Snozzberries, Poutine & SNOW in Toronto!

Serendipity... almost as good a word as dubious. Both appropriate! A few weeks back, Tracie asked me, "Isn't this a friend of yours?" Indeed! Tyler Clark Burke was being really interesting again, importing something I will refer to as the snozzberry, but she refers to as the mystery fruit. This tiny little berry, alters the way food tastes. So... then the globe and mail has an article about another berry tasting happening at the Drake Hotel in Toronto, and that's where I am!!! So I go! Not only was it fun to see old friends including Tyler, Cheryl and Michael (and meet new ones), I got to have probably one of the oddest and most fun food experiences to date. Warning: if you believe in dietary balance and the consumption of regularly associated foods, do not read on.

Here I am eyeballing the fruit... you might say I'm dubious... or wall-eyed.

Here the other guinea pigs are... various emotions, not sure if any dubiosity is involved here. Perhaps stunned? Worried? Distracted?
This photo makes it clear... there is NO (I repeat...NO) need for being skeptical. These berries work. The best things were probably lemons and limes, which tasted very much like sweet lemonade or limeade. Sour candies tasted like sweet candies. Little pickles tasted like sweet pickles (although, we couldn't tell... maybe they actually were sweet in the first place). Vinegar had a sweet beginning with a more vinegary finish. The most interesting was wasabi. Eating wasabi had a sweet/smooth beginning to it, with some heat... but heat depended on the person it seems. It's all kind of wacky, and left me thinking that different potato chips would have been an interesting experience as well (salt & vinegar, barbeque, wasabi even) although, I have vague memories of there being fruit flavoured chips in the 70's??? There might be a reason it didn't last...

This doesn't relate to the berry so much as it shows a bad camera angle can really affect a photo. And bad timing. While in reality it was the feeding of a spoonful of vinegar... it magically appears like someone making a goofy face while being knuckled in the kisser. There were a few foods that miraculously tasted like... themselves. I guess nothing can make brussel sprouts better?

Then... when flavours began to return and tobasco tasted like... tobasco... we went to the next stage of the "dream trip to Toronto"...

Tracie is going to kill me. She was upset enough I was getting to try snozzberries... without also getting poutine... and good poutine with veggie gravy at that!! When she had poutine, she wasn't impressed. This was pretty good. The veggie gravy was tasty, the potatoes were real, and the cheese curds were fresh (enough?)!

Biodegradeable bucket and forks too!
Here's me... and poutini!Ahhh... poutinis...

And now, for something completely different...
...and then to show that hell froze over and all of the stars were in alignment... in 30 degree Celsius weather, it snowed... and stayed on the ground... for the people filming on Queen Street. It kind of broke me though... you mean sometimes when I watch movies there are fake things in them?

Ahhh... friends make the world go round. A great evening...