THE NORTH BY pulled pork + grilled pineapple + corn relish + cheddar

It's basically like my favourite week of the year here in Toronto. No, it's not Christmas/NYE, or my birthday. It's NXNE (North by North East). It's like a prolonged Wednesday-Sunday weekend of running around the city (read west end), going to an obscene amount of shows, as if for sport. There are awesome shows going on in all the dozen of usual venues, and like 30 others I don't go to, free concerts at Yonge + Dundas square, so many bands, free in-stores at record shops, and lots of official/unofficial events like the Toronto Island Vice takeover, or the many years running Great Heart Festival, which is pretty much a big park concert where bands do semi-acoustic arrangements of their songs, and it gets filmed and put online for everyone to relive the greatest time of year all year round. 

North 'By', as it's generally called is always an amazing time, some unforgettable sets, but a general blur of a weekend, what with the constantly jetting off to see another band somewhere, and continually evaluating whether you're too day-drunk to bike. It's something my friends and I highly anticipate, some of us months in advance, but come festival Sunday, no one wants to do anything but shovel BBQ and tacos into our mouths. The crowds at Sunday shows can be pretty sparse.

Anyway, this year I was pretty lazy and only went to like 2 shows a night, and none of the daytime parties or house shows. And I had a blast. Here's my NX Sunday sandwich special. If you're in Toronto and you've been "festive", you know this is what will keep you going, just one more night folks!

maple Hawaiian grilled cheese

So it was my birthday last week! The family tradition for birthdays in recent years, is that we all take work off, and try to spend the day together. And birthdays are awesome, because you put thought into what it is exactly, that you would be happiest spending the day doing, and have everyone participate in. So when my parents asked, I pretty quickly came up with a day of making sandwiches. I invited them over, and had them bring odds and ends from their ever-full kitchen of untold wonders, and made a variety of sandwiches for them, and of course stopped to photograph, so I could get some blog posts out of it. Here's one of them, and you'll see a few more in some past and coming days. 

It was a nice birthday. I like having something totally unnecessary, but satisfying to do. And I think the sandwiches were a hit? I was going to make 3 of this one, so we could all have, and I was kind of looking forward to this one in particular, but as it turns out, I couldn't eat this sandwich because unless expressedly stated, cured meats are NOT gluten-free. But I snacked on some of this delicious Quebec raw milk cheddar. And everything smelled really nice. 

Oh, and then at night, I had a little booze picnic in the park with friends. There were sparklers. That was nice too. It would be great to spend every day doing exactly the things that make you happy, and I try. And of course, it's easier when your wishes and tastes are simple.