Christmas in Kingston, sort of

This past Saturday, the Kingston annual Christmas parade at night. That's right, we gotta be different.

 Not to be confused with the line up outside of Stages.

 Yeah, there really was no po-po presence.

 Here it comes!

Kingston is home to the World Champion Town Crier, dontcha know. Apparently his official duties have taken him to Australia, Belgium, England, Ireland, across Canada and the US to cry in praise of Kingston. I'm not sure if that posse follows him around permanently, but if I were him I would probably force them to.

Apparently his promotional duties did not include looking at the camera. Fucker.

The historical costume society (I'm not capitalizing that... ) followed by the RMC's flotilla device.

 Not RMC's flotilla device.

 They're everywhere, probably because they get free money and a place to drink beer.

 Most floats looked like this: a big truck hauling a trailer full of garbage and people.

Not sure what this thing is doing here. The #4 runs like this all year around here in Kingston. Also, an extremely drunk/high guy got out of this bus in front of us; apparently Bagot and Princess was his stop.

That's a good costume. 

Big trucks with Christmas lights. At least there was an effort. The mayor of Kingston drove through in a black Chrysler with a magnet on his door stating that he was in fact the mayor. He did not wave his hands and was alone in the car. I will not speculate as to what he was doing with his hands alone in the car.

The abrupt stop this thing made was pretty hilarious...

Not officially part of the parade. This is how the Kingston kids dress these days. 

 

And of course you have the Harry Potter float. 

We skipped the lighting of the tree, mostly because we were freezing and relatively bored (really, an hour of this is more than enough once a year), and instead opted for beer and burgers at the Kingston Brew Pub. Walking back, we found evidence it was in fact lit, and found its obvious sponsorship partner next door.

Glowing full moon between the best tree silhouette I could find.

Want to enter next year? Of course you do. And so do I. Julia looked up the application process. Official entry fee is $150, but you can easily work it down to $80 with a little creativity.

http://www.downtownkingston.ca/files/09%20non%20commercial%20application...pdf

I already got some ideas.

Anton Kuerti Albert.

In an effort to not be stuck behind a computer screen nearly 20 hours a day, Albert and I (Jesus I love the name Albert... I'm not sure why. High up there in the alphabet, nice and simple, yet complex... There's something intelligent, noble about it. There's also this amazing song:



Unfortunately it's incomplete here... like this blog post. Anyway, so yeah, Albert and I are heading to see Anton Kuerti tonight. Whatever, let me get back to Albert for a second. So, we go to this party for first year law schoolers. Not only does he make springrolls for everyone, but he plays piano for half the night! And like, not annoying piano either! Apparently I got a man crush.

Anyway, what was I saying?.. ah yes, Anton Kuerti is playing tonight, yada yada yada. Read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Kuerti

I wonder if Albert will accompany me on cello for Lawlapalooza. We could make sweet, sweet music together, me and that man....

Umm, why didn't anyone tell me about this sooner?

This is pretty awesome. I'm kinda wanting to set up my own competing google maps website just to have to do this.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32330625/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets

The U.S. company has hired two young cyclists to ride through gardens, historical sites and other pedestrian-only areas on the device to take thousands of digital photos.

"The idea is to be able to offer 360-degree images of places that were inaccessible before," Google spokesperson Anne-Gabrielle Dauba-Pantanacce said in an interview.

Update: Oh yeah, so in my excitement about this idea, I forgot to mention how I fell into this tidbit. I met up with Julia at the Toucan; thank you!!! I blew her mind discussing the implications of the 1927 Solvay conference on the Heizenberg Principle, and she blew mine telling me how disappointed she is in her high school friends. Post coming up on that soon. In all seriousness, it was fun and will be needing to do it again shortly, and she's generally brilliant.

Joel Plaskett's rider, etc..

What’s on your rider? Evian, potato chips and a bottle of Jameson.

What are your favourite and least favourite venues? My favourite I’ve played is Massey Hall in Toronto. Incredible. My least favorite is the Big White Ski Resort outside Kelowna, British Columbia.

