Food Friday : A Fondue Party for Two!

"Are you having fun, too"? Why yes .. yes, I am! That's a little joke that Nick used to make when he first began visiting me at my apartment. There was another tenant in the house whose cooking always smelled like they were having fondue! (Is that a case of 'you had to be there'?)

For this week's food post is about the little fondue party for two we had last Sunday, something we'd never done together before.The idea first came up with Nick telling me about how when growing up he and his family would have beef fondue for special occasions and how he loved it. I just happened to have a vintage fondue pot and some forks, which were unused and still in their original boxes. I had been given these as a gift from an ex's lovely mother. She knew I liked vintage things and nabbed these for me at a church jumble sale she was helping with. This was years ago and I held onto those fondue things, packing and moving them from apartment to apartment and finally to my home here. But they stayed in the packing box for years, until they were unveiled last week-end. Nick was quite surprised I had them and impressed with my fine fondue pot! After almost 13 years of marriage it's good to still have a few surprises.Part of the reason we had never used these things is that we're not big meat eaters. As an aside, unlike most people who are not frequent eaters of meat, who eat chicken but not beef, we are the other way around and do occasionally eat beef steak but not chicken. We're not overly fussy about the whole thing though, and eat whatever is being served when we are invited out to eat. But another reason I had never used this fondue pot I had was that I was afraid of the dangers associated with hot pots of boiling oil. Particularly being combined with a party of drinking people, which seemed to be the whole premise behind a fondue. It seemed like a party thing .. and the image on the box reinforced this thinking.

EBay Calling : A Peacock and some Dishes

Greetings! Hope Wednesday has been good so far. All is swell here.

I thought I'd show you a few purchases I recently received from EBay. I'll start with the pretty item first, this peacock necklace. I so love the colours and the dangly bits and the crystal eye! I realize you can't tell the scale in these pictures .. the pendant is 3 1/2 inches tall and the chain is a long one. It has inspired the outfit I plan to wear out to see a concert tonight, so I'll hopefully have some pictures to show you of the necklace in action!

Then versus Now : Queen Street West and Spadina Avenue

I do like to examine historic photographs and compare the spots they were taken to today. Here are some taken from the same spot at Queen Street West and Spadina Avenue, with the old one having been shot in 1909 and the new one taken last week! What a difference a century makes ... or not. That building looks barely touched by time, though the houses behind it (to the north) were replaced by that other old looking building. I wonder when that happened.

Nowadays, to the left of the photo (west corner) there is a very unsightly McDonald's Restaurant. Not picturesque in any way and certainly not as pretty as that stand of trees!

Much Love Monday : New Music, Life Lessons and a Squirrel Update

If you've been visiting my blog for a while you will know that I participate in the Much Love Monday link-up and if you're a new reader perhaps you'd like to pop over to Anna's and see what that's all about, but in a nutshell a Much Love Monday post is to include a photograph that includes a heart, along with a story about something the writer loves.

Spotted : The Google Maps Street-View Car!

c="http://www.loulou.to/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Google-Maps-Street-View-car.jpg" alt="" title="Google-Maps-Street-View-car" width="1024" height="768" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-7062">I love to look at Google Street-View Maps and have spent much too much time just looking at different neighbourhoods around the world. With it we were able to see exactly what the beach looked like in Aruba before we booked our vacation there a few years ago, rather than relying on the pictures provided by the travel brochures, who always find just the right angles from which to take their pictures, that make any beach look dreamy. I also had a good look at the streets around our hotel in New York City when we went, so I was oriented before we got there. And of course, when the maps of Toronto first came online, we scanned our neighbourhood looking to see if we knew anyone who was out at the time the pictures were taken, and hoping that the pictures hadn't been taken at the exact time that we were walking home from the beer store with a two-four!Have you ever wondered how Google Maps got their photographs? Well, wonder no more! I got these shots of one of their cars parked by the side of the street on Friday evening. Nick saw it again early on Saturday morning, so the google maps driver either lives in the neighbourhood or the car broke down. I guess this means we're getting new pictures on the site soon though.