Isa Chandra's Beet Burgers are amazing!

http://www.theppk.com/2012/02/quarter...

We make big batches of 12 patties in the VitaMix and freeze 10 of them. They freeze and thaw quite nicely. I always have mine with a bit of hot sauce and goat cheese on a bed of greens, while husband has them with a slice of Swiss and a wholegrain bun. They're very filling, so you'll really only want one per person.

I read a news story, years ago, about a guy who found a rat in his soda bottle. He didn't so much as "find" it, really, as "had it bump up against his lips." The thought of a slimy rat carcass sloshing around makes me decant (or "decan," haha) every time. I also feel like those cans get exposed to all sorts of things, sitting around in factories, so I'd rather have my mouth on the drinking glass that I cleaned myself.

Wild Wings has pretty good ones, and you can get them with dill dip.

I have had this happen too. One thing that helped was upgrading to those awesome red-ball-center dishwasher tabs, the pricy ones called Finish Powerball Quantum. I also do a dishwasher cleaning cycle once every month or so - you can find it in your cleaning products aisle.

That one at Peter and Adelaide is pretty good. Their khao soi was outstanding, as were the squash fritters. I believe the restaurant is called Khao San Road, which is ironic seeing as that's the least Thai street in Thailand. :)

When my now-husband and I were dating, we decided to make a carrot cake from scratch, from a Cook's Illustrated tome he'd received for Christmas. We shredded the carrots, sifted the flour, put everything together, etc. Just before it went into the oven, I licked some batter off the spatula and remarked that it tasted disgusting. His response was a very condescending, "It's raw cake batter! Of course it tastes bad!" I dismissed my hesitation and into the oven it went.

When it came out and was cooling, I had another nagging feeling since the batter had tasted so incredibly awful. What I didn't want to say at the time, since we'd only been dating a couple of months and thought it might put him off, was that it tasted like blood. I looked at all of the ingredients we'd put in. Sure enough, the 2 cups of sugar or so that had gone into the cake were SALT. His ex-GF had put all of her baking bulk items into unlabelled jars and that was what we had put into the cake. We had a good laugh and he earned the nickname "Saltycakes" as a result.

A more unfortunate thing that happened was when I was living in Santiago, Chile. While in my nightie, on my day off, I decided to make a cabbage and mushroom stir fry. Slicing off the root of the cabbage, I swung the extremely sharp cleaver directly into my right forefinger (I'm a leftie). I held it up and thought, "Oh, good, no blood - just white!" The white, of course, was my bone, and the blood began to gush all over the floor. I wrapped a bath towel around my hand and threw on my pants with one hand, frantic to get to the office since my husband (BF then - yep, same guy!) was there and we had no phone in our apartment. On the way I nearly passed out from blood loss, and happened to pass the friendly/creepy buskers who frequently shouted "hermooooosa! rubiaaaaa!" my way. On this day, however, I was having none of it and screamed something at them about, um, their mothers and a wild dog.

Finally made it to the office, the finger now nearly completely opened up from fingertip to palm. My boss took me to the hospital (private, having learned my lesson about Chile's public hospitals after a nasty fall from a horse a few months earlier) and my husband went back to the apartment, on my instructions, to ensure I'd turned off the burner in my rush. (I had!) Ten or eleven stitches later, my finger was healed. My editor at the time remarked that she was impressed that I'd had the wherewithal to grab my ID, keys, and cigarettes on my way out the door. I'm surprised I made the ten-minute dash to the office in the first place!

The funniest thing about it is that when my husband met me at the hospital, he had brought my purse for me... in a plastic grocery bag, so as not to carry my dainty suede purse through ultra-macho Santiago Centro. :) I still have a nasty scar, five years later, and regained the feeling about a year ago.

It's similar in size and consistency to a lemon meringue pie. The filling is like a creamy peanut butter filling, topped with whipped cream and crushed peanut butter-y candies. It's divine and I think you can still buy them whole, to go, for about $12 or so.

Nah. Still here.

