More Orangeville (Canada) winter or Canada=SLOP

OK if you have ever lived in Canada save yourself now and just go do something more constructive because these are pictures of ... WINTER.

But if you are from Darwin NT Australia and you keep telling me ... "Oh I'd love to see snow and experience winter", this post is for YOU.

Actually in Orangeville we are lucky because we do get quite a bit of snow and it's sticks around. But road maintenance has to happen and that is what ruins snow. They put down a combination of snow and gravel/dirt to give us some grip on the roads.

This is just a small side street. You can see the gravel/dirt mix that they have put on the road. Hence Canada=SLOP. This stuff is ugly.

Sizing up a bit of chunked icy snow

We have liftoff and soon to be smash.

That snow is got to go somewhere and when the street is a dead end they just make a pile and wait for it to melt away. This one will probably last till May and be a lot bigger. It would be too costly to put the snow in dump trucks and truck them away to a bare field. Not to mention that all that snow has a ton of salt in it which would kill the vegetation.

All that salt and dirt accumulates in the back of your tires. Hence the SLOP. This is why cars rust out so fast here.

This Santa was way bigger than the house

Snow plow, this guy is plowing and dumping the gravel/sand mix

Enough of snow lets go to the greatest store in the world, and it's not IKEA, it's Costco. We are in line for a Hotdog. It's now $1.50 it used to be $1.99 2 years ago.

Pizza $1.99, hotdog with drink $1.50 then add %13 tax. Pretty cheap meal. Oh and the drink is endless. The only bad thing is that they switched from Coke to Pepsi ... BOOOOO

This post is for my Darwin friends

Well everyone in Australia keeps saying that they'd love to experience snow. Well we are in Canada so I'm going to give you my experience with snow and you don't have to be cold or have to shovel it.

We've been in Orangeville 1 1/2 hours drive north of Toronto Ontario, this area is consider just on the southern cusp of the snow belt.

Since we've been here there has been no sun. Today it snowed a little we had to go into the city we used to live in called Brampton. It's 30 min drive at 80km an hour. Here is a few pics from our journey and from yesterdays days outing.

The three pictures below are yesterdays outing.

Canadians are a tough bunch. This store is called Canadian Tire, similar to Bunnings. They eat their hotdogs out in the freezing cold.

This is infront of a grocery store about the same as Coles or Woolies. We are full on Christmas here. When I see how much consumerism is going on here I am amazed.

Yup that's about less than $1.40 a kg for bananas. I don't even know where Guatemala is.

The pictures below are from today outing.

The snow looks really nice on the trees. Here they wrap up some of the trees in burlap cloth so that if they get lots of snow on them it doesn't break the tree.

In some cities you have to clean the snow off of the sidewalk. Here the council cleans it for you with a machine.

This is the driveway covered in snow. 

They clean the main streets from snow but since it is only a few cm they will leave the snow on the street. They only clean the snow if it's a large amount. It could take many days before they clean the side streets.

Driving behind dump trucks that are spraying all the salty water that the snow has become all over our car. Cars rust out very fast here because of the salt put on the roads. We also have a special fluid we put in the windshield reservoir so the water doesn't freeze. It's like a alcohol that's good to -30c 

All that lovely snow turns to slush ... yuck.

This is rock salt that is spread so people won't slip.

Being next to the USA gives Canada great buying power and fruits and veg are very cheap.

Yup we even import Kiwi fruit from 1/2 way around the world

Some people don't clean their cars off. This can be dangerous as the snow will fly off and hit peoples cars driving behind them.

This is where they store the salt. That truck is a snow plow. It is used to clean up the snow around the shopping mall. They dump the salt all over the parking lot in the mall.

This is our bank. It is even open on Sunday. 

The salt is coating the car already. When it is thick I will write something in it and show everyone.

L standing in the snow. It's not too deep yet.

It's 4pm and this is the snow from the front of the house.

The Great Australain Microwave Popcorn Challenge

L lately has taken to eating popcorn while we watch TV and every time I make a bag she claims that on a different night the popcorn was better. As there are only 3 brands that we can purchase at the grocery stores I challenged her to a blind taste test.

Our other reason for creating this challenge is to determine if the Mini Poppin Microwave Popcorn is worth the extra money and the less quantity simply because it's a better tasting product.

