According to Rachel: dubious compliments edition

We are having a beautiful early fall here in Ottawa. Warm, sunny days, chilly nights, and cool, crisp mornings. It's making deciding what to wear difficult. You don't want to freeze in the mornings, and you don't want feel too hot in the afternoons.

The girls are reluctant to give up their shorts, and have been wearing a hoodie over a teeshirt with shorts and running shoes to school. This morning, I put on a denim skirt, a dark red, scoop-necked teeshirt, and a camel-coloured cardi on top to keep me warm on the walk from my car to my office.

Rae: You look like a ketchup-ed hot dog today.

Me: A what?

Rae: Your teeshirt is like the hot dog covered in ketchup, and the sides of the sweater look like the two parts of the bun on each side.

Me: That's very observant. Is it a compliment?

Rae: I don't know. How does it make you feel?

Me: Not really good, to tell the truth. You're right about the colours, but do I look like a hot dog to you?

Rae: Only a little. You're not made out of pork, though.

Me: ....

Two countries separated by the same language

That quote, attributed to George Bernard Shaw (and sometimes to Oscar Wilde, people are arguing about this) was meant to refer to Britain and the U.S. But, in my experience, the same can be said for Canada and the U.S.

I was clearing out some old files on my computer and found this guest post that I contributed to a friend's blog some years ago. Alissa doesn't blog anymore, well except for her photo blog where she showcases her gorgeous Kentucky landscapes, sunsets, flowers and dogs, which is a shame. (The fact that she doesn't 'blog' blog anymore is a shame, not the fact that she takes beautiful pictures and shares them online.) So, I've dusted that post off and I'm posting it here.

(This may or may not have something to do with the fact that I'm having a bit of writer's block at the moment, and am dealing with the fall craziness of yard work, back-to-school, pool closing, firewood ordering, garage cleaning, cookie baking, etc., etc.)

Hi, I’m Alison, and I live in a small village just outside Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Like Briana, who guest-posted last week, I ‘met’ Alissa online through a parenting forum and have known her for probably six years or so [more like 9 or 10 now - Alison]. It was her blog that first inspired me to start one of my own, so I’d like to take this opportunity to say “Thanks, Alissa!”

Internet friendships have added a lot of joy to my life. I’ve been blessed by a wonderful and group of women (and one man) from all over Canada and the U.S., and now new friends in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, reaching out and showing that the world is a pretty small place after all.

But for all our similarities in experience and outlook, I have come to see that there are differences. And being a Canadian with American and British friends, I’m finding that language can be one of those places where those differences pop up.

During one thread on our parenting forum, I mentioned that the girls were getting a new toboggan because the old one was too worn out from banging into trees. Some confusion ensued with Alissa, and when we finally figured out what was going on, we realized that while I was talking about this:


Alissa thought I was talking about this:


Big difference. Yes, the same word is used in Canada to mean sled and in parts of the U.S. (Kentucky, apparently is one) to mean a winter hat. Which we would call a tuque up here. Go figure.

This reminded me of another miscommunication that happened in Kentucky, funnily enough, back when I was in university. I was on a third-year geology field trip in Corbin, Kentucky to study sedimentary geological features. They’re kind of hard to study in Ontario, seeing as the last glaciation scraped most of them away, but there are some gorgeous sections to study down in Kentucky.

It was November, and starting to get chilly. We spent our day driving around in a bus, stopping along the highway to get out and look at the roadcuts. (Sedimentary rocks are arranged in layer-cake fashion, and the best place to look at the features is in a roadcut, where you are looking at a ‘slice’ through the rocks.) Just an aside here, Kentuckians must be the most friendly, helpful people I’ve ever met. Whenever drivers on the highway would see the bus pulled over and all of us out looking at the rocks, they would pull over and ask if we were OK and if we needed them to call us a tow truck.

At the end of the day we were chilled. I hadn’t packed a heavy enough jacket, thinking we were headed to the (almost) Deep South. We ended up at a restaurant after nightfall for dinner. We sat down and the waitress took our orders. I wanted to heat up fast, so I ordered a bowl of chili and tea, and then headed to the washroom to run some hot water over my icy hands, thinking of how hot and comforting the hot chili and tea would be, picturing steam coming out of the little steel teapot, the cup upside down next to it.

Imagine my surprise when I returned to the table to find that the waitress had already set my drink order on the table, and I was looking at a tall, frosty glass of iced tea. Iced tea! When the waitress came back, I apologised for the error, and told her that I had wanted a cup of tea, not a glass of iced tea. “Oh”, she said as she headed back to the kitchen, “you want hot tea.” Up here, ‘tea’ means a pot of steaming tea, and if you want it cold, you have to order iced tea. In Kentucky, it’s the exact opposite: ‘tea’ is iced tea, and if you want tea, you have to order ‘hot tea’. Weird, eh?