And the peanut butter pie!!

Gnocchi. Delicious but my GOD did it ever take long. Gnever again!

They can pry my blue-rare sesame-crusted tuna steaks out of my cold dead hands.

Marbles has always sucked; both the food and service are a total waste of time.

I know this is old, but I wanted to let you know -- made the lavendar one for Easter and people thought I was Jesus come to earth. Fantastic. Thanks so much.

And aaarrrrgh, why use excuses when you're not doing anything wrong?!

Absolutely.

Agreed. Apparently this woman plonks down at the table and says, "Oh, don't mind me." I suggested saying, "Yes, we do mind, in fact" and people acted like I suggested dousing her in gasoline.

Bending over backwards to make rude people feel okay, and being so timid that you can't stand up for yourself, is not "nice" and it's not "polite." It's utterly spineless.

They haven't been great, have they? I feel like proper strawberry season hasn't fully kicked off yet, though, so maybe things will pick up.

chip, you may want to try Lai Wah Heen. They're pretty great and fairly upscale.

http://www.laiwahheen.com/

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Lai Wah Heen
108 Chestnut St, Toronto, ON M5G 1R3, CA

Wow, Frank. You're a mad pimp. $1300 for 3? Daaang. Can you tell me more about it?

Ehhh, it's average.

Mmmm.... short rib gnocchi at Bauer = to die for.

They're open? I thought they closed and were replaced. I used to live on Charles, a couple doors down, and always loved popping in for a luxe breakfast or a tasty Froot Loop martini.

Calling the manager to pass along the message is a wuss move. The OP is a big girl and so is her husband. I'd be much more annoyed/embarrassed, as the hostess, if I heard the message from someone else versus the actual people involved.

And it's not what I typed at first, either. ;)

Yes, the wedding went down July 18th 2009. It was great and the guests were lovely, save of course the two hipsters who came as a faux-lesbian "bride and groom," white silk dress with flowers in the hair for one and white short tuxedo suit for the other - they posed as bride and groom all evening. Hardy har har.

And those few who didn't RSVP didn't show up; I was really disappointed when my college mentor didn't reply to the invite or the follow-up email ("Hope you liked what you got in the mail! ;)") and I haven't talked to him since. I'm 24 and my husband is 26; since a lot of our friends are young, they're accustomed to the loosey-goosey crap of "oh, I'll make it if I can"-type BS that people do now. They really did need to be told that RSVPing was necessary, and eventually most of them did.

Thanks! :)

It's amazing, you won't be disappointed. :)

In fact, I did not suggest using those words to the waitress; I told you to, in effect, tell her to back the hell off. When someone plops down at your table and says, "Oh, don't mind me," a response of, "In fact, we do mind, and we'd like to be left alone," is hardly "nasty." It would depend on how you say it and how people generally perceive you, but that's firm and perfectly clear.

Rude people will do as much as they're allowed; it seems that women all-too-often allow themselves to be walked all over in the guise of being nice. It's not 'nice' to allow this person to ruin your dates with your husband; if "we're discussing private business" doesn't get the job done, as you stated it would not, you're not being firm enough.

Hey all,

Just wondering if there are any really awesome new places in Toronto you'd recommend for an anniversary dinner. My husband and I are coming up on 1 year in July and though we've since moved to KW, we'll be in the city for our big weekend.

We're both really into food, and love pretty much everything and every type of cuisine. Korean, Japanese, and French really do it for me and Indian and Thai are his top two. Generally though, except for my avocado allergy, nothing is off-limits and will be enjoyed. Having lived in Toronto a while, we've done a lot of the top recommended places, and we're wondering if there's anywhere new to try, something that would be rather nice (we're willing to splurge) and also romantic. We'd love a good wine list, as well. Location not terribly important; anywhere downtown-ish (i.e. not the 'burbs) is fine.

Any suggestions are welcomed with many thanks! :)

I'm late on this, but our wedding RSVP cards said something to this effect. "If we haven't heard from you by ___, we will assume you are unable to attend."