The Challengers

• Woolworths Select Microwave Popcorn Butter Flavored 40g bag
• Coles Microwave Popcorn Butter Flavored 40g bag (link is to 200g size)
• Mini Poppin Microwave Popcorn 25g (link to Poppin's funky website)

The Challengers

These products are the smaller cousins of the large bags of popcorn that each brand sells. The Coles and Woolworths are 15g larger that the Popping brand and actually cost less per box even though each individual package has more grams than the Poppin brand. Each box comes with 5 packages of popcorn.

How we tested 
Since we only had 1 microwave oven I popped the bags in the microwave in following order:

• Woolworths 1min 40sec
• Coles 1min 40sec
• Poppin 1min 20sec

After the bag was removed from the microwave I left it unopened on the counter until all bags were popped. The times that we used are from our experience popping these different brands/bags of popcorn. These times minimise the number of unpopped kernels left in the bag.

After popping all of the bags, some popcorn was poured into a coloured bowl. The identity of each bowls brand was only known our corn popper, me. The judge L, was not aware of what brand was in what bowl.

Our Judge.
As you can see we don't just eat Popcorn. On the table is watermelon, mango, banana and rock melon (cantaloupe).

The results
It was noted during the taste test that the reddish bowl, the Woolworths brand, seemed a little soggier than the Coles and Poppins brand. This may be due to the fact that we left the popcorn in the bag until all the bags had been popped and since the Woolworths brand was first popped it could have allowed for more condensation to build up in the bag.

L rated the Coles and Poppins brand a tie for first and Woolworth's brand second. But L said that in reality the difference was so slight that any brand could be as good as the other, hence a 3 way tie.

So what can we take away from this?  

• Open the bag immediately after popping to reduce condensation build-up so that the popcorn doesn't get soggy. 
• The Poppin brand isn't any better than Coles or Woolworths and is may not be worth the extra price. 
• 25g is really a piddly small amount of popcorn but 40g is a nice size for a small snack when sharing between 2 people. 

Our Recommendation
Picking Coles or Woolworths brand is a wise choice with regards to taste and money savings. Which brand you choose really depends on where you do your weekly shopping.

We've done lots in the Dry

The dry is a time when it doesn't rain. When I mean doesn't rain it DOES NOT RAIN for 5 months.

So needless to say in Darwin that's when everything happens. Darwin is the Florida of Australia. It's hard to think that Australia has cold parts but it does. Because of that many people come north to escape the cold and to be tourists.

Only now it is evident that tourism has died off in a big way.

Looking cool on the main strip (Mitchell St.) in the CBD of Darwin.

Down and staying down, well I'm married so what do you expect. Oh and mince is on special this week.

Here's L doing her Vanna impersonation showing her sand dollars. I think we have a couple of thousand dollars worth laying around the house. 

I have no idea what this is. It is a camera malfunction but L took and it looks cool so we're sharing it.

The dry has lots of fires. Some set by the government (controlled burn), some spontaneous, some set by bad people

I keep saying the things we have to do for a great sunset.

As you can see it's mostly the dry brush that burns the trees always survive.

I had a 30cents per litre petrol/gas coupon. So I saved $12+ dollars on $70. I was pretty happy.

I was complaining to a Vietnamese friend who runs a stall at the vegetable market that there is no good Vietnamese spring rolls in Darwin. She said her mother makes good ones and offered us some meat. So 3kgs of meat they gave us. Will filled the freezer and made up a big batch.

For fun we'll drive 45 min to see the bird show at the territory wildlife park. On that trip we also picked up a few native freshwater fish from a local Dam. 

We staked out a place on the beach. Of course there was no one around for quite a distance.

Checked out L's friends business Jamaican Delight.

Always trying to avoid the sun. This is a trip to the poor man's Coles (grocery store). It's not in a poor area it's just no one goes there.

Went to a friends wedding on the foreshore of the ocean. It was a nice wedding.

After the wedding we had soup at our favourite Chinese soup place in the Smith St. Mall in down-town Darwin.

The after that we went to Government House this is where the Territories representative to the Queen lives. It only opens once a year.

This was our turtle that we got to watch at the turtle release. Ours came in 2nd last. She made it to the ocean with a little bit of ranger help.

You can see how small she was. A footstep in the sand was a challenge for this little one to navigate.

Going towards the water.

More than 3 months

Well it a lot has happened since I last posted, so instead of just saying it with pictures I'll try to write something to go along with it too.

As you can see we are still eating well even though the cost of everything seems double what it is in Canada. So most pictures you'll see are of us eating. Well L eating I don't eat I'm on a constant diet.

Hot hot hot

One of the great things about Darwin is that when we want front row seats at the wharf to feed the fish we only have to wait about 15 minutes. We always bring bread and I always leave some of my french fries for the fish.