I guess that ‘eh’ is a giveaway that I’m Canadian. Though I don’t pronounce ‘about’ as ‘aboot’ as we are reputed to do. There are a few Canadian words or phrases that seem to confuse readers from other countries, so as a public service, I’ll use the rest of my time here on Alissa’s blog (and doesn’t she have the cutest accent?) to explain a few of the most questioned Canadianisms, in case you’ve ever wondered:

Loonie – A one-dollar coin with a picture of a loon on the tails side. We no longer have bills lower than five dollars.

Toonie – A two-dollar coin. Named because it’s worth two loonies.

Tim's, Timmie’s – Tim Horton's: a franchise of coffee shops selling the Canadian national food: the donut. Founded by Tim Horton, an National Hockey League player who played for almost 20 years for the Toronto Maple Leafs. They are everywhere in Canada.

Double double – When you’re at Timmie’s if you want your coffee with two cream and two sugar, you order a double double.

Pickerel – what American fishermen call Walleye

Eavestrough – I think it's called a gutter in the States, you know, the long things that are supposed to collect water from the roof and then send it down the rainspout, but all they really do is clog up with dead leaves?

Kraft dinner – Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, the main diet of the Canadian university student

Chesterfield – sofa or couch

Serviette – napkin

Poutine – a French-Canadian delicacy – french fries covered in a layer of fresh cheese curds and drenched in brown gravy

I guess only a Canadian would understand this, “Excuse me, could you please pass me a serviette? I spilled my poutine on the chesterfield.” Only now, you all (y’all) do too! :-)

Why the world needs translation editors

Or, why Google language tools are not always the best.

Many years ago, I had dinner with my father in a restaurant in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montréal. I had bouillabaisse, a French fish stew that originated in Marseille. It was so delicious, I remembered that meal for years. So, when I Googled a recipe for it a few years ago, the first few pages returned were in French. I figured that a French recipe for a French dish would be the most authentic. However, I didn't read French that well back then, and hit the button on the page which translated the recipe into 'English'.

The translation was about as good as the English instructions for a Japanese VCR circa 1988. Here are some excerpts:

"Subtle dish with the many fish species which cook together to release us their different taste and particular perfume, to make a success of it it is essential to rigorously respect the order and the time of cooking of fish, if not parks with a pulp dull full with stop!"

Um, OK. I'll respect the cooking order. Because you know I don't want it to parks with a pulp dull full stop. That would be bad. I think.

"To make partly cooked, potatoes to the vapor, and to keep them with the heat. They will be cut in 4 sections each one and will be added during cooking. To put 8 semi hollow or hollow plates and a large hollow dish to heat."

Great! A chance to use the hollow plates. I hardly ever use those.

"In a pot, to make a bed with white onions thin slices, the crushed cloves of garlic, crushed tomatos, the bay tree, fennel and the bark of orange."

I'm not sure there's room enough in the pot for a bay tree.

"If need be, to add a little soup or water for just to cover fish, and to let cook 10 minutes. Your Bouillabaisse is ready to be useful, and like the soufflés, it could not wait."

I'm *so* glad the bouillabaisse is ready to be useful. Maybe it could vacuum the living room. Or fold some laundry.

"For the service, to present fish and their trimming of potatoes in the large hollow dish, the soup, the sections of toast rubbed with garlic, and garlic mayonnaise and rust with share. To pour a little soup in its plate, to deposit sections of bread pasted of rust or garlic mayonnaise and to taste there various fish with soup, rust or garlic mayonnaise with its own way. "

I'm totally lost with this one. Not sure I want to eat rust. And the mayonnaise sounds kinda pushy, wanting its own way.

I ended up making lasagna instead. But next time I'm in Montréal....

Back seat conversations: the meaning of lyrics edition

So we were driving back from soccer one day last month, and "Kiss You (When it's Dangerous)" came on the radio. I've embedded the video above for those of you (my U.S and U.K. friends) who have probably never heard this 80s Ottawa band's most famous song.

And from the back seat came this conversation:

Leah [singing along]: ♫ ♪ I'll kiss you when it's dangerous. I'll kiss you then and only then. ♪

Rae: What do you think they mean by "kiss you when it's dangerous"? What does it mean?

Leah: I don't know.

Rae: Maybe it means that he will only kiss her if she's tied up on a moving conveyor belt with sharp knives on it.

Leah: Ummm....

Rae: And lasers.

Leah: Nah, it probably means that he's going to kiss her when she's mad at him and he might get slapped if he tries. So it's dangerous.

Rae: Like she's mad because he didn't buy her some shoes?

