Taste Test: Fentimans Orange Jigger Soda

Last week I ventured into an organic grocery store that I have lived near for about 5 plus years and had never been inside. Organic means expensive to me. I also believe that most organic food is part of "green-washing" marketing, where something rather ordinary is suddenly healthy because it is labelled organic, but does not have any proof to make it's claim.

The store was shockingly American. Almost (if not all!) the produce was American! Then scattered throughout it's aisles, there was the usual suspects of healthy, natural foods and Canadian content. Milk, of course due to dairy/border laws was Canadian. Same with baked goods since most natural food stuffs don't have the preservatives to travel. But really, it was sad. Oh and there was a weird amount of maple syrup.

It left me angry.

On the brighter side, they had a really wacky selection of pop. Hence, my taste test of "Fentimans Orange Jigger Soda."

I'd never heard of it - have you?

It comes with a cool bottle cap.

Apparently this product is British but is bottled in Vancouver. (???) That is odd to me, for we dare not call pop,"soda" in Canada.

Fentimans has a neat ingredient list: fermented ginger root extracts with mandarin orange juice and juniper extracts. Funky. The raised glass says Botanically Brewed (and is why it was at the Organic grocery store).

How does it taste? Rather disappointing. I don't taste the ginger at all. It tastes rather like mandarin orange juice with just a little bit of carbonization (which I do like).

According to the website : 'Jigger' is an old English term for a good measure, which is used when combining the juice of eight mandarins and the zest of Seville orange in every bottle.

Here is a pic of PM David Cameron having a taste test of Fentimans. Check out the amazing wallpaper in the background LOL:

While I am not impressed with this flavour, they have lots of neat flavours which you can see here. I am curious about their "Curiosity Cola" which The Guardian has named 'the best soda in the world.'

Guess I have to go back the grocery store!

My Rob Ryan Plates & Collection

I have a little collection of Rob Ryan work. None of it original, original - unless you count my signed lazar cut. (which is signed!)

This was my first purchase.

Rob Ryan is an artist, based in England and is quite well known for his intricate paper-cuts. He was really one of the first well known and established paper-cut artists, before paper-cutting became incredibly popular.

He lives and works in Spitalfields, London, where you can visit him in his shop named Ryantown.  Two years ago on my trip to England, I missed an exhibition of his and contemporary British craft artists. I was literally a day late and was kicking myself to the point of bruising! I even went to Spitalfields to find his shop later and got distracted by a huge street market.

 One day I hope to own an original but it is out of my price range at the moment )-:

My 3rd Acquisition ... his little story book.

Well I did manage to visit a gallery/shop that represented him and managed to buy some lazar cut cards. You can check out Castor & Pollux here. It's a really cool little shop...

My camera died before I could photograph them for you!

Today I purchased his plates. YAY!

Oh, to eat off of them or hang them on the wall - decisions, decisions!

My Vacuum Obsession: My New Dyson, the Best Vacuum ever!

For the longest time, I have needed a new vacuum. My old clunker barely did anything and after vacuuming, I would need to use a swifter. And even though it was an upright, it would toddle at the most inappropriate times, and fall on my feet, or back, or crash and hit something.

I started research over two years ago(!) into a new vacuum and really fell in love with the Dyson television commercials. Also, probably because I work in the arts, I had also seen the yellow ball vacuums in design cases in design museums!

Trick is, I had to ask everyone I knew who owned one, whether or not they liked theirs.

A total of five people I know own a fancy (and expensive) Dyson,
but did they like them?

Here were my results, bad and good:

BAD (more like Complaints)

With the Dyson Ball Design vacuums (everyone I knew had one), the ball prevented you from reaching underneath furniture. This was the major complaint. 

Everyone complained about the weight. They are heavy...hmm, 40 pounds?

For those that had a detachable hose, the strong suction would cause you to fight against the vacuum hose, as the suction pulls you back. This was enough for the individual to say she would never buy one again because stairs were so difficult.

