Marilyn's Photos - May 16 2025 - Michelin Stars

 

There's big news on the Quebec restaurant scene with 9 Michelin Star awards in Quebec.  Michelin certainly has made a business of judging restaurant quality.  They review 17,000 restaurants annually.  There are 151 three-star restaurants globally.  There are 26 Michelin-starred restaurants in Canada - 25 with one star and one restaurant with two stars.   Michelin ratings started out as a service offered by the tire company in 1889 for car owners in France - a guidebook for hotels.   Independently-reviewed restaurants were added in 1920 and stars emerged in 1926. A 3-star designation is the top level.  Even today, the Michelin Guide supposedly does not make money.  Instead, it is estimated that it "increases tire sales by 3%".  And it sells Michelin Guides - about 250,000 a year. The Guide runs events and licenses the ranking system - e.g. TripAdvisor.  And countries pay for coverage.  That's what I found out when i initially asked Pearl Morisette about "star status" - their answer was they had to pay Michelin to make the trip and do the assessment. No promise of a star for that investment.  Most restaurants have 1 star.  A star adds about 20% more traffic to the restaurant, 2 stars gets 40% more business and 3 stars gets 100% more business.  And how do the restaurants react after getting their star?  The article I read says they increased pricing to signal new status, revamped menu language to more sophisticated terms and ingredients.   Would you like to be a Michelin guide "inspector?" You would eat around 250 anonymous meals a year which Michelin calls a table test.  travel involves 150 nights in hotels, 600 total visits and 1,000 reports.  And then there are the chefs who "walk away" from their stars.  Too much work, tired of making complex multi-course menus, get back to cooking simple dishes, The full article is HERE.  A rust abstract today.

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Mar 13 2025 - Beer Wars

 

The CBC has an article about a Presidential Pack of beer available from Moosehead Brewery. " A beer a day keeps the chaos at bay."  That's 1,461 beers in the pack. It is mean to cover the current president's term.  The company wanted to "tap into" Canadian pride.  They made 5 the packs, and then 5 more, and who knows where it will end?  There are more than 100 people on the waiting list. The quality of the beer will decline before the year's up so I guess there are party plans for Canada Day.   Since the revival of the I am Canadian beer ad, beer has gained stature. What other products could compete?  There's ice wine, maple syrup, nanaimo bars and poutine.     The last time I went past the neon display at the Toronto Convention Centre, it was all turned off.  Too bad.  Here's a motion blur abstract from when they lit.

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Mark 9 2025 - Jack Sprat

 

Jack Sprat.  Who was that?  Jack Sprat could eat no fat, His wife could eat no lean. And so between them both, you see, They licked the platter clean. "Like many nursery rhymes, "Jack Sprat" may have originated as a satire on a public figure. History writer Linda Alchin suggests that Jack was King Charles I, who was left "lean" when parliament denied him taxation, but with his queen Henrietta Maria he was free to "lick the platter clean" after he dissolved parliament—Charles was a notably short man.An alternative explanation comes from the popular Robin Hood legend, applying it to the disliked King John and his greedy queen Isabella. The saying entered the canon of English nursery rhymes when it was printed in Mother Goose's Melody around 1765, but it may have been adopted for use with children much earlier. Here's the 1639 version:  Jack will eat not fat, and Jull doth love no leane. Yet betwixt them both they lick the dishes cleane. And today?  The Jack Sprat diet plan uses a guided day-by-day approach geared to gender, size and physical activity level...yes, it is a low-fat diet. Time for a Spring diet of colours.

