o, there’s no dog.
Having just finished my fifth visit to the Philippines in some 25 years, I’ve decided this dog-eating thing is a complete myth.
Filipinos don’t eat dogs.
It’s not part of the culture. Filipinos eat the same meat/fish proteins as North Americans, maybe about one-hundredth the amount, but chicken, pork, fish and shell fish are what you see in the market. There’s nothing weird like snakes or rats or monkeys … or dog. Or if there is, it’s very secret.
Besides, why would anybody want to eat a Filipino dog? The street dogs in the country are the scrawniest canines on earth. They all look like they’re about to die from malnutrition. There’s nothing there to eat!
The weirdest food you’re going to find is balut – a duck egg with a near fully developed duck embryo that absorbs salt and flavours in a resting stage, then is quickly boiled, peeled and eaten with a vinegar dip.
I tried it … once. If you closed you ...
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Ontario is reeling.
The “Ontario Green Energy Program,” introduced four years ago by then-Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government, has proved to be an utter disaster.
A public inquiry has brought to light the sheer size of this white elephant.
The consequence of going all-out green will cost the average Ontario family an extra $636 a year by 2018 , a 42% jump in electricity bills over the next five years.
Independent analysts are pegging the additional costs at $16 billion today, $23 billion by 2016. This in a province that is already $273 billion in debt!
“Trying to save the future has created an economic disaster in the here and now, for our children and our grandchildren,” summed up one commentator.
Ontario industry is paying more for power than almost any other jurisdiction in North America. Any wonder manufacturing and food processing companies are leaving Ontario? Any wonder it’s so tough to find a job in Ontario?
I don’t preten ...
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Enzo’s on 76
11214 76 Avenue
780 800 1976
enzosedmonton.com
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two, excluding beverages, tips and taxes: basic, $30; loaded, $60.
It was a cold, cold night in the city‘s southwest.
But our gang was as snug as a bug In a rug, sitting in a corner nook at Enzo’s on 76. Nice and warm, no drafts, looking out a big bubble window at the snow-piled windrows along 76th Avenue … piled up over those famous bike lanes.
What is it about Italian eateries in our town that make them so darn cosy? Piccolino, Pazzo Pazzo, Sorrentino’s in Little Italy, Nello’s, Café Amore, Il Pasticcio, Rigoletto’s, Il Forno and now Enzo’s on 76th.
Cliché becomes truth. Scratch the surface of any good Italian restaurateur, and it’s all about how momma and nonna (grandmother) used to do it, how the pasta never stopped, all visitors were long-lost cousins and a big pot of tomato ...
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It's the opening of an annual request, to give some poor, tough, confused teenager a gift for Christmas.
The Edmonton Sun’s Adopt-A-Teen program celebrates our community’s loving ability to give 8,000 teens living in poverty a small Christmas gift.
And it’s a time to appreciate the vows of near-poverty those working in the charitable sector have taken, and the unavoidable paradoxes any charity director must deal with.
The business of charity: Those working in charitable organizations do us a huge favour.
If it wasn’t for the charitable sector, government would be forced to care for so many more Albertans not so good at caring for themselves.
Were it not for charities, government would groan under the financial demand of three, not two ministries – not only Health and Education, but Human Services as well.
Executive in the charity sector make half to two-thirds of their earning power elsewhere.
Click here to donate.
Any new charity executive director rapidl ...
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Christmas can be the loneliest place on Earth.
Especially if you're a teen in a less-than-privileged family.
Chances are it's a single-parent home, one parent raising two or three children on less on a minimal income.
Chances are the kid will get new socks and underwear for Christmas -- that's all the mom or the dad or the guardian grandmother can possibly afford.
That's why the Edmonton Sun's Adopt-A-Teen Christmas Gift program for underprivileged teens was created 14 years ago: To give these underprivileged teens a Christmas gift.
With your help, Adopt-ATeen will make Christmas 2013 a much happier place for 8,000 Edmonton teens -- 10% of the total teen population -- who live in families eligible for Christmas Bureau or Salvation Army assistance.
Each child -- for that is what these teenagers are -- will received an Adopt-ATeen $50 Walmart gift card. It's all theirs, to spend as they want -- on themselves, their friends, to buy Christmas gifts for their brothers and sisters.
During the c ...
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Sabor Divino
10220 103 St.
