Paul's Coffee

  Linking up with Marg at The Intrepid Reader

Weekend Coffee Share

Sunday Salon

Sunday Post

 August 2023 - Toronto ON

NEW - OPENED ACROSS THE STREET FROM US

Saturday we woke to heavy rain. So as per the last two Saturdays that we had baseball tickets, we headed out with rain jackets and sneakers. 

Shohei Ohtani is the American League Player of the Month for July, marking his second consecutive A.L. Player of the Month Award and the fourth of his career!

Halfway through the game, they opened to the roof and we were sitting in full hot sunshine and sweating.

Sunday stay home/relax day!

Monday - my birthday!! John golfed, I insisted. I just picked up what I wanted for dinner.

Saw this walking to Longo's.

Came home and got a flower delivery.

Flowers! And chocolates.

Tuesday we had lunch reservations at Bardi's, my choice. 

BARDI’S STEAK HOUSE IS AN INDEPENDENT, NON-PRETENTIOUS, TRADITIONAL STEAKHOUSE, OWNER OPERATED SINCE 1966 by Phillip Bardwell.

Wednesday John went for a pedicure and then golf. I headed out to meet BFF for lunch. Neither of us felt like our lobster roll (gasp) so we tried Michel's Bakery Café and chose sandwiches instead. The bread and croissant were delicious. We are adding it to our rotation.

I decided to cancel my birthday dinner on Thursday at Velouté, in our building. Instead I bought myself a birthday present of a new telephoto lens for my Canon. I had traded my one in when I bought a new camera a few years ago and really missed it.

Instead of going out to dinner, John bought a special bottle of wine for dinner.

Thursday it was so hot and humid when I went for a mani pedi at 10 AM that I decided to stay home while John went for his golf lesson.

Friday was another lazy day at home. I did spend most of the afternoon working on our itinerary for our time in Whitehorse. 

Since I'm light on photos this week, here is one John took last week as the sun was setting, coloured by the fires.

And the Marilyn Monroe buildings in Mississauga.

COOKING

I forgot to mention, when in Montreal last weekend, John's daughter ordered celery fries and they were delicious!

I also didn't post John's Philly cheesesteak poutine (and I many of you think this is a gross idea!).

Saturday - ordered Swiss Chalet chicken

Sunday - Roast pork, potatoes and broccoli

Monday -cilantro lime honey salmon, Greek lemon potatoes, and spinach

Tuesday - out for lunch - cheese and crackers

Wednesday - teriyaki chicken skewers with mushrooms, peppers, and onions and kale salad

Thursday - Velouté  spaghetti and meatballs with focaccia.

Friday - steak, baked potato and broccoli.

WATCHING

11M: Terror in Madrid Survivors and insiders recount March 11, 2004's terrorist attack on Madrid, including the political crisis it ignited and the hunt for the perpetrators. We were not aware of these attacks, a year before London July 2005. 

Mother's Day 2023 is a thriller action movie from Poland (org. title: Dzień Matki). The story unfolds around Nina (Agnieszka Grochowska), a former NATO special operations agent, who is alive and well despite standing over the grave that says she died in 2005 in defense of her country. An interesting foreign film for a Saturday night. 

We finished the series The Night Agent. Low-level FBI agent Peter Sutherland works in the basement of the White House manning a phone that never rings - until the night it does, propelling him into a conspiracy that leads all the way to the Oval Office. We are enjoying it.

Sleeping Dog is a 2023 German mystery series. A disgraced police officer and an ambitious young prosecutor open a closed case, which sends them down a conspiracy rabbit hole.

The dubbing is excellent.

Georgetown is a 2019 American crime drama film directed by Christoph Waltz (in his feature directorial debut). It is based on Franklin Foer's 2012 New York Times Magazine article "The Worst Marriage in Georgetown", which details the 2011 murder of 91-year-old socialite Viola Herms Drath by her much-younger second husband in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Waltz stars alongside Vanessa Redgrave, Annette Bening and Corey Hawkins.

Creepy and good.

READING

I am on a kick of Toronto true crime stories.

A Daughter's Deadly Deception: The Jennifer Pan Story was good (I knew the story) but it didn't cover how she was captured nor give us much of the trial. 

Click here for a quick recap of the case in Toronto Life.

From the outside looking in, Jennifer Pan seemed like a model daughter living a perfect life. The ideal child, the one her immigrant parents saw, was studying to become a pharmacist at the University of Toronto. But there was a dark, deceptive side to the angelic young woman.

Secret Life: The Jian Ghomeshi Investigation 

It began as rumours. Whispers at dinner parties. Warnings about bad dates with a Canadian celebrity. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, superstar CBC broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi revealed his interest in “rough sex” in a long Facebook post, and a scandal of unprecedented scale descended on the radio host.

I had read the excellent book about and by Marie Heinen, Nothing But the Truth. She was Ghomeshi's lawyer. I actually read it in one sitting! The woman loves shoes, how could I not??

Click here for an article about her and the Ghomeshi case.

An intimate and no-holds-barred memoir by Canada's top defence lawyer, Nothing But the Truth weaves Marie Henein's personal story with her strongly held views on society's most pressing issues, legal and otherwise.