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Feb 16 2025 - Let the Blizzard Begin

 

There's a tiny moment between 5:45 and 7:00 where there isn't a forecast.  Starting at 7:00am it is snow, snow, heavy snow. Well, actually, the forecast says "blizzard".  Look at the radar - so many colours of blue, then there's green and red. Red is for ice.   So it is blizzard until 1:00pm today when it becomes snow again.  It moves to light snow, then snow, then scattered flurries, then blowing snow. We're starting to move into Monday morning with a mix of sun and clouds - rise and shine it is 7:00am and your holiday weekend has been a long weekend forced to stay-at-home - a "Snoliday."   And what is a blizzard?  Three components are necessary - "high winds at least 40 km/h, visibility less than 400 meters and lasting for 4 hours.  That's the Canadian definition. And if we get a ground blizzard?   "Another type of winter storm is called a ground blizzard. This is when gusty winds—often 50 to 60 miles an hour—lift up snow that's already on the ground. Both types of blizzards can cause whiteouts, a condition in which so much snow is blowing so fast that it's hard to see anything." The worst blizzards in history were in Iran in 1872 and in Afghanistan in 2008.  Iran's was the deadliest blizzard in recorded history and dropped as much as 26 feet of snow, completely covering 200 villages. The Storm of the Century was in 1993 in the U.S. Toronto's great snow storm of 1999 is not covered in Wikipedia.  It is remembered for bringing out the military to clear the streets.

A watercolour abstract today. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Jan 04 2025 - Lottery News in Art

 

I am looking for a good news calendar for 2025.  I find one, but the calendar is sold out, so I guess I am a bit tardy in my search. Instead, I happen upon weird things artists use to make art.  What made me wonder this is the strange tropical house plant made out of felt in the Globe and Mail.  What other materials do people use to make their sculptures?  Lauren Was and Adam Eckstrom's sculptures are made out of lottery tickets.  Dream Car made of $39,000 worth of lottery tickets to represent the retail cost of the new car in 2008, is a large-scale installation that ruminates on money spent on dreams and the risky behaviours that accompany these goals.  They also use afterworld money.  I find out that this is spirit money, a "a form of joss paper", (incense paper) an offering used in traditional Chinese ancestor worship. It is a burnt offering to the deceased so that they have money to spend in the afterlife.   The articles say the lottery tickets are discarded:  "We kept finding these lost lottery tickets littered all over the ground and we started picking them up thinking they were someone's lost wish; that they were this hope and dream that they had and then they tossed it away. We started thinking about what those dreams actually meant and what happens if you collected enough of those to make that dream into a reality." At the end of the article, it says:  More stories like this one.  I think one is enough for today.   Here's another one of my abstracts -  this is at the car wreckers yard.

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Dec 5 2024 - Snow Squalls and Bananas

 

This is today's weather - snow squalls - and the pictures are all over the screen.  So many bright colours and so easy to see if that snow squall is coming for you.  Well, maybe.  Look closely and most of the pictures are for snow squalls in the past.   I found the current forecast finally.  The legend of the colour codes at the bottom is most entertaining.   Didn't the six million dollar banana get eaten by the purchaser?   "Chinese-born crypto founder Justin Sun eats a banana artwork composed of a fresh banana stuck to a wall with duct tape in Hong Kong on Friday after buying the provocative work of conceptual art by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan at a New York auction for $6.2 million. "  "To be honest, for a banana with such a back story, the taste is naturally different from an ordinary one. I could discern a hint of what Big Mike bananas from 100 years ago might have tasted like," said Sun, the founder of the cryptocurrency platform Tron. Big Mike bananas — a common translation of the flavorful Gros Michel banana variety — were once ubiquitous and have now become virtually impossible to find.  Sun wrote that as thanks to Shah Alam — the 74-year-old Bangladeshi fruit stand employee who originally sold the banana for just 25 cents — he would purchase 100,000 bananas to be distributed for free to Alam's customers. This is not Sun's first venture into multimillion-dollar bids. In 2019, he won a $4.8 million bid to have lunch with Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. In 2021, he put up $28 million to be among the first passengers on Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft, though that trip was ultimately canceled."  Other articles have him investing $30 million in Trump's crypto project after the election.   Little did we think that a snow squall could end in a lament over a bygone banana by what looks like a crazed 34 year-old crypto billionaire.

A colourized abstract of motion blur along the Highway.

