Party! Party!

Hurray! Officially 4 teeth the unwiser as of 4pm or so yesterday, Little Blue Duck is in fine health and barely looks like a chipmunk at all (so far)!

So to celebrate, though she isn't quite up to eating this herself, she presents to all and sundry readers the worthy sequel to Banana Soup she found this morning in the local paper:

WATERMELON CAKE
(straight from the ovens of the Natural Watermelon Promotion Board. go figure.)

300 ml (1 1/4 cups) cake-and-pastry flour
0.5 ml (1/8 tsp) salt
5 large eggs, room temperature
180 ml (3/4 cup) granulated sugar
5 ml (1 tsp) vanilla
80 ml (1/3 cup) unsalted butter, melted
1 medium sized seedless watermelon
1 l (4 cups) prepared whipped topping

1) In a bowl, sift flour & salt, set aside.
2) In large bowl using electric mixer @ high speed, beat together eggs, sugar & vanilla til mixture is pale yellow & tripled in volume, and forms a ribbon when beaters are lifted, ~ 10 minutes.
3) Using rubber spatula, gently fold in flour mixture 1/3 at a time, making sure each addition is well-folded before adding the next. Quickly fold in melted butter.
4) Pour into greased, floured 3l (13x9-inch) cake pan & level with spatula. Run spatula through batter once to remove bubbles.
5) Place in middle rack of oven & bake at 1800C/350F until edges shrink from bottom of pan and tester inserted in centre comes out clean, about 30 mins. Place on wire rack, run knife around edges of cake. Cool pan for 10 mins. Invert onto large rectangular platter. Cool completely.
6) Ice entire cake with whipped topping. From watermelon, remove rind and carve two 7.5x20 cm (3x8 inch) rectangles, no more than 2.5 cm (1 inch) thick. Carve the shape of a maple leaf from a 2.5 cm (1 inch) thick, 12.5 cm (5 inch) square of watermelon (HAAAA??)
7) Place carved pieces on cake top to form the Canadian flag. In seedless pink watermelon. A truly tasteful way to celebrate Canada Day.

*HAPPY CANADA DAY IN ADVANCE!*

Last Wisdom Post

This post will be Blue Duck's last blog entry with her wisdom teeth. With her last remaining wisdom, she is hereby posting the only quiz of self-discovery on Quizilla to ever get it right (Blue Duck denies being, among other things, a Happy Stardust Fairy and/or a Twinkly Anime Unicorn).

This quiz shall answer for you that burning question: Which Canadian Province are you From?

Go ahead. Try it. You know it will keep you awake at night if you don't.


You are from Manitoba! You can stand the cold.
What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger!
Unfortunately, the polar bears usually kill
you.


Which Canadian Province Are You From?
brought to you by Quizilla

Taking over the world, one mall at a time

The Duck has been somewhat absent from her blog of late, and with good reason. She has been working hard on her latest henious plot to take over the world, which saw her travel all the way to Fargo, North Dakota (and/or Minnesota) in the innocent guise of a folk dancer for the purpose of making some daring raids on unsuspecting American SuperStores - which, like the restaurant portions, all seem to be proportionately sized for the Friendly Giant. Or very large trolls.

These stores all seem to have been named by the same giant übercorporation, as these names all seem to begin in a synonym for "ridiculously large" (Mega, Super, Big, and so on) and end in a random noun also signifying "ridiculously large" (Walmart, Target, K-Mart). Furthermore, these large beige rectangles, the Kraft Dinner of architecture, all manage to look suspiciously identical to each other, both outside and in. They swarm together - or, conversely, hunt in packs - these terrifying examples of When Bricks go Bad. They stick out like sore thumbs on the lushly flooded prairie. And on the prairie, sore thumbs stick out a loooong way.

These SuperStores have not only taken over countless helpless American cities, they are also heading north to Canada. In the several months since she was last at home, so many of them have sprung up in Blue Duck's city that she had trouble recognizing some of the outlying suburbs. These SuperStores are clearly Not Good, EH? Which is why Blue Duck was seen frequenting them last weekend - it always pays to know one's enemy, eh? And all those dangerous sugar-weapons which the American Junk Food Cartel cruelly withholds from the Canadian candy market..