What’s your crowd-pleasing number? (Can I Go) Nowhere With You?

What’s the most you’ve paid for a gig ticket? Springsteen two nights in Philly last year. Couple hundred bucks.

See full list of Irish times questions here:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/theticket/2010/1119/1224283664776.html

Leonids

So I checked out the Leonids, and with a clear sky in the middle of nowhere, I managed to get a few shots, which I posted below... really, really nothing bad shots though, mind you.

The Leonids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. The Leonids get their name from the location of their radiant in the constellation Leo: the meteors appear to radiate from that point in the sky.

Earth moves through the meteoroid stream of particles left from the passages of a comet. The stream comprises solid particles, known as meteoroids, ejected by the comet as its frozen gases evaporate under the heat of the Sun when it is close enough – typically closer than Jupiter's orbit.

--

So, last night there was a Clerkship informational session with Justice Gilles, and beyond that it was really interesting (and something I'm thinking of trying for), the idea of SPACE LAW came up. Yeah, there is such a thing, and it is sounds awesome. "Yeah, I work at the The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs." I also love their first side-bar link, casually (and incorrectly, I guess...) "Whats new".

Space law encompasses national and international law governing activities in outer space. International lawyers have been unable to agree on a uniform definition of the term "outer space," although most lawyers agree that outer space generally begins at the lowest altitude above sea level at which objects can orbit the Earth, approximately 100 km. The inception of the field of space law began with the launch of the world's first artificial satellite by the Soviet Union in October 1957, named Sputnik 1.

--

Ok, then I started reading a bunch of articles on the moon (one thing lead to another) and I got onto helium 3.

Scientists estimate there are about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the world for thousands of years.

As reported in an Artemis Project paper, about 25 tonnes of helium-3 -- or a fully-loaded Space Shuttle cargo bay's worth -- could power the United States for a year. This means that helium 3 has a potential economic value in the order of $3bn a tonne -- making it the only thing remotely economically viable to consider mining from the Moon given current and likely-near-future space travel technologies and capabilities.

There's a pretty great and highly recommended 5 minute video here which will make you an expert on helium 3 mining on the moon.




In 2006 Nikolai Sevastyanov, head of the Russian space corporation Energia, was reported to have said that Russia is planning to mine lunar helium-3, with a permanent Moon base to be established by 2015 and industrial-scale helium-3 production to commence by 2020. The Americans also have plans, with NASA having announced its intention to establish a permanent base on one of the Moon's poles by 2024, and with helium-3 signalled as one of the reasons behind this mission.

A few weeks ago China launch a moon orbiter that has already sent back pictures. As reported by China View (because I obviously read China View), China is also in the race, and plans to put a man Moon by 2017. One of the goals of the mission will be to measure the thickness of the lunar soil and the amount of helium-3 on the Moon. There have also been reports that India, Japan and Germany are taking an interest in lunar exploration linked to helium-3 as a potential future nuclear fuel.

--

Anyway, apparently I'm already too late to the party; however, there is an actually fantastic Discovery Channel videogame -- that I blew about 2 hours playing last night waiting for the moon to fully set to watch those Leonids -- about rival nations mining Helium 3 on the moon.

\Ok, on with the Leonid pictures!

 Out to see the stars!

 Originally I thought I'd be able to see them from McBurney Park just down the street, but didn't realize it was so lit up.

Walked down by the water to Douglas Fluhrer (yup, that's how you spell it) Park... much more remote and darker, but as you'll see, probably not quite dark enough.

 Ok, so in this test shot (down by the lake), you should be able to make out the big dipper.

 Alright, the circled area above is the bottom end of Leo, where all the action happens. Compare the above and below images in that area...

See the difference? There's an meteor in there!

Here's a closer look.

Ok, so, maybe I had my camera settings off, maybe the "shower" was a bit/quite underwhelming, and just maybe it was too bright to take any decent photos. But, that's a meteor!