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Nov 23 2024 - At What Age Should A Woman

 

The article asks:  Can aging stop women from wearing leggings?   First answer:  Absolutely not!  Age is no barrier to wearing leggings.  It's all about how you style them.  Second answer:  I think you can wear leggings until you are 100 yrs old. It depends what you pair it with. I bet there are more answers - and likely similar.  Good thing I am not the one answering the questions.  There's a fraternity of social indulgence.  You look fine.  Really. Maybe the question of leggings is better than who is the oldest body builder in the Guinness Book of Records. There are two - male and female -showing their muscles in their skimpy bathing suits. I had thought the bathing suits and muscles pictures were unpleasant with younger people and here we are faced with Ernestine and Jim smiling away with bulging arms and legs. This is Ernestine:  “I really don’t need an alarm clock to awaken me. I wake up at 2:30 every morning. I get up. I say my devotions. Then I’ll eat. I will eat ten egg whites. They’re scrambled, sixteen ounces of water, and a handful of walnuts. I have a certain song that I sing every morning...‘Oh I can’t sit down. Got to keep on rolling…Today I am happy and free…Nothing in the world is troubling me'.” So begins the day for the now 85-year-old Ernestine Shepherd, the world's oldest female bodybuilder.  She was named six-pack granny at the time.  Ernestine looks young - really young.  Is she a SuperAger body builder?  Or more likely these are pictures from 15 to 20 years ago when she held the record in 2010 and 2011 in her 60s.There are articles all through her career, so I expect they are using the ones from her favourite time period.  I I guess that as pictures of other younger female body builders look their age. And then our male bodybuilder Jim seems more real as he is over 90.  But then being more real over 90 isn't that pleasant to look at. And there's a picture where he doesn't even have the weird bathing suit on. That story concludes with "Every body is perfect." So I won't check out the headlines on the world's oldest bodybuilder - Manohar Aich - at 104 in 2016. Whether to wear leggings or not?  Ernestine and Jim have already answered.  No need to wear leggings at all. Come as you are.

I think our perceptions are like this picture of rain on the windshield in front of the Food Basics.  Pretty colours and patterns,.  Don't use the windshield wipers and see what's really there.

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Nov 18 2024 - How does a hot dog get to be gourmet?

 

Didn't I read about a Michelin restaurant with gourmet hot dogs?  Or did I dream it?  I am cynical about hot dogs.   Even the google questions in People also ask contribute to cynicism:  Is there such a thing as a gourmet hot dog? Why do Costco hotdogs taste so good? How to upscale a hotdog? What are the most expensive hot dogs? Let's answer the last question:  "This $169 haute dog now holds the "world's most expensive" title. This hot dog from Tokyo Dog in Seattle rings up at $169.00 -- That's one haute dog. It's the most expensive, in fact, according to Guinness World Records, which crowned Tokyo Dog with the world title.  Here's the description:" It is a 12-inch smoked cheese bratwurst topped wit butter-teriyaki grilled onions, maitake mushrooms, wagyu beef, foie gras, shaved black truffles, caviar and Japanese mayo on a brioche bun." I remain skeptical.  The descriptions focus on the toppings and not the bratwurst sausage. We could just eat the yummy toppings and have a wonderful dish.   I go in search of the most famous gourmet bratwurst by looking for the Michelin Guide recommendations. There's Bratwursthäusle in Nuremberg, with the label "best in the world."  Besides the Michelin Guide our own PBS travel host Rick Steves recommends it.  The second is Zum Gulden Stern, again with a Michelin Guide recommendation.  One still wonders as the pictures show a rather boring plate of bare sausages and sauerkraut.  Not the sort of Michelin dish one would expect. Where are those yummy toppings?   We did get an answer to how hot dogs achieve gourmet, didn't we?  Make them expensive. Here's a picture that matches the topic.  This was at the Hawk Watch quite a few years ago and this is a picture of the reflections in the side of the french fry wagon.  I bet some hot dogs came along with the fries that day!

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Nov 16 2024 - Ookpik Returns

 

I bought a winter coat and the brand is Ookpik.  I haven't seen the name Ookpik since the late 1960s.  The definition says it is a popular Inuit handicraft toy.  The description is:  a small souvenir owl with a large head and eyes, a beak and small black talons.  It was chosen as the Canadian symbol at one of the international trade shows in the 1960s.  It had a lot of popularity for a while. This picture shows the original that Jeannie Snowball created in 1965.  Doesn't it look creepy now.  Supposedly it has inquisitive eyes.  I remember these were for sale in the Canadian boutique at the Niagara Falls Skylon shop when I worked there.  I've put these out of mind.  They can be purchased on Etsy - looks like an Etsy kind of thing.