We went on a Smoothie kick for a while. When I first came here I figured we'd drink Pina Colada's every day. But the price of Bananas quickly killed that dream.

The cheapest meal in the whole world is a 30c ice cream at McDonalds. Our McDonalds has a lovely outdoor eating area. No matter what time of day we always eat outside.

Is this how Vanna started

In our area Nightcliff they have the Sea Breeze Festival which has all sorts of activities, here L joined in the fun as a graffiti artist.

We also went back to Canada, sorry we didn't visit anyone it was a rush back to see my dad. On they way back we had to stay in Manila Philippines for a day. So we went to the mall. Which was expensive to buy things. They even had an ice rink.

These are private buses that run on the streets. They are really decked out and are really cheap. Unfortunately we didn't get to go on one. It was hard for L as everyone thinks she from there and would speak to her in the native tongue. Even though she responded back in English they would just keep on talking. I guess it was confusing for them. But everyone was very friendly and we managed to get around quite well.

Some signs on the way to the Airport. The number one source of money for the Philippines is people working offshore and sending their money back. So much so their economy is booming with all the money that is being re-spent locally.

In Canada some people were put to work.

I suffered from over shopping and it seemed easier to put myself on sale than to fly back to Australia. It seems I wasn't marked down enough so there were no takers.

On the way back to Australia L bought a pillow in the Dollarama, for about $2.00 (hear that Australia). It made a lovely hat. Why are all the pictures of me when I'm acting an idiot?

In the Manila airport they didn't have a place to store the luggage so we had to wait 14 hours in the airport. It was brutal

I just survived a 14 hour flight and now I have another 10 to go.

Soon after I came back I had a birthday, I turned 51 hence the sign language.

I met this really sexy blonde on the beach that just came right up to me.

This is July 1st, Territory Day, we put on some serious fireworks here in Darwin. They had 2 sets going off, some on a barge and some on the beach. That doesn't include all the fireworks that normal citizens were firing off as well.

The beer can regatta, it wasn't all that great not many boats got made. I think the problem is that we get 10c for returning beer and pop cans now.

We walked out into the water needless to say there was a lot of holding up long skirts and long shorts.

It was quite a big turn out, maybe they were trying to use us as croc bait.

Well if this doesn't sum up life in the top end of Australia I don't know what does.

We remember the passing of L's mum and dad. Now we have the great weather and we can eat outside instead of doing it twice a year, one for mum and one for dad, we do it many times a year. It's great to remember in the sun and to have all the food outside.

We went to the Darwin Ski Club. It's a water ski club which is situated on the ocean. Now I was thinking "what a dumb place to put a club no one is going to ski in the ocean they'll get eaten". Well they don't they do it in a lake an hour in land. Although they can still get eaten in the lake as well. We always drive by this place and they have really great music. This night however they did not.

The races came to Darwin, we had tickets. We went in, saw a lot of people dressed up drinking. No races transpired so we looked at the horses.

Took a few pics of horses and left and went downtown Darwin for some Chinese soup.

This is a picture I always take when we are going to Coles the grocery store. I hadn't taken one in a while.

Well it's almost the end. We only had one lodger up until last week when another one showed up. They are so cute and since we never shut the door they are safe. In fact when we went to Canada the lady that we had looking after our garden we had to tell her NOT TO SHUT THE DOOR. We didn't want them to get hurt. I guess they are getting a good spot for the wet/mating season which is still about 3-4 months away.

Well for exercise lately I've been jogging and L has been going out on the scooter. The other day she fell off of it because she was watching a kid on a bike coming towards her. What she should have been looking at was the palm leaf (frond) on the ground in front of her. Well because the wheels are small they don't go over bumps and she fell. I was running quite a ways behind her and I could see it all unfolding. She scrapped her knee and now a lot of bruises have started to appear. She had a few cuts on her hands as well. But really she was darn lucky. So we may be on the lookout for a scooter with bigger wheels, which is hard when where we live there is nothing to buy.

Oh I had a peril today here bottled water is expensive so we buy these 10 litre boxes. But there is a nozzle that is hidden inside attached to a bag. You have to open up the box along a perforation and pull the nozzle out. Well the nozzle came off in my hand and the water started pouring out all over the floor. Good job we have tiled floors. Needless to say I wasn't happy about that. Well it's Coles brand and it does say return if you are not 100% satisfied. Well I can honestly say I was only 50% satisfied on this one.