One complaint I read online was the suction was too strong in general and pulled carpet.

My cousin had one problem, but discovered it was only a dog hair clog.

GOOD (more like Worship)

My Precious: My Dyson Air Muscle Pet Machine

This sucker sucks. But the nice thing about my model is the four different floor settings: bare, low pile, medium and high pile. Terrific. Works fine on my rugs too. It works so well, it gets the particles of dirt out from in between the wood floor boards!

It is a tad quieter than my old vacuum. But apparently according to complaints online, it is loud. It's a vacuum - whaddaya expect?

This was the amount of dust after my first Dyson vacuum. I had vacuumed with
my old vacuum only a week before. Wowee! 

Washable hepa-filters and canister. Yay! I no longer smell dust while I vacuum and no bags! But a word of warning, you must wait before the dust settles before emptying the vacuum. I was too excited the first time....Oh and I have a sick fascination looking at how much I have sucked up.

It has a tiny beater brush for stairs (if I had any).

I use the thin attachment for dusting and love how it gets between the rungs of my radiators, behind furniture and the wall and the brush that can be lowered onto the thin attachment is super on lampshades.

Items of Annoyance (not really bad, just annoying)

Two out of the four attachments attach to the body of the vacuum but the one tend to use most doesn't attach so I have to lug it around the apartment as I vacuum. It pivots nicely and gets to the back of furniture easily. The suction is excellent for it being attached to an extendable wand.

The attachment I use most and has already taken a beating (scratches).

I had a major stroke of luck finding my vacuum for half-price at Future Shop (for $300) when it usually retails for $600. It is probably more than what I need for a small apartment yet one day when I grow up and move into a house, it'll be great. If I did stay in my apartment, I would recommend one of their cordless or smaller models.

Still scared by the price? Yes, they are cheaper in the United States than in Canada. Another alternative is to buy refurbished through the Dyson Canada website as one of my friends did.

Love it, love it, love it - vacuuming is my new sick hobby. LOL!

Natural Peanut Butter, Vegan Baggage and Cookies

In a rush, I grabbed the first peanut butter on the shelf. It was on sale. We needed peanut butter. I grabbed it...

Didn't realize until I got home, not only was it crunchy, it was natural.

I'm all for natural products. The less chemicals in my food, the better. So I thought, "What the hey" and stirred my separated oil and nuts.

Things I don't like about Natural Peanut Butter:

1. You have to stir it well. If you don't stir it well enough, you will find that when you get to the bottom of the jar it is oddly, freaky, crusty dry. 
2. There is less sugar and I like sugar. It is really noticeable in Natural Peanut Butter. To solve this problem I added jam to every peanut butter'd piece of bread I had.
3. I don't know if it is all those saturated fats but DAMN IT REALLY STICKS TO THE ROOF OF YOUR MOUTH.

I couldn't throw out the peanut butter. I resolved to bake with it.

UGH! You have to stir it before you even bake with it!

I scoured the internet for a new peanut butter recipe and found an interesting vegan one.

Vegan?!?! I just didn't know. Vegan? Tasteless, wacky, kale?  You see, I have vegan baggage.

A vegan stole my job. Another vegan I used to work with would insult me on a daily basis (I blame diet/lack of food). And the whole wool thing, honey thing really gets my goat.

But, I am open minded. I know of one vegan who is sane and a terrific person. There is hope. So I decided to try it. This recipe uses olive oil (I have never baked with olive oil despite how many recipes are out there) and good ol' natural peanut butter.

"If it doesn't taste good, I'll eat it!"

Did it work? Does it taste as good as a normal, regular, everyday peanut butter cookie?

YUPPERS! And there are very few ingredients: Maple syrup, flour, vanilla, salt, baking soda and peanut butter.

This is an important picture: the dough looks just like
a regular non-vegan recipe.

The final product: just wonderful!

