After being away for a month, I’ve got to say, Toronto is a great city. Sure, we’ll make fun of it and the rest of the country can hate us but if you came to U of T, you might as well explore this place. It’s rather upsetting to hear from graduating students who aren’t from Toronto that they have never been on the islands or they’ve never really set foot outside of campus during their 4 year residency here. In any case, here’s a list of places and things to do while you’re stuck here:

(more…)

What: Kings of Pastry
When: Friday, May 7th @ 11AM
Where: The ROM theatre
How: The film is sold out for the screening so you’ll need to show up AT LEAST 1 hour early and stand in the rush line. It’s during the day so it’ll be free for students if you can get in. HotDocs keeps a set of tickets for press (like me), so once these are unclaimed (15 minutes before the film) they’ll start to let the Rush line in — bring something to sit on and to read!

Every year, HotDocs selects a few documentary gems, which later become great successes (like Helvetica from 2007) and seeing them at HotDocs before they are known is always a pleasure. The trick, however, is finding these films beneath the large mass of films by neophyte directors with inchoate ideas and the ridiculous notion that documentary filmmaking is merely the art of pointing a camera at anything “real”.

So far, I’ve seen two big winners at this year’s festival: Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s Kings of Pastry and the great Steven Soderbergh’s And Everything is Going Fine. Kings of Pastry plays again this Friday at 11AM at the ROM: it is RUSH only so show up early (no later than an hour in advance if you want to make sure you get into the movie) but it is worth the wait.

Kings of Pastry is about a group of sixteen chefs who are finalists for the MOF (Meilleurs Ouvriers de France) competition, a French competition for pastry chefs to show their cooking prowess and earn the very prestigious striped collar. Kings of Pastry focuses on three chefs: we watch them prepare for the competition, revise their pastry inventions, and finally participate in the competition.

The process by which these chefs craft pastries is utterly fascinating: a feat of structural engineering. A delicious dessert is a prerequisite for success but by no means a guarantee; presentation is equally important. One of the challenges of the MOF competition is to make a sugar sculpture, which, by nature of the material, is extremely fragile, meaning the MOF candidates must be very inventive (and careful) to ensure that their pastry is structurally sound and does not break when moved. Structural integrity is This also an issue for every other pastry, and the chefs achieve this by carefully planning and considering, at minimum, the ingredients, the thickness of materials, and the cooking time required.

Perhaps even more fascinating than the structural engineering behind these pastries is the iterative design process – yes, design process – that these chefs undergo to arrive at the perfect pastry. In one scene, we see five different versions of the same puff pastry, each with different arrangements, as one of the chefs tries to decide which pastry he wants to present at the competition. Each participant must make a large wedding cake sculpture, and the one chef we follow most closely designs and redesigns the cake many times, largely in an effort to ensure that it can support its own weight.

Although Kings of Pastry chronicles a competition, it does not feel forced or scripted and it does not follow a formula like American Idol, to use a crude example. Hegedus and Pennebaker focus on the story behind making the pastries and the art and dedication that goes into this trade, with many mouth-watering shots of these gastronomical works of art, which is absolutely mesmerizing. Last year, Nora Ephron made another movie for the epicure, Julie and Julia, about the trials and tribulations of two ambitious chefs and featured many delectable shots of gourmet French cuisine; Kings of Pastry does an equally good job of photographing food and celebrating the epicure culture, though it focuses on the story behind that special food group, dessert that has its own separate compartment in everyone’s stomach. Kings of Pastry, like Julie and Julia, celebrates the art of cooking and it’s sure to leave you craving an incredibly fancy French pastry dessert by the end of the film.

Steven Soderbergh’s film, And Everything is Going Fine, is a continuation of Soderbergh’s obsession with the actor/performer Spaulding Gray. Soderbergh made Gray’s Anatomy in 1996, which was an eighty-minute film version of one of Gray’s monologues. And Everything is Gone Fine is essentially a mash-up of old recordings of Gray’s various monologue performances interspersed with the occasional personal interview (between, presumably, Soderbergh and Gray) and television interview. (more…)

picture from maplesyrupfest.com

I have to admit that before going to my very first maple syrup festival at Bruce’s Mill. Yes, my very first one after 21 years of being born and raised in Canada. I imagined it to be the stereotypical Canadian farm boy atmosphere – flannel shirts everywhere (and yes there were many) and all white people (perhaps racist). As a jest, I even attempted to get my whole family – brother, mom and niece to “dress like farmers” just so we’d fit in. As it turns out, my attempt to “fit in” was highly unnecessary because practically a quarter of the people I saw there were Asian. Heck, even our tour guide was Asian and also an immigrant! As a Canadian, I should have known better, my assumptions were racist and ignorant.