So I was wondering how it was that a coat brand would be named Ookpik. The Ookpik brand describes its relationship to the Canadian north mythology: "Founded in 2011 by Sylvain Roy, Ookpik has soared the skies of reputation, becoming a symbol of quality and reliability in North America and beyond. Our winter parkas and down jackets are the whispers of the Canadian winds, the warmth of the embracing snow, distributed across Canada, the United States, South Korea, Japan, and Europe, shining in over 450 points of sale." Who would guess that a coat could have such Romantic appeal and that the howling winds of winter become the "whispers of the Canadian winter winds."  There's no "warmth of embracing snow" in my mental synapses.  And our picture today is an abstract of the Sony Centre from a few years ago - it is reflected in a metal sculpture.

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Nov 8 2024 - How many ocracies?

 

How many "ocracies" are there?  We only think of a few, don't we?  Presently for sure. In fact, there are 48 words in the chart.  Which one gets your attention?  adhocracy ergatocracy mobocracy punditocracy androcracy gerontocracy monocracy quangocracy aristocracy gynecocracy nomocracy slavocracy autocracy gynocracy ochlocracy snobbocracy chrysocracy hagiocracy pantisocracy snobocracy cottonocracy hierocracy pedantocracy squattocracy democracy isocracy phallocracy stratocracy demonocracy kakistocracy physiocracy technocracy despotocracy kleptocracy plantocracy thalassocracy dollarocracy mediocracy plutocracy thalattocracy doulocracy meritocracy pornocracy theocracy dulocracy millocracy ptochocracy timocracy I wondered about chrysocracy - is it about chrysanthemums?  No, it is the rule by the rich, or rule of gold or wealth. No flower power there.  Also none with Plantocracy - not the rule of plants, but of planters, eg. plantation owners of the West indies. Is timocracy some sort of rule by time?  No, it is a state where only property owners may participate in government.  Slavocracy is rule by slave owners, and dulocracy is rule by servants and slaves.   Is a demonocracy a government of demons?  Yes, I guess so if you believe in Hell.  Squattocracy seems to me to be about squatters rather than land owners.  It is the opposite - rich families who own large amounts of land.  Australian history has this as a play on aristocracy where sheep herders were "squatters"  and became wealthy exploiting illegally occupied Crown land.  And what about gynocracy and phallocracy - one is rule by women and the other by men.  The "sex" references is that each sex was thought superior and excludes the other from power.  So many possibilities, don't you think?

No ice yet, and in fact no hard frost yet in my garden.  I am most fond of ice and all its intricate shapes and textures.

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Nov 8 2024 - Living on the Equator

 

If we lived on the equator, then what?  It seems far away from us to me.  Even farther away is Greenland, which is white on the map for some reason known to geographers.  The equator is usually drawn as a red line.  There seems to be some Chinese reference with fire being red and south: "located south of China, the equator therefore became associated with redness." Sunrises and sunsets are very fast there.  Not like here.  They take minutes there.  And then the length of day and night remains constant throughout the year, with a constant climate.  The Earth bulges a little at the equator so people are further from the centre of the earth.   Being on the equator means that the noontime sunlight is almost directly overhead every day, year-round.  And with it goes a 12-hour day and 12-hour night year-round.  That would be solar power year-round for every home.  What is the advantage of the Equator?  "Sites near the Equator, such as the Guiana Space in Kourou, French Guiana, are good locations for spaceports as they have the fastest rotational speed of any latitude, 460 m (1,509 ft)/sec. The added velocity reduces the fuel needed to launch spacecraft eastward (in the direction of Earth's rotation) to orbit, while simultaneously avoiding costly maneuvers to flatten inclination during missions such as the Apollo Moon landings."   That location is known as the European Space Centre. Here's our world with that equator red line.

I keep finding interesting images in the past archives of my photo database.  With more techniques, the colours and textures can be exaggerated and enhanced.  Here's a great example.

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