Christmas 2007.

Turned out to be fairly tame. The cinema crew had the day off, while the Earl's boys were rostered on. And with Josh gone off to Calgary to spend his christmas with his brother and cousins, Cam and I spent the afternoon by ourselves.


This is where I spent my Christmas afternoon, practicing jumps on the shown tabletop. There's something so calming about being away from people and being surrounded by powder snow.

Anywho, we decided to head out to Earl's for dinner that night, as if Golden and Heathy hadn't had enough of the place already. It must've been the cheap beers and discounted meals. It turned out to be a good move though, as Heathy and Golden managed to get all six of us into the place eventhough it was quite packed.

Photo of my Christmas eve dinner.


Campbell not posing at all.


Golden smiling awkwardly at the camera.


Heathy and I being our natural handsome selves.


The man in the centre is Francis, a French-Canadian (from Montreal) who stayed with us at the YWCA for a while. We'll talk more about him later, but this was his first night in Banff. And he got to spend it with us. The poor bloke.


A poorly taken photo (by whoelse but Sanor Michael) of myself and comrade Jae. He is now our roommate at the Tunnel Mountain Resort (TMR)! More on him later also.

Here are some photos of the food;

Cam's Quesadilla.


My seafood penne. YUM.


Golden's shit on a plate, I mean prime ribs with potato salad.

We had few drinks there, and had some more when we got back our dorm room back at the Y, and that was about it for our Christmas.

Unfortunately Josh being away at Calgary and draining (and also being a lanky bastard; muttered angrily by Golden as I am typing this,) our plans to Kris Kringle this year was abandoned. So noone ended up with presents this Christmas.

That's about it, and here are some more photos from the night.

Jin

About the author

I’m Alex Rushmer, a freelance writer who specialises in food, cooking and all things edible.

In addition to creating the globally popular food blog Just Cook It where I document my culinary adventures, my writing has been featured in a range of publications including Waitrose Food Illustrated, the Financial Times, Home Farmer, Cambridgeshire Agenda and Portfolio Magazine.

Previously I’ve tackled challenges from molecular gastronomy to charcuterie and am available for commissions large and small. Click here to email me any enquiries, requests, comments or thoughts.

In 2010 I cooked my way to the final three of Masterchef, a competition to find the best amateur cook in the UK. I finished runner-up along with Tim Kinnaird losing out to the incredibly talented Dhruv Baker. During my time on the show I created a wide array of orginal and modern British dishes. My next challenges will involve writing a book and opening a restaurant. Best get cracking then...

Lake Louise.

Much has happened since Golden's post but I figure writing about everything in one long and boring blog post would be lame so here is a brief look at Lake Louise instead.

Last Saturday (22/12) Michael and I ditched the drainers who were either working or being lazy and went up to Lake Louise for a full day of skiing. I decided to take my camera up as well, and it turned out to be a good move because the sun was shining, ever so brightly.

The photos don't really do the place justice but here they are nonetheless.

Lake Louise from the front.

Golden and myself in the gondola.

View from the top.

View from the hills. The second shot is especially nice, if I do say so myself!

These next few were taken from the chairlift;

Golden looking out into the sun, I don't know why, because it would've hurt his eyes, but I guess it's okay since he's a big poser anyway.

Who is this handsome looking man I wonder?

and here is one more for the Golden family.

Beautiful.

So that was a little something about Lake Louise, hopefully I can take some good photos throughout the season, of the mountain as well as of the guys.

We are stuck at the crappy YWCA until the 2nd of Jan, so it might be hard to blog again for a few days but it should be all smooth sails from then.

Happy new year to everyone,






Jin.

