Mexican Train Dominoes

I am always on the lookout for new games to play, especially new board games, even though we don't have much room here to store them. Or play them. All the same, I go to the local toys shop sometimes and I get curious. I found one a few months ago, Mexican Train Dominoes. Now, I only played dominoes a few times. I do like the aesthetic of it, but that's not what I like here. It has trains in it. Trains. So... yeah. I might put it on my birthday list.

ALMArique

J'ai trouvé ça sur les réseaux sociaux. J'ai bien ri. La réponse saguenéenne aux tendances hégémoniques d'un certain voisin du Sud. Ou l'SUDE, comme on dit chez nous.

Tout ce que je vais dire sur le sujet

Bon, on parle du Québec, de certains Québécois, à l'international. Vous savez à quoi je fais allusion. Vous deveinerez que ça m'a mis en colère. Des influenceurs, qui ont voyagé de Montréal à Cancun et ont foutu le bordel dans l'avion, se comportant comme des pirates paquetés (et/ou cokés et/ou sur le speed). Je ne vais pas m'épivarder là-dessus. Le PM Trudeau les a traités d'Ostrogoths. Je n'aime pas le PM, mais c'est assez juste. Je vais le dire comme ça, ce sera une vacherie et c'est sans doute tout ce que je dirai sur le sujet: ce sont des esties de colons sans classe ni éducation, le nez plein de poudre. Même leur franglais est merdique et fait saigner les yeux comme les oreilles. Ils peuvent bien attraper la Covid, la chlamydia, la syphillis, les morpions, ou une bonne vieille tourista, un cocktail de ces maladies, c'est pas mal tout de qu'ils méritent. En demeurant expatriés, idéalement. Qui les veut anyway? Gang de débiles.

Crâne festif

Mon père a pris cette photo en Californie, lorsqu'il a visité mon frère PJ. C'est un crâne qui est je crois associé au Dia de Muertos, le Jour des morts mexicain qui survient peu après l'Halloween. Je pourrais attendre au 2 novembre pour le montrer, mais j'ai d'autres photos du genre pour ce moment-là et puis il fait tout ausi bien pour l'Halloween qui s'en vient, même s'il est peut-être un peu trop coloré. Il n'en demeure pas moins macabre, c'est un crâne après tout.

Corona (health advice)

You probably read or heard on the news the absurd story before about Corona: 38% of beer drinkers (and not Americans as it was previously said) don't want to drink it. They fear... the coronavirus. Now I don't know if I should read or laugh about this. You my opinion about this tasteless beer: I only drink it out of nostalgia (more about it here) and when I do I always drink it with a bit of lime, otherwise it tastes nothing. My health advice: it's a vile beer, probably poisonous in itself, but it's safe if you add the slice of lime in it. It kills germs, poison, viruses and whatever there is in this Mexican beer. And it gives you a slight vitamins boost. And more to the point, it make it taste something else than nothing.

Authentic (?) Taco

When it's hot, I often feel like eating exotic and hot food. It was the case a couple of weeks ago, when we went to a country show. There were different stands offering different cuisines, we went to the Mexican food van and I bought this taco. I don't know how authentic it was, but this was the best taco I ever had. Not the Old El Paso pseudo-Mexican stuff. This was fresh, the tortilla was soft, there was plenty of sauce (sour cream? I cannot remember) and the jalapeno brought all the spice and kick needed. Moral of the story: the best food experiences come in the most unexpected places.

Jarritos

Sometimes, you find something exotic in the most unusual place. We went to a country show, because it had tractors' procession and tractors' displays and our little Wolfie loves tractors.There were lots of stands selling a number of goods, food and drinks, including one selling Mexican cuisine. And a Mexican soda I had never heard about, Jarritos. I bought the lime flavored one, because... well, because it was the only flavor left and I was thirsty. It was good, nothing outstanding in itself, I mean it tasted of lime soda, but on a hot day it made me feel miles and miles away from where I was, in the Mexican desert or something. And I just loved the bottle. Sometimes I judge a drink by its bottle, or at least, I buy the drink because of it.

