Eva's Bakery

 Linking up with Marg at The Intrepid Reader

Weekend Coffee Share
Sunday Salon

May 2024 - Toronto ON

April 2024 - Salt Lake City UT

The condo weekly newsletter had a fun poster about the pigeons that decided a couple of years ago to move in!

Monday Mural was from Casey IL.

John used the golf simulator.

We ordered more steaks from The Butcher Shop.

In April, on our way home, we drove through Illinois which has an automatic toll system, which means you must have a transponder or pay online. The entire length of the Illinois system is cashless since 2020.

We registered our license plate and waited.

Today there was a charge of $8.70. There should be a few more charges.

Made soup for lunch.

Tuesday he did a Costco run. And yes, we got a rotisserie chicken!

A Costco shop means finding a home for everything and dividing up the meat.

Bananas are crazy at Costco $2 for nine bananas! 

But a blogger mentioned that coffee had gone up and yes, it was $44 for 80 pods.

John found their gluten free Carbonaut bread but isn't impressed, he said it sticks to his teeth and breaks up.

He also went to the bank to get a certified cheque and got the new parking tags for his car. Car insurance is taken care of. 

I cleared out the fridge and used up some items to make salted caramel cheesecake bites with homemade salted caramel sauce. No photo, the finished product looked terrible after I tried "decorating" it. But it tasted good!

I updated my potato chip collection!

Wednesday John picked up his car!

This old baby took us on many a road trip! 

2017 her maiden voyage was to Florida for a couple of weeks then west to LA where she waited patiently while we flew to Mexico for 6 weeks. On our return to LA she took us along the California coast and then back home.

Later in 2017 she went across the US and back home across Canada.

Late 2017 we went to Florida for our wedding anniversary with stops in Boca Raton and Daytona Beach FL, Savannah GA.

2021 she went from Toronto and through the Maritimes and all around Newfoundland and Labrador.

This year 2024 she took us from Toronto to Las Vegas with stops in St. Louis MO, Salt Lake City and Toledo OH.

This was being picked up on our driveway, it belongs to Osprey Bluffs Honey Company.

Yonge-Dundas

The Eaton Centre is under major renovation.

The new food court, Queen's Cross, is now open.

Oliver and Bonacini

Oliver and Bonacini

Oliver and Bonacini

Oliver and Bonacini

Our favourite pizza place but no gluten free here...

Oliver and Bonacini Curryosity is on the right.

And I just learned that O&B are now running the food court at One York!

Thursday John went to bottle his wine. Then we took the shuttle downtown and walked to St. Lawrence Market. Once again, we said, why don't we do this more often? It was packed with tourists.

We got 2 pounds of mussels for $11. Yes, we are a metric country but we use a mix of metric and imperial measurements!

Damn! We did it again! We put them in the fridge still wrapped up until I looked it up and they should be unwrapped, so we lost a few of them. We will remember the next time.

I reminded John of the time, in 2014, that we bought mussels and froze them, forgetting that they are alive! Out of interest, two pounds of mussels in 2014 was $5.69.

Sourdough bread was fresh from the bakery at $5.We got some cheeses and cheese curds, pate, tzatziki. 

Cilantro, cherry tomatoes, an avocado, 3 garlic cloves, 2 spring onions, jalapenos, Brussel sprouts for $20.

I looked at the price of limes, out of curiosity.

Longo's - $1 each. 

St. Lawrence Market - 3 for $2 = 0.67 cents 

Costco $9 for a 3 pound bag. I counted and we had 15.  0.60 cents

Crab legs are a favourite of ours, but at this price????

New place, this was a fish place before.

Phew! My fave, lobster roll is only at $22.

Raspberry, apricot, blueberry, lemon, papaya, mango, cranberry, sticky toffee cheeses.

Friday John had car things to take care of and I went to pick up some weekend groceries. Then it turned into a rainy day so we watched a couple of movies.

