Ms C's Random Food Review: Purple Cauliflower

What: A not-so-gross looking purple cauliflower from the discount pile. Since I don't have much experience with buying vegetables in general, I thought I could get away with cutting off all the darker crappy parts and cook it as normal.

How: A stir-fry with a bright yellow zucchini, onions, and really red wine-soaked mushrooms, and then another time with cream of mushroom.

And...?: It is way freaky when you have a plate of vegetables with weird colours. Even weirder when the cream of mushroom turns purple from the joy of anthocyanins.

Then it gets gross when you try to eat it. Don't get me wrong - I really like cooked cauliflowers, and I even appreciate raw cauliflower (with the weird aftertaste reduced by soaking in some salt). And I barely ever eat raw vegetables... @_@

Well, I don't know about regular healthy purple cauliflowers, but this one tasted like acid. Everything I made was invaded with the taste of a really acidic bite. No matter if I added sugars, cheeses, tomatoes, salt, spices.... Nothing hides the acid.

On the plus side, it doesn't have a terrible aftertaste - it does leave a tingly acidic (purplish) tongue, however.

Rating: 3/5 until someone tells me what the hell went wrong.

Merry Christmas!

I wish you all very happy holidays this season, and hope you are spending time with your loved ones and enjoying your time together, despite the less-than-white weather on the east side of the country and pretty awful dumps the west was blessed with.

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And without furthur ado, here is the year-end round-up. I will probably forget to do this later this week from the miscellany of things to worry about - like getting a car and figuring out what I'll be doing in Chicoutimi after Christmas.

The many things (or lack of things) that happened this year are more or less well documented on my blog. Thus, dear readers (new and old and in-between) can peruse the archives and get the gist of each moment from A to Z - agony to zen.

January
Had weird dreams, and was also introduced to supply teaching at the adult education center. Posted some interesting art, along with a first foray in vectorizing. Douchebaggery continues.

February
Started to regularly supply teach at a school where it felt like total chaos. Most likely not my fault.

March
Stopped supply teaching at the school because it was total chaos. Not really my fault. Also: whining about taxes again.

April
Uploaded some cover songs/music on Tindeck produced by myself on violin and a shitty microphone on a headset. Surprised the bejeezus out of Norm. Somehow a minor internet celebrity stumbles upon this blog. And my brother starts becoming more of a real life celebrity.

May
Start of gardening season because the snow didn't melt until then. More douchebaggery occurs.

June
Actual training for Run for the Cure began, when I could have started earlier. The school year wound down with a good note, with the first foray into supply teaching French for elementary school, involving a violin...?

July
Wrote some short stories, attempting some creativity. Went to Boston! And Waterloo. But Boston! Sorry... Bwawston.

August
Focused on running some more, and attending the third wedding of the summer. Some more vector photoshopping!

September
Sketch that turned into a t-shirt (idea). Ran a bunch more. There was some sort of birthday in there somewhere.

October
Ran the race! Revisited Waterloo with Jorghnassen to help him move in. Hives. :(

November
Went to Montreal for the teacher's convention, and ended up staying two weeks due to being sick and losing my voice. :(:(

December
Spent some time in Montreal to help Jorghnassen become a doctor. ;) On a whim, I answered an ad for a teacher needed in Waterloo, and surprisingly enough I got the job. Now agonizing over getting a used car.

And to end on a cute note, here is a flash game about a bunny. Snow included!

Chinese Vegetable and... Banks AGAIN?

As some of you might have witnessed, I have been growing some (unidentified) chinese vegetable over the last few months on my window sill. A few of them have grown to a harvestable size while I was gone, so my mum cooked it for me. Not bad, for about 3 months of agonizing over their stunted growth!

Desjardins called me today to give me another reason to bitch at them and about them, again. In a nutshell, the caisse changed their accounts last month, resulting in their unsuspecting clients having to pay fees for each transaction unless the client indicates otherwise. So I ended up paying for a bunch of transactions because their letter to me did not mention this.

I ranted to Big Pu last night about this, and both of us wanted to know if there were a way to protest their stupid new account structures. Protest? Because they're not a bank but a cooperative, which should mean we are supposed to have a say on this. I admit that I am a bad co-op member because I did not stay well-informed. The people who decided on making stupid user fees are even worse. But whoever voted these dumbasses in who created this shit should be punched in the kidneys.

Something's Coming...

I don't know / what it is / but it is / gonna be greaaaaaat!

There are two beans sprouting!!! And there are other chinese vegetables actually growing!

About an hour ago, I noticed these two kids from the building across the driveway poking around in the tulip garden. Puzzled, I let them play around some more, seeing that they weren't pulling up things or stepping on the bed. Then the girl ran away but the boy spoke up: "Il y a plein de limaces!"

Wha-?

In his palm, the squirming slug struggled slowly in its slime. The boy reported that he had already picked out all the slugs from the flowerbed. I merely acknowledged him and waddled off to water the vegetables.

This explains why there's been a foam baseball bat nearby for the last two weeks.

Another thread popped up (or pooped up) on the SA forums for more covers of video game music. I don't know any of those posted. I think the next one I make will be a bit more obscure for amateurs of old school video games.

Tales of Gardening Feats

My mum, brother and I took the time this afternoon to get some flowers for my dad's grave and plant them. I finally brought the plastic green dividers that I bought from the school's rummage sale last year. I also finally got to dig up old useless roots in the soil and plant living things in the bed. Like LIVE flowers. Anyway, it's looking a lot better now. Such a pretty day...

