Art By Sunshine

Wayne and I went to Asian Restaurant on Arthur St and Mountdale Ave in Thunder Bay. Wayne thought it was opening day today, but it had actually opened on the 21st! Not quite sure how he mixed that one up. I love Vietnamese food so was very excited to have a real live Vietnamese restaurant opening up in good ole TBay. But alas…there was only ONE Pho on the menu. Really? There are so many Pho types, chicken, tripe, rare beef, well done beef, tendon, beef balls etc etc all they had was rare beef with beef balls. I can’t have beef balls (but can’t remember what I am allergic to exactly but know I can’t have them) so I asked for no beef balls and extra rare beef.

Photo by Wayne Potter

There was a lot of rare beef in my bowl, which was really nice. The soup broth wasn’t as tasty as Pho Du Bo and was lukewarm (ewwww). They also cooked my bean sprouts. But did have lime. Didn’t have my favourite hot sauce (only the chili garlic sauce Eyana loves). No culantro. No Thai basil (the best part, besides the tasty broth). They said they imported ingredients but said “This is Thunder Bay! We can’t get that here! It freezes in transport. Maybe in summer.” Our summer rolls (made without shrimp for me) were delicious, but it looked like I couldn’t have the sauce because it looked like hosin sauce or oyster sauce both of which have wheat in them. We also tried their homemade Vietnamese sausage with kimchi.

The sausage was excellent, the kimchi not so much although Wayne liked it because it wasn’t hot and spicy. Both of those appetizers ran $5.50 each. Rather pricey for Vietnamese food. That is actually one reason I like Viet food. The great prices! Not so in TBay. They had only one noodle bowl too and no curry soup. They did have a curry dish that I will try next time. Wayne tried the Pad Thai

Photo by Wayne Potter

in a mild version that he discovered he liked at Goldstones in Toronto in Chinatown this past summer. He said Goldstones’ Pad Thai was better, although he liked the portion sizes here in TBay at Asian.However, with that being said the Pad Thai was $18.50! He wanted to get the Pad Thai made hotter next time, as the mild was really mild. My Pho was $11.50 a far cry from the $5.50-$6.50 I usually pay in and around Toronto. I had to pay for my Jasmine tea too, no free tea. The wait staff was very attentive and came by with hot water to top up my tea bag (strange, was always loose leaf and strained before coming to the table at all the Viet restaurants I’ve ever been to before and of course, FREE!) and coffee frequently and were very nice when Wayne winged his coffee cup and sent coffee flying all over the table with his elbow. At the end of our meal, after I had 1/2 my soup packed up to take home with me, they brought out 2 Chinese fortune cookies (weird) and these 2 little biscuit balls with this weird stuffing in them. Wayne – who is seemingly trying almost everything new and interesting these days – I mean really – he was eating frog legs the other day at Beau Daddy’s Cajun restaurant with Kodey for his 16th birthday, ate one of these weird Asian buns and said “Yumm!”

Then Wayne broke the other one open and we peered inside – it was filled with some round white thing, but Wayne didn’t care what it was, he just said it was good and ate the other one. I couldn’t have it because it was definitely a wheat product alas. The filling was tofu looking, but Wayne couldn’t say what it was.

The bill came to $50 for a tea, coffee, two entrees and two appetizers. Asian restaurant said that they were going to be licensed to serve alcohol within the next month. The owner is Tommy Tran and their website which will be http://asianrestaurant.ca should be up and running soon. We then tried to download all the vids from tonight from Wayne’s Samsung Galaxy Ace with not so much success, as not all the vids would download and then the Mac Desktop iMovie kept crashing. We had Wayne’s 16 year old son Kodey over tonight and the nanny, Janet, both of whom should be all set up (alright totally confused) about video editing as I’m a bit behind with my vids and they both would like some extra work. But really, all they did was watch Wayne crash the computer a lot. We did get a vid out of it and some pics. I will definitely go back to Asian restaurant and try the noodle bowl and the curry dish as we are kinda isolated around here and this is the only restaurant besides Woking Bird for Vietnamese food in Thunder Bay. I totally miss “real” Vietnamese food in Toronto though much and am really disappointed that the restaurant didn’t live up to my usual Viet experiences elsewhere.

