Author Archive for Premee

You can find these things at British Import Shops and, for some reason, Bulk Barn. I’d never eaten one. Not homemade, not from a can.

“Everything about this sounds good,” I said.

“Wait, what are you doing? You can’t just…no, no. That goes against everything I’ve ever been taught. Parents, friends, books, the aliens that live in my dreams. Come on, let’s just open up the can and nuke it for a few minutes.”

“IF YOU PUT A METAL CAN INTO BOILING WATER IT WILL BLOW THE FUCK UP AND KILL US ALL.”

“No it won’t.”

“YES IT WILL. WHERE DOES ALL THE PRESSURE GO?”

“Look, will you trust me? I’ve made these before.”

“WHY HAVEN’T THESE THINGS KILLED EVERYBODY IN BRITAIN I’M DECLARING THE TERROR LEVEL TO BE BLACKWATCH PLAID.”

“Oh, all right. I guess I can’t fool you. Remember how the English said a thing called ‘The Blitz’ happened during World War II? Yeah, the truth was, it was three years of bad treacle pudding cans. They destroyed a few hundred buildings before they were stopped.”

“I’M GOING TO GO STAND ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COUNTRY NOW.”

“WHAT ARE YOU DOOOOOING LET’S JUST TAKE IT OUTSIDE AND HIT IT WITH AN AXE THESE HAVE BEEN THE LONGEST GOD DAMNED  THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES OF MY LIFE”

“Can you stop shouting? You really do need to concentrate on this thing while you open it up. Can you grab a plate?”

“NO.”

“I’m not eating that. Why doesn’t it look like it does on the wrapper? Well, I mean, nothing looks like it does on the wrapper, but – ”

“Can you pass me that plate? Thanks. Here…we…go.”

Anyway, with my shameful hysterics over and the pudding actually inverted onto a plate, it did look a lot like the one on the wrapper. And it was good. After we had let it cool down from fresh magma to recently-lit napalm temperature, it was moist and fine-textured and almost creamy, like a not-too-sweet spongecake (from sampling various areas I determined that most of the sweetness comes from the treacle topping) with raisins in it that had disintegrated from the canning process or the fact that it had been boiled in a metal can for over half an hour. Actually, it was awesome. My young man opined that it tasted ‘like England’; I thought it tasted like burnt-up adrenaline and Defcon 2. My verdict is that I would make another one provided someone else can do it and I can stand way across the kitchen with my camera.

You all know I’m some kind of low-grade pop-culture dork, yes? Even just based on my posts here?

I’ve been to Video Games Live (once in Edmonton, actually, and once in Calgary) and I’ve got a stack of Conan and Thor comics next to my bed; I have a book listing the 500 Greatest Marvel Villains; there are four vintage sci-fi movie posters above my bed; I have an embarrassingly large number of Batman and Earthworm Jim action figures in a shoebox that I absolutely. cannot. give away. (I’ve tried. I ended up fishing it back out of the storage tote. Sorry, kids whose moms shop at the Goodwill by my house!)

So it may seem odd that I’ve never been to a comic expo till a couple of weeks ago, and in fact I hadn’t even planned the trip around going to said expo, even after I found out William Shatner was going to be there. But my road treep partner got tickets for Sunday, so I did end up spending most of the day there.

It was unexpectedly awesome! I did a lot less sniping at geeks than I expected, even though they gave me ample opportunity (about every ninety seconds, on average). This was because after a while I released my deathgrip on Dean’s arm and tried to give in to the geekery. The camera finally came out at that point and I started appreciating the time investment that went into some of the costumes, displays, dioramas, merchandise, and comics. There are a lot of talented people in this community, and I don’t just mean people who can draw comics, though they were my favourites. I  mean people who sculpt, weld, sew, paint, knit, forge, and LOTS of craft forms I’d never considered.

I didn’t take many pictures, though many encouraged photo ops – after all, if you spend hundreds of hours on a costume and only wear it once, you want to be the centre of attention, right? Also, I felt awkward about photographing the statues and comics and whatnot at peoples’ booths. I didn’t see any ‘No Pictures’ signs…I just felt weird.

(Not taken at the expo, obvs. I do recommend the crab cakes at Catch though. This was scrumptious.)

A stupendous amount of work went into this Ghostbusters setup. The traps, decals, stickers, lights, everything. This guy stayed COMPLETELY in character, too. We chatted for a few minutes about the Ghostbusters of Alberta and their mission, etc. I seriously wanted to ask him out but thought it would be gauche, and distract him from his important work.

“Jesus. I think I’m hallucinating, man. I keep thinking I hear R2-D2.” “No, you’re OK. Turn around.”