The Sugarbush Maple Syrup festival was not just a time to drink maple syrup (the best syrup I have ever tasted by the way!), eat pancakes, pet animals, and learn the good ol’ Canadian tradition of getting our beloved Maple sap, but it was also a time to rejoice and bring people of all backgrounds together. (more…)

If you live in the student ghetto below College Street, you may have noticed a new bicycle-themed cafe in the neighbourhood. Located on Cecil street, just east of Spadina and a short hop away from campus, Sonic Cafe has added a burst of bright, spray-painted colour to the street since it opened this winter. And now that spring has finally arrived, Sonic Cafe is ready to launch into full gear.

Owner Anthony D’Arcy created Sonic as a stop for cyclists to come in and tune-up their bikes. The cafe, which is loosely affiliated with Toronto DIY cyclist groups Bike Chain, Bike Pirates, and Bikesauce, will hold a repair stand and tools for tune-ups on its front patio by April .

Not only is Sonic’s coffee organic and fair-trade, it’s environmentally friendly, too. Most local bean roasters emit a highly carcinogenic product, roasting their beans in residential areas with no emissions standard. Sonic is different. “We get our beans from this old Italian fellow who was an engineer before he entered his family’s coffee business. He built this absolutely amazing roaster. It’s highly efficient and has controls that you don’t see in a local roaster. You end up with a bean that is organically grown, fairly traded, and environmentally roasted,” says D’Arcy.

(more…)

So, here we are, university students with a limited budget. As a result, buying bags of candy from the supermarket might not even be plausible if you have your yearly craving for Halloween candy and are low on cash. Not to mention the fact that you can’t trick or treat without people asking awkward questions. Well, there is a way where you can still dress up, possibly (even probably) get some free candy and do something to help the less fortunate in your local community. So here is what you do:

1. Find a wagon, a lot of big cardboard boxes and get your Halloween costumes out of the closet.

2. Prepare little flyers saying that you will be coming around the neighbourhood to collect non-perishable food items for the Daily Bread Food Bank. Distribute them to your neighbours. (Live in residence? Make a non-residence friend!)

3. Go trick-or-treating for non-perishables on Halloween. A lot of the time, or at least in my experience, neighbours will reward your kind act with candy. Or at least, they offer you candy while you wait for them awkwardly to get you canned foods.

4. Once you’ve trick-or-treated to your heart’s content, drive your donations to the Daily Bread Food Bank!

Have fun trick-or-treating!

Picture from here.

Earthcycle, also known as Environment Week, is coming up at U of T from September 21st to 26th. With over 25 things to see and do — all incorporating the theme of climate change and the environment — you might get overwhelmed with what you want to check out. Here are some of blogUT’s event picks for Earthcycle.

Workshops and Tours

Container Gardening Workshop
Thursday Sept. 24 from 1pm – 3pm @ International Student Centre Veranda

Learn about city gardening – grow your own food

Trinity College Green Roof Tour & Lunch
Wednesday Sept. 23 from 12pm – 2 pm @ St. Hilda’s College Residence

Students from Trinity College, the first University of Toronto signatory to the Presidents’ Climate Change Initiative, will provide a tour of their green roof and free lunch to visitors.

Food

Hot Yam vegan lunch
Thursday Sept. 24 from 12pm – 2 pm @ International Student Centre, Baldwin Room

A $4 vegan lunch by the Hot Yam! — a healthy environmental alternative to fast food and animal products.
(more…)

In its 25th year, the Vegetarian Food Fair isn’t just for those who’ve gone meatless. With over a hundred exhibitors to visit, anyone who is a budding vegetarian, environmentally-conscious, interested in healthy living, or just looking to try new foods will discover something interesting.

Whether you are a vegetarian or meat-lover, you will want to try some of the faux-meat dishes offered at one of the many food booths. As a seasoned vegetarian, I was particularly pleased with the veggie drumsticks from King’s Cafe. If imitation meat is not your style, you can also find a few meat dishes here and there.
(more…)