Her undercover work was of course not Blue Duck's only purpose in Fargo. But as she is going to have her teeth removed tomorrow morning she must stop eating until 2 pm tomorrow once she goes to bed - so she is heading off for a snack now. More to come soon of Blue Duck's Excellent Adventures, as well as the Movie Shoot Saga, how to do a Hungarian Wedding Dance, and her progress on the Project From Heck....

Also Seen in Fargo:

Grinder's Taco Shop:
"Homemade Chicken!"
"Feed your face/ at this place!"

And who could pass up on Canadian World Domination, the Official Website?
http://cwd.ptbcanadian.com/

Have you seen this Bird?

It would seem that Blue Ducks are a very wanted species - in New Zealand at least. Little Blue Duck wonders what she is doing going to Iceland to freeze in a tiny corner of Tjörnin, pelted with stale croutons by screaming children on weekends, when she could be joining the Blue Duck Mafia on a sunny southern Kiwi beach.

Should you happen to be in New Zealand yourself and happen to see one of these creatures (because you will probably know what a Blue Duck looks like!) here is the site to report them to. You will also probably understand this form, which Little Blue Duck does not. Perhaps this is the reason that she and her kindred are so endangered.

http://www.blueduck.org.nz/index.asp

first blood

Some of you may remember it. A demonic little piece of terrorist weaponry, a strange cross between House of Flying Daggers and Arsenic and Old Lace. The Project from Heck. Which, admittedly, has a nice ring to it.

Some of you may call it knitting a traditional Icelandic hat. Those who saw it called it the Knitting Project I would Never Do. All of them. And I quote. Little Blue Duck calls it the Swift Road to Insanity.

It was doomed from the start. I really don't know how the Duck missed the signs. Sign #1 was that the materials had to be purchased from a secretive location somewhere in downtown Reykjavík, open only for several hours on Mondays and Thursdays, deserted but for the occasional crafty-looking woman, usually smiling helpfully. Yes, doomed from the start. For the mere price of a kidney, one can purchase a ready-made knitted hat piece, but Blue Duck was saving them for her M.A. and decided it couldn't be THAT hard to do the knitting (even if the instructions did call for size 1.5 needles). So she bought her pattern and her yarn and exited the shop. The bells on the door jingled ominously as she went out. She thought that the yarn looked suspiciously like black thread. Doomed from the start.

The next step was to buy the needles. But since the needles required were not, in fact, needles but rather some highly dangerous razor-thin plastic blades issued by the CIA from 1971-72, they were not to be had in just your average knitting store. The Duck traversed the city in search of them. Fruitlessly. At last, one persistantly nice store owner cracked open a copy of the Reykjavík phone book, and, after several tries, found a dark basement on the other side of downtown whose occupants admitted to owning a 1.25 and a 1.75. The Duck went the size down. No doubt about it, doomed from the start.

Now, when one is knitting using thread-sized yarn not yet rolled into a ball rather still twisted in a skein, as the Duck was, it is common procedure to roll it into that ball before beginning to knit, to prevent it from tangling into a labyrinthine mass that closely resembles Medusa's snaky hairdo. The Duck was sadly unaware of this common procedure. Doom inched a little closer. Ironically, as the knitting certainly didn't.

The instructions say the entire hat will take an evening's knit, if you have good eyesight. Three months later, she had completed approximately a centimetre. Doomed, doomed, doomed.

Things seemed to be looking up when she decided to go home for the summer. She remembered not to put it in her hand-luggage when she packed it up, was not convicted for attempted plane-hijacking, and when she got safely to the other end even found an innocent victim to help her unravel the horrifying web. A record-smashing 3 centimetres were knitted. That was before she realized she couldn't find the pattern. It seems, of all things, she has left it in Iceland.

