Guess how I felt about Kinton Ramen.

Just guess.  I LOVED IT.  Quelle surprise.  The space is beautiful - a long, skinny, wood infused room with a long standing bar (with bar stools), a long counter, a teeny tiny table at the back.  All the tables are VERY communal.  I think the Guu crew design their furniture for sylph-like Asians and not burly North Americans.

When I arrived at the restaurant just after 6pm, the Dotytron was parking the car and luckily the hostess deigned to seat me at the last remaining two spots at the standing bar.  The Dotytron arrived within 4 minutes so it was okay.  By 6:15pm, there was a whole restaurant's worth of people waiting in line.  Another good sign?  Not a single Caucasian in sight.  It was all Asian people as far as the eye could see.  I really, truly believe that only Asians know how to really eat, in an omnivorous way.  Other cultures also privilege food, but Asians eat widely without fear or prejudice and that's the hallmark of a good eater.

Now let's get down to brass tacks.  We ordered the gyoza, which were delicate, small, and a bit of a gouge at $4 for the portion.  We had the karaage (fried chicken), spicy, which was light and crunch in the Korean fried chicken style.  Did I tell you that I recently tried Korean chicken by way of Home of Hot Taste?  We had the original and the spicy.  Here's what differentiates Korean fried chicken from your more readily available, Western iterations: the entire chicken is cut up into smaller pieces (so you don't get a breast piece, it's all roughly 2" pieces of chicken), it is coated in some kind of light (rice?) flour which results in a very thin, crispy coating.  The chicken is way less greasy and it's often tossed with spices/sauce afterwards.  It's kind of like a bar food.  At Home of Hot Taste the spicy had KICK!  It was a sweet-spicy type of tacky sauce.  It was good.  The standard-bearer of Korean fried chicken is the Bonchon chain.  I'm trying to convince SMckay's FroYo King to go in on a franchise.  It would be murderation.  Maybe I can talk to MHui's hubby?

The Dotytron ordered the spicy garlic ramen with pork shoulder and I had the Kinton ramen, shio style, with extra pork (I chose belly).  You choose your broth type (miso, shio [sea salt], shoyu [soy]) then you decide whether you want your broth regular (where they thwack pork back fat through a sieve onto the broth) or light (sans pork back fat thwack) and then you pick whether you want kinton pork shoulder or kinton pork belly.  Simple.  The broth is full-flavoured and the ramen is exemplary.  Unlike Kenzo, here the ramen is thick, chewy, al dente.  Very satisfying mouth feel.  It comes with the de rigeur runny boiled egg.  It is delicious.  The broth was a touch salty for my liking, but it's a small quibble (find me a ramen place where the broth isn't salty!).  I would definitely go back.

In fact, when my Discerning Coyote friend bailed on me for lunch today, I DID go back with MHui.  This time I tried the shoyu ramen and we had the tofufurai, which are little tofu nuggets served with a sweet-spicy-mayo sauce.  Delicious!  So I was basically there twice in less than 24 hours, which means I should have just slept there.

We were going to see Jiro Dreams of Sushi but then we realized that a quiet little documentary about a monastic sushi-maker would play just as well on our small screen and that we'd get a better ROI with a big screen rock'em sock'em summer tent pole feature.  Now, as you may or may not be aware, I grew up in a pop culture obsessed family (my siblings).  From a very young age, when I was dragged to see Ishtar in the theatre, movies have been near and dear to my heart.  So while I enjoy the highbrow as much as the next person, summer for me is always about the blockbuster summer tent pole movie.  As one of those, The Avengers doesn't disappoint.  As a child weaned on Voltron, G.I. Joe, Thundercats and the like, I, like many of my generation (and anyone with a beating heart, really), love a good story about ragtag misfits banding together against a common good.  My favorite kind of movie montage?  When a ragtag group of underdogs start preparing for a siege (see: montage in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves).  The Avengers brings together a bunch of Marvel superheroes to fight against Thor's bro, Loki, who is in possession of this glowing cube thing that is a crazy source of power (see: Transformers).  Anyway, the main point of this film is that it is written and directed by Joss Whedon and you are either one of the members of the smart-geek crew who deify Whedon as a god, or you're not.  If you're not, then I feel sorry for you, because Whedon is a genius.  The movie was funny, hit all the right marks, and gave us an awesome Hulk (finally!).  The movie is a touch long, but when you're bringing together 6 heroes under one umbrella, it's gonna be hard to do quickly.  A full half of the movie is spent bringing everyone together and getting them up to speed.  I wasn't a fan of the use of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Phil as a major plot device, and I thought Cobie Smulder's acting was off and her role was dumb.  Otherwise, it had classic Whedon moments of levity.  He's a master of tone, that one.  Go see this!