Combining Photoshop with Roly’s introductory sculpture class, for this food production sculpture for our final project – soft sculpture. Ick. Soft sculpture is not my thing however…this is day 3 and I finally got the photos the right size and can print in colour without an attendant at the help desk in the ATAC at LU to switch the paper! (I can print 8.5×11 by myself in colour but not 8.5×14 sheets of paper after 4:30pm!) Ah the joys. These are going to have coated dusk masks (ah, softness!) attached to them with different things to smell and see. I’ll take a pic of it when it’s finished. Now if I could only hook up with Roland Martin, my prof, to use the power tools in the sculpture class, I’ll actually get this done by the due date! (Thurs Dec 6th)

photos by sunshine

My hands molding clay

Turning it into treasure

Works of art are born

Photo by Sunshine

Photo by Sunshine

Our final project with Moe’s computer art 1 course at Lakehead University was a surrealistic city scape. I wanted an orange landscape with an orange road and cloud ground with upside down orange trees and orange waterfalls. The octopus kind of appeared and who knew that octopi came in orange? Wow. I originally titled it “A Blanket for my Octopus”. Orange happiness.

Someone posted in the Thunder Bay homeschooling group about having water kefir babies to share. I thought yes! as we can’t do dairy and I haven’t been making kimchi lately as I’ve run out of Korean red pepper flakes and apparently water kefir is full of pro-biotics. They are also high in B vitamins and for vegans, B-12. Nice!

Here’s my water kefir recipe:

1/4 cup water kefir

1/4 cup sugar

1 slice lemon

1 Tablespoon molasses

1/2 un-sulfured date or fig

4 cups de-chlorinated water at room temperature (boil tap water and let it cool or let water sit out on the counter 24 hours uncovered)

Stir together in a glass container – cover with soft cloth – let sit 24-48 hours at room temperature – strain – strain out kefir grains to use again – can drink immediately or store in fridge capped up to a week. Can add 1/2 cup fruit juice if desired.

Want some kefir babies? Send an email to 365artbysunshine@gmail.com and if I have any extras I’ll email an address to which you would need to supply sufficient postage and an envelope.

Photo by Sunshine

Nancy lost over 55 lbs since I seen her last. Minimal exercising. She said that she is not eating carbs and sugar and doesn’t miss them at all. She says she feels great. The food choices she made are based on a book by Dukan, called the Dukan diet. We went for a chat at Bean Fiend where Nancy got this awesome looking hot chocolate, they also have gluten, vegan treats too and delicious coffee.

Cut and paste, you say? Well, yes this is new – new in Photoshop. Again, for my course with Moe at Lakehead University, Computer Art; blur project. How hard could this be? It took me 1 1/2 weeks straight and lots of frustration to get this to where it now is. The end result? Awesome.

Welcome to the Neighbourhood: Love Zombies. The one in the middle is coming to get you. Run!

Photo by Sunshine

Karen was having sizing issues in Photoshop and asked me to come to Lakehead to work together on our blur project for Computer Art with Moe. First time I have hung out in the lab. Apparently they are open 24 hours a day, and during the school year, except for classes they are usually free from 10pm-8am. In the spring and summer, they are closed on the weekends. Sweet. Karen and I did great work together. It was such a help getting the assignment done. No pic for today as I didn’t think about it (using Photoshop after all!).

Today I decided instead of working on my assignment for my spring course at Lakehead University, Computer Art 1 with Mavorneen Trainor, I would play with an image from my fav beaver pond aka Mills Block Forest and see how I could push the image with adjustments in Photoshop CS5 with my free 30 day trial. You can get a free download of their newest not yet released beta version of Photoshop CS6.  After many hours here’s what I got…

new and improved beaver pond photoshop

Photo by Wayne

My 10 year old found the shrub. “Hey! What’s this?” Well, it turns out it was Labrador Tea. We had it when I was a kid and I haven’t had it since. We all picked a bunch and headed out from our hike at our fav “the beaver pond”;  Mills Forest Block from bringing my kids to hear the Northeastern Chorus Frogs super loud mating calls (we were told they may be Leopard Frogs??) to Robin’s Donuts for some hot water. My 365 New it Daily was picking, making and drinking Labrador Tea as an adult. It tasted pretty good. We’ll definitely have it again! Found out that Labrador Tea leaves can be used to flavour meat and citrus dishes too. Nice! And it can be picked year round.

vid coming soon