This weekend is Doors Open in Toronto. The Toronto Star has the best interactive map of all the places taking place this year.

Get some comfortable walking shoes and a lot of patience - there will be lines at the most popular attractions.

Photo courtesy of City of Toronto.

A friend and I booked a reservation at Susur before it closes at the end of the month. We booked it last month so that goes to show you how busy they are since Susur Lee announced he was closing Susur and starting a new restaurant in New York.

The food was, as expected, fantastic. It was definitely a bit experimental. I know what they mean when they say “you have to be in the mood for Susur” because it’s not everyday fine dining. It was a six-course tasting menu and we got to try everything on both menus since there were two of us.

When we asked the wait staff if they were closing on the end of the month, they gave us a “maybe”. It sounds like there is some sort of plan in the works, but noone is divulging the information. We will have to see what happens after May.

This headline on Wired Magazine caught my attention, especially in it’s bright red hue on the shelves of Indigo this morning: Attention Environmentalists: Keep your SUV. Forget organics. Go nuclear. Screw the spotted owl.

It’s premise: that in order to truly reduce the carbon emissions that our society produces, we have to embrace some of the things that environmentalists loathe. Things like organic foods (which produce more carbon to produce), nuclear power, used cars and not hybrids.

Full article at Wired.

First of all, to get this out of the way, there is no way that the Audi RS4 will win this comparision. Not only is it the most expensive car here, but it’s so expensive by such a wide margin that instead of the RS4 I would recommend getting one of the other sedans and a backup car like a hyundai. Yes, the price difference is that much. Audi - get your act together.

Price:
The C63 leads in the pricing category as shown below.
BMW M3 Sedan: $69,600 (also available as coupe: $71,300)
Audi RS4 Sedan: $94,200
Lexus IS-F Sedan: $64,400
Mercedes-Benz C63 Sedan: $63,500

In case you were wondering, in Canada we are still paying an enormous price premium on cars even though the Canadian dollar is at parity. What’s worse is that all of these cars were introduced after it went to parity last fall and have not been adjusted. Below you will find the US dollar prices and the Canadian premium (in brackets):

BMW M3 Sedan: $53,800 (29%)
Audi RS4 Sedan: $66,910 (41%)
Lexus IS-F Sedan: $56,000 (15%)
Mercedes-Benz C63 Sedan: $53,800 (18%)

A lot of people have asked me what I bought at the Pepper Mill from my post. Initially I considered the Williams Sonoma 14 piece set which included:
10″ and 12″ fry pans
3qt and 6qt saute pans
2qt sauce pan
4qt sauce pan
5.5qt dutch oven
7qt tall stock pot

After looking at this set, I soon realized that it’s just too big. The 6qt saute pans and 4qt sauce pans are HUGE! Way to big for the majority of my cooking. Plus I would never use the dutch oven - a cast iron one would be way better.

Instead, I chose the following:
8″ nonstick fry pan
2qt saute pan
3qt saute pan
1.5qt sauce pan
3qt sauce pan
12″ chef’s pan (wok)

This is much better for the home cook, the smaller pieces are easier to wield and won’t take up as much space (which comes at a premium in a condo).

This is my current desktop wallpaper from Automobile Magazine.

My favorite pub, the Rebel House, was mentioned in the New York Times today. The “Frugal Traveler” had heard about it from the Chowhound forums.

The Rebel House is a cozy, two-level pub with a great patio in the back. Staff are friendly and efficient, and the food well above any of the pubs in the neighborhood, especially the soul-less food at the nearest Firken. The menu includes buffalo burgers (try it, it’s healthier than beef), wild sausages and a hummus plate complement normal pub fare. They server a very large selection of microbrewery beers.

The Rebel House is a perfect place on a cold winter’s night or a sunny weekend brunch.

Great cookware is hard to find in Toronto. Choices are usually limited to big retailers like Williams Sonoma and small independents - both sell at full retail price. My favorite brand of cookware is All-Clad especially their simple Stainless line. They just introduced their MC2 line which features brushed stainless steel exteriors.

Not willing to pay full retail, my search on the internet led me to Cooking.com which uses Canada Post’s BorderFree service for easy shipping to Canada. Unfortunately, they cannot ship most All-Clad products due to a limitation in their ordering system (specifically, if your order qualifies for a free gift, it cannot be shipped to Canada, even with BorderFree). Placing an order was frustrating and even after spitting a 5-item order to bypass the limitation, the combined shipping fees made barely feasible.

I searched for a local independent retailer that would be more apt to provide some better pricing. My search led me to the Pepper Mill. Owned by a Parisan named Albert, he ordered me up the All-Clad items I wanted and provided me with pricing that I was agreeable too. I also noticed that they had 20% off all their in-stock Global Knives.

Pepper Mill has two locations - Hazelton Lanes and in Summerhill, across the street from the LCBO.

Detailing cars is something only auto-obsessed people enjoy. Unfortunately I am one of those people and think that spending 4-5 hours outside detailing a car on a sunny afternoon is something worthwhile to do. Most of my friends think I’m crazy.

A few years ago, with my first car, I used what most people used - “car wax”. This is generally a combination of carnuba wax (from a Brazilian palm tree) and some petroleum products that make it easy to apply and remove. Products like this have been around for decades and are usually hand applied and buffed.

Recently, many new products have come to the market that are not wax-based. These are generally called paint sealants and once were only the domain of high end paint/detailing shops. These are polymer based (manmade synthetic material) and have advantages of being very easy to apply and very long durability compared to carnuba wax.

The only downside I have found with paint sealants is that if left to dry too long before buffing out, they are very hard to remove. So, when applying sealants, apply to a small area and buff out soon after it hazes over. If it does harden and becomes very hard to remove, the trick i use is to apply more of the product and then buff it out quickly. That method removes even the most stubborn hardened sealant.

There are two types of sealants I have tried, although there are many on the market. I use eshine.ca to supply them:
Wolfgang Paint Sealant
Klasse High Gloss Sealant

Make sure your car is cleaned and polished before applying and you will have a very shiny car for months! Most sealant companies will offer a polish or pre-”wax” product that you apply and buff out before you apply sealants. These products are a combination of polisher (smooths the clearcoat), filler (fills gaps in the clearcoat) and cleaner (removes residue/oxidation).

Leatherman just made available their new Skeletool and Skeletool CX multi-tools. Announced in October, they were not available for sale in any retailers until April.

The advantages of these models over their existing line is their very compact size. However, getting to a multitoll this thin means that many functions over their regular multi-tools. The Skeletools feature only one blade, no scissors and no file. However, they still do include a folding, lockable blade, pliers with wirecutters, a bottle opener and screwdriver. The only real missing item that would be useful is a can opener.