it's morning, and I'm in Canada.

[baratron]

Things I don't recommend: travelling across the Atlantic Ocean on the first day of your period. If I did not have 30mg codeine phosphate on prescription, I don't know what I'd have done. I was taking alternating doses of painkillers: 1g of paracetamol then 30mg of codeine 2 hours later, and it was only relieving the pain enough that I wasn't screaming. Aspirin makes me wheezy and ibuprofen makes my throat close up, so the best thing for period pain, mefenamic acid, is verboten.

Anyway, we are now in Toronto. We appear to be staying exactly between the hippy/bohemian district and Chinatown, which suits me perfectly. Imagine an entire district like Brighton, but cheap. I don't know if it's the pound to dollar conversion, or simply that London is so expensive that anywhere else seems cheap. But we went to Whole Foods last night, a place that is generally considered "expensive", bought a ridiculously large amount of stuff, and it was under £20. The vegan chocolate mousse I bought would have been £5 or more at home, and it was CAN $4.80 - much less than half the price. And the Chinese restaurant on Spadina had main courses for $7-8, which turned out to be three times the size of main courses at home for £4-5.

We are going to Toronto Zoo today to see the wolves (yay!). I think we're meeting up with bcholmes & the_siobhan for dinner, though I don't know where yet. Guess I'll call one of them later on.

Comments

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Today has been a very "argh" day due to a running out of prescription med emergency (http://baratron.livejournal.com/486759.html) followed by insane traffic, then a nice dinner, followed by a crazy Bulgarian taxi driver ranting at us about the bombs in the UK ("how could we let it happen?"), a bus that was delayed, even more traffic because the Lake Shore road was all closed off and Gardiner(?) being slow all the way up to Dufferin. And then finally getting back into Toronto an hour and a half late to find the 505 streetcar was doing some other random diversion than the one earlier in the week, but none of the signs had been updated to show the new route, so having to walk to the hostel. Argh.

So our level of stress is high and level of organisation low. I did try to call you from the bus, but your home phone went to answerphone (presumably because you were at the wedding), and my reception kept cutting out, making it pointless to try your mobile.

I guess we will get up sometime in the morning and go to the Ontario Science Centre, possibly via Whole Foods or one of those Fresh places (any idea which one is nearest to us? They're all on roads that are near here, but the roads are long and I don't know exactly where to go) for some sort of breakfast/lunch. Are you interested in going to the Science Centre, or is it something you've done to death? I don't think we need to spend hours and hours there, but Richard is interested in the Omnimax from a technical point of view if there's time. If you meet us at the Science Centre, it doesn't really matter where we go for dinner: if it is near the Indian restaurant where you live and it's convenient, we can go there; or we can go to the one downtown. But I'd like to go to the Royal Ontario Museum in the evening for a couple of hours if it's open until 9.30pm.

Also, clawfoot was thinking of making you a vegan chocolate cake, but we weren't sure if you'd be able to eat it, because it might be too high-fat. I think she said that the cake, which I think is a 9" square pan, has a half a cup of canola oil in it. Any idea if that's okay / not okay?

That's very sweet. There's no real need for her to do that, because I'm finding plenty of friendly cakes & cookies in Toronto, but if she wants to make a cake I would be happy to help eat it :) Whether it's too high-fat depends on what else is in the cake. If it's made with melted chocolate, I'd say it's probably too greasy, but if it's made with cocoa powder, it may be ok. I don't know what the other ingredients are, but oil in cakes can be replaced with other sources of moistness, such as applesauce, mashed banana or soy milk. These are all reasonably good binding agents. Obviously, if soy milk is already part of the cake, it's not sensible to try replacing the fat with it as well, or you can end up attempting to use the same one ingredient for three ingredients in the recipe...

If you are worried about the keeping properties of a cake with no oil or margarine in, you can use half oil and half applesauce/banana/other fruit of choice. (I recommend apple, pear or banana simply because they're easy to obtain and not particularly highly flavoured - sufficient cocoa powder hides banana flavour if a person isn't keen on it. I do know someone with a banana aversion who used plum sauce in one of my brownie recipes, and she said it came out like black forest gateau - strongly flavoured, but in a way that went well with chocolate.) However, if it seems likely that the cake will be devoured in one or two sittings, it really doesn't matter how well it keeps ;)

[okoshun.livejournal.com]

One of those Fresh places (any idea which one is nearest to us?

I mapped out your location (http://maps.google.ca/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=114907672198207934552.00000113876aa24a6648b&om=1&ll=43.650004,-79.404867&spn=0.015185,0.032787&z=15) and you have two reasonable options within walking distance.

Option 1: King's Cafe (http://www.kingscafe.com/kings_cafe.html) is a vegetarian cafe that's around 2 blocks from your location in Kensington Market. You may want to call to see if they're open (416) 591-1340.

Option 2: Fresh (http://www.juiceforlife.com/main3.html) on Queen Street, which is around 16 blocks from your location. Again, I'd call first to see (416) 913-2720.