Yesterday she drew first blood. She was putting the knitting down on a chair when it caught on an invisible plastic bag. The impact drove the blade into her hand. A single tear of blood rolled out. It mourned the madness that drove Blue Duck to begin a skothúfa in the first place.

Once she has finished the knitting, she will have to buy herself the tassle (she seems to remember it being 3000 ISK/$60 CAN) and the silver tube to go with it (this is REAL silver, folks, and custom-made at that). Maybe she should take her time. Yes, this project is doom personified.

viking attack

It's the attack of the Silly Viking Quiz!! Yet again!!

Little Blue Duck's darkly dubious viking quizzes continue to oppress the defenceless coast of the Internet. For those of you who dare, here is the latest addition:

http://quizilla.com/users/littleblueduck/quizzes/Find%20your%20Viking%20Nickname!

Jæja...

Since the last time the Duck put fingers to keyboard (cause if chickens have fingers, why can't ducks?), a few rather interesting things have happened.

First, the Good News: It's official!!! The Duck will be translating three chapters of a memoir by a group of Western Icelanders, for which she will be paid REAL MONEY, because it will become part of a REAL (PUBLISHED) BOOK!!! ... Little Blue Duck, although you probably can't see it from where you are, is bouncing up and down - her career has begun at last!!!!! Tremble, all ye citizens of the Great Ice Cube...

Stay tuned for updates, when Blue Duck starts pulling her feathers out over the correct word for obscure Icelandic farm tools...

Anyway, now for the Other News: It's not quite official, but according to the blood tests our friend Duck has a gluten allergy. Which means no wheat, no barley, no rye, no PopTarts, no Kraft Dinner, no triple-cheese hold-the-mayo McWhoppers, no glistening Tim Hortons honey-dip doughnuts...... It was as if a divine voice spoke out from the grey Winnipeg clouds and said: "Thou shalt not eat carbs."

Crocodile tears aside, Blue Duck's actual reaction to hearing the news was, in fact, "You mean I can still eat sushi? YIPPEEEE!!" To tell the truth, she was just relieved to find out what was wrong with her - and that it wasn't fatal. She had nearly had a heart attack several minutes before, when the nice assistant came in and told her she had an ultrasound appointment in two weeks (Thought Bubble: But.. this NEVER happens in the Canadian medicare system.. I'M GOING TO DIIIIIIE..) Now all Lil' Blue needs to do is find alternatives to all those tasty wheat-and-sugar products she can no longer eat, though in another happy stroke of Divine Providence a bakery appeared several days ago a mere block from her house selling gluten-free bread on Mondays. Coincidence? She thinks not!!

Oh, and she plans to fill her suitcase to Iceland (via Minneapolis) with a variety of white powders with labels such as "rice flour" and "potato starch". Stay tuned for updates on that too :P

Oh, and Blue Duck has rejoined her old choir! She has been somehow coerced (possibly with blackmail) into singing Rogers and Hammerstein in a medieval gown next Sunday.... all we can say is that no one must ever speak of this aloud. And there will be NO pictures. Ha, ha, just kidding. Blue Duck loves her choir (we do not wish to comment on her opinion of Rogers and Hammerstein), no matter what strange situations they may get her into. But there are still no pictures.

why i love public transit

Today, on my way home from university after a long, hard day of translating, the bus I was lazily riding in after having decided that walking burns too many brain cells suddenly ground to a halt several metres short of the bus stop. Without a word, the driver put on the brake, opened up the doors, then casually walked out of the bus and into the neighbourhood doughnut shop to buy coffee. A lean woman in jogging shorts muttered something irritably under her breath before storming off the bus. The irresistable call of Tim Hortons.

I shouldn't really have been surprised. In my first year of university, it was practically a tradition for bus drivers to stop at this very spot at least once a month to buy themselves some steaming liquid caffine. Words cannot describe how much I've missed Winnipeg Transit and its fleet of jittery, coffee-addicted drivers. Iceland's busses, in their shiny glistening ridiculous expensiveness, will never really compare.