I thought it was funny that this Joker came up behind this Batman and started randomly stabbing at him. They didn’t come together, so basically Joker would have been hoping that Batman stayed in character and didn’t just turn around and go “Fuck off, you mook!”  They had a little mock fight; Wonder Woman, hilariously, was no help at all. As we were leaving she was saying “Do you have a medium in this?”

Dork highlight for me, of course, running up to this guy and screaming “ARE YOU A MAN?” and him screaming back “I AM DEVO!”  (Other big dork highlight: getting a commissioned piece from the creator of Earthworm Jim!)

(I did take more pictures than this but I don’t want y’all to get geeked out and most of them are on Dean’s Facebook album anyway because he’s not slow like me.) (Also, can I just add, Tia Carrere is a freakin’ BABE still. I don’t know if it was a heavy layer of slap or just good genes but she looks like a million bucks in real life. No joke.)

This is definitely something I would consider doing again next year – and I would be more prepared, too (bring a backpack, snacks,  poster tubes, more cash, etc). Who’s with me?

(I am not sure but that this may be the post which qualifies me for true Soda Crazy status.)

So you know how “They” always say you need five to ten daily servings of fruit and vegetables? I actually looked it up the other day when Mom called during my lunch hour. The conversation started like this:

Mom: “What are you eating? I can barely hear you.”

Me: “Broccoli.”

Mom: “Raw broccoli? By itself?”

Me: “With the artichoke dip left over from the party.”

Mom: “You know, even when you were little you preferred veg to fruits. All my friends told me what a strange baby you were.”

Me: “I bet that wasn’t the only reason.”

Mom: “You know, you’re supposed to get equal amounts of fruit and vegetables in your diet.”

Me: “What? Really? Who says that?”

Mom: “The government. Everybody knows it.”

I pretty much had to look it up at that point. Anyway, if you don’t feel like clicking on the link, the short version is:

- She’s wrong

- And how much fruit/veg you need depends on how old you are

- And if you are a lady or a man

- And a serving size depends on the actual item

For instance, I’m supposed to get 7 – 8 servings of fruit and vegetables per day. That sounds pretty reasonable, right? At least it’s not ten! But then the curiosity started to get to me, so two weeks ago I tracked my typical fruit/veg intake for a week, and the results were dismal. Really – averaging fewer than four servings per day (3.7 if you want to nitpick).

Some of this was due to portion sizes (you know, less than a full cup of spinach in my omelet, a third of a tomato on my toast) but also – frankly – I just don’t eat enough produce. I don’t drink much juice. I also don’t snack much so even if I include a fruit or a vegetable with each meal, I don’t get anywhere near 7 – 8 a day.

Since I currently have no problem getting nearly the required amounts of everything else, I decided to see if I could eat everything else and all my fruits and veg in one day. I picked last Thursday to try it, since I had bought groceries on Wednesday.

Breakfast was the ever-popular toast with hummus (I counted the hummus as a meat substitute), a cup of tea, and a banana. But since I ate the banana last, I was too full to eat the apple I had also intended to go with breakfast. Servings: 1.

Lunch was a sandwich, a cookie, carrot sticks, celery sticks, two bananas, and the apple I neglected from breakfast. This time, remembering the lesson I had learned from breakfast, I ate the veg, then the bananas. Then I was so full I couldn’t eat the rest. Servings: 4.

By the time I got home, I still wasn’t hungry. But I made myself eat the apple from breakfast/lunch when I walked in the door. Servings: 1.

Around 7 pm, when I realized I hadn’t really managed to eat from the other food groups, I got out my sandwich from the fridge and ate that, then the cookie, and basically forced down some celery and a large handful of grapes. Servings: 2

Total for the day: 8 (5 fruit, 3 veg)

Sheesh! Getting in the full RDA of produce is not easy. By the time I had my servings in, I basically hadn’t eaten much else – about 3 small servings of grains, 1 of dairy, and 2 of meat or meat substitutes. And dinner was literally crammed down my throat amidst much gurgling and gagging; I spent half the evening on the couch groaning with indigestion. It felt like I had eaten neverending pounds and pounds and pounds of food all day. And I had to go pee like FIFTEEN TIMES.

But now I need to know, am I missing something obvious here? Is the gub-mint on crack? Do all of you guys get your five to ten servings a day? And if so, how do you do it without exploding at every meal? Are people chugging V-8 like it’s going out of style, maybe? Is everyone eating salad for every meal? If it’s not fruit/vegetables, which food group are you usually able to get your full RDA of?

Nosy people want to know!

(Apologies for this post, I’m not sure when I decided to become a tourist in my own city!)