Leah: Exactly.

A public service announcement

Here is a picture of the people I nearly poisoned with toxic ribs earlier this month:


Well, actually, the body count would only have been 5 rather than 7.


So, here's the PSA:

Always, always, always defrost meat in the refrigerator. Don't leave two racks of frozen ribs out at room temp in the microwave to thaw overnight. Because if you do, they might grow copius amounts of bacteria and eating them could result in a trip to the ER.

When I went to put the ribs on the barbecue, the edges had turned a delicate emerald green.

(Joke: who are two people you don't want coming over for dinner? Sam and Ella.)

So, instead of my much-bragged-about barbecued ribs, we had hamburgers for supper. And we all survived.

This has been a public service announcement from the Let's Not Poison our Southern Neighbours Action Group.

(PSA #2: always have backup propane so you don't have to finish the hamburgers under the broiler -- the hamburgers you were serving instead of lethal ribs. A rookie mistake, not having a second tank, but I made that one too. ) I am *so* not Martha Stewart.

Nice (n-ee-ce) was pretty nice (n-eye-ce)

Yes, I know I'm home, but you'll just have to put up with a couple more posts about what was the best vacation ever. No, wait. BEST. VACATION. EVER.

Nice (or maybe all of France, or all of Europe for that matter, I don't know for sure) is very different from Canada. Here are some random things I noticed:

• Things are smaller (apartments, washing machines, refrigerators, supermarkets), and despite the crazy traffic and bus drivers who think they're driving in a Formula One race, life is slower paced.

• Walking down the Promenade des Anglais, day or night, was the thing I liked to do best.

• Best. Croissants. Ever.
  
  Seriously.
  
  

Considering the above bullet point, it's strange that there are no overweight people here. Also, I have never seen so many attractive people in one place in my entire life.

• Skin cancer does not seem to be a major concern in Nice. Everyone seems to be tanned to a deep toasty brown. Including the one woman we saw on several days down on the beach, clad only in a teeny yellow thong, a gold chain around her waist, and a Gilligan hat. Reading Emile Zola and eating nectarines, no less.

A real Nicoise Salad doesn't have any green beans or potatoes in it. But it does have lots of tuna, olives, radishes, tomatoes, hardboiled eggs and some anchovies.

Even though the Mediterranean Sea is salty and easy to float in


I couldn't smell the sea the way you usually do at the seaside. But swimming in it will leave you all salty and with a bad case of Med Head until you shower.

Parking is a sport in Nice. People will park anywhere. On sidewalks. On corners. Double parking. You name it.

If you order anything with prawns (gambas) or shrimp (crevettes), be prepared to do some dissection. Most of the time in North America, shrimp are little pink commas of flesh when they're served to you. In Nice, they are cooked to a rosy red, but not peeled. Even in a curry sauce, you'll still see little eyes peering out at you, and little leg things waving.


The upside is, that when you take the time to peel them, they taste better than any North American shrimp.

The Hotel Negresco is a truly fascinating place. The gorgeous architecture and eclectic art make it a place not to miss.

Wine there is really cheap and really good.


Mostly we drank local varieties of rosé by the bottle, but we couldn't resist these single-serving glasses we found in the grocery store. Vive la France!

The default music type in any public space is jazz. It was playing on the tour boat we took to Monaco, and in those restaurants that had music playing. It was so nice. How nice was brought home rather forcefully when, on the long trip home, we ate lunch in a 'seafood' restaurant in the Newark airport and the soundtrack was Taylor Swift's greatest hits. Yeah.

You WILL gain weight in Nice (And Villefranche Sur Mer, and Monaco).

Oh. Yes. You. Will.

Banana split crepes. O.M.G.

Warm goat cheese salad!!

Moules et frites!!!

Calamari!!!!!!

I seem to have used up all my exclamation points.

[I don't know why this is all different colours and underlined. HTML coding and I are not friends.]




I think I would like to be dropped in a vat of Chantilly whipped cream. And left there

Lettuces, mangoes and nectarines from the greengrocers are ENORMOUS. And delicious. Really, really delicious.

The transit system -- the trains, trams and buses -- are clean and efficient and cheap. You can go a long way on the bus for a euro.

Even as far as Eze, which is probably the most picturesque place I've ever been.

This picture was taken from the boat from Nice to Monaco. You can see that Eze is perched right at the top of the mountain.

So, to sum it all up, I can see why people retire to the South of France. Thanks, Dad, I'll never forget that trip.

I can't wait to go back. Come on Lotto 649.