Cross your fingers for our Toronto Maple Leafs Hockey as they play Boston tomorrow night, the series is 3-3 and it is the final game.

This is the t-shirt we saw around town. The Leafs haven't won a Stanley's Cup since 1967!

It is tulip time, this time last year, I/we did two tulip trips.

Tulip picking at Bay-Adelaide last year. It is scheduled for next week.

Fenwick ON

COOKING

Saturday Roast leg of lamb, roast potatoes, Brussel sprouts and turnip and carrots

Sunday homemade pizza - that turned out to be a bust. I blame my inconsistent oven.

Monday lamb curry with enough for one lunch and then made a pot of soup for one.

Tuesday rotisserie chicken nachos. $8 2X2 dinners 2X2 lunches then a pot of soup.

Wednesday chicken salad beets hard boiled eggs and homemade gluten free biscuits.

Thursday mussels in a spicy garlic tomato sauce with crusty bread. The sauce was okay, I added onions and hot sauce, but it lacked oomph. We will try this Thai red curry sauce next time!

Friday steak and poutine

WATCHING

We watched many of our regularly recorded series this week.

Get On Up 2014 a chronicle of James Brown's rise from extreme poverty to become one of the most influential musicians in history.

Eye on Juliet 2017 Eye on Juliet tells the story of an unlikely encounter between Gordon (Joe Cole), a hexapod operator, and Ayusha (Lina El Arabi), a young woman from the Middle East. Gordon, guardian of a pipeline in this desert region, becomes fascinated by Ayusha, while piloting his robotic spider from the other side of the world, in America. Ayusha is promised to an older man she doesn't love. Despite the distance, their mutual fear and their imperfect interaction, he will do everything in his power to help her escape her fate. This is a remarkable little movie: the robots are fantastic, and the two main stars do a beautiful job. An interesting setting for a love story.

All Good Things 2010- why had we never seen this? I am not a Gosling fan but he was excellent in this! A love story and murder mystery based on the most notorious unsolved murder case in New York history. The original screenplay uses newly discovered facts, court records and speculation as the foundation for a story of family, obsession, love and loss.

As Good As Dead 2022 Bryant befriends a troubled teen and introduces him to martial arts. As Bryant's mysterious and dangerous past catches up to him, he is forced into a life and death struggle to clear his name, save the boy and get back all he left behind.

READING

"Marriage is a wonderful institution...but who wants to live in an institution?"- Groucho Marx

What a scary read. The Marriage Act by John Marrs is set in the same world as the Netflix series The One 2021. The One is a British science fiction television series based on John Marrs's 2016 novel of the same name.

One simple mouth swab is all it takes. A quick DNA test to find your perfect partner, the one you're genetically made for. A decade after scientists discover everyone has a gene they share with just one other person, millions have taken the test, desperate to find true love. Now, five more people meet their Match. But even soul mates have secrets. And some are more shocking and deadlier than others.

Review from Publishers' Weekly.

Marrs (Keep It in the Family) delivers a smart Orwellian thriller set in a near-future U.K. where the financial impact of several pandemics has led to drastic measures. Multiple economic reboots failed, leading the government to conclude that it could only turn things around by “making people understand that they’re better off emotionally and financially when they’re in a committed relationship,” which would make “them want to work smarter and harder.” Now incentives, including tax breaks and increased access to medical care, reward those who sign up for a “Smart Marriage,” an arrangement which includes consenting to AI devices being placed in married couples’ homes to randomly record conversations and send alerts when they detect potential problems between spouses. The impact of living in a world where privacy is minimal and those not “smart married” face discrimination is cleverly explored through several vividly portrayed characters, including vlogger Roxi, who wants government surveillance to be expanded, and Corrine, a member of the resistance to the oppressive regime. Marrs builds on techno-dystopian ideas explored in prior books (there are Easter eggs connecting this outing to both The One and The Passengers) to craft a scarily plausible world. 

I started She Lies in Wait, so far it is an average read but not a page-turner. It turned out to be much more interesting than I initially thought.