Bailey's Birthday Cheesecake, by Jo

Birthdays as a kid were easy: summer birthday summer + grandparents pool = pool parties. Messes of other kids, swimming, playing Shark and Marco Polo, a barbeque, running around like lunatics, cake, and presents. So easy.

As an adult, things somehow got more complicated, and they turned out to be less fun.⁽¹⁾ This year was certainly an exception.⁽²⁾

Saturday, July 4th

Saturday and Sunday my neighbourhood held⁽³⁾  held its annual do, the Corso Italia Festival on St Claire West.

The street was blocked off from Landsdowne to Dufferin, filled with music and entertainers of many varieties, though largely Italian, of course. There were inflatable things for children to jump on, slides, food, shoes, food, more shoes, and the usual variety of things you’d see at any street festival or faire. Friends of ours joined us for the day, and we browsed and checked things out. Continue reading »

Popularity: 2% [?]

Footnotes:

1. Indeed, every other day the week leading up to my birthday I seemed to find a new grey hair. Quite accidentally. I’d notice something sticking up, and it’d be this coarse grey thing. It was rather disturbing. [↩]
2. Except for the grey hair thing. That sucked. [↩]
3. For those not in the know, Toronto is a city of neighbourhoods – more than 200 – each with their own distinct personality. [↩]

An alarming number seem to be misinformed about the beverage known as “chai”. This little essay aims to clear up some of the confusion.

Please feel free to share this link with your friends if they’re under the dreadful misapprehension that there is such a thing as “chai latte”.⁽¹⁾

The truth about lattes

Latte is simply Italian for “milk”. According to The Internet, caffelatte is a contraction for caffè e latte, or “coffee and milk”, similar to the French café au lait.

A later American corruption repurposed this sensible designation to signify a specific beverage “typically prepared with approximately one third espresso and two-thirds steamed milk, with a layer of foamed milk approximately 5 mm (¼ inch) thick on the top”.⁽²⁾ Absurd, but so it goes.

Notice that neither the Italian original nor the American corruption refer to tea. Lattes remain a beany sort of thing. Continue reading »

Popularity: 35% [?]

Footnotes:

1. Note: The image on the left comes from the blog Cooking The Ideas, which has an excellent recipe for masala chai here. [↩]
2. See Wikipedia: Latte. [↩]