Soba Totto

December 28

Hungry for a little something after work last night, I popped my head into a new place that the very enterprising people at Urban Daddy alerted me to, Soba Totto (211 East 43rd Street, between Second and Third avenues, 212-557-8200. For more descriptions of the place, please take a look at this entry and this one. Thank you).
Not surprisingly, the restaurant’s specialty is Japanese buckwheat noodles, called soba. Also not surprisingly, sitting with the owner and some guy from Chicago, was Grub Street’s Josh Ozersky.
Josh seemed, oh, I don’t know, maybe just a tiny bit troubled that I, too, had heard of Soba Totto, which had just opened a couple of days earlier. Maybe he doesn’t subscribe to Urban Daddy, or maybe it’s his week off and he hasn’t been reading his e-newsletters. People do need a week off from time to time, you know.
Josh is probably best known for his job as editor of New York magazine’s food blog, but what he really is is a meat expert — hence his nickname, Mr. Cutlets — and he was gracious enough to send me a galley of his soon-to-be-published book, The Hamburger: A History, for an article I’m working on. It’s a terrific read, clever and witty, informative and sometimes strident in that way that Josh can be with regard to subjects pertaining to meat (I think we amused casual listeners with our conversation about deckle at the reopening-party of Picholine).
To wit (from his book):
"To admit ground beef on toast as a hamburger is to make the idea of a ‘hamburger’ so loose, so abstract, so semiotically promiscuous as to have no meaning."
Because hamburgers come on a bun, you see.
He's right, of course.
Anyway, I ate at Soba Totto’s bar, which is sleek and decked out in earth and wood tones. Behind it are young, hip-looking Japanese chefs, heads covered with urbane-Japanese-looking versions of do-rags, grilling things with a sort of casual earnestness.
Soba Totto is owned by the same people as Yakitori Totto, and so grilled meats are another restaurant specialty.
I had two draft beers (Kirin, I believe) assorted Japanese pickles, a skewer of chicken oysters (the “oyster” is the bit of meat on the chicken’s lower back, just above the thigh, that is highly prized by certain meat aficionados, maybe including Josh, although I can’t say for sure) and a bowl of hot soba with "poached egg” although really it was more of a swirled egg in the style of egg drop soup.

A 16-ounce Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee is 16 ounces

December 27

If I’m doing the math right, only about 11 percent of you come here unbidden, just clicking on your bookmark and landing here. A fair amount, but fewer than half on most days, are referred here by one of the nice web sites that link to this blog. The rest come because of keyword searches — because some combination of words I used match the ones that you typed into a search window.
Sometimes I think that my blog delivers what you’re looking for. If you’re interested in finding out more about the bull named Prime in Kentucky, I’ve written about that. If the keyword search prime the bull ky had another meaning that I choose not to speculate about, well, then I’m sorry. If you have been wondering about James Bond’s taste in Martinis I’ve written about that, too. Curious to find others who prefer their tomatoes cooked? You’ve found one here.
But I don’t know when popcorn was invented or what Jimi Hendrix liked to eat. I don’t know about the sexual orientation of Mario Batali (not that it’s any of your business), but I do know that he has thanked his wife (“without whom I would be nothing,” he said) at award ceremonies.
Incidentally, "Mario Batali" and "gay" apparently are referred to in close proximity fairly often. One person who used those key words made it to this blog, even though it was the 40th entry in a Google search.
As for Pedro Yanowitz, I heard that he recently married (a woman).
A disconcertingly common keyword search that brings people here is dog fuke woman. I don’t know exactly what you’re looking for with that search, but I hope you spelled it right.
Let me take a brief moment to answer some other questions implied by the searches.
I think I’d like a creamy gorgonzola with Poire William.
Jeans can count as smart casual, depending on how you wear them.
Anything will help you lose weight if you just eat less of it, but I'm not sure how to loose weight.
I’m not sure how you comb a fauxhawk (pronounced fo-hock), but I believe it requires a lot of gel.
Tony Esnault is a man.
As for the other keyword searches listed below, well, I just don’t know what to say (I apologize for the first one, but it did lead some troubled soul to this blog entry):

after dinner seduction mother
are laura cunningham and thomas keller back together
bad booths at the national restaurant show
bathroom plants
candied sturgeon
cheese to pair with poire william
cork braised octopus
do jeans count as smart casual
does chrysanthemums,walnut, rose, green raisin help loosing weight
dog fuke woman
estrogen food
forehead sweating standing in line
fuke woman
give me a speech on tomato ceviche apptezier
hate raw tomato
how does james bond order his martini, shaken, not stirred
how to arrange bongos for wow
how to comb faux hawk
how to eat eggplant?
how to seem smarter than you are
i grew a goatee
interesting words about chrysanthemums
is pedro yanowitz gay?
james bond martini vespa
jean-georges chef what is his wifes name and is she black
jimi hendrix favorite foods
mario batali gay
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prime the bull ky
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what happened to rocco dispirito
what size is a 16 ounce dunkin donuts iced coffee
what was jimi hendrix's' favorite food
when was popcorn invented