The Bata Shoe Museum

To add a little variety to my travel schedule I spent this past week in Toronto, Canada. I've been to Canada a few times before, but this time I actually managed to do a tiny bit of non work related adventuring so I braved the public transit system and made my way over to The Bata Shoe Museum.  Hannah recommended this the first time I traveled to Toronto and although that didn't work out I kept thinking of it when I had Toronto on my itinerary so this time I found out that they are open late on Thursdays and I made my way over there.  The museum itself really isn't that big with only four exhibits total, but the building is a fun shape and is meant to resemble a shoe box with the lid askew.  On a regular basis they have a historical exhibit of footwear through history which is interesting and informational, but one of their current exhibits is The Roaring Twenties: Heels, Hemlines and High Spirits.  This was particularly fun because the shoes in the Twenties were really spectacular and the exhibit included clips of dancing in these amazing shoes that made me tired just to watch them.  The shoes in the twenties had such great lines, and colors, yet many had practical straps and heels of moderate height and width.  In particular, the collection included two really awesome pairs, one a black and gold starburst pair:

(from The Bata Shoe Museum website)

 and a black pair with rhinestone heel:

(from their brochure)

I have to admit that if they'd been selling modern reproductions I might have come home with a pair. 

One of their other fun exhibits included pairs of shoes donated by JUNO award winners.

 The showcase included this fun pair of beat up Harley Davidson boots worn by Nickleback. 

There was also a pair of amazing thigh high boots worn by Nelly Furtado in another case that I couldn't get a decent picture of.  Overall an excellent way to spend a couple of hours after work.

Istanbul Market

An unexpected bounty (clockwise from top left): lahmacun, sour cherry juice, pomegranate syrup (nar), honey and mixed nuts, olives, Turkish baklava, double pistachio Turkish delight, parsley, tomatoes, red onion, manti (tiny, meat-filled pastas), kaymak. Missing from photo: a very shy jar of pickled Turkish pickled peppers.

Oh happy day! Chance did us a good turn today as we got lost trying find our way from Corrado's Pet Market to the Garden State Parkway. Phoebe (the GPS) took us on some back roads and we passed a sign reading Istanbul Market. On a whim we turned around and took a peek.

Just as we had hoped, it was a little slice of Turkey back home in the States. The proprieters were, true to Turkish form, extremely friendly and genuinely nice. The other patrons were polite and cheerful and mostly Turkish. And of course the shop was full of all the food we loved during our recent trip to Istanbul.

The picture above shows the few things we picked up this time, but now we know where to go to pick up spices and ingredients that are hard to find elsewhere. And they had fresh Turkish baklava, which we can never get enough of. We even found kaymak, which we never expected to find outside of Turkey, and some of the better olives we've ever had. I'm not sure what they do differently in Turkey, but their olives are bursting with flavor. They tasted even better than they smelled.

We can't recommend this place enough. The cashier even made fun of us for not tasting things before we bought them. As he said, "it's Turkish tradition! Next time you come here you taste everything you want before you buy, ok?" What's not to like?

Last, but not least, we found some frozen lahmacun on our first spin through the aisles. We were careful not to get our hopes up, since it wasn't likely to be in the neighborhood of the lahmacun in Istanbul, let alone the one we sought out on our trip (Istanbul Eats claims it's the best in the city). Well, happy days are here again because this lahmacun is delicious. We chose the hot variety (which wasn't very hot anyway) and added the traditional chopped tomatoes, chopped parsley, and lots of lemon juice. We skipped the onions, mostly because we forgot. It was absolutely amazing and I'm so happy we have 8 or 10 more in the freezer. Hurray!

Lahmacun, all dressed up for supper.

Knitted Donut!

Tonight Todd and I went to City Bakery for their City Bakery Night of Knitting on the Rocks (With Chocolate Too!).  I learned about this fun and tasty event on the Mochimochi Land blog and signed right up.  I was lucky enough to find empty seats at the Brooklyn General Doughknits workshop table and we got to chat with Anna Hrachovec and the nice people from Brooklyn General.

This year they didn't try to have people do more than one workshop which was good, because last year there really just wasn't time. The tickets were significantly more expensive, which I think discouraged a lot of people from coming, but made for smaller crowds.

Although we spent most of our time at the Brooklyn General table I also met a nice woman from Knitty City who gave me a bag and a fun clicky tape measure in exchange for contributing to their charity project which will become a blanket to be sent to Japan.

Again they had tons of delicious food including their super rich hot chocolate and macaroni and cheese.  I managed to only get one serving of food, but ended up succumbing to two cups of hot chocolate.  Overall a fun and worthwhile event.