Tuesday, August 31, 2010

EN by YAKUDO

Calling all taiko fans!

Mark your calendars!!

On Sunday, October 3rd, 2010, Yakudo Traditional Japanese Drummers will be performing 2 shows in Richmond Hill, ON (just north of Toronto). I have been an apprentice with Yakudo for the past 18 months and lovin' every minute of it!

For tickets and more information, visit www.yakudo.com or www.rhcentre.ca

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Taste of the Danforth 2010

Chicken pita! Délicieux!!

Yuuuummmm! Souvlaki! Baklava!!
Here's a clip from a local news videocast about the Taste of the Danforth.
Toronto's Greektown hosts a fabulous street party every year with food, food and more food. Since there is a higher concentration of greek restaurants, the choices of greek food is wide and varied. But there is also variety with every restaurant, pub and store getting in on the action. Thai noodles, sushi, roasted corn, ice cream...the list goes on.

Culture crossroads!
We just got back from our afternoon of chicken souvlaki, baklava, spanikopita and so much more. It was a lot of walking but a lot of fun. There was a lot of people and so walking through the crowds was sometimes difficult. Line ups were long but seemed to move quickly. The challenge sometimes was to find the end of the line and to make sure you were standing in the right line!!! Most people are pretty courteous about waiting there turn. I've never seen people line jump for freshly squeeze lemondade or fried calamari.

Since streets are closed and parking is next to impossible, we decided to take the bus and subway. The girls were very excited to take the bus (Alia claimed it was the first time. Hard to believe but I guess we take the subway more often and they've rode the streetcar last summer). The bus ride was long but we brought some reading and it is sometimes just fun to look out the window. I think some of us napped a little too!

Our way home proved a little more difficult. We found out on the subway from passengers and muffled TTC announcements that our station was closed and riders had to find an alternate route to their destination. Great. We got off one stop early but now what? Guess we have to walk to the next subway station. The girls were real troupers. We stopped halfway to rest our feet and finish our slurpees from the 7eleven. We made it to Victoria Park Station only to find that busses were diverted too and we had to walk around a bit to figure out where to catch the bus. Luckily busses run every 5-10 minutes so the wait was next to nothing. The bus ride home seemed to go faster than the ride earlier in the afternoon.

Let's just say, when we got home, we put up our feet and relaxed. Not sure what I will have for supper tonight. Not very hungry right now!

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Ribfest 2010

What an interesting weekend. July 30 to Aug 2 was the Rotary Ribfest in Scarborough. What's a ribfest you might ask? Well...
Umm...where do we start?

The ribs were great. The pulled pork sandwiches were great. We tried the ribs from 2 different 'Ribbers'. We got a kick out of seeing all the trophies some of these teams have won. Most of them also sold their 'secret' sauces.
Ribs anyone?
The sign says it all!!!
Blooming Onion

On top of ribs and pulled pork and baked beans and coleslaw, if you were still hungry, you could try the Alabama lemonade, fruit smoothies, Mill St. beer on tap (not cheap!), fresh cut fries, blooming onions (which we shared one after sitting at the playground for half an hour to digest the ribs), roasted corn on the cob, ice cream truck treats and the list goes on.
Yummm! Pulled pork sandwich!!

We were glad we went on the Sunday. It was rock 'n roll day. They had a band playing classic rock tunes. The Saturday was 'country/western' day which we were happy to have missed! Gotta say that the food was good (to the point that we stopped by on the holiday Monday to pick up some pulled pork sandwiches to take to the beach for lunch).