I ended up seeing maybe 15-20 shooting stars: 6-7 bright ones, 6-7 medium, 4-5 faint/non-existant/floaters. Basically a few less than what you would see on a summer cottage night. 

 pUniverse's augmented reality blows me away everytime. Basically, you point it at the sky and it tells you exactly what you're looking it, you name it. As long as you name stars, constellations, and the odd planet.

 

This isn't the augmented reality part, but it will still move the image as you move around the phone... really, really great.  

Remember this building Changer?

Alright, well, that's it for now, but look for posts on John Mighton, 4'33", and hummus making this weekend. Or not... you never know.

Sheezer - El Scorcho

ah Weezer.



I'll bring home the turkey if you bring home the bacon.

The pierogi incident

Hey!

Long time no talk eh?.. why, I've been busy, reading, making cuff links, writing blog posts and never finishing them or posting them, you know, the ush... well, actually, a couple days ago I made pierogies, from scratch!

So, a bit of backstory, I emailed my mom asking her for my aunt's recipe... it went pretty much like this:


Can you send me out a good recipe for pierogies (maybe cocia's? (ed: aunt's)). And what kind of sauerkraut and mushrooms she uses? I want to try to make them!

Thanks!

P**

M** P** to

Hi PETER!

i JUST finished talking w Ciocia,she wants to know when u coming?she will make for u to take .We both agreed that is time consuming plus needs practice,may be one day we will make them all of us together?


WHAT.EVS!!!

Geez, that email makes me feel like the biggest momma's boy loser ever. Maybe one day, Mom??!! I just want to make pierogies!

Also, I love how they both agreed (read: decided) that I should wait for them.... lol!

Just kidding mom, I love you. Actually, re-reading that email, it's kinda sweet, but if you're going to play a new character in this blog you're going to have to roll with the obnoxiousness. Just hold your head high and look where it got Spenny.

Anyway, so I pretty much took this as a personal challenge. I mean, I have this potluck on tuesday and I volunteered to bring some food (I suppose that's what one does for a potluck), and I didn't just want to bring something like a bag of chips and vodka (all the girls are used to that already). So, I narrowed it down to my vegetarian lasagna or ... I pretty much got nothing else. I searched the internet for a bit, and thought, meh, pierogies.

I'm not about to buy pierogies from No Frills. I mean, really? Also, being the only Polish person within 200 kilometers limited my options. So, after getting some huge help from home (I'm kidding! :), I ventured onto this thing called the internet and found this recipe:

http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/pierogi-polish-dumplings/Detail.aspx

Ok, it go good reviews, and looks legit. I'm not about to make potato pierogies. I don't like them and they can go fuck themselves.

I also made a few amendments to the sauerkraut mix. I doubled the onions in the filling and added 1/3 cup diced mushrooms. I ended up making one spicy batch and one garlic batch. The spicy batch actually weren't originally supposed to be spicy... I got a few peppers from Derek and Lisa's garden during a visit down to T.O. and decided to throw a few in... and man were they HOT!.. like, I like spicy food, and yeah, these were hot.

Kneading. Kneading is possibly the worst cooking experience in the world. You mix eggs, sour cream and flour, and you actually have to fight with your new creation for 20 minutes. Almost literally. It sticks to everything. I can't believe people still do this by hand. I have a new found respect for kneading machines. I now realize why they exist. Kneading totally sucks.

HAHA!.. my first dough roll! Four!... four pierogi! This was not going well. After about 20-30 minutes of preparing the dough, I got an output of four dough holes. ok. hmmm... what you want to do, those doing this for the first time, is try to get the dough thinner.

Here are those four pierogi.

This is all trial and error. They turned out fine.. well, perhaps not really. Perhaps they were a bit on the doughy side, and perhaps they were a tad waterlogged. Make sure you close up your damn pierogies, otherwise water gets in and they taste like garbage.

Ok, test number two... starting to slowly get the hang of things..

If that's not a thing of beauty, you are not a person of God.

Second batch!

