Potato cheddar pie and fish taco brunch *featuring pineapple salsa!*

Preheat the oven to 350F. Shred 3 potatoes, 1 sweet potato, and half a head of cauliflower. This will take approximately forever unless you have a food processor in which case, la di da! Then, in case you hadn't had enough yet, shred some cheese. I used about a cup of cheddar and a third of parmesan. Put all this in a pan or pot or something else ... a bucket maybe, if that's all you have.

Calorie counters, avert your eyes! Add 2 cups of cream, as much dill as you can handle and heat through while heating up an oven safe skillet.When the cream starts to bubble up like a Bieber fan who catches a glimpse of his toes under the side stage curtain, add oil to the hot skillet and put all the potato mixture in. Pat it down a bit with the back of your spoon and put it in the oven for an hour or until the edges are dark brown.

While that is cooking, you can do an amusing dance for anyone in the house with you, tidy the living room, giggle at pictures of cats on the internet, or anything else for half an hour or so. Then get started on your fish tacos. I made a mixture of olive oil, salt and pepper to coat my tiny ocean perch fillets. Cook them in a non-stick skillet or, as I did, in a george foreman grill until they are done. They should be opaque all the way through and flaky.

While that is cooking, lets make pineapple salsa. It's getting a bit Inception up in here. Cut up 2 tomatoes and an equivalent amount of pineapple into 1 cm cubes. I like it chunky. Chop up some cilantro, I used about 5 stems worth. Add it to the bowl with some salt, pepper, and a splash of olive oil. Salsa done. Delicious!

Assemble the taco! Get your tortillas, and load em up. I added fish, salsa, and a small handful of arugula. By this time the potatoes should be done. The music has ended so let's blow up the hospital and ride the kick back up the layers. Serve a piece of that golden potato pie with a taco and call it a meal. That's what I did and people bought it. *snicker snicker*

The Daily Grind Cafe

This weekend I visited a cafe in Ottawa while visiting some friends. The espresso at The Daily Grind was made properly and tasted amazing. I noticed loads of chocolate and nutty notes in the two double short  I had there without a trace of bitterness. You can taste the love in every shot. Absolutely delicious!

As soon as you walk into this place, you know that this is exactly what Mike, one of the owners, wants to do. His personal stamp is all over everything. An artist at heart, the place vibrates with his colour and energy. Art pencils and paper on every table is an invitation to borrow some of his creativity for yourself.

Up-cycled church pews added to the artist aesthetic, and for me commented on an often overlooked spiritual element to coffee. Many coffee drinkers are as devout as your average church goer, often more so. They drink their brew daily, at regular times, at the same place(s). An enthusiastic drinker will revel in how it makes their lives better by bringing people together, and raises their energy and concentration levels to a peak. Some argue coffee has definite health benefits even if science still can't seem to come to consensus. True or not, spiritual or otherwise, the abstract photography on the walls brought me an as uplifting mindset as any church service ever has.

If you didn't buy any of that last bit, they also serve food. I had breakfast tacos. How awesome is that? Very. I even managed to get some great work done on a story I'm working on before this guy showed up to our table to say hi. He had a really cool hat so I had a picture taken of us both in our headgear.

Later, one of Ottawa's homeless called me a space rabbi. All in all, a pretty interesting trip and a neat coffee shop. It seemed like a place you'd find in Toronto, but without the requisite independent coffee shop brick wall. The Daily Grind will definitely be on my list to visit next time I make it out to that way.