A warning: Mr. B believes these cookies are dry, but I don't find them that way at all. They do stick to the roof of your mouth a bit more than a regular cookie. They are less sweet (which I remedied by sprinkling sugar on the top of them).

To try this recipe out visit the link at 101 cookbooks right here.

Upcoming Trends I see....the Native Voice

Recently I was I was talking to a visitor from the U.K. about trends. She summed up what I have been seeing a lot of lately: the Nordic influence.

I simply hadn't linked the current style cycle under one word: Nordic.

Between 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo', knitted cowls, geometric patterns, 'Wallander' and 'Of Monsters and Men,' anything and everything nordic is being embraced.

And I think it will disappear quickly with the spring thaw.

Already, there has been a regression of sorts with geometric patterns finding their native roots. Yup, welcome back Santa Fe and what I see as a Teepee trend.

These Paper Teepee's, or as this french website says Tipi can be found here. 

Maybe there is something bigger happening here. Perhaps there is a rise in our attention to Native Issues and the Native Voice. Politically, there is a greater focus on Native Rights with the Idle No More movement across Canada (and the world for that matter). Even in art there is currently a focus on contemporary native artists, who are often not given much of a platform in art galleries, unless they are controversial.

Now on at the Power Plant in Toronto, their programming is featuring "Beat Nation" an exhibition exploring the influence of Hip Hop on Native Culture.

The Power Plant, a contemporary art gallery in Toronto.

There is also an interesting exhibition of Native Art coming to Ontario (Kleinburg) named, Changing Hands: Art without Reservation 3/Contemporary Native North American Art which is being circulated by the Museum and Arts and Design in the U.S.

Cell, 2010 by Frank Shebageget, from Changing Hands

Looks like interesting things to come!

The Girl with...No Time on Her Hands

Let's hope, in the New Year, I manage to write a heck of a lot more than 2012. I also hope that I can manage to finish my penguin challenge of which I only finished one book (pathetic).

And of all things, my procrastination is purely caused by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Somehow in July I started to read this series (you've probably read it, so sorry to bore you) and it somehow absorbed all my free time into the Fall. The first book went rather well, the second was a tad slower and the third (!) I suffered through. Don't get me wrong, these are all excellent books but I was not in the right head space to get through the Swedish names and levels of Sweden's police departments!

I apologize for not photographing my Christmas crafts, my leg lamp cookies, my knitting...perhaps with the winter sunlight I will wake up a little and write a tad more in the New Year.

Versailles and Fabric Fusion!

I stumbled upon the current summer contemporary art installation at Versailles whilst purging my old bookmarks on the computer. How fabulous! These crazy quilted octopus' are invading the palace of Versailles for the summer and brings a whole "high-art" twist to yarn bombing, or quilt bombing as the case may be.

Royal Valkyrie by Joana Vasconcelos, at the Palace of Versailles

In case you don't know, the famous pop artist Takashi Murakami (most recognized by his Louis Vuttion multi-coloured purses) did an art installation at Versailles that raised a lot of controversy. I believe it was the first of such art installations in the palace.

Do you want to know how to say that in art speak - you say "art interventions." Yes, I work in the art world and hear this lingo bullshit all the time.

The controversy was quite extensive, merely because there are traditionalists who want historic buildings to remain historic without any change or influence from present day. From a museum stand-point, this is suicide. How often have you caught yourself saying, "Been there, seen that." This is one way museums are trying to bring people in, with art installations, performance, theatre, festivals etc. And what what's wrong with that? It's fun. You may not like it but it's only temporary. Maybe next time you'll like it.

Royal Valkyrie by Joana Vasconcelos

I have never heard of this artist, Joana Vasconcelos. The sculptures are pretty wacky. I can't say I like them all either. But I really like the bright colours against the rococo pastel paintings. Pretty wicked! If you would like to see all the installations, there is a special website here. Or visit Versailles. The Hall of Mirrors  and Marie Antionette's bedroom are amazing!