More random Montreal thoughts

[redbird]

List format again, and possibly repeating things I posted from Montreal.

• On the bus back from the airport yesterday afternoon, I was reading Sue Grafton's Q is for Quarry in bits, got to a description of a very generic piece of rural semi-desert California, looked out the window at a less-than-delightful bit of Montreal outskirts, and found myself thinking "I'm glad I live in reality." Jasper Fforde's The Well of Lost Plots may also have been a factor here.


• Both one of the US immigration/customs people (the man whose job is to tell people what line/inspector to go to) and the woman at the Starbucks in the wing for flights to the US commented on having seen me yesterday. Either I'm quite memorable, or the Bronx Zoo elephant t-shirt is; I didn't even unpack my hairbrush last night, though I did change into a fresh, non-sweaty bra.


• Mushrooms in cinnamon sauce might make an interesting hors d'oeuvre (perhaps in mini pastry shells) or even appetizer; they're disconcerting when the dish is called "veal marsala," and the sauce, which is odd on the mushrooms, is moreso on the veal.


• Conversely, tarragon-flavored chocolate works, but I think I liked the ones with just tarragon that Andrew Plotkin brought to Minicon a couple of years ago better than Cha Noir's tarragon-and-strawberry-cream. Tarragon does go with strawberries, but the strawberry flavor overwhelmed the tarragon.


• Maple Delight continues to live up to its name.


• Rather than spending C$35 or more on any of the introductory French books available at Indigo, I spent C$10 on a used text, a secondary-school book that starts with a simple introducing-the-characters conversation, all in French, which reminds me of one of my Spanish texts and my brother's first-year Latin text. ("Que estudias?" Estudio la leccion una." "Roma in Italia est. Italia en Europa est.") What I read was papersky's Lois McMaster Bujold, rysmiel's Jasper Fforde, and bits of The Worm Ouroburos, which requires close enough attention to the language that it's not a good bedtime book for me. Also, I'm wondering where the manticores are.


• Alternate history may produce airships, but I want ornithopters.


• I'd been avoiding that New York skyline mug in Papersky's kitchen for at least three years; it's fine now.


• I meant to cook more than I did, but it was hot.


• I like having an ISP that promises to be "your home away from $HOME".


• An ad in LaGuardia Airport, for some financial thing, asked "What do you want?" and the part of my brain that answers that sort of question came back "Peace, order, and good government."


• I hadn't realized one of the major advantages of Montreal (Dorval) airport until I was walking down a corridor at LaGuardia: Dorval has no random televisions repeating insipid news stories.

Comments

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

What do you want?

My response would either be to run screaming from the supposed Shadow agent, or to reply 'Who are you?'...

[zsero.livejournal.com]

I was just about to say the same thing.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Maple Delight continues to live up to its name

Is that the store on Rue St-Paul in the Old Port neighbourhood? I was there on Saturday afternoon!

[redbird]

That sounds like the location: the sign says Delice D'Erable, two floors, lots of ice cream and pastries and such. I wonder if we were there at the same time.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

porcinia gave zorinth that mug in 1998, and it was a lovely mug for a long time until it suddenly became an ominous omened mug that nobody wanted to use any more.

[redbird]

And somehow, feeling cozy and at home in NDG, it didn't feel ill-omened anymore.

[fuzzygabby.livejournal.com]

I had thyme ice cream last year in southern France. It wasn't bad, though I decided it was probably something I only needed to eat once.

FWIW, when I started teaching myself French (though as a false beginner and I did end up taking 3 semesters at UW), I started with French the Easy Way. It worked well for me because it had places where I needed to write in the answers. The whole writing answers on a seperate piece of paper never really worked for me. YMMV.

Another thought

[fuzzygabby.livejournal.com]

You may already know this, or might not be interested, but if your French gets up to an appropriate level, you might want to check out www.alire.com, Quebec's main sf publisher.

[lysana.livejournal.com]

Cinnamon sauce as marsala? I'd almost wonder what else that place would misinterpret, but I don't think I want to know.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

The sauce included some kind of sweet wine (probably marsala) in addition to the cinnamon. Pastitio traditionally combines cinnamon and nutmeg with onion, tomato, ground meat, and noodles. I can't stand it, but there are significant numbers of people who like it, and think of cinnamon as a perfectly reasonable thing to put in savory dishes. A competent cook could have added cinnamon to the sauce, I think. The problem was probably the sugar, and the sheer quantity of cinnamon. I'm speculating wildly, based on smell and commentary, not having tasted the dish in question.

[redbird]

I routinely put a cinnamon stick in my savory rice pilaf, but not that much cinnamon, and nothing sweeter than the sauteed onions.