Manquer le Jour des morts

Mon père a pris cette photo en Californie quand ils visitaient mon frère PJ. Je crois que c'était à Sans Francisco. Vous pouvez facilement identifier une figure propre au Jour des morts (Dia de Muertos) mexicain. Qui était hier apparemment et que je n'ai pas souligné, notamment parce que j'en connais trop peu sur la fête. C'est pourtant le genre de célébration que je devrais apprendre à connaître, étant donné ma fascination pour le macabre. Je crois que c'est passablement plus suivi aux États-Unis, surtout dans le Sud, surtout en Californie, étant donné leur proximité avec le Mexique. Tout de même, à cause de l'aspect saisissant du macabre festif mexicain, j'ai voulu partager cette photo ici.

Les huevos rancheros d'Aux Vivres

Je l'avoue, ceci est un pur billet de food porn et désolé si vous vivez le Supplice de Tantale en regardant ça. Mais je le subis aussi: si j'ai déjà fait la découverte des huevos rancheros, je n'ai jamais mangé la version d'Aux Vivres. Comme la plupart des photos de leurs mets végétaliens, je les ai prises... de leur page Facebook. Ces huevos rancheros s'ajoute à la longue liste de ces mets que je devrai découvrir ou redécouvrir lors de mon retour à Montréal. Petite note: bien entendu, Aux Vivres étant végétalien, ce ne sont même pas de vrais oeufs. Qu'importe, je veux essayer ça au moins une fois comme déjeuner.

The lime in the Corona

I took this picture yesterday in a local pub when my wife was giving a concert yesterday. For the record, I rarely, if ever, drink Corona, or indeed any insipid lager beer. I mean when you need a bloody lime for the beer to taste something, you know you are not drinking a beer worthy of the name. But yesterday, I was in the mood for it. Corona reminds me of my early twenties as a uni student, especially in the UK, as I was drinking it quite a lot in these cheap pubs and clubs that often did not have proper beers. It is true that by the time I was drinking Corona, I was already drunk so the taste did not bothered me one bit. And it was usually quite cheap. Or at least as cheap as alcohol could be. It became one of our drinking traditions in our little group, mainly composed of Italians, and I was the one to teach them to push the lime to the bottom by turning the bottle upside down. One of my Italian friends had her thumb so thin, she could not cover the hole, so I had to help. Since then, every time I have a Corona and look at the slice of green lime, it reminds me of that time.

The Huevos Rancheros from The Giraffe

As it is a weekend tradition, I am plugging a meal from a restaurant. This time it is a breakfast, from The Giraffe, a quirky chain specialised in... I guess eco-friendly, fair trade food? I went there last time on the first day of my Christmas holidays, at Heathrow. I had been there once before, but never had their breakfast and had not been overly impressed. But this was different. A Mexican breakfast is just exotic enough to make the experience unusual, yet it still feels and tastes like a breakfast, if I make sense. I love how it tweeks the traditional elements of breakfast: the eggs are there, but there is spicy chorizo instead of bland sausages, tortilla instead of bread, black beans instead of the disgusting beans in tomato sauce the Brits have and you have all the unusual vegs and the avocado. It was filling, spicy and it felt healthy.

Exotic mood

It happens sometimes: I get into a particular "cultural" mood. Maybe I am just a shallow tourist deep down. Recently, my wife and we made spanakopita, one of our favourite "couple" meal. So I had again a Greek feeling. I wish the weather had been Greek too. But it was neither hot nor dry. I also try to speak Italian as much as I can with an Italian colleague of mine, hoping to improve it. And there was a company dinner last night in an authentic Mexican restaurant (as in: the fajitas did not taste like your Old El Paso mix). So I am in an exotic mood. Since I put enough of Italian songs here (or songs in ITalian), I thought I put that Greek song you can hear near the end of the second season of The Wire. I put it here because I am in this exotic mood, because I love the song and because the Greeks were maybe my favourite villains in the whole series.