When Bright Nights in Hawrelak Park was cancelled this year, my across-the-street neighbours and I decided to go to Candy Cane Lane instead (mainly because I was whining about wanting to see something shiny and finding out about the cancellation was very last-minute).  (And also because it was a perfect night for a winter stroll – very still, fluffily snowing, only about -12, and not too crowded.)

Tourist shot in front of the sign!

Magi’s camel slightly too obviously trying to buck VM off.  ”Ow!  Ow!  You call this the spirit of Christmas?”

General agreement that this was our favourite house, with the white and the blue and the matching paint.

Loved decorations partly buried in fresh snow.

After seeing this cute little beast, we all kinda wanted one for Christmas too.  (Till I reminded everyone that hippos can bite people in half.  Then not so much.)

Me, being The Grinch.

JEL, being… well, we weren’t sure.  ”What are you doing there, kid?”  ”YOU know!  From that song!  COME ON!”  (crickets)

There are some really big-normous trees in this neighbourhood (pretty, hey?).  Am hoping those are LED lights, or else that homeowner is going to be looking at several trillion dollars on their Epcor bill.

Another favourite display – the traditional ‘shark munching an unfortunate snowman’ motif.

Anyway, good times had by all – there were sleigh rides and hot chocolate, which we were too late for, but we went back to the house and drank hot apple cider and watched the Shaw holiday fireplace for a little while.  A very Edmontony Christmas!

My plans for today fell through, so I ended up going to the Edmonton Waste Management Centre open house instead.  I am mildly embarrassed at how much fun I had.  Seriously, at some points I was squealing and giggling louder than the kids on the tour.

We pulled up in the free shuttle bus that left from Stadium station to the open house tents in front of the Administration building:

Then we got tour tickets and hopped onto the schoolbus to tour the waste management centre.  Which started with one of the areas where they deal with commercial waste:

(Note: when you hear people talking about how awesome Edmonton is in terms of waste diversion, they are talking about residential waste.  Unfortunately, commercial waste is still generally just being landfilled.)

Then we got to see the tiny pile of residential waste that they had essentially just been pushing around all day for the purpose of the open house; normally on a Saturday that area would be empty.  I for one appreciated the effort.

(THE CRAW!)

Then we went through the compost area, where they sort all the diverted organic waste and add things like sawdust and newsprint and biosolids from Gold Bar to get the carbon:nitrogen ratios right – it was pitch black in that building so I only managed a couple of blurry photos of looming piles.  Then, we went to the MRF, Materials Recovery Facility, where they separate recyclables.

This was my (and the squealing kids’) favourite part of the EWMC.  I realize the photo doesn’t do it justice, wish I’d thought to take a video, but the people who are doing the sorting are moving at kind of a fantastic clip.  I don’t know why I assumed that all of the sorting was done mechanically.  (Racked with guilt, I have now resolved to follow all the recycling guidelines printed on the handouts they gave us.  Remove lids!  Rinse containers!  Flatten boxes!)

Here is where they bale stuff before sending it to market.  Why do I love things that compact things?

We drove past their stormwater management pond a couple of times.  It’s quite nice; and with my practiced eye I was gratified to note both their monitoring setup and their leachate management facility later.

I didn’t get any pictures of the GEEP building, which is where they process electronic waste (and have a very creepy computer graveyard – like, a hectare of staring monitors and tumbled towers) but I did get one of the still-under-construction paper recycling dome.  Seriously, they’re going to have a facility just for recycling shredded paper into asphalt roof shingles!  A smaller dome being inflated nearby is for recycling glass into glass building bricks.

Apparently they inflate the dome, then sort of spray concrete inside it to make it into a permanent building.  I totally and non-secretly want to live in a house like that.

After we went past the generators (which use landfill gas to create electricity that’s fed back into the grid) we went back to the administration building and I had some Funky Pickle pizza and read about composting.  They had a cute vermicomposter set up in the tent and the girl there was telling me how perfect it was for apartments because it’s odorless; I would give that some serious consideration, actually, because whatever I couldn’t use for my own plants I could just offload on the parental units.

Then as I was waiting for the shuttle bus two very little Chinese kids (maybe three and five years old?) who spoke German to each other and English to me came over to ask me to play, and we ended up running around a bit and I taught them how to make grass whistles.  (Which isn’t related to waste management but I thought it was a very odd thing to happen.  Their parents explained that they were staying here for a year because the dad has a contract with the provincial government and that they’re always surprised when random people ignore their children’s requests to play.  Don’t they have stranger danger in Europe?)

Anyway.  A fun and educational day, and I think well-salvaged from my original plan of staying in the house to sulk!