certain promises from me. But meantime, the cat and I have called a temporary cease-fire in order to pursue the kinda lunch we can both appreciate. And I hafta say that teamwork when you're chasin' hot squirrel sandwiches on the hoof can be a good thing...

PuBlog: Audrey and the mini-caribou burgers

After many weeks of hockey watching in local bars and living rooms, it was a shock to attend the garden party at Stornoway hosted by the Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. Stéphane Dion, and his wife, Janine Krieber. No one talked about hockey! I didn't know everyone! I didn't have to bring beer!

It was exciting to sample the various canapés on offer. I ate:

· Smoked arctic char with mascarpone in a fennel dusted crepe (Nunavut)
· Caribou burgers (Northwest Territories)
· Wheatberry salad with lime and coriander (Saskatchewan)
· Creamy lobster bisque (New Brunswick)
· Lowbush cranberry brulées (Yukon)
· Rumballs, featuring Screech (Newfoundland and Labrador)
· "Sugar" pie, with wild blueberry compote (Quebec)

I did not eat:
· Tortilla chips and salsa
· Salt and vinegar potato chips
· Hickory Sticks
· Cookies
· Hamburgers
· French fries
· Pizza

My favourite canapé was, of course, the mini-caribou burgers. I'd told everyone that I hoped there would be mini-burgers there, and I was not disappointed - the burgers were fantastic.

Photo: Audrey / Hand modelling: The IO