ReNe: a new pan

A mundane post today because I'm quite tired at the moment. We bought a new saucepan today.

As always, easier said than done. We've been toying with the idea of getting a new one for a while as the current pan is slightly too shallow, but recently, the number of scratches has increased almost exponentially and the base is permanently stained now. Suddenly, there was a sense of urgency. And since we're buying a new pan, we don't want another teflon-coated pan, so probably a stainless steel pan. Mike wanted a cast-iron pan but I flatly refused because those things weigh a ton.

We had a look at some of the pans at Sears but while there were a couple of nice pans on offer, they were still really expensive, around $75-80. In the end, we went down to Ikea today after work, where we got a reasonable stainless steel pan for $30.

We both commented on something odd while waiting for the shuttle bus at Ikea, something we noticed the last times we were at Ikea as well -- it really feels like we're in a different country. Of course we are in a place foreign to us, but why should the strangeness strike us so starkly at that point in time, at Ikea? We were hard-pressed to explain. Perhaps it's Ikea itself -- the layout is almost the same as that of the Ikea store in Singapore, down to the location of the restaurant and kids area, but unlike the one in Singapore, this is more spacious and much, much less crowded. Even the food, and cutlery and tray and all, served at the restaurant are mostly the same, and yet there is no fighting for tables, no maître d' with a headset directing customers; in fact, the restaurant was less than a third full and it was around dinner time. Perhaps this strange juxtaposition of the familiar and strange created a sense that something was 'off', and that something is that we're in a foreign land.

So we eventually got ourselves a nifty new saucepan, and we're pretty pleased. This means no more unintended consumption of plastic (teflon).

MiKE: Don't store vinegar in the freezer

Ok. So, we went to T&T last evening. T&T is this huge Asian (predominantly Chinese) supermarket chain in Canada (someone said 'the biggest'). Let's just say that, like Ikea, it is rich enough to offer free shuttle service to and from convenient pick up locations. We bought quite a lot of stuff, including a 50-piece bag of Tako Yaki, which I just dumped into the basket without checking the price. The eventual bill exceeded $50, which was mysterious until we went home and found out that that bag of balls cost $17.99. Well, not the point of this post, I guess. Here are some pictures from T&T:

The entrance to T&T. This outlet was located at what seemed to be a near industrial estate part of the city, not far from downtown by straight line distance, but not well served by mass public transport. Large place, as you can see:

Outside, we were just next to a dock, with a pair of huge cranes that I think are used to lift vessels out of water and into dry storage; there seemed to be a storage area of sorts nearby. In this shot, you get bonus point for locating CN Tower:
And as you can see, the water is nearly frozen over. Made for a rather pretty scene.

We had dinner there. I bought supermarket sushi, which, even though was priced at 75c per piece, added up to a price that was comparable to that which you can get at restaurants. Sushi here, I've noticed, as with some other restaurants, tend to have rice which was mushed up, slightly too wet and slightly too compacted, not fluffy enough. Serene bought a dim sum set, which came with siu mai that was the juiciest that we had tasted in some time.

T&T has this free seating area, that does not have those odious large "NO OUTSIDE FOOD ALLOWED" signs. But then again, the closest place to here that sold food was at least 15 minutes walk away, so I guess they were in no danger of losing rent. I like the concept, a place where people could sit down, enjoy the food that they just bought, sit down for a rest after a tiring shopping trip, and generally feel attached to the place.

Ok, here's the part where I talk about the title. Like I mentioned, we bought a bottle of Mizkan Japanese brown rice vinegar. Brought it back, with no mishaps, then wanted to store it in someplace cool. The fridge was getting somewhat crowded, and I remembered that the Oden seasoning, water, salt, and flavourings, did not freeze in the freezer. So I thought to try the same; put the bottle in the freezer.

This morning, while preparing breakfast, I noticed a faint sour odour, which I could not trace to anything in particular; until Serene suggested that it resembled vinegar. And then I remembered. Here is a normal bottle of vinegar for comparison; this was the old bottle:

And this is what happened when the vinegar froze:



Pretty hur? Yes yes, I know all about water expanding upon freezing, but I really did not expect that the vinegar solution to freeze over too. Yes it was a waste, but anyway, it was useful in providing something of visual interest?

Update: The frozen vinegar melted away, and the bottle sort of disintegrated. It seems like the bottle had been held together by the label, and the bulk of the frozen vinegar preventing it from collapsing. I wanted to pick up the bottle, and it just broke up:

MiKE: Spending Money (II)

So, the second part of this long overdue update concerns the actual spending of money. As I mentioned, Serene moved here, and to accommodate our stuff, we had to get some additional furniture. Besides the shelf, we bought a few more items to aid the organization of stuff, like plastic drawer sets, some kitchen stuff for baking (mixing bowl etc), and a desk lamp, 60W maximum, which of course I stuffed with a 29W CFL (125W incandescent brightness equivalent), making it the brightest light in the room. Not many items. Still, the largest purchase was the shelving unit, which is quite insidious - they sell the parts separately, frames, shelf, brace; individually, the items don't seem that expensive, but when it comes together, it all adds up.

The other thing we'd been spending money on was eating out. Since we had to go to the Spadina Avenue (specifically Chinatown) branch of the bank to open our accounts, we found ourselves 'conveniently' drawn to the restaurants there, and we discovered at least 2 more relatively good eating establishments, one serving Hong Kong cuisine with the obligatory HK 'tude, and another serving good Vietnamese beef pho and vermicelli. Both places were quite affordable, with roast duck noodles going at $3.75, and fried rice enough for 3 large eaters at $6.95 or so.

