I had a fun-taste-tick time at the Taste of Buffalo. It was pouring in the morning but it cleared up beautifully by around four.


I sampled a good variety of really appetizing stuff, learnt how to make a fairly complicated Turkish dessert, came home and made an inspired crunchy stir-fry.


The Turkish Cultural Centre of Buffalo demonstrated the art of making traditional Turkish Baklava and a savoury little appetizer called Borek. It was quite interesting. The culinary stage was too high for me get direct shots of their cooking. I had to instead resort to somewhat blurry shots of the broadcasting TV screens.

Baklava starts with layers of "filo" dough.


Twenty layers of filo dough are stacked atop each other with a generous brushing of clarified butter between each layer.


Then comes a layer of grated walnuts and sugar, followed by twenty more layers of butter-sandwiched filo dough layers. At this point, I was consciously wondering what the rates of cardiovascular diseases in Turkey were. I think they must have got through 75% of that box of butter.


The Baklava came out of the oven looking heavenly. They brushed it with a sugar-lemon glaze and topped it with grated pistachios. It started raining and I was probably their only non-Turkish audience. They let me take this shot from inside the stage trailer.


It was delicious enough to make me forget that probably a week's worth of calories were packed into this small triangle.


The Turks also demonstrated Borek - a savoury deep fried savoury pastry roll filled with feta cheese, mozzarella cheese and parsley.




The rich flaky pastries were accompanied by slow-brewed Turkish tea. They put this traditional turkish kettle on when they started their show. It brewed for a complete 40 minutes before they handed out a deeply burgundy-golden coloured tea. It was strong, bitter and completely refreshing in the rain.


The "Cina-Monkees" - a vegan dessert from Craftsmen cafe, was interesting and went pretty well with the Turkish tea.


The previously publicized dark chocolate covered funana was fun. :)


Got to hear a couple bands in transit.


The White Chocolates were egged on by a completely smashed undergraduate crowd in the beer tent. They played a string of MJ hits. Random people within hearing range launched into personal versions of the MJ dances. It was weirdly hilarious.


Jon Seiger and the All Stars played some awesome jazz tunes. Some talented couples from the crowd broke out into ballroom jazz dances in front of the stage. It was a curious contrast to the MJ fever simultaneously razing another part of the festival.

I also sampled a salad from the Polish stall, fruit juice samples, a bruschetta pizza from one of the Italian restaurant stalls (I forget which one. There were so many of them!), a mango smoothie and some chips with salsa.

Overall, quite a well-spent and enjoyable food experience. :)

This is something I was chatting to (e:Jim) about in the chat-space. (Notice how I say "to (e:Jim)". Yeah, I wasn't really sure if he was chatting back.)

Anyhow, the poll is about "holding on" to "stuff" in your life and the question is:

Were you forced to leave your current residence RIGHT NOW FOREVER and take two inanimate purely materialistic things with you - and strictly two things, (Ideally, in these kind of scenarios, you are only allowed ONE THING, but I am being slightly generous and slighly shifty here. I want to take two things, you see and this is my party island blog!) what would these two things be?

I am voting:
- My rice cooker
- My newer laptop

I just want to get an idea about what kinds of (money-bought) stuff (e:strip) peeps would generally want to hold on to.

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PS: I know. I know. There is no mention of being stranded on an island. That just seemed like a good cliched title for the post. Oh, and I don't want to deal with all kinds of complications and restrictions of a bona-fide island stranding. If I wanted to be *that* unrealistic, I would just have had to say, food or some such practical boring thing.

Can you imagine the sheer deadweight of concussion-inducing wok-power on that wall in the background?



This is not a restaurant wall or even a wok showroom. This wall is "at home". I think if I had these many frying contraptions in my kitchen, I would be somewhat uneasy at the thought of cooking in it...

That is good to know.



But who will refill this ink?



The Meadow Brook milk factory?
Walgreens?

Why would anyone want a gallon refill of ink? Wouldn't it be more helpful if they advertised, "We refill milk"?

Overheard at the height of the finale of fireworks at the Erie harbour.

First Old Man: (Jostling all the kids watching the fireworks in front of him) Do you see that? That, over there?

Second Old Man: (Elbowing his way to the first old man) Yeah, I see it. Yeah, it's smaller. It is really smaller than Dennis's boat.

First Old Man: (Completely focused on the boat in the water, fireworks are going off like crazy around him.): YEAH, Dennis definitely has a bigger boat than this one!!!

The new movie may not be much to write home about (quite literally, I didn't), but the soundtrack to both movies are worth writing to the world about. They are nothing short of phenomenal. Something about them is compelling and worth listening to, time and again - especially the score from the first movie.





No doubt this amazing keyboardist feels the same. He combines two of Steve Jablonsky's finest pieces from the score to the first film and transfoms them with his personal touch into one fluent passionate piece.



And a final track to illustrate just how derailed and completely baffling the second movie was...

A friend sent me this picture of the falcon baby that fell out of its nest on one of the towers at University at Buffalo, last week.



Strangely, it reminds me of a puppy who has done something mischievous!

::Download Flash Video::

An awesome memory that floated past me once more today. Peter Allen's Tenterfield Saddler.

How can you not draw this conclusion hearing these two tunes??!

Exhibit A: Clint Mansell: Stay With Me (The Fountain OST, 2006)


Exhibit B: Linkin Park: Numb (Meteora, 2003)


They are so strangely similar. Though one is "rock"-ish and the other is "classical"-ish the underlying notes, repetition and rhythm share such a very strong resemblance. I wish I knew music theory to be able to analyze these tunes further.

Was Clint Mansell "inspired by" (of all the bands on this planet) Linkin Park??! The possibility completely blows my mind.

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PS: (e:boxerboi), I can't wait for your journal. And you know which one! :)