No sooner had I vowed that my summer wardrobe was done then I was notified that a dress I had fallen in love with on Modcloth was back in stock.  So I bought it.  It was pretty inexpensive ($50?) and it came quickly and I didn't get ganked on customs, which was nice.

Here's the thing though - LOOK AT THAT DRESS!  It's perfect!  It's so flattering - the included belt makes everyone look skinny and the shape up top hides all the stuff you want to hide but accentuates the stuff you want to accentuate.  I love the ikat pattern and it's good for work or paired with skinny jeans and flats or a jean jacket for after work.  It's ladylike but still fresh.  Love it!!!

Softball got cancelled tonight, which is a blessing in disguise.  We had hotdogs and KD for dinner.  I fully intend to be sleeping by like, 9:00pm tonight and I'm near giddy with excitement at the prospect.

I've attached the recipe for the slow-cooker Thai coconut curry soup because it was so darn good.

Fin.

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Thai Coconut Curry Soup
serves 4-6


2 cans coconut milk
1 L. chicken stock
2 large boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 package (or 2 T) Thai yellow coconut curry paste (the one I bought came in a little foil packet like what powdered Swiss Chalet gravy comes in and we bought it at T&T.  It was a single-use portion to make enough curry for 4 people)
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and cut into slices
2 stalks of lemongrass, bashed and bruised with a knife
4-5 cloves of garlic, sliced
10 lime leaves, torn into pieces
4 carrots, peeled and cut into 1" pieces
2 c. of bean sprouts, washed
1/2 package of rice stick noodles, the thin kind
1 red pepper, cut into 1" pieces

- put everything up until the rice noodles into a slow cooker, put the lid on, and simmer on low all day while you're at work.
- when you get home, crank the heat to high and put in the bean sprouts, the rice noodles, and the red pepper and stir it around.  Put the lid back on and cook for an additional 30 minutes or until the rice noodles are cooked through.
- season to taste with salt and pepper and serve.  You can loosen with additional chicken broth or water, if you like.

Sooooo much dramas!

*My head asplodes*  Okay...so the sketchy neighbours we share the driveway with (we call her Mad Eye Moody for reasons that would be evident if you dear readers, were to ever see her in real life), got a dog.  No big deal, it's just another check off the ol' adhering-to-low-income-stereotypes list.  Of COURSE they got a husky-german shepherd mix.  OF COURSE.  OF COURSE they don't walk the dog, ever, and just let it run loose.

So a few neighbours had already asked her to keep her dog on a leash.  I don't particularly care about that, but what I *do* care about is her dog pooping on our side of the back area (which is one big open area until we can put up a fence).  What the Dotytron certainly cares about is NOT stepping in a pile of dog poop (he had shoes on, thank goodness!) on our deck when he goes to take out the trash/recycling/whathaveyou.

Anyway, we asked her a few times to please pick up after her dog.  I still find dog poop, so I talked to the tenant relations person that manages the property. Contemporaneously, our one busy-body neighbour called animal control on Mad Eye (independent of us).  So the Dotytron goes out back to put out some green waste yesterday and finds our garbage, recycling, and green bins on Mad Eye's side of the yard.  When he opens up our green bin (which, if you recall, I spray painted, along with our garbage and recycling bin, with our address and the words, "fire walk with me" when we first moved in, which PREDATES Mad Eye moving in by a whole year), what does he find?  Loose dog poop.  Unbagged.  Sitting in OUR green bin.

