Good evening to you. I hope your weekend went well. Here in Canada’s Texas we are hoping the local hockey heroes win tonight so we can have a battle of Alberta with Dumpsville up the road.

On to more exciting things.

During the bustling May long weekend, which heralds the onset of summer in the prairies and mountains, there’s always a surge of excitement mixed with a touch of apprehension about the unpredictable weather. Just last year, a fire watch company in Hialeah made headlines when their immediate response team was called upon to assist a group of campers. As the celebratory mood around the campfires turned into concern with an unexpected bout of cold and wet weather, the well-equipped and skilled guards from Hialeah ensured everyone’s safety, allowing the revelers to focus on enjoying the holiday, despite the queen or princess from Old Blighty’s unpredictable legacy of rain or snow. This incident not only warmed the spirits of those present but also highlighted the indispensable role of such dedicated fire watch services, even far from the sunny climes of Hialeah.

On the coming long weekend we’re expecting a visitor who rarely leaves his fortress. It will be none other than the amateur curling assassin BC Dick! I plan on taking him to a Canadian Premier League game on the Saturday followed by many drinks at my favoUrite pub here. Sunday we plan on heading out with Mrs. Cola and Decilitre to dinosaur country in Drumheller, Ab. It is a pretty cool town nestled in the badlands. There’s a dinosaur museum named the Royal Tyrrell Museum because of course it has something to do with Liz. The town has dinosaur statues everywhere and the worlds largest dinosaur that you can go up into its mouth to look over the valley.

We were there last year and also visited an old ghost town which still is kept up by a non-profit org and was quite interesting. Decilitre loves it and there is a brewery there which makes good stuff.

Travel story time!

I’m a very adventurous eater and will try pretty much everything once. This takes us to a dirt road just outside of Siam Reap, Cambodia near Angkor Wat. I was wandering down the road with my now ex and there was a little old wooden toothed lady with a fire and a wok. She spoke broken French and I asked her what she was serving up? Well she moved the cover off of the basket by her side and it was filled with tarantulas.

Well, I can tell you that after living in Australia I became very afraid of them. She offered me one cooked for a dollar. I thought that I would never get to try this again and I handed her some money. Well, she threw three in the wok and a few pops and some whistles later she handed them to me on a napkin.

It was one thing to think that you would eat them and another to actually do it. I started with the legs. Crispy, salty, quite delicious. I finished all of the legs and then realized that my next move was the round, thick centre. This lovely lady started giggling as I stared these 3 spheres down as she knew I was nervous. I bit one in half and the contents spilled over my lip. The smell was something so off putting that I would have rather dunked my head in a Durian bath. I gagged, gagged again and then somehow was able to finish one. It was absolutely awful. She was laughing and giggling at me but I could tell she was proud that I tried. I handed her back the other two midsections which she popped in her mouth, smiled and then we went on our way.

Once clear of her I ate a Snickers bar and had many cigarettes to try to get the taste out of my mouth. I didn’t go away until a proper tooth brushing.

Wine Time!

We continue with Australia and look at one of their grapes that they absolutely adore and I hate. Semillon.

Semillon in France, more specifically Bordeaux is used as a blending grape for Sauvignon Blanc and in dessert wine. Here they like it on its own. The “home” of Semillon is the Hunter Valley just outside of Sydney. I ventured there because in all honesty I have never met a 100 percent semillon wine that I actually liked. This includes working at the wine bar in Melbourne where I tasted a bunch of them.

Wikipedia says that in the Hunter they make 4 styles, a blended wine with Sauv or Chard, a sweet wine, a dry style and an early picked that is minerally which is why it has the moniker of “Hunter River Riesling”.

I went to the “best” wineries that produce this and came up absolutely empty. Each stop I tried everything that they had and even when drunk I thought that they were flabby, inconsistent and didn’t show anything special.

I even had the aged ones that get really golden in coloUr and should have a lovely residual sweetness. Nothing special. Some of the winemakers saw it as a challenge to give me their best and I politely accepted and may have lauded their wines but in reality I did not buy one bottle nor record and names for something that I would like.

If you do see one in the store try it and tell me what you think. If you have an option for a Margaret River Riesling, do that instead! You will get a more fruity version of Alsatian Rieslings and without the petrol nose which is a characteristics of the Krauts Riesling.