780 757 1114
www.sabordivino.ca
Food: 4.5 of 5 stars
Ambience: 4 of 5 stars
Service: 3.5 of 5 stars
Dinner for two excluding drinks, tips and taxes: Basic, $80. Fully loaded, $110.
What a joy to return to Sabor Divino and find this restaurant has not only held up to its own impeccable standards, but continues to improve upon those standards — a first, first-class restaurant as it were.
In the downtown Boardwalk Building on 103 Street, Sabor Divino (Portuguese for “divine flavours”) has been practising the art of fine cooking for five years, on a contemporary Portuguese/Spanish base, but reaching far beyond.
It was one of the first restaurants to represent a new generation of culinary entrepreneurs. Co-owners chef Lino Oliviera and manager Christian Mena were skilled professionals who would have been successful at whatever they put their minds to. They are open to innovation, are leaders rather than followers, and are not afraid to char ...
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Yes, it was Saskatchewan’s day last week, when the Roughriders trounced the Hamilton Tiger Cats to win the 2013 Grey Cup, at home!
But the Miracle on the Prairies is far greater than Darian Durant, Kory Sheets, Weston Dressler and that amazing offensive line composed of beefy Saskatchewan farm boys.
The Roughrider triumph is symbolic of the turnaround in Saskatchewan’s economic fortunes, since Brad Wall’s Saskatchewan Party came to power in 2007.
Saskatchewan has gone from zero to hero — from a debt-riddled economic backwater to a province brimming with accomplishment — and the surface is scarcely scratched.
Government numbers offer a snapshot of economic fortune, and Saskatchewan’s are impressive.
The Saskatchewan government’s accumulated debt (excluding crown corporations) has shrunk from $13 billion in the late ‘80s to $4 billion today.
After 80 years — 80 years! — of a population stuck at 900,000, Saskatchewan has shot up ...
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Cactus Club Café (Downtown)
11130 Jasper Ave.
587 523 8030
http://www.cactusclubcafe.com
Food: 4.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two (excluding beverages and tip), basic, $45; loaded, $75.
It’s the professionalism that’s so remarkable.
Everything at the Cactus Club Cafe — the new one on Jasper Avenue — is so well done.
It’s the chain concept taken to new heights.
The food is impeccable — everything is done just right.
They may be the same young ladies in the black cocktail dresses, but the servers are intensively trained for three weeks before they hit the floor.
Founder Richard Jaffray opened the first Cactus Club Café in Vancouver in 1988 with a concept that has remained constant to this day, especially in this, the 25th Cactus Club Cafe: To produce consistent, high-quality food at manageable prices.
Cactus Club was doing well in the food department. Then super-chef Rob Feenie set ...
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Bottleneck, what bottleneck?
If anybody has concerns about pipeline capacity from the oilsands out to the world, breathe easy.
In the last few weeks, the GO button has been pushed on four major new oilsands projects that will bring another 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) of bitumen on stream by 2017.
You think those dudes would invest the $10 billion or more it costs per mine, if they had the least doubt about getting their product to market? You think shareholders would approve?
Where there’s a will, there’s a way
Even without the Northern Gateway and Keystone XL pipeline projects, Canada’s two biggest pipeline builders will add another 2 million bpd capacity within three to four years. TransCanada and Enbridge are expanding existing American pipelines and converting existing natural gas pipelines to send bitumen/crude oil to Eastern Canada for refining, domestic consumption or export.
Other companies are sniffing out new pipeline opportunities from the oilsands northwest to ...
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Under The High Wheel
8135 102 St.
780 439 4442
www.underthehighwheel.com
Food: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3 of 5 Suns
Service: 2.5 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two (excluding drinks, tip and taxes), basic, $40; loaded, $60.
The food is good, the room spotless, but the whole set-up is quite peculiar.
Under The High Wheel is a restaurant/café/bistro — take your pick, it can’t quite decide — on the ground floor of the new-age swishy “Roots on Whyte”, a brand-new three-storey building at the corner of Whyte Avenue and 102 Street. The landlord has bet on Edmonton being ready for an entire suite of organic markets, yoga studios, health foods, specialty massage and restaurants, all in one building. It’s all hippy-dippy and new-age mumbo-jumbo, but, like I said, the place is new, clean, spacious and enthusiastic about its offerings.
Under the High Wheel is a loft-like space on the ground floor, sharing one big room with Da Capo espresso and gelato.
The ...
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