These were keepers. Things I could feed to other people and not feel bad about. That above is 25 pierogi. I figured I needed to get to 75 to make a decent potluck meal... time to double my efforts. It's cool though.. the first two batches only took 5 hours.

What is that you ask? Why that's just two large bowls of soaking sauerkraut. You haven't seen that before?.. get outta town.

I wanted to get that caustic, stingy taste off them, and as recommended by the web, thoroughly soaking and rinsing a few times does the trick.

Also, on a side note, you'll be happy to know that the Brazilian nut effect also applies to sauerkraut in a liquid. As usual, Sixty Symbols also has a great video about this, err, not specific to sauerkraut however. 

Chopped up sauerkraut. No one like stringy pierogies.

This is one pierogi that didn't make it... it got waterlogged. But, as I was eating it, I got an idea, I never really thought of it before, and not sure if it's standard practice, but why do those burnt up caramelized crisps of onion need to be only the topping to a pierogi. I mean, why can't I just cook them right into the thing?.. And so I did.

Now we're cooking!

So, I went through my entire batch of second filling. 82 pierogi. As I got better economizing my dough and filling the pastries with more substance, I actually went though it quite quickly. I ended up having a load of dough left over, so I decided to take some frozen blueberries out of the freezer...

... doused them with sugar, and add a banana! Exclamation mark!

One thing that was a bit different about these was that they are a lot harder to fold. When you're folding the dough overtop of the filling, it is crucial not to allow any filling to escape through any cracks. Because the liquid sugar does not allow the dough to congeal (something to do with activating the gluten), any liquid that escaped formed a permanent hole in the fold. YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO CLOSE THAT HOLE. opps, caps lock. Yeah, you won't be able to close that hole; the dough won't congeal there. I had to be extra careful with these. There was certainly a higher attrition rate, but some delicious and unexpected desserts were born.

So, in the end, 82 sauerkraut pierogy, 25 of which are extra spicy, plus 26 blueberry and banana pierogi. I'm probably being biased here, but these things are unbelievable. Like, close to the best I've ever had. The sour cream in the dough really made them creamy, very unlike most I've had, and the carmelized onions inside just make the taste jump out. They're great on their own without toppings. Probably not that good for you (I may have added a bit of extra butter), but so delicious. I'll try to save a few for my next weekend visitors. Also, the blueberry banana pierogi are a bit sweet, but out of this world. Like, such an expected but pleasant flavour combination.

Helpful tips:

preamble: Obviously the hard part isn't the filling... it's so easy and so delicious. Just chop everything up real fine, pre-caramelize/crisp the onions, soak and rinse your sauerkraut, cook everything (mushrooms too) in a bit of butter for 15-20 minutes, and you're flying. No, the hard part is of course dealing with the dough. Fear the kneading.

1. Sticky dough? I wish someone told me to use a ton of flour. When kneading it, when rolling it, and especially when forming the pierogi. It really blows when you have shaped a great one only to find that you can't lift it off the counter. Don't use so much as to alter the recipe significantly (so the internet says), but be prepared and willing to coat all surfaces with flour.

2. Dough not spreading right for you? Stick it back in the fridge/freezer for a bit.

3. Make sure your perogies are closed before putting them into the boiling water! Waterlogged pierogies taste like garbage. To close them properly, moisten your fingers before you fold the delicious morcel, and pay special attention to where the flaps join! Yeah, that's right.

4. It is extremely time consuming. It took a good 7-8 hours for 100+ pierogies. This is obviously due to a first time thing, and a general lack of experience working with dough. My second, third and four batches already started to show improvement.

5. Don't eat the nice ones... they'll be plenty of deformed, drowned children for you to eat.

--
 
Also, as a bonus, here are two pictures from TEDxQueensU over the weekend. Sara, Jowi and Peter came up on Sunday to present...

Afterward we all went out with a bunch of friends to Curry Original, which, if you find yourself in Kingston for some 'reason', although nice, it is not as good Indian as Cafe India, which incidently is owned and run by Mitali's brother... ahhh, small world indeed.

Anyway, then I come back to this.

Just like home, eh Ma?!