Some cute LOST gifs made by an SA goon.

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I was working the last two days so I hadn't posted. One of the things I noticed is that students were definitely going insane. Secondary 1 to secondary 5... they were all going positively insane. It is warm, it is green, and it is SUMMER. I got fed up with having nobody and nothing to back up any discipline cases (especially being a supply teacher), so they were treated to a two-day WTF marathon where anything went. Fortunately, the more sensible ones were plodding along fine, but the crazies were just absolutely crazy. These are 17 year old mental cases I'm talking about.

If it were up to me, I'd have expelled their asses a long time ago, or just let them go out to the workforce and try their stupid antics and see how long they last when their boss asks them to do something and they defiantly yell "NO."

Tales of Gardening Woes

The beans actually haven't sprouted at all, despite a week and a half of rain and waiting. On the other hand, the bed has produced two shoe indentations smack dab in the middle of it.

I don't understand. I planted a dozen of these things just as my mum explained it. I watered them every day that there was no rain. I even pulled out all the stupid weeds that I - OH NOES WHAT HAVE I DONE!??!

(No, actually I know the difference between them. Don't worry.)

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My hayfever became so intolerable last night that I took a Benadryl and promptly fell asleep for much longer than I usually sleep (yes, even on unemployment days months). Then today I kept all the windows closed and became agoraphobic.

Landscaping and Neighbours

It seems that our landlord is a complete douchebag, so I took it upon myself to pick up the trash that mysteriously appears every day on the lawn, by the parking lot, around the garden and other spots that the wind and tunnel effect spews schoolkids' leftover lunches. And drugs.

Anyway, my very least favourite chore is picking up trash. The candy and chip wrappers aren't too bad because they aren't filled with goop or shit (so far), and there aren't massive piles lying around, only scattered. But what I hate the most is that the garbage is mixed with the leaves that a certain idiot landlord believes will decompose on their own, sitting in untouched, weed-infested and barren corners of the yard. It's even worse - they're leaves that the wind tunnel also scattered from the yard of the school.

(One of the things I should have suggested during that meeting two weeks ago between the school, the police, and the neighbourhood was that the school get these goddamn messy kids to come and clean up their trash because I was tired of doing it... but it was mostly about drugs and they didn't even have a concrete program to deter it.)

I was just outside a moment ago, picking up leaves and trash. I don't have a rake nor large garbage bags, so I was doing it by (gardening) fork and grocery bag. I also took some time to weed out some massive dandelions sprouting between the paving stones. It's quite time-consuming, but it would definitely help prevent more from spreading and aggravating our allergies further.

We noticed that our side porch was excessinely sagging some time ago. I suspected it was because the soil under it was sinking, but there is probably much more to that. During May and June when there are crazy rain storms, the entire walkway on this area gets flooded. Foot-high flooding. Fortunately none of the water gets into the basement. Unfortunately because of that, the landlord doesn't do shitall about it. Thus, due to years of flooding and soil being inevitably washed away, the ground has sunk a good couple of inches. You can feel the angle of depression walking around there.

The porch itself now feels precariously unbalanced. There is evidence on the side of the foundation that the steps have sunk about an inch or two each. I'm getting kind of nervous about the stability of this thing, but we don't have young kids jumping around on it so I don't think there's much to worry about yet.

I did dig up a couple of paving stones to see if I could determine what could be done, but I have no idea what to do. There is nothing for me to compensate for the sagging walkway, and I'm no carpenter who can fix porches and fancy wooden stuff.

As I was putting the stones back, there was some sort of repairs going on next door that necessitated cutting down some electrical or telephone cable. The people repairing the wires never suggested I get away from the area, and they didn't mention anything being too dangerous to touch, so I mostly ignored them.

That is, until they turned on the chainsaw. Suddenly wood chips from above were raining down on me. I looked up, and they were chopping something down from a pole. I quickly scurried away like a rat, kind of pissed that they weren't even considerate of me "down there" pulling up stupid roots and picking up leaves. Once inside, I watched the rain of dust and woodchips piling up around the area where I just picked up other people's crap.

I've been hiding at home since then. They're still humming away at their chainsaws and wires. People are utter morons around here.

I don't have a broom either.

Happy Mother's Day!

My mum and I were debating on whether we should go to the flea market in Ste-Foy yesterday or just go home. She says that she enjoys looking at junk and not buying it versus actually buying useful things. Although last week, she did start eyeing the suspicious looking 80s pattern chairs (you know, charcoal flecked with random green and pink specks - I'm sure you had something like this in your house) and then I said "Let's get outta here." I think if I had a couple of bucks to set on fire, I'd do that instead.

I planted beans outside in the garden that I dug up. I just hope that nobody steals our beans or sprouts like during the year my dad died - they stole our melons. >:( As I previously mentioned, there are rednecks as far as the eye can see around here, so what would they do with a chinese melon?

Our garden is too desolate for any sort of raiding though. For now, there are only tulips growing by the side of the building, left by my brother from several years ago. There are also metric tons of vines overgrown on the fence that nobody ever tends to, so I take it upon myself to cut back some of the vines. I don't even think the landlord intends to do anything about them. In fact, they were creeping across the entire lawn last year before I viciously pulled them out of the ground and slashed the bastards to death.

Soon the rain will come. When it does, the vines will start showing their leaves. That is when the massacre will begin. Mwa ha ha ha ha!!!