And, since we made at least 2 trips to Chinatown to do the banking thing, and a few more toward Queen Street and Eaton Centre to try to get a good jacket for Serene, we ended up eating out once a day for almost the whole of last week, which also adds up.

And, since we're on the topic of jackets, I'd take the opportunity to exclaim how expensive it can get to acquire a cold wear wardrobe (yes, yes, this is pretty old news). When I came here in late August, some of the mornings and evenings got quite cool, but even so, I found the jackets I brought, a fabric bomber jacket and a boardskiing shell, very adequate. As the seasons changed toward end Autumn and the temperatures got stuck at 10-15ºC, I found, and bought, a rather classic mid thigh length woolen (well, not quite. 85% wool) jacket, and was happy for about a month. Then, temperatures dipped some more, into the 5-10ºC range, and I found a synthetic fill insulated jacket from Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC), an outdoor store which serves much of Canada, and that helped for about another month. I've been realizing that the MEC jacket is quite good for when the temperatures are above freezing, but any colder, and the jacket does not provide adequate coverage for my thighs, and no matter how much I tug the tension cords, cold air still seems to seep its way up from under the jacket.

Serene did not have it any much better: all she had in terms of warm clothes was a synthetic fill insulated jacket which we bought in Hanoi for perhaps 10% of the retail price in N. America (and which, by now, had been compressed and lost its ability to loft and trap warming air), a full length trenchcoat from a thrift store which looks a 1/2 size too big, a genuine plastic leather lookalike 3/4 length raincoat like trenchcoat, and many sweaters and vests.

So we both needed something that could help us cope with: snow, -15 to -10 ºC temperatures, and wind. Sound easy? From our (understandably limited) experience, we wanted something that had a hood (Serene wanted something with fur lining, but I was a bit worried that the fur would get into the eyes); had a sturdy and thick cotton shell for abrasion resistance and some measure of windproofness; had some sort of fill insulation; and was 3/4 length - long enough to cover the thigh, but not too long as to restrict motion or get muddy when walking in melted snow-ice.

We spent literally days walking around town, ducking into stores large and small, chain stores, department stores, entrepreneur-run places, looking at different jackets, looking at what people wore, how cold they seemed to be, and eventually, we managed to stumble upon an impressive looking jacket, whose claim to fame was that it was standard issue for the US Antarctic Program. It was expensive. We went back, did some digging around, found a $32 discount coupon (the store celebrated its 32nd anniversary this year), bought Serene's jacket on that coupon, but could not find my jacket till the 26th, boxing day, when, to great joy, there was a 15% discount! What can I say, we were both very happy! and warm!

A shot of us together along Spadina Avenue, looking east. Looks a bit overkill, yes, but you need to know what we were wearing underneath - just a long sleeve t-shirt, that's all, and the temperature that day was about 5ºC.

We figured we needed some really competent jackets because we did not want to spend winter indoors; we'd like to be able to walk outside, and sometimes at a leisurely pace, to pause and take pictures, and not have to rush from heated domicile to heated transport to heated establishment to heated transport to heated domicile. This is us, walking around on Christmas evening:
Christmas here is pretty much like CNY back in sg; there is the reunion pig out on the eve, and then, for the religious, midnight mass at the churches and cathedrals, and then Christmas day itself is much like family visit time. The slight change is that the shopping spree is done on boxing day, where there are seriously good bargains worth waking up early and braving the hangover for.
The harbourfront centre, with the pond now frozen over to serve as skating rink.

The Nathan Phillips Square outside the Parliament House also had a portion converted to skating rink:
Apparently, there is going to be a huge countdown thing happening on the eve. Still wondering if I should go. Generally, we don't like crowds, but then again, this is going to be an interesting experience.

Speaking of crowds, the one at Eaton Centre on boxing day must take the cake for density. There were queues everywhere, security only allowing people to enter once patrons left, and an incredible sense that the place was so packed that they could simply save money and not need to turn on the heating. We did not bring a camera with us that day, but two days later, the crowds were still non-trivial. The stores had expanded the event to the entire week to call it boxing week and a means of driving up sales:

And yes, with understaffed conditions and everybody digging around to find a good bargain, the inevitable result in many stores is chaos:
To be honest, many of the stores did not have really good bargains, they were taking the opportunity to clear stock, (yes yes, all retailers do that) and even at the prices that were on sale, we did not find the items good value for money, they were neither well designed nor look particularly durable. So, we did not feel bad leaving the place empty handed; and in any case, we were not big consumers inured in the shopping culture, nor was there any risk that we could be inducted.

Eaton Centre's Christmas tree had Swarovski crystal adornments, making it really glittery:

Elsewhere, it was also very crowded; here is a shot along Dundas Street West, looking eastward:
Doesn't really look like Toronto downtown, eh? First time I saw this, it occurred to me that, minus some cues, this could easily be Hanoi or Hong Kong or somewhere in the PRC.

Serene posing before a grocer. There were many such stores around Chinatown, some of them with less than glowing hygiene standards.

Another shot looking down Dundas Street. I was trying to draw attention to the signboards, but I think the lighting conditions are not ideal:

And the last one for this (long) post. We'd like to think that snow is all beautiful and clean and pretty and white. But the reality of it is that that's probably true, for the first few hours after it falls. Very quickly, especially in cities, dirt takes over, and snow quickly becomes a place where one avoids (especially since that day I saw this guy spit at the snow pile...):


Not too good a way to finish off a post eh? Too bad, all the pretty pictures were used already.