So he's obviously pissed off.  Mad Eye comes home from an outing and they have a discussion, where she gets all wrangy because animal control was called on her (again: not by us!) and accuses us of STEALING her recycling and garbage bin.  According to her, they're given an ID number and the ones we have been using are not ours and are hers.  I'm like, "you crazy!" because the dog poop has nothing to do with the bin stealing, but whatevers.  I call Toronto's universal line, 311, and as it turns out, our garbage can ISN'T ours! The recycling can is ours, the green bins are like everyone's - they're not given a unique identifier.  So according to the rep I talked to at the City, the City is "opening an investigation" into our M.I.A. bin which will be concluded WITHIN THIRTY DAYS, at which point, if they can't find my bin (and let's think about this here: what are they going to do?  CSI that shiz?  Put up signs?  Take statements?), they send me a replacement one.  I'm like, "where am I supposed to put my garbage for a month?" and the rep is all like, "who said that? Is that a crazy talking squirrel?" So whatever.  

I go over to Mad Eye's house and tell her what I learned.  She explains, in her Mad Eye Moody way, that she was angry cuz she thought we called animal control (and I assured her we didn't) and she thought we hated dogs.  I explain that I have no problem with dogs, but the reason I don't have a dog is because I don't want to pick up dog poop, so you can imagine how frustrating it is to NOT have a dog and STILL have to deal with dog poop.  Anyway, she calmed down and seemed reasonable about it.  She was also mad that I contacted the property management person but I was like, well look, we'd already asked you a few times and you hadn't done anything...so we didn't know what to do..." and she's all like, "well, I'd appreciate you telling me because every time they get a complaint I get a mark next to my name" and I kinda clucked sympathetically but internally I was like, "well, BE NORMAL ABOUT STUFF THEN!" but obviously I didn't say that.  So she agreed to clean out our green bin for us and that was that.

I was mentally exhausted from it all yesterday.  It was just too much!  Thankfully we had an episode of Game of Thrones to watch, which I washed down with one of two (!) free coconut waters Dr. Rei and I scored on our lunchtime walk yesterday.  I was also feeling down because we had that crappy dinner the Dotytron had made.  It was an unsatisfying night with a happy ending in the form of coconut water and fantasy political intrigue.

Tonight was Friday Night Takeout Night, so we checked out this new place my neighbour (a totally normal neighbour) hepped me to, called Leslieville Pumps.  They took over this old convenience store attached to a gas station and put in a new façade, but I had thought that the inside was still gas-station convenience store, with a new old timey country store outer. As it turns out, they've turned it into a store/take out restaurant serving smoked brisket and stuff.  We got the smoked brisket sammy (with fried onions), the pulled pork sammy (with coleslaw), and the smoked chicken sammy (with arugala and tomato).  We also got poutine, and coleslaw and cornbread muffins.  Everything was really, really good!  I have small quibbles, the barbecue sauce is applied a little too heavily and it's a bit of a one-note sauce...a sweet Kansas-city style that's a little too sweet for my personal taste.  But the coleslaw is fantastic - nice celery seed seasoning, perfect amount of light mayo dressing, great texture, and only SIXTY CENTS A PORTION!  The poutine features fresh cut fries, and real curds.  I wasn't a fan of the cornbread muffins, but that's because I really prefer my own cornbread.  This version wasn't too sweet and had pieces of fresh corn.  All in all, my quibbles were small (rhyme!), for a barbecue option that's so close, is out of a gas station, and is run by really well-intentioned, well meaning people who seemed super-hype on their project and receptive to input and constructive criticism (the owner/chef came in and was super-cute and was asking a local rubbie what he thought of the renos and was super-friendly with us).  I just think it's so cute.  The gas station part is overseen by this sweet Sri Lankan couple and apparently they're going to offer late-night curry (made by the Sri Lankan couple).  So cute!!!

I'm so pumped tonight is Friday, guys.

Fin.