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Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto

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Tomorrow night is FEAST night

September 19, 2008 by Tricia

Tomorrow evening we’re going to be going out of town to celebrate our brother-in-laws birthday. We’ll be going to an old friends of ours’ home to have a feast.

Our friend, J, loves to cook. Whenever she has these parties (and believe me, she’ll use any excuse to have a dinner party) the meals are always HUGE. Like 8 to 10 courses and three to five desserts! If she invites 10 people to her dinner party there’s enough food to serve 50!

Oh and it’s not light fair. It’s full of fats, sugars and all the bad stuff. It’s usually delicious, but I’m sure if we were to attend her dinner parties regularly we’d soon have clogged arteries!

We have one major problem though. Since this dinner party is out of town we normally stay over at Chris’ parents whenever J has a party. Too much food and too much drink isn’t a good mix for a two hour drive home!

We can’t bring our dog! J hates, hates, hates … did I say hate? Yeah, she hates dogs. So there’s no way we could bring Midnight with us. Plus … Chris’ parents have been invited to the dinner party as well, so they won’t be able to take care of our puppy either. Midnight’s so hyperactive anyway, I wouldn’t saddle them with her, she’d probably end up knocking one of them over or dragging them own the street. She certainly drags me around!

On top of all of that, Chris’ sister and our brother-in-law will be moving in October, so they’ve asked if Chris could come over and help with a few things around their house to help prepare them for the big move. So … Chris is going to drive to Waterloo this evening, help our brother-in-law with a few things and then drive back to Toronto tomorrow morning … well, I know him … he probably won’t get back until early afternoon.

I’ll stay home and take care of the dog while Chris is gone.

Then, sometime late tomorrow afternoon we’ll drive to Paris for the dinner party … but we can’t party too hard as we’ll be leaving Midnight at home alone (in her crate) and we’ll have to drive home sometime after the big FEAST is over.

Don’t count on any new posts on Sunday … There’s a good chance I might be a little hung over and or my tummy might be upset by all that food. Most of J’s dinner menus usually don’t go well with my Crohn’s and she’s the type of person that doesn’t seem to understand if you beg off eating something she’s cooked (simply because you can’t digest it!). LOL So I guess I’ll be eating a variety of tasty food, but probably paying for what I ate on Sunday and who knows … maybe well into next week if it irritates my already irritated Crohn’s affected system. Ugh …. (don’t worry I won’t be too stupid about what I eat.)

So I guess I’m going to try to do a day or two’s worth of posts this evening! Hope my fingers don’t cramp up with all the typing!

What are your plans for the weekend? Any dinner parties or family trips planned?

BTW I haven’t been to one of J’s parties for a while (Chris has, but I haven’t). The last one I went to was in the summer of 2006. Long time readers of this blog might remember that that’s when I tripped and fell on a weirdly shaped curb and tore a tendon in my knee (took 8 or more months to heal and hasn’t been the same since). Luckily for me that was my last most spectacular klutzy move. I haven’t done anything nearly as self-injury causing since that time. Let’s hope that if I go tomorrow night I don’t trip and fall or klutz out in any way!





Filed Under: Dining and Restaurants, Entertainment, Family, Health Fitness and Beauty, Home and Lifestyle, Inflammatory bowel disease, Life with Chris, Our Puppy, Recreation Tagged With: 10_course_meal, Birthday, blog, blogs, brother_in_law, celebrate, clogged_arteries, cook, cooking, crohns, desserts, dinner, dinner_party, dog, dogsit, drinking, drive, driving, eating, evening, fats, feast, Food, Friday, hates_dogs, hung_over, in_laws, menus, moving, out_of_town, parents, Party, partying, posts, Saturday, sister, stuffed, sugars, tasty, tummy, upset

What’s with all the flyer deliveries lately?

September 18, 2008 by Tricia

I’m being bombarded by mail these days. Yeah I know … my usual complaints are about spam email and spam commenters … but this time it’s snail mail! LOL

I’ve had a huge increase in mail deliveries in the last while. I guess it’s not enough for the mailman to deliver bills and flyers, but our Postal Service hires people just to deliver flyers in addition to the ones that the mailman delivers, and then of course there’s people hired to deliver flyers for private companies too.

Our regular mail is usually delivered by about 9:30 in the morning, but it seems just about any other time I walk out my door during the day there’s a new set of flyers in the mailbox, on the floor of my porch or stuck in the handle of our screen door. It’s actually becoming a hazard, I’ve slipped on a few glossy flyers that have been placed right outside the front door. Now I’ve got to be sure to look down before I put my foot down … remember I’m a klutz already so I don’t need any extra help with mishaps! LOL

The flyers run the gamut with anything from restaurant take out or delivery fliers to drug stores promoting things like the best diet pills they sell and so on.

Now that we’re having a snap Federal Election we’re also receiving newsletters and promotional mail from all of the major political parties too.

I’ll admit some of the flyers are useful, but the majority end up going straight into the recycling box. I can’t help thinking what a waste of money it is for companies to print out these flyers and hire people to deliver them when I suspect the majority of people receiving them are just throwing them in the recycling bin. (well I hope they are at least recycling!) what a waste of paper, money and resources!

In the past we had a sign on our door that said “No Flyers” but those delivering them ignored our request, and if the flyers were part of the regular mail delivery they still got delivered.

Do you feel that you get too many flyers too? What do you do about it?

Filed Under: Home and Lifestyle, Toronto Tagged With: advertising, companies, deliveries, delivery, Federal_election, flyers, junk_mail, mail, mailman, newsletters, political_flyers, Postal_Service, promotions, recycling, resources, restaurants, snail_mail, take_out, Toronto, waste_of_money

Mmmm homemade spaghetti sauce

September 16, 2008 by Tricia

My home is filled with the wonderful smell of homemade spaghetti sauce. Mmmm it smells so good! The dog is going nuts – between watching me prepare it and smelling the sauce at is simmers on the stove she won’t stop pacing around with excitement. I don’t know what makes her think she’s going to get any? LOL

Chris is working until 8 pm tonight so we’ll be having a late dinner, but it will be a good one. Spaghetti with my homemade sauce, and a salad filled with our own home grown lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes. Chris will probably want to have some garlic bread with the meal, but I don’t think we really need it. He might win out though.

We don’t have spaghetti for dinner very often, but when we do I almost always make a homemade sauce. Well ok, it’s not totally homemade – canned whole tomatoes, a basic canned or bottled tomato sauce, tomato paste, garlic powered, Italian seasoning, freshly chopped chives from the garden, chopped onion, diced green pepper and a tablespoon of brown sugar (my secret ingredient to give the sauce a slightly sweeter taste) and of course about a pound of cooked lean hamburger. I don’t follow a recipe – I just throw in a little of this and a little of that until it all blends together to make a fabulous sauce. Of course this means that each sauce is different and some are better than the others. Oh well- that’s life. Most are pretty tasty.

It’s usually only during the cooler months of the year that we have meals like spaghetti dinners, roasts, stews or homemade chili. I find these meals too filling and too “hot” to cook during the summer. We stick to lighter fair in the summer.

Do you make your own sauce when you make spaghetti?

Filed Under: Dining and Restaurants, Home and Lifestyle, Recipes, Recreation Tagged With: bottled, bread, brownsugar, canned, chili, chives, chopped, cucumber, dog, excited, fabulous, garden, garlic, hamburger, homegrown, homemade, lettuce, light, mmmm taste, onion, paste, peppers, recipe, roast, salad, sauce, scent, smell, spaghetti, stew, Summer, tasty, tomatoes, winter

Thanksgiving and other favorite holidays are just around the corner

September 15, 2008 by Tricia

The remnants of Hurricane Ike passed through Toronto yesterday evening and through the night and now that all of that weather has passed it’s quite cool here today. Brrrr

I guess it’s obvious that the cool weather we’ve been experiencing this month has got me thinking about Autumn and Winter. I want the warm weather to last a little longer, but it doesn’t look like it will. Perhaps instead of thinking of the cool weather I should be thinking about some of my favorite upcoming holidays? It certainly won’t be long before we’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving, Halloween and Christmas!

Thanksgiving and Christmas are my favorite holidays. Most likely because it almost always means a big family get together.

When I was a kid we used to always go up to our cottage to celebrate Thanksgiving. Now that I think it about it does seem appropriate to celebrate Thanksgiving surrounded by beautiful natural scenery.

We’d always cook up a feast for Thanksgiving – Turkey, sometimes a ham, sometimes wild partridge, mashed potatoes, gravy, and lots of vegetables such as peas, glazed carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, cranberry jelly and of course, my favorite, Pumpkin pie!

The large table that sat at least 14 people would always have hand crafted Thanksgiving ornaments and of course beautiful Thanksgiving flowers in the center.

All this reminiscing is making me long for Thanksgiving … but oh … won’t that mean we’ll really be into the cool weather by then? Ha, I can’t have it both ways, can I? Perhaps this year I’ll hold a big family Thanksgiving get together.

Have you thought about your Thanksgiving plans yet?

Filed Under: Family, Home and Lifestyle, Recreation, Socializing Tagged With: autumn, carrots, celebrate, cool, cooling, cranberry, dinner, fall, Family, favorite, flowers, gathering, gravy, ham, holidays, jelly, partridge, peas, pie, potatoes, pumpkin, squash, Thanksgiving, together, turkey, weather, winter

Win a trip to the World of Coke Museum in Atlanta with iCoke

September 10, 2008 by Tricia

If you are a Canadian resident and you enjoy drinking Coca Cola products I have a contest for you that might be right up your alley.

How would you like to Win a trip with iCoke.ca ? Ok, maybe you want to know what the prizes are first?

You could win a trip for four to Atlanta Georgia – where John Pemberton invented Coca-Cola in 1886. If you win your airfare to Atlanta will be paid for as well as 3 days, 4 nights hotel accommodation, plus 2-day Coke Museum passes for four and to top it all off you’ll also get $1000 US cash to spend as you please.

Secondary prizes that you could be eligible to win include Best Buy and Cineplex Odeon gift certificates.

The contest is in celebration of John Pemberton and his lasting invention! I honestly didn’t know that Coca-Cola was invented in 1886! I thought it was invented in the 1920’s. 122 years – isn’t that something?

Ok, so as I said you must be a Canadian resident to enter the contest. Plus, you’ll need to register at iCoke.ca in order to enter the contest.

The contest started August 31, 2008, and it ends at 11:59:00 a.m. EDT, October 31, 2008. During this time period you can enter up to five times a day if I read the rules correctly. So you can amass quite a few entries!

Of course you need to have 500 Coke coins per entry.

What are Coke coins? Well .. you earn them buy submitting the special alphanumeric pin code that you can find beneath the cap on 591 ml and 2L Coca Cola product bottles or on special promotional materials like iCoke contest cards. Usually each pin code is worth 500 coke coins, but for a limited time you can earn 1000 Coke coins on specially marked 591 ml Coca Cola product bottles. So when you’re out shopping watch for those specially marked 591 ml bottles as the pin numbers will be worth two contest entries if you choose to use them in that way!

I entered the contest last night and I plan on making more entries. Why not? I’ve never been to Atlanta and I think visiting the World of Coke Museum would be kind of cool.

Are you going to enter?

Filed Under: Canada, Contest, Cool stuff, Entertainment, Home and Lifestyle, Recreation Tagged With: 1886, accommodation, airfare, Atlanta, Canada, canadadry, canadian, cash, celebration, Cineplex, CocaCola, code, Coke, cokemuseum, Contest, cool, daypass, drinking, entry, Georgia, gingerale, hotel, iCoke, invented, invention, JohnPemberton, Money, museum, October, Odeon, passes, pin, Product, resident, Shopping, sprite, trip, win

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