Bulldog Coffee: best lattes in Toronto

This morning, Ray, Jeff and I visited gourmet coffee bar Bulldog Coffee (89 Granby, at Church and Carlton, 416-606-BARK). I had never heard of it, but both Ray and Jeff have been there before. Bulldog Coffee has gotten rave reviews in Toronto, include the Toronto Star and Now magazine. After our visit, I can definitely see why.

Barista/owner Stuart Allen Ross makes Toronto's best-tasting latte and expresso-based drinks for $3. The term "barista," by the way, refers to someone who has acquired some level of expertise in the preparation of espresso-based coffee drinks. From this Wikipedia entry: "Within certain circles, its meaning is expanding to include what might be called a coffee sommelier; a professional who is highly skilled in coffee preparation, with a comprehensive understanding of coffee, coffee blends, espresso, quality, coffee varieties, roast degree, espresso equipment, maintenance, latte art, etc."

Stuart Ross recently took first place at the Central Region Canadian Barista Championship, where his winning signature drink was Triple Chocolate Maple Passion, which is made with three different kinds of chocolate, maple syrup infused whip cream and a dash of chili, along with his espresso blend.

I wish I'd known about that signature drink before I went to Bulldog today! Yum, sounds heavenly.



The photo at the top of this page is of Ray's latte. Here's a bulldog that Stuart created in the foam of Jeff's latte:



Here's my hot chocolate:



Not surprisingly, bulldogs are a prominent motif throughout the shop. Stuart has a picture of his own bulldog prominently displayed; apparently the dog was found abandoned, tied to a telephone pole, so Stuart adopted him.

I love the atmosphere of this place, and Stuart Ross is a big part of that. He obviously takes huge pride in his work, and is also incredibly friendly. I have nothing against the big chain coffee shops, but they can't compare to a place like Bulldog Coffee.

Do visit Bulldog if you're in the Toronto area; you won't be disappointed. More info on the Web site.


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He's Dead, Jim!

Above: treats on display in a store at Niagara-on-the-Lake. Ginny, Jeff and I went to see the Shaw Festival's "Arms and the Man" by Bernard Shaw at the Festival Theatre a couple of days ago. Thanks, Ginny!

Speaking of festivals, the Toronto International Film Festival has begun. I still clearly recall when we were in the thick of it all, watching the stars cross the red carpet across the street. We'll be going to see "The Hula Girls" with our friend Craig next week. As I've mentioned before in Blatherings, Craig's an avid fan of the TIFF, taking time off work to submerge himself in film culture and get way too little sleep, sometimes seeing 3 or 4 films a DAY.

This year, he's been asked to keep a Fest Fan Blog for the National Post's Canada.com and will also be posting reports on Reid's server at http://filmfest.tnir.org/.

Meanwhile, I've updated He's Dead, Jim! with my first episode report: The Man Trap. Here's a cartoon I drew for my post:



You probably won't get the joke unless you're familiar with the original series of Star Trek, sorry.

Less than two months until National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo)! Anyone out there participating? If you're not sure what Nanowrimo is, here's a brief description from the site: "National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30." The novel I've been talking about recently began as a Nanowrimo project. I don't think I'll be participating this year; I don't want to push my luck with my tendinitis...but Nanowrimo founder, Chris Baty, is going to be featuring my writing cartoons.

Have a great weekend, everyone!



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I Play Magic Now

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated, as you can see above.

For the past couple of evenings, Jeff has been teaching me how to play Magic. I tried it once ages ago, but it never stuck. This time, I'm enjoying it much more.

Maybe it's because I liked the artwork on the cards. Maybe because of the often amusing text descriptions. Maybe because I KICKED JEFF'S BUTT LAST NIGHT! (ok, with some coaching) Jeff says I had a "fast green deck," a term which I vaguely understand now. Anyway, I'm enjoying myself enough that I'd like to play some more games. I'm also reminded of a great song written by my friend, Scott Snyder, called "I Play Magic Now."

We also checked out Second Life for about half an hour.

Ooo.

Dangerous.

Must. Keep. Away.

Thanks to Rob Wynne for setting up an RSS feed for He's Dead, Jim! (my new Star Trek: TOS blog) in Livejournal. You can find it at ohitrek. I'm having some CSS issues with certain browsers but the Wordpress theme author, Christoph Boecken, is helping me resolve them. His own blog is in German, I've noticed, and I'm sooo tempted to practise some of my German on him. But that might make him NOT want to help me anymore, so I'd better not.


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Embracing my nerdgirl soul

I've started off my novel revisions by brainstorming about each of the main characters in my book. I've found WriteRoom very useful for this sort of thing; thanks to Ray for reminding me about this software! I just opened a WriteRoom doc for each character, one at a time, and wrote down everything I know about this character's motivations and background, from their perspective. Yes, I've taken notes about the characters before, but I found that doing this from scratch, free of other distractions, was an enlightening experience.

In the WriteRoom environment, you can control the colour of the text and background, but I like the default...it seemed very Matrix-ish to me, different from my usual word processing environment.

Jeff reminded me that this Friday marks the 40th anniversary of the original Star Trek series, when the first episode aired on September 8, 1966. Since I can't attend the official gala, I'm going to celebrate by watching all the episodes. Ok, maybe not all at once. But Jeff and I bought the DVDs for the entire three seasons and I've only been watching them sporadically.

To satisfy my nerdgirl soul, I've decided to watch them ALL in CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. And I've decided to post my reports in a blog called He's Dead, Jim. Click on the title of any entry to read the full entry.

I have no idea how often I'll be watching them; I'm going to aim for one a week, but we'll see. I'll be posting updates in Blatherings, and you can always subscribe to the RSS feed if you want to know when the blog is updated.

I tried out a bit of my CSS skills by changing the graphics in the Wordpress theme for this blog, as well as increasing the font size for easier readability. Anyway, I know I'm not the only fan of the original series out there, so feel free to join me in embracing treknerdjoy over the next while.

:-)


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safe

The illustration above is for Illustration Friday. This week's topic: "Safe." I used Corel Painter's Croquil and Watercolor brush tools. The Watercolor tool is more realistic-looking than the Digital Watercolor tool in Corel Painter, but is also slower to render. I'd like to start experimenting with it, though, so I'm creating these images in lower-res and smaller files. I figure that I can always recreate them at a higher resolution if I like them enough.

I am SO enjoying weather these days...great for running outdoors. I'm only too aware that winter is going to leap upon us from behind very soon, so am taking full advantage of outdoor runs while I can. I never bring my iPod anymore...I'm getting far more pleasure out of listening to the wind in the trees, the birds, and thinking about my writing. I find running hugely inspirational and de-stressing.

Also very much enjoying learning about CSS. I think I may actually start experimenting with a new template for Inkygirl soon. I'm not sure if I'll convert Inkygirl to Wordpress...there doesn't seem to be a way of displaying entries from multiple blogs on one page with Wordpress. Right now, I use a Movabletype Plugin to combine three blogs into Inkygirl.

Anyway, I've brewed up a cup of Casablanca tea from our Paris trip and have happily settled down for a Puck's Hollow day. Time to roll up my sleeves and start revising....

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