Claire! Claire! What is that apple-shaped thing behind you, and where can I get one?

Yeah...our owners tapped into the Filipino work program thing, so it was all Filipinos biding their time, or middle-aged mothers who got out at 15:00 to pick the kids up. A few university kids, like I was. And some teens in the afternoon, but even those started tapering off after a while.

The bagels are tasty, I won’t argue there—I certainly made enough of them.

I find most juice a bit sweet these days, but I like it mixed with sparkling water.

On the one hand, I am suspicious...but you have never failed me before.

If they were a shoe style I enjoyed at all, I’d be pretty tempted.

Ah, but if I were rich I could get that steampunk robot one I saw once. It would be rad as hell, even though my 20$ coffeemaker still makes coffee just fine.

I spent too many years trying to scrub the coffee smell out of my pores, it was awful.

Right? If I were mindnumblingly rich, I’d learn to cook for real and have an on-call team of baristas instead of a chef. Or at least a really good coffee machine.

The Canadian politeness?

Salt is salt. We have a box of table salt, and I bought fancy grey salt on sale once—but I really can’t differentiate between them, so I just sprinkle some salt in my baking and hope for the best. It works out alright.

Your corn articles always make me so damn nostalgic. I appreciate them.

The timing for this is good, because my husband recently bought cucumbers—forgetting, apparently, that he can’t eat them right now unless they are minced into oblivion. I think I will give this a go.

It was chunks of carrot cake in cheesecake, if I recall correctly. I’ve made a bastardized version, with cheesecake over the carrot cake base instead of chunks of cake in the batter, and it’s pretty fantastic.

A (now closed) pub near me used to make a carrot cake cheesecake. It was cheesecake with chunks of carrot cake inside, and I loved it.

Once upon a time, Starbucks carried an orange spiced iced coffee, which I loved. I have never been able to recreate it.

It depends. If I’m somewhere in Canada, I’ll look up places to eat. If I’m abroad, I’m willing to wander into a place and hope for the best. I’m usually interested in what, rather than where.

Good timing: I just made coleslaw today.

Boone’s used to be pretty common in Canada, as I recall; I think it’s largely been superseded by Arbour Mist. At least in Ontario—I can’t speak for the rest of the country, as I moved East long after I realized there was better alcohol out there than Boone’s.

Breakups should not take place in public. Unless you are afraid the other person will turn violent or aggressive, and you want a lot of witnesses and don’t have any scary friends available.