Two Signs that Puzzled Me

Walking on Elgin Street today, I glanced into the Standard. Their chalkboard said "Hockey, Sushi, Quarts... What more could you want?"

Even though watching hockey bores me, nothing leapt to mind.

But, it looks like they erased something between "Hockey" and "Sushi".

Could it be there is something more you could want that they ran out of?

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On Gladstone, I passed this car with a bumper sticker directing us to support organic farmers. Do you think there might be a more effective way to promote the people who grow food without using synthetic fertilisers, pesticides and growth regulators than by placing stickers on gasoline-powered vehicles?

Uses for Plastic Containers - PET sea creatures

close up jelly fish, Volvic water bottle, 2005 by Miwa Koizumi

Zoom, one of Ottawa's most generous bloggers sent me an email today that said:

I saw this and immediately thought of you and Megan and the quest for alternative uses for plastic containers: http://miwa.metm.org/PET_project/index.html It's extraordinarily astroidean, don't you agree?

I do agree! And I bet Megan will be totally into it when she sees that soldering irons and heat guns are involved!

Uses for Binder Clips - Poster Display

Megan's heroic Eric is not only a fine spider-removal man, he is also an expert user of binder clips. Today he sent me a link to a photo of a poster he has carefully displayed with four binder clips.

Of course, an observant reader would have noticed his binder clip usage back when Megan gushed about him a couple of weeks ago.

(Some bloggers might be concerned that Megan will not be gushing when she finds out that Eric gave me this scoop before giving it to her, but not me. All this lovey-dovey stuff is okay I suppose, but if this provokes a fight that livens up her blog, not only do I get a scoop, but we'll all have something exciting to read.)

Uses for Binder Clips - Parchment Bag Cooking

Weeks and weeks and weeks ago, the Other Kerri sent me a clipping of an article describing binder clips used for en papillote (or "parchment bag") cooking. It thrilled me that she'd been so kind, that it was a completely new use of binder clips and it was a cooking method I had never heard of!

So why has it taken me so long to post it? Well you see, she got the clipping from Cook's Illustrated magazine and when I went to their website it became clear that while some of their content is online and can be linked to, this article was behind their subscriber firewall.

So, I could have written them and asked for permission to reproduce the article that Kerri sent me, but I didn't because it annoyed me that they didn't make the content freely available in the first place. Especially because it looks like they got the idea from a contributor, Jana Volavka, and all she probably got was a free issue of the magazine or something.

There are all sorts of places you can go on the web to find out about cooking en papillote. Until a few minutes ago, none of them mentioned the use of binder clips. But now in Wikipedia we see:

En Papillote (French: "in parchment") is a method of cooking in which the food is put into a folded pouch or parcel and then baked. The parcel is typically made from folded parchment paper, but other material such as a paper bag or metal foil may be used. The parcel holds in moisture to steam the food.

The moisture may be from the food itself or wine, butter, water, oil or another moisture source may be added.

En Papillote is perhaps most often used to cook fish. Choice of herbs, seasonings and spices depend on the particular recipe being prepared.

The pouch may be sealed with careful folding or through the use of staples, paper clips or binder clips.

External Links A basic Fish en Papillote recipe How To: Cooking en Papillote Using Reynolds® Parchment Paper

This is the beauty of Wikipedia: If it is missing something important, it can be fixed.

Meanwhile, I'm not even going to give a link to Cook's Illustrated. If they want to guard their intellectual property that carefully, they can't expect free advertising.

Uses for Plastic Containers - Spider Removal

I've been feeling bad about not providing more clever uses for plastic containers,^{Note 1} and so I am happy to report that Megan's gallant beau, Eric, came up with a use I would not have thought of: Spider Removal.^{Note 2}

The photo shown here is the used container and lid after it had been used and placed in the recycling. In deference to Megan's phobia, you will have to imagine for yourself the spider it held.

Note 1: One idea I had for containers was using them to make space helmets for your puppets. But it turns out that my puppets all have heads that are too big for a 10cm diameter container.

Note 2: If it was summer time, I'd have thought of using a plastic container for removing bees, hornets or wasps, but for spiders I've always used my hands. Except for the time my cat in Africa was sparring with a tarantula. I used a biology text dropped from knee height to "take out" that spider.

Do you know this cute family?

Back during the real winter, I found this little frame with family photos on the sidewalk on Laurier St. W, just west of Elgin. A light snow was falling, so I picked it up with the intention of blogging it that very day so that it would be timely and have a better chance of winding up with its owner.

Instead, I forgot all about it until yesterday when I cleaned out my man-bag.

I have a tendency to pick things up and forget about them. There is a roll of film in my overcoat pocket that I found at the bus stop on Rideau Street more than a year ago. One of these days, I'll take it somewhere and have it developed. But I won't be taking it to Walmart or Costco. I don't want to get arrested if there are naked pictures on the roll.

Speaking of finding things on the sidewalk...

I'm no Dave X (reported on at Zoom's Blog), but I do make the occasional good find.

Lately I've been walking past a lot of Tim Horton's cups.^{Note 1} On Gladstone last night, I passed one near Metcalfe. For the next block, I thought about that 10-year-old girl in Quebec who demonstrated several fundamental principals of property law when she found the SUV-winning cup in the school trash can last year. So, the next cup, just after O'Connor, I stopped and rolled the rim -- "win/gagnez un café/coffee ©". ^{Note 2}

I am now a Tim Horton's coffee cup spotting robot. Unfortunately, of the rest of cups spotted on the walk home, three had "please play again" and one must have been a winner because the critical part had been ripped off the cup.

Note 1: Apparently I'm not the only who notices more of these cups on the ground during "Roll up the Rim" season: [National Post: Tim Hortons contest a litterbug, critics say: Roll up the rim begins]

Note 2: I've been reading a lot about copyright lately and find it very interesting that Tim Hortons appears to believe they can assert copyright ownership in "win/gagnez un café/coffee". If I was a lawyer I would be able to express an opinion on the issue, but I'm not, so I won't.

Impersonate those in power

Someone has fastened this work of art to the phone pole just north of MacLaren on Elgin Street.

Materials: oval mirror, wood, wood screws, paper, glue, and ink.

The caption is one of those instructions I've been following without knowing I was supposed to.

Update: There have been similar sitings by Robin, Zoom, and Pearl!

[Google Map of the installations]