Canada and the U.S. are still friends and we were not disrespectful to the nun within her hearing

So, I invited my friend Jen and her family (from Virginia) up to Ottawa for a visit. Jen's family and mine have vacationed together four summers now, and it was her turn to visit me, see our beautiful capital city, and check another UNESCO World Heritage site (the Rideau Canal) off her list.

But what I didn't expect was that my mild-mannered American friend would almost cause an international incident by trying to smuggle a knife into the Centre Block of the Parliament buildings! (da da DA!) Well sort of...... OK, not really.

Actually, it was an innocent mistake. She had forgotten about a small Swiss Army knife in her purse and had it confiscated by security on the way in. She was issued a chit to pick it up on the way out. We teased her a bit (OK, a lot) as our tour group (which included visitors from all over Canada, the States, Iran, the Philippines, and a trio of tiny, elderly nuns from Italy) moved from room to room.

When the tour ended, Jen was able to retrieve her sharp, pointy weapon teeny-tiny Swiss Army knife from the security desk at the exit. Waiting in line in front of her was one of the elderly Italian nuns, who turned in her chit and was handed a small, sharp pair of sewing scissors by the security guard manning the desk.

As soon as we were out of the nun's earshot, Jen turned to me and her husband and said, "That nun has a shiv." We all but collapsed laughing, and, inevitably, following the verbal template of this post, said, in unison, "This nun WILL cut you." Of course, the only logical way to follow this was to head across the street to a chip truck for some poutine, slog through an unexpected thundershower with the children back to the minivan, and then set off in search of the Beavertail stand in Byward market. That's just how we roll.

By four thirty, we were safe at my house, towelling off and enjoying a rum and coke, and still saying 'shiv' out loud occasionally to make each other laugh.

I hope making fun of a nun isn't too bad a sin.

Jen's far, far funnier recounting of these events can be found here.

The French sense of humour, part deux

While traversing the city on Sunday, on our way to the Port in order to buy tickets for our boat ride to Monaco, we walked through Place Garabaldi. There is a big statue in the middle of the square.



Apparently, Mr. Garabaldi liked to play raquetball.

A conversation on the Promenade

On the Promenade des Anglais.

Alison: Over there, green shirt, black pants.

Lise (Alison's sister): Mmmm, nice.

Alison: You know, we need a code word for saying "Look at the hot guy over there" so we don't have to say "Look at the hot guy over there."

Lise: Yep.

Alison: But what?

Lise: How about "Bazinga".

Alison: Bazinga?

Lise: Or "Knock, knock".

Alison: *laughs* I like "Bazinga".

Lise: "Bazinga" it is.

The French sense of humour

We went walking this morning, my sister Lise, my dad and I, looking for a cheese shop. On the way we passed a small store that sells cosmetics:

Outside was this sign:

"Tested on the English"

I think that PETA would probably be OK with that.

Hee.

And now for something completely different

A while back I did a recipe post on my blog. Now it's going to be a travel blog for a while. Why? Because I'm in France, and who knows when I'm going to have a chance like this again. So you're just going to have to put up with me chronicling two weeks of jealousy-inducing meals and trips and scenery, just because I can. Sorry.

Did I say France? I meant the South of France. Yes, I'm in Nice on the French Riviera, and really, now I know why rich and famous people move here. It's gorgeous.

The trip, from Detroit, to Washington, to Munich and then to Nice, was very long, but the last leg, from Munich to Nice was when I met the first man of the trip. Instead of being seated next to my sister, I was next to a really good-looking man. He was olive-skinned and dark-haired, with huge brown eyes and long silky lashes and charming English. Unfortunately, he was also about 18, and spoke to me with all the polite respect that's usually reserved for the elderly. Sigh. I couldn't figure out his nationality: Italian? Spanish? French? Turns out he was Swedish. Go figure

We arrived in Nice about 2 p.m. local time and took a bus to our apartment.



It's very nice and looks out over the Promenade des Anglais and the Mediterranean Sea.

We had only been in the apartment (me, my dad, my sister and my stepmum) half an hour before the first bottle of rose was polished off. Life is good.

(We had been travelling for 16 hours when this was taken and well, we are kind of tired and it shows.)

When Bambi goes bad

Why, yes, this stuffed animal does belong to Rachel. Why do you ask?

A Fathers' Day card by Rachel

Once we work on the spelling a bit, I fully expect her to begin a career in the section of Hallmark that makes the snide greeting cards.

The front of the card:

The inside. (I think she gets her sense of humour from me. Seriously.)


But wait, there's more!


Coupons! They start out as your standard kid coupons:


Awww, she's going to make him breakfast:


And he can come and watch her soccer game:


But then I think that she thought that perhaps she wasn't getting enough out of the coupon deal. Et voilà, a coupon good for the chance to take her for ice cream:

And the pièce de resistance:



She'll go far, this one.