For Me, It's all About the Sauce

The Husband and I are not real restaurant goers. Given the fact that we live in a city with literally thousands of dining choices running the gamut of every possible cooking style and ethnicity, this is probably to our culinary and cultural detriment, but it is a fact of our palate-challenged lives. Due to dietary restrictions (mine) and shlep-factor (usually his), we much prefer to eat at home or frequent a few local haunts nearby.  The North Jewish Ghetto is not known as a hotbed of fine cuisine, so we have become, for better or for worse, creatures of habit. One of our favourite joints has been a neighbourhood pizzeria called Dante's. (For regular readers of this blog, I would like to point out that I rarely, if ever, use real-life names for anything or anybody, but this time I feel the need to express myself fully. Who would have thought that pasta-sauce would aid in smashing this fourth wall of blogging?) 

Dante's could only minimally be described as a restaurant. The place was truly a "joint"! For over 30 years, this wholly family-operated dive has been a fixture in the area north of Toronto. It was small and cramped and there were garlic-oil stains on the threadbare carpet. The tables while clean, always rocked from one odd-sized leg and the chairs were grossly uncomfortable. Paper place mats with maps of Italy adorned the tables along with the requisite Parmesan cheese and hot chili flakes shakers. Because of its size, waiting became the norm at Dante's, so take-out was often a more palatable option. The Dante's vehicles became recognizable friends in the area and one of the big jokes about the place was that they had more delivery cars than tables. The ordering experience was something to behold or "hold". Here was a typical ordering experience at Dante's.

Dante's operator: "Thank you for calling Dante's. Please hold!"

The Husband: "I have been holding for 15 f%*&@^g minutes!!!"

Dante's operator: (15 minutes later)" Thank you for holding. How may I help you?"

The Husband: (after placing the order) "How long will that be?" 

Dante's operator: "Well we are extremely busy this evening. (They were extremely busy every evening!) I would guess anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours!"

The Husband: "Ok, then!"

Why would we wait for up to 2 hours for pizza and pasta from a joint that is less than 5 minutes from my house? It was all about the food and especially the ambrosial tomato sauce. The food was to die for. The pastas were heavenly, in portions large enough for a family of four, the pizza divine (The Ying to the Lil Bro's Yang would often trek 1/2 hour out of her way to the northern part of the city in order to retrieve a pizza for her family) and the salads and sandwiches out of some other-world recipe book. For me, it was all about the sauce. If I could have figured out how to mainline the stuff, I would have. And then, the unthinkable happened. Dante's went upscale.

A year ago, we in the neighbourhood became aware of a new and decidedly un-Dante's like menu. Gone were many of the take-out favourites, (although you can still get some of the pastas at the eat-in restaurant) every pasta came in platter sizes that were ridiculously priced, the salads were generic and the pizzas bland. The food began arriving cold and wilted and the sauce seemed to have lost its zing. The prices have gone up while the quality of the food has decreased. The money seems to have been spent on sprucing up the restaurant. Gone are the rug stains and paper place mats, only to be replaced by a wine menu, soft lighting and wooden flooring. They have also opened up a second location. Recognizing that change can be difficult, The Husband and I have attempted to remain loyal to our favourite joint, but our last meal there on Saturday was truly our last. The pasta was cold and the chicken greasy. The salad looked like it was 2 days old and the sauce so very disappointing. When The Husband attempted to send an e-mail complaint, he was greeted by an automated response that was obviously being re-directed to a corporate hack. They still have not responded to his concerns. We think that some larger restaurant entity has bought a huge chunk in the family business and is now controlling the show. How very sad. 

Dante's was one of those places that was a constant; a neighbourhood landmark that remained for decades despite bad economies, changing food tastes and diets. In their zeal to clean up the location, they forgot the basic tenet of running a successful restaurant-"IT'S ALL ABOUT THE FOOD, STUPID!!!"

The Passover Seder Symbols Song

A little something to get us into the Pesach planning mood. Enjoy!

Gloria Steinem on Outrageous Acts

Happy 75th Ms Steinem. You continue to inspire, challenge and motivate women everywhere.
http://outrageousacts.org

We Canadians Can Take a Joke-When It is Funny!

There has been much made of the tasteless, wholly insensitive and grotesque segment that aired on Fox News' semi-satirical crapfest known as Red Eye. On the same day that we as a nation lost four more soldiers to the conflict in Afghanistan bringing the ignominious total to 116, some pinheads over at the "faux news" network decided that it would be a laugh riot to ridicule Canada's contribution to the military struggle in that hellhole of a country. Well, guess what Big Brother? We here in the Great White North aren't laughing. We find it difficult to laugh at the images of flag-draped coffins coming home. We tend not to chuckle when our contributions to aid our allies are lampooned. It is true that we are quiet, peace-loving, hockey rabid, and a bit pedantic, but we tend to get pissed off when such blind ignorance to our existence is shown by our nearest and supposedly dearest friends. While it may be true that we are not a country that is well-known for our military prowess, we have a long and proud history of  engagement that would make the morons at Red Eye blush with ignorance. 

• Canada enter the fray in both World Wars ahead of the Americans. In World War I, we followed Great Britain (we were bound as a subservient) to arms in August of 1914. While we were not at liberty to refuse the call, we did have the independence to choose our level of involvement. The United States did not enter the war until April of 1917. The per capita death casualty rate for Canada during the Great War was approximately .9% while the US had a per capita loss rate of approximately .54%. During World War II, Canada declared war on Germany a mere week after Great Britain did following the invasion of Poland in 1939. This time, it was not incumbent upon us to follow the British, but we did and in huge numbers. 1.1 million Canadian men served with the allied forces, and more than 45,000 lost their lives. The Americans didn't come into the war until after Pearl Harbour in December of 1941. On June 6th, at the Battle of Normandy, Canadians landed on Juno Beach. Resistance was fierce and casualty rates were high, as much as 50% in the first waves. "By day's end, however, the Canadians had made the deepest penetrations inland of any of the five seaborne invasion forces."
• We were a major part of the UN forces in Korea. Almost 27,000 troops were deployed to Korea and there were over 1,500 casualties. 
• We have a long and proud history as participants in peace-keeping deployments from Somalia to The Balkans to the Middle East.
• It is true that we did not actively provide military support in either Viet Nam or Iraq, but that was mostly because a case could not be adequately made to Parliament that our chief ally was being threatened by either country.

Canadian forces have been deployed in Afghanistan since the very early days of the mission. Our soldiers have been in one of the most dangerous regions of the country and have suffered 4 times the casualty rate of any country with troops there, including the Americans. We are sensitive about this war. Thinking and feeling people should be. So forgive us if we find it a wee bit difficult to laugh at the shit that was spewed on Fox. 

41 with 3 Kids and Apparently Over-the Hill!

I have never been a huge Julia Roberts fan. I have enjoyed a few of her movies and I have been bored by many others, but I certainly recognize that the woman has had a remarkable movie career. She broke through a glass ceiling in terms of compensation at a time when Hollywood was all about male action stars and adolescent testosterone-driven teen comedies. She was one of the first female stars to be recognized as having the ability to carry a film on her name alone, and she was one of the few female stars who carried enough clout to get pet projects to the screen. There was a time, not so long ago that Julia's name alone was enough to drive the numbers at the box office. But, that was so last century. 

You see, Julia has taken a couple of years off from the movie making business in order to attend to her personal life. Over the past several years she and her husband have had 3 children, and she has effectively scaled back her professional responsibilities to a few small roles and some voice-over work. She has done what millions of working women the world over have done-choose. Yes of course, Julia's financial situation makes her choices easier. She has options that most women can only dream of, but in Julia's business face time is money. She knowingly removed herself willingly from the public consciousness in order to parent, and she had to understand that there might be professional consequences. Hollywood is, after all, nothing if not amnesiac and cruel. 

This week marked Julia's return to the big screen. Her movie, Duplicity hit theatres this past weekend and in the minds of the Hollywood press, is a bit of a box-office disappointment. Despite fairly decent reviews, (Rotten Tomatoes has its average at 65% fresh!) the unbelievably hot Clive Owen and a smart and sexy plot, the flick finished third behind the universally panned Nic Cage stinker (A quick commercial message. Older Son saw that this was a piece of crap coming down the pike in his online column Trailer Trash) and the undoubtedly hysterical bromance I Love You, Man. There are probably many reasons as to why Julia and Clive finished third in this week's box-office. (Young men are the target audiences for most movies and a romantic thriller is probably not their idea of a cool 2 hours.) But, the most offensive and totally misogynistic theory  that I have heard today, is that she is too old, too maternal and no longer viewed by the public as available and sexy. Julia Roberts??? I get that the entertainment business is a youth-driven environment, but this is Julia Roberts! Angelina Jolie has six kids and she has never been accused of being viewed as maternal. Jennifer Aniston is 40 and she seems to have the sexy-thing going! Why is the Hollywood press feeling the need to justify perceived disappointment of a fairly decent 14 million dollar box office, by using Julia and her age as the apparent scapegoat? Maybe the not so ideal weather on the east coast kept women and the intellectual elite (we are way too smart to go out in the rain, snow and cold!) at home? Maybe the financial crisis has hit this target audience pretty hard and movies have become somewhat of a luxury? Maybe, just maybe (although I cannot fathom a reason why!) audiences don't like Clive Owen as opposed to Julia? 

I am so very weary of feeling that as a 46 year old woman, I am totally ignored by the media. I rarely see depictions of women like me in magazines, movies, TV shows, commercials and the like. I am tired of feeling like these images are what passes for some Hollywood mogul's skewed view of reality. But, if a woman like Julia Roberts is now feeling the heat, then I know that I am in some fairly respectable company. I am now making plans to see Duplicity, not because I have a burning desire to be entertained by Ms. Roberts, but because I feel a kindred need to add to her box-office totals. Come on girls! Show the assholes in the suits who is boss!

Making the Most of the Final Few Days

I am headed home to the north country tomorrow. It has been an interesting (to say the very least!) experience to spend an extended period of time in the southern part of the continent. I have regaled you all with stories of shopping, driving, politics, parking, dismal manners, behaviour and language that could make a sailor blush. I have enjoyed nature, strengthened relationships, forged new ones and attempted to clear my head and start anew. I thought that I had seen it all, but apparently the denizens of South Florida weren't quite done with me. 

Two separate incidents yesterday convinced me that, contrary to popular beliefs, this area is far from being God's waiting room. The dating, mating and social culture is alive and well, no matter how old the participants. In the first episode, I had the extraordinarily odd sensation of watching my father flirt. Now, please understand me. My father is so entirely clueless as to the machinations of the female psyche, that he had absolutely no idea that he was in fact flirting, but that is exactly what he was doing. Sitting at the pool yesterday, we were happy to make the acquaintance of 7 or so middle-aged nurses on vacation from Montreal. These women were laughing, drinking and having a grand old time. My dad, always the social butterfly and never able to harness his loquacious mouth, began to chat them up. By the end of the first quarter hour, he knew every name, job description, where they resided and had begun to play the "do you know" game. One 40-something was so taken with Dad, that she parked herself in an adjoining cot and spent the better part of the next hour with him. These ladies were so smitten, that they insisted on coming together for a group photo, with my father parked squarely in the centre. I should advise that my mother was sitting directly to his right, but was completely ignored throughout the entire spectacle. Mom turned to me and laughingly stated that it has become increasingly apparent to her that if, God forbid, she should go first, Dad won't even be out there on the market for the duration of shloshim, (thirty days!) so she has decided to make him sign a waiver ensuring a respectful period of time. Women will be pounding on his door with casseroles and cookies in hand. He is quite the operator, my father is. I honestly think that I could have done without the sexualization of my Dad, but it was funny.

But, turnabout is fair play. Later in the day, my parents (all four of them!) and I were doing some after-dinner shopping at a warehouse-style store called BJs. (In light of the topic of this post, I find the name slightly ironic.) Since I had absolutely nothing to purchase and because the store was freezing, Mom and I decided to wait out front in the warm evening air. We were just chatting when a 60-something man pushing a cart approached us and asked if we were ok. Assuring him that we were just fine, we joked with him about possible frostbite from the indoor air conditioner. He laughed and then, quite disturbingly commented on how beautiful my smile was. (Now, I haven't been hit on in years and here I am being approached by a man at least 20 years my senior. OY!) Mom and I doubled over in gales of laughter and when Dad joined us he thought that we were shitting him. As we walked to the car, the same guy pulled up next to me in his van and (I absolutely swear this is the God's honest truth!) called me over using the name "Beautiful Smile Girl,"(gag me!!) handed me his card and told me to call him to get together for a drink. My father was slightly horrified and my mother was laughing so hard she couldn't see straight. She grabbed the cards and made certain to dispose of them. (I am not quite certain as to what she thought that I might do with them, but she wasn't taking any chances!) I contacted The Husband to tell him of my potential suitor, stupidly thinking that he might like to defend my honour. He responded that sluts don't have any honour to defend and that picking up a guy in the BJs parking lot was certainly slut-like behaviour. That's my guy!!

It just goes to show that the battle of the sexes is alive, well and kicking it up here in Miami. Maybe it is all of that sunshine that gets the engines revving. In northern climates, we are quite content to hibernate. See you back in TO!

Dolphin Bubbles: Science Behind this Amazing Behavior

OK! So I haven't seen the dolphins in my cove again, but I thought that this might explain some of my fascination with these incredible animals. Beautiful